The Living Dead

I have been a tad under the weather these days just gone, but, nonetheless, I was rather perplexed when the phone call went this way:

"Hi, this is Al. here. How may I help you?"

"Oh-My-Gosh," she yelped. "I heard you were dead. I mean I heard you just died, I mean I am surprised to hear you."

One should wonder,...if "she" thought I was dead, why would she call...whom did she think would answer?

This being the season of Halloween however, it all seemed, ironically appropriate.

"Actually," I retorted, "while not fully dead, I did join the Legion of the Undead, the blood sucking souls, who walk the nights sapping the life out of..."

"Well, you have all ways been that... I mean being a real estate agent is the most non-blood sucking thing you have ever been. Tell me something that is new."

So much for respecting the dead.

This put me in mind of my of fellow agents in this the beginning of the Dark Ages, so we are told.

Many, I am finding out, have left the business, pushed out by the lack of a paycheck and the inability to, well, put in a day's work for the day's pay. In the old days of light and leisure, all an agent had to do was sit in a chair whilst buyers and sellers fought out who would bow to the front and who would bow to the backside. Then the checks would pass and buyer and seller would come up from under the table duly puckered from smooching the agent's "privates".

Not so today...

OK, I expand the truth a tad via literary license, but the point is noted. The housewife agents in those golden days did a banner business when all buyers and sellers thought all that "paper" they had was really wealth, but now that the work is hard, the Gals are off the job. I've done an informal survey in my corner of the world and count 30% of the agents no longer hanging out their shingle; opting for better pursuits (like chowing chocolates while watching "The View" or fat Oprah).

The rest of us soldier on. Sucking blood from the streets to feed our families and find you a home. Burning the midnight oil to find a buyer for your home.

OK, OK, it is not that bad, but the REAL Real Estate agents are at work. They may be a little chalk faced from hours away from the spa, but they are working.

As for me, I am going out on Halloween. I'll walk some kids around, grab a Snickers or two, and hand out business cards.

"The Better Half" or "A House Divided" (Take your Pick)

Just in case you missed it. I just want to know if the broker will cut his commission
(CNN) -- A Cambodian couple who separated after 40 years of marriage may have taken things too literally when it came to splitting their assets:


A couple who separated after 40 years of marriage split their house in two -- literally.

The husband cut the house in two.

"It is the strangest thing I've ever seen," said May Titthara, who wrote about the case for The Phnom Penh Post, an English-language newspaper in the Cambodian capital. "People there never saw this happen in a divorce. It is very interesting for them."

The husband and wife had been living together in the house in a village in the Prey Veng province of southern Cambodia, roughly 50 miles (80 km) from the capital.

The couple would not talk to the newspaper, but the village chief told May Titthara that the husband was angry because his wife wouldn't tend to him when he was ill.

Last week, the husband and his friends moved his belongings to one side of the house -- and sawed and chiseled it off, said the reporter, who interviewed the village chief and neighbors.

The couple also divided their property into four sections: for themselves and their two children.

Because the couple side-stepped the provincial courts when they parted ways, their unusual resolution could pose a problem later, said Prak Phin, a lawyer for Legal Support for Child and Women in the province.

"This was a not a legal divorce. It never went to the court," he said. "If they have disagreements in the future, they will not have a legal (recourse)."

The man moved his part of the house to his parent's property, May Titthara said. He lives with his parents, while the wife continues to reside in her precariously perched, upright half.

6 and holding

It seems the world has been puton edge by 6% of the loans in America. Made by riff-raff in granite offices, these loans to folks ill equipped to handle them are holding the lives of the rest of us hostage. It should not be.

Robin Hood is turning on his grave at this give to the poor by stealing from the equally poor while all the while ingratiating the rich on Wall Street. I have been asked for a better way, and here it is.

Let the bastards fall. Let those ill equipped to buy go back to renting. And remember -- money did NOT disappear. It has just gotton concentrated in a few hands of rich folks. We need to get it from them. Let those banks still standing, offer those money folks incentives to park their cash -- higher interest rates, 6% should do it. Then you will have a return to liquidity. Surviving banks, most likely local will administer the funds to qualified folks. Mortgage rates will rise to a level commensurate with the early 80's. And away we will go.

Will it happen? No chance. Congress wants your money so they can give it to Wall Street.

Open Door Policy

Now that the flaks in Congress have opened the doors to your savings with big words to hide the final costs you will incur to bail out their buddies, it is time to look beyond and see that the real estate markets are not dead. A paltry few loans from folks who should not have gotton them from folks ill qualified to give them have secured all the press, but life goes on.

A look about shows that in my corners of the world, people are looking and showing. Arlington has 58 Open Houses this weekend; Belmont 42. Watertown has the doors ajar on 47 locales, and Medford, that hotspot of economic free wheeling, has 27. We need not tally the gross value of the houses here; suffice it is worthy of contemplation. Whether they sell is, of course, another matter.

Life is going on; it will go on regardless of bailouts and bank failures. Folks find a way. It is what makes life great.

If you were thinking of buying but have been scared away, come on, take a ride and visit a house. Talk to folks about it all. Gas is down,...you can afford the trip. I think it will calm your nerves -- and that of a lot of home owners.