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A Buddhist real estate agent
cvalue
Veteran
Here is a scenario:
My Buddhist real estate agent friend is very good at buying cheap houses in undesirable locations. She rented them out for a few years. After a few years, as she predicted, developers moved to these locations and turned them into fashionable areas to live. The prices of her houses doubled so she sold them at a very nice profit. Then she used this profit to search for next cheap houses and so on...
My friend and I debated about this. This is clearly greed and greediness will keep us from entering the pure land after we die!
So she said she is on the way to be a sainte but she is not a sainte yet. A sainte would donate her houses to the homeless but she is not able to do it yet.
Her argument is everything is in the mind. If she manages to look at her profit with an indifferent eye, neither happy nor sad. And if she is not attached to it, if all her profit vanished due to a robbery, she won't feel sad. Then she should be OK to go on doing the same thing...
...until she can get to the next level which is to give all of them away.
I told her, her decision is right, she is like swimming in a river with a life saver on. Until she learns to swim properly, it's not wise take her life saver off.
Can people do the act of (harmless) greediness and meditate to feel nothing? Is it doable? Is it a Buddhist thing? I guess it's just wishful thinking!
It would be very much appreciated if you have any advise for my friend.
Thanks.
My Buddhist real estate agent friend is very good at buying cheap houses in undesirable locations. She rented them out for a few years. After a few years, as she predicted, developers moved to these locations and turned them into fashionable areas to live. The prices of her houses doubled so she sold them at a very nice profit. Then she used this profit to search for next cheap houses and so on...
My friend and I debated about this. This is clearly greed and greediness will keep us from entering the pure land after we die!
So she said she is on the way to be a sainte but she is not a sainte yet. A sainte would donate her houses to the homeless but she is not able to do it yet.
Her argument is everything is in the mind. If she manages to look at her profit with an indifferent eye, neither happy nor sad. And if she is not attached to it, if all her profit vanished due to a robbery, she won't feel sad. Then she should be OK to go on doing the same thing...
...until she can get to the next level which is to give all of them away.
I told her, her decision is right, she is like swimming in a river with a life saver on. Until she learns to swim properly, it's not wise take her life saver off.
Can people do the act of (harmless) greediness and meditate to feel nothing? Is it doable? Is it a Buddhist thing? I guess it's just wishful thinking!
It would be very much appreciated if you have any advise for my friend.
Thanks.
0
Comments
If all her profits go only for herself, then I would say that is not good. If, however, she also donates to charities that assist the poor, then that is reasonable. Is there a place in Buddhist scripture (honest question) that suggests we all have to be poor?
It is difficult to convinced anyone to open their noses to their own dukka smell except by example. My advise would be to examine whatever smell of your own is almost beyond your own capacity to face......and then address it...... like you are asking your friend to.
This will give you the empathy, sympathy, tenderness, compassion and love to be able to stand in their shoes and know what you are asking them to also do.
Here's how I may find what she does more or less 'acceptable'... (although she doesn't need my -or anyone else's- approval, really. Buddhist or not, she walks her own path, right?):
Does she rent at a very reasonable monthly rental fee, to people who are low/er income? Or does she charge the top rental that the market would bear - which is usually an amount that far exceeds the value of the home?
Does she make sure the homes she rents are well restored and at a decent level of livability? (would SHE live in one of the houses she rents out to others?) Or is she a 'slum-lord'?
Buying and selling real estate (yes, even at a good amount of profit) is like any other business. You work hard, you invest time and money, you (hope to) make a profit.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with it as a good, honest living- as long as you ARE honest and not taking unfair advantage of people along the way.
@how, thanks for your reply. I have full sympathy for my friend because I am struggling with my own issue of Greed and attachment to my possession too. My solution for this is to release it slowly so we can get used to it gradually. It's painful to part with something dear! It's like taking a piece of your flesh and blood out! This feeling is so unlike somebody who wishes to follow Bodhisattva path! But I am just being brutally honest with myself right now!
