There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Group Therapy (page 26 of 81)

Overnight News: Coattails without the coat? Not plausible.

Ya think it's easy?

“Dude! Don’t piss on my leg and try to tell me it’s a rainy night in Georgia!”

Odysseus told you Wednesday what to look for: Voting only for President, only for Biden. Same pattern in many fraud-states: Too many ballots to fake. The specific voters being disenfranchised are urban Ants – wise enough to know better, unable to escape. That’s how much any lives matter to the Deep State. Like him or don’t, Trump is all the dragon-slayer you have, with perpetual Chinese dragon-slavery as your undoubted alternative.

Redfin: Housing Market Update: 15% Price Growth Shows No Signs of Letting Up. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found – even though the riots are all over their charts. Imagine a company less likely to tell the truth about the real estate consequences of Marxism than Redfin, facing a lawsuit for being insufficiently Marxist. News about the devastation in riot-torn cities will have to come from elsewhere.

CNBC: Homeowners and buyers are the real winners in this election.

CNBC: Fed holds rates near zero — here’s how that benefits Americans and their wallets.

Housing Wire: The vote is in: Borrowers want RON. Me, too.

Housing Wire: What would the CFPB look like under a Biden administration? We’ve lived for four years under steadily waning regulation. Who wanted that to change?

Zero Hedge: Companies Join Exodus To Suburbs As Cities Transform Into “Ghost Towns”. Someone should tell Redfin about this.

Zero Hedge: Why Does Biden Have So Many More Votes Than Democrat Senators In Swing States?

The Federalist: We’re Supposed To Believe The GOP Had A Great Election Night Except For President?

The Federalist: Polling Isn’t The Problem, Intentionally False Media Polls Are The Problem.

Richard Fernandez: A New Correlation of Forces.

David Solway: If a Won Election Is Not Reported, Is It a Won Election?

Michael Anton: Game-On for the Coup?

City Journal: Texas Is Still Texas—For Now: The Lone Star State is changing, but not in the way that everyone assumes.

Overnight News: Ants contain Grasshoppers – for now.

Ya think it's easy?

“It turns out half of America is bored with world peace.”

Silver linings stories abound, and they’re not wrong: America caught a glimpse of Critical Theory Marxism and blanched in horror. It remains to be seen if the man who brought peace to the Middle East can survive his current railroading, but it is beyond dismaying to think that half of America voted for war and slavery. I crave better news…

Housing Wire: What would a Trump win mean for housing?

Housing Wire: What a Biden victory would mean for housing.

FEE.org: California Voters Just Saved Uber and Lyft From Regulatory Destruction.

City Journal: Colorblind California: The defeat of Proposition 16 is a blow to elites obsessed with racial-identity politics.

American Greatness: Election Night Confirmed the Polls Were Lies.

The Federalist: Yes, Democrats Are Trying To Steal The Election In Michigan, Wisconsin, And Pennsylvania.

Glenn Greenwald: The U.S. Inability To Count Votes is a National Disgrace. And Dangerous.

City Journal: A Noisy Place: Our exhausting and not-yet-settled election of 2020 should remind us that America has rarely been “one nation, indivisible.”

City Journal: Election Month.

City Journal: The Winner? It Might Be the Administrative State.

The Washington Examiner: The biggest loser of election 2020: Identity politics.

Overnight News: Today would be the ideal day to discover what Bill Barr does for a living…

Ya think it's easy?

“The most reliable mail-in ballots are pure-breds: They vote only for president and only for Biden.”

Marxism hasn’t stunk up 2020 quite enough yet. While the rest of the world is amazed Trump did so well, I am dismayed he did so poorly. I thought every values-loving person could picture everything he loves going up in flames and choose accordingly. And while it may yet redeem itself, don’t even get me started on Arizona.

Today we find out how committed the Democrats are to obvious cheating, and how serious Trump is about defending his rights. Who knows? We might even discover what Bill Barr has been doing with his time…

Housing Wire: Home prices jump 6.7% in September, but are expected to moderate.

CNBC: Jumbo and FHA mortgage rates set record lows, juicing refinance demand.

City Journal: The Limits of Rhetoric: Noble-sounding words won’t improve failing cities, especially for minority residents.

City Journal: The “Transition from Oil” and Other Fairy Tales.

The Federalist: The New Contras’ Insurgence Against Legacy Media Is Only Getting Hotter.

City Journal: In Defense of the Electoral College.

