This thing Realtors know painfully well but can’t quite describe.  This thing anyone who has recently bought or sold a house knows but probably wants to forget as quickly as their burned-out neurons will let them.

This odd place real estate has stumbled into.  This strange dream it has woken up in. This brave new world that gets more scary all the time.  Some kind of chaotic force or unintelligible intelligence has hijacked real estate. An uncaring non-process has abducted the process and won’t let it go. Or flow.

I don’t mean one transaction. I mean all of them. The whole kit and kaboodle. Sucked into the same wormhole that grabs socks between the time they go into the washer and are supposed to come out clean and smooth from the dryer.

Welcome to escrow ladies and gentlemen. The new and unimproved version. A discombobulated dimension of realty where transactions don’t exactly go to die in – just get stuck in and drag on, in a bone-numbing, jaw-dropping, eye-rolling torturous drip of endless delay-without-closure.

What do we call this period between when escrows are supposed to close and when they sorta, kinda should close, if we are lucky, for reasons we may or may not ever understand? We better find a word for it. It’s the rule now rather than the exception.  And these interminable intermezzos are taking up incredible amounts of energy. Drowning our professional souls.

Escrow bardo? The never-ending denouement? Purgatory? FUBAR? The twilight zone? Extra innings? Overtime?  Real estate held hostage. Day 382.  We’re in a sudden death play-off game that isn’t very fun.

Honest.  The old notion of Close of Escrow (COE in Realtor-speak) was something you could pretty much depend on. It wasn’t liquid. Or gas. It was a solid you held in your head.

There was a contract. The buyer and seller signed it. A point was picked on the horizon. Wheels were put into motion that would eventually converge in time and space. And voila – the deed would record and money would change hands. The buyer of the house became a buyer. And the seller, a seller.  All, more or less, proscribed in the timeframe known as COE.

Now COE has become something completely fuzzy and amorphous. It is a moving target. Constantly moving backwards in time that is. When will a particular escrow really close? That’s anybody’s guess. And I mean anybody.

Realtors are just trying to have a real estate market here.  The escrow officers, appraisers and loan brokers are on board. Doing their part. What happened?

Didn’t that seedy underbelly of the beast known as underwriting get the memo? Or they got the memo but lost it?  Or they got the memo, but the “team” lost it’s jobs last week? And we have to send another memo to the new team? Or they got that memo but we need to verify that we’ve insured the memo for the third time? (Is that the same as insuring the insuring of the insurance?)  Or we have to certify in a separate memo that it was really us that sent the first memo that is now lost? And that needs to be a non-faxed, non-scanned memo with wet signatures delivered in person on bended knees? Handed to the processor who will move it along to the closer who will run it by the committee who will assign it to the great decider-er for a really quick turnaround?

Folks, the system is in the throes of a grand mal. It affects the entire brain of real estate.  I’d love to explain it to you but I’m waiting for someone to explain it to me first.

In the meantime all I can do summon the wisdom of Yogi Berra, the man known as Mr. Malaprop,  for answers to the avalanche of malaproperty-isms we are experiencing. Yogiisms are just about the only things that do make sense in this impasse of an escrow juxtaposed between now and the future.

Try this one: “The future ain’t what it used to be.” Or: “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”  And… If you are in the middle of an escrow that isn’t closing:. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Me? I’m sticking with this one:   “I wish I had an answer to that because I’m tired of answering the question.”

There are immutable laws that govern the Real Estate Universe and Murphy’s Law is one of them. In fact, it might just be the prime directive.

Realtors out there will recognize the phenomena. They’ve all experienced it  before.  I’ll recite a few examples culled from the karmic repertoire.

Remember holding that open house at the beautiful, idyllic country setting so immersed in the soothing sounds of silence? Like clockwork, the 1pm witching hour struck and some self-styled Paul Bunyan within easy earshot, decided to rev up his chainsaw and massacre any semblance of tranquility you hoped to promote.

How about that expansive, manicured mini-estate in the middle of town you invited people to visit? Right on cue the neighbor’s leaf blower launched into decibels of overdrive. You couldn’t hear yourself think let alone mouth all those glowing descriptions about how peaceful and quiet the ambiance was.

