“I had ridden the great housing tsunami, soared financially, doubling my income annually early on in my career, then crashed and hit the “riprap” or the rocky shores of the housing market crash, then drowned by the occasional unstable client or disreputable fellow realtor, been resuscitated, promised myself I would quit this crazy business, changed offices, lost every penny of savings including my 401-K. Then made more money than I have ever made in my life in alternate years.”
When we first meet Victoria as she is sitting in her DC real estate licensing class in September of 2001, at The Fanny Mae Foundation on Wisconsin Avenue, in northwest, when the instructor walks in and announces, “The Twin Towers in New York have just been hit by planes, and there is rumor that DC is also a target, please pack up your belongings and leave the building and go home to your loved ones, it appears the United States is under attack.”
And so, begins Victoria’s return to DC with a literal bang! Later that day the Pentagon is attacked, as her terrifying reentry coincides with her new career choice of real estate agent.
“My life had been lived like a female Tom Hanks in the film, “Forest Gump” (1995), always at the epicenter of many major historical events however, only tangentially involved and effected. This was how it was and had always been from my hometown of Baltimore (1960s) to Atlanta (1990s) and now in the new millennium in Washington, DC.”
“It is said that it takes three events to jettison you into your next realm of existence. My trinity of DC events was explosively marked in 2001, first with “9-11”, then the beginning of the longest war in history and the consequential “Tech-Wreck” or crash of the tech giant’s stock market in 2002.”
Victoria’s life is directly impacted professionally and financially when she notes, “I would also consequentially be forced to leave my formerly lucrative communications consulting jobs and ostensibly transform myself as I had a few times prior, from teacher, fundraiser-publicist and most recently, communications consultant now, I would morph into a licensed realtor.”
Victoria goes on to get her DC, Virginia, and Maryland real estate licenses, or in the “DMV”, then affiliates with a local brokerage in historic Georgetown, then since she would sell no homes during her first six months in the business, and then proceed to go broke and almost have a breakdown due to the stress of her newly minted profession and her financial woes and the highly politically charged DC environment.
Desperate and having no network or “sphere of influence” to sell real estate to, because she has not lived in the area for the past 18-years, she begins her harrowing return to DC sans income, sans contacts, sans friends, sans relationship.
And to add to her tension what she doesn’t realize is that she is about to enter a field of work that is breathtakingly stressful. “My real estate coach told me that getting upset because a transaction has become difficult is like a surgeon freaking out at the sight of blood!”
Ironically, she is unable to put down roots or purchase a home in the expensive DC housing market, even though she is in the business of buying and selling homes, so she takes a rental apartment at the historic, Kennedy Warren in the posh northwest neighborhood of Cleveland Park.
She had seen the building featured in a coffee table size book entitled, “Washington DC’s Top Ten Addresses”. Here she learns that local legend has it, that many senators and congressmen use to keep apartments for their secretaries hence the nickname, “The KW” or “Kept Woman”.
The KW is rich with lore and legendary events like in the ballroom downstairs where President Bill Clinton had held one of his inaugural balls and where many past presidents have held theirs. There is even an old bowling alley in the basement.
And then the new construction on the original lobby begins the month she moves in when a new wing or addition of 200 more units is also taking place. And since her apartment is one level above the lobby the noise becomes untenable, hence adding more stress, to her already beyond breaking point reentry back to DC,
Here she states, “My life like the Kennedy Warren was about ready to undergo one hell of an urban renewal renovation!”
And that’s not the only thing that is changing for hers is a literal “baptism by fire” and becomes an even more bizarre and frightening reentry to the city, when a man in a white truck has been going around shooting people randomly in DC and Virginia parking lots.
Victoria’s professional DC stage is also dramatically set when she affiliates with a most exceptional real estate office in the famous area of Georgetown, where she meets a cast of characters or realtors, all of whom, like most realtors, have had very interesting past lives.
First, there is her beloved-by-all manager, Darrell who is a jovial good-natured man who has been in the real estate industry for over 25-years who use to sing with the Vienna Boys Choir, and who bursts into song and uproarious laughter periodically. Darrell also sings in a trio with his wife accompanying him on the piano.
Then there is Tony a gay, former Los Angeles. and off-Broadway New York singer and actor who also bursts into the periodic musical in his deep rich baritone voice. The office antics are highlighted, when another opera trained singer and teacher, Jim joins Darrell and Tony periodically in perfect harmony at the company office parties. Calling themselves “The 3 Realtors!” when they put real estate lyrics into old Broadway musical songs.
Her stories are also peppered with personal anecdotes as in the story, “All is Fair in Real Estate” where her life becomes even more spicy when she meets and begins dating a man who she nicknames “crazy Craig”. “Little did I know then that his “man-opause” insanity combined with my hormonal shifts of menopause would begin with and create a cataclysmic reaction and unprecedented emotional nuclear meltdown for us both.”
Knowing that she can’t sell Craig’s and his alleged former partner’s property due to a conflict-of-interest and her romantic involvement with him, Victoria refers the home sale to another iconic character and longtime Grande Dame realtor, Thyla. She claimed her career started when she worked for Ted Kennedy as his assistant and then when his tenure as Senator ended she jumped into the real estate business.
Toward the end of the series Victoria is in total collapse again, almost having another “un-institutionalized” breakdown, over the stress and both fiscal and physical loss of fifteen listings she had been awarded by a local developer and a project that she had been working on for a year.
When she states, “It’s been my experience throughout my life that sometimes you win and sometimes you learn and that sometimes you have to have a breakdown before you can have a breakthrough!”
Here Victoria decides for the final time to leave her life as a realtor, after the colleague she asks to help share the fifteen listings undermines her relationship with the developer.
This is one but not the final chapter entitled “The Gangster and The Thief”, when Victoria learns, after the fact, that this fellow realtor that she had invited to share the listings, had been asked to leave her prior office because she had been arrested for shoplifting.
Then their mutual company management rewards this same colleague (the thief) with the lion’s share of the commissions for the fifteen listings that the developer (the gangster) had originally awarded to her.
This series of events, developments and setbacks brings Victoria to the brink of real estate insanity and so she begins to look for other work when her therapist states, “I don’t care if you go to work at Costco or Walmart, but I want you to get a steady paying job and get the hell out of this crazy business that has drivin’ you to the edge more than once!”
Her response, “Speaking of hell, if you asked me what my definition of the job from hell is, I would tell you it was working retail at a big box, windowless, cavernous, store with a lot of BIG PEOPLE buying BIG ITEMS and BIG BOTTLES of BIG ALCOHOL?”
This dilemma leads Victoria to a few more ridiculous short-lived jobs that she tries, when she finally ends up taking the one that lasts the longest. “My most unusual professional life as a realtor, would be bookended by me going to work for the most successful tech company in the world at the flagship store - APPLE Carnegie Library!”
“The newly restored architecturally award-winning building, in historic, Mount Vernon Square is where I would end up after leaving my fulltime work as a realtor, where at the Grand Opening, I’d meet CEO and Co-Founder Tim Cook and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser.
The series ends with “The Insurrection” or attack on the Capitol occurs on January 6, 2021, twelve blocks from where she lives in the home she purchased fifteen years before, on Capitol Hill. And then the ending of the longest war in history. She then resumes her work as a full-time realtor.
