Book Exposes Real World Of Real Estate

by Peter Mericka B.A., LL.B
Real Estate Lawyer
Qualified Practising Conveyancer Victoria
Director Lawyers Real Estate Pty Ltd

I was watching "First Tuesday Book Club" on ABC TV a few months ago, and I saw the host, Jennifer Byrne hold up a copy of Brendan Gullifer's book SOLD. According to Byrne, "I thought it was tremendous fun. And let me tell you, you've met these people. They probably sold your house." Having read SOLD, I can confirm that the characters and behaviours portrayed in the book are true to life. I recommend this book as compulsory reading for anyone contemplating a career in real estate, or doing business with those involved in the real estate industry.

The real estate industry in Victoria has a well-deserved reputation for dishonesty and improper behaviour, but getting the message to consumers can be extremely difficult.

Brendan Gullifer's novel warns and informs in a way that legal advice can't. I have had personal experience with the estate agent stereotypes portrayed in SOLD and the shonky methods they use, and I now refer clients and other consumers to SOLD as a primer for anyone who will be coming into contact with real estate agents.

The book is available through most book shops. If not in stock it can be ordered. Alternatively, the book can be purchased on line at Readings Books.

I think the best summing up of the book is provided by The Book Show, ABC National:

"SOLD is a pacy, satirical novel exposing the dirty, scheming underbelly of a Melbourne real estate firm, and, well, the real estate profession in general. Anyone who's had dealings with real estate -- and let's face it, that is or will be most of us at some stage of our lives -- will be highly amused by Brendan Gullifer's satirical dig at the industry."
(See "What They Say")

Struck by the uncanny accuracy of the attitudes and behaviours of the characters in SOLD, I contacted Brendan Gullifer and asked him how he gained such insight into the Victorian real estate industry.

Here's how Brendan Gullifer explains it:

"In 2000, I lost my job. The media company I worked for went into bankruptcy. I was 40-years-old and couldn’t get work. So I went against everyone’s better advice and decided to become a real estate agent.

After two weeks’ training (to be an agent’s representative) I applied to three companies and was offered a job at each one. And why wouldn’t they? Terms were commission-only.

If it was a poker game every time I had bought and sold a property as a customer, it was like Russian roulette on the other side of the fence.

Agency principals make money only if you make money – so the intimidation and motivation to compete, to work 70 hours a week, and to close on as many listings as possible, is subtle and not so subtle.

In every office there’s a whiteboard somewhere, which lists market appraisals, listing presentations, successful listings, sales, and commission. It’s only a whiteboard – but it screams everyone’s success and failure to everyone else who works in the agency.

There’s something called ‘scripts and dialogues’ – brainwashing sessions that surely must have been developed in Jones Town, and comprise peer-based intimidation and criticism. I write about these in the book. Agencies disguise them as ‘training’.

There’s rah-rah-rah meetings – conferences, seminars and personal coaching, a whole second industry that makes money out of keeping agents jazzed up, and which are paid for out of your own pocket.

Then there’s the stuff that goes on in the office.

There’s the jocularity and happiness and cockiness of those who are succeeding, and the dull and painful force-marching of those who are not.

Sales stories have had a long tradition in storytelling. Glengarry Glen Ross, The Big Kahuna, Death of a Salesman, Tin Men.

It's like Fight Club for the middleclass.

And the weapon, the thing that gives you an edge, that pushes you into the winners' circle – three small words – utilising the philosophy of: whatever it takes.

The three most dangerous words in the English language, I think: whatever it takes.

You will do anything, say anything, think anything, pretend to be anything, to get the deal over the line. Because in a commission-only jungle, getting the deal over the line is king.

It’s the difference between the winners and the losers. It’s the difference between eating and starving.

That’s how you are rewarded. That’s how you make a living. And that’s why I lasted less than 18 months in real estate.

Then there’s how people respond to this stress.

I met agents who were casino addicts, alcoholics, who arrived in the morning with the shakes, who had affairs, who had broken marriages, who were in therapy, on medication, who suffered panic attacks.

I met agents who, in the private confines of the office or elsewhere, were drunk in the mornings, were loudly flatulent, were aggressive and even violent, were juvenile, had temper tantrums and were politically incorrect to the point of being offensive.

Then I sat with them in people’s homes and they were so good at pulling on a face, at doing the dance, at pretending to be what they were not, that for the moment, even I was convinced.

Until in the car ride later, they dropped their guard and returned to who they were, making snide remarks about the furniture or the wife or the taste or the breath of the person we had just met.

And it happened to me time and time and time again.

My book is a book of fiction. I made up the story. I made up the characters. But it will, I hope, give a sense of emotional truth about a group of people with whom we are all forced to interact at one time or another."

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