Barking dogs? Droning generators? Impromptu road repairs?  Unanticipated septic failures? Newly junked cars? Yep. They are all in play -  just waiting for you to go to work.  The big party at the frat house down the street? Somehow the open keg always runs out of control completely in sync with your open house.

And those open houses you were envisioning for that ridgetop home you just listed? The one with the incredible ocean views? Might as well hire yourself out to the City Water Department now. The drought is over. Rain clouds are lining up across the Pacific. Loch Lomond will soon be full.

When Realtors prepare to showcase a great home they strive for perfection. Lights on. Fresh flowers in the vase. Soft music floating in the air.  But somehow, the very act of making best laid plans is an open invitation for the fickle gods of fate to step in and wreak havoc without bothering to take off their shoes. Why? Obviously, some of those tricksters residing on Mt Olympus get a huge kick out of punking us real estate mortals on a regular basis.  Imagine Ashton Kutcher in the role of Zeus.

Suffice to say. Real estate fortunes can change as quickly as the weather does. Literally and figuratively.

So there I was. Planning a little soiree at one of the most unique properties I’ve ever seen.  Two decades in the biz and nothing even remotely like it.  A half-acre peninsula stretching 270 feet out into the water. A private bluff top providing front row seats for riveting primetime views of every significant feature there is, along the entire curve of the Bay.

In my mind’s eye, all those Brokers with all those discerning beach-buyers were going to answer my call to convene for the Wednesday night sailboat regatta. They would stroll leisurely out to the end of this special point of land. Feeling the breeze while shooting the breeze. Wine glasses in hand, they would watch in awe as billowing sails glided past. So close they could almost touch them. Each sail a harbinger of the big sale to come.

What could have been a better augury than the record 101 degree heat we had on Tuesday? Wednesday morning we woke up again to bright sunshine. All was right in the heavens. Until the 11th hour of course – which is roughly 5pm – regatta time.

Suddenly out of the blue, there was a wash of grey and a confederacy of disaster.  An eerie fogbank blew in from nowhere, blanketing our erstwhile banana belt in a soup so thick you could barely see 20 feet ahead. The few boats that actually made it out past the harbor jetty were fleeting shadows.  Mary Celestes  moving in and out of the mist like ghostly apparitions

So now that real estate is no longer the great pulsing economic engine driving the entire world’s economy, I think I’ve discovered a way to still make myself useful  – thinking globally while encouraging people to buy locally.

I’m going to hold this one of a kind, once in a lifetime, rarest of properties, open for as many sailboat regattas as I can. By doing so, I’m going to help halt the progress of Global Warming. Take that – you capricious, unruly gods of real estate. There’s only one way you can stop me from doing too much good.  You better make sure this property sells fast!

But it’s not the sound of all that ripping away next door that is wrenching the roof off my brain.  True, I can’t believe what my ears are hearing. But what I really can’t believe is what my eyes are seeing in the news. That’s the real chalk squealing on my optic nerves. The creepy feeling making me shudder and jump out of my skin.

The story that contractors of spin are trying to put on top of the real estate market is driving me stark raving mad.

What story?  The one that starts with…According to the Chronicle, home sales in the Bay Area slumped 23 per cent in July. That’s a belated “told you so” that I take no pleasure in.   It seems the news is finally catching up with the truth that all of us in real estate have known in our guts these past months.

We are reminded, for the upteenth bazillionth time, that what most people think they know about real estate is woefully out of touch with the real thing. Numbers and prices quoted in the middle of August, regarding sales recorded in July,  have almost nothing to do with where the market really was in July or even June for that matter. Let alone where it is at right now.

It is all trailing information folks.  Days late. Dollars short. July sales tell us what the market was doing 60 or 75 days prior. Way back in April and May, when those willing sellers were (or weren’t) coming to terms and making deals with those willing buyers.  And the market wasn’t going all that well then, apparently, despite persistent rumors to the contrary.

We’re almost five months behind the curve now.  Turns out we’ve been running on fumes. The market hasn’t been that busy since mid spring. But the Industry itself and the Feds have been very busy constructing a different story built on lag time.

Yes, we had palpable energy coursing through our veins back in March.  And all those applauding pundits of positivism (perception always creates reality until the house of cards falls and it doesn’t anymore) didn’t let the opportunity pass. They jumped right on it.

