Unreal estate

A little more on the ongoing saga of the sale of the lovely house that I rent.

I have only a layperson’s knowledge of the general principles behind real estate, but I do know the Rule of Proximity: the value of the properties beside yours affect the value of your property. In the case of Big Trouble in Little China (better known as my house), our immediate neighbours have decent houses, but as you progress east or west on my street, the houses become more and more dilapidated, going downhill from “student ghetto house” to “crazy old lady with all the cats”-type shacks with garbage in the front yard.

When the real estate agent called me yesterday to let me know about yet another showing, she told me that there would be a large open house tomorrow with a phalanx of agents. She said this was because they’d adjusted the price.

I assumed that they’d adjusted the price downwards, as the general consensus among all the recent home-buyers I’d met was that the current asking price for Big Trouble in Little China — CDN$679,000 (for my non-Canadian friends, that’s US$504,552 or 431,801 Euros) was mildly insane, given the current market, which has been described as “soft”.

However, when I met up with Deenster and Lisa last night, Lisa told me she had inside dirt on my house. Deenster and Lisa’s mom is a real estate agent, and apparently, there’s some kind of buzz going about my house. The price has been adjusted upwards to CDN$750,000 (USD$557,766 or 477,046 Euros).

Clearly the real estate industry has found some kind of drug that makes homebuyers tractable. My guess is that it is absorbed through the skin and that it is administered by putting a light coat of it onto house brochures.

When this Internet-and-computers fad blows over, I may have to see how I look in one of those Century 21 blazers.