Supafly.com

Note: I never imagined that I would end up doing a 4-part series on shopping centers. This started as a simple journal about my frustration with the inhumanity of malls, and it developed into a thesis of sorts.

I spent most of my childhood in the 1980s, and nobody thought the idea of a suburb was a bad thing. Actually, everyone was a big fan. Almost every movie or TV show in that decade was obsessed with the the suburb and it’s grand landmark: The Mall. If you believed what you saw on TV (which I did), the mall was the center of every young person’s glorious social life. That’s where you hung out with friends, bought clothes, and met pretty girls. I knew the mall is where I was meant to be.

The only time I encountered this magical place was once a year when my family traveled two hours south to Gwinnett Place Mall, about 30 minutes north of Atlanta. My young teenage mind got dizzy off the sites and sounds of the place. I frolicked in every single acre of paradise.

By the time I was in college, I was too cool for the mall (just like every other kid raised in the 1980s who came of age in the 1990s.) But on the rare occasion that I absolutely had to go to the mall, I was got frustrated by the traffic, the game of finding a parking space, and the mindless consumerism. I preferred the quaint corners of the leafy streets of the city. Areas like Little Five Points, Virginia Highland, and Midtown. I couldn’t understand why anyone would shop anywhere else.

When I traveled, I was drawn to cities that had vibrant street life: New York, Chicago, Boston, and to a degree, New Orleans. I loved walking past the sidewalk cafes and exploring the stores. I discovered that one thing all these cities had in common was they were built before the invention of the automobile. With few exceptions, every other city in America boomed after people decided they’d rather drive somewhere than walk. This is why we have highways, exit ramps, large parking lots–all the familiar topography of a suburb.

I’m old enough to know that suburbs can be very good places to live, often with good schools, low crime rates, and more space for a grassy backyard. I’ve also witnessed the wide variety of “neighborhood shopping centers” that can make or break a neighborhood. I’ve experienced first hand that a shopping center can enhance the livability of the neighborhood, or exploit the residents for financial gain.

I should note that I’ve had no formal education on architecture, city planning, or commercial Real Estate development. Everything that I’ve written here is from the perspective of someone who loves city life, and wants people to be happy as they live out there days.

I’m so convicted about this that I did some work on Google maps people could get a bird’s eye view. Although the images might at first seem boring, they tell the unique story of the entire experience of shopping.

Here are 10 examples of how you make a large shopping center outside of downtown.

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1. Gwinnett Place Mall, Duluth, GA
Cool Factor: 0 out of 5
Online: http://www.simon.com/mall/default.aspx?ID=205Here you see a gazillion square feet of climate-controlled hell wrapped in acres of hot pavement. You can see a few rows of trees to break up the barron parking lot, but it’s hardly enough. Between your car and the mall’s doors is a brutal game of Man v. Machine where you try not to run over. Seriously, where are the sidewalks for the humans and the baby carriages?

The thought of driving the loop around the mall makes me want to vomit.

Although you can’t see it from the photo, the entryways into the mall are simple doors that allow you to pass from the parking lot into the store. There’s no “front porch” to make the transition more friendly. If it’s like any other mall built in the same era, there are no front display windows to draw you inside. From the outside, the mall is ugly and completely at odds with the natural surroundings. Essentially, it’s cubic structure of concrete built on top of acres of pavement. What could be more lifeless?

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2. The Block at Orange, Orange Country, California
Cool Factor: 2 out of 5
Online: http://www.simon.com/mall/default.aspx?ID=1236I first visited The Block in 2000 or 2001 when I spoke at an event at nearby high school. Then earlier this year I visited it a second time for Adam and Carolyna’s wedding rehearsal dinner at Dave and Busters.

The Block at Orange has a taste of the visual intensity of Times Square in NY.

You can see that it’s still a mall, except it’s divided up so you can walk outside.

