The Poet of Property (and For-Hire College Essays)
Monday, May 25, 2009
So there I was, taking a break from not writing, reading the New York Times, about to rush right past the Real Estate section (I own my house, and I'm not moving) when a headline—The Poet of Property—caught my eye. Since I've written about real estate and architecture since I started my business at the age of 25, I thought I might stop to discover what I might learn from a NYT-worthy subject.
I learned, among other things, that Valerie Haboush, the story's star, pens "property descriptions" and "online biographies of brokers" for a nice little sum, collecting between $150 and $250 for bios featuring such lines as "She dabbled in merchandising before realizing her true calling, residential sales," and he "built his career from the ground-floor up, ultimately earning the kind of success that most agents only dream about," not to mention he "possesses an innate gift that allows him to connect with individuals, understand their needs, and deliver results that often exceed expectations." She is able, I also learned, to write 50 such bios each week.
I couldn't help myself; I just kept reading. And then I got to the end. Where I learned that Ms. Haboush doesn't just write for real estate brokers. She writes, for an unspecified sum, college application essays for the children of, well, anyone who might ask, I imagine (though the story lists brokers). Herein are the penultimate words of the story.
“Sometimes they’ll come to me with an outline, or else I’ll interview them first,” Ms. Haboush said. “My feeling is, it’s a very competitive world, and everything you’re writing about yourself, you have to sell yourself, you have to position yourself in the best possible light. If that child can’t write an essay — well, that’s not my business. Let’s at least get that kid into the school.”
Ms. Haboush has no idea what her track record is with school applications. “I always tell them to let me know if their kid gets in, and I never hear from them again,” she said.
What say we, I wonder?