They’ve been busy pumping up the volume on real estate ever since.  Trying to leverage the hearts and minds of the marketplace into believing that everything was back  to normal.

So here’s the part that really drives me crazy.  They are still at it. Foisting more missed and dissed information on those who just wanna/gotta believe.

Now that we know sales have been down, what’s the story being used to explain that story?

The Brokers of Illusion have the perfect excuse and aren’t embarrassed to use it. Their answer is simple.  There’s nothing wrong with the market itself.  The end of the Housing Tax Credit in April is the real culprit. The expiration of real estate’s very own cash for clunkers program has somehow sapped the will of those who would otherwise be lining up to buy.

The notion that the loss of  an $8,000 tax credit has much to do with a marketplace like ours is dumb. Dumber than dumb.

Maybe, just maybe, the notion of a one-time rebate of $8,000 could be construed as compelling in a market like Iowa where the price of a decent home is $120,000. But why would any buyer of sound mind and judgment be sold on buying a home, in a place where the median price is $500,000,  just so they could get a check back for that relatively measly amount.  Doesn’t compute.

The average price and median price in Santa Cruz have both fallen 4 or 5 times that number since April.  Interest rates have set record new lows for 9 straight weeks now. Seems like both of those very true facts are way more reason for buyers to step up and buy than the end of the credit would be a reason for local buyers not to buy.

Yes, I know there seems to be a correlation in the time line -  end of tax credit and loss of steam in the market. But could it possibly be that the perfect storm of lack of jobs, an incredibly tough loan environment, all the powerful fears that buyers still harbor and an overall economy seesawing on the cusp of a double-dip recession has more to do with the new numbers we are finally seeing?

Buying a home can feel remarkably similar to being pregnant.

There I said it.  I can hear those pregnant pauses now. Groans welling up from today’s studio audience.  As a gender-related note of apology, I promise to pass a large kidney stone in the future just to make amends.

First, there’s the obvious. The timing is right. The stars are aligned.  The seed of an idea issues forth out of a gleam in the eye and suddenly something inside you takes hold.  Out of the blue you are on the cusp of one of those great journeys in life.  A transition that is both exhilarating and a little scary.  Part of you tries to grasp the whole notion of what it means to leap into this particular variation of the unknown.  There’s an inkling that things are going to change in ways you can’t even imagine yet but it’s all a bit abstract at first. Am I talking about buying a home or having a baby?

The inception of the idea is followed by a long gestation period, as that initial spark of desire begins to grow and take shape.   No one conceives of buying a house one day and then simply runs out to make it happen the next.  Real estate isn’t designed to work that way.  And even if it could, most people need time to adjust to the whole notion of buying a house. What will it look like? Will it be a boy? Girl? Ranch style?  Victorian? Buyers, just like future parents, imagine a million different scenarios in their heads before what actually comes to pass, comes to pass.  There are early, formative stages of development along the way that everyone has to go through.

The obvious aside, here’s the way that buying a house is most like being pregnant…  Expectant mothers as well as expectant buyers will all recognize this particular phenomenon.  Moms, do you remember how, when you were most obviously pregnant, total strangers seemed to think nothing about coming up to you in the middle of a public place, completely ignoring whatever sense of boundaries or personal space you might have,  in order to reach their hands out and feel your belly?

In addition to the physical intrusion, most of these same people were incredibly eager to launch into their own detailed accounts describing the good, the bad and the more than you ever really wanted to know, of their birth experiences.

It happens all the time. Well-meaning people just can’t help it. There’s some deep archetypal connection they feel that makes them blurt things out without considering the appropriateness of what they are saying.  Does an expectant mother really want to hear about 36 hours of grueling labor and all the things that the delivery doctor should or should not have done?

Now step into the metaphorical maternity shoes of a buyer going through the growing pains of  looking for the right home, making an offer,  being in escrow, having inspections, wrangling with the lender  – ” the full catastrophe” as Zorba the Greek might have put it .
See if you don’t recognize the distinct variation on a theme.

Announce to the world that you are buying a house and suddenly friends, relatives, cube-mates, acquaintances and a boatload of imperfect strangers are popping  up everywhere, coming out of the woodwork to insist on offering you their own unsolicited reams of advice about this, that and every other thing that they may have experienced themselves while buying their home. No detail is too small. No fear is too big.  No odd, weird or completely crazy story is too odd, weird or crazy. Jeckyll and Hyde tales abound – ad infinitum ad nauseum.

