A sudden twinge of pain. A shallow breath. A pain here, another there. The symptoms of something, but of what? A quick google search reveals what you already suspected. You’re dying. Classical symptoms, classical profile, soon it’ll all be over but the weeping, and there’s a very significant doubt that more than a few will weep. Maybe your mother, but that’s about it. Your kids, sure. They’ll be sad for a while, at least one could hope. The funk sets in, the languid life lived as one who will soon depart from it. The world will go on, and you don’t find encouragement in that fact. It’ll go on, all right, the same as it did today the same as it did the day before, but you won’t be there. The absence won’t be noticed, no one will care. The car passing outside your window right now won’t know if you’re in that office or not. Soon, no one will remember you, unless your friends hold a golf outing in your memory. But that, like all things, will slowly fade and everyone will move on and they’ll be happy that your wife found a new husband, and so quickly and she’s so happy! It’ll be just fine, and the pain comes again and the breath feels shallow and so you nap a tortured nap. Death, soon.
But you don’t do this for long, because you go to the doctor who studied about your pain and your breath and he says you’ll be fine. He says you have anxiety and you’re not really dying at all. For the advice, you’ll owe him money. If you have Humana, you’ll think your insurance will pay for the visit, but they won’t. You take your family to Chili’s. Another year, another near miss. And when your car sputters and the light comes on, you google and find yourself on a message board. The members use words you don’t really know, but you’re smart and you can figure things out. The member forum contributors have names like TieRod (everyone assumes his name is Rod). Others are Sparky (and they assume his nickname is Sparky, but it might only be for this forum, no one knows for sure). The moderator doesn’t even use a name, just V-10. We assume he has one of those BMWs with that size engine. You search for others that have discussed what it is that your car has. You search for the positive, something like, yeah, my car did this and then I did that and now it’s fine.
But after some time you don’t find anything and that sputter persists and the black tape you stuck to the dash glass over the shining cartoon image of the engine has begun to peel and sag. You take the car in to a mechanic named JEFF, the cursive signature stitched into his shirt a reassuring endorsement. He’s been there long enough to have the personalized shirt. The mechanic says your car has a this and a that, something serious, but not fatal. You agree to have him fix it, for a price. When you return to the dealer two days later your car is ready, it’s been washed, the invoice is $870.54. Good, you think, because you had feared it might be over a thousand but it wasn’t. You take your family to Chili’s in your car, the one newly fixed.
You’ll need to sell your house soon. You’re looking to upgrade, to improve, because your health is okay and your car is fixed and it seems like the time is right. You’ll need to sell the house. A Realtor is summoned, the one with her name on the city bus bench. She arrives, a yellow Hummer with her name emblazoned on the side and her face, too. She looks nothing like the photos, but that’s okay because you don’t look like you did 20 years ago, either. You ask for her advice, what’s the house worth? She tells you $375k. Maybe $385k, but certainly not $395k. Your list should be $389k. Start soon, clean the clutter, fix those holes in the drywall, clean up the oil stains in your garage, the drips that dropped from your car before you had it fixed by Jeff. You thank her for her time, for the sweet brochures, and you tell her you’ll let her know.
You toss and turn that night, not because of the shortness of breath and the slight wheeze that the doctor said was nothing, but because you question the advice. Why would this agent tell you $389k? The neighbor once asked $429k for his house. He’s not better than you. The agent must have just wanted to get your house sold immediately, so she under priced it. She wants her commission, that’s really all she wants. Yeah, that’s what’s going on here. You get it. You’re not dumb. You weren’t born yesterday. In fact, when you fill out online things where your birthdate is required you have to scroll way, way down the list. This isn’t your first time. You’re not to be trifled with. Nice try, Realtor lady, but that’s not going to work with you. Those four comps she showed you on your street, and her lifetime of sales and experience, those aren’t going to just steal money from you. When you wake up tomorrow you’re going to find a Realtor with the right number, because that Realtor knows you, and your house, and they know that you once replaced the water heater just because. It wasn’t even leaking!
I get it. Realtors aren’t doctors. We aren’t even mechanics, though shamefully, some Realtors do wear name tags. Realtors aren’t really motivated by a desire to help you with your housing goals, just as a mechanic isn’t motivated to help you with your tie-rod assembly. The mechanic fixes your tie-rod because he wants to make a living. A Realtor works on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights because she wants to make money. She puts pictures on Facebook of a kid running through some lakeside lawn with the title “WELCOME HOME”, because she wants to make money off the emotion. You’re working at your desk today and not laying in bed because today you want to make money. You didn’t buy that stock because you want the company to usher in world peace, you just bought the stock because you liked the dividend and think the stock will appreciate- because you want to make money. Realtors are greedy, you say, they just want to sell your house or sell you that house to make money, you say. Guess what? You’re right. There’s never been a successful Realtor who wasn’t motivated to make the wage that can accompany success in this business. Is that an indictment on the real estate business? That depends, does a printing press operate because they love the thought of people reading the instruction manual that comes tucked into a package of a a wireless router, or does the printing press print those manuals because they are trying to make money?
The real estate business is clouded by the thought that Realtors are representing their financial interests, rather than those interests of their clients. This, in the presence of agents who have not proven themselves honest and effective, can be the case. But this can be the case with the printer, and with Jeff, and with your doctor who prescribed you some medicine that you might not have needed, even though it might help if you actually have that thing you think you have, the thing that makes your breath shallow when you’re nervous. Want to find a Realtor who isn’t very good at their job? Find one that doesn’t find motivation in the promise of wages for success. All this is to say you can’t discount a broker’s advice just because you’re afraid he’s going to make money if you listen to him. That’s the way the business has been structured. If you’d rather pay me hourly for my time, I’m happy to discuss a fee-based arrangement. But you know what would happen then? You’d assume that open house I’m doing is just a ploy to bill you for my time.