I got my real estate license and started to sell houses in Key West in 1996. Most of the people I worked with were my contemporaries - they were foremost baby boomers and several came with a dash of hippie. The closet I ever got to being a hippie was a pair of bell bottom jeans, hair a bit over my ears, and a mustache.
My customers grew up in the fifties and sixties. Some of my buyers did well for themselves. Some did exceptionally well. And it wasn't just my buyers, but the slew of people who came to Key West during the past quarter century to be apart of this place that is not like up north in America. In the beginning there still were Conch Cruisers, dilapidated houses, and bars where you could buy a Miller Lite for a buck. Those were the days my friend.
A strange thing happened this past Sunday at an open house I was holding. This guy with white hair started asking a lot of questions about the house, the town, the laws, and so on. That happens all the time. And then he asked how old I was. I thought that odd. Nobody had asked me my age in years and certainly not in the context of selling houses. I told him and he said something like "We're almost there". Then he confessed he was a commercial real estate broker up north - in one of those really big cities on the east coast. I think he said he'd been in the business over fifty years. He and his wife have been coming to Key West for years and years and are finally starting to look at buying a place here - them and everybody else. Good luck on that. Seriously, there are so few choices left.
The past year has caused a lot of us to accept our mortality. Not the kids - they will live forever. But the hippies and the never-were-hippies can see what awaits them. Many have decided the prefer Key West to the big cold cities up north with millions of people. The End!
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