This past Wednesday I attended an event put on by JP Morgan Chase at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Midtown Manhattan. There were over 300 employees from Chase present, along with what seemed like at least 1000 brokers and agents. Chase’s national REO manager, former NFL football player Brian Stablein was a speaker, as was Jed Smith, a managing director at NAR. The evening was educational in nature, centering on the market outlook as well as Chase’s initiative to expand their REO agent base for the sale of their assets. I have never seen a lender be so forthcoming about how to become an REO agent for them, ever. 

After the presentations, the floor was opened for a question and answer session, with a lively exchange between licensees in the audience and the panelists on the stage, all managers with JP Morgan Chase. It was quite unrehearsed. The agents really let the Chase people know just what they thought of the practice of their use of “out of town” BPO agents and appraisers, as well as the damage that was often caused by their use, and didn’t let the VP off the hook when her answer didn’t tackle the issue to their satisfaction. Candid, hard-hitting stuff. I had to give Chase credit for the apolitical, spin-free format. 

Toward the end, the audience was told that we had two more questions before some complimentary food and drink. One of those final questions got up and said that she didn’t know what an REO even was, and that the presenters should have explained it at the start. 

At an REO event. 

I had to ask the people next to me if that really happened, and I didn’t doze off and dream it. No, we were all quite awake. 

Now, I hate to pile on a well-meaning agent who is confused, and frankly I’d attend a baseket weaving exposition at the Waldorf Astoria just to drink the water, so the agent had every right to be there. And I don’t even fault her for not knowing what an REO is I suppose, because you don’t know what you know until you know it. But criticizing the panel for it seemed like one of those “only in New York” moments that only happen in the Big Apple. Sometimes a little humility is in order, you know? 

Just in case you are wondering, “REO” stands for “real estate owned” by a lender after they foreclose on it. If you ever get a chance to do anything at the Waldorf-Astoria, by all means do so. There is no place like it in the world. 

 By the way, moments after I took this picture, I ran into Barb Altieri! 

No shows are a part of the business. I often keep repeating the phrase “yes, I went to college” as I stand in the driveway of a home, staring at it, wondering if I can do some sort of Schopenhaur exercise to manifest a human being, preferably the owner, to answer the door or the phone. And the guy from this morning’s no show did indeed call me back,  a half hour after I drove away, to let me know he was in fact home, but didn’t hear the door, phone or whimpering broker in the yard because…

…wait for it…

He was in the shower. At 11am on Tuesday, August 16, 2011, the man was inspired to pursue his hygiene at the very moment we were supposed to talk about the possible sale of his home. This is not the first person I have inspired to get soaked at the time they were scheduled to meet with me. It is somewhat common. I don’t know why. I really don’t. I remember back in college I had a strange talent for inspiring co-eds to empty their bladder at social events. 

“Hi, I’m Phil”
“Hi Phil, dying to pee. I’ll be RIGHT BACK.”

Damn I was good.  I never figured out how to monetize the Gift. 

Is there something about me that makes people want to shower (my poor self esteem!)? Or, conversely, are people so honored to meet with me that they must anoint themselves with cleansers and bath oils in anticipation of our meeting, even to the exclusion of punctuality? And why is the likelihood of a no-show, shower-related or otherwise, so bloody proportional to the distance I travelled and the hoops I jumped through to fit them in my schedule to start with? 

I hate no shows. I would rather meet with a person overdue for their daily shower than not meet with them at all. Is it possible that they are fibbing to cover that they were asleep, otherwise occupied, or forgot? Is it me? 

Much has been written about the “code” licensees employ in describing their listings. For example, “cozy” is Agentspeak for “cramped.” “Potential” means that nothing has been updated since 1980. You get the picture. There are hundreds more, and I don’t blame consumers for taking agents’ descriptions with a grain of salt. 

However, consumers are people too, and from my vantage, I have often seen the some propensity for being, shall we say, creatively interpretive in turns of the phrase from them as well. So, in the interest of a little fun, I shall offer a few examples of consumer terms needing translation I have heard over the years. 

Consumer Real Estate Glossary

Outdated (buyer)- over 5 years of age
Updated (seller)- We changed a fixture or appliance
Musty– anything that doesn’t smell like laundry detergent
Moldy– Humid
Buyer’s market-I want to offer the same price for  for this 4 bedroom colonial as the 2 bedroom bungalow down the street.
Falling down– I see a drywall seam
They are crazy– I disagree
Slobs– The people with 4 kids who just let us into their home on 30 minutes notice.
My lawyer– God
Their lawyer– Satan 
Overpriced– We prefer to lose the house in a bidding ar after they whack the price next month.
We were thinking– We changed our minds
I’m paying Cash– I have an equity line on another property and I will remove my mortgage contingency 
Comps (seller)- Inferior garbage to my place
Comps (buyer)- Anything that sold for 15% less
I will use my union lawyer– The transaction will now enter the 7th ring of Dante’s Inferno
We are using an Internet lender– The deal will die 2 weeks before closing when Brad in Utah disappears into the cosmos 
I’d like to bring my parent to see the home– NO deal.
Sorry for not getting back with you– We were seeing homes with another agent who didn’t work out.
Pre-approved– I had coffee with a bank teller last April
Legal deck/bathroom etc– My brother in law knew what he was doing just fine.  

Feel free to add your own. And do remember that we are all people, and that this is meant to be a little fun at all our foibles in what is an otherwise uncommon period of life-buying or selling a home. 

Water created the Grand Canyon. Anyone who has ever seen a house with a leaky roof or basement appreciates this. And sewage is mostly water. It erodes. While sewage didn’t cause the recent leaks (really massive spills) in Harlem and now Ossining, it is clear that external damage, such as a fire or tree falling, will cause massive destruction to the corroding, crumbling conduits through which we have managed our waste the past century. And we don’t have the money to fix it. All that has been done is repair the damage to stop the spill and dump bleach in the waterways to manage the bacteria. Does that make you rest easy? 

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and at a time when we should be investing in shoring up and updating infrastructure throughout New York, we instead fix problems as they occur and put off the inevitable. Today it is the sewers, which is kind of icky. But tomorrow it might be the roads, which if you haven’t noticed are often in deplorable condition around Westchester. By roads I am also including our nearby Tappan Zee Bridge, which is past its life expectancy and in poor shape. With the volume of traffic that travels over the bridge each day, a catastrophic failure of tragic, epic proportions becomes more likely each day. 

Like a house or a car, municipal infrastructure requires maintenance and at some intervals, wholesale replacement. Our local roads, waste management, drinking water, recycling, and energy systems are decades and in some cases approaching centuries old and there is no plan in place to do the big ticket work that is inevitable. Worse than no plan, there are no funds. 

Part of managing a business, a family, and a community has to involve a capital fund or savings of some sort so that there is a rainy day fund to handle and pay for the next crisis. Borrowing is no longer an answer, as we are right now under crushing debt at almost all levels of government, and we can’t sustain the current liabilities. Something has to give. 

While I don’t have an answer, the first step is to acknowledge the facts and live in the question. Our infrastructure is aging and in some cases failing, and we don’t have the plan, logistical or financial, to address the problem. Think about that next time you swerve to avoid a pothole. 

I got word tonight that my client’s offer on a home in Tuckahoe was accepted. She is very happy. What is unusual about this particular deal is that the sellers actually interviewed me before they first went on the market but elected to list with someone else. I respect the agent, so I was happy for them. He and I are pals, and we are excited to be doing our first deal together. Ironically enough, the home is being sold for the exact price I predicted back in February, which was also probably the reason I didn’t get hired. 

The real pleasure about the negotations was that even though we started somewhat far apart, my colleague and I kept cooler heads and affected a meeting of the minds fairly quickly and solidly. It was very cool, and a far departure from the mini dramas I have seen playing out lately where the agents, who should be stablizing figures, have let their emotions get the better of them and inject unneeded drama into a process that calls for calm and sanity. 

Among the sillier tactics I have seen is the petty nonsense some sellers and their agents pull when comparable sales are cited as justification for the price offered. 

• Oh THAT dump? Our place is way better
• Number 122 up the street? Are you kidding? Have you seen how it backs up to the highway?
• Obviously you’ve never seen the inside of of this one. It is a fetid relic.  
• That is in no way shape or form a comparable. Please. How insulting. 

Inspired by the Facebook group. 

