The best place to obtain a broker is at a junior high school, where you’ll find that virtually all the teachers obtained real estate licenses once they realized what a tragic mistake they had made, selecting a profession that requires them to spend entire days confined in small rooms with adolescent children. Often it is sufficient to just drive by the school and beep your horn; within seconds, brokers will come swarming out of doors and windows, eager to abandon their lesson plans on the Three Major Bones of the Inner Ear so they can help you find a home.

There are many factors to consider in selecting a broker, such as competence, honesty, vertical leap, and placement in the Evening Gown Competition. But the most important factor is an intangible quality called “professionalism,” by which I mean “car size.” You want to select the broker with the largest possible car, because you’re going to spend far more time in this car than in whatever home you ultimately buy.

Next you should tell your broker what your Price Range is, so he or she can laugh until his or her official company blazer is soaked with drool. What your broker finds so amusing, of course, is that there is virtually nothing, outside of the Third World, available in your Price Range. I don’t care if your Price Range is a hillion jillion dollars, there will be nothing available in it. This is a fundamental principle of real estate.

At first you will probably insist on looking at the something in your Price Range anyway, which will result in the following comical dialogue:

YOU: This is It? They’re asking $89,500 for a refrigerator carton?

BROKER: Yes, but I think they’ll take $85,000.

This process is called “getting a feel for the market.” Once you’ve undergone it, your broker will explain a creative new financial concept that has been developed to enable people such as yourself to enjoy the benefits of home ownership, called: Spending Way More Than You Can Afford. Usually you have to talk yourself into going with this concept. Here are some sound financial arguments you can use: