Dave Barry's Homes and Other Black Holes (13 page)

There are many different types of gardens to choose from, such as the flower garden, which consists of flowers; the vegetable garden, which consists of vegetables; and the
Japanese garden, which consists of Japanese. But I myself have found that the best type, in terms of ease of maintenance, is the “garden consisting of ugly plaster statuettes.” Of course the type of ugly statuette you should choose depends on the climate in your particular area.

No matter how perfect your new home seems when you first move in, you’ll gradually discover various shortcomings about it that get on your nerves, and ultimately you’ll come to hate it. This usually takes about two weeks. From that point on, you’ll be thinking about Trading Up.

Trading Up is the basic maneuver in real
estate, dating back several million years to the prehistoric Catalytic Era. In those days, a typical couple would have to start out living in a small cave, but each day they’d go out and hunt for pretty stones, which they’d put in a pile, called Equity, in the center of their cave. When the Equity was big enough, they’d move to a larger cave, where they’d repeat the process and move to a still larger one, and so on until they moved into their Dream Cave, which was occupied by a saber-toothed tiger, or carnivorous humongous (literally, “huge payments”), which ate them. This is essentially the system we use today.

Before you can buy a new house, of course, you need to sell the one you’re in now.

The best way to sell a house is to walk down a city street and have a construction worker who is eating a sandwich fifty-five stories above you accidentally drop his lunch box so that it lands on your head in such a way that you are not seriously injured, but you do lapse into a coma, and you wake up four months later and the nurse says: “While you were in a coma, your house was sold.” This is also the best way to move, have a baby, and attend the opera. But things are rarely this easy. Usually you have to put quite a bit of effort into selling your house, starting with asking yourself the question …

I touched upon this subject back in an earlier chapter, but I am quite frankly too lazy to go back and read what I said. Probably I said that there are pros and cons, because there almost always are, unless you’re talking about hemorrhoidal tissue.

On the one hand, if you sell your home yourself, you avoid paying a large commission; but on the other hand, you have to deal with people calling you up and coming around to your house all hours of the day and night, pestering you and giving you no peace. I’m not talking about potential buyers. I’m talking about real estate brokers, trying to get your listing. The only way to get them to go away is to sign a contract with them. Then you’ll never see them again.

Ha ha! Just kidding, of course. In the interest of fairness and decency and, above all, not receiving thousands of concerned letter bombs from the large and powerful real estate industry, let me state that I am sure that virtually all brokers out there are honest and highly competent professionals of the type regularly shown on TV wearing geek-style blazers. And even if it turns out that they’re not, I strongly advise you to use a broker, for the same reason that I’d advise you to pay somebody else to repair your automobile transmission, namely: No matter how incompetent or overpaid this person is, he or she can’t possibly screw
things up as badly as you would if you did it yourself.

Before you sign a listing contract, you should talk to several brokers, to find out what they think your house is worth. What you want to be on the alert for here is a practice called “highballing,” which is when an unscrupulous broker deliberately overestimates the value of your house, just to get the listing:

Once you’ve selected a broker, you’ll be asked to sign a standard contract, which will read as follows:

1. The BROKER gets FIVE PERCENT.
   

2. Even if the BROKER doesn’t do SQUAT.
   

3. Even if the BROKER is off somewhere like MAUI, drinking EXOTIC TROPICAL DRINKS with names like KAMIKAZE KAHLUA when a WILLING BUYER, acting totally on his OWN, appears on the SELLER’S doorstep carrying a SUITCASE full of CASH MONEY, the BROKER still gets FIVE PERCENT.
   

4. In return, the SELLER gets to bitch about the BROKER at social occasions.
   

5. “My damned BROKER couldn’t sell mascara to TAMMY FAYE BARKER,” is the kind of snide comment the SELLER is allowed to make.
   

6. But the BROKER still gets FIVE PERCENT.
   

This is a very difficult question, but top real estate experts from all over the world agree that you should ask $127,500 and ultimately settle for $119,250. Also you should throw in the outdoor gas barbecue system with the charcoal-roasted spiders permanently bonded to the grill.

Once you’re signed up with a broker and have decided on an asking price, you need to fix your house up so it looks as though clean and tasteful grownups live there, instead of yourselves. Take a hard look at your house and furnishings, and ask yourself how they’ll appear to prospective buyers. Chances are that with a minimum of time and effort, you can make a number of dramatically superficial improvements. For example, suppose you have an ugly old sofa in the living room with
a leg missing from one corner, which you’ve propped up with a copy of
The Sex Lusters
, by Harold Robbins. You’ll make a far better impression with an acknowledged classic such as
Moby Dick
, by Jackie Collins. You can also make a big improvement in the appearance of dirty, crayon-marked walls by buying a can of flat white latex paint and using it to stand on while you install a lower-wattage light bulb.
And, of course, it’s always a smart idea to nail all your bathroom doors shut.

The overall effect you’re trying to create with these “homey” little touches is that your house is a warm, welcoming, and—above all—
real
kind of place, similar to the set of a 1962 situation comedy. You may want to create the impression that, at any moment, Ricky Ricardo might come bursting through the front door and get a great big welcome-home kiss from Mary Tyler Moore.

But the most important ingredient in the home-selling equation is
you
, the homeowner, because only you have a really intimate, detailed knowledge of the house; only you, who have lived there, know all the interesting little idiosyncrasies it has—all the special features and hidden “secrets” that make you want to dump it like a grocery bag full of armpit hair. Your job is to help your broker make sure that prospective buyers view these things in the proper light.

Unfortunately, brokers don’t always appreciate receiving help from sellers. In fact, most brokers won’t even want you hanging around when they show the house. They’ll let you know this by dropping little hints
such as: “Please don’t hang around when I show the house,” and: “If you hang around when I show the house, I will kill you.” The broker is concerned that if you’re always hovering in the background like some kind of desperate street person, the prospective buyers won’t feel free to speak their minds.

There is some basis for the broker’s concern. The last time we sold a house, whenever I was in the room, the prospective buyers would always describe everything as “interesting.”

“Hmmmm,” they say, looking at one of my Home Improvement Projects. “How interesting!” Meaning: “I can’t
wait
to tell the people in my office about this.”

So on the one hand, you don’t want to make the buyers feel uncomfortable, but on the other hand, you want to be available to explain features of the home that the broker might not be familiar with. The solution to this dilemma is to
hide in closets
when prospective buyers come around. By ducking from room to room just ahead of them, you’ll be invisible, yet still available in case a question comes up that the broker can’t answer.

One major problem you’ll have to be on the alert for is when prospective buyers get really interested in your house and start to bring around …

Virtually all prospective buyers have horrible relatives with names like Uncle Roger who believe themselves to be experts in the field of home construction on the basis of their vast experience as thirty-year subscribers to
Popular Mechanics
. The prospective buyers will bring Uncle Roger around, and unless he is stopped, he will go into
a testosterone-induced nitpicking frenzy wherein he finds hundreds of thousands of things wrong with your house. This is why it’s always a good idea, when you’re darting from closet to closet, to carry a garrote: