What do a Scottish Play and the Boogieman have to do with Real Estate?

Unless you have experience as an actor, you may not be aware that it is thought to be bad luck – really bad luck – to speak the name of one of William Shakespeare’s most performed plays inside of a theatre. Productions of Macbeth have been plagued with over 400 years of unmitigated catastrophes, so much in fact, that unless actors are rehearsing or performing the play, quoting it is expressly forbidden and even the mention of the title is thought to bring disaster. Actors will instead call it “The Scottish Play” (as it is set in Scotland) and refer to the title character as “The Scottish Lord.”

The play is believed to be cursed, and while I don’t necessarily buy into it, the evidence presents a pretty good case. The night of the play’s first performance in 1606, the actor playing Lady Macbeth became inexplicably feverish and died backstage, forcing Shakespeare himself to fill the role. In 1672, during a performance in Amsterdam, the lead actor substituted a real dagger during a fight scene on stage, and killed another actor in full view of the audience. During an 1849 performance, 31 people were trampled to death when a riot broke out in the theatre. On April 9, 1865, Abraham Lincoln brought a copy of the play with him aboard a riverboat, amusing passengers by reading aloud passages dealing with the assassination of one of the characters. Later that week, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre. In 1937, during a rehearsal of Macbeth, a 25-pound weight fell onto the stage, barely missing actor Laurence Olivier. Three actors died during a 1942 production of the play, and the costume designer committed suicide. Charlton Heston suffered severe burns on his legs when his tights caught on fire during a performance in 1953, due to the fact that they had been “accidentally” soaked in kerosene. At the Metropolitan Opera in 1988, a production of Macbeth was cancelled at intermission when an audience member plunged to his death from the top balcony into the orchestra pit.

The legend surrounding the curse states that Shakespeare used actual Wiccan incantations in the play’s text, thus angering evil spirits. If someone quotes “The Scottish Play” inside the theatre, or refers to it by name, there are steps of recourse the offender must take, which include spitting on the ground, turning around three times, and reciting a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”

It may sound odd, but actors get very paranoid about this curse, and theatre accidents are often attributed to the curse of that Scottish play. It’s not illogical to assume, however, that the paranoia more than the curse may cause such accidents to occur.

Now, by this point, 476 words into the article, you may be wondering what this all has to do with real estate. This paranoia and fear surrounding the curse of Macbeth has resulted in some serious accidents. Much the same way, the paranoia and fear surrounding the current real estate market can be dangerous. I’d like to talk about a word that makes real estate agents (and economists, and investors…) a little paranoid and scared, the “R” word. That’s right, Recession. It’s being used a lot in the media lately, without much quantitative substantiation to support the claims.

The very existence of this word is a Catch-22. The first speculative pundit to mention “recession” should be beaten, because once its brought up, the conversation goes like this:

News Anchor 1: Well, looking at the polls, the Republicans/Democrats/Purple People-Eaters are gaining speed against the incumbent party. What would really trip up [insert incumbent candidate/party name here] is if we headed into a recession…
News Anchor 2: You really think a recession is possible at this point? I mean, the economy is doing so well…

Sooner or later, news broadcasts start off saying things like, “We’re starting to hear a lot of talk about recession…” Suddenly, all this recession-talk in the news has people scared, and little things (i.e. dips in the stock market, a bad month or two in the housing market) have consumers fearing that we are indeed going into a recession, just like everyone says! Consumer confidence suffers, people stop spending money, and BAM! – recession¹ .

If my Macbeth analogy didn’t quite do it for you, maybe this next example will: Have you ever told a seven-year old a horror story right before bed? I found that if you want to guarantee a child will not go to sleep, telling them a horror story about the boogieman will pretty much do it. They lay awake in bed, thinking about your story over and over again, until they run out of their room, convinced they saw a monster in their closet. I think this is a fairly decent analogy, except in this example, the media is the babysitter, you and I are the seven-year old kid, and the fear of a recession is the boogieman. Whether there’s a monster in the closet or not, people get scared and run out of their bedroom (read: stop buying houses, pull their money from investments, etc.). This is how fear of a recession, causes a dip in consumer confidence, which leads to decreased spending (because people are scared), which triggers an actual recession² .

This is ridiculous. Let’s look at the GDP growth for 2007: 1st Quarter: +1.3%, 2nd Quarter: +3.8%, 3rd Quarter: +3.9%.
I’m not seeing a recession yet.

It is your job as a real estate professional who is armed with actual knowledge to shine your flashlight into the closet and show your clients that there is no boogieman hiding in there. If all else fails, the next time you hear someone use the “r” word, from here on out labeled as “the word of which we will not speak,” spit on the ground, turn around three times, and start reciting lines from Hamlet.





¹ At this point, the author would like to acknowledge the use of the slippery slope rhetorical fallacy for illustrative purposes. A recession is defined as a negative growth in the GDP for two or more successive quarters in year. No, recessions don’t happen if the NASDAQ falls two points on a Wednesday.

² See above footnote. Seriously, folks, just making sure my bases are covered. You cannot trip and fall and cause a recession (although, in his day, it might have been possible for Allen Greenspan to trip and fall and cause one…).