If you haven’t played around on GooglePlus and want to, let me know as I have plenty of invites left.

Meantime, I understand that if I link to Google+ a certain way, if you search for “GooglePlus Comes to Sacramento Real Estate”, you should find this article with my GooglePlus account avatar in the Google search results.

Facebook, eat your heart out!

I have great news from the Government. No, it’s not like one of those weird Facebook ads you see where they’ve got some creepy guy from over a headline that reads “Barack Obama Announces He Will Pay Your Mortgage” or whatever.

This is great news for me, on a personal note, and it’s the news that the the folks at US Citizenship and Immigration Services have approved our fiancee visa for Jenniffer (my lovely fiancee who really has two Fs in her name and I’m not kidding). They had quoted five months as a probably time frame and got it done in a little more than three, so we’re happy about that. Now we’re keeping our fingers crossed about the next phase, where the approved petition gets sent along to the State Department and / or the National Visa Center. At some point she has to pass a medical exam, to make sure she’s not going to come here with ebola or Colombian Tapir Flu.

OK, look, I confess. I’m just one of those people who, when they get all excited, starts making up diseases. There’s no such thing as Colombian Tapir Flu. Tapirs do come from there (more or less) but as a rule, having one live in Bogotá would be about as weird as having a Polar Bear in Sacramento.

And that reminds me, since Jenniffer’s from one of those delicious equatorial places where they have beaches like the one pictured (well, not in Bogotá, but at the beach they have beaches), I have already warned her of the grave dangers we face from the polar bears here, and how, when we go outside, we have to distract them by tossing them raw seal meat in a high arc while we run to our cars.

She just rolls her eyes.

That’s my gal.

Yesterday we sent a tentative date for the wedding of July 30th. It’s tentative because there’s still some government meddling that needs doing, and it’s tough to plan how fast that will happen. It’ll be a small ceremony, family only, so that’s why I didn’t invite you. (Well, that and the fact that you’re anonymous and your email address is IHaveNoIdea@msn.com).

Yesterday I put my Facebook account in a hole, and shoveled dirt over it. Don’t worry: I checked it. It was dead already. I wrote about the mechanics of it yesterday in my post about how to delete your Facebook account and leave it write-only. Today I thought I’d spend a little time writing about why I did it.

First of all, I’m not trying to convince anyone to join me here. It’s not like we’re going to go camping or something if you quit Facebook too. The chances are pretty good you have no reason to leave Facebook. For most people it’s either a harmless diversion or a vehicle they perceive as having some potential for growing their business.

For me it was neither. That’s why I left.

My Allergy to Facebook, and What that has to do with Arthur Miller

Some of you may recall the title of Arthur Miller’s play, “The Death of a Salesman”, which the well-known sales trainer Tom Hopkins calls “an abomination of a play”. I read it a long time ago, but to refresh my memory, I looked it up on Wikipedia:

Miller’s play represents a democratization of the ancient form of tragedy; the play’s protagonist [Willy Loman] is himself obsessed with the question of greatness, and his downfall arises directly from his continued misconception of himself—at age 63—as someone capable of greatness, as well as the unshakable conviction that greatness stems directly from personal charisma or popularity.

I left Facebook because of a certain allergic reaction that I have to it: I become Willy Loman.

Kool-Aid Salesmen: Social Media as Business Opportunity

I know some people who work in marketing, some online and some in real life. All generalizations are wrong, of course, but every single marketing person that I know believes religiously that social media is a wonderful vehicle for promoting a business. Why do I say they believe it religiously? Because religion is belief that survives evidence. Tell any marketing person that you’re not making money off of social media and you’ll be told this: “You’re doing it wrong.” That’s religion. You can’t argue with it, because evidence doesn’t matter. Of all the things I’ve done in my life, arguing with religious people is the single least satisfying activity I know.

Now let’s recall Willy Loman’s tragic flaw: “the unshakable conviction that greatness stems directly from personal charisma or popularity.” What is this but the “reputation economy” that we have supposedly entered, now that social media is going to make all of us fabulously well-to-do, provided we’re “doing it right”.

This is Facebook Kool-Aid 101. The reason I feel like Willy Loman on Facebook is first of all the personal flaw I have in my habit of comparing my accomplishments to others, but that’s not all of it. Like most dysfunctional relationships, there are two sides to this one, too. The idiotic notion that my numbers are down because I have mismanaged my reputation (whatever that means) didn’t pop into my head fully formed like some of the other idiotic ideas that occasionally flourish there.

