Do you need a middleman

I was first introduced to a broker (called a middleman) concept when we moved in to Mumbai. There was this man, who was already attached to an apartment. If you decide to lease that apartment, then you have to inherit that broker (you have no choice) and pay him 2 months rent for a 11 months lease.  In return, the job of the middleman is to prepare the lease document and get it signed by the owner and the renter and collect the witness signatures. It made no sense to me. As I moved on with life, I kept seeing more of these middlemen. There are actually a big network of them. Name any industry, you will find people that serve as a layer between the real producer and the consumer. The real producer does not have access to the consumers, neither does s/he has the resources, expertise to meet the people who would like to use the produce. So, the middleman with his sales mans skills and networking comes into play. Often the middleman makes much more than the hard working producer. As long as it is restricted to this simple one middleman step, it is fine, but you will find often there are a network of middlemen who operate at various levels often making the produce insanely high priced and the consumer finally suffers. Most of the banks have broking business. The well paid stock brokers are middlemen, so also many of the banking and finance jobs that pay very well depends on the so called analysts who work for the brokers. In USA, it is even a bigger business. You will find brokers everywhere. The up side to this is, it generates jobs, but the downside is, it costs a product much more than it should. Walmart costs way cheaper because it has successfully gotten rid of many middlemen, in turn, it is the sole benefitter of  the profits. Well, it is a vicious circle.

Realtor business is a big broker business. Anybody buys or sells a house always goes via agents without giving a second thought. In our own house selling experience, we decided to sell the house by ourselves without an agent. We were warned by friends that it may be insane and a ridiculous choice because you will be overwhelmed with the amount of work you end up doing. But as the things are moving on, we have a completely different opinion about hiring an agent. If you hire an agent, you actually spend a lot more time than you doing the job by yourself. If someone comes to see your house, the agent calls you and asks you to go away atleast 30 minutes before the potential buyers visit your home. They call you only after the buyers have left the scene and this could be easily 30 minutes more. So, in this process for every visit, you spend 1 hour more than the actual visit time. And of course before you leave your house, you also spend some extra time cleaning your mess. But if you sell the house by yourself, you don't have to leave the house!! You just walk them through the house and that is it. With realtors, you don't have direct access to the people who see your house, so you are completely in dark till the realtor calls you back with an offer, where as with direct buying, you can actually talk about the process right away, so there are no delays there. We bought this house through a realtor, and actually we signed a lot more papers than the actual contract papers.

I may be pompous here, but let me give you an example. Our house was listed 10 days back through owners.com and we had a potential buyer by our doorstep on the 4th day of listing. We talked about the price directly and yesterday signed the contract papers. Now the only thing remaining is the inspection. If it gets through, then we are all set. In addition to this buyer, we also have 3 people in waiting list, who are eager to make an offer should this contract fail. Now actually in this housing market, we as owners can choose the buyer, this sounds incredible!! On the other hand, there is another house for sale just one house apart from ours and it is through a realtor. I see that house listed for quite sometimes now and pretty sure that the contract is not signed yet. Coming to the price, they are charging 1 dollar less per sq. ft. than what we are charging. They were a model home and located just in front of the swimming pool and a play park. Now what is the difference? I don't know. So looks like eliminating the middleman has worked really well for us. So sellers of the house, please don't panic and try selling your house by yourself, it will workout well.
Realtors, please don't be angry with me that I am advocating against your job, but honestly, I feel brokerage should be restricted to a skilled profession, that individuals with average intelligence, outreach can't do it by themselves. Professions that are based on ignorance of other people should be eliminated. And this is entirely my opinion...

House for sale

As we are planning to go back to India in July this year, we have put our house on sale over the 8th April 2012 weekend. The site we listed our house is www.owners.com by paying a small fee that lists the home automatically in 24 other sister sites. It took me about 4-5 hours to draft the description of the house. As we always do with our combined projects, we draft, read and get it proofed by each other and finalize it, so this time also we did the same. And we decided to go without an agent this time, so not sure what will happen. Having known all kinds of horror stories from everywhere, we just proceeded. Not to mention, there is another house on sale just one house apart from our house in the same lane just in front of the community pool. So, there seems to be a lot of competition.
After listing, the waiting began. We would go to the site and check how many people have already seen the house and feel happy that people are interested.
On 13th April 2012 morning about 9 AM our door bell rang, I thought may be a courier guy. Opened the door and found a Vietnamese family with a very cute 2 year old at our door step. They had a printout of our advertisement from zillow.com, which unfortunately did not have our phone number. They said, they saw the ad and decided to drop by. Then they said, they would like to see the housee. Then I had to reluctantly let them in, although we had not done any cleaning before that. They saw the house and  I can tell that they liked the house. next thing they said is they will bring their older kids the next day to show the house. It was good sign and we were happy that they liked the place. That same day my friends came over and it was a bit hectic. I had also signed up for the chakra yoga class the next day and we were suppose to take our friends for sight seeing. So, I asked my husband to drop my friends at Dallas aroboratum and come back the next day, so that I can take up my yoga class. Because someone has to be home for the house showing business. After he left, I went to the bank, which is just few blocks away from home. I had few checks lying for quite sometimes to be en-cashed. On my way back, I saw already a vechicle parked on our drive way and the same gentleman is roaming infront of the community center with his kids. I called them in and they saw the house again and apparently liked it. We talked about the price little bit and they came back to us with their price the next day, which was also acceptable by us. Then on Monday he is back with a contract. I can't believe within 10 days of listing our house and without completing any formalities such as MLS listing etc. and in this housing crisis period, we are in a contract. Not sure about what will happen next, but I am very excited with the turn of events. Things are happening so quickly. Unbelievable , must be some past Karma....

By the way, if you want to download the contract form, it is here :

http://www.trec.state.tx.us/formslawscontracts/forms/forms-contracts.asp
Form#20-11 is applicable for signing of the 1-4 Family Residential Contract (our case)

Don't you Aparna me or Rameswar me:))

[Disclaimer: This is true and based on two people, Aparna and Rameswar. Rameswar, with all likelihood would not remember me, if he did, it does not matter. Aparna on the other hand, is a very close friend of mine. So, Apu, if you read this by chance, take it in a funny way, for you are a very funny person;-)]


While growing up, my younger brother and I used to always team up playing in the evening hours on the sand heaps in front of our house. We used to make temples in the wet sand and would collect all the withered Nerium flowers from the tree floor and decorate our temple.

Nerium indicum(Kaner flower)

Occasionally, my friends or my little brothers friends would join us and by the end of the evening, we will end up making a stupendous looking structure....

It  was one such evening, my little brother's classmate in school joined us in our venture who lived in the next block. His name is Rameswar and was widely known for his mischievous nature. He would push kids to the road, would beat up other kids, the list goes on and on. So, it was kind of surprising for us that Rameswar decided to join us for making a temple!! We were not very apprehensive, but gave in later on. It was new years eve, and we all were indulged in collecting greeting cards. The more one number of cards one gets, the more popular he/she is. While playing, suddenly Rameswar got up and asked my brother to give the postal address of our house. My brother little surprised, asked why? Rameswar said, I have decided to send you a greetings card by post, so give me your address. My brother was kind of illiterate then(did not know how to write), so with this news, he got very excited and came running to me and narrated me what Rameswar said him. I got even more excited. I went inside pulled a square piece of paper, and started writing our address. In the end, the hand writing was not looking that impressive to me, I was afraid that Rameswar may decide against sending us a card if the handwriting was not good enough. So, I decided to redo the whole thing again. In that process, I may have done it several times, before the writing was near perfect. With lot of pride with my own work, I handed that piece of paper to my brother, who in turn gave that to Rameswar. I was thinking how long it will take for the postal people to deliver a card from across the street, may be 2 days... Then suddenly, I heard my brother coming to me running and telling, Rameswar tore the address paper and said, "don't have so much hope that I will send you a card", and ran away. All my dreams got shattered like a pack of cards and I remember that event till today. So, if anyone says they will do something for me and don't do that, then I simply say "Don't Rameswar me".... You can also use it, if you like.

Storey of Aparna is slightly different. By the way, in our recent meeting we knighted her with a new suffix "namuni" means "sample". She truly is a sample and now she proudly flaunts "namuni" in her name stamp in each email.

Aparna was my room mate during my Ph.D days. I will tell more of her storeys later, but for now, let me tell why I would like to say "Don't Aparna me". Many times Aparna and I used to go to shopping/exhibitions and buy range of products. Before getting into the bus, we will be talking, joking nicely, then suddenly she will shut down completely. She will not listen, not talk, simply look out through the bus window. Initially, I was kind of pissed, later I accepted that, it is after all her "true nature". I had a small Luna during my Ph.D days and I used give Aparna a ride when the Luna would start. But many days, it won't start. I will be struggling kicking it, then Aparna will coolly walk off passing me let alone stop and ask if I needed any help. She does that walking off quite often. If you are walking together, for no reason, what so ever she will walk off. So, if anyone walks off on you for no apparent reason, you can just tell "Don't Aparna me". So for today I guess these 2 terms are enough:)))