The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The wag who said the only certainties in life are taxes and death never dropped into the many real estate offices on the South End for a ‘free’ map. An earthquake could separate us from the rest of the Civilized World and no matter the land values, real estate would be the Real Show. If a nuclear explosion ended most life as we know it, there’d still be cockroaches and realtors, both equally adaptable to any environment.

Not that I’m suggesting they’re equally unsavory. I can list a whole lot of professions more detestable than a land and home salesman. But most of those are SOME kind of salesman, from snake oil to stocks and bonds. And it’s not that I think they’re inherently dishonest or greedy. Most are good folks and most are poor as me. It’s just that there are so damn many of them. They’re more prolific than us artists who apparently breed up every holler and down every ravine. So many …. none can make a decent living competing with one another. The folks who moved here either become artists or realtors because there’s no other employment available within a tank of $4 a gallon gas.

So now we got 17 flavors of real estate, everything from ReFlux Realty to Windy Rear, all vying for the same properties. Which, if you’ve lived here more than the time it takes to close a mortgage, means about a third of us are selling, a third are buying and about half must be the realtors. Drive down the island and it looks like more For Sale signs than mailboxes some years. It’s too bad the signs aren’t painted by the artists — we’d become the Art Island practically overnight, famous up and down the Sound.

But don’t tell the realtors – it would only draw more Art Lovers hoping to buy a small studio. And in a year or two, they’d become real estate agents themselves. It’s a vicious circle and we need to break the cycle. Although … I’ll worry more when the realtors start painting tourist art.

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