Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Foreword

It’s been forty years since I started in the real estate business and fifteen years since I left it behind for my new career of retired. I’ve got to say that both careers are equally creative and inspiring, and at the same time equally challenging.

Given the title of this series, you might not believe me. In fact, I’m not sure I do either, but one way or another, it ought to be a fun adventure. Of course I’m too old and feeble to remember any of the names of my clients and associates, but that comes in handy in terms of avoiding being sued. So the names will all be fictional and the incidents may well have an element of truth in them, they may be by no means fully accurate, but I maintain my mandate of telling a good story regardless of the facts.

Real estate is an interesting career, exciting even. But it’s complicated to say the least. There is a huge conglomerate of entities with a vested interest in the real estate business, each with its own angle to get a piece of the pie. There’s the Real Estate Board for one who provide a service to the general public and to the agents to keep the game honest and above board. Then there’s the Securities Commission, a government agency designed to protect trust accounts and moral obligations of real estate companies and/or their agents. Beyond that you have your various associations, each of which has its own departments.

Well, as a brand new, naïve potential real estate agent, the first thing you do is to pay money – to the Real Estate Board for the two week course you have to take in order to obtain your license. Day after day the naive agent is lectured about real estate law, board rules, securities commission rules, property values and appraisals: on and on and ad infinitum.

One by one the novice agents were beginning to worry. When were they going to teach us how to get listings? When were they going to teach us about making a sale? When were we going to find out about doing business?

Well, they weren’t going to teach us any of that at all. Old Albert Schmidt, a bricklayer who was tired of laying bricks day after day was totally disgusted. In his words, what kind of stupid training was that? (Well, those weren’t exactly his words – I know there were a few variations of “Verschissen” in there). I think he went back to laying his stupid bricks having satisfied himself that real estate was not for him.

I’ll never forget the appraisal course I took later to get my broker’s license. There was an eye opening revelation made by the lecturer that proved to be far truer than any other mark of the value of a property. After he had given us all the considerations in the value of a property he said that if a seller complains he hasn’t received enough for his property, and the buyer complains he has over paid, and the deal is still consummated, THAT’S your fair market value. Too bad we can’t hit that mark every time.

But I digress. Finally done with my real estate course, I reported to my office and was shown to a cubicle containing my brand new business cards and little else. Well, now what? It wasn’t really as bad as all that. Our broker welcomed me and we had a nice chat. Then he took me downtown in his big Lincoln to introduce his new agent to the boss at head office. We hit it off nicely and I went back to my cubicle which was about the same size as the one I had left in the Engineering office I’d been bored stiff at. It was still as empty as ever, except for my business cards, oh and yeah, a phone.

“What do I do now?” I asked my broker.

“You see that thing on your desk there?”

“Yeah, that’s a phone.”

“Wrong! That’s your gateway to a great future in the real estate business! Get on it and let family and friends, business associates know you’re in the business and see if you can be of service to them. That’s your lifeline!”

Actually, I was more interested in the coffee machine in the back of the office.