Issues and Insights: What We Know Already About Election 2020.

The Conservative Treehouse: Election Night Turns to Post Election Day – Outcome Remains Unknown. Sundance will be a comprehensive resource on the election litigation, if any.

Overnight News: Q: What did Marxists use to light their homes before candles? A: Electricity.

Ya think it's easy?

“Go Ants!”

The country that set the standard for human liberty for centuries has the opportunity to vote itself into slavery today. This is just amazing to me, and, even though I know we’ll survive this scrape with hell’s torments, we are very far from being safe. We are Ants, and we need to support the Ants – and oppose the Grasshoppers – in everything they do.

Meanwhile, in my pre-election dread-shopping I acquired two very large candles. My faith in the Western ideal is such that I haven’t opened the package yet. I hope I never have to.

Godspeed, America. Go Ants!

Housing Wire: Beware of gloom and doom housing market crash headlines.

Housing Wire: Mortgages in forbearance fall across all loan types.

Housing Wire: Rate lock data suggests record $4T in 2020 mortgages.

Housing Wire: Younger generations want to become homeowners – Here’s how the housing industry can help.

Mike DelPrete: The Economics of iBuying.

The Daily Wire: Trump Campaign Claims Democrats Plan To Delegitimize Election Day Results.

Issues and Insights: Democrats Deny Voter Fraud Exists As They Plot To Steal Pennsylvania.

The American Mind: How Trump Survives a Coup.

Spengler: I Voted for Trump—and You Should, Too, Because the Republic Is at Stake.

The Federalist: Win Or Lose, Trump Isn’t Going Away.

Salena Zito: What’s old, and who, can be made new again.

Overnight News: My revised forecast puts Peak 2020 at November 4th.

Ya think it's easy?

“I’ve been hearing rumors that someday soon we might get to eat the rabbits and geese!”

I have no non-trivial real estate news for you this morning. Usual weekend drought, plus I think the whole world is palsied by this election. The good(?) news is, win or lose, Donald Trump will be able to put down the riots on November 4th, hence its nomination in the headline.

Assuming Trump wins, watch for more big news in the ensuing months as SJW executives are let go for pissing away the business on political stunts. None so deserving.

The News:

The Federalist: Here’s Why Judge Sullivan Must Disqualify Himself From Michael Flynn’s Case.

The Western Journal: Go Woke, Go Broke? NBA Reportedly Facing Billions in Losses, Steep Decline in Player Salaries.

The Spectator: The Pope really doesn’t like Republicans.

Ammo.com: Cultural Marxism’s Origins: How the Disciples of an Obscure Italian Linguist Subverted America.

Roger Kimball: A Momentous Choice Faces Us Today as in 1776.

City Journal: Big-Bucks Ballot Battles: Unions, businesses, and other advocacy groups are spending more than $1 billion on state initiatives and referendums this year.

Legal Insurrection: Kamala Harris tweets radical leftist advocacy of “equity” over “equality”.

NBC News: Biden is leading Trump in 2020 polls. But expect Election Day to be a repeat of 2016.

Overnight News: Redfin pleads, “How can we be evil when we lose money so well?!?”

Ya think it's easy?

“When Grasshoppers say they’re making dog food, it’s really just slop. Go Ants!”

I wanted for this election to be about freedom versus Marxism. I definitely did not want for it to be about Coronavirus, when that came along, but I confess that I did not see that the underlying issue was everything versus China. In the end, though, we end up almost where I began: This election is the Ants versus the Grasshoppers. If the Ants lose this election, everyone loses. Go Ants!

Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie: The Grasshopper Rebellion.

Meanwhile, while I’ve been making fun of the Redfin race-piracy lawsuit, it’s important to keep perspective: It’s just another shake-down. I’m guessing Redfin will cave with an expensive cash settlement and some cheap demonstrations of faked contrition.

I would love it if any corporate weenie would stand up to this mishegos, but Redfin spent all Summer lying about racism and papering over the riots happening within blocks of its offices. God bless Glenn Kelman, who I hope has not been assimilated by The Borg, but I’m not looking for any big-balls moves from that direction.

Rob Hahn: Simple Solution to the Redfin Fair Housing Lawsuit. Long read, misses the point: It’s a shake-down. That’s all these lawsuits ever are, going back to Zillow on BloodhoundBlog, but going back to the Community Reinvestment Act, at least.

Glenn Kelman: Redfin & Fair Housing. I can’t imagine what it feels like to discover the burning need for simple human liberty so late in life, but perhaps this has not happened yet, anyway. Consider this: “Certainly no one can complain that Redfin itself has been greedy about our income as a corporation when, in our sixteen years of being a brokerage, we’ve never made an annual profit.” It’s like something out “Atlas Shrugged” – “Don’t call me evil! I’m good-hearted but inept, just like the next guy!” As above, I predict Redfin will pay to make this go away – which policy will invite still more predation.

In the world less shameless:

CNBC: Leaving New York: High earners in finance and tech explain why they left the ‘world’s greatest city.’ CTRL-F Read more

Overnight News: Hey, Redfin: What happens when you tell everyone you’re racist – and they believe you?

Ya think it's easy?

“Redfin? Now that’s good eatin’!”

Here’s the deal: If disparate impact is automatically racism, Asian and Jewish people should be suing pro-athletics. That’s what Glenn Kelman needs to say to swat the race pirates away.

Financial hurdles seek to qualify Ants and disqualify Grasshoppers. This has nothing to do with race, but every financial hurdle will seem to have disparate impact on different racial groups, depending on how exponents of those groups have expressed Ant or Grasshopper values over time.

That cannot possibly be Redfin’s fault. But Redfin and every brokerage that has transaction minimums – including all of the major iBuyers – will be devoured by race pirates until they are willing to explain how Ants get ahead in the world.

Getting ahead on my gloating, from September 22:

Greg Swann: A fun fact about #iBuyers? Every buy-box is redlining.

Color-me-Redfin is getting spanked:

AP: Fair housing groups: Redfin ‘redlines’ minority communities. Cannot not be so. Six Flags “redlines” short children – and dwarves! – on all the good rides.

Housing Wire: Redfin faces “redlining” lawsuit claiming it favors white neighborhoods. White people should sue about the even-better service the even-better-qualified Asian clients are getting. And everyone should sue waiters for the way they fawn over the big tippers!

In the so-far unspanked world:

CNBC: Smaller American cities see big interest from urban flight. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Forbes: The Serious Disconnect Between A Hot Residential Real Estate Market And The Coming Tsunami Of Foreclosures. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

SFGate.com: San Francisco curbs virus but once-vibrant downtown is empty.

City Journal: San Francisco, Homeless Encampment: A new plan to turn the whole city into a shelter system might finally be the breaking point for residents.

Fox Business: American shoppers panic-buying as coronavirus spike aggravates year of upheaval.

The Federalist: Yes, Media Are Rigging The Election Against Half The Country. Here’s How.

Neil Patel: It’s Easy to Predict the Loser in Tuesday’s Election.

Matthew Continetti: The Next Populist Revolt.

Tyler O’Neil: Biden Pledges to Gut Religious Freedom Protections, Saying They Give ‘Hate’ a ‘Safe Harbor.’

Overnight News: When we are shielded solely by the courage of men like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald – that would be a government of men and not of laws.

Ya think it's easy?

“Fortune favors the brave? Fortune favors the well-prepared? My motto is: ‘You never can tell.’ Accordingly: Fortune favors the audacious!”

I closed a house yesterday – I’m bragging about it just below – so I refuse to despair. Life is luck, ab initio, and we can hope we will be lucky enough to make it past Election Day…

Yesterday on BloodhoundBlog:

Greg Swann: A Bloodhound’s fish story: $10k over list, $15k over market, 23 days total – and the seller’s total pre-market outlay was $257.50. It’s easy to forget this fact in our piles of self-important paperwork, but real estate representation is selling.

And in the harsh, cold, cruel world outside:

Forbes: Housing Affordability Inches Down, Despite Record-Low Mortgage Rates. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: Earnings for apartment owners show the pain of urban flight. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: There was a surprise drop in September home sales as buyers were priced out. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Zillow Offers cuts 80 jobs, cites realignment. Another cry of financial pain? That’s usually what layoffs mean. But this could be an SJW purge – ditching the freethinkers. Expect a lot of this as corporations are taken over from within by Critical Theory Marxists recruited en masse from America’s “elite” universities Marxism factories. Was I to guess, I might suppose they are losing the people they hired with actual real life real estate experience. iBuyers in general seem committed to making every error ever made in real estate; experienced people ruin all the fun.

PJ Media: Joe Biden Pandering to the AFL-CIO Will Impact Millions of American Freelancers.

RedState: The War on Independent Contractors is a War on Working Women and Families.

