Category: Group Therapy (page 21 of 81)

Since 2014, I’ve playing with a contrarian listing praxis born out of my own frustrations representing buyers. Bidding in the dark is dumb. Being coy about what the principals will or won’t do is dumb. Paperwork for its own sake is dumb.

What I do by now is radically transparent and as frictionless as I can make things. I price to the market in round numbers – no screwing around from square one. I disclose when offers will be reviewed, and then I disclose the best offers in the MLS as they come in – Cash, Conventional and FHA. I work by text and phone with the strongest offers, telling the agents exactly what they need to do to beat the other guys. Then I tailor the offer I like by Addendum – not by Counter Offer; a Counter is a rejection and I am all about affection. Then we close.

It’s easy to be a lister now, but try this seven years ago. Even so: It works. If the price is right, you’ll show. If the value is right, you’ll get offers. If you accelerate negotiations by transparency and salesmanship, you’ll find the buyer you want before they find another house they want more.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Criminal charges filed against Texas Realtor Jenna Ryan.

Housing Wire: How Biden’s $1.9T stimulus plan impacts housing.

Reason: The 2020s Will Be the Decade of Deficit Doomsday.

The Daily Mail: Hay big spender! Farmer Bill is now the biggest owner of agricultural land in the US – billionaire Gates buys up 242,000 acres across 18 states.

CNBC: NRA files for bankruptcy, says it will reincorporate in Texas.

John Hinderaker: Did The Democrats Steal The Presidential Election?

Jame Bovard: Collective Guilt And The New Witch Hunt.

Marxism is patricide-by-proxy, but that’s a matter of means and ends. The motivation behind every religious frenzy is the conquest of reality. This is what is actually meant by the phrase ‘narrative control’: Marx’s objectively-atrocious behavior would have been praiseworthy but for his father’s scolding.

Marxist “thought” mainly consists of The Opposite Game – it’s easy and they are lazy ab initio – but the ideas being opposed are Dad’s ideas, the ways a self-responsible father goes about things with his children:

The Marxist solution to everything is simply to do the opposite of what any self-responsible father would do. Accordingly, self-responsible fathers are the first and best defense against Marxism (and every form of criminal domination and subjugation) in a family. Hence fatherhood must be destroyed.

The bad news? Dedicated Marxists – their name is legion, alas – are the steadfast opponents of everything that has made human life rich and safe and gracious and joyous and beautiful – and possible – so far. They are tyrannical toddlers perpetually melting down from infinite unrequited father-love – from an eternally unmet need for loving boundaries.

The good news? They refuse to breed propitiously – and “science” has now made it easy for them to refuse to breed at all. If we can get them out of the classroom – or get our children out of their classrooms – the nursery room will take care of the rest.

In other news:

Redfin: Housing Market Update: First New-Listings Decline in 5 Months Portends a 2021 Housing Frenzy to Rival 2020.

The Guardian: San Francisco office market in collapse as tech workers stay home.

Business Insider: Twitter and Facebook have seen $51 billion in combined market value wiped out since booting Trump from their platforms. If the boards of directors of Twitter, Facebook, etc., do not discipline their hired help, they are complicit and liable in the damage being done to shareholder interests. In a well-fathered world, these crimes would have consequences.

Brad Polumbo: The Mobbing of a Portland Bookstore Reminds Us Why Read more

As with the last impeachment, there is an incontrovertible transcript obstructing the putsch. Perhaps Nancy Pelosi will sit on the Articles again, to give the Red Chinese time to cook up another bioweapon.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Alongside rising yields, mortgage rates increase to 2.79%.

Redfin: Redfin Survey: 60% of Homebuyers Believe the Housing Market Will Fare Better This Year Than Last Year.

Housing Wire: Texas Realtor who stormed Capitol responds to backlash.

Redfin: Home Prices Rose 13% in December, Sales Up 16%.

The Washington Examiner: Boom: 21M guns sold in 2020, up 60%, women, blacks top buyers.

Sultan Knish: California’s Internet Censorship Office Is Watching What You Say.

Christopher Rufo: Woke Elementary.

City Journal: Chicago Teachers, Checked Out.

Intellectual Takeout: Preparing Your Kids for the ‘Re-education Camps’.

Christopher Bedford: 4 Reasons McConnell’s Terrible Impeachment Blunder Is Doomed To Failure.

