Evil empire or herd of cats?
Last week I ranted about tirekickers at open houses. A reader surprised me by immediately retorting that since since agents always mail open house invitations to the neighbors, he figured we were happy to see them kicking tires because their extra bodies inflated perceived demand. Real buyers, seeing neighbors all over an open house, would mistake them for competition and bid accordingly. I replied:
"Yes, you're right about some (most) tirekickers being welcome, like the neighbors (and others) I mention in the posting, as long as they observe some simple rules of decorum. If they don't, they deplete the agent's reservoir of good will toward humankind, which is precious and not inexhaustible.
"As for why agents invite neighbors to open houses, I think like many people you give the average agent's capacity for deviousness way too much credit. We invite them for three simple, straightforward reasons:
1. To get other listings in the neighborhood. Ever seen an agent have two listings in the same neighborhood, even on the same block, one right after the other? An open house invitation may well be the reason.
2. Failing that, to simply become better-known in the neighborhood, if it's a neighborhood where we'd like to do more business.
3. Because sometimes neighbors know someone who'd like to live in the neighborhood.
"I don't think that the handful of neighbors who do show up to open houses could appreciably affect the perception of demand. Demand for real estate in this area varies from unreal to torpid, depending on area, price range and housing type. It's beyond our simple powers, either individually or collectively, to manipulate demand or even the appearance of demand."
A well-reasoned response to a well-reasoned comment, and no doubt some agents would pad open houses if they could, but when even one of my readership, obviously the most discerning and rational element of Silicon Valley society, thinks not only that an innocuous agent practice is nothing more than a cheap trick but that it works, then something is up—something big. It got me thinking about how much unwarranted credit the real estate industry gets, both individually and collectively, not just for its alleged powers of manipulation but for its capacity to inflict ill on society.
It reminds me for all the world of the old deep-seated fear of the Soviet Union—how much credit it got, both from the "experts" and from the man or woman on the street, for being able to stop the world on its axis.
The Soviet space program, for example, was earlier than ours and long thought more advanced. Soviet industrial capacity, state-focused and centrally controlled, was greater than ours in ways that counted in the showdown for world domination. (Sorry, I can't even write about this without slipping into Cold War clichés. Any minute now I'll be getting under my desk to practice a nuclear attack drill.) Soviet military might was irresistible except at great cost and with weapons of great complexity. And it was part and parcel of monolithic global Communism, presenting a united front to squabbling decadent democracies.
The experts—the Dr. Strangeloves—told us so, and we believed them. Actually, the Soviets told the Dr. Strangeloves, and the Dr. Strangeloves believed them. Then the irresistible, impregnable empire inexplicably crumbled, the walls came down, the secrets came out and we discovered that those intimidating industrial production numbers had often been hyped. And when they hadn't, that empire-building apparatchiks, bumbling economists and self-serving bureaucrats had sacrificed quality for quotas and the good of the entire industrial base for a few favored sectors. And that all it took to stop the Soviet Army dead in its tracks anywhere except on the plains of northern Europe was a handful of talented amateurs armed with relatively simple weapons. And that far from being united, the Evil Empire was like any other large organization, hobbled by personal and factional disputes.
But the Evil Empire was a good myth while it lasted. It was, as good myths always are, based on a kernel of truth: there were people in the Soviet Union who wanted to hurt us. It served and advanced the agenda of the Strangeloves, in government, in academia, in the press, on Main Street. It gave us a reason to circle our wagons, and we seem to like circling our wagons.
Now, of course, we have another Evil Empire. We fought it in Iraq, where it didn't exist and wasn't a threat until we invited it, and we're fighting it in Afghanistan, where it does exist and is a threat and where we've decided we're tired of fighting it. But for some reason we also need Evil Empires within our borders, in our very own cities and towns, and typically they're the industries we interact with most and understand least. Often they involve markets seemingly booby-trapped by those who seemingly manipulate them. We need booms and busts and mortgage crises and bail-outs and Gulf oil spills, incredibly complex events that can be made to look incredibly simple, and we need talking heads and sound bites to tell us they are simple and that everyone is shady or incompetent except the storyteller and his audience.
We need the specter of perps and victims, the spectacle of righteous indignation and shady dealings, the struggle of good versus bad, essential halves of the dramatic whole. And as a minor sideshow to this desperate contest, we need agents who pad their open houses.