The Kings Of Cool

23

Fortunately, this was Orange County.

(Before the real estate market flopped like a European soccer player.)

Back in those halcyon “finance and flip” days, you could walk into any upscale OC hotel (the Ritz, St. Regis, or Montage) and drop something-anything-in the lobby Chances are, whoever picked it up would have been a real estate agent.

Or you could drive up (or down, didn’t matter) the PCH and rear-end your ride into any BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Audi, Porsche, Land Rover, Land Cruiser-actually any vehicle not a Mexican gardening truck. Just prison-shower that ride and the odds were that the person who got out of the other vehicle would have handed you a business card before the insurance information.

Everybody in the OC had a real estate license.

Everybody.

Every OC trophy wife who required a “career” for her self-esteem got a license. Every surf bum who needed a source of income (i.e., all of them) got a license. Dogs, cats, gerbils had real estate licenses.

If they weren’t actually selling property, they were financing the mortgage, doing the title or the assessment, consulting on getting the property ready to show.

Others were involved in “creative financing,” aka “fraud.”

The entire economy then was based on swapping real estate around, boosting the price with every pass. Everyone was living off the ginormous Ponzi scheme that was the real estate market in those days, hoping they wouldn’t get caught with the hot potato in their hands when the whistle blew.

People were using trash financing to buy three, four, five houses that they hoped to flip, so people had houses they needed to rent and there were real estate agents who specialized in rentals.

So finding a Realtor was no problem.

Finding the right Realtor was.

Because, generally speaking, Realtors hate dope growers.