The stupidest profession

Disclaimer: there are some good, smart people who make their living selling real estate; they help their clients. There’s the realtor who sold me my house in DC, helping me make some smart choices to get a house that suited my needs and was a good investment. There’s the realtor who helped me sell it, who through some simple but savvy marketing incited a bidding war on the house. (Yay!) There’s the realtor who sold me my current home, who patiently took me through bungalow after bungalow, pointing out things I did not see, and helping me with the process so that Teddy and I could live happily in an idea house.

But there are lots of the others, the ones who collect a fee without really looking after their clients’ interests. For example, the listing agent on the first house I wanted to buy here in Houston, who after being told that I was sending over an offer, advised her clients to accept another offer a few hours earlier – because why would you want two buyers trying to outbid each other? Then you might get more money.

Or the ones who just confirm the stereotype so many of us have: that real estate agents are lying dolts who’ll say anything to sell something. They are the ones who define any property within twenty minutes of Houston Heights as the Heights; the ones who work for developers who build ugly townhouses here and announce that they are “lofts,” having no idea what a loft is (here in Houston, “loft” is usually code for “house thrown up in 15 minutes that looks like it was made from a giant tin can”); the ones who believe that “charming” is a synonym for “claustrophobic.”

And there’s the one who wrote the copy for this listing. It’s a house in Sugar Land, a suburb of Houston. It’s 3000 square feet. It’s on a lake. It’s on a 20,000 square foot lot. It has a lot of things that a lot of people would like. And, the agent cheerfully informs us, it’s an “urban retreat.”

Don’t you just want to throw a dictionary at her head?

To be an urban retreat, one would normally assume that the property would have to be in an urban location. For example, somewhere within city limits. Not by a lake in a suburb.

Our local snarky real estate blog did a piece on it; they were unusually kind. They called in a “ranch loft” (snort) and let the commenters comment on its excessive interior ugliness – it does look like the set of a low-budget remake of The Jetsons. With boats. That’s pretty urban, isn’t it?

An “urban retreat” is a house or condo in a city that feels peaceful – you know a retreat from the urbanity outside your window. I’d call my house now an urban retreat, because that’s what it is. If my house was next to a lake in Sugar Land, it might be a “suburban retreat.” Actually, the neighbors would probably call it “that nasty shack up the road” because it is the right size for a normal person to live in, it’s old (OMG!), and it doesn’t have turrets.

Thank God. I’ve been accused of being elitist about this stuff, but it’s just practical; given the choice between lots of extra space to clean and air condition versus a comfortable house with great neighbors that’s ten minutes from everywhere I want to be, I chose the latter. For that some people say I have “overpaid for my house” or am an “inner loop snob.”

I’m still not clear what’s snobbish about choosing a house that is convenient, charming, and appropriately sized.

Whatever. I’m sure there is a perfect buyer for this “urban retreat,” and I hope they find it and love it; I’m betting, however, that they aren’t sitting down with their agent and saying, “We need an urban retreat kind of house. With a lake. In the suburbs.”