And Here I Thought It Would Be Easy
I Thought It Would Be Easy!
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October 27, 1974
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More and more women are running away from their homes to sell other people's through rain, sleet, snow and mortgage and gas crunches. Television's Maude Is doing it. So am I.L At a recent meeting of the Long Island Board of Realtors, I noticed that three‐quarters of the members were women.
"I have to admit it," one of the male brokers said. "You're naturals. You know the things other women want in a home. I only hire women now. Only women over 30. They inspire confidence."
Not only reverse sexism, but reverse age‐ism, too! In the real estate world you don't have to be a shiny new part of the office decor, you actually appreciate with age.
The idea flashed across my mind four years ago while I was watching my husband watch Joe Namath throw a high looping pass. Real Estate: More interesting than typing letters in in office or selling pantyhose in a store, something challenging, meeting people, seeing interesting houses, decorating.
It would mean working weekends, but it would be liberating, too. While I was pointing out someone else's selfcleaning oven, my husband would be putting the dinner into mine, happily clucking over my business acumen and those nice fat commissions—6 per cent, divided by two, half for the broker and half for you. Sell a $50,000 house and my share is $1,500. For one house! For one weekend's work! Sounds easy, or so I thought four years ago.
Although you read when you study for your license that real estate is "land with appurtenances attached thereupon," you soon find that real estate is really people—all those wonderful, exasperating, unpredictable people who buy it and sell it. You learn to play many roles, including midnight therapist to suicidal widows and marriage counselor to venomous couples intent upon divorce. One young woman, poiting to her husband along with the refrigerator, told me tersely: "He goes with the house." They gave me lunch and a long list of grievances. This marriage could not be saved, but the house could be sold if the two of them could be civil long enough to agree upon a price. Two years later, they still haven't done it.
Buyers are usually family folk who get morose looking at houses they can afford, but there's always a sprinkling of the exotic types. Like the most improbable buyer of the decade, the little old lady dressed in 1930 Thrift Shop Chic who pulled $40,000 in cash from the recesses of her moth‐eaten squirrel coat. Or the fifth cousin of the Godfather who took me for a ride in his curtained Cadillac in search of the right "tucked‐away ranch" —a fortress.
But even the "normal" apple‐pie American family will dissolve into a mass of unresolved traumas when they cone close to buying a house, and no real estate test has questions to measure your F. Q. — Frustration Quotient. It had better be high if you hope to survive without an ulcer, hypertension or a drinking problem.
Typically, our customers love the house, but the mavens— the parents with the down payment or the professional engineers — don't. Or even if they do, the buyers remain unpredictable. Take my favorites, the J's. After nine months of Sunday afternoon expeditions filled with great camaraderie, I finally found their dream house: the fireplace—just that they always wanted—the treed acre, the swimming pool.
Then came Contract Night, when they had to put 10 per cent of the price where their mouths were. They didn't show. I've been stood up at contract before. It's one of the occupational hazards. But I didn't expect it from the lovable, honorable J's. After two hours they finally called. They said a funny thing happened on the way to the contract. They bought another house.
If you don't end up, hating everyone you meet, real estate can make you some very good friends. My husband and I have doubled our social life with invitations from buyers and sellers. One woman I worked with went a good deal further, using reel estate as a dating service But most real estate women are trying to make money, not love.
"... there's always a sprinkling of the exotic types. Like the... little old lady who pulled $40,000 in cash from the recesses of her moth‐eaten squirrel coat."
The idea that you can earn $1,500 for a weekend's work is hardly accurate. Not only do you have to lead countless sightseers, mind‐changers and mavens through countless houses, but you also have to do your homework during the week—unearthing new listings and inspecting as many as 15 house's in one day. It's a good way to lose weight. And as a matter of fact there aren't many fat real estate women.
Despite all the homework, matching the customer to the house is really like arranging a blind date. Even harder is matching the customer's offer to the seller's price. Here's where you earn your commission—by, as they say in real estate law, bringing about the "meeting of the minds."
You have to present your customer's low, offer in a way that won't insult the seller. At the same time, if his price is unrealistic—and whose isn't?—you have to point out discreetly the faults of his house. All this while he eyes you as if you were telling him that his only child is defective.
Of course, you say, his house is charming. But the "ultramodern" kitchen is 30 years old, and while the bus stop at the front door is convenient, it is hardly esthetic. Then too, the house next door went for $10,000 less last month. At this point, the seller may cry, throw you out of the house or redude his price somewhat—or all three.
Once the price drops, the telephone tennis begins. You are the tennis ball, bouncing back and forth between buyer and seller with offers and counteroffers.
During negotiations, there's an unmentionable that often gets mentioned by the seller: the 6 per cent commission. If you expect the seller to reduce his price, how about reducing the commission he pays you? Here's where oldfashioned sexism is still alive and running in a field that supposedly offers equal pay for equal work and equal ulcers. A woman's commission is more vulnerable than a man's especially if she's married. A man is supporting a family while she's just filling her time with busy work for a little extra spending money. Or so the sexist myth goes.
Janet L., a gentle, whispery speaking 44‐year‐old who averages $30,000 a year, is the best defender of the commission I know. "First," she says, "I educate the seller about our long hours, expenses, ads, car, phones. Above. all, I say that I am a professional and that my know how, my services, come high. I can haggle for weeks, knocking the house to the seller, building it up to the buyer, and they can end up only $1,000 apart—but the seller won't move another penny, and the buyer can't dredge up another penny. It looks like the deal will die, but I stand tough against the most macho men. If the buyers really want the house, they'll manage to come up with that other thou."
Somehow, they find that other thou for Janet. But even for Janet, after the price is worked out, contracts can fall apart over a piece of trivia like the faded carpeting in the upstairs foyer that the seller won't leave or over something monumental like a mortgage.
"It's the endless complications that I love," says Janet, tossing back her long blonde hair. "When I was just a, housewife with tired., blood, my psychiatrist asked what I really wanted to do. in life, and right out of my stream of consciousness. came the words, 'Sell real estate.' Now I know why. I'm playing roulette with other people's money and my brains. I find it orgasmic—mentally, of, course."
Orgasmic? Not for me. And certainly not secure for the woman who must be assured of a steady income. There are no sick leaves, pensions or, in most cases, even salaries. But the business can be exciting, even obsessive. Late night calls. Big money hanging on a word. Playing Monopoly for real. That's why we real estate women have to make lots of good money. So we can take lots of good, restful vacations.
The four towers of 1199 Plaza will be formally dedicated Nov. 1. The 1,590‐unit, moderate‐and‐middleincome cooperative housing project is sponsored by Local 1199 of the Drug and Hospital Workers Union. It consists of four "U"‐shaped structures, each of which, ranges in height from 4 to 31 stories, on site east of First Avenue between 107th and 111th Streets. Its design was chosen in a competition sponsored by the Ruberoid Corporation and New York City in 1963. It marked the first time the city had used competition to obtain housing designs for its urban renewal program. The concept of mixed highrise and low‐rise buildings, novel at the time, was developed by Hodne Associates of Minneapolis, now known as Hodne‐Stageberg. The four towers, shown here during construction, are staggered in both height and siting. The larger apartments are contained in the low‐rise elements, which feature large galleries facing the inner courts rather than individual balconies. Most of the units of the $80‐million project have been sold. Prices are about $565 a room, and monthly carrying charges range from $145 to $320.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/10/27/archives/i-thought-it-would-be-easy-i-though-it-would-be-easy.html
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