New York Luxury Real Estate agents

The image that the author used for most of her Craigslist postings

Here's my short explanation: I was young and naive and really needed a thousand dollars.

And here's my long explanation: I was working as a hostess in a two-story, vomit-friendly nightmare of a club in Times Square (a.k.a. I was working at a panic attack inside of a panic attack while having a panic attack), finishing my spring semester of college, and interning. My paychecks were enough for my weekly MetroCard and the occasional iced coffee if I was feeling spontaneous, but I constantly came up short when rent was due. I also planned to move to Rome at the end of the summer to study abroad, so I needed money. A lot of it, and fast.

A friend had asked me if I wanted to be a real estate agent. I didn't know anything about real estate, but that didn't stop me from saying yes.

So it was that I got introduced to "Anna." She was in her mid 30s, intimidatingly Russian, and gorgeous in a way that forces you to accept that drinking kale and redeeming your Groupon voucher for Pilates can only do so much. The office was located in the basement of an apartment complex, which totally seemed legit. Anna and her assistant (and cousin) "Vlad" were the only two people in the office and welcomed me with a mug of tap water. (I've changed both of their names.) Although I immediately felt like this was the sort of place my parents warned me about, the colorful Post-It notes with addresses on them and key-cutting machine somehow calmed me.

Calling what I had a "job" might be a stretch, at least in the legal sense. I didn't sign a contract nor was I given tax documents. All of the money was to be paid under the table. However, Anna assured me that I could make thousands of dollars with them. If I successfully rented out an apartment, I would make half of the tenants' deposit in cash—so if I convinced someone to rent a $4, 000-a-month unit, I'd make $2, 000. After a quick tutorial in credit scores and Craigslist ads (ask if the client had a score over 720; make sure I pressed the "post" button) I began my new career as a burgeoning real estate mogul.

A part of me knew what I was doing was probably (definitely) illegal, but I chose not to think about it. I figured the less I knew, the better.

I spent my days off posting on Craigslist, eager for appointments. I would write "GORGEOUS 4BR 2BATH OPEN LUXURIOUS SPACIOUS!!!" hoping the all caps and exclamation marks would catch the attention of a desperate renter. And since I had no training in real estate terminology, the only words I used in the ads were open and spacious, because those were the most popular words on all the other Craigslist ads. Although they aren't necessarily lies, there is a certain redundancy in calling an empty space "open" and "spacious." It's like calling an empty mine shaft "deep" and "dark."