Real Estate is the best of jobs, and real estate is the worst of jobs.  The potential earnings are outstanding, and the potential earnings are dreadful.  You don’t sit in a cubicle all day long, but you do sit in the front seat of a car.

At least you get a big window, and the view changes a lot.

One of the downsides of the business is that sometimes we fall victim to other peoples’ opinions of us.  (Actually I suppose that’s a downside of being a social animal in general).  In my online colleagues, especially, I often see a sort of Stockholm syndrome at work.  I don’t mean to suggest that our clients or the general public are always and forever beating us up.  I’ve been fortunate that the overwhelming majority of my clients have been fabulous to work for.  Howerver, I do think that we have to jump through more hoops to earn our clients’ trust than some other business people might.

Here are some of the signs that you may be suffering from real estate Stockholm Syndrome:

• You begin to wonder if you should have been selling houses to all those people during the boom when prices were so high, even though that was the price at the time, and your buyers were not ambiguous at all about wanting to buy them.
• You spend time and devote space on your web site or blog to discussing businesses or people who — one way or another — are trying to take food out of your mouth, as though the public would be better served by your poverty than by your success.
• You think having leads is a bad thing.
• You take a dim view of one or more accepted and legal industry practices for making money, such as paying referral fees to other Realtors®.
• You believe it’s better to be transparent than substantial.
• You’re more focused on the possible mistakes you can make in your promotion efforts than in the natural freedom of expression that is one of the great things about being in a sales profession.
• Picture in the upper right hand corner.  Can’t go anywhere without a picture in the upper right hand corner.  (Read: “I can’t possibly have anything interesting enough to say, so I need illustrations.”)

Here is what I take to be the core etiological process of real estate Stockholm syndrome:

• Someone expected you to be crooked, based on your sales role.
• With that expectation in mind, they treated you differently than if they trusted you.
• You internalized that, and started to behave like a dog avoiding a beating.

By the way, the online form of this is just the tip of the iceberg.  There’s a full article’s worth of the way we do this offline as well.  Here’s a preview:  as a profession, we routinely work either without any assurance of getting paid, and when we do have a contract, we treat it as unenforceable.

May I help you?

Here is are various flavors of cure you might try, depending on your mood:

• Get in touch with your Buddha nature.  (Possible Christian translation:  God don’t make no junk).
• Repeat after Stuart Smalley:  “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me.”
• Be more like me, the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Get over it.
• Three pillows and a down comforter.
• Ignore advice.  I recommend you start with mine and work your way up.

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