The Wild Wild East

Real estate in New York City is anything but civil. Practices in other parts of the country are either unheard of or resisted here. Fair Housing Laws...what's that? Multiple Listing Service is but a rumor. Try to show an apartment and you may or may not be given access based on the whim, discretion or cantankerous mood of the Super. Have a lot of twenties ready to slip the Super if needs be. Tenants may be required to come up with as much as one or two months rent (no small amount when a 1 bedroom goes for $2,500) for security/cleaning deposit only to have to clean the apartment before they move in. Practicing real estate can be an exercise in masochism. Brokers are given the respect of a small town used car dealer. And paying your dues includes taking people out in blizzard conditions, walking up 50 flights of stairs for a 5 story walk-up only to have them sign a lease or purchase with an agent that just showed them one apartment in a high rise elevator building that they said that they would never live in on the east side during an open house. But people sign up as agents in droves. We get up at 3:30 in the morning to hike down to Williams Street and wait outside in brutal weather for up to 5 hours to take the real estate exam. Why do we do it? We do it because we love the business; we love the people, we love the architecture and we love New York City with all of it's challenges.

Why do people rent, buy, live and work here? Why do we all trudge through knife slicing winter gales, climb up 5th floor walk ups every day, several times a day, push our way through sardine packed subways to shop in sardine packed department stores, pay exorbitant prices for food, housing and the basic necessities of life? Because to live in New York City, to live in Manhattan, is a dream. This city is unlike any city in the world. The people here are unlike any other in the world. It's tough, they are tough, it's beautiful, they are beautiful and most of all it's undefeatable as are the citizens.

Other cities are big, other cities are expensive, but there is an uncivilized quality amidst the civilized in New York City rising up from it's underbelly. It's a freedom or a blatant disregard for convention, sometimes the line is blurred, that lends itself to the static electricity felt by every single person who has ever walked the streets of Times Square after the rain or of Central Park in the wee hours on a snowy day. Anything goes, seldom is there a law or even if there is a law it's seldom not enforced, nor is societal judgment there to stop you. It's live and let live or die and let die and once you've tasted it you'll never be able to live any other way.

They say you can't see the stars in New York City and the reason is that they were brought down and live here now, you can see them twinkling in all the buildings, teasing you with their light, beckoning you to come out and play with them. New York, my home, my love.