Category: Real Estate (page 3 of 266)

One late-Summer Prime Day in 2019, from the depths of Death Valley – cancer brain, chemo brain, insane-in-the-membrane brain – Cathleen bought a Roomba, an “artificially-intelligent” robot vacuum.

She parked it at my desk, saying it was mine to work out. I approached it the same way I do every other project not my own: I neglected it. My wife is not the nagging type, and Death Valley brain pushed her off in other directions, so no rumba for the Roomba.

When we were packing up, I thought, “I should sell this thing” – but we ended up moving it anyway.

And: I have been vacuuming a lot at the new house. Tile floors betray what carpets conceal: Desert air, at least at around shoe level, is full of grit.

And so that Roomba was suddenly much more interesting to me. I don’t mind vacuuming, and I like any job where I can tell the difference when I’m done. But: Scutwork is never first on my list – except my list of jobs to delegate.

Enter Rosie, named after The Jetsons’ housekeeper, who swept away the grit in two short shifts yesterday and is gamely sucking up dust right now. She was duck soup to set up, with a little extra thought devoted to preventing her from becoming beached by her own enthusiasm.

Rosie is hyper-diligent, but she is dumb, dumb, dumb. The “artificial intelligence” is a variation on the drunkard’s walk – that is to say, nothing anyone would even loosely describe as intelligence. If the iRobot people are selling data from this relationship, I cannot imagine what it is. This device – a Roomba 690 – is definitely not mapping the house.

It could be – it must have a Cartesian relationship with its home base – and, accordingly, it could be much more intelligent in its approach to vacuuming. Vide: Map the perimeter, then work that map by segments, lawnmower style. That would make most-efficient use of Rosie’s battery. Or: Keep records of where significant “dirt events” occur and give Read more

What will remain of the iBuyers, once the market turns?

As noted long ago, iBuying as such is a very stupid idea. A flipper came up with it, and it may be that he didn’t really even get the math of flipping, he just started at the perfect time – the bottom of the Big Short real estate bomb; iBuying has lived in no other market than this one, steadily steaming upward for years, now screaming like a tea kettle. In any case, owning a house to fix and flip for resale only makes sense because that’s what you have to do in order to do the rest – where owning non-producing assets (financed!) is always a bad idea. Even then, you have to cheat the original seller – you have to buy even lower the the home’s actual as-is Fair Market Value. You have to control your turnover expenses. And you have to get in and get out fast.

Corporations can’t do anything fast, nor can they control costs. Buying low is only possible where Zestimates don’t grow, so the pure iBuyer business model would seem to have been completely frolicked ab initio – which is of course what I have been saying all along.

iBuyers with a value-add like Curbio or EasyKnock may have a business for a while, and Redfin uses the promise of iBuying to upsell its slow-moving discount listings. Pacaso is an international small-business: A niche offering with any profit potential emerging from its being a time-share: The only winner will be the management company, in the form of recurring fees, and today’s buyers will probably never see a resale return on their “investment.”

That is to say: None of them will matter, going forward. The claims that Zillow has some great data-prescience have always sounded absurd to me: Real estate is a black swan business, and Zillow has seemed to me to be nothing but flat-footed for years now – since Spencer Rascoff did the math on iBuying and went off to find what he hopes is Read more

Every time we move, our network topology gets simpler. By now, we’re wireless for everything except for two network drives hardwired into the cable modem/router.

Those live in the living room, since that’s where the wiring is, in a tiny cabinet of their own. The modem and the drives continuously flash pointlessly, of course, so we’re thinking of festooning their housing with flashing Christmas lights – like a little hi-tech hearth.

What’s radically simpler this time is the power. I have been accumulating all sorts of multi-pronged outlets since before I could drive. I don’t need watts or amps, but I always need more outlets than are available. That need has transmuted over the years, too: On my desk right now there is a power strip charging seven USB devices and three camera batteries. We did everything here with power strips; greater flexibility and better line-protection – I hope.

Perhaps I am too much talking to myself, but I think rethinking is fundamental to the praxis of praxes: If you truly aim to get better at the things you do, you have to admit it when you have been wrong – and then re-do everything you did wrong.

That last bit is the hard part: It’s hard enough getting things almost right. What’s the benefit of undoing everything, then redoing it better?

My answer would be: In order to have done everything better.

I amaze Cathleen whenever there is massive work to be done, because I am unabashedly amazing at daunting tasks. But I astound her most, I think, when I scowl at some huge job I’ve just finished – then proceed to rebuild it all over somewhere else instead.

Everything gets a little better every time you think something all the way through – if you act on your thinking. We are long since done moving in, but I am only just now getting to the place where I’ve stopped rebuilding things.

In other news:

RedState.com: The Read more

So: We are all Colorado cake-bakers now. Who didn’t see this coming?

In other news:

Eugene Volokh: Realtors Group Hearing “Hate Speech” “Ethics Complaint” Against Pastor-Realtor.

Geekwire: Redfin CEO explains how its iBuyer home buying program avoided pitfalls that sunk Zillow Group. Totally not whistling past the graveyard.

I’m playing with some new ideas for 2022. We haven’t done anything to campaign for new business since 2010, but I want to move to the supply side, so I’m sliding in that direction. Just lately, on a training podcast with Brian Brady, I mentioned that the way to get around the Realty.bots is Old School: Direct mail.

Brian and I came together over a shared love for Guerrilla Marketing – not the books, which are excellent, but the underlying strategic praxis: Achieving maximum marketing impact for the minimum spend.

I specifically mentioned the USPS’s Every Door Direct Mail program: Hit every mailbox in a particular carrier route with a mail piece as big as 8-1/2 x 11” for around twenty cents a door. You won’t get the investors – title can get their addresses for you – but you will get every resident.

There is a lot you can do with this: For example, you could leave once side blank and use that to laser print your monthly newsletter to your farm. My pitch is more prosaic: If I list your house, I will manage the rehab to maximum financial benefit. I already do that, of course, but some folks can’t taste the steak until they hear the sizzle.

I can buy the cards I want for around fifteen cents each, and I will do my own copy and design, so my pilot project is to hit around 500 doors a month for twelve months for a total spend of around $2,000. One conversion is worth around $10,000, and two a month is about as hard as I want to work, for now. If it pulls, it can scale until it’s pulling us where we want to go. And if not: Cheap to try something different.

Zillow may have dinosaur-robot egg on its face right now, but it won’t stop coming between you and your clients. To get around the Realty.bots, approach the marketplace in ways they can’t match.

In other news:

Andrea Widburg: The Kyle Rittenhouse trial is a master class Read more

On Friday, October 22nd, the day of our actual, physical move, I found out that our net provider had not yet delivered on internet to the new house and that our file server had been shut down because it was attacked from the outside. Then, while I was taking down the network hardware, I managed to scorch the hard disk on my desktop computer.

Ten years ago, I would have been freaked out by that trifecta: No computer, no internet, no internet presence – and no time to fix any of it. What’s changed? Steve Jobs put my business in my shirt pocket. In my everyday world, I use my desktop computer for this – for writing. Everything I do for money I can do from my phone. Vendor contact is all text – only by cell phone. We closed a house in our triply-crippled state.

All is well by now. Brand new SSD hard drive, wicked fast, and every byte of data was recovered from backup. Fiber internet at 500 megs – hello, 500-million channel television. And the file server was held hostage by its host for days just because I couldn’t get to them to demonstrate that a server that is running two weblogs cannot have attacked itself.

Murphy’s Law says whatever can go wrong will. Finagle’s Laws tend to argue that the worst possible thing that could go wrong will go wrong at the worst possible time. On the other hand, static charge really does matter, especially in the desert, and people actually do win the lottery.

Meaning what? We had a great move with a three-headed digital Cerberus blocking our exit. I flashed it my phone and it ceased to be a problem. How cool it that?

PS: I am reading that Broker Barton may be dumping his entire inventory of over-priced turkeys to hedge funds – overpaying for owner-occupied homes then turning them into rentals. If this is so, he graduates from moron to menace. Stick to your knitting, please, poindexters. No one needs the world made worse.

In other news:

Robby Soave: Glenn Youngkin Defeated Terry McAuliffe Read more

Well. It turns The Incumbent has a calculator on his phone. Even billionaires can identify a stupid business – eventually.

On July 19th, 2019, I took OpenDoor’s business praxis apart in public, demonstrating all their foolish marketing errors. Hundreds of OpenDoor staffers read that article. I think Eric Wu’s parents read it. Even so, precisely zero people from OpenDoor reached out to me to learn how to do better.

In that same week, I also took OfferPad and Zillow Offers apart, documenting the fundamental real estate errors that make the iBuying idea ridiculous. None of them followed up with me, of course. Who needs free market research – that turns out to be telling the truths you won’t see? I asked Rich Barton on Twitter how he managed to lose $160,000 on a $200,000 house and he blocked me. Nice move, Incumbent.

I haven’t been following Zillow’s flaming Icarus news. Krupke, I’ve got troubles of my own. But I told you the problems they would have in that same week in July of 2019: A retailer without a discount rack must cut the prices for all of the inventory all at once, not just the stuff that isn’t moving. Zillow bought stupidly on its strength, and now it is discounting stupidly – in what is still a killer market for listers – because it cannot hide the fact that it is a crippled lion.

There’s always another Icarus, but there are two easy takeaways for anyone who can latch onto the obvious facts of reality faster than your average billionaire:

1. There is no upside to owning non-producing assets. All the money in real estate brokerage comes from socializing the risk to the seller – being ONLY the agent, not the owner.

2. Big-feet real estate players are inherently catastrophic: Make a mistake in real estate, you lose money. Make enough mistakes, you get a job. But if you make market-wide mistakes, you take the whole market down with you.

Go away, iBuyers, all of you. You don’t know what you’re doing, and you don’t want to know how Read more

Bloodhound Realty is moving its offices – and our residence – today. The COVID and ‘domestic terrorism’ lies both blew up yesterday, so there’s plenty of news out there. Just not here. My apologies.

In other news:

CNBC: Sales of existing homes rose in September, likely due to a brief decline in mortgage rates.

California Globe: Iconic Target Store on Mission St to Close Amid Shoplifting Tidal Wave.

City Journal: In Thrall to D.C.: The pandemic has worsened states’ dependence on federal largesse.

Who didn’t see this coming? Netflix caved.

Since George Floyd got sober, I’ve been predicting the advent of the new power center in all corporations, the Chief Grievances Officer. Yesterday, the CGO became de facto CEO of the biggest money in Hollywood.

I’m thinking “Admiral Rachel” should start primping for “her” closeup…

In other news:

Redfin.com: Housing Market Update: Fast Sales Increasingly Common This Fall.

City Journal: Transition to Nowhere: California’s switch to a primarily solar and wind-powered grid is a dead end.

The Federalist: Biden Forced Americans Into A Game Of Chicken Over Their Livelihoods, And They’re Not Flinching.

Don Surber: They promised to destroy Big Brother. They became him.

The headline of the day belongs to The Babylon Bee, the most-accurate news source in America: “Arms Race Heats Up: Just As China Reveals Space Nukes, America Responds With Trans Admiral.”

We are led by a pageant of clowns. Who can argue that we don’t deserve exactly what we’re getting?

In other news:

CNBC: Weekly mortgage demand drops over 6% after interest rates move even higher.

CNBC: Single-family rents are surging, and investors are flooding the market.

Jordan Davidson: Corporate Media, Democrats Praise Rachel Levine, A Man, For ‘Historic’ Female Admiral Title.

Joy Pullman: Leftist Shadow Governments Control A Lot More Than Our Elections.

Joel Kotkin: Have we reached the high water mark of woke?

Here’s an interesting question: Given that we know that the iBuyers gouge buyer’s agents, could it be that they also gouge all their other vendors?

This could explain why Zillow has discovered that it is unfit for the house-flipping business: It can’t get rehab contractors, and, for bizarre reasons unknown, it (says) it can’t move its deals through title and escrow. Paper-shuffling was to have been propteched by now, likewise online notarization, but it’s not like there is a sudden supply-chain shortage of chatty, chubby folks to close deals.

What’s really Zillow’s problem? Duh. College boys can’t broker real estate from 30,000 feet, but before that there is this: The profitability of real estate brokerage, if any, entails NOT owning the inventory. All iBuyers make stupid marketing mistakes all the time, but their worst mistake – risking their own funds – will bleed them white as the market turns.

Not really a problem for Zillow: They have two reasons for iBuying, to stay in front of consumers – and to stay in front of agents. As long as pie-eyed agents are willing to pay Zillow to sell their own clients back to them, they can continue to soak their toes and call it swimming.

In other news:

CNN Business: Zillow slams the brakes on home buying as it struggles to manage its backlog of inventory.

CNBC: Homebuilder sentiment bounces back despite ongoing supply chain problems.

City Journal: Some Things Money Can’t Buy: For everything else, there’s deception.

Andrea Widburg: The DOJ has finally disgorged some exculpatory evidence about January 6.

John Stossel: Let Life Resume: “It’s not admitting defeat; it’s admitting reality.”

America is aghast at its own collapse, and this seems to have resulted in a dearth of fluffy real estate lies. But Redfin always comes through, today with a survey of recent movers’ attitudes about hot-button political issues.

That alone seems stupid to me: “We’re from Redfin, and we market our business with dubious anger porn! What’s it gonna take to get you to hate your new neighbors today?”

But the question to have asked, given that we’re asking recent movers why they moved, is this one: “How were your real estate choices influenced by last year’s riots?”

Redfin could only ask that question by admitting that there were riots – most especially in Redfin’s own home town of Seattle.

Moreover, since the riots were – and are – the reason for America’s resort to resorting itself – the Ants who can fleeing Grasshopper-run cities, moving as far as possible from rioters – refusing to talk about them is worse than lying: It’s gaslighting – redlining facts out of the discussion.

Why is Redfin pretending to be bold about politics while gaslighting the riots that are actually roiling the real estate industry? Where is its headquarters again…?

In other news:

CNBC: Mortgage originations will drop 33% in 2022 as interest rates rise, according to industry forecast.

City Journal: Liberal Pieties, Illiberal Consequences: We can fight censorious certitude by allowing for moral complexity.

American Thinker: Parents vs. Educational Wokeness.

We move officially, residence and office, on Friday. Miss Chioux is with us all week to help push the process along, and I’m delighted to have her spending time in both places, to get her acclimated to the new house.

I am amazed at my own consideration. I am good with, for and by dogs, but I have never been this sensitive to a dog’s emotional needs. This is DISC-my-way in action, with the understanding that normal dogs are virtually all Sociable and not much else. Labs and other working breeds are Sd and we had an English Coon Hound who was Sc, a bitchy queen of proprieties, but dogs love what they live for – love, ideally expressed with food.

So yesterday I was doing sightlines from imaginary furniture to figure out what Cleo will be able to see in the new house. She’s still sofa-bound, but she patrols the top of the sofa to monitor the activities she is not directly participating in.

She can’t see the kitchen at all, right now, but of course she is fascinated by it, since noises there frequently result in snacks for the whole family. She has trained her night watchman to perk up at the sound of the microwave beeping.

From her perch atop the sofa, Cleo will be able to see all of our office when we move, but only a tiny slice of the kitchen. We’re calling this phenomenon Plato’s Kitchen, given that Miss Chioux is the undisputed mistress of unfounded inferences.

But dogs are toddlers and toddlers are participants. We will situate the furniture so that Cleo can participate as much as possible in the world whirling all around her. And when she drowses, she can dream of what might next emerge from the mystical, magical kitchen.

In other news:

Brad Polumbo: Walgreens is abandoning San Francisco because leftist policies created a shoplifting crisis.

RedState.com: Chinese Military Operation Leaves US Officials Dumbfounded.

Clarice Feldman: School Boards and Idiots.

I was talking with Brain Brady on Facebook about why Wagon Wheel is the perfect American song. I ended up here:

As music, I think it is the quintessential American song. It retells the story of American diligence and redemption every eight bars – that’s what makes the rest of it work so well. It’s written in I-V-IV, very gaelic, where almost all pop music is in I-IV-V. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, also written for the movie, is also in I-V-IV. Two incredibly simple, very American songs, both huge hits for multiple acts. The Nobel Prize was a sad joke, but the man is the best uniquely-American composer since Gershwin.

At the risk of being boring, this is why Wagon Wheel works as a truly American song: This is the song for guitar, with the capo on 2:

G D Em C
G D C C

That’s it, eight bars repeated throughout. But it’s a tight little three-act benedy in music: That E-minor is the second-act crisis, and the last two bars are the resolution and redemption – hard work paying off. That’s a lovely story, one we never tire of hearing.

I could say more, and Wagon Wheel makes up around 20% of my own guitar time: It’s a song I like to whistle with my fingers, this because it is a work song, a traveling song, a song for getting things done.

We are moved by small things we take no account of. The image of a wagon wheel – rolling ever westward, taking every shock from the cracked and corrugated deserts – that’s America. The metaphor sells it, the music sells it, but it is that American idea – hard work pays off – that sells it so well that you share the good news by singing or playing it while you work.

In other news:

The Seattle Times: Downtown Seattle’s troubles go beyond the pandemic.

City Journal: Squalor By the Seaside: Homelessness and RV fires have overrun Venice Beach, California.

Monica Showalter: Pete Buttigieg finally comes out of the woodwork on supply chain mess — to complain about Tucker Carlson.

American Thinker: Read more

It would be stupid to speak of Practical Anarchism and rules, so let’s settle for an axiom instead: Do what you want.

No one will stop you. Ask me how I know.

If what you want is to hurt people, you can get dead – and the sooner the better. But if all you want to do is live your life the way you want – go ahead. Nobody cares.

I think most people like to see themselves as being obedient, where I am very proud to have been born a rebel. But it remains that what we think of as civil society is simply the uniform expression of the self-restraint we learned as toddlers, primarily from our fathers. We are in a graduated state of collapse not because of Marxism as such, but because Marxism has so-successfully undermined fatherhood.

Whatever. As you know from your habituated lawlessness on the freeway, a “law” that is “enforced” by a sign is a joke. You have occasion to laugh everywhere. Where Irish Democracy won’t work, White Mutiny will. And when all else fails, you put down your tools, sit down on your ass and wait. “Who is John Galt?” That would be you, compadre.

Self-governance is all the governance there ever was. When the state makes war on its own stability, Practical Anarchism – maximizing your own family’s interests in the maelstrom – will be all the law that’s left to you.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Fewer Homes for Sale in September; Declining Number of Listings Holds Back Home Sales.

City Journal: From Malls to Homes: An obscure new law may help alleviate California’s housing shortage.

Michael Ledeen: Is China Falling? Selling off resources, purging top officials, and defaulting on debt.

American Thinker: Requiem for the Roth IRA.

Christopher Rufo: Walmart vs. Whiteness: The company’s new training program tells hourly employees that they are guilty of “internalized racial superiority.”