Category: Real Estate (page 25 of 266)

Two confessions:

First, I’ve always been the guy who works sick. I get respiratory syndromes that last for weeks, and I promise I have shed them to others.

Second, I have become the guy who is expert at not getting respiratory syndromes that last for weeks – this as a years’-long project.

There’s a lot I could talk about, but the big secret is this: Stay away from sick people.

There are a lot of good reasons for killing the beehive office complex, but the fact that you can’t kill me with your cooties if we only interact electronically seems hugely persuasive to me.

Housing Wire: Yun: fewer people will work from home after pandemic. My take: Hide and watch.

Redfin: Housing Market Update: Home Prices Up 15%, Pending Sales Rose 31%. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Mortgage interest rates hold steady at record lows.

The Federalist: Congress Is On A Chaotic December Spend-A-Thon With The Nation’s Next 50 Years Of Money.

City Journal: State Election, National Effects: The Georgia Senate runoffs will have implications from coast to coast.

David Harsanyi: How the media covered up the Hunter Biden story — until after the election.

The American Spectator: The Texas Election Challenge and Its Discontents.

Margot Cleveland: 6 Things To Know About Texas’s Supreme Court Petition Over 2020’s Messed-Up Election.

Watts Up With That?: Essential Facts About Covid-19.

The American Spectator: Fox News’ Media Suicide.

Happy days are here again! – so pucker up.

When you know you’re being lied to, when do you know you’re not being lied to? Maybe if you took a poll…

Here’s the deal: There will be hell to pay, somewhere, sometime soon. The dollar is worth 75% of its value at the start of this year, and some significant, largely-unreported fraction of the nation’s housing stock has been abandoned in the aftermath of this summer’s riots.

We had a concentrated recession, and that’s a good thing: Productivity growth ameliorates growth in the money supply. But: Still: Hell is to have been paid – mostly, I expect, in the cities where the exodus is happening. Giant suburbs like Phoenix will probably be hurt less, because of the ongoing artificially-inflated demand.

Why should you be reading the Overnight News every day? Who else is telling you the truth about the real estate markets right now?

CNBC: Homeowners are $1 trillion richer thanks to the pandemic-driven housing boom.

CNBC: Trend shows home price growth at record high, rising at fastest pace since early 2000s.

CNBC: Renters return to Manhattan, driving 30% gain in new leases in November. Wanna make your eyes pop? “[M]ost landlords offering more than two months free rent.” That’s how you bury the news without actually emitting false statements.

Sam DeBord: Tweetstorming the Industry Relations Podcast with Jack Ryan of REX.

Joel Pollak: Why the 2020 Election Was Neither Free nor Fair.

Jay Valentine: Who Will Be the Fraud Deniers?

PJ Media: YouTube Says It Will Start Deleting Content Alleging 2020 Election Voter Fraud.

The Federalist: Facebook Sued By 48 Attorneys General, FTC For Allegedly Obtaining Social Media Monopoly.

Jay Valentine: How Google Falls.

Want me to tell you the secret to being right most of the time? Bet the odds. What will happen is what has happened. Not always, but most of the time. Hard lesson to learn – particularly when you have billions to burn and a burning need to buck the odds on every bet.

So: RedfinNow is expanding its iBuying business into two new markets: Seattle and San Francisco. I’ve been mocking Redfin for months for its rose-colored riot-denial, but there is no bet more resounding that doubling down on dipshit.

Consider: The game the iBuyers have not yet played, despite The Incumbent’s crowing mid-Spring, is called “Catch a Falling Knife” – not just one, but hundreds. The iBuyers have lived for years in a perpetual Spring: Steady growth in prices with – count them – zero downturns. (So you know, El Incumbento, what happened this Spring was nothing and what has happened since is the riots.)

What happens to the iBuyers when all home values go down all at once?

What happens when the iBuyers’ own price cuts are leading the market-wide slashscade?

What happens when your bold plan to buy at 80% nets you a chance to sell at 60% – hundreds and hundreds of times?

“We’re all spending more time at home than ever before and many of us are dreaming of a home with a larger yard, a dedicated office, maybe even in a new city,” said Quinn Hawkins, head of RedfinNow. “Yet at the same time, the idea of selling your home before you’ve found a new place to move is daunting, especially if you’re moving out of town.”

Could not be plainer: They want to surf the deflation of two great American cities. The riot-denial thus becomes comprehensible: Seattle and San Francisco are “watered stock.” Redfin had been lying about the riots in order to prey upon their victims.

Their safety valve? More de facto redlining: “To qualify for RedfinNow, homes in Seattle and San Francisco need to fit certain parameters and the iBuying service Read more

The actually-dispositive election fraud case may have been filed last night. Today or tomorrow may yet compete for Peak 2020. Think of this: We could have big news now and still bigger news later in the month…

CNBC: Redfin CEO says the booming Covid housing market can get even hotter. How’s the market in Seattle, Glenn? The job of big-name “reporters” is letting big names off the hook.

