The Persian

I don’t know where your Realtor is from, but mine is a Persian woman of subtlety and dark beauty. I have had good luck with people from Persia, going back a way. My rugs are beautiful, and many of then are because my friend Farzhan got them to my attention at a good price. We both did well. That is the point of business.

My Persian tells me she has made the top five percent of all volume sellers in the country, which is impressive. Her card shows her radiant smile. It does not show her fierce cunning, or her able research skills. Her name has soft vowels and an unexpected lilt in the middle. Even the consonants do not grate on the ear.

I have never had a personal Realtor before. I signed a contract to that effect, one of exclusivity. I know why I did it. I was getting the market fever, and felt the market was passing me by, leaving me behind.

This is not the first time I have dealt with Realtors, of course, or attorneys for that matter. I fully intend to interact exclusively with the former, having had some recent unpleasant experiences with the latter. Except my brother, of course. He is a good attorney, not one of the blood-sucking parasites I have been dealing with.

Realtors, as a species, I have a better view of. After all, it was Realtor Susan who I contacted in desperation and whose with the bright smile who steered me into the first rental unit at Big Pink, 212, the efficiency with the big windows that looked out on trees, and the white walls and freshly steamed beige rug.

I had nothing to put in it, but it was a roof and a start. Thirteen months later I had filled it up with the detritus of my disorganized life, and then got a call saying that I was back out on the street at the end of the month. The Landlady’s husband had died, and the evil step-sisters who inherited the house on the pre-nup wanted to exploit the white-hot housing market, and sold it out from under her. She needed her house back.

She is still in it, as far as I know. I saw her at the mailbox last week. We do not speak, since my departure was hasty, and I recall her screaming disparaging things about me to her care-giver when she thought she was out of ear-shot down by the elevator.

I still had two or three shopping carts worth of crap to move, and I did so with alacrity. I think she believes I still owe her two days rent. Like I say, we do not speak. Matters of real estate do not go without emotion.

But at that moment I was filled with resolve. I was never going to be in a position where some loon could put me on the street again.

I found another unit in Big Pink on the bulletin board, which I looked at each day. It was just in time. It was on the fifth floor, with a balcony. The owner was a nice lady, in the real estate game herself, and she was hanging on to what was euphemistically called a “junior one bedroom” for investment, or as a bolt-hole if things didn’t work out in the marriage.

It is a new world, and people have to look out for themselves.

“Junior One Bedroom” means the owner has put a wall down the middle of an efficiency unit, with pocket doors that can be slid into the wall for privacy, if necessary. It is hard to have guests to an efficiency, where the bed lies there accusing you either of ignoble intent, or failure.

Or both.

The heating unit was on one side of the wall and the other had none. So if the door was closed, the “bedroom” got cold. I loved the balcony on that unit, standing outside and watching the traffic whiz by, but I still felt that I was living at the whim of the owner. Prices were going up. I don’t know what she had originally paid for the place, but it had at least doubled in value in the five years she had owned it. Sooner or later she might have to leverage it in some other deal. I wanted control of my life back.

I was walking down to the pool early in the summer two years ago. Henry the Realtor was sitting on a folding chair in the main room of the ground floor efficiency with the door open. On a whim, I walked in and took a look around. It looked nice. I went back upstairs and wrote him a check for the deposit. I knew it was wrong, and it wasn’t big enough. But I had to get in the market somehow or it would leave me behind.

Henry was not my Realtor, but he was a pretty good guy and since he got to keep both sides of the commission, he was pretty accommodating. There was a title problem with the place, and the negotiations went on for months.

I was lucky. The owner was out of town, and had no idea what was going on in the market. I think I made a chunk of change while we waited for the paperwork to come through, since the point was that I got it off the market as everything else took off.

Not that it was real money. Not until you cash it out. In the meantime I moved and put in plantation shutters and a ceiling fan and Pottery Barn drapes and a new refrigerator and a screen door to keep out the bugs and squirrels, two and four footed. It was a cool feeling to be able to make changes without asking anyone’s permission.

But I knew I was kidding myself. The efficiency was only good as a pied a terre, a foot on the ground. Not a place to live.

Once I got the kids out of college things would be easier, and even getting one out the door would free up enough resources to do something else. Something with at least a bedroom to call my own.

So I began to talk to Realtors, hoping there was still something in Northern Virginia I could still afford. There was Susan, the woman who kept trying to sell me million dollar properties out in Loudoun County . I didn’t think she was working for me. I think she thought I was working for her . And Tina, of course, who specialized in Maryland , and just about had me into a horse property near the water in Calvert County .