It’s fun to walk in between the stores while enjoying the nice weather. There is plenty of tree shade too so I imagine it never gets too hot. The bad thing is that it still has a mall’s parking lot. The parking lot is an uninterrupted band of concrete that circles the shops. Once you get out of your car, there’s no excitement until you escape the parking lot. But still, everyone I know feels cooler at The Block than a typical mall.

But we’re not quite there.

 

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3. Clay Terrace in Carmel, IN
Cool Points: 4 out of 5
Online: http://www.simon.com/mall/default.aspx?ID=860Clay Terrace wasn’t finished when I drove through one early morning a few years ago, but it seemed like it was destined to become the charming downtown marketplace for the upscale town of Carmel.

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I found this picture online. I’m loving the classic architectural details of the subdued storefronts.

The central boulevard keeps drivers going slow with the two loop-around circles. (I don’t know what they are called.) And how much more fun is that? It’s what makes Columbus Circle in Manhattan such a whimsical place. It’s a Merry Go Round for adults.

There is plenty of street-side parking off of Clay Terrace Blvd, much like what you see off of downtown streets. People love to park in these spots. It’s a little silly to write a sentence like that, but there’s something about street-side parking that is more exciting than parking in the car pasture of a typical shopping mall.

A new downtown for Carmel, Indiana.

There are plenty of of spaces in the parking lots on the outskirts, but they are divided up to not seem so overwhelming. The stripes of white that extend out from Clay Terrace Boulevard are probably sidewalks, the ultimate courtesy to pedestrians. This shopping center must be a huge asset to the community. There is not a single Realtor in Carmel that doesn’t first drive down Clay Terrace Boulevard before showing an out-of-town buyer their next new house.

While Candyce was at Mass on Sunday I watched an episode of MTV Cribs dedicated to 50 Cent’s house outside of Hartford, Connecticut. (I’m pretty sure he bought this from Mike Tyson’s ex-wife.) I should start by explaining that this estate is massive: 17.6 acres, 48,515 square feet, 19 bedrooms, 19 full and 16 half bathrooms. MASSIVE!

 

Does 50′s house make him not gangster?

 

If I were in high school living with Mom and Dad, I might be jealous of somebody with a house that big. It’s the ultimate stage of glamor and success. But anybody who owns a house watched that episode with a different perspective:

1. Maintenance. I know 50 isn’t pushing a vacuum around a house that’s half the size of a Target store. That means he has to hire people to maintain the inside and outside of his house. Think of the chores: mow the lawn, spray for bugs, maintain the pools, remove dead tree branches after a storm, repair cracks in the driveway, change light bulbs, etc. The list goes on and on.

   Since 50 doesn’t want to manage armies of workers, my guess is he got smart and hired full-time estate manager dude. At the end of the day, 50 has to sit down with this guy in the kitchen to find out what’s going down around the house. I’ve never seen this meeting in a rap video. Gangsters aren’t supposed to know about the flowers being planted in the pots next to the front door. That kind of stuff is just supposed to happen.

   

   17.6 acres of manual labor.

2. Relationship drama. My house is just under 3,000 square feet, so it would take 12 houses just like mine to match the size of 50 Cent’s house. Even with it’s diminutive size, Candyce and I get in at least one fight each week day because we’re trying to communicate when we’re in separate rooms. After 30 seconds of playing shout tag, we end up in the same room exasperated and angry:
   

   What were you saying? I answered you didn’t you hear me?!

   It’s gotten a little better each month since we’ve been married, but I can’t lie and say that we have this whole thing worked out. We get mad a lot.

   Now, if 50′s girlfriend is at the house, how are they supposed to talk to each other? If she makes a “quick trip” to the kitchen 300 paces away, how is 50 supposed to find her when she gets lost? It’s a funny scene to imagine 50 and his hotty girlfriend trying to find one another, almost like a hip hop version of Marco Polo or hide-and-go-seek. What if half way through this game 50 stumbled upon a groupie from 3 nights ago who got lost on her way to get a get a blanket from the closet? Wouldn’t that be embarrassing.