Matt Taibbi: The media — and social media — drive to squelch information a menace no matter who wins election.

Matt Taibbi: Glenn Greenwald On His Resignation From The Intercept.

Hollywood in Toto: ‘Plot Against the President’ Shames Media, Deep State Agents. Not really a date-night movie, but it’s free on Prime.

A Bloodhound’s fish story: $10k over list, $15k over market, 23 days total – and the seller’s total pre-market outlay was $257.50.

I live a charmed life, just now, and I know it. The resale market in the Valley of the Ever-Fecund Sun has been all my way for seven-ish years, culminating in our current simmering state of frenzy.

The investors I work with bought and bought and bought when nobody was buying. We’ve managed those properties as rentals over the last decade, and for the past few years we have been divesting some of them. I just sold one, which we’re about to talk about, and I have more on deck. One flight to safety leads to another, it turns out.

So here’s my fish story: We just now closed on the sale of the house in the picture, on West Monroe Street in Coldwater Springs in Avondale, AZ. I was the Buyer’s Agent nine years ago, and we’ve managed it since then, with almost no vacancy and little in the way of costs. Ignoring all the rental income and the tax benefits, the investor tripled his initial investment at COE. Those funds are moving by 1031 exchange into something safer – to everyone’s relief.

That much is just buy-low/sell-high. My guys were cash-rich and credit-rich when nobody else was, so: “When there’s blood in the streets, buy land.” They were working with me, so we bought very carefully – wicked aggressive on price, but we bid only on properties that I knew would rent well and sell high. That much has proved true, so they were monied fishermen with a seasoned guide.

So here’s the fish story: I took the house back from the tenants at 9 am on September 30th. I had the deep-cleaners in with me by 9:30, and I had my punch-list: Half-a-dozen handyman jobs, plus two bigger issues I thought might come up on repairs. My plan was to list on October 8th, so there was plenty of time – with the tenants’ Security Deposit as a buffer on the budget. But the house was decent the way it was – or would be when the cleaners finished – and the market at that moment could not have been hotter.

Do the touch-ups Read more

Overnight News: “If I stay inside, I might live ’til Saturday.”

Ya think it's easy?

“All the world is a supermarket to my nose.”

Shelves looking a little bare at your supermarket? All Spring, I heard Steely Dan’s “King of the World” in my head every time I went shopping. Tomato juice was sold out yesterday, and there it was again: “I can’t be no savage. I can’t be no highwayman.”

I bought 32 packets of Taco seasoning. We might end up eating shredded golf-course goose, but we’re having Tacos.

My take: Make time to shop today. Buy food that keeps.

Housing Wire: Zillow: Pandemic uncertainty is keeping 34% of home sellers out of the market. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. There is a groundbreaking lawsuit against the City of Seattle for aiding and abetting the riots, but Zillow has Bidened all riot info, apparently.

Forbes: Is New York City’s Real Estate Market Really Tanking? I Asked Three Experts For The Brutal Truth. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Forbes: Eye-Tracking Software Reveals What Buyers Focus On Most When Touring A Home—And How You Can Use It To Your Advantage.

The Stream: The Landslide America Will Be Glad to Have.

Issues and Insights: Biden Looked Normal At The Debates, So Why Does He Appear Senile At Most Other Times?

John Podhoretz: Twitter’s threats to The Post echo those of authoritarian states — and the media shrugs.

Legal Insurrection: Leftists Are Physically Attacking Trump Supporters Just Like They Did in 2016.

The Washington Examiner: Kids today: 4 in 10 call Constitution ‘outdated,’ OK with silencing speech.

City Journal: City Hall Socialists: The far Left is making inroads into local government races.

The Federalist: The DOJ’s Lawsuit Against Yale Is How To Win The Culture War.

Overnight News: Is today the day China Joe takes the slow boat back to Scranton?

Ya think it's easy?

“A better question: Is today the day the Teddy Bears have their vengeance?”

Doomed to repeat it? History is being made before your eyes. Soon it may be running down your cheeks – or draining from an embalming table.

If you click on nothing else, watch the Tucker Carlson video. If the link doesn’t work (Youtube is fragile), search for another one.

Housing Wire: Home price index sees greatest gain in over 2 years. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. Phoenix wins, and soon will win still more.

CNBC: Homebuyer demand may have peaked as mortgage applications eke out a weekly gain. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. Let’s see what happens next week…

Housing Wire: Refis lead the way as mortgage applications rise 1.7%.

