Why you should not be a total hack if you're talking to me:

Reason #1: I will blog about you, douche.

Reason #2: I want a cookie.

So, all 17 of you know that I've been looking to buy a house. And that I've had some strong opinions about the real estate bubble the past 4 years. You've heard about it, maybe you've even read my [now private] blog on how mad it has made me that speculation and hoarding and well-connected pricks on Wall Street left to their own devices have shit all over the American Dream for my generation.

So, my patience with people whose livelihood depends on me buying a home is swinging by a thread as we speak. They all seem to break every rule in my book with the things they choose to say. They're like these cracked-out, singing, dancing monkeys in bellhop suits with cymbals, giving performances they don't even understand and running around with their hats out afterward. I have to be nice, because they are taught to assume I've been hiding under a rock the past 5 years, and are encouraged to talk to me that way. So I'm considering giving them my OWN little schpeal before they open their mouths, and I'm just wondering how bitchy I'd come off. So, give me your feedback. Would it be rude to say: 

Hello, host at the model home/Realtor showing the home. I realize you are doing your job right now, but I’m going to tell you to take a 10 minute pseudo-break. That means you can stay clocked in, and you need to unlock things for me, and answer my specific questions about the HOA, but you are free from all your other duties. 

What I need to tell you up front is that I’m not stupid. That means I want you to pretty much shut up. I guarantee everything you are about to say, I’ve heard 5,000 times before and monumentally disagree with. And not because I’m cheap, or that I’m a bottom-feeding vulture that wants to rape the food directly from your children’s mouths with my asinine lowball offers. But because when I was about four, these people decided to teach me this skill called reading, and I decided to utilize said skill during the run-up in home prices driven by hot air and supported by thin air. I have done my homework for three years, like a psycho stalker, obsessed with the every step and breath of the local and national markets. My disagreement with your one-liners and canned R.E. industry quips is based on the facts I have to back it up. Do not attempt to argue with me. It will make you wish for a gloves-off throwdown on politics mixed with religion.

Let me repeat: you’re on a break right now. You are free from your obligation to the required memorized pitches you’re undoubtedly going to rattle off to me. I’ll cut the crap and tell you right now, yes, I HAVE added up the costs of renting versus the costs of “owning” over the past five years. Renting wins for me, in every scenario. No no, don’t you dare finish that sentence about tax deductions. Those were in the calculation, and yes, I included tax and insurance and PMI and even the cost of a new water heater here and there. I vow that you will sell NOTHING today if you finish that damn sentence, you understand me? And by the way, when you get out your marker and calculator and start to ask me what my rent is, you’re gearing up, essentially, to insult my personal decision to rent, and in many ways, suggest that I am stupid. By doing this, you are instantly stupid. See how it turns around like that? Yeah. I'm a bitch. That word hasn't been an insult since the nineties, so let's move along.
No, I do NOT “know” that prices have found a bottom (yeah, one condescending ass told me … “um, you do know that prices aren’t dropping any lower, don’t you? Chuckle chuckle. You do know that¸ right?” Don’t for one second think that I was nice back). No. I do not know that. At all, and neither do you. In fact, I’m fairly certain that they have not, and I don’t care. If a price makes sense to me and I like the house, I’ll pay the price, regardless of where it might fall in two years’ time. It's a home to me, not a get-rich-quick scheme or even an "investment." In the past five years, prices jumped over 60%, and have dropped, oh, 6%? My income did not do that and neither did yours or anyone else’s.) So, prices have a long ways to go. You can knock the president all you want, but the invisible hand hasn’t been chopped off. If you think otherwise, you do know you’ve been drinking the kool aid, don’t you? You do know that, right? 

If you DO know prices are splattered along the rock bottom of the permanently inflated market, I'll run grab the paperwork outta my car for you to sign your 401k and children's tuition funds over to my mortgage balance, guaranteeing that prices can't drop further. Since you're so damn sure. Stop trying to put MY money where your mouth is.

If you ever quote Yun or anyone else from the NAR, I will assume that not only are you drunk off the Koolaid, but that you’re shitfaced beyond recognition on the Koolaid. (With this guy, I did use the word orgy to describe what happened with prices as if it were a big greed-rave, which it was). So you’re free from that duty. In fact, anything you have ever heard at a Board of Realtors convention, or anything where lots of real estate agents congregate, just keep it to yourself. Take a load off. 

If you say, “OK, you can wait and think about it…but the fear then, is that these might not be here when you come back. [fake chuckle]” I WILL respond with “No. There will be no fear. I don’t use fear in my decision making.” And then you will fake chuckle again, and awkwardly hand me the booklet of floor plans, and I will leave. And blog your dumb ass to shreds.

The grants and credits and incentives totaling 12k do not mean crap to me when the house is overpriced by 30. Or more, which this one is (I feel that I could have truthfully said that to 80% of the homes I have viewed during my search, so it does work as a general statement). Please refrain from your spastic need to blurt out the word “incentives” at every quiet moment. I understand that there is an intense urge for you to spew that, but it is not an uncontrollable one. Control this urge. 

If I hear the words “granite and stainless” one more time, I’m going to vomit on you. 

I don’t care about tile in kitchens. If this home were SO LOADED, it would have hardwood. Yes, that’s just my personal preference, but tile is not hardwood. Utah is not Tuscany. Get over the damn tile. 

Beige stucco ≠ special. 

I don't care if it's jetted.

Enough with the half walls on every staircase. Quit looking for new ways to suck character out of a house. Spring for an extra $350 to make it a standard wood banister. No, it is not OK to charge $5,000 when you do, either. 

Interest is rent that you pay to the bank. If rent is throwing money away, then so is interest. (Oh, you almost did it again with the tax deduction Tourette’s moment). This isn’t my first rodeo. Chill the **** out. 

Look at my roots: they are brown. I’m not a real blonde. So when you tell me the payment is the low, easy rent-beating price of [three figure payment amount] I know that you are very deliberately leaving off the extra $350 in tax, insurance, HOA fees and PMI that I will be paying every month in addition. I also know that you’ve made an assumption that my interest rate will be very low. While I appreciate your giving my credit score the benefit of the doubt based on your 5 minutes with me, I still know you’re in sales. And the sales guys that work in my building have been known to talk on the phone while at the urinals (the guys in my department totally talk). You’re smarmy, and I’m being bigoted about it, and I don’t even effing care. 

Don’t use the phrase “pride of ownership.” That is not a sacred cow with me. Save it. 

Yes, I do know real estate is local. I watched our “insulated” local market copycat all the boom markets like a little sibling, mimicking every move of the big markets. The big markets just got expelled from school for having sex under the bleachers with weed in their backpacks, and our little market is still saying I learned from that, but God loves me more, so I'm going to do all the fun stuff they did, but with none of the consequences, and (you ready for this?) it can’t happen to me. You know where this is going.

Every builder claims they are the highest quality. Richmond "Build-With-Them-With-A-Gun-To-Your-Head" American Homes? Probably said that to people buying their flaking, drafting, rusting, uninsulated, leaking pieces of fauxEVERYTHING crap houses. I guarantee it.

West Valley is not the Avenues.

The Avenues are not Manhattan.

Please stop talking.