– If you could go back, would you choose this professional path again, or would you discard it?

– Aside from figures like Einstein, Picasso, Karajan, the “predestined,” all of us could probably do something else if we went back. We all have nostalgias, unrealized dreams. However, if the sense of the question was: are you dissatisfied, do you feel that you chose this real estate agent path only as a fallback, then my answer is no. It wasn’t just a way to get by. And not just because the family, with its various branches, lived in the “construction” field (designing, building, renovating, acting as intermediaries in buying and selling). Certainly, the family “landscape” influenced me, but it didn’t constrain or bind me.

– What do you like most about your job?

– The effort, the continuous research, the fact that a transaction, before it is successfully completed, is generally the result of long, patient work, both at your desk, at your computer, but above all with human beings, with others.

– May I ask a cheeky question: do all sellers have to put in a certain effort to convince the client…

– True, but a real estate agent is not a seller like any store owner selling any object, I say this with all due respect, of course, to those who do this job. After all, if you don’t like a pair of shoes after buying them, you leave them there.

– Well, it’s also a matter of price, a price much different from a house…

– Yes, but even for more expensive items like a car. If you don’t like it anymore, you figure something out, you sell it to a relative or a friend, you might lose something, but, in short, you find a solution. A house is a much more complex affair. And the cost is an important variable, enormously important, in this complexity, but not the only one.

– What do you mean?

– A house is where you live, spend your life, come back in the evening, sleep, it presents itself to you every time you wake up, when you’re away on a long vacation – for those who can go – you start to dream about it… in short, your home is yourself, and you are your home. Then, to some extent, within economic constraints, of course, it represents you in your own eyes. Because, for the same or almost the same price, you choose one house over another. For a series of variables, aesthetic, how you see yourself, practical aspects like proximity to services such as shops, schools, etc.

– So, you’re saying, we are intermediaries for a not only economic good.

– Yes, exactly. We move between seller and buyer, between two categories of human beings. The buyer, especially. The seller has decided to get rid of something, maybe he regrets it, but he decided. The buyer has to decide everything, again. Within a purchase, all his life companions come into play: money, expectations, aesthetic sense, dreams, in short. And, if we want a house to be sold – because only in this case do we get our remuneration – we must “understand” who the non-perfect buyer is, which doesn’t exist, like the perfect deal, but one that comes closest to that house.

– And then…

– And then, sometimes, bring out, against their own prejudices, what the buyer has inside. Maybe he wanted another neighborhood, but had he ever looked closely at that neighborhood, or had he ruled it out a priori? Or – going off script – did he look closely at the movement of the sun around the house? In short, we do a lot of practical, daily psychology. Precisely because the economic factor is so heavy, the others also weigh – within, of course, the initial economic constraint. And those of us who want to build or maintain a good name for our agency have to carry this burdensome, long, underground work. Otherwise, some deals will be closed, of course, but the “prestigious firm,” as it was written in the past, is another thing.

– Well, architect. Until the next episode.