By Greg Ellis
“Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.”
-Mark Twain
As Calgary’s real estate market booms, earning a 26 per cent average gain in 2005, everyone should be grateful that the heavenly tar sand deposits formed where they did. Alberta’s resources wealth has bolstered our real estate to incredible proportions. But there is a dark side to real estate, not in the fine print nor in polluted land but in the agents that sell it. Real estate agents represent a useless and archaic enterprise that should be destroyed. Shakespeare once said that first we must kill all the lawyers. While I don’t disagree, we should also kill all the real estate agents while we’re at it.
Home buying can be intimidating. Significant money is involved and of course it is an experience one takes on with little to no experience. But nowhere does such an experience call for the surrendering of six per cent or more of your home’s market value to a pimp that took a three month course. I don’t know about you, but when I think of integrity I don’t think of fridge magnets and bus stop advertising. Somewhere between the 895 million porn sites online there is a plethora of information to assist first time buyers. One such website, Welist.com, has quite successfully eliminated the need for any hands to be stuffed in the home equity cookie jar
Real estate agents continue to thrive in this city for two outlandish reasons. Firstly, home appreciation is occurring at such a rate that no one cares about that six per cent, and secondly we somehow have been conditioned to think they’re necessary. If that six per cent seems insignificant, consider that on your suburban kingdom with a market value of about $500,000 that six per cent represents $30,000, or roughly the after-tax annual income of the majority of Canada’s population. The day I need a real estate agent is the day I need a professional ass wiper. It might be convenient, but I would never want to be involved in something so degrading.
At the current growth rate, your real estate investment–quite possibly the biggest investment you will ever have–will double roughly every three years. If you want to pass away those gains to someone in a short-sleeve suit from Wal-Mart who’s business card has their nickname in quotations, please contact me instead. Adam “the land pimp” Ramsay! Don’t forget to bend over.