ABC News Good Morning America and a Sacramento REALTOR

A producer from ABC News Good Morning America called yesterday to talk about the hatchet job from Consumer Reports last month: Real Estate Agents Confess Their Dirty Little Secrets. With a headline like that, whose eyeballs would wander elsewhere when those eyeballs can fall upon real estate porn? How stupid does Consumer Reports think its subscribers are? Oh, wait. Consumer Reports just told you.

This producer said she was having difficulty finding real estate agents to appear on the show to back-up the silly-ass headline grabber punched out by Consumer Reports. She said ABC News Good Morning America offered to film real estate agents in the shadows, anonymously, but nobody was jumping at the opportunity. No shit, Sherlock. Agents won’t do it because first of all, the “facts” are not true, second the statements are the results of a tiny sampling of agents, which stated they once witnessed or heard of another agent doing (nothing first hand) and, third, agents crave publicity, for crying out loud. Real estate agents are publicity hounds.

I wouldn’t go so far as to propose that agents might pull that “Jimmy McGill publicity stunt” as in episode 104 on Better Call Saul — faking a guy falling off a billboard so Jimmy could come to the rescue — but agents are not above standing on a street corner dressed like a clown and waving a Sacramento homes for sale sign if they thought it would bring in the business.

The crap that Consumer Reports spewed forth was stuff that probably grew out of a committee meeting with everybody slouched around a conference table, munching on stale doughnuts. What crappy things do you think agents do, one of the suits asked. I think they tell sellers to sell for too little and they make buyers pay too much, answered some minion who, because he overslept, arrived with his shirt on backwards.

That kind of nonsense is idiotic. We live in a fast-paced digital world, and market movement tends to dictate. No agent cares about squeezing a client because clients can’t be squeezed.

I would be remiss if I didn’t note how quickly my husband zeroed in on the story when I shared it with him last night. A large grin crossed his face. He offered up the reason I am willing to help out ABC News Good Morning America. It’s because I live very close to an ABC affiliate, Channel 10, so I could dash over to Broadway in an instant to be filmed for the Good Morning America via satellite — which would give me access to that damn inaccessible and private Ingress portal. Yes, I could claim the portal, deploy all of my resonators, set up my mods and walk out of that Channel 10 studio a satisfied Sacramento Realtor.