Going for Broke

The other side of midnight

The last few weeks have been quite an eye-opener. I rave and rant about Goa being sold to outsiders but they are not the only villains if you find a hill being cut or a field which used to have plentiful tamdibhaji now becoming a concrete jungle, or a block of apartments is mushrooming where paddy fields used to be. The bad guys are also the ones who facilitated the selling of Goa. For instance, the head of a financial institution who gives home loans says, paraphrasing the famous poet: “My job is not to ask why but to do and die.” In other words home loans are given on the basis of documents not on whether there was a scam behind the land on which a dream home is to be built.

Brokers are the other villains behind Goa not being a pristine preserve anymore but a state where even highways have been turned into garbage dumps with plastic bags strewn everywhere. The same guys who upped the prices to meteoric heights causing the real estate bubble here two- three years ago -- a well known brokerage firm told me people use to crowd their offices with the result that tables were even put on the balcao to accommodate them-- today are sanctimonious pointing out “quotation is too high” (earlier it was not high enough!!). Goa has not been immune to the recessionary trend in real estate – although a Chennai developer is all set to sell about 5,000 sq ft apartments for Rs eight crore with the piece de resistance being a diamond-studded peacock in the marble foyer of each of the 21 apartments. But what is heart-warming is that Goans – whether they live in Bombay, Bangalore, US, UK, Canada or Kenya – are back as buyers.

The cartelization of brokers

To amend former US President George Bush’s famous one-liner – They are all together or they are at each other’s throats apparently. They are all smooth operators but some hide it very well and confuse you. Like the one who could teach a thing or two to our New Age gurus and throws so much spiritual mumbo-jumbo at you that it is easy to forget that they can give tips to our original Material Girl, Madonna. Actually, the truth is that spiritualism and the business of buying and selling property are oxymorons by definition, but there are smooth operators who straddle both. And brew spiritual BS galore. Some even get you to hand over the fruits of your labour (literally, in some cases) , give you spiritual and real estate fundas (about African and American money, go figure) and nothing else in return for your patient ear. And if you didn’t figure that out, African is black money and American, is white. Who said we aren’t racist?

While some of these smooth operators gang up together to rob Goa of her glory, there are others who get petulant that a buyer spreads a net over large swathes to get the best deal. With land and buildings going abegging – someone very bluntly said “Goa today is a buyer’s market, not a seller’s market – the brokers bring out their bag of dirty tricks. One of them is to telephone a rival and bad-mouth a seller so that the former takes a potential client in the opposite direction. There are other manifestations of these petty jealousies which have the potential to harm a seller. For instance, tracking down the village gossip and getting the low-down on the seller as if his character will have any bearing on his property. After all, if he was a bad guy, it will be good riddance. But if he was a good chap, then he will be a hard act to follow.

Beggars can’t be choosers

You also have the arrogant client whose ego has to be massaged- as they say beggars can’t be choosers. So if he wants to tramp all over your clean floor in shoes that may have walked through a pig sty you have to lump it if he does not have the basic courtesy of removing his footwear. In fact, he refuses to kick off his shoes and says he’d rather give the grand tour a miss and you capitulate. But to be fair, most buyers observe the house rules with no rancour whatever.

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