This idiotic idea had more than it’s share of salesmen.

I know how hard sales can be sometimes, so I don’t have any particular malice towards these people, and wish them luck as they knock on the next door.

Now that church is over, let’s give each other the sign of peace, get the heck out of here, and go enjoy our Sundays.

I just logged in to Facebook for what I hope will be the last time ever, and was able to configure my account in such a way as to continue updating it without having to show up. Indeed, I configured it in such a way that I can’t show up without creating a new account. I may get into my reasons for that in another post, but for now I thought I’d share how I did it in case you, too, would like to free yourself from Facebook while still using it as a micro-blogging platform.

Fair warning: this post assumes you want to quit Facebook permanently, not that you just want to try leaving to see if you can stand it. There are plenty of posts about how to do that. Just Google “How to Quit Facebook” and you’ll bump into many of them. Also, if you’re quitting over privacy concerns, you won’t want to quit this way, since it won’t address that issue specifically.

However, if you’re quitting because you simply resent Facebook selling your data to advertisers, this is really the best of all worlds here, because if enough people do this, Facebook’s value proposition evaporates since advertisers won’t want to pay to reach people who aren’t even there. (This isn’t my reason, by the way). But again, they’ll still have access to your email address and whatever else Facebook sells and opens up in their developer API about you, so if you’re interested in protecting your privacy, this method is not for you.

I’m not sure if this violates Facebook’s terms of service, and I’ll leave it up to you whether you should worry about that. In my case, I believe that the worst they’ll do to me is to delete my account if they find out, and if that happens, oh well, at least I had a free microblogging platform for awhile.

Step 1)
Your first step is to set up your blog feed (RSS feed) to post automatically. If you don’t already have your blog posts sharing the benefit of your wonderfulness on Facebook automatically, you need to do that first. I use Twitterfeed.com to do that; it’s free. Basically the idea is that you’re going to point Twitterfeed at the RSS feed of your blog, and then link it to your Facebook account. Be sure to write a test post, because once you quit Facebook you won’t be able to go back and test it. Wait a few minutes and if your test post appears successfully, you’re on to Step 2.

Step 2)
Change your email address. The next step to Facebook freedom is to set up an email address that you can’t remember and have it forward to an email address you can remember. If you have a Unix hosting account, chances are you can do this by logging into your account and using the site configuration tools in the email section to add a forwarder to your account. You want to search for Add a forwarder. You’ll come up with a simple interface where you’ll choose the domain name and the name for the email address. What you’ll want to do is create a strong email address as though it were a password, using some long and random string of letters. Point it to a real email address so you’ll be able to confirm your new email address when you change it in Facebook.

If you don’t have a Unix hosting account, you can accomplish the same thing by setting up a public gmail or hotmail or yahoo mail account, for example. If you do this, you can simply use the account you set up and won’t have to forward it.

Step 3)
We need to change our email address in Facebook to match the email address we just created. The reason we needed to set up a real email address is that Facebook will want to verify your address with a link. So change your email address to your new cryptographically strong email address, then go into whatever real email account that’s pointing to and click on the confirmation link.

Step 4)
Prepare your final words to your adoring fans, or your parting shots to your nemeses, as the case may be. A good way to do this is to create a jpeg file with a brief message using Windows paint or a similar tool, then post it as your profile picture. The reason for this is that if you post your goodbye on your Wall as a status update, that message will scroll down and disappear as your blog posts get published. All set? Good.

Step 5)
Create a strong password. You can use a bunch of letters and numbers for this if you want. Be sure it’s something you won’t remember. Obviously, if you have Lastpass or another password manager installed, make sure you don’t save it.

Step 6)
OK, before you take this step and the following ones, I’m going to warn you again that once you do, you won’t have access to your account. If that’s not what you want, stop now. If it is, you now want to change your password in Facebook to the password you created in Step 5.

Step 7)
Now, with a cryptographically strong password and email address, log out of Facebook.

Step 8
Make sure to delete your email forwarder or your TEMPORARY email account, so you won’t be able to log back in to Facebook in a moment of weakness.

Now, pour yourself a cup of coffee and think about the things you can do with your newfound life. If you’re lucky enough to get a call from the best friend you had since your moms used to get together for coffee with their infant sons like I did, enjoy the call. I recommend something fun like a movie or going out on a date or having sex with your partner of choice. Make sure you call some folks during the week to make lunch dates or get together somehow to tell them you care about them or just to goof around (which is another way to tell them you care about them).

You young people may not remember this, but we did it back in my day, when stamps cost a nickle and sandwiches were called “flat breadies”.

It’s called socializing.

For those of you who do remember it but are a little rusty, don’t worry, it’ll probably come back to you. Like riding a bicycle.

I don’t usually come right out and ask for feedback, since everybody knows that when I ask for feedback I’m really just trying to engage you in conversation so I can hypnotize you using my sinister salesman super-powers.

“You are getting very sleepy. You want six bedrooms.”

OK, that doesn’t work, so you can relax.

But today we installed a new comment system on the blog — hosted by a site called disqus. It’s pretty cool. In addition to leaving a comment with your avatar and everything (assuming you have an avatar and everything — but if you don’t, please comment anyway), you can share my paragraphs of outstandingly excellent awesomeness with your thousands of adoring Facebook followers.

Or not.

This Is the Serious Part

Hi. Welcome to the serious part. No really, it’s serious, it’s just the tone is friendly:

I’d really love to know what you think of the new web site. The reason I’d really love to know is that it seems like I used to get more people responding to the old, ugly web site than the new one, even though most everyone agrees the new one is much cleaner and simpler to use. Well, the guy who I paid to design it agrees. And my fabulously beautiful fiancee, Jenniffer, who really has two Fs in her name, agrees. Google Analytics reports that you’re here clicking away and doing searches for homes, clickety clickety click, so let’s take this as a sign that Google agrees and will soon have me back in the number one spot I like so much.

Is It Something I Said?

So what’s going on? Is it something I said?

Is it the fact that we’ve changed our name from “Elite Properties” to “Lockwood Real Estate”, and the first one sounds like a big company, while the second sounds like it’s run by a guy with a broker’s license and a blog?

Is it the yellow? I personally can’t see the yellow very well especially when it’s a normal-sized link, because I’m five thousand years old, and even if I wasn’t, well, jeesh, yellow on white? Hello, contrast? It does look good on the larger titles, though.

Are you just not buying because home prices are falling like a round rock in a vacuum, and you’re thinking — “wait for it…wait for it…” No, I know people are buying. We had something like 8% more people buying in April than last April. So now the number is up to at least six or eight people. When all the short sale offers currently on the books close, it will be sixteen million.

Is it that I didn’t offer you a discount, and you were looking for a cheap agent?

Is it because I failed to convince you of how good Mike Keleshian is, and you’re looking for a good agent? (He’s more awesomer than me, and I’m so cool I’m grammatically incorrect).

You do understand, don’t you, that even though we’re a small company, when the deed records with the county you own the house same as you would if you bought it from Rewell Banker Lyon MegaZip Prudential and Berkowitz, right?

Is it that I’m sounding too desperate?

No, really, John, why don’t you shut the hell up and let the people comment?

[OK, I'm taking over for John, who is too verbose for his own good. The comment box is below. Thanks for chiming in with your feedback on the website.]

(Please note that the following remarks apply to those of you who bought your home before the gold rush of 2003-2005, have been making payments and have equity. These comments do not apply to short sales).

There’s a fundamental inefficiency in real estate.

Because of this inefficiency:

1. You pay more for real estate service than you have to.
2. A lot of what you pay for is designed to make you feel good about how much you paid.

What’s even worse, because of this inefficiency, when you negotiate with your agent on the cost of her services, you can actually be helping to ensure that your house doesn’t get the attention it deserves from buyers.

What is this fundamental inefficiency? It’s this:

The 50 / 50 Commission Split is broken.

A lot of consumers already know that commissions are split 50 / 50 between the agent representing the seller and the agent representing the buyer. Sounds like a fair deal, right? Half the money goes to represent you, and half goes to represent the buyer.

But hold on a minute. There are two facts that most consumers don’t know, and it’s these two facts that explain what we mean when we say that real estate is inefficient, and the 50 / 50 split is broken.

1. According to figures published some time ago by the National Association of Realtors(r), the average agent working with buyers spends four times as much time working with a buyer (32 hours on average) as your listing agent will spend on listing your home and representing you (8 hours on average).
    