People who have been down the road to home ownership before seem to view themselves as kindred souls.  Defacto experts with a deep, misguided sense of  shared experience that gives them unspoken permission to recite the Home Buyers Bible -  chapter and verse.

Dig in Buyers. There’s going to be a deluge of unsought opinion, un-sage advice, out of context comment and rampant recommendations coming your way.  It’s going to make your head spin until you think you are on the verge of doing a Linda Blair.

If you let it happen that is.

What’s the best advice for buyers trying to birth a new home? Don’t tattoo it on your forehead.  Keep it to yourself as much as you can. If it gets out, turn down the sound. Tune out the armchair quarterbacks.  Just say no to all those that want to relive their buy-gone days through you.  In the end, if you really want to own your own home you have to start by owning your own process.  Become your own mindful midwife. It’s going to be your baby,  not anyone else’s.

Odd juxtapositions of eclectic streets, pockets of ambiance, micro-climates of weather and demographics are stitched together in a diverse fabric that flows with abandon  through the Reservation we all know as Santa Cruz.  Here, the good, the bad and the funky co-exist in a harmonic convergence of dissonance.  Or as I recently heard one disgruntled couple call it when they were looking at “cheap,” half million dollar, fixer-uppers – “Shanty Cruz.”

>From beach blanket bungalows to stucco boxes to mock English cottages  to ego monsters to redeeming eco homes it’s easy to jump from thing to thing to thing when traveling through the outer and inner landscapes of real estate.   So, step up to the tapas bar folks.  Put your bibs on for a few bytes.  We’re just driving down the smorgasborg of  the real life that feeds my head.

The good news? There’s a pulse!  There are actual living, breathing, qualified buyers fogging a few mirrors out there. Logging a few sales.  Which is to say, it suddenly feels a whole lot better than it did just a few short weeks ago when we were still suffering a hangover from the June Swoon. This is one of those welcome release points where, for reasons we could probably speculate about forever, a number of wanna-be buyers have decided to get their collective behinds off the fence and jump into the flux with their bucks.

Well, not completely with their own bucks. There’s usually a lender involved. Is it getting any better in terms of the credit crunch – which is just a fancy term for banks looking for any excuse not to lend anyone any money? Nah.  It’s one of those perfect paradoxes. A parable for our times that continues to leave everyone scratching their brains and wanting to scratch their own eyes out when they see the list of absurd loan conditions lunatic underwriters keep coming up with. We’ve got incredible interest rates as long as borrowers are willing to submit to a mild form of water-boarding to access them.

And speaking of odd and interesting paradoxes and strange pickles wrapped in riddles inside of enigmas…isn’t this the exact right juncture for “organic” sellers to get their properties on the market asap?  Here’s my fractured logic: Enough bargain-hunting (some say bottom-feeding) buyers have experienced the down side of short sales by now. They’ve figured out that short sales aren’t really sales at all unless they actually happen. A reasonable percentage of them must realize that properties that can actually be counted on to close on time with some contractual assurance – i.e. – those owned by real “organic” people – have extra value.

Right Buyers? Bird in the hand? What do you want to do? Wait for another six months while the first lender beats the crap out of the second lender and tries to force a short sale? Or even longer because they are all busy scouring the planet to figure out who actually holds the paper in the first place?  Or…would you rather end your holdover in the emotional purgatory of a never-ending escrow, take  advantage of the rates and be one of those buyers moving forward in their lives? Your choice. I’m just asking.

Yes, I know HAFA  is going to reform the short sale process one of these years and a tsunami of successful loan modifications are right around the corner and banks are going to release their shadow inventory momentarily but I’m not ready to believe that the checks and balances are actually in the mail yet or that the process is really ready to respect me in the morning.

And … what are the Feds going to do as we approach the new September 30th deadline for Buyer Tax Credits and they realize that a ton of those transactions which didn’t close by June 30th  still aren’t going to close three months later? Are we looking at another extension of the extension that was already extended?

And…in a County where the median price is over $500k, can we really blame the expiration of Tax Credits for the dip in sales figures we saw in June? Maybe $8,000 means a whole lot in Iowa where homes are selling for $100k. But when savvy Buyers sat back and saw prices fall in chunks of $25k over the last nine months, why would they scramble to get in under an arbitrary deadline to save so much less?

