Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Getty Images, Shutterstock In this biweekly series, “Realtor Diaries,” we hear from the people at the center of a wilder-than-ever market. Today, an hour-by-hour glimpse into the working world of Tori Atwell, 59, a power broker in the San Jose area.Last night, I promised myself to wait an hour or so before checking my emails in the morning so I could spend some quality time with my pets. I have a lot of them.
12 p.m. I go to the office. Another 50 emails. No day is the same. What you need to know about San Jose is that it’s basically a bunch of little towns all squished together. And they’re all incredibly distinct. Some are luxurious; some are dangerous. Some are funky and historic — Japantown, Naglee park. But mostly, San Jose is mass urban sprawl, track housing, and strip malls, kind of boring. Also, people don’t really move to San Jose because they want to move to San Jose..
1 p.m. A Realtor friend calls me. Realtors in this area are chatty. We talk about the press the market in San Jose has been getting lately; an article said it’s seeing the largest decline in home prices in the United States. Sure, maybe 70 percent of the town is not doing well. But it’s not Almaden Valley or Willow Glen. It’s the 70 percent of San Jose that’s urban sprawl. And that’s because people aren’t looking to move there in the first place.
My clients are going to think about this one. All Realtors say this, but buyers are like sheep. When everyone is buying, they want to buy. When everyone is pulling back, they pull back. Right now, with the interest rates, clients are pulling back. But it’s silly to me. This time last year, there was no way to get into the market; you’d have to overpay by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now — in San Jose at least — you can get a house for the right price.
realtors are evil vampires