Real Estate Rant

[ritaxis]

We got another one of these damned real estate letters.  I can't say why I am so deeply, deeply offended by them -- aside from the fact that these greedy so-and-sos are driving my kind out of the county -- there's something else, something personal about this.

This one says:

Dear Santa Cruz Homeowner,

You own a house in one of the ideal locations in all of Santa Cruz County.  The proximity to the University, the odcean, downtown, and to the hiking trails of Pogonip and Wilder Ranch situate your property at the apex of our steadily improving market.

I believe in the lasting value of this area and I believe I am the best real estate agent to represent you in the sale of your property.

1.My house is not for sale. This is a cold-call type of letter.  The guy just assumes everybody's out to sell their house.

2.  If I own a house in one of the ideal locations in all of Santa Cruz County, why on earth would I want to sell it?

3. If my area has "lasting value," doesn't that mean I want to stay here in spite of what money-grubbing yuppie profiteering jerks like him are doing to it?

4. What does proximity mean to this guy, anyway?  If it means "conveniently close enough to drive to," then just about everybody in the county is in proximity to those places, and many people outside the county too.  If it means "close enough to walk to," only downtown and the ocean (that is, some beaches and cliffs of the bay) qualify from that list. If I were trying to sell proximity as a value for my house, I would have broken down those ocean and downtown blocks into sparkly little examples.

5. The guy goes on to tell me how much I want him to be my real estate agent because he works hard and his company appreciates him and he lives right! here! in the city!  -- he doesn't say in so many words that he's driving up the cost of housing in my city single-handedly, but he lists, on a separate page, a very long list of houses he has sold in the county, none of them for less than $350 thousand, except for one condo in the bleakest part of Capitola for $140 thousand.  Hell, he sold one in Beach Flats or maybe on Beach Hill, I can't tell, for nearly $600,000.  The only one he lists in my neighborhood went for nearly $700,000.  I happen to know that's a big house, really nice -- but it's on a really busy street and you can't get out of the driveway for hours at a time.

This man is an enemy of the people.  He is a bad, bad, bad man.  He is profiting off a phenomenon which has driven innocent families out of their homes, deprived people of their livelihoods as services close, exacerbated the hardships of the poor, destroyed the funding base for the school system, and made the town much less hip and cool since the artists and cool people have had to leave in large numbers.

Sometimes I call these people up and berate them for sending me mail.  Today I'm just ranting.  Safely.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You might want to sell it and move into a one-room apartment in NYC. You might want to go and look after ageing family in central Maine. He doesn't know who you are or he certainly wouldn't have sent it to you.

Isn't there a law against sending things like that to people who haven't approached the agency? Couldn't there be?

It must be so horrible doing a job that's evil. I don't expect he thinks of it that way, be no doubt has a justification for how he's gentrifying and improving and so on, but even so.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Oh, there's no law against it. There never would be. These people make the real estate laws. Sometimes they call me on the phone. They haven't started emailing me yet. When they do, I'll make a stock answer that tells them what I think of them, and reply with that every time until I get blacklisted or something.

When we die, and our kids sell the house, which I am pretty sure they will do because I am pretty sure they are both going to end up in the City or someplace they just end up in, they will have no problem selling, even if the real estate market crashes as I hope that it will. (I want the speculators to lose their goddamned designer shirts)

See how mean I am?

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

The cost of housing is ridiculously high in places. I am familiar with this since I just bought a condo. What I want is for prices to crash, *now*, so people can actually buy homes to live in, but recover by the time I am ready to sell the condo (whenever that may be). As it is, I'm afraid of a crash that will prevent me from moving to a new place.

I might end up forced to live at my new place for a long, long time.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

What conditions would make you ready to sell the condo? I don't really understand the phenomenon of having expectations about moving -- except in specific situations. of course.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily expect to move, but originally I expected to be able to move if I wanted to. Well, there are two situations I do have in mind.

If I got married and had kids then, like the previous owner, I'd probably want to move to bigger place.

Also, people don't seem to stay in the same job for long in the tech industry. Changing jobs could easily entail moving. I suppose renting would give me more flexibility, but my hope was that by buying, instead of my rent just going whoosh, my mortgage payments would go towards building up equity.