   Let’s presume 50 is monogamous. If he and Hotty want to keep the relationship sweet, the most reasonable solution is for both of them to carry walkie-talkies everywhere they go. When 50 struts to the game room to get a lighter for his cigar, he’s got a walkie-talkie in one hand. When she steps into the boudoir to slip into something more comfortable, she’ll come back to bed carrying a walk-talkie. That’s just not sexy. No gangster points here.

3. Losing Things. When I lived in a 1000 square foot apartment after college, I never lost things. I lose things ALL THE TIME now. And it’s not because I’m losing my mind; there is just a lot of space to devour my stuff. Poor 50 Cent. If he loses his keys in his 50k square foot home, he won’t make that 10 O’clock meeting in the city. He’d be smart to chain down his TV remotes. Because once they’re gone, they’re gone! He’s stuck watching the same channel because he’s too tired to make the 40 foot roundtrip to the TV and back. No gangster points there.
4. Bumps in the night. Anybody who owns a home knows what it’s like to hear a bump in the night. Even if you have a security system, you hear something like that and assume that somebody is breaking into your house. With a modest sized home, you can pick up your baseball bat, do a couple laps around the house, and be back in bed in under 2 minutes. It could take 50 Cent 45 minutes to scope out the joint. He might even have to stop half way through the rounds just to make coffee to stay alert.Now that I think of it, I bet 50 doesn’t even hear most of the bumps in the night. Again, if you consider how large the house is, it’s the equivalent of me waking up at night because I heard my neighbor knock over a vase 3 houses down the street. So in 50′s palatal home, people could come and go as they please. There might be members of Eminem’s D12 setting up camp in a remote corner of the west wing. Really, Kanye West could break in and film a music video while 50 is fast asleep. To give Kanye the gangster points he deserves, you’ll have to take ‘em away from 50.

I guess 50 Cent has realized his house is not that gangster, which is why it is for sale for a cool $18,500,000. I doubt 50 will get that much money for it, but he only paid a modest $4,100,000 for it back in 2003, so whatever he gets for it will give him a hefty profit.

Now that’s gangster.

The 2008 Ford Edge is awesome.

We rented a 2008 Ford Edge to get us around for the week that we were in Pennsylvania, and I was thoroughly impressed. I’ve rented many SUVs over the past 3 years, so I’m not easily swayed just because a vehicle is new or different from what I drive at home. The Edge is just a blast to drive. It’s comfortable and hugs the road. I’d buy one if I was in the market for a new car.

One of the best parts of our trip was the drive down country roads. The colors of the autumn leave peaked on the day that we arrived. The next afternoon it began to snow, covering every bright orange tree with a touch of white. I can’t imagine there could be a more majestic autumn that what we experienced in Pennsylvania.

Johnny and Ali are married.

Johnny and Ali are going to have a very good life together. They are such fantastic friends, I can’t imagine any two people better for one another.

The Problem in New York

Every time I go back to New York, I’m re-writing my life from the summer of 2001 when I called New York home. I get a chance to use the same stage but with new scenes. So with every visit, New York becomes a more hospitable and wonderful city. With every minute that Candyce and I spend in New York, the more I want to move back.

I realize that most adventurous young people feel this way when they visit New York. You fall in love with the action, the romance, and the idea of being the rock star from your home town. (Nobody will admit it, but this is half the reason graduates move to LA or NY, just to be the hometown hero who made it big by, well, by leaving their hometown.)

But a well-spent vacation in New York is far detached from the reality of living in the city. The biggest problem you have to face is trying to figure out how you can afford to live there. Everyone likes to quote Frank Sinatra when we are on the subject of rent in the city:

“If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.”

The problem here is that New York is not just an expensive city to live in, it’s a very very expensive city to live in. It was a lot easier for people to “make it in New York” when Sinatra first sang those words. Most of the people who own an apartment in New York could not afford to buy an apartment today. They bought it back when the cost of an apartment wasn’t so outrageously priced compared to the salaries that you could earn while working in the city.