Zero Hedge: How COVID Paved The Road To Serfdom.

So the ruling class that just spent four years insisting that the election they failed to rig sufficiently was stolen is now insisting that the election that was even more-obviously rigged must be referred to as being “free and fair.”

That’s the Big Lie in action: Either mouth the obvious lie or be persecuted for refusing.

#BrotherYouAskedForIt!

In other news:

CNBC: Mortgage refinance demand spikes 20% as borrowers fear missing out on record-low rates.

Housing Wire: New-year optimism reflected in mortgage applications jump.

The Los Angeles Times: California exodus intensifies as retirees, teachers, musicians seek cheaper, less-crowded pastures.

City Journal: Striking a Blow Against Economic Recovery: Mayor de Blasio plans a ban on new hotels.

Glenn Greenwald: How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler.

PJ Media: If Global Corporations Walk Away from Republicans the GOP Will Have to Listen to New Voters.

Tristan Justice: A Divisive Impeachment Will Only Make Trump A Martyr.

Julie Kelly: Capitol Riot Used to Crush ‘The Big Lie’.

Michael Walsh: An Ascendant Left Silences and Excludes Its Enemies.

If a sales clerk in a brick ’n’ mortar store got pushy with his political opinions, I’d be gone forever. Forbade me to express my own views? So much the worse. Shut down the competition? Arson ain’t in me – but I ain’t everybody.

So: Jeff Bezos: My wife, who until this weekend loved Amazon Prime, is in the process of firing you. Had you had sense enough to fire the Marxists who took over your business, you could have kept her – and millions like her.

Oh, well. Here’s you chance to learn to do better going forward.

A simple maxim from retailers of old: “The customer is always right.”

What does it mean? Shut the flock up and take the money.

Try it. It works – where what you’re doing now reeks.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Compass files for IPO.

Redfin: Survey: One-Third of Homebuyers Would Relocate If Remote Work Becomes Permanent; One-Third Already Have. Remote will have become a must-have for recruitment.

Housing Wire: What bonds are telling us about the housing market.

Tyler O’Neil: Parler Sues Amazon, Asks Court to Reverse Illegal ‘Death Blow’.

Jordan Davidson: The Biggest Gun Forum On The Planet Was Just Kicked Off The Internet Without Explanation.

Victoria Taft: The Left Tries Another ‘High-Tech Lynching’ of Clarence Thomas and His ‘Terrorist’ Wife After Trump Rally.

Townhall: Antifa’s Determined to Prevent a Book About Their Tactics From Being Published.

The Washington Examiner: New role for antifa: Biden’s ‘shock troops’.

Ron Paul: The ‘War On Terror’ Comes Home.

Robert Stacy McCain: Staying Sane in a World Gone Mad.

Robert Spencer: Fascism Comes to the U.S.

PowerLine: The Deep State is Rattled.

Matt Taibbi: We Need a New Media System.

Thomas Sowell: Is Truth Irrelevant?

Brendan Eich invented Javascript. So what? So he’s the guy who made the web work. When the internet stopped looking like circus posters with business cards and started acting like software – when the web started working madly as a point-of-sale terminal – that was Brendan Eich.

In consequence, he stands an excellent chance of turning out, in due course, to have been the most wealth-productive person ever to have walked the Earth.

He also donated money to a group opposing gay marriage. For this awful crime, he was doxxed and instantly cancelled. By Mozilla/Firefox. Which he co-founded.

By cancelling Parler last night, Amazon Web Services demonstrates that we are all peons now. Even so, Mozilla/Firefox will not rest in its mission to cannibalize the future…

PJ Media: Mozilla CEO Says Deplatforming President Trump Isn’t Enough.

Rob Hahn: The Big Test for REALTOR Associations and New Speech Code: The Jenna Ryan Situation. Long read. Doesn’t really matter: Everyone targeted by speech codes knows who they’re aimed at – and now everyone else knows, too. “This is not intended to” refers to the abuses to be effected in two years. “We would never, ever, ever” means five years. What would the Venezuelan Association of Realtors do?

Axios: All the platforms that have banned or restricted Trump so far.

Joy Pullman: Big Corporate Uses Capitol Riots To Push Communist-Style Social Credit System On Americans.

Jordan Davidson: Russian Dissident Alexey Navalny Decries Twitter Censorship Of Trump, Compares To Kremlin.

Andrea Widburg: Democrats close in for the kill – not just Trump, but all Republicans.

The Federalist: The Global Consequences Of The Tech-Lash Will Be Severe.

Clarice Feldman:
The Night of the Tech Long Knives.

Roger Kimball: The ‘Virtue’ of the New Totalitarians.

Mark Steyn: Kathy’s World. Kathy Shaidle was an amazing writer and one of the best friends this blog ever had. Light a candle, but don’t waste it. We didn’t listen to her, so you’ll be needing it later…

As I have been warning for a while, big companies are being taken over by their most-Marxist employees. Twitter will turn out to have ditched a huge chunk of its shareholder value by Kristallnachting President Trump and his supporters, and other self-NASCAR-ization stories are piling up like the third turn in a NASCAR race, but the prize blunder of the anti-Trump corporate putsch belongs to Jeff Bezos – at least for now.

What happened? Last night, Amazon Web Services announced that its most-Marxist employees have commanded it to cancel its web-hosting contract with Parler, the alternative-of-the-moment to Twitter.

Why does that matter?

Third, Amazon has now joined Google and Apple in dropping a triple-guillotine on a Twitter competitor – which will make for very juicy evidence in forthcoming anti-trust suits.

Second, many, many millions of pissed-off Americans will now boycott Amazon. Don’t believe me? Ask Fox News. Ask NASCAR.

But first and most astoundingly, AWS has just announced to its thousands of web-hosting clients that its most-Marxist employees have a Papal veto over their content and can put out their lights at any moment.

Billions upon billions of dollars in hosting contracts will be cancelled as soon as practicable until Amazon explicitly abjures content discrimination.

Won’t shareholders self-correct all of these unforced errors? Why haven’t they, so far?

Why would Jef Bezos commit what may turn out to have been a trillion-dollar blunder?

Is his hatred of Trump even greater than his storied greed?

Or is all of this just more China – burning its infowar assets as it goes?

More humbug:

Zero Hedge: Washington “One-China” Policy Dead As Pompeo Lifts Restrictions On US-Taiwan Relations. Just as the Neom announcement foreshadowed all of Trump’s Mideast peace agreements, this may turn out to be yesterday’s biggest news.

Buzzfedd News: Amazon Is Booting Parler Off Of Its Web Hosting Service.

Sharyl Attkisson: CENSORED: Parler founder says ‘We’ll be back Tuesday’.

Tyler O’Neil: The All-Out Assault on Conservative Thought Has Just Begun.

Legal Insurrection: The Great Purge Expands As CNN Sets Its Sights On Fox News’ Cable Providers.

iGeek: Digital Kristallnacht.

Daniel Greenfield: Parler Read more

Here’s an obvious fact no one wants to think about: America has had a Praetorian Guard since the end of World War II. It was crypto – not even nukes – that birthed the security state; you can see its inception in “The Imitation Game.” Our unelected, unacknowledged guardians have, so far, kept America’s nuclear weapons from falling into enemy hands.

That will change on January 20th, if China Joe Biden in inaugurated.

The alternative might seem to be secession, with or without a civil war, but that doesn’t work, either. Anything that disrupts the vigilance of our defenses cannot happen.

Accordingly, it seems reasonable to suppose that it won’t. If popular self-government has been an illusion in The West for 75 years, this is one more veil we should expect to see fall away from our eyes in the coming days.

Is that good news or bad? Far better than the alternative, at least in the short-run.

Otherwhere:

The Washington Examiner: Poll: ‘Civil War’ expectations reach new high, 71% of Trump voters. Most important housing story of the day, by far. Incidentally, have you figured out yet why BloodhoundBlog is back in daily operation?

Redfin: Housing Market Update: Home Prices Up 13%, Pending Sales Rise 38%.

Housing Wire: Economists see housing as bright spot to unemployment.

Real Clear Investigations: A Big Move to Ban Realtor ‘Hate Speech.’ At Work. Anywhere. 24/7. As always, actual real estate news does not come from the real estate press. This is a nice read today – after yesterday.

Jacob Sullum: Did Trump Commit a Crime When He Riled Up His Supporters Before They Rioted?

Jordan Davidson: Twitter Just Nuked The Account Of The World’s Biggest Critic Of Big Tech And China.