2. Agents representing buyers are more than ten times more likely to find a buyer for your home than your listing agent.

The Big Money’s Not In Selling Homes, The Big Money Is in Selling Sellers

So what this all boils down to is this. On the one hand, we have hundreds of eager and hard working real estate agents doing the incredibly time-consuming work of working with buyers who may not even turn out to be buyers, so that one of those hundreds of agents can sell your home. On the other hand, we have, we have an absolutely outstanding salesperson who is working primarily as a listing agent.

But make no mistake. This is an outstanding salesperson, but this salesperson — this accomplished persuader of humans that you’ve allowed into your home — is not in the business of selling homes. The real business of this selling superstar is selling you on the idea that somehow their experience and “sales numbers” justify being paid an equal amount of money to the hundreds of agents who each are going to work four times as hard as a listing agent and who collectively have more than a ten times greater chance of selling your home. (And of course, in “the listing agent’s” sales numbers, they include the credit they get for all the homes where they stuck a sign in the ground and the buyer’s agent did all the heavy lifting).

I’ve created a chart of where your sales dollars go. Is it approximate and does it represent my opinion? Well, it’s definitely approximate, and yes, it is an opinion, but it’s an opinion formed after almost nine years of experience in working with buyers and sellers both directly and with my agents. It may be a motivated opinion, but it’s definitely not naive.

(If you click on the image you can see a larger and easier-to-read version):

How do You Discount Price Without Discounting Value?

Ask any successful listing agent and they’ll warn you about the dangers of working with a discounter, as though somehow if you saved money on what, after all, are a rather limited (but very important) set of core services that the listing agent provides, you’d somehow be losing out.

And the way most listing agents work, there’s a case to be made for what they’re saying, because the listing agents know that you as a seller have been trained by every real estate agent and broker you ever met that the split between a listing agent and the seller’s agent is 50 / 50, is now and always shall be, world without end, amen.

Says Who?

So where does this 50/50 rule come from? Well, it comes from the thousands of transactions that have been done that way. There isn’t a rule about it. It’s not in the Magna Carta (you can check Wikipedia — I did, just to be safe), nor is it in the Ten Commandments. It’s just “the way we always do things”.

So what’s going to happen if you negotiate with a listing agent on price — are they going to discount only their own side, or are they also going to reduce the advertised commission to the buyer’s agent in the Multiple Listing Service, thereby making your home less attractive to these hard working agents?

Well, I don’t want to speak for them, but I know in my case I’d be inclined to discount my side, because that’s where there’s fat that I know I can cut — all that superfluous activity that are the non-green portions of the chart. If anything I think you should be paying your buyer’s agent more than 3% to make your home stand out, because buyer’s agents work their tails off. On the other hand, as a listing broker, I can afford to take a a deep cut on my side, because a lot of arm-waving and magazine ads aren’t going to sell your home. The right price in the right condition and hundreds of eager buying agents are going to sell your home. The fee on my side covers free a price analysis up front, photos, listing the home in the MLS, price review as needed, full representation (by the broker of record), and the best transaction coordinator in the business.

How much does that cost?

Call me and I’ll tell you. (530) 672-9160. I’m not trying to be coy, and if you don’t like the quote, I won’t twist your arm. But a lot of agents read this blog, and those who are working the listing side pretty heavily are probably already mad at me for talking about this stuff.

Woops.

If you don’t call, I’ll try something else. Like telling you I’m the next best thing to Nordstroms, or giving away free train whistles, or running a Memorial Day Sale.

As you can see, my business model is in flux a bit.

Was I not supposed to tell you that?

Woops again.

I have been haunted by this title and this idea, that 2011 is a year of change, for some time now.

Don’t get me wrong. This article is only accidentally about the real estate market. Warren Buffet says “the housing market” [there's only one?] will bounce back this year. That’s encouraging. Buffet is a guy who knows how markets perform. I’m not a market analyst like Warren Buffet.  With my nine years in the business, my best answer for how markets will behave is that they will surprise us. I do see some signs that he’s right in the numbers for Sacramento County for the past month. The total number of sales is up 11.7% from last year, and coupled with an inventory level of under six months, this tells us that demand is strong. With prices still falling, the demand side is sure to increase to the point where we reach equilibrium, but my crystal ball is too cloudy to tell me if Buffet is right that it will be this year.

As always my advice to our clients is this:  whether buying is right for you depends more on your circumstances than the market’s.  Do you have a steady job, where you expect to stay in one place for some time?  Can you afford it?  Are you willing to invest somewhat more than you would in rent each month for long term tax advantages and a higher net worth in the future?  If so, then it’s a good time to buy.  If not, it doesn’t matter what the market’s doing.

But this isn’t an article about the market.

“There’s a Change My Life, Since You’ve Come Along”

Caution:  assumption of government efficiency ahead:  If the government officials in charge of issuing fiancee visas aren’t horribly slow at what they do, I’ll be getting married again this year to the best girlfriend in the world, who currently lives in Bogotá, Colombia.  Naturally I’m excited and happy about that, and I’m pleased to announce that Jenniffer (that’s not a typo, there are two F’s in Jenniffer, no extra charge) will also be joining the company at some point, first as an assistant to me and later as an agent.

Talk about being serious about one’s recruiting efforts!

I am hoping she’ll try her hand at blogging from time to time, which realistically means that we have an opportunity to spin off a new blog or make this one bilingual.  We’re both more or less bilingual, but as you can imagine, she’s a lot more lingual in Spanish just as I’m a lot more lingual in English.  You can tell by my clever misuse of the word lingual, can’t you?

Sure.

Attitude Is Everything

As I said, the title “The Year That Everything Changed” has been haunting me, but what that’s really about is not so much the market (which is interesting), or my marriage (which of course is exciting), but about a new outlook on my life and my business.  On the one hand, my passion for the business has been re-ignited, partly by working with a great web designer who’s also a great online business consultant,  my friend Andrew Rhee.  He’s as crazy busy as I am, so the new web site design is still just on the drawing board, but I’m very happy with it and I hope you will be too once it arrives.  Meantime the real value he’s added to my business is getting me to give serious thought to what it is the brand is about.

I have a brand?  Who knew?  Actually, as you can probably tell by that question, I didn’t, but I’m working on one.

In addition to a sort of increased baseline excitement about the business, I’ve made a determined effort to eliminate whatever limiting beliefs about the business have held me back in the past.  This is the year I start to hire more good agents, train them on better systems, and put up better content than at any time in the last two or three years at least.  My agents are already great at what they do, but there’s not enough of them, and sometimes quite frankly their broker has been phoning it in.

That just ended.

The best is yet to come.

Given that it’s Friday and we wanted to have a bit of fun, we’re throwing the awesome ineffectualness of our C list blogging status to lend our absence of influence behind the new movement we’re starting that has yet to be ignored by everyone in the community – Save Frances Flynn Thorsen, the Real Estate Bulldog.

Actually, truth to tell, nobody calls her that but me and a guy named ItsEric.  ItsEric, really?  Well, it’s good that we know what it is.  If I were it, I would have said ImEric, or maybe HesEric, to avoid being treated like a zebra object.  Then again I’m a native speaker.

Jay Thompson did call her a bully (for raining on his own bully parade), but it took an ItsEric to raise her role in this to the status of a brand.

Now OK, let me take a minute to get my facts moderately straight, even though I’m a C Lister and we’re not known for that.  (A Listers don’t get their facts straight either, but they’re known for it.  Being C Listers we’re not known for anything.)  When ItsEric calls Frances a Bulldog, he uses a small B and means it in a bad way like as in, “Oh, does this mean we have to put down our lanterns and pitchforks and go back to work?”

When I call Frances Flynn Thorsen the Real Estate Bulldog, I mean it in respectful recognition and admiration of her ability to get right in there and stand up to those A list bloggers.

I can’t do that with A List bloggers.  I can’t even be around them.  I feel the siren song of their meme-generating awesomeness pulling on my sensibilities like so much rub and tug.  It always leaves me feeling whistful and non-plussed when I was hoping to spend my day more whistless and plussed.  That’s why I don’t even know who Daniel Rothmiel is.  I hope I got his name right.  Nor the lady who’s suing him either.  Nobody going after the lady who’s suing him knows enough about her or the issue to be able to pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel, but when A Listers yell “Jump!”, admiring throngs of idiots yell “How high?”

When C Listers yell “Jump!”, does it make a noise?

I have changed my photo in Facebook and Twitter in solidarity!  I have raised my voice in a loud rallying cry and my troops are…  hello…. troops????…. Hey fellas?

