Diary of a Real Estate Rookie: My Year of Flipping, Selling, and Rebuilding ? and What I Learned

225 Pages·2007·6.15 MB·English

by  Alison Rogers

a l E
e s
R D I A R Y O F tA
a
t
e
Rookie
My Year of
Flipping,
Selling, and
Rebuilding—
and What I Learned
(The Hard Way)
ALISON ROGERS
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subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in
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Vice President and Publisher: Maureen McMahon
Editorial Director: Jennifer Farthing
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Production Editor: Karina Cueto
Production Artist: PBS & Associates
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Cover Designer: Rattray Design
© 2007 by Alison Rogers

Published by Kaplan Publishing, a division of Kaplan, Inc.
1 Liberty Plaza, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10006
Portions of this book appeared as a column on Inman News.
Inman News is the leading source for independent news, analysis, research,
and events about real estate. For more information, visit www.inman.com.
All rights reserved. The text of this publication, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
June 2007
07 08 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
ISBN-13: 978-1-4277-5465-3
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Dedication
To Rupert Murdoch, whose refusal to pay me a decent wage
launched me on the adventure of a lifetime
and
To my darling husband Ivan, who shared it with me
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Contents
Introduction 1
(An Idea of What You’re Getting Into)
Prologue 5
(In Which the Author Explains Her Midlife Crisis and Her
Confi dence That She Can Found a Business with $16,000)
Part New Jersey
I:
1. Back to School 13
(A Harvard Grad Gets the Beginnings of a Real Estate Education)
2. Learning to Drive 17
(Where Our Heroine Gets Asked for Heroin)
3. T he Sheriff’s Sale 21
(How Foreclosures Really Work)
4. Going Broke 27
(Precious Little Work, Worth Precious Little)
5. Media Inc. 33
(My Rich Client with the Jaguar Shops for a Summer Home)
6. C ramped 39
(An Outline of My Predicament)
7. A Wreck of a House at Christmas 43
(What the Crack Addicts Left Behind)
8. A New Year’s Wish 47
(Meditations on the Death of Two Jersey Cops)
9. The Lowball Offer 49
(Trying to Knock a Seller into Reality)
10. The Estate Section House 55
(Tricks to Keep from Overpaying)
11. T he “Come to Jesus” Letter 59
(Sometimes You Just Have to Punch Somebody in the Nose)
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12. Shadowing Mr. Success 65
(A Jersey Broker’s Tricks of the Trade)
13. The End of Jersey 69
(Admitting That “Flipping” Has Been a Total Failure)
Part New York
II:
14. Class, Again 75
(A Harvard-Educated Real Estate Agent Learns about UFOs)
15. Taking a Listing 79
(Things Every Smart Seller Should Know)
16. Staging the Bohemian Apartment 83
(Where to Put the Bong before the Open House)
17. Why Cheap Rentals Suck 89
(Meditations on Why Big-City Apartments Are Such a Rip-Off)
18. Breaking into a Suburban House 93
(That I Just Happened to Own)
19. Testing, Testing 97
(Do I Have the Personality of a Successful Agent?)
20. Clients, 90210 101
(Young Buyers and How to Be One)
21. Sellers Are Liars 107
(Some New Rules for Advertising)
22. Homeaphobia 111
(Buyers’ Failure to Commit)
23. Freaking Out 115
(Maybe I’m a Little Stressed)
24. FSBO Chaos 119
(One Apartment, Three Prices)
25. Back to Work? 125
(In Which I Am Offered What Ten Years Ago Would Have Been
My Dream Job)
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26. Bored of the Boards 129
(What the Internet Can—and Can’t—Do for You)
27. T he Wedding Anniversary 135
(Meditations on Our First Year)
28. It Starts at $10,000 a Month 137
(The Business of Luxury Rentals)
29. Sneaker Technology 143
(My First Rental—A Celeb! It Looks Like I Might Just
Make a Living at This)
30. The Golden Gate 147
(The Real Estate Conference/Vacation)
31. Coffee and Condos 151
(Great Customer Service Can’t Be Faked)
32. Letting Go 155
(The Emotional Side of Selling a Home)
33. Sorry I Hid Your Underwear 159
(When Life in the Big City Gets Mischievous)
34. The Closing 163
(Wrapping Up the First Sale)
35. Out to Lunch 167
(Business Heats Up, at the Expense of a Friend)
36. The Deal That Wasn’t 171
(Originally Titled “Jackpot!”)
Part More Tips From the Front Porch
III:
(cid:2)
The Four Cs of Real Estate 177
(Learn Your Tradeoffs So You Can Shop Wisely)
(cid:2)
How to Talk to Your Realtor 185
(Who Should, Preferably, Be Me)
(cid:2)
Now This Is Living 195
(A Meditation on the $10 Million Home)
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(cid:2)
Constant Renovations 199
(A House Is a Series of Leaks Held Together by Gutters)
(cid:2)
Credit Score Myths and Facts 203
(Surviving a Three-Year Fight with Citibank)
(cid:2)
Home Comforts 207
(Secrets to Coziness That Should Be Revived)
(cid:2)
Acknowledgments
(Thank You Thank You)
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Introduction
(An Idea of What You’re Getting Into)
More than six million Americans move each year. If anecdotal ev-
idence is anything to go by, 5.9 million of them hate their real estate
agents.
So how did I end up going into a profession that ranks below “vam-
pire” on the trust scale? And why should that interest you? The answer to
the fi rst question is: I had a midlife crisis. I had been a real estate journal-
ist at a big newspaper—the New York Post—and I got married. It seemed
important, if I was ever going to have a more interesting career and up my
income, to try out those things before the kids came.
The answer to the second question is: Things didn’t turn out like I
planned. I ended up exploring a much wider area of real estate than I
thought, from fl ipping to landlording to brokerage, and at every turn stuff
kept happening to me that wasn’t in the books. So I wrote my own.
Diary of a Real Estate Rookie is actually two books: a memoir of my
fi rst year in real estate—which was also my fi rst year of marriage—and a
personal fi nance guide to buying, selling, and renting. The year—as you’ll
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