That’s it for this Saturday folks. Just a few random thoughts for a seemingly  random real estate market.  If you have a few thoughts of your own, don’t hesitate to share…

Real estate is all over the map these days – literally and figuratively. Terra firma here. And terra-a-lot-less-firma  there.  Or, as Groucho Marx said:  “You can get wood. You can get brick. You can get stucco. Boy, can you get stucco.”

Talk to an Agent who just closed a couple of escrows and the world is perfect. The market is back. Everything is coming up roses. Talk to another Agent short sale-ing his own upside-down beach house and the whole dream has suddenly been dragged under by the inexorable undertow of a rude awakening.  Just because we hype it, that doesn’t make it so.   We can kick the can down the road but we’re all still going to have to kick the bucket in one of the great reckonings that lies ahead. Maybe switching over to the Mayan Calendar isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Read about those local folks who thought they were getting an “amazing foreclosure deal” like the one’s late night infomercials have weaned us on and it  lends another perspective.  Amazing indeed. They ended up buying a worthless Wachovia 2nd  on the courthouse steps, putting in another $25,000 worth of worthless improvements, only to find out that parent company, Wells Fargo, was still holding the first.

Methinks the right hand knew exactly what the left hand was doing in this case.  The slight of the hands worked because they weren’t required by law to disclose the rules of the game to unwitting people.  Buyers beware and buyers be aware. A little due diligence is always worth your while.

But then, the great fix is in anyway, right?  The Financial Reform Bill was just signed into law as I write this, a mere 8 minutes ago. Once again, we’ve come to another intersection on the road to recovery or the other one leading to eternal damnation.  That mythical place on the flawed GPS System where Wall Street, Pennsylvania Avenue and Main Street are all supposed to meet in magical confluence.

Forgive me, if I’m not overly-optimistic. We’re already suffering the “new and unimproved” of HAMP, HAFA, HVCC,  HERA-MDIA and a whole hullabaloo of other H-ish acronyms. Lots of sound and fury signifying nothing but hassle. Business as usual made even harder than usual.  Sort of like rooting out the cancer by killing the patient.

Not that we should trust Alan Greenspan anymore – the man who knew too much who became the man who fell to earth by being the man who was the last to see it all coming, even when impending disaster was trick-or-treating through every neighborhood in America,  but… the former sage of finance cryptically says this about the new reform legislation: “There are unintended consequences in every page” of this 2,000 page bill.

And speaking of unintended consequences…how about our own little piece of pending local legislation relating to the regulation of rentals.  What happens if some unhinged landlord gets angry enough to set off a neutron bomb?  It would be easy to drive around town, log the addresses of hundreds of funky, illegal garage conversions and report them for code violations.

Forty years of growth by default rather than appropriate planning  – all coming home to roost in the over-crowded nests of small property owners who need that extra income to make their mortgage payments.  C’mon! Every Mayor and ex-Mayor living on the lower Westside has seen the extra units with the built-up bathroom floors to allow plumbing pipes to get to the sewer mains, electric feeds hanging precariously ten feet above ground waiting for unsuspecting kids to hit ‘em with sticks and gnarly carpet-seconds thrown over bare concrete slabs in the middle of an incredibly high water table?

But take heart.  Santa Cruz was just named one of the 25 best cities for the rich and the single by Money Magazine.  Apparently,  we are the place where “surf culture meets tech geek.”  We’re going on a scavenger hunt next Friday night, to look for some of those rich and single people hiding in our midst.  The winner will receive a free  Keep Santa Cruz Weirdly Rich and Single bumper sticker.

In the softening fog of our Mid Summer’s Dream we’re running around like chickens. We don’t know where we’re headed but we’re staying busy, hurrying up and waiting. Waiting for Good Dough to arrive. All addressed up with nowhere to go. We’ve made our lists and checked them twice. At what point do we just Puck the whole thing, a la Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and observe with self-induced irony: “What fools we mortals be”?

What’s next? If more market doesn’t show up soon we’re likely to find ourselves moving in even slower motion, in the middle of the Doggier Days of August. And if that happens, we’ll probably end up migrating towards the fall, tails between our legs, feeling both snake-bit and flea-bit – by the sheer indignity of it all.

