“It’s the plumber who stops working just to get some extra money out of you. It’s the tank on the ground that you suddenly realize you need to remove to the tune of 50K. It’s the vandalism right after you finish the property…” John he gave an exacerbated sigh as they walked around a sodden mattress that was burned around the edges, “I’m telling you, I’m so tired of this.”

Jim stared at him grimly for a long moment, then silently raised his camera to take a shot of the caved-in ceiling, trying almost mechanically to remain professionally aloof. As the smell of burning wood mixed with the thick smoke of mold assaulted his nostrils, he could almost see himself standing in John’s place 20 years earlier, his young entrepreneurial spirit shaken by the whims of a market. apathetic. It has been a long time since he lost the small portfolio of small commercial properties that he had worked so hard to build. The real estate recession of the early 1990s left him totally discouraged. He never owned property again. Instead, he chose a career as an appraiser.

They moved into the kitchen, where the stale semblance of family life was strewn across a cracked counter. A couple of dirty and decrepit dishes straddled an empty cereal box. A faded brown pacifier lay against an open dirty fridge. Suddenly, a chill ran down her spine as her eyes landed on three rusty hypodermic needles in the center of the heavily stained floor.

“I’m going to take a quick picture of the kitchen, and we’ll be done,” Jim’s tone rose with affected gaiety at the words ‘all set’ like he’s a dentist calming down a suffering patient while finishing a bloody mess. root channel. They got out and crossed the street to take one last photo of the front.

“Wow, it’s a shame the whole house isn’t in this state,” Jim pointed to the new brick and windows that made the house look newly built from the front.

“Yeah, I know…” John’s tone trailed off wistfully. “If life were that easy… But, well, that’s why I bought it for 200. When I’m done, it will easily cost 450, 500.”

“I do not know anything about that”. Jim stared a few doors down at two large women yelling at each other on the porch of a detached 4-person family that had a large crack in the side wall. “If you move this property a few more blocks,” he pointed east, “I could possibly see those numbers.”

A black Cadillac Escalade slowed next to them as three rowdy children abruptly ran into the street in a disorderly chase. The deep bass that pulsed from inside the closed tinted windows quickly drowned out the children’s voices and reverberated throughout the block. As the Cadillac rolled on, the fading rumble continued to reverberate in Jim’s head as he slowly, almost painfully, shifted his gaze to his beat-up old Honda hatchback. “By strictly following the appraisal guidelines, I can get almost any value I want.”

At these words, a visible glint crossed John’s eyes and the shadow of a smile slid across his mouth. Although he had known Jim for just 30 minutes, it was clear to both that they had already woven the first fibers of a friendship. They understood each other without words.

For a long time, John studied the discontent that still dominated Jim’s gaze, and then decided to take a step.

“You know, with the right appraisal I can get very good financing for this property.” She nervously waited for Jim’s reaction. The latter turned to him expressionlessly and without saying a word.

‘Curse!’ John thought, ‘this was not the right thing to say.’ He had felt that he could discreetly make a deal with Jim, but now Jim’s muffled silence puzzled him. How foolish of him to say that.

Jim looked away, thinking of the bank. He had given so much to this bank. For years he had been giving them precise values, poring over each draft as if his own money were on the line. He stared at a fire hydrant sprouting in the distance over the next block.

He had seen loan officers and department heads come and go, and none of them had the decency to show the least bit of appreciation. She suppressed a sudden swelling in his eyes. Thousands of hours of his work turned into meaningless piles of paper in his hands, good for just one number they needed to cover his ass.

“What do you have in mind?” she suddenly turned to John.

“Well,” John stifled his surprise, “I was thinking…” he breathed out slowly with relief.

“Right now I can get 100% financing, and if you got to the right number…”

“Don’t you have to personally guarantee the loan?” Jim interrupted him with forced indifference.

My God, this appraiser really was reading his mind! “Everything I own is in my wife’s name,” he replied matter-of-factly, as if commenting on the weather. He had collected part of the rent earlier, and now she was clearly aware of the thick wad of Franklins, Grants, and Jacksons bulging in the inside pocket of his jacket. “Why don’t we get in my car and see what we can figure out?”

The appraisal was $500,000. True to form, the loan officer in charge of the loan, sitting next to three yards of waist-high files in his windowless, over-air-conditioned office, didn’t even look at them. The number he needed was already in the app. Even if he had perused the appraisal, he would have simply noted that the estimates were within a radius of a few blocks, which was perfectly reasonable. He would never know that a few blocks away, comparable properties were regularly selling for twice as much on the subject’s street.

While John was in the bank’s conference room signing the last of the triplicate copies of his loan documents and receiving his freshly printed check for $493,537, the senior vice president in the corner office a few doors away was walking past. the favorite part of your monthly call with the bank’s address.

Raising his feet on his spotless mahogany desk, Percival Eaton Worchester III studied the shiny black tips of his $400 shoes. Nothing in the past 30 years of his life, since he was quietly expelled from Yale, has done as much to restore his confidence as this month’s numbers did. “The number of creations under my supervision is simply unprecedented,” he meticulously pronounced each syllable with a sugary smile only his mother could appreciate.

While he never fully understood how securitization worked, he learned that the bank was transferring risk to someone else while retaining record fees. But neither he nor the in-house lawyer who gently tried to explain it to him realized that a small clause buried deep in the securitization documents required a buyback if a certain number of loans defaulted. The head of the bank, who had originally agreed to that clause, never imagined that this would happen.

John began bidding on every pitiful pile of bricks he could find that remotely resembled real property. With the scope of his rehabilitation work now comfortably reduced to the façade, he was able to handle several jobs simultaneously. The appraiser’s inspections were also considerably shorter, now that they excluded an interior ride.

“Ooh, that’s beautiful,” John peered into an elegant living room in a picture Jim brought with him to one of his inspections.

“This is what the living room on this estate will look like when you’re ‘done,'” Jim exclaimed, a mischievous boyish glint in his eye. The picture was from another appraisal, but Jim would insert it into the appraisal of the dilapidated property in front of them. “What can you do if after ‘finishing’ the property falls into disrepair? It’s not a great neighborhood, is it?”

“And besides, who cares. You make money, I make money, the bank makes money…everyone is happy!”