You have another large group of people living in New York–mostly young people–who are burning through their savings hoping to make it big. They eventually have to move away to actually get some financial stability again. These are talented, educated, hard working people. And some other city gets to absorb them into the economy because New York was very very expensive.

This isn’t a good thing. An intelligent college-educated person can move to the city with no debt, find an admirable job from a well-known company, and they still have to scrape pennies to afford a crappy apartment with four friends. There’s something wrong here. If the top performers from America’s universities can’t afford to live in New York, who can? You have a problem on your hands.

The Rocketts

The Rocketts show in Radio City Musical Hall was fantastic. I totally under-estimated the cool factor of this show. I expected an hour long dance routine of women kicking their legs in unison. I’d go again.

The Bling in Times Square

Puff Daddy has a massive 10-story ad in Times Square of himself wearing Sean John clothes. This is as lame as a band wearing their own shirts during a concert. But I can’t judge Puff Daddy because I would’ve probably done the same thing. Why should I pay some model to get famous off of my dollar?

Puffy going for the forlorn Statue of Liberty look.

For the record, I can’t call Puffy “P.Diddy ” because if I do that, I’m giving permission to every other lazy rapper who wants to add to his mystique by changing his name, like he’s an upgraded operating system or something. I figure you have one chance to change your name, and that’s all I’m going to give you. I’ve got better things to do than to keep up with your newest names. If some moron wants to correct me, then he’s a moron.

One useful edition to Times Square is Charmin’s free and clean bathrooms. I didn’t go inside, but I was amused by the concept. I mean really, where do you go to the bathroom in New York? When I lived there, you bought a small cup of coffee at Starbucks just to gain access to the bathroom. (Speaking of Starbucks and bathrooms, this is one of the funniest articles I’ve ever read in The Onion The Onion: New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room Of Existing Starbucks.)

171 Starbucks

On our last night in Manhattan, I asked the barrista on the Upper West side how many Starbucks were in the city. I guessed maybe 35-40 stores. Wrong! Try 171 coffee shops on one island. I didn’t believe her, so she told me to go online and watch this video.

Then I checked Google Maps and Starbucks.com, and I actually believe there are more than 171 Starbucks coffee shops. Without a doubt, all of the Starbucks in New York City add magic to residents and to tourists.

• Residents: If you live in Manhattan, putting a Starbucks in the vacant storefront on the corner tells the world that it is a safe and wealthy block to live on. It’s not like a Wal-Mart coming to town…rattling your local economy. Nope. Starbucks is something that adds to the community. It’s a place where people gather.
• Tourists: For people who travel to NY from out of town, Starbucks are familiar stops on your walk across town. You know you are going to get the same cup of coffee. There is a place to set up camp for the afternoon, or a place to meet friends. You can rest your feet and people watch if you want to.

I know that people like to get all worked up about Starbucks because it’s a corporate success story, and we all hate the idea of a local coffee shop going out of business because the big dog moved into town. But I also know that a lot of coffee shops are in business today because Starbucks paved the way with the coffee lifestyle.

People who act like they hate the Starbucks on the corner are either too stupid to know the big picture, or they are just lying to you so they can seem anti-The-Man. I’m not going to act like an outside observer here. I love the fact that there are 3 Starbucks within a mile and a half of my house.

Don’t confuse what I’m saying here. I don’t want America to become homogenized with corporate chains. I’ve traveled to over 250 destinations in America since the year 2000, and I hate that so many places look the same. But, you also can’t dismiss a chain of coffee shop just because you don’t like a homogeneous America.

I Hear the Suns are Awesome

There is nothing more disorienting than having your favorite team be in a different time zone than you. I salute the Suns fans on the East Coast. You guys really have to work hard to catch the Suns. You might have to stay up past midnight. It is so much more fun to watch the Suns play basketball than it is to look up scores on the Internet at the end of the day. The only thing exciting about that is knowing that we won.