Who knows? Suffice to say, all those cars backed-up, bumper-to-bumper towards Scotts Valley, aren’t waves of weekend buyers streaming into town to search for perfect little beach-blanket bungalows. Most of them are coming to ride the roller coaster. The real one at the Boardwalk – not the real estate one on the Monopoly Board that has gone south for the summer.

Yes, it is true that more homes sell in the summertime. And this summer probably won’t be an exception. But conventional wisdom obscures another unconventional truth residing in darker shadows cast by the sun. That truth is: There are always more homes that don’t sell in the summertime too. Think about it. If 20 more homes go into escrow this month, does that balance out the 120 new ones that come on and jump on top of the mounting pile of un-sold properties sitting idly by, twiddling their thumbs and thumbing their noses at their Sellers’ best laid plans and aspirations.

Looking back over the ups and downs of these past months…March came in looking like it might be a lion. A glimmer was there that was hard to grab hold of – but it felt good. Hope was ready to spring eternal. We set our internal clocks ahead towards a brighter future. It wasn’t exactly multiple-offer mania fueled by steroids and liars’ loans, but it seemed like enough buyers were chugging enough extra cups of caffeine to register a more detectable pulse on the market’s shaky Richter scale.

But not enough fools were rushing into the market by the first of April . Too many were holding back. Fearing to tread. They were taxed. Not by the IRS. Rather, by their own what-ifs and worst-case scenarios. And sure enough towards the end of April the market was already going out like a lamb. Exit stage left.

In May, we all crossed our fingers and shouted MAYBE! As de facto Tauruses, we were bullish. The market would grab itself by the horns, carpe the dinero and find a way to get much better, much faster. We trotted out stats to prove how much better-er it was all getting. Of course, most of the sold data we materialized was already old news – trailing indicators from transactions that had started in and around, oh, say March or so.

Then there was June. About all that rhymes with June as far as the real estate market is concerned is SWOON. We may have been polishing those shiny new listings with hype and filling our open house balloons with helium but the majority of those million dollar listings are glistening like jewels of denial right now and the air is slowly going out of the inflated list prices those balloons can’t seem to hold up.

As for July – I’m just going to ask WHY. Why aren’t buyers beating down doors to get at the huge window of opportunity that has opened, with interest rates about as low as they can go, here in limbo land? This is everyone’s chance to dance. Get in and get under the bar set by their fears. Three or four months ago, there wasn’t a mortgage broker alive who thought we’d see rates under 5% again.

So maybe we’ll be singing the Summertime Blues for awhile. I hope I’m wrong and that all the smiley-faced spinmeisters are right. As the new real estate blues song says: “If it wasn’t for short sales, we wouldn’t have no sales at all.” Just our luck – a market defined by a double oxymoron. Short sales aren’t short. And so far, very few have actually sold. They are simply homes stuck in the pipeline with no sunlight shining at the end of the tunnel.

Our sacred mission? That most basic of biological imperatives – survival. You know…saving humanity. And since we humans require such a significant amount of idiot-proofing to insulate us from our own strange natures, survival in this case also means: Saving Ourselves from Ourselves.

It’s a scary world out there. Ensuring the safety of mankind and the huge roof lying over its head is a difficult job. But someone’s gotta do it.

So here we are. Hard at work on the Herculean task of protecting everyone from everyone else and their cousins. And from everything and every other possible thing that anyone could conceivably conjure up in their wildest dreams and/or worst nightmares.

Someday we’ll actually have a complete compendium of all the what-if’s that could hurt, damage or otherwise disappoint people in their new homes. Of course, even when we pull that list together, we still aren’t going to guarantee that you won’t get hit by a bus while crossing the street or struck by lightning while watching Jeopardy during the next big storm. You’ll have to consult your local priest, shaman, bartender, attorney or other suitable expert for greater accuracy regarding those specific matters.

But we Realtors can do the next best thing. We can warn you. And warn you again. And then warn you some more. Until eventually you either get scared to death and run away screaming as fast as you can in the opposite direction from buying a home. Or…you proceed forward both forewarned and forearmed with the knowledge that something terrible could happen at any time. Big terrible. Or little terrible. Terrible-ridiculous. Or terrible-sublime. Or…you just become numb and numb-er to the whole process and succumb to the mindless tide of acquiescence that clouds the vision and makes the brain feel dumb and dumber.

In the great Rochambeau game of real estate we try to leave no stone unturned or rock uncovered by paper. Paper is the talisman we use to ward off the eventual consequences of all the potential evils that could happen to people living in glass houses. Paper is the most powerful device we can use to demonstrate our desire to save mankind and to actually save ourselves (me) from ourselves (you).

Think I’m kidding? Your honor, I want to draw your attention to Estate’s evidence C.A.R. Form SBSA Revised 4/07, Otherwise known as the Statewide Buyers and Sellers Advisory, Page 4 of 10, Item #18, which reads and I quote:

Errant Golf Balls: Buyer and Seller are advised that if the Property is located adjacent to or near a golf course there is a possibility that golf balls may damage the Property or injure persons or pets on it. Additionally persons playing golf may enter the Property to retrieve errant golf balls or for other purposes. Broker recommends that Buyer investigate this possibility during Buyer’s inspection contingency period. Brokers do not have expertise in this area.

Realty truly is funnier than fiction sometimes. The fatal flaw in all our exacting efforts to disclose and encourage due diligence and real active investigation? Human nature. The more paper that people are presented with, the less they read. The quicker they fall asleep. Thus we keep shooting ourselves in the foot and the number of lawsuits in real estate keeps increasing in direct proportion to the stumbling attempts we make to jam consumer protection down everyone’s throat in lieu of common sense.

There, I’ve finished my written Agent Disclosure for this Saturday. I’ve done my small part to save ourselves from ourselves. Sign Here and Press Hard to acknowledge your receipt.

Meanwhile, I’m off to my appointed round – a 12:30 tee time – while you move forward, forewarned and forearmed, in the purchase of your new home. If it happens to be on a golf course, I promise to yell fore before my next huge slice flies off the fairway and lands in the middle of the guacamole dip resting on your future back patio. Today’s golf game is certainly going to prove once and for all that “brokers do not have expertise in this area.”

Many of the things that cause frustration, consternation, perturbation  in real estate often arise from people not being able to distinguish between what’s big and what’s small. Specially when they are in the heat of the moment. What’s worth the time, effort, money and brain-space? And what’s not?

What’s that animal part of your nature saying when it insists that you should: get even, teach the world a lesson, draw an imaginary line in the sand, preserve some  semblance of pride by not succumbing to anything that is galling no matter how much of your own nose you have to cut off in order to save face?

And what’s that cool, more detached, smart part of your brain saying that is able to: let it all go, not sink to anyone’s level, recognize the value of living yet another day without lugging a ton of extra baggage around. And… isn’t so arrogant to think that it can force someone to learn a life lesson that they are not ready to accept.

Cardinal rule in all negotiations? Make sure you win on the big stuff. If you have to lose – lose on the small stuff. If you gotta give the buyer a home warranty for 350 buckaroos and throw in a couple of 1.6 gallon toilets to meet the County’s water-conservation requirements to help leverage another $10,000 on the purchase price – go with the flow.  Ten thousand bucks will buy a lot of Totos and TP. It will flush away all kinds of bad feelings that might either wash over you for a few moments or completely inundate you if you let them.

For quite a while there,  we  didn’t have a lot of normal negotiation in a marketplace dominated by multiple offers, overbids, fewer days on market and a general sense of entitlement on the part of the Sellers.  Many negotiations, circa 1999 through 2005,  pretty much went like this: Sellers said: “Jump!”  Buyers asked:  “How High?” Negotiation concluded. Bite your tongue. Sign here. Press hard.

It’s not that there wasn’t any negotiating going on in those years.  It’s that the bulk of the negotiations were between Buyers worrying about what other Buyers were willing to do, capable of doing or just crazy enough to conjure up. Buyers versus Buyers rather than the usual one Buyer v. one Seller going at it in a tete-a-tete, mano y mano steel cage wrestling chess match.

When the  national economy goes down, invariably, the collective incidence of serious crimes – murder, assault, armed robbery – goes up. Coincidence? I think not.