You know you are in the real estate business when

• You dial a phone number on the calculator app. 
• Your daughter brings home straight A’s and you worry that the report card won’t comp out.
• You walk up to your own front door and look for a lockbox. 
• You put your ATM code into the microwave.
• You answer the phone at 10pm and are surprised the person calling is surprised. 
• A friend brags about a rebate they got on a car trade in/purchase and you wonder how they put it on the HUD-1.
• Someone asks how your kid is doing in school and you initially cringe at discussing a school district in any way shape or form.
• Your insert your Sentrilock card into the supermarket self checkout. 
• You cram an entire day off into 4 consecutive non working hours. 
• You briefly consider faxing a landscaping estimate to an attorney for approval.
• You can’t find your Bluetooth- because it’s in your ear.
• You leave the house for a gallon of milk without your cell phone and you feel naked.
• You bring a lawn sign car shopping to make sure the trunk will allow it to fit. 
• You ponder the square footage of the Church during a boring sermon. 
• When you pick up your son at a play date you notice if the house has a buried oil tank or an old roof. 
• After running into an old friend you check out what their home is assessed for when you get home. 
• There is at least one neighborhood or town in your market area that completely pisses you off because you’ve lost more than one deal there. 
• There is a banker or lawyer somewhere over whose head you’d love to pour spoiled gravy. 
• Your heart races when you see a For Sale By Owner. 
• You are authentically astonished and grateful when a client picks up the lunch check. 
• Nothing good ever happens when they say “we were thinking about it last night, and________”
• You’ve screamed into a pillow because someone you knew bought or sold a house without telling you. 
• You’ve hung up the phone after a solicitation utters the words “all you need is one sale to pay for it.”
• Catch-22: will calling be too pushy? Will not calling be poor follow up? 
• You get home and wish someone else would make the decision for a change.
• You cringe when you recognize certain phone numbers or email addresses. 
• There is a certain house in town you’ll never ever forget, ever, because_________
• When everyone else screams at the TV during a game, you scream at the TV during the news. 
• You ponder an idea that will transform your business as you drift off to sleep, and can’t remember what the hell it was when you wake up. 
• You want to ask someone why they use a photo that is almost unrecognizable with how they look today. But you don’t. 
• You hate meetings.
• You’ve been asked to move a mountain in the next hour by someone who hasn’t returned your calls in 2 weeks, and they are completely serious. 
• You wish you handled that appointment differently. 
• You live in the question. 
• Upon getting voicemail, you chide yourself for believing they might actually answer the phone.
• You’ve wrung your hands over your URL.
• You know what a hoarder’s home smells like. 
• You wish that negative guy would spend just one day watching you work, because that would teach them. 
• Knowing what you know, you wonder aloud how that other person can do what they do. 
• Nothing surprises you anymore. Until you get surprised again. 
• You exhale when their parents tell them they should buy the house. 
• You have thought or said “This isn’t 1983. It isn’t even 2007.”
• You have been a grief counselor after showing them the comps. 
• If that person can do it, dammit, you can do it. 

I could go on, but I think you get the point! 

This morning I read a brief tribute online from Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino to Joseph Acocella, the town clerk of nearby Harrison, NY who had passed away. I get notices on the loss of Realtors and public officials with some regularity, so I just assumed Mr. Acocella was someone who was older. Who would expect otherwise.  

In logging onto the Journal News, however, I found out that Joe was just 30, and had battled health challenges his whole life. This hits close to home for me– my older brother Paul also died young-too young- after a lifetime of fighting, battling, and overcoming diabetes, kidney failure, a temporarily successful kidney/pancreas transplant, and many other issues, one setback after another. The story had a picture of a wheelchair bound Acocella – a double amputee- on his job as clerk, looking forward. 

Only 30. He was the youngest New Yorker ever elected to a town clerk position in 2007, and he distinguished himself by modernising the town system and putting town records online (something people like me really appreciate). And he did all this despite being on dialysis 3 days per week, which if you are unfamiliar, is utterly exhausting. My brother sometimes needed a day to recover from dialysis, and he wasn’t much older than Mr. Acocella.

To distinguish onceself in such a public position despite such physical challenges is really heroic. It takes a very special person. And in a time when we are confronted by bad news all around, it is a reminder that we have good, good people in our midst, and we should appreciate their contribution more than we do. According to the local Patch.com, he was a Fordham guy as well who was a leader going all the way back to high school despite the percieved roadblocks. What an inspiring person. I really wish I knew this guy. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: sometimes God takes his best work back early.