@MaryAnne, thanks for your reply, my friend is a real estate agent so she knows the fair market value. She does rental, buy, sell for her and her clients based on this market value. She takes good care of her houses to protect the re-sale value. She prefers to take lower rent from someone that she judges would keep her houses in good condition. She is careful when choosing a tenant.
Namaste,
I own a house up the coast and live with my parents due to my illness. I rent my house out to people. In three years I have not increased the rent and I have a gardner tend to the yards at my own cost. Friends tell me I am crazy as it is in a desirable spot. Yet if I could, I would be living there. Yes I need to pay the mortgate and other bills but to me the current rent covers most of the mortgage (with a neglible amount left over). They look after my house and have never caused me any grief. If I sold it, they would be hard pressed to find another place to live and can't afford to buy.
I am grateful they look after the place well. If I ever thought I was squeezing money out of them, or ever found out that to be the case, I would be mortified and would try to work with them to come to a solution that benefits us both. After all, I cannot take it with me when I die, but my daughter will then take on the responsibility of both the house and the tenants.
In metta,
Raven
They quite openly lied to me for their own gain.
Not a job I could do but each to their own.......
There is nothing wrong with having a job and there is nothing wrong with being rich. Some of the Buddha's main supporters were very rich (kings and such) and the Buddha never condemned them for it. If the money is not gained through things like being a pimp, butcher or selling guns, it is ok and not necessarily a barrier to advancing on the path. Of course our attachments to things are a barrier, but having things does not automatically mean we are attached to them. It doesn't have to be greediness.
@Bunks, I am not with my friend when she is on the job so I can't tell how she deals with her clients. But I know that she really wants to be a good Buddhist so she has to find a way to reconcile her actions with her beliefs.
Thanks @Sabre, I don't know why my friend and I feel so guilty for having some discretionary income! As for my problem is I am cheap so it's not easy for me to give. But I have a solution for that. I set a giving target for me such as this year I give 1% of my income, next year I will increase to 2% until I am able to give 5% then 10%. I do it slowly so I can get used to it. I guess being cheap is a form of attachment. Being able to let go is to learn to detach from it...bit by bit (in my case).
Namaste @cvalue,
Thank you
I think your plan is a good idea. There is a story of the Buddha teaching a stingy king how to be generous. He told him to start off with giving one hand a gold coin to the other, then to work on giving it to a family member and then friends, and then strangers. The king went on to be a well loved and generous man.
I think you have a head start on the king
In metta,
Raven
Yes, giving things (dana) is a very good thing to do. Perhaps the lack of generosity is what you feel. I once was given the advice to give until it hurts and that has been a very helpful advise for me.
Metta,
Sabre
A year ago Superstorm Sandy hit my area of NJ, as well as areas of Long Island and NY.
The devastation from flooding was very significant.
People are still homeless, literally, today- one year later. (my sister-in-law and her family are one of the many still homeless).
But in the immediate aftermath, many, many families needed temporary shelter and frantically searched for rentals. Within a couple of weeks, every available rental property -- whether condo, townhouse, apartment, or single family home -- was snatched up in desperation.
In my community, an 'active senior community' there were many homes for rent that had been sitting empty - sometimes for months and months. The community's HOA boards decided to drop all their seniors only restrictions, and allow families - even with kids - to temporarily rent out homes here, or move in with family members already living in the community. This was a 'good' thing to do, and the right thing to do!
Then there's the other side of the coin. People who owned homes here, either because they bought them as future retirement homes for themselves, or they inherited them from passed-on relatives, or whatever... they took this opportunity of desperation and destruction and started raising the rents. That was the 'shitty' thing to do and the wrong thing to do.
Before the storm the 'average' home in this community rented for anywhere between $900 and $1,000 a month. Some slightly less, some slightly more.
If the home was very recently updated; you know- granite kitchen, new bathrooms, hardwood floors, etc. landlords were asking about $1,200 a month. That was for top of the line, though.
Now as I search around for my sister-in law every few days, I see that the homes coming back onto the rental market in my community and surrounding areas are now, on average, $200-$350 pr. month more than they were a year ago. Why?
