The Cranky Files
Out kicking tires? There's an app for that.
"If you're buying a home, you're looking for an apartment, or you just enjoy attending open houses (italics mine), you can find help from a dizzying number of new smartphone applications", says a recent article in the San Jose Mercury News.
Great. First we had the Internet Empowered Consumer (IEC). Now we have the Smartphone Enabled Tirekicker (SET). SETs can download home data just like they can download restaurant menus, except that eating at a restaurant costs you money, and all it costs you to attend an open house for a home you'll never buy is something far more precious—time—fifteen minutes you'll want back when you're fifty.
First off, I Am Hip. I realize that open houses have replaced either football, baseball or NASCAR as America's Number One Spectator Sport. I also realize that real estate A-frames don't say "come in only if you're a serious buyer", and that it wouldn't matter if they did, and that I don't necessarily want them to. I also realize that tirekickers don't see anything wrong with kicking tires. I also realize that "tirekicker" covers lots of territory, from the nice neighbors from next door who are just curious, to the nice renters from around the corner dipping their toes in the market, to the nice business traveler from five hundred miles away who's half-way thinking of moving here.
But note the emphasis on "nice". It's nice to be nice, which is why we agents try to be nice at open houses and sometimes, when the light catches us just right, the wind's at our back and the run is downhill, even achieve charming. It's so nice to be nice, in fact, that at least at my open houses, observing the niceties of open-house decorum promotes anyone just drifting through like a tumbling tumbleweed from "tirekicker" to "guest", a small but healthy boost up the ladder of social respectability. Guests act like they're glad to be here, and we're glad to see them. Tirekickers, on the other hand, act like their mothers made them come.
What tirekickers don't realize is that they can always be spotted. Years ago the Chronicle ran a photo of two admitted tirekickers at an open house, a young couple out for some low-impact entertainment, and it didn't take a caption to identify them. The disengaged don't-bug-me-I'm-just-here-for-the-thrills body language said it all. Both were standing, or rather, slouching, one foot in front of the other, the man smirking at something on the wall that was probably treasured family photographs from a 1974 trip to Disneyland.
But, heck, what harm do tirekickers really do? But, heck, what harm does rain really do to a picnic? To answer the first question, if not the second, I'll relate just one of my many tirekicker anecdotes.
In late 2003 I had a listing in Sunnyvale that was very nicely staged. So nicely, in fact, that the home looked like something out of a midrange furniture catalogue. The furniture and accessories were new, stylish without being trendy, well-coordinated and expertly placed to show the house to full advantage. There was no clutter. There was no reality TV on the widescreen. There was no widescreen. An oasis of style and serenity that made everyone feel at home and/or wish it was their home.
Almost everyone. A neighbor, a heavy-set middle-aged woman with a loud authoritative voice, walks into the crowded open house and immediately starts making caustic comments. Not about the house or price, mind you, but about the staging. "Nobody lives like this!", she finally exclaims, standing up for slobs everywhere. My wife says quietly, "Well, I do." You can hear a pin drop. Neighbor zips mouth and leaves, clouds go away, sun reappears.
I have other tirekicker stories I could share. Like the young woman convinced I was personally responsible for the dot-com real estate market. And dear old Dad, trying to impress Mom and the young 'uns with how much he knew about home repair when it was obvious he should be barred from owning hand tools. And the cranky young mother who rode up in a elevator with a button marked "P" and then asked irritably why it didn't go to the parking garage. And the legion of real estate pundits stretching back to 1998, each solemnly warning me "this market can't last" (no, booms don't last forever, but around here there's always another around the corner).
Yes, I could tell you about people who skulked in and slunk out, but that would only embarrass you and I and waste even more server space. People who didn't observe the first rule of open house decorum, which is simply the first rule of being a good guest: leave it at the door.
Maybe some day there'll be an app for that.