Chapter 1: The Real Game

Forget what you think you know about real estate agents. The real money isn’t in selling houses—it’s in knowing who’s about to lose theirs. That’s the insider secret nobody wants you to hear: it’s not the agents working for clients, it’s the wealthy big shots scrambling to get on the good side of people like us. The top dogs aren’t sweating over a few grand—they’re raking in six figures before lunch.

If you’ve ever watched those glossy TV shows where some grinning agent walks a family through a four-bedroom colonial and pitches granite countertops, let me set you straight: that’s not the real game. The power players—the ones who make real money—are more like bouncers at the velvet rope of an exclusive club. And the ones dying to get in? Hedge fund guys in Patagonia vests, trust fund brats who never had to mow a lawn, old-money types who still send their kids to Andover. It’s not about open houses and earnest money; it’s about having the inside scoop before the world even knows a property’s for sale.

You think those folks in blazers showing families around houses are the real agents? Please. They’re barely scraping by.

Most agents are hustling, grinding through weekends, drowning in paperwork, and barely making rent. Maybe they lease a Lexus or rent a tiny office on Main Street, but behind the curtain, they’re sweating every single commission. The real sharks? You’ll never see their faces—they’re too busy making silent deals you’ll never hear about.

The ones truly cashing in are the ones who already have tens of millions in family assets, millions in the bank, who jump into the business for the information. With an agent’s network, they know exactly which homeowners are about to break.

It’s not about helping families find a home—it’s about knowing, before anyone else, which family is about to lose theirs. These people could have retired before thirty, but instead they slap on the agent badge for access. Their idea of spending is wiring half a million for a fixer-upper like it’s a new pair of Nikes.

Take the pandemic, for example—so many rich people went bankrupt. These desperate homeowners, their houses appraised at two million, but to get quick cash, they’re ready to let it go for $1.5 million. Cash only. No loans.

The pandemic flipped the board. Suddenly, even the folks with lakefront homes and Viking stoves were upside-down on their mortgages. When it all went sideways, you had parents who sent their kids to private school for years suddenly selling their house to the first buyer with a duffel bag of cash. A two-million-dollar place for $1.5 million, no questions asked, as long as you could wire the cash in days—not weeks.

That’s when the agent pounces. He’s a trust fund kid himself, loaded with cash, and just buys the place outright.

We’re not talking some suit-and-tie rookie—we’re talking about the guy who got his first Rolex before he lost his first tooth. He doesn’t scramble for financing or beg for board approval. He shows up, wires the money, and in two days, the deed’s his. That fast.

Once he owns it, he goes for a mortgage. He’s already slipped the right people a little thank-you—gift cards, bottles of bourbon, whatever keeps the wheels greased. He gets a $2 million loan on the house, pays a little over ten grand a month, and after half a year, just shrugs and says, “Sorry, I’m out of money, can’t pay the loan.” He tells them to take the house.

Here’s where it gets dirty. The agent uses the property as collateral and lands a sweet mortgage—sometimes inflating the appraisal with a little help from his network. He makes payments for a few months, just enough to look good. Then he throws up his hands, claims hardship, and walks away. The mortgage company takes the house, but not before everyone—loan officers, appraisers, even the agent’s cronies—get their cut.

The mortgage company doesn’t lose—they get the house. The loan officer doesn’t lose—they get their kickbacks. The agent loses even less—he’s already pocketed hundreds of thousands.

It’s a win-win for everyone on the inside. The agent’s got his cash out, the mortgage officer gets their side money, and the company repossesses a property at a discount. Everyone but the average guy on the street gets richer. If you’re not in the inner circle, you’re just cannon fodder.

So who loses? Everybody else. This is house flipping. This is leverage.

That’s the side of real estate nobody ever brings up at the Sunday barbecue. It’s not about community—it’s about leverage. Wonder why you can’t buy a starter home in your own city? This is why.

You say it’s immoral—so what? It’s not illegal. The law can’t touch him. And if he does it too much and his credit gets trashed, he just pays a few grand to someone at the bank to wipe the bad record. That’s how the rich play the game.

Sure, it’s scummy, maybe even soulless, but unless you’ve got a senator on speed dial, nobody’s stopping you. Credit report looking rough? No big deal—just call in a favor, slip a few grand under the table, and it all gets cleaned up. It’s the American loophole dream. The system’s not broken. It’s working exactly the way they designed it.

Me? I’m just a broke real estate agent. I don’t have the capital to play at this level. Every time there’s a low-priced property, all I can do is hand over my info and watch those rich kids in the office make a killing.

I’m not in that club. My business cards are bent, my shoes are scuffed, and every time a hot tip lands in the office, I’m the one fetching coffee for the guy who’ll actually close the deal. I give them the lead, watch them drive off in their Range Rover, and try not to choke on my envy.

Until my turn finally came—my family home got torn down.

The irony is, my break didn’t come from hustle or luck. It came from loss. The bulldozers rolled through my old street in rural Ohio, tearing down my childhood home and everything it stood for. Progress, they called it—some new highway or strip mall coming through. But for me, it was the first real cash I’d seen in years.

My home’s out in rural Ohio, and the compensation’s based on household headcount. My wife, my kid, and I sold our share and only got $70,000, but I didn’t tell my wife the truth. I took her ID, forged her signature, and took the money. She still thought the demolition hadn’t happened yet.

The payout was peanuts compared to what I’d dreamed of—seventy grand, split for three. But the guilt? That was all mine. I used my wife’s ID, signed the papers myself, and pocketed the cash. She still had no idea her childhood backyard was just another patch of torn-up dirt. The guilt sat in my chest like a cinder block. I told myself it was just business, but I couldn’t look my daughter in the eye that night.

It’s not that I wanted to betray her. It’s just that her family’s looked down on me for years for being broke. They even have the nerve to mock me in front of our kid, calling me a loser. If I get mad, they say they’re just joking, that I can’t take a joke because I’m useless.

You try living with that. Every Thanksgiving, I’d sit at the folding table in my in-laws’ finished basement, picking at cold green bean casserole while her brother made cracks about my job. Every birthday, sitting across from her brother and mother as they laugh about my dead-end career. They don’t care if it cuts deep; they just want to remind me where I stand. My own kid’s going to grow up thinking her dad’s a joke. I told myself: if I could just get ahead, just once, maybe I’d earn their respect—or at least get them off my back.

I wanted to get in on this game, use this money to turn my life around, so nobody could look down on me anymore.

I wasn’t dreaming of a mansion, just a seat at the table. I pictured paying off a car, getting my wife something nice, maybe even putting down roots in a decent zip code. More than anything, I wanted to see the look on my in-laws’ faces when I finally made it.