Are you a closer? – Monapart
What does it mean to work as an estate agent? This question has led José Luis Echeverría, a partner at Monapart, to reflect on our profession, using Glengarry Glen Ross as a starting point, a film that exemplifies the more arduous side of our work.
To the question “What do you do for a living?” we respond starting from the verb to be, letting our occupation define our essence, always a strange state of affairs, but more bearable when answering “I'm a violinist in the Berliner Philharmoniker” than “I'm a risk analyst at Bankia”. Saying (to oneself) “I am an estate agent”is not within everyone's reach. I don't know the reason why it took real brass neck to sell real estate in the eighties in Chicago—the oil crisis?, the S&L crisis?, both?—, but I am clear about why it takes guts to do it in Spain today. Glengarry Glen Ross It's a great film, by the way. Drop everything right now, and look for it on Netflix or similar.
This scene from Glengarry Glen Ross it runs like clockwork, like a uppercut on the jaw, like an unappealable insult. Incontestable in every word of a magnificent Alec Baldwin in a delirious and dodgy monologue… Hamlet of the metropolis, champion of the hundred quid note, messiah of the property market… Genuine and inimitable gringo estate agent. How terrifying!
If you are an estate agent, and this is Spain on any day between today and 2017, then:
You don't know how to do anything else and you've given up on learning anything.
b. You had an extramarital affair and feel you deserve a painful penance.
You are a Russian living in Marbella and you have a star tattooed on your knee.
d. You come from another sector, but you couldn't waste the opportunity of a good crisis.
My answer is “d”. I know it’s the prettiest.
