If you spend anytime on the internet, you’re used to what happens if you look something up. You’re bombarded with solicitations related to your search.
The latest for me was when I went on Google Earth to look up a crime scene location of a 20-year-old murder case of mine. The home is now apparently for sale.
I’ve written here before that I’ve always engaged a realtor for real estate activities because it usually facilitates navigating the transaction.
So this is not meant to be a criticism of the vital role of realtors in property transactions. This is about how they go about “selling” property.
Since the Google search I’ve been receiving solicitations from realtors about that property, and others in surrounding communities. Setting aside the Big-Brotheresque aspect of how they knew to contact me, what I find annoying is a common theme among the solicitations. They all refer in some way to my “lifestyle”.
What is the obsession so many realtors have with “style”? Is the nature of their profession so permeated with “curb appeal” that they only think of facades?
What exactly is a “lifestyle” anyway? I have a 1952 edition of Webster’s Unabriged 20th Century Dictionary of the English Language. “Lifestyle” isn’t in it, so the word was not in common usage then. The current Cambridge Dictionary of the English Language defines it as “someone’s way of living”.
I won’t waste your time explaining the origin of the term. Suffice it to say that it was once used in clinical psychology.
But “Since the 1970s, the [Oxford English Dictionary] says, ‘lifestyle’ has also been used as an adjective, describing something ‘designed to appeal to consumers by association with a lifestyle regarded as desirable, glamorous, or attractive.'”
I’m reasonably certain the realtors trying to entice me to buy the murder scene are not using the term clinically!
Years ago, after I prosecuted a realtor for fraud, I was asked to speak about that subject at a statewide training seminar of realtors. I was just one speaker among many who addressed a variety of topics — including “sales strategies”.
Out of curiosity, I attended a sales strategy session. It seemed like every approach involved “selling the lifestyle”. “Style” was clearly more relevant than substance. I felt like asking, “What about those of us who have a life — not a lifestyle?”
Apparently those realtors contacting me following my Google search attended similar strategy training. But their training lacked what I consider a critical element: the truth. It was all about image.
They are also clearly unaware that I’m a native Floridian — and a local. Because as someone who knows better, I can attest that their descriptions of the “lifestyle” I can “enjoy” from purchasing that property, or another in the same vicinity, is scatological.
Allow me to enlighten those of you considering moving to Florida – which it seems everyone is. We don’t spend all our time “boating”, or “relaxing in a backyard pool”, or “at the beach”.
I can speak from experience about all three: Boats are expensive to buy, operate and maintain; Pools are expensive to install, and maintain; Beaches are overcrowded, and it can be a PITA finding parking.
All three “lifestyles” also expose you to skin cancer (about which I speak from literally painful experience).
If your “lifestyle” is having a home “on the water” you’ll need to hit the lottery to buy it… and afford the insurance!
When did having a roof over your head become all about “lifestyle”? Has our society become so decadent that the principal selling point for one of the fundamental necessities of human existence is “designed to appeal to consumers by association with a lifestyle regarded as desirable, glamorous, or attractive”? Apparently it has, to most to realtors — judging from the focus of their “sales strategy”.
I’m tempted to respond to realtor solicitations about the murder scene home and tell them my “lifestyle” is that I’m into haunted houses — and ask if they are aware of any homes for sale that may have ghosts.
If they are aware that it was the scene of a murder, would they use that as a selling point to appeal to my “lifestyle”?
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.