Recently,
I had the pleasure of visiting a large art museum, and I saw some very famous
pieces up close and personal. And I saw
some real “pieces,” too.
One
exhibit in the Modern wing was a polished fiberglass plank approximately seven
feet long painted bright red leaned up against the wall. Next to the plank was a card with this typed
on it: “This is an archetypal example of the blurring of the line between
traditional art and utility.” I read this in the voice of a cravat-wearing
balding man with a monocle and aristocratic English accent, but what I pictured
was a shady character explaining, “I swiped this from the bleachers at the high
school football stadium, painted it red, and sold it to a snobby Brit for five
large. I’m no Van Gogh, but I sure am
good at shellacking, right?”
In
the Early American wing, I noticed that all of the paintings of women looked
like men in really bad wigs and ill-fitting dresses. I wouldn’t say they looked like drag queens
because drag queens try much harder to look like
women. Either there was a movement afoot
in those days to seek out and only paint extremely homely women, or
cross-dressing had much earlier (and uglier) beginnings. Either way, the artists must have been much
more talented at painting a picture with words than with oils: “Dear sir, I believe I have captured the
strength of your wife’s character through the dominant and handsome lantern jaw. And if you will notice, I subdued her bosom
to assure you do not attract the attention of ungentlemanly oglers.” Perhaps in that exchange, the patron might
say, “I’m no artist, but could you ‘subdue’ the Adam’s apple on her neck?”
The
Sculptures area had me scratching my head,
too. More
than one of the female statues was dressed in a traditional robe slipping off
one shoulder and exposing a . .
. this isn’t
like the Super Bowl and Janet Jackson’s split-second “wardrobe
malfunction.” To the best of my
knowledge, an artist will spend weeks if not months transforming a chunk of
marble into a lifelike representation of the model – during that length of
time, don’t you think the young lass is going to notice a draft and do a little
adjusting? As
they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
As
it is in art, so it is in real estate: What one person finds beautiful and
priceless, another finds it ugly and overpriced. Like art dealers, real estate agents can’t
control the inventory. The closest thing
they can “control” is the deal itself – and there are still a lot of factors
that could go sideways at any moment, so the sooner they can close the deal,
the better. (Let’s not fool ourselves:
in about 95% of real estate transactions, it’s an emotional decision.) So, the more factors that can be controlled,
the better – and one of the biggest factors, of course, is money.
Any
agent who was half awake during real estate school knows that before taking a
client out to look at properties, the client needs to contact a mortgage
company and get prequalified – and any agent who has done more than three
transactions in his entire career knows that a prequal
is NOT a guarantee that the client will ACTUALLY qualify. After the offer is made and accepted, there
are still SO MANY things related to the client’s loan application that could go
sideways and blow the deal. Wouldn’t it
be nice if something existed in the lending world that was FAR MORE SURE than a
prequal
– something similarly sure as cash itself?
Wish no longer: we have it. So,
when your clients want to buy the real estate equivalent to an overpriced
fiberglass plank, you can be sure they can afford it and the deal WILL close –
even if you’re questioning their choices.
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