Candyce and I met Franky Bones at Radio Milano, LGO’s newest restaurant at the corner of 40th Street and Campbell in Arcadia. Frank is a 2nd generation Italian who was raised in Arizona. I hadn’t seen him in a while, so was a natural fit to invite him to join me and Candyce at LGO’s “new Italian” restaurant on its first week. I’ve enjoyed LGO’s other restaurants, and was anxious to see what they came up with.

If this were a new restaurant in another part of town by a different restaurateur, I wouldn’t be so critical. But LGO has momentum, so you expect creativity, especially when it comes time to branding the restaurant. Having said that…

The atmosphere disappointed me. It’s one thing to keep a visual theme in all of your restaurants, but it’s another thing to re-use old ideas. The interior is all-too-familiar: lots of hard surfaces, concrete floors, block walls. These surfaces might be hip, but it makes the dining area too loud. Even with a full spread of fabric curtains stretching across the back wall, the voices of the room roared too loud for good conversation.

The only thing that sets this restaurant’s interior apart from the gang that is LGO is the ceiling and the seating. They inherited the unique architecture from the previous owners, and they played up the low, wood arched ceilings from wall to wall. The chairs and tables were wood laminate held up by thin, spidery legs. When compared to the volume of the room and the scale of the arched ceiling, the furniture combined for the busyness of a high school cafeteria.*

There were a couple details that did please me. The front windows look like they’ll swing right open in nice weather, a detail worth carrying over from their other restaurants. The lower portion of the windows is a wide concrete shelf that will serve as a bench for folks inside and outside. It’s a clever way provoke the social life through the restaurant walls. Like Chelsea’s Kitchen, waiting for a table might be as fun as having a table.

The other details I like were at the back of the restaurant. Behind the wide curtain on the back wall were glass doors that will most likely open to the narrow strip of courtyard. The young trees planted in an orderly row will give some organic relief to the industrial vibe inside. If they’re smart, they’ll make friends with their neighbors whose back wall defines the far edge of the courtyard. A whimsical Italian mural could set the tone for the whole restaurant. (And why not? The wall is shielded from the harshest desert sun.)

The food? For the record, the restaurant is a “new Italian” concept. Aside from the fashion capitol the restaurant was named after (Milan), there wasn’t much on the menu that spoke Italian. I didn’t expect numbered pasta dishes, but I expected to read through creative interpretations of Italian classics.

We started with the vegetable plate. It was fresh and tasty, but it was hard to figure out how you can charge $11 for a handful of vegetables with two thin slices of fresh mozzarella. Listen, if you are a “new Italian” restaurant and you are going to anchor a dish with an Italian staple, then make sure to slice like that mozzarella like the hungry Italians do. And I am talking about a handful of vegetables. I could’ve scooped them off the plate and put them in my pants pocket.

Perhaps the waitress was too scared to tell us the truth, but we were under the impression that we got real entrees with descent proportions. The menu seemed to be divided into appetizers and entrees. Come serving time, we were surprised to see we bought appetizers that were priced like entrees. The confusion grew…so this is a new-Italian tapas restaurant?

I understand the concept of a tapas. You get lots of little servings and you share them with friends. You explore the menu and discover different flavors. But that only works when you have dozens of options at reasonable prices. I’ve been to several tapas restaurants and enjoyed every part of the dining experience. But Radio Milano’s menu was short, and every item was stickered between $10 to over $14. It’ll take five orders for a couple on a date to feel full, and all of a sudden you’re inching towards $100 with tax and tip. Where’s the fun in that? For less money than that, you can have the timeless $10,000,000 atmosphere of Sassi up in Pinnacle Peak.

Anyway, I was served my main course. I ordered the meatloaf because I like to see how chefs spin a comfort food classic. It was tasty and moist, but it was just a fraction larger than a biscotti I ate that morning with my espresso. If you can make it bigger and serve it to me at Chelsea’s Kitchen, I’d order it again. Candyce and I didn’t bother ordering anymore when we realized the cost of the night had already run over $50.