Whenever the real estate market slips into a transition period and stops running at an exorbitantly accelerated pace, it messes with the collective heads of people out there in real estate land.  It tweaks their ability to maintain perspective between big and small. It acts like some kind of mind-altering drug  that’s been surreptitiously slipped into the tap water. Suddenly instances of people behaving badly about little things increase with alarming frequency. Coincidence? Definitely not!

Almost 20 years ago, I was involved in a sale between two principals who got their knickers in a twist about an old refrigerator – a lovely harvest gold model.  Much to both Agents’ exasperation the refrigerator became the raison d’etre for the whole transaction. It kept popping up in the negotiations at every turn. It resurfaced during inspection contingencies. The buyer was determined to get it.  And the Seller wasn’t going to part with it, even though it was something he had absolutely no use for, end of story.

Well not quite the end of the story…..The Seller prevailed.  Sorta. The fridge was personal property. And in the end, his after all that squabbling. Arrangements were made for the Salvation Army to pick it up.  While moving the appliance, a bumbling volunteer managed to scratch the hardwood floors throughout the house. The Seller had to spend thousands refinishing the floors at the same time the Salvation Army decided the refrigerator wasn’t worth it and left it sitting at the curb for someone else to haul away!

Worst case of reefer madness I ever saw. But that’s what happens when you stop distinguishing between big and the small and can’t see the floors for the freeze.

I remember going through the Anthony Schools course. Religiously cramming every factoid I could get, into my brain. I was a true believer.  A supplicant vying for admission into the secret order of all things REAL.

Fittingly, I took my licensing exam in the Scottish Rites Hall in San Francisco surrounded by 500 other eager wannabes. Walking out afterwards, I experienced a huge core dump as all the information I had just memorized, spontaneously fled my body.

I didn’t know it then, but that was my first auspicious real estate sign. I was ready.  I had to empty myself of everything I already thought I knew and just start practicing real estate each day in order to find the hidden grail that it holds.

Along the way I’ve shown property at midnight, written offers on the hood of a car, gotten frantic  buyers remorse calls at two in the morning and once listed and sold a property in less than five hours. Along the way, I’ve met looky-loos, nosey-neighbors and tire-kickers by the score.  Along the way, I’ve represented buyers who just had to grind to the very last penny and others who had a million dollars burning a hole in their pockets.  I even saw a client try to bring cash in a suitcase to close his escrow one time.

Along the way, I started carrying a box of Kleenex tissues in the car for those convinced they would never be able to afford a home in Santa Cruz.  Later, I  upgraded to an EpiPen when anaphylactic sticker shock became the norm.   I earned a masters degree in grief counseling with a minor in hand-holding during the early 90′s at the same time I learned what it meant to chase the market down.

Along the way,  I  also learned how to find lost septic tanks by bending ordinary coat hangers into the shape of dowsing rods.  And along the way, I occasionally employed a psychic house cleaner to clear away some of those dustballs of dirty energy that often accrue in people’s lives.   I also hired Crime Scene Cleaners once, when I sold a house that a compulsive hoarder had completely filled with thirty years worth of rotting possessions.

Along the way,  I’ve seen more Michael Jordan posters and more odd and eerie doll and owl collections than you can possibly imagine.  I’ve shown houses where bongs were sitting out in the open on kitchen tables and naked college students were running around totally oblivious.

Along the way, I’ve run out of gas in the boonies with a clients in the car. I’ve come home with a loose key in my pocket after showing ten properties without a clue as to which house, I forgot to put the key back in the lockbox at.  Somewhere along the way,  I seem to also remember sitting an open house where there was a parrot with a huge vocabulary of swear words,  greeting each visitor.

Along the way,  I’ve worked with Tibetan Lamas and the other kind of llamas. I’ve worked with Fortune 500 execs,   motorcycle club members and middle-aged sex therapists – all in the same day.   I’ve  sold ego homes,  wondering how people could ever stand to wander around in that much space and homes under 500 sq ft,  wondering how people could possibly live in them without strangling each other after the first week.

Along the way,  I’ve been called the Bodhisattva Realtor, a spiritual advisor, a consummate professional and a dirt pimp.  I’ve been accused of breaching the NAR code of ethics for humorously suggesting that Realtors should carry a moral compass with them at all times.

Have I arrived? Nope.  I’m still on the bus with the license plate that reads “Further” and yes, what a long strange trip it’s been.  Strange and endlessly fascinating.

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