They are still the same house, not top of the line- no improvements made, taxes in the area haven't gone up... so why?
Price gouging, at a time of disaster, that's why. A shitty thing to do...
BUT - here's another good story about a great tenant and a great landlord!
*I* am that great tenant, and I have a great landlord!
My husband and I have been renters (by choice) for the last 25 years. I raised three kids in a rental home, ONE rental home, for 22 years. Same landlord the entire time. That is extremely unusual, wouldn't you say?
When my kids were grown and my hubs and I decided we could get more house for our rental dollar in a retirement community (and my husband was old enough), we moved and came to this community - but rented from someone else.
Well, the new landlord was the biggest JERK ever. Mean, stingy, crazy and tried to rip us off for thousands of dollars security in the ONE year we lived in his home! (He didn't rip us off in the end, because I was waaaaay smarter than he was.
But anyway, within 6-7 months of moving in, I was frantically looking for another rental home, AGAIN.
Long story a little shorter... one day out of the blue my OLD landlord contacts me and asks if I would be interested in renting out another home he just bought; right in the retirement community we were in! I said Absolutely!! How often does THAT happen, right? But that's because he knows we stay put, we take care of the house as if it was our own, (we respect his investment) and in turn he's a great landlord who doesn't hassle us, and almost never raises the rent.
Within the next two months' time, we pitched in and helped him remodel the house he just bought. My daughter Angela and I painted the entire house, my husband worked on the yard and outdoor spaces, and the (old) landlord got the home all done just as my lease with the crazy man came to an end. Perfect timing! Good karma, I'd say!
So yeah, this is why I say there's a good way to make money being in real estate and there's a not-so-good way. I like being involved in the good side of things!
We all have to make a living, and some just do it much better financially than others.
It doesn't have to be a big deal or the sign of bad morals.
Why do the houses need to be given to poor people or the money given away to strangers in need? Why not just use it to help people close to her, making sure the elderly in the family are taken good care of, that the children get educations etc. - are they worth less help and happiness because they are worth more to her?
What I think she should do is not different from what I think everyone should do:
Believe in (and vote for) a society where no one are left behind, be nice to others and help them whenever she can.
Buddha advised that the shopkeeper invests 25 % in his shop, saves up 25 % and uses 50 % on his housekeeping and family. For this to make sense, there must be a profit - large or small. Seemingly does not matter.
Monks, on the other hand, cannot of course be real estate investors. Lay Buddhists can knock themselves out with the buying and selling and profiteering.
Thanks @Ficus_religiosa for taking time to reply. I guess for a buddhist, the issue of attachment/detachment is more important than greed. If we amass a huge fortune but feel indifferent about it and feel that if all of them disappear, we wouldn't regret one bit. Like the story (I can't remember the name) of a man watching his house burning down, his wife cried but he just told his wife do not cry but enjoy looking at the fire because you won't have this opportunity again. Great man! but I can't remember who he is.
I guess for a buddhist, the issue of attachment/detachment is more important than greed. If we amass a huge fortune but feel indifferent about it and feel that if all of them disappear, we wouldn't regret one bit. Like the story (I can't remember the name) of a man watching his house burning down, his wife cried but he just told his wife do not cry but enjoy looking at the fire because you won't have this opportunity again. Great man! but I can't remember who he is.
This is exactly Kipling's message in his poem,"If."
Something like:
"If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors both the same." He said. His influences came from a Hindu source I believe.
Yes, I think the individual is responsible to live as cleanly as one can in whatever profession they employ to keep body and soul together. The Buddha gives us great example of clean living.
The talent of money- making should not be wasted. Even in a monastery a monk with the ability to manage money should used as the resource he or she is. As has been said, some people just have the knack.
The real estate agent may or may not live more cleanly than the OP.... If an evaluation of both characters were taken does the OP claim his / her superiority would be evident? Don't answer that.
I know, you are friends or relations... I have given a lot of bad advice to both in my day. Be careful OP.
I guess a hangover would be -1/1 then