After dinner, Candyce and I walked to the car and we both admitted to still being hungry. We flirted with the idea of going to LGO Grocery across the street to buy a salads or a couple sandwiches to go. If our night had ended there, our evening would’ve been a big let down. But we swung by Safeway and got a big massive sub sandwich from then sat by Tempe Town Lake under the night sky. It was the perfect night, almost a little too cool with the breezes coming off the lake. (Could this really be June in Phoenix?) (Could that’ve really been LGO’s newest restaurant?)

*Note 04/07/09: I peaked in the window of Radio Milano and saw that they re-ordered the tables and chairs so that it doesn’t look so cluttered.

A couple weeks ago I watched two reality shows about buying, fixing up, and selling homes for a quick profit. The first show is a couple years old, aptly called Flip This House. The latecomer to the game on another network is a the same concept with a me-too name: Flip That House. I put the power of Tivo to work and recorded both of the shows.

My house was actually in the final steps of selling, so I decided to watch these shows with a new found knowledge of my own real estate ordeals. Plus, these shows were filmed in the heat of the housing market, and I was interested in the time capsule of emotion and circumstances of the investors.

I would not have had the fortitude to watch a show like that at any point over the last 9 months because there was nobody buying my very pretty house. Watching the show would’ve made me feel foolish, jealous, or mocked by the “profits” that splash across the screen with every upgrade to the home. But I’ve been on a couple reality shows myself, so I know that the creators of the show are selling entertainment, not facts. Things were edited in and out of my life and millions was believed as historical fact. So what I’m about to write isn’t because I’m taking these shows as 30-minute seminars on becoming a millionaire. I’m just comparing my own reality to that of a TV show. With that disclaimer out of the way…

Flip THIS House

This show was interesting to me because it is filmed in Atlanta, a city I lived in and loved for 4 years of college. I watched the housing market there do amazing things after the 1996 Olympics from my dorm window. Plus, the show followed business partners that were livin’ the ATL rapper lifestyle, albeit a more tame, Real Estate version of bling. They had my full attention.

The first thing that made me doubt the authenticity of this show was how little they had to pay these contractors to do work. If the price tag on the screen were real, it’s obvious these workers were more interested in being on TV than getting paid what they are worth. I know this because I could’ve had many “girlfriends” when I was on the Real World and looked like quite the player, but I knew those girls were just gold diggers looking for the spotlight. I also know this because nobody puts all new drywall in a house for a mere $600.

Some of the other workers’ pay was suspicious too. The 3 “day laborers” were paid $200 total for a full day of cleaning up the huge, overgrown front yard. In my neighborhood, 1 migrant workers charges $200 for a day’s worth of yard work. And that’s your basic dude with hand trimmers and a saw. All in all, this house was entirely remodeled for $12,000 which just seems impossible to me. New roof, walls, fixtures, the yard? No way. A roofer recently wanted $500 to do 2 hours worth of work that I thought could be done in 45 minutes.

The first part of the dollar equation makes me suspicious, but I’m just ask skeptical about how the creators of the show calculate the “added value” they splash across the screen with every upgrade. Some things are easy to calculate because home appraisers do it all the time, like granite counter tops. Those are standard luxury items in a home and they know how to price them. But they’re quoting “added value” over things like new paint over the exterior bricks, and it doesn’t even look that pretty. So where’s the value there? And what happens when your bargain labor installs the cheap carpet poorly. No appraiser will factor that as an upgrade, but the TV show always does.

But what I was most disappointed in was how the president of the investment company was cheap. He nickeled and dimed everyone at every step of the way. I understand that you have to watch your money, but you also can’t take advantage of people for your own gain. I’ve dealt with some greedy bastards, and when you are on the other end of one of their “deals”, you know the full story. They act like they’re trying to protect their money from being stolen, but in reality, they’re stealing from everyone else.