It was too rich for me by just a couple hundred thousand dollars, and far enough away from Washington that I wasn’t sure I could get my money back out of the property. The specter of laboring and driving, clawing to hold onto my job into the dim and distant future filled me with dread. But I was willing.

Then I met the Persian. I had attended an open house on the Fifth floor. It was a so-so unit with a so-so view. It still seemed small, and though there were two bed-rooms, the one bath was problematic. I did not have the hunger that day, though I was hungry. I ate some of the little pastries she was heating in the oven, and had a glass of wine while I walked around.

Most of the crowd viewing the unit and drinking the wine were other residents of Big Pink, marveling at what was happening to their investments. I kept the card that she gave me, and she followed up on her contact with me.

I was impressed by her energy, and I was impressed by the fact that the market was soaring away and she moved the property at an advantageous price to her seller.

A short time later, a friend sold her house, a modest little place a few blocks away, in a bidding war that drove the price up twenty percent from her asking price. It was incredible. At this rate, I would be living in an efficiency apartment right up until they took me away to assisted care, or the barracks at the Veteran’s Home.

I called the Persian, and told her I needed to buy something, and I wanted to have her as my personal agent to deal with the sharks and grifters that are making fortunes on the bubble.

We met in the lobby of Big Pink. It is a gracious place, with marble floors and a concierge and delicate couches covered in Damascus fabric. I signed a contract with her that guaranteed half the commission on any deal we might make, and gave her exclusive rights to me for sixty days. I wondered about that, in case something came up elsewhere like the haunted house in Clark County that I looked at on a whim. But this was serious business, now.

I was prepared to pull the trigger, and I needed my own gunslinger at my side when I did it.

I told her that I wanted to stay in Big Pink, but with things being what they were, I was willing to consider other options. The first thing she brought me was a two bedroom on the end of the Fifth Floor.

It was a gem, and it was not on the market yet. There were not many of these in the building with two bathrooms. The owner was a confident softball player, and aggressively looking to move up; she and her Realtor know the market, and know that Big Pink is undervalued for this zip code by as much as 20%. They had a fact sheet to prove it. There was no price on the place, as yet, so I was asked to imagine a number.

The last two-bedroom, albeit with a single bath, had been listed for a staggering amount of money. I swallowed and mentioned a number well above that. The Persian looked at me with kohl-rimmed almond eyes and slowly shook her head. No, that was not an adequate number. I thought of another one, and another number after that. There was finally a number that took my breath and she said that might work, provided I was willing to go above it.

We made out a contract and submitted it to the male Realtor who represented the owner. The answer was a brusque “No.” There was no counter offer. It had only been a ploy to test the waters, and see what the initial listing price would be. They fully expected a ten percent premium on top of what they listed it for. My math is rusty, but even I can think what ten percent of too much is.

My heart sank. I might have missed my chance to live like a real person in a real place not connected to the City by twenty miles of concrete. My Persian was pretty well plugged in. She knew another building, a lot like Big Pink, in an even more prestigious Zip Code. I was depressed, in a tail-chase to find anything; I looked at a couple units in fashionable Mclean, though it was twenty minutes further out than Big Pink, and nearly a half million bucks for the same floor space that I had already missed, and there was no garage parking available.

We looked as far away as Tysons Corner, which had the advantage of being near our suburban office. But it was not right. The numbers were killers.

And these were apartments , for God’s sake, not houses.

Then the goddess of fortune smiled, or the Persian goosed her. A woman on the fourth floor was leaving the area, cashing out, and was not under the pressure of people staying here and trying to trade up with the other sharks. She was going to put her two-bedroom, two-bath on the market for a lot less than what the other one was going to go for, and it hadn’t hit the market yet. Her Realtor was asleep. My Persian, counseled me to be bold.

We made out a contract that put a ten percent premium on her asking price, said we would match any deal better than that, and if she needed a week or two to finalize her move, she could stay on for up to a month, rent-free, after closing.

She took it.

That just started the excitement. Then I had to come up with the money to execute the deal. Which meant refinancing the efficiency to strip the new-found equity to the 80% mark, and then throw a second on top of that, and have the resulting cash on deposit for thirty days, so it would look like it was real. I was sweating the appraisal on both the new and the old, since it is hard to keep up with a skyrocket, and an undervalue assessment could be a deal breaker

It all worked. The new place even appraised for more than I was buying it for, which meant the first small profit was there as soon as I signed my name eighty times in front of Patrick the real estate attorney.

This speculation game requires nerves of steel, and a firm hand to sign ones signature, over and over.

But so far, I am ahead. I have to thank my Persian for that.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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