It’s the Pitts
tor is not all big commission checks. First of all you have to look prosperous because no one likes to do business with an unsuccessful realtor. At the very least ranch realtors need a current year Suburban or Expedition and many have their own airplane or helicopter. Then there’s the Luchesse boots, silver and gold buckle set, the latest iPhone and a silver belly hat with nary a sweat or manure stain. They must spend fortunes in advertising that keep livestock publications alive to advertise themselves and their listings. Then there’s the cost of going to the big convention every year in hopes of impressing other ranch realtors in order to get “co-listings.”
I decided that not only did I not have the attire, the pocketbook or the looks to be a ranch realtor, I just didn’t have the right demeanor. Sure, being a ranch realtor is great on the day they sell a ranch but how about the other 364 days a year when they are working for free, chasing false prospects or going down dead ends? I don’t know if I could handle the housing bubbles, and boom and bust cycles that real estate goes through, especially in my home state of California where currently the asking price for a homeless person’s refrigerator carton in San Francisco is a quarter million dollars. I also don’t circulate in groups of people who’d buy a “hunting property” with a price tag larger than my ten digit phone number.
I tend to be the despondent type anyway and would be slitting my wrists if I went a month without selling a ranch. I have an acquaintance in our town who has an office, advertises heavily and is well liked but in 2017 he sold exactly one listing. He reminds me of the old Ace Reid cartoon which pictures a skeleton in a cowboy hat named J.M. Defunct, a ranch realtor who says, “If I don’t sell sumpin’ soon I’m gonna starve plum to death.”
I suppose the real reason I never got my realtor’s license is I was afraid I’d have to change the way I write and learn an entirely new language where a ranch two hours from the nearest town is a “secluded hideaway”; where gale force winds become “gentle breezes in the afternoon”; a shack without electricity or running water has “old world charm”; a mud flat becomes “a meadow glade”; a ranch home overlooking a dump is “a property with a view”; and a house 50 feet from the railroad track is “close to transportation.”