Saturday, December 10, 2011

The Whole Real Estate Sales Strategy is Built On a Veil of Lies

It’s hot again, I can feel it as soon as I wake up. 9am. My bedroom gets the morning sun, of course.

I text Gill, first thing, and ask her what time she is planning to arrive? She texts back 11.30 to 12.00. Yay. Plenty of time to laze in bed, I reckon an hour. 

The hour slides right away, just like that, it would seem. Time to get up and get ready and still not to have to rush. I so like having plenty of time in the morning. I can rush, if I have to, but I’d try to avoid it, if I can.


I make coffee. Sam prepares muesli. I’ve rolled two joints first thing. We sit outside in the heat with our coffee and smoke the joint... like it’s a long, hot never ending morning. Actually, I didn’t share the first one with Sam, it is all a part of my harm minimisation program with him, less is more when you are starting out. No need to have that period where a little goes a long way spoilt by a pot head like me. Truth of the matter is that I smoked it like a pig. We were chatting, it was just in my hand, what can I say, here is the roach. “Oops. Sorry.”

He gives me a look. Really, I think he is not unhappy about the situation.

I shared the second one with him, though.

We did the computer thing while we ate our breakfast.


11am, time to shower. Gill arrives at 11.20. "It didn’t take as long to walk as expected." 

I am only just out of the shower. Sam is still dressing. I meant to tell Gill that he is my new boyfriend, but I didn’t think of it again after she had arrived.

We drank tea and then we got going.


The real estate agent, Andrew Terry, was none to pleased about our refusal to budge off X as our price. You see, we don’t have to sell. We’ve come up with a good business plan, that’s all, but it doesn’t have to be enacted now. It can wait.

“It won’t make that,” says Andrew Terry. “The market has dropped.”

But, X was the price he always gave us, right from the beginning. In any of our meetings with him it was always X. The turn around time on all of this is four to six weeks? Come on Andrew, do you really expect us to believe that the market has dropped in that short a period of time. And for you to say you won't get that now, you are saying that the market has dropped suddenly, unexpectedly, even to you an experienced real estate agent, one of the partners of the agency, no less, in the time we have been in dealings about this.

“It’s okay though, because the unit you are planning to buy has dropped too.” Then, as we realised afterwards, he quoted us the same price (bracket) for the units that he told us at the beginning of all of this.

Oh yes, real estate agents have a, shall we say, silver tongue.

The house just up the road was being auctioned at 12.30. It was what our property could be once it has been developed. It started on a vendor’s big of XX. Nobody bid on that house, there was not one bid. Not one. The auction was silent, other than the auctioneers somewhat straining words of encouragement.

Still, it was a good comparison to our place.

Nobody bid at our auction, either. There were no bidders, just a vendors bid Z, well below X.

Andrew Terry was back at us after the auction.

“You have to decide what you will except now?”

Andrew, it has always been X from the very beginning.

“Will you except an offer of Y, if I can get it?”

“Will you?”

“Will you?”

“Will you?”

“Decide!”

“Decide!”

“Decide!”

I find them especially hard to deal with, those of the high pressure variety.

“What do you say?”

Oh my god, he looked so pained… dare I say desperate.

“Yes, we’ll accept an offer of Y.


The whole sales strategy is built on a veil of lies. The real estate agent will tell you what you want to hear to get you to sign up to the sale, and they tell the purchaser what they want to hear, and then it is whatever lies it takes, to make the difference between the two positions disappear.

And you see it worked, we dropped our price.

We came home. We drank more tea. Gill left to catch the train.


Dean text and said he’d be here at 7.30am, in the morning. Yay!

Jane did say at some stage that she would have Andy at her place to help unload. That meant that Sam and I could drive to Bolago, help load and then drive home. We wouldn’t have to drive to the beach, as well. We could be done in a couple of hours. But, my still small voice told me that that would be tantamount to deserting Dean, and I was really doing this for him ultimately. So, I didn’t pike on him.


Sam was anxious about food, by this stage, of course.

I rolled two joints, which we smoked.

I was going to cook pasta with the left over pesto sauce from what Sebastian cooked on Wednesday, but I couldn’t find the spaghetti. Sauce, no pasta, a strange predicament. And I spent so long hunting for the spaghetti, it has to be here we only bought a new packet recently, that I didn’t notice my boy getting snarly and tight lipped.

“Do you think we could have put it somewhere else?”

“Which part of I’m hungry don’t you understand?!”

We walked down to Smith Street and bought pork rolls.

We came home and smoked two more joints. Ha ha, I’m a bad influence. But, this is the last bag for sure, so it’s all nearly over now brown cow, so what does it matter?

I’m a bit stoned now.

It is hot and humid.


Facebook

Someone said to me today that hairier arses are tastier.

Then it was dinner with Rachel, Jill and Elly at The Pier in Port Melbourne.

Elly is down from Sydney, I’m not sure why? I’ve missed that corridor of information, from being up the country for a week, or so. The sisters must have made up, although Jill hasn’t said anything. Jill was never talking to Elly again, not so long ago. I tried to tell her at the time, this will all blow over – even if it is all, essentially over money and I’m really not that quietly confident – and obviously it has. Big smile.

The weather had changed, by this stage, and it was threatening to rain. It was a just-about-to-rain moody evening when we drove down to Port Melbourne. The sky had grey’d over, but the light remained, brightly threatening what was going to happen.

We got a park directly out the front. I had to show Jill, as she is convinced I have parking spot charm, which I’m not at all sure that I, in fact, do have. Maybe, I should just tell Jill that she is my great car spot charm, as I’m sure it only happens when she is around.

Actually, I guess I do have charm, a charmed life. I should remember to be grateful for all I have. The only trouble with that theory, is that I’m never really sure who I should be grateful to? I guess it is my family, for the generations of hard workers.

Rachel was at dinner first, that is why dinner was at 6.30, as Rachel had been in the area all afternoon. She was sitting up by herself at the best table in the place, when we got there. I don’t know if that was luck, or the expertise of a recently set free restaurant owner.

Then Jill and Elly arrived, and you know, for Jill it was nearly, practically on time, give or take half an hour.

We chatted away all night, like friends of thirty years do. I don’t remember what we talked about? And afterwards, I realised I didn’t talk about The auction, or Bolago. But we never stopped talking, so it was a time issue, rather than an interest problem. Ha.

We sat in the corner, under two large glass windows. We watched the day turn to night. We watched the fine weather turn to rain. We listened to it beat up against the building.

 

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