It was a golden autumn day, like the one Van Morrison sings about, when I turned my dilapidated 1975 Volkswagen in to the hallowed grounds of The Property Guru. The extent of that superstructure of bricks, mortar, wood, aluminum, glass and pure plastic overshadowed my humble down and out appearance, but I continued up that stairway to heaven with the franticness of one that knew when the time for discreetness had finally passed. "This was the moment to be saved from a poor existence, a nose diving existence not becoming of one that had such high hopes..."

I was promptly steered into his divinely decorated quarters where great photographs of his various successful property transactions were displayed on the walls. I wondered whether one should approach the guru by bowing deeper all the way, or whether perhaps I should do the knee shuffling thing. But he greeted me with great warmth and I felt at ease. A great calm crept over my being and I really forgot about my troubles and my hunger for a short while.

Before I knew it, he had me talking - about property, naturally. I told him that I had read all his books on property and that I had bought all his dvd’s as well. But, I told him, it wasn’t clear to me exactly what he meant one had to do in order to succeed big time and that now I could not wait any longer to find out about that holy grail. I told him that I think thought I had found the perfect property to take me out of my misery but that, being so intensely important to my future well being, I could not take the risk of messing up again and that I needed to understand his great thoughts and clear vision regarding the practicalities of this potential property purchase.

I then told him that this specific property that was for sale was in the perfect position. And "isn’t it so that Position is very important in the defining correct purchase?". He responded by saying something, if I remember correctly, like "yeah, but there must be something more to it than position" and what else could I tell him about this property.

I then told him that this property that I was considering buying, apart from it’s perfect position, was also on the market at a ridiculously low price according to my calculations, but what do I really know? I was there at the feet of the property guru, figuratively speaking, and I was awaiting his great insight. He responded saying something like that I really was a good hunter to sniff out a good property proposition, but this still did not grab his attention really. Was there anything else that I could tell him?

I then started to sense why there was such a difference - no, more a divide, between him and me. There I was jabbering along about basic stuff like the right position and the right price of a property purchase, while he was planets ahead of me in the considerations of such an endeavour. I was so ashamed of my mediocrity in terms of the field of property that I then increased the deplorability of my perception in adding the other basic thing regarding property, that is the right timing to buy property, the property cycle, the interest rate cycle, the political set up... blah blah blah.

He listened, then he smiled, with what I sensed as great insight in these things and how we mortals just do not have the capacity to see things in a clearer way. I cannot quite remember how we got to that, but he even took time to discuss the precise location of this property with me. And I was grateful for that and I respected him very much for that gesture, but soon after this discussion I could see that he started to tire because he was looking at his watch every now and then.

I somehow felt better talking to him, so it did not really matter that I could not really learn more from the great man. I thought to myself as I was leaving that perhaps being the loser that I am, I should discuss my perceptions about property, that it should be bought at the right time, at the right position and at the right price, with people more at my own level.

The last thing that I remember about my visit to the property guru was that even after I spent so much of his time going over the details of my lowly property speculations, he still took time to phone someone else about - I suppose - that person’s property problems, while he was looking intently at me through his window.

Postscript: the bottom line is that there is an immense difference between property gurus and us normal mortals, because a week later, whilst listening to Bruce Springsteen singing about winners and losers and being caught on the wrong side of the line, I drove once again past that property that I fancied, and there he was, the guru himself, smiling from a SOLD board whilst he was still looking intently at me and my basic propositions.

I leaned into my Volkswagen as I drove away from that spot. The Volkswagen backfired then, because, I think, it’s insides were not so clean anymore.

Wim van der Walt
26 April 2007