American Thinker: Silence Will Be the Next Hate Crime.

So everybody knows the election was stolen – and that’s the point. You just watched the Congress sanctimoniously sanctify that Big Lie – all the while telling still more lies about “terrorism” and “peaceful protest” – and all of that is the point.

The long game is to goad the Middle Class into acting out, as seen at the Capitol, in order to malign them as ‘white supremacists’ – thus to rationalize disarming, enslaving and exterminating America’s Kulaks.

“You don’t have to fall in love, you just have to fall in line.” Famed psychopath Hillary Clinton said that – and she would love to see you in a place where you don’t dare dispute it.

But: Meanwhile: If you meekly fall in line, the crocodile won’t eat you – today.

But if you object in any way at all – they’ll know who to come for.

Donald Trump brought America a nation-unifying landslide. If we let China Joe steal our Republic, he’ll be around to steal everything else in due course.

Elsewhere, as if anything else could matter at this juncture:

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates drop even lower to new record of 2.65%.

CNBC: Buyers and sellers are substantially more pessimistic about the housing market, as Covid cases surge again.

Housing Wire: For 2021 housing data, context is key.

Tablet: Techxodus: The flight of terrified techies from California to Texas marks the end of one era, and the beginning of a new one.

Frontpage Mag: The Great UnReason of 2020: The ‘Curious, but Quite Authentic, Inability to Think’.

American Thinker: Recognizing the coordinated attacks on the First Amendment.

John Daniel Davidson: Media Outrage Over Capitol Riot Isn’t About Defending Democracy, It’s About Wielding Power.

An innocent, unarmed “peaceful protestor” – a 14-year Airforce vet – was shot and killed by police in the Capitol yesterday. What’s the name of her murderer? What charges have been brought against him? Now you know what the Red Chinese will do with America’s military, if China Joe Biden completes the sale on January 20th. But you don’t have to wait until then to find out which live don’t matter.

On the other side of the street, we have three iBuyer plays. It’s a stupid time to try to buy at a discount, but dead money always gets a seat at the table and an easy chance to lose. Even so, if you parse the arguments, each one turns on agency-with-an-interest – on overt and financially-advantageous fiduciary violations by real estate licensees – so the ultimate class action lawsuits should be fun to watch.

Housing Wire: RedfinNow launches in Phoenix housing market.

Housing Wire: Offerpad expands services through homebuilder partner.

Housing Wire: Knock offers Home Swap in Jacksonville, Florida, market.

CNBC: What a Democratic-controlled Congress could mean for renters struggling amid the pandemic.

Housing Wire: Democrat Senate win could cut refinance wave short.

David Marcus: The Nation’s Riots Have Now Entered The Capitol. The Center Cannot Hold.

I wrote a song this morning. Feel free to sing it with me:

I do not consent
I do not consent
I do not consent
to being enslaved by government.

I know Trump’s victory – and America’s – was stolen, and I now suspect that all elections have been corrupt for decades. But that does not even matter, by now: America is at the abyss, and if it tumbles, the whole world goes with it.

Fun fact: Every prediction is non-epiphanted. What happens today could change everything.

Otherwhere:

CNBC: Mortgage demand from homebuyers pulled back sharply, even as rates ended 2020 near record low. Hmm… How’d that happen?

Housing Wire: Mortgage applications drop over holidays. Hey, maybe that’s it!

CNBC: Snowflake CEO says Covid has shown old approach to working at the office is ‘nonsense’.

City Journal: The Sunshine Exodus: New York license plates increasingly stand out on Florida roads.

Lee Smith: The American Elite Declares Its Independence From America.

Christopher Rufo: Radicals in the Classroom: San Diego’s school district tells white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murdering” black children and should undergo “antiracist therapy.”

Last year was a clinic for the Cautious, but preening Ci came off very badly, compared to compassionate Cs. Whether the impetus is the virus, the response to it or the riots, Cs and Ds are on the move – away from every pernicious Ci influence.

Housing is about kids and dogs. Every noun in that sentence will do better, going forward, because of 2020’s hysterical Ci overreach. Everyone wants to believe in his own peculiar genius, but good news, most often, comes from the other guy’s mistakes. Rejoice and be glad in it.

Elsewhere:

Housing Wire: Will we have a buyer’s housing market in 2021?

Housing Wire: Could 2% define mortgage rates for the next decade?

