Category: Flourishing (page 1 of 38)

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“What do you know for sure when a rumpled old man says, ‘You don’t deserve to know if I have treats in my pocket!’ And who is going to clean up all this drool?”

Saturday, I said: “I desperately wanted for this election to be about Marxism: ‘You’re what’s for dinner!™’ Biden wanted for this election to be about Trump. Biden won.”

Guess what? Obama was right: Just two short days later, Biden has managed to make the election about radicalism, at a minimum.

We’ll see how that plays out, but, meanwhile, not much else is news:

Zero Hedge: These Are The US Cities Where Workers Make The Most Relative To Their Cost-Of-Living. Fun take, but why assume work-from-homers will remain in American? Why assume they will even be Americans, in due course?

Forbes: Is Florida The Likeliest To Rebound First From COVID? If only Arizona had a governor like DeSantis…

New York Post: ‘Ghost town’: In-person attendance dwindles at NYC schools. Assuming we do not vote to become North Venezuela, a signal unforced error for Marxism will turn out to be letting up on the stranglehold they have on America’s children. Children can’t get Coronavirus, but some of them are learning to read for a change. Readers are rebels. Ask me how I know.

National Review: If Biden were a Republican.

Issues and Insights: Beyond Court Packing: Here’s How Dems Plan To Create A One-Party State.

Salena Zito: No matter who wins, there is no exit from the roller coaster anytime soon.

Joel Kotkin: Will the Cultural Revolution Be Canceled? The challenge to our civilization is real, but most Americans aren’t sympathetic to social radicalism. I believe no one who worked for what he has wants to see it destroyed. But as everyone in real estate can tell you, a backward-looking approach only gets you so far…

This election is not about Trump, Biden, court-packing, nit-picking or any other media-borne nitwittery. It’s about Marxism and its zeal to extinguish human liberty. First we must renounce the Marxists, but then we must also purge them from Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“The simple fact is that you eat better if you work better, even if you are all alone.”

So says the preamble to the NAR Code of Ethics, and I love those five words of it, at an absolute minimum.

It’s existentially true, obviously. I love the term for real estate in español for that reason – bienes raices, rooted things. So many contract disputes resolved with better word choices!

But the real truth of that observation is economic: Underneath all of the fake wealth of Wall Street securities is the real wealth of real estate.

Silicon Valley billionaires may not own a lot of dirt, but their investors do. Undergirding most mere millionaires, other than their own businesses, is a portfolio of commercial and residential real estate – three or four suburban tract homes, a triple-net drug store or two, strip malls, office parks, apartment communities, skyscrapers. If they don’t own the dirt themselves, their own investors or their REITs do.

The literal foundation all wealth is the land.

Hence: Husbandry of all wealth begins with husbandry of the land we are destined to live on.

This is the idea of stewardship, and it is the essence of the profit-seeking ideal: Better profits come from better stewardship. That much is an economics of isolation: No need for buyers, sellers, trade, currencies or even the idea of profit itself. The simple fact is that you eat better if you work better, even if you are all alone.

So I have some questions for the putative, would-be, wannabe stewards of the American economy. You can pick your own favorite corporate gnomes, but I am specifically highlighting Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Rich Barton of Zillow and Glenn Kelman of Redfin – them because they seem to me to be the worst possible stewards for Seattle, the city they have inflicted themselves on.

So first we note that corporate weenies of every pinstripe have denounced the “systemic racism” committed by everyone around them but themselves.

And we take account that many of them have promised flagrant violations of fair-employment laws to undo all the “systemic racism” Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“I’ve had better haircuts, but never cheaper or faster…”

But: I have been a Realtor for nearly twenty years, a broker/owner for fifteen. I have sold a few hundred homes and overseen or advised on the sale of hundreds of others. I have met with or spoken to thousands of customers, making hundreds of them my clients or tenants to the rental homes we manage. I am my only agent for now – I sub out anything that does not require a license – but, with my wife Cathleen on board or without her, we have always been scrupulous about fairness – not just fair-housing but fair-dealing as such. I hate predators. I never want to be one.

So what is my experience of actual, specific, objectively-real racism in real estate?

I once had an out-of-town investor in my car who said things I considered red flags, so I drove him back to his hotel. This is the same thing I do with irrationally optimistic investors – except I’ve met dozens of them.

Want more? When I first started, working as an apartment locator, I had a very racist elderly black woman as a client, but I just laughed at the things she said – and in the end she found a new place without me.

I have one more: We used to use a centrally-located Fidelity office for most of our title work. In those days, that was the “Spanish” office, the one where all deals that were to close in Spanish were sent. Over the years, I saw several contracts fall apart on Friday afternoons, with the whole family coming down to sign, only to find out that no one, until then, had told them what their monthly payment would be and how much cash they needed to close. Not Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“Nihil nichts, no?”

Daily Mail: More people are leaving California than ever before, driven out by worsening wildfires, politics and the skyrocketing cost of living.

RedState.com: A Most American City Becoming Increasingly Unlivable.

The Federalist: What Life Is Like In California’s Post-Apocalyptic Landscape.

City Journal: Let’s Hold On to the Throwaway Society.

Daily Caller: Wildfires Will Become Worse Thanks To Decades-Old Liberal Policies, Says Fire Expert Who Predicted Uptick In Blazes.

Good grief!

Who needs a palate cleanser, some good old fashioned smoke-blowing?

Forbes: 14 Home Upgrades That Will Boost Property Value. Voiceover: “Your mileage may vary.”

What’s the good news, for Monday? Everywhere things aren’t awful, they’re great. Get thee hence and make the most of it!