Tucker Carlson Tonight: Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski details his role in Joe Biden’s influence-peddling syndicate. See the DISC? Ci attacks the Sociability in Cs. Yet another unforced error in a year full of them.

PJ Media: Bobulinski Bombshell: The Bidens are ‘Compromised’ and Lying About Joe’s Knowledge of Hunter’s Deals With China.

The Federalist: The Hunter Biden Scandal Has Exposed The Corporate Press’s Corruption And Condescension.

Sarah J. Hoyt: How the Left Is Using Americans’ Empathy and Decency to Destroy Us.

The Washington Examiner: College undergrads: America is racist, looting ‘justified,’ reparations required.

Tyler O’Neil: Democrats Give Away the Game: They Want the Supreme Court to Unilaterally Amend the Constitution.

The American Mind: OK, Senator: Amy Coney Barrett puts the nail in the coffin of TV politics.

Overnight News: Federal government performs quotidian function amidst paroxysms of weeping, albeit with only one major riot.

Ya think it's easy?

“What do you call the bad guys who chased away the cops? The new cops.”

What’s the least-worst part about Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation? For a welcome change, the left didn’t mount a huge, bogus smear campaign. That just means they’re effecting their evil elsewhere – e.g., court-packing – but it was nice to see a lady being treated almost like a lady.

CNBC: Home prices in August see biggest gains in more than two years, S&P Case Shiller says. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Holy smokes — new home sales are up 32.1% year over year. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Forbes: The Hottest Housing Markets Right Now In 2020. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: The Three Cs of Post-Forbearance.

The Washington Examiner: Trump is forcing voters to grow up.

The Federalist: Big Tech Is Turning The United States Into A Giant Company Town.

Brendan O’Neill: People must have the right to mock Muhammad. Charlie Hebdo is right to republish the cartoons that caused such barbarism in 2015.

City Journal: Unfriending Free Speech: Who will guard the gatekeepers of our political discourse?

Issues and Insights: Left’s Post-Election Agenda: More Riots, ‘Truth Commissions,’ Other Punishment For Their Foes — That Means You.

City Journal: It’s Now the Barrett Court: The newest justice will change the dynamic among her colleagues.

Overnight News: So how many shoes can a centipede drop?

Ya think it's easy?

“‘Every kid deserves a back yard?’ Wrong! Every back yard deserves a dog!”

If you find yourself feeling sorry for China Joe Biden – all he has to do is get the hell out of the way.

Yesterday on BloodhoundBlog, me:

Greg Swann: Dear Daniel Morillo: Here’s why #OpenDoor’s houses sell so poorly – even in a blistering real estate market.

Outside our kennel:

Forbes: Demand Is Rising For Properties In Vacation Home Markets. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Vice: We Don’t Mine Enough Rare Earth Metals to Replace Fossil Fuels With Renewable Energy.

LifeSite: Shock poll claims 30% of U.S. women under 25 identify as LGBT: dire implications. Sell homes or home loans? Why do people want those things? Every kid deserves a back yard? What happens when there are a lot fewer kids?

Matt Taibbi: With the Hunter Biden Expose, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than The Actual Story.

Roger Kimball: A Momentous Election: Donald Trump may be an odd ambassador of freedom. But Joe Biden is but a gibbering front for a vanguard that would destroy America as traditionally conceived.

Angelo Codevilla: The Election to End All Elections: Trump, imperfect as he is, is like a finger in a dike that, if removed, would loose a deluge.

City Journal: Educating Patriots: In his “farewell” book, E. D. Hirsch, our foremost thinker on American schooling, sets his sights on fixing America itself.

Overnight News: Just how much more do you not want to know about Joe Biden and his wretched family?

Ya think it's easy?

“Just when you think you’ve seen everything…”

Today could challenge October 22 for Peak 2020. The amassed hypocrisy of ignoring Hunter’s laptop and all it implies is proving unsustainable. We can hope China Biden will withdraw before you learn more than you ever wanted to.

Rob Hahn: The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day for REALTORS in the New York Senate.

Quillette: What Divides Us Is Class, Not Race.

Redstate: Now We Know Why Obama Picked Biden.

New York Post: Long-standing claims of Biden corruption all but confirmed with Hunter’s emails.

The Washington Examiner: Hunter Biden alleged sex tape and images uploaded on Bannon-connected Chinese website.

FEE.org: Socialist Critique of Libertarian Children’s Books Drives Massive Surge in Sales.