Of course I know that the creators of these shows need drama, and sometimes your only adversary is that you are running out of time and money. In reality, when construction is running smoothly and there are no termites hidden in the attic, life is pretty good. It’s the kind of thing you see on American Chopper. They don’t have any real “deadlines.” Nobody is going to cancel their order because the bike wasn’t done in time. They probably already have paid for half of it anyway. But episode after episode is about the bike builders “battling against the clock.”

But if his greed is a reality and not a TV fabrication, there could be greater problems beneath the surface. A greedy real estate investor can forget that there are real people who are buying your homes. They forget that this home is their dream where their family will grow. They’ve worked hard and saved money for this very moment when they get to buy a home. To date, I’ve only seen one episode (last year) where an investor actually had to do structural changes to the home to make it more safe. Every other episode has been the story of an investor making cosmetic changes. I understand that not every house has a villain that needs to be defeated before the investor can sell the home on a clean conscience. And a buyer shouldn’t be so swayed by a pretty surface that they forget to look deep into the home. But a greed is greed, and someone will always suffer at the expense of your greed.

Flip THAT House

The second story was a young lady from LA who did not seem too bright at all. She had no confidence or style. Rather blah. I’m not judging her for the sake of being critical, but she didn’t seem to have what it took to navigate a tough, competitive market. At least the other dude had some charisma on his side which made you believe that not everyone could do the same job.

She bought homes in the LA area, put in new counter tops, moved some walls, rolled new paint, and replaced the yard–your standard fixer-upper to-do list. At the beginning of the episode, she moaned about having to pay $500 to a landscaper to move the sprinklers away from the sidewalk. She looked into the camera and explained that, “set backs like this can make a project tough.” It seemed like a small loss to get all worked up over, considering I had about 20 of those setbacks. But we’ve both been there, so I felt bad for her. But that pity disappeared when she ended up selling the house 6 months later for a profit of $250,000. Yes, she was upset about $500, and ended up making a quarter million.

I don’t have time to consider the quality of work she did on the home and all of that. But I do want to talk about that the TV calculator of profit is that it never factors in real dollars that you have to spend when you sell a house. First you have to pay the buyer’s Realtor 3%, which in the case of the LA house works out to be $27,000. If you are using a Realtor to represent yourself, that figure doubles to $54,000. That’s 1/5th of the profit made off the home already gone. In the negotiations, you can might end up paying the buyer’s closing costs, which can be $5000.

Another reality is the property taxes she had to pay out over that 6 month period, which I would’ve been at least $6000 in California. Then you have to add in costs of electricity, water, the security system, and landscaping fees every month. That’s another $2000 over 6 months. Once the home is in escrow, the buyer is obligated to fix up outstanding problems with the house, like leaky faucets, masonry cracks, and ill-fitted doors. Now in a good market like she was in, most buyers ignore that stuff because they’re happy to be homeowners and don’t want them to sell the house to someone else. But those little things can quickly add up to a few thousand dollars in repairs. So now that $250,000 is down to a less than $180,000. And then you have taxes to pay on that $180,000 because you never lived in the home as a primary residence and you have no loop holes. I don’t know what that would be, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it knocked off another $20,000.

That’s still a lot of money, don’t get me wrong. With or without a TV calculator doing your math, you’re gonna make money. And that’s what this lady did. In the closing credits, she stood confidently in her own grand home and shared that it was a “lucrative endeavor.” At the same time, I was both jealous of her fortune, but prophetic with my fast-forward knowledge that this would be the last time she’d mention “lucrative” in this decade. Who knows, maybe I’m wrong. We still have 3 years left before the decade runs out. Maybe there will be a blogger mocking me with the same hindsight from the year 2010.

As for the future of these two shows? They certainly aren’t going to air any shows filmed in 2006. It would look much like my own life. A nice house sitting on a nice street. A for sale sign out front and nobody knocking on the door.