Redfin: U.S. Housing Market Will Withstand a Wave of Foreclosures When Forbearance Ends. What about the wave of foreclosures when all the folks who bought in the suburbs stop paying on their old loans back in the big city? If a boatload of housing has been abandoned, how will there not be hell to pay?

Housing Wire: How to grow housing market supply in 2021.

David Harsanyi: Journalists Turn on Free Expression.

City Journal: Out of Patience in California: Residents are fed up with officials’ blatant disregard for the public interest.

John Tierney: Pandemic Penitents: Lockdowns are more about faith than science.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Scars of 2020.

The American Mind: Woke Capital Isn’t a Game.

The Daily Wire: Goya Foods CEO: AOC Called For Boycott. Our Sales Jumped, So We Named Her Employee Of The Month.

We’re working with a prospective tenant right now who is sure she has bad credit. In fact, she would have a great credit rating, based on her current payment history – except she has ancient medical icebergs that should have been expunged long ago.

Why does she think she has bad credit? Because she keeps getting turned down – apparently with no one telling her why. In six months she’ll have great credit, because I will have told her where to go and what to do. How do I know she’ll follow through? It’s right there in her payment history – same reason we’re leasing to her.

I don’t know if this is compassion or not. Wouldn’t it be better for my investor to leave her in the dark, like everyone else is doing? Steady payer who doesn’t know she has options – that’s a candy machine. I cannot even imagine not telling someone how to stop drowning, but I don’t consider that compassion, just simple humanity.

Whatever. Listen to the MercyCrats, and listen to how little their attested compassion actually matters – actually results in any real change in real human lives. A compassionate culture would offer continuous free “Ant 101” classes – “How to stop being a dipshit Grasshopper today!” Instead we indulge in charity theater without ever telling poor people why they are poor and how they can stop being poor.

The Nazarene said the poor will always be with us. Hardly necessary – anyone can master better habits – and it is nothing but cruelty to conceal crucial, mission-critical facts. If you insist you are compassionate, a good New Year’s resolution for 2021 would be to do compassion better: Not just charity theater but real change for real people.

Redfin: Car-Dependent Neighborhoods Are Hotter Than Ever Mid-Pandemic, With Home Prices Up 15%—But Walkable Neighborhoods Aren’t Far Behind. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. This article is crying out for the RiotScore™ metric.

New York Post: Goldman Sachs eying Florida move Read more

Jason Childs from The Federalist opines below, but I think the all time worst Christmas song is “Happy Holiday/The Holiday Season,” first made famous by Andy Williams.

Every writer knows what’s wrong with that song: It was phoned in. The lyrics were slammed out on deadline, and the shit that shipped was the sad state of affairs when the deadline hit. The lyrics are simply awful, almost dadaesque in their scansion-cramming scat contraptions. I don’t dare link to it for fear I’ll earworm you for months.

And who is credited as the writer of this atrocity? Irving Berlin. Caveat auditor.

[Amending this. Irving Berlin’s chorus from “Happy Holidays” was ripped off and ruined by Kay Thompson to make the double-named abortion that is ever yet coming down the chimneydown.]

Housing Wire: iBuyer purchase volume sank 82% YoY in Q3. There’s a whole lotta blood in Pinocchio’s nose…

City Journal: Blue State, Red Tape: California is shedding residents and businesses.

Brian Boero: Friday Flash: A giant fight. Useless headline, and the pundit thinks he’s being provocative. But I already do better without ARMLS on rental listings. I much prefer the Realty.bots, because I want to meet everyone we lease to, anyway. If I can’t get the NAR to set me free, I will move my resale listings off of the MLS as well. If I can still deliver the goods (with no buyer’s agent’s commission to pay), I lose nothing, but every other agent loses my listings.

City Journal: Hard-Nosed Economist, Generous Soul: Walter E. Williams, 1936–2020.

Townhall: Worthless Heirs.

The Federalist: Top 5 Worst Christmas Song Lyrics Ever.

During the O.J. debacle, it became obvious that Americans have become so well versed in anti-logic that they do not understand what evidence is. “Every crime is videotaped – how else could that make police procedurals? – so if there is no video, there was no crime.”

Bad news for the “No Fraud!” crowd: There’s video. I’ll bet there’s a lot more from around the country. There was video from San Bernardino, too; we just never got to see it.

Housing Wire: Even with low inventory, expect a strong 2021 housing market.

Redfin: Housing Market Update: Pending Sales Return to Typical Seasonal Trend, Still Up 28% From 2019.

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates fall to new record low at 2.71%.

SFGate: Over half a million Californians left the state last year. Here’s where they went.

Fox News: Chuck DeVore: Hewlett Packard packs up – Will California ever get fed up with losing to Texas?

TownHall: Georgia Governor Changes Tune After Trump Lawyers Present Troubling Video of Alleged Fraud.

Real Clear Politics: The Georgia Runoffs and Our Embattled Constitution.

American Thinker: If the Elections are Stolen, the Biden Nightmare Begins.

Christopher Rufo: The New Untouchables: Seattle policymakers want to provide the city’s underclass with blanket immunity for misdemeanor crime.

Five years ago yesterday, an office in San Bernardino was shot up by two Islamofascist terrorists.

Before Trump, those sorts of events were common, so they can seem to blend together. This one sticks out for me because a young friend of mine was born that day. It was she who made the awful news bearable – her reminding everyone who knows her that death might be news but it is life that matters.

And Elizabeth Grace Trbovich has been a birthday gift to me that way ever since, a steady reminder of what we are all doing this for.

This is me celebrating her birth the day after it happened – the day after the Massacre at San Berdoo:

Greg Swann: Saved by Grace from Islamic Workplace Terrorism: Even in the midst of carnage, hope springs eternal.

Elsewhere:

Housing Wire: Why are sellers sitting on the housing market sidelines?

CNBC: Mortgage refinancing is hot, but using your home as an ATM is not.

Housing Wire: FHFA extends foreclosure and eviction moratorium to Jan. 31.

Don Feder: The Media Stole the 2020 Election Before a Single Vote Was Cast.

John Daniel Davidson: Media Elites, Not Trump Supporters, Are Disconnected From Reality.

Thomas Sowell: Walter E. Williams 1936-2020.

Walter Williams: The Tragedy of Black Education Is New.

The Blaze: A lost generation of children — thanks to adults acting like children.

The corporate weenies who spent all Summer lecturing you about your racism to try to shed their own consistently systemically-racist reputations are arguing for slavery before Congress. No kidding – linked below.

The funny part is in the NASDAQ news: As I have been pointing out since Bostock, every commercial entity big enough to have an HR department is being taken over by its Chief Grievances Officer. Corporate America is to have been devoured by its own hypocrisies. None so deserving.

Housing Wire: COVID-19 remains “wildcard” in 2021 housing market.

CNBC: Mortgage demand from homebuyers spikes 28%, and the average loan amount sets a record high.

Housing Wire: Online notarizations usher in era of trusted transactions. When you are marveling at Realty.bot claims, consider that obvious in 1995, legal since 1998 is now almost happening.

Liberty Unyielding: NASDAQ proposes illegal racial quotas for corporate boards; ACLU applauds.

Helen Raleigh: While Lecturing Americans On Racism, Big Business Opposes Ban On Using Foreign Slave Labor.

Jonathan Turley: Daily Beast Editor Calls For “Humiliation” and “Incarceration” For Trump Supporters.

City Journal: Lies and Violence: Averting our gaze from political hyperbole and violence empowers the mob.

Andrew Torba: A Discussion With Business Insider About QAnon.

City Journal: Desert Visionary: The death of Tony Hsieh is the loss of an urban pioneer.

Alternative headline: The CIA whacked JFK. “Conspiracy theorists” were born that day.

The Ruling Class is by now playing chicken, daring ordinary Americans to object to the ever-better-documented theft of the election. I believe Trump will pull this out, but god help the Democrats if he doesn’t. When the CIA used a Mafia proxy to assassinate President Kennedy, the idea of the “conspiracy theory” – so named by the CIA as disinformation – took root.

We know our governments lie to us. We have good reasons to suspect that the Deep State – the henchmen of the Ruling Class – are the Praetorian Guard of the American Republic. Should Biden escape prison and somehow attain inauguration, millions of people will spend the next four years documenting every fraudulent ballot.

CNBC: October pending home sales fall unexpectedly, as high prices take their toll on buyers.

Rob Hahn: Harshing the Mellow: NAR, DOJ, Lawsuits.

Margot Cleveland: Trump’s Michael Flynn Pardon Is Only The Beginning Of The Justice This Nation Deserves.

Mark Judge: Slanted: Our Dumb, Incompetent, Dangerous and Awful Media.

Tyler O’Neil: Four Data Dumps in the Witching Hour After the Election Gave Biden Victory. Rand Paul Has Questions.

The American Spectator: Legitimacy of Biden Win Buried by Objective Data.

American Greatness: Mathematician Says Biden May have Received 130 Percent of the Democrat Vote in Maricopa County, AZ. I am normally so proud to be a Zonie. We keep electing carpet-bagger governors. Now we’re a banana republic. Nice.

City Journal: Beat Cops Cut Crime: A new study explores how police presence maintains public order. Big duh, yeah? Vigilant schoolteachers minimize cheating on exams. Who knew?

The Federalist: Stuck In Online Schooling, U.S. Kids Are Failing More Classes Than Ever And Will Never Recover.

City Journal: Growth of the Pod: The public education establishment is losing customers as more parents take charge of how their kids learn amid the pandemic. The big story of 2020? Ci overplayed its panic and lost its stranglehold on American thought. Some children will do worse, academically, but some will do very much better. A rebirth of intellectual Read more

San Francisco wants to find out where Detroits come from. All you gotta do is ask right…

NBC News: ‘Good riddance’: Tech’s flight from San Francisco is a relief to some advocates.

The American Mind: California, There It Goes.

The American Mind: The Big Tech Occupation.

Roger Kimball: Reality and the Narrative.

Roger Simon: Now Is the Time for All Good Men and Women to Get Off Twitter.

Roger Kimball: Crime Hiding Crime: A Motive for the Steal.

I have no non-obvious news, nor apparently does anyone else. That might seem comforting, were the Republic not being rent. It argues, instead, that we are unserious about everything, even incipient civil war.

Want some better news? The salary required to pretend to ignore electoral fraud is skyrocketing. Soon only the emperors themselves will be naked.

And here’s the news about the news: A link makes it to the ‘Overnight news’ if I made it to the end – and I think it’s worth your time, too. Me making it to the end of anything is a major hurdle, but, even so, I have little to choose from just now. My apologies.

Just the News: Whole Foods CEO: Socialism means ‘trickle up poverty’ that ‘impoverishes everything’.

FEE.org: How Big Government Stacked the Deck Against Small Business.

National Review: The Great Reset: If Only It Were Just a Conspiracy.

AND Magazine: Censored: How Many People Are Really Dying Of This Pandemic?

Spiked Online: Jordan Peterson: how the left manufactured a folk devil.

We have huge LED-like signs on our freeways, not because reading while driving causes accidents and we want more of them but because a vast new population of full-time Democrats had to be hired to install, maintain and populate these signs.

Think about Arizona and then think about how many miles of “last mile” electrical support had to be built to put useless signs over empty freeways in the remote mountains of the most uninhabitable deserts in North America. Your tax dollars at work.

But pity the poor writers who have to populate those signs – ever at the mercy of the witless bosses tasked with tormenting them.

Witness: On our freeways now, for Thanksgiving:

“I like my potatoes mashed and my drivers sober.”

The joke was “smashed,” of course, but a bulb to dim to get it ruined it.

Perhaps that offends only me, but I am in every way an entrepreneur for a reason.

No real estate news again, also offensive, but I have a 4-bedroom rental in Goodyear coming soon: A short hop to the I-10 one way or to Spring Training the other.

Breaking Ground: Exodus.

FrontPage Mag: Everything is on the Line: A close look at Georgia Senate Candidate Raphael Warnock.

Christopher Bedford: The Future Of President Trump’s Agenda Hangs On Georgia.

Daniel Greenfield: An Illegitimate Election Plunges the Republic into a Crisis.

Theodore Dalrymple: The Age of Cant.

I am a renegade boss.

In this I am one with Caesar and Trump and possibly also even the Nazarene: I am a natural-born boss, but I abhor and resist the way most bosses do things. I am not beset by enemies like those other guys, lucky me, because I lack their ambition. But their enemies – for Caesar and Trump, anyway – assailed them because they resisted and hoped to supplant the predation of the boss class.

The DISC of this is simple: Only the Driven temperament should lead, and only Ds should lead things meant to endure. I’m Di – solo projects, skunk works, turnarounds – but I understand why Ds matters – and, where it doesn’t, why nothing else does.

The boss class right now is enthralled by Ci – much weakened this year by Ci’s many unforced errors – but it is flirting with Dc. This would be the entire battle of recorded history – Ci theocracy (here technocracy) versus Dc oligarchy – minus the Nazarene, who brought with him the Ds golden age none of us thought to question until Ci started tearing it down.

Ci in power is predatory – you know, like squeezing broke people and calling it “optimization” – but Di and Dc will drift toward Cautious tyranny over time, as well. Why? Because “rank has its privileges.” This is something that should never be said, and certainly never said down, to your own people. But a whole lot of bosses seem to think their job title confers upon them a change of identity whereby the boss points and says, “My bags,” and whomever he says it to is instantly minionized.

It’s easy to spot bad bosses – unless you come to the office after five or on the weekend: The only practical way they have of proving the privilege of their rank is by not working. Half the economy worked yesterday so the other half could take the day off. But almost none of the bosses worked, and those who Read more