We’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole…

A bunch of us were discussing the current real estate market in the office the other day, when it hit me that we’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole and are now wandering around in Wonderland with Alice. That would seem to be the only logical explanation for the madness that is real estate these days. Surely the insanity that we face each day in the realm of short sales defies any other explanation.


For a while, I was using the analogy of the man behind the curtain from The Wizard of Oz to explain the great and powerful Investor – the man behind the curtain to whom everyone bowed and scraped and whose actions and pronouncements no one understood.

But, perhaps the richer set of characters in Alice in Wonderland would provide more opportunities to give face to the various banks and characters that we encounter in our real estate lives today – the Cheshire Fat Cat and the Mad Hatter would seem to be especially appropriate to represent some of the short sale bankers and negotiators that I’ve hit.

The sad conclusion that we all came to in our discussion is that this is no longer an anomaly, but rather represents the new reality of our market. I suppose the sooner that one comes to grips with that the better. As one who is naturally a bit of a cynic and can appreciate the absurd this Dali-esk landscape s beginning to look natural – “Look is that a clock melting over the side of that table? No, it’s a clock measuring the time passing on a short sale!”

What did the bank say about our offer? They said to lower the offer and resubmit it. OK, which way to the tea party, Mr. Hatter?