Stalking the Motivated Seller

I, Vulture.

There I stood, flapping my black wings on the sidewalk outside a sprawling, two-story Porter Ranch home with a “For Sale” sign posted in the front yard, eyeballing more house for my buck than I could have dreamed of at my home-buying nadir just seven short years ago.

Back at the roof-blown-off height of the real estate market, I was sure I could never buy a home, the core trophy of the American Dream.

In those days, it was a nasty little poker game with the badmen brokers and greedy sellers controlling the bidding. I had little choice but to ante up or sit it out with the other lonely losers, those mortgageless creeps and cretins: the renting crowd.

But now I hold the cards. The mercurial local realty market--jolted by earthquakes, drowned by flood waters, scorched by fires, riven by riot and impoverished by layoffs both blue- and white-collar--had shivered and quivered and swooned dead away.

Now it lays still, presumably bottomed out. Brokers are broken, sellers frantic.

And like other birds of prey, I’m ready to swoop in and pick clean the bones of other people’s mistakes--build my own home-buying happiness by feasting on the unfortunate, rifling their pockets after they’ve been knocked flat by fate in the homeowner killing fields.

As I half-seriously pondered the four-bedroom house that would have been laughably out of reach in 1989, when I settled for a tiny two-bedroom condominium, the owner pulled up into the driveway in her minivan, with her precocious brood.

I winced. Seven years ago, she would have slammed the door in my face, challenging me to see her broker, to prove what I was made of and cast my lot with the other have-nots.

But she walked out to the curb, extended her hand and invited me in for a look around.

“I’ll wake my husband,” she promised.

“But it’s Thanksgiving eve,” I offered. “I’ll come back some other time. I’ll call your broker on Monday. I really don’t--”

“No,” she interrupted, “come on in. It’s no trouble at all.”

So I got the grand tour, with the husband, wife and kiddies. They watched my every move, looking for some small sign of approval, as we paraded from room to room. They were moving to Las Vegas, they explained, where life looked brighter. The house was in perfect shape and they had already dropped the price nearly $100,000. They were living examples of that real estate ad shorthand, the “motivated seller.”

In this rocky-road market, that means “screamingly desperate.”

As I back-pedaled toward the door, house flier in hand, promising to call their broker as soon as I returned home, they pursued me.

“Make us an offer. Any offer,” the husband said. “You might be surprised.”

His wife’s parting shot came in a half-whisper:

“Please,” she entreated.

The home-selling story has been bad all over.

Between 1989 and 1995, according to statistics from the San Fernando Valley Assn. of Realtors, Valley home prices dropped 27.5%. Areas with higher-priced homes--such as Woodland Hills, Studio City, Sherman Oaks and Tarzana--took bigger hits.

“In these areas, it hasn’t been uncommon for a house selling for well over $1 million in 1989 to sell for $475,000 these days,” said Pat A. Zicarelli, the trade association’s president and owner of Style Realty in Tarzana.

The result: A more realistic market that’s tailor-made for people like me.

In past months, I have hunted through the home-sale ads and skimmed the weekend real estate sections, scouting for bargains, stealing through 150 homes from Studio City to south Porter Ranch. And it is there I have seen firsthand the human fallout from the market collapse.

They’re the people, like the Vegas-bound family, who, when the bottom dropped out, stood flat-footed in homes they paid far too much for, praying they can avoid permanent ruin. Or they’re retired people who, by the luck of the draw, learn that survival in their old age depends on selling their homes at this most inopportune of times.

This real estate market has taught me a lot about human nature, 1990s-style. And I haven’t always liked what I’ve seen. Not in other people. Not in myself.

In my frenzy to buy, and buy at the absolute lowest price, I have broken rules. At night, I have tossed and turned with such gnawing indecision that I continually pull the fitted lower sheet from the bed, ruining another night’s sleep, as I see news stories that the Valley home market may have bottomed out, that it may be heading up again.

But the following day, I’m right back at it, tromping heavily through people’s homes as they do crossword puzzles and nervously drink coffee at the kitchen table. I scoff at their hard-earned investments, snicker to myself over their personal treasures, feeling more like a hanging judge than a prospective home buyer.

And frankly, I am tired of dealing with the other vultures, the real estate agents, a pack of promise-making predators who always seem to show up wearing gold jewelry and driving a Mercedes-Benz or a spanking-new BMW, seemingly ready to suit me up for the first money pit they can push me into.

Don’t make an offer too low, they say, their teeth glinting. You’ll cut into my commission, er, you’ll insult the seller. You won’t be taken seriously.

And talk about telemarketing-style high-pressure sales.

Brokers call me morning, noon and night. All of them want to take me on endless romps to properties they have selected especially for me. My mother complains that she can’t reach me: My telephone is always busy.

I have more brokers’ business cards than I know what to do with. Magnetic broker cards line my refrigerator. I have broker calendars on my desk, broker sketch pads, broker pens. What will they think of next? Broker toilet paper?

One called me the other night saying he got my name from some person or another. He offered to show me some “great deals” and assured me he could find me a “castle in my price range.”

Trouble was, I had just spent nearly two full days with this guy.

He had forgotten my name and was talking as though this was some cold-call sales pitch. I wanted to punch him.

Instead, I told him I wasn’t interested.

Still, this is better treatment than I got seven years ago, when brokers didn’t even have to be civil--there was so much business around. But even today, even in this bottomed-out market, I am listening to these people trying, so subtly, to pressure me into buying.

Oh, the market’s turning around, they say. Newt Gingrich says interest rates are going to go through the roof if they don’t get that balanced-budget thing passed in Washington. Multiple offers are back, so don’t be cheap. Talk about calling the empty glass nearly full.

But I am not blameless in this new feeding frenzy, the bullish buyer’s market. And at times my conscience has begun to prey on me.

Like the day a broker showed me the home of an elderly Sherman Oaks couple. As the agent ushered me through the house, opening and closing doors, pointing out this feature or that, I couldn’t even listen to her.

The place was like the gingerbread house in that old fairy tale. The couple had lived there for 50 years and were surrounded by the mementos of their lives and their happy marriage. Trophies. Faded photographs. Babys’ booties.

These people weren’t mere sellers, they were my long-dead grandparents. And theirs was a family museum, not an anonymous real estate opportunity.

As the agent blathered on, I asked the couple, who sat in the living room holding hands: Why on Earth are you selling this place?

The woman looked at her husband, then at me. “Well, my husband’s always been real proud of his gardening. Now he’s getting too old to keep the yard up like he used to. So we’re moving to a place where it’s easier to do the upkeep.”

I wanted to hug them, not haggle for the lowest possible price to take away the home they’ve lived in all their lives.

What could I do? I asked. If I came over on Saturdays to mow their lawn, would they stay?

The Realtor tapped her foot. Time to go.

I drove past the house the other day.

It had sold.