Fortunately for all concerned except me, I’m here being ineffectual.  I own the C list.  No one will boycott the shoe store where ItsEric buys ItsShoes, so ItsAll good.  No one will threaten him or send him hate mail on my account.

I’m no Jay Thompson, after all.

I couldn’t whip a mob into a frenzy if my life depended on it.

Every so often a newspaper article appears that’s critical of the California Department of Real Estate’s record on enforcement against agents who are breaking the law or otherwise misbehaving.  Fortunately I don’t have any experience with that side of things, because I generally obey the law and don’t misbehave — at least not in a real estate sense.  (I’m fairly fond of sugary foods, if that counts).

I do however have experience dealing with the Department of Real Estate when I need something done that has to do with my license. I thought by way of setting expectations for those who might have something to complain to them about, I’d share one recent experience I had with them.

Several months ago I sent them a form to change the broker of record for my company, since the broker who was working for me left to go be a full time mom.  After about a month or so, they sent me a form asking for a corporate resolution saying basically what I said in the form, I wanted them to change the broker of record.  OK, fair enough, you like redundancy, do you?   Let’s be redundant.  So I sent them the corporate resolution, and a few weeks later I got the same form, saying they want the corporate resolution.  Apparently being only a little redundant wasn’t good enough, so they asked me for the resolution again, by way of being redundantly redundant.

Several weeks go by…

Now meantime, lots of the things I need to do as a broker are on hold because I’m not officially listed as broker of record.  For example, I can’t go in to our MLS and make changes to our listings, because the MLS takes the DRE’s word for it as to who the broker is.  In general that’s a good idea, because you need to know who’s who, but of course the effectiveness of that check relies on the assumption that the DRE keeps up-to-date records.  So I’m getting anxious to get this change done so I can get on with my work, so I call the DRE.

Wednesday morning.  Ring ring.  I talk to the computer and tell it I’m a licensee and my license number, and after a few minutes of mucking around with the computer I’m told my wait time will be one minute.  Then I get on the phone with a human being.

“Hello, I want my license changed.”  (This is the short form of the conversation, of course).

“Well, did you get the form asking you for a corporate resolution?”

“Yes, I got it, but I ignored the second one because I sent it to you the first time.”

“Well, we don’t have it.”

“You lost the corporate resolution?  OK, I’ll fax you a new one.  You should have a form asking for a change of address, too”.

“No we don’t have that, either.” (Now mind you, I KNOW they have that because the original broker of record form is the same form as the change of address form — the very same form that triggered them asking me for the  corporate resolution — which they also lost).

“OK, I’ll fax that, too.  Who do I speak to about it?”

“You ask for Mary in Business Licensing.”

So I go back to my desk and fax in the same stuff I sent them months ago, and a couple of hours later I call back and the computer tells me my wait time will now be 20 minutes, so I spend about 20 minutes on hold waiting to ask Mary if she got my fax or if somehow that managed to get lost, too.  Well, Mary’s not available, so meantime I’m trying to get someone in the department to help me with my month-old request to have someone do five minutes of work.  The person I get says the department manager can help me, and proceeds to transfer me.

Do I get the department manager?  No, of course not.  I get his voice mail, so I leave him a voice mail asking him to please get back to me, etc.

By now you probably guessed that he doesn’t get back to me, so I call Mary again, and after a sufficiently long hold time I learn  “Oh, Mary’s gone home for the day, can you call tomorrow?”

So the next day I call the guy who says he’s going to work with Mary on it for me and ask for him by name.  So I get the guy I get to go find Mary and hunt up an answer for me.

This is going to be good, I think.  She has the fax.  All’s well.  I’m going to get my five minutes of work done.  Hooray.

The Mary-finder returns to the phone, and tells me what Mary told him, which was that it takes two days to distribute the faxes and then about a week to do the work.

Yes, you heard right.  It takes two days for the Department of Real Estate to get a fax with the paperwork you sent them that they lost the first time, which was a restatement of the paperwork you already sent them, after which, if you’re lucky, a week later they can do five minutes of work for you.

Now, I’m not saying that if someone’s misbehaving you shouldn’t complain to the Department of Real Estate — that’s part of what they’re there for.  I’m just saying that if you go down that road, you should bring a lunch and a warm sweater, since you likely won’t return before dark.