CNBC: Home prices are rising faster in the middle of the U.S. as Covid drives people away from coasts.

Jordan Davidson: Exodus From Blue States In 2020 Fueled By COVID And Government Mandates.

City Journal: For Chicago Homeowners, It’s All Pain, Little Gain: Driven by exploding pension costs, the city’s property-tax hikes are depressing the housing market.

American Thinker: The Future: It Ain’t Gonna Be Pretty.

Margot Cleveland: Is The United States Too Big To Save?

One of the awful consequences of the Deep State’s deep aversion to Donald Trump and his supporters is the deliverance of Hong Kong in to Red China’s bloody clutches. Perhaps Trumps could have done nothing – or perhaps he will do something yet – but America, Hong Kong and the whole world suffered while the leader of the free world was being swarmed by gnats.

When the heroes of Hong Kong were protesting, we longed to be the Americans they imagined us to be. This week we get to find out who we really are.

In other news:

Joel Kotkin: Can California stop Big Tech from decamping for cheaper places?

The Federalist: Radical Democrats Are Turning Minneapolis Into A Violent Wasteland.

AND Magazine: She Painted The Pavement And Failed Her City.

Roger Kimball: Who Will Be Inaugurated?

Stella Morabito: Ignoring And Ridiculing Election Fraud Concerns Will Not Make Them Go Away.

Vivek Saxena: Peter Navarro to release full election report ‘The Art of the Steal’ on Monday. Here’s what he alleges.

David Solway: January 6, 2021: The Day of the Electoral Epiphany.

American Thinker: Why the Left Always Wins.

And here’s a song, lately sung in Hong Kong, I hope to be hearing a lot over the next few days:

The caravans of Trump supporters are on the move to Washington, to converge there on or before 9 am on Wednesday, January 6th – the Feast of the Epiphany, the Twelfth Day of Christmas.

I don’t know if their transit will be news, but their arrival will be: We made a stout point of ignoring all the rioting, looting and destruction committed by Antifa, BLM and other arms of the DNCCP last year. Two million or more very neat, very orderly taxpayers will be decried as bloodthirsty terrorists.

The real question: Does Trump have a plan beyond massed Sullaism – a vast, intimidating mob? We shall see…

In a world without real estate news:

Sacramento Business Journal: A multibillion-dollar f-you.

The Atlantic: The Pandemic Disproved Urban Progressives’ Theory About Gentrification.

The New York Post: Say a prayer for New York City.

Forbes: As More Americans Move To No-Income-Tax States, More Lawmakers Move To Phase Out State Income Taxes.

The Washington Examiner: 2020 was the point of no return for establishment media.

Michael Goodwin: President Trump is set for his last stand.

Sundance: January 6th Ted Cruz Has a Rare Second-Chance At Redemption, But Don’t Expect Him to Take It…

Daniel Greenfield: Frontpage Person of the Year: The Disenfranchised American Voter.

Cheryl Chumley: Fear is the socialist, communist, collectivist left’s greatest weapon.

The seven rules of The Church of Splendor are mental- and moral-management strategies for an appropriately-prioritized anarchist egoist life – that being mine. You’re free to make free with them:

1. I don’t go to your church.
2. I am not arguing with you.
3. Don’t be an asshole.
4. Butthurt is not contagious.
5. Never play the other man’s game.
6. Keep your own counsel.
7. Look out for your own.

The one that matters most right now? Rule #7.

My perennial New Year’s admonition: Want to be a better, more-perfect version of yourself? Master something difficult this year. My bite of the apple: I already know how to play the ukulele, so this year I’m going learn how to work the supply side of the real estate market.

In a world without real estate news:

The New York Post: Portland kicks off 2021 with a riot for the new year.

Glenn Greenwald: The Kafkaesque Imprisonment of Julian Assange Exposes U.S. Myths About Freedom and Tyranny.

FEE.org: The Fight to Keep Schools Closed Has Proven Thomas Sowell Right About Teachers’ Unions.

Michael Barone: The Year America Went Crazy.

The National Pulse: The Senior U.S. Officials Taking CCP-Subsidized Trips, Dinners For ‘Favorable Coverage’.

The New York Post: 2020 was an absolute bloodbath for box offices.

Fender.com: 7 Reasons You Should Play the Ukulele.

Inspiration: