Category: Real Estate (page 5 of 266)

It is your thinking brain that languidly declines Latin nouns and categorizes and conjugates all those vigorous verbs. Whatever else it does, the thinking brain is an amazing database engine – the source of the information that makes informed discretion – free will – possible.

And yet: You as a human being can manage a truly sociable social network of only around 150 people – 15 or fewer you know and love as family, with the rest being those people about whom you can speak in loving detail of recent memories. As new close relationships are added, older, more-distant ones drop away, since 150 or so is all you mind can handle.

But consider: This is also true of your dog: He knows and trusts dozens of people – and other dogs – but it’s only family he treats as furniture. If you watch your dog interacting with people he knows, you will see graduated expectations based on past experience – for instance, who shares food while eating and who only afterward? That is: A database of memories of past interactions with particular people.

Evolution gave us the need for the thinking brain – too many freakishly difficult survival problems all at once – but the Greeks wrote the manual. But they – and we – are blinded by our own brilliance: We refuse to see what we had to have seen first, in order to have seen anything at all: All mammals are amazing adaptations with astounding brain power. They can’t connect dots, but they never, ever have their postulated ducks out of alignment.

It seems obvious to me that dogs and people manage personal relationships in about the same way because they are doing it with the same hardware: The mammal brain. Do recall, all other mammals are solving their own social problems without the thinking brain; unlike proto-humanity’s survival crises, the need pre-existed the hardware upgrade. This is very alien to the Greek way of thinking, where “dumb” animals are regarded as animate rocks, surprisingly variable deterministic Read more

John Hinderaker asks if electric cars are a joke, but I can think of something even funnier: Electric motorcycles.

Scooters, Vespas, mo-peds – battery up; no one cares, least of all fertile women. But the purpose of a motorcycle is to be showy and obnoxious – to be showy by being obnoxious. Remove the obnoxophone and you have removed the marketing appeal.

These are the purposes of a motorcycle in America:

• To be obnoxious at start-up and shut-down, especially when everyone else is sleeping.
• To be obnoxious at stoplights.
• To be obnoxious in traffic.

In fact, this is all about Incandescent need – and the excessive displays necessary to catch the attention of preoccupied strangers ensconced in cars and enmired in traffic. But how are you going to distract them with your presence without the boom-boom-boom of that VRROOM-VRROOM-VRROOM?

Like NASCAR and the NFL, is the motorcycle business trying to replace its customer base? Seems equally wise to me: Hating the people who love you will not inspire the love of people who hate you. But, as with corporate weenies everywhere, there is an incandescent need even more important than VRROOM-VRROOM-VRROOM. Who cares if it kills the business?

In other news:

The Federalist: Of All The Third-World Cities I’ve Lived In, Baltimore Was The Worst.

WKBN.com: Vans operating as illegal Airbnbs in NYC impounded by NYC Sheriff’s Office.

Thomas Lifson: Schadenfreude to start the week: Biden and the Dems’ plans are collapsing.

Roger Kimball: How It Might End, Act I: It seems to be that we have alarm bells going off all around us. The oddity is that so few people seem to hear them.

Christopher Rufo: The White Backlash That Wasn’t: Opposition to critical race theory is broad and bipartisan.

Who was looking ahead? This is me in February of 2019:

Marketing genocide:
Stage 1: Tax-payer-funded abortions for all!
Stage 2: Now free in nursing homes, too!
Stage 3: Stay put. We deliver!

If the virus isn’t genocide, if the vaccine isn’t genocide, the hunger for genocide remains. I wish I were joking. Australia daily proves the wisdom of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, but America is not yet that overt in its genocide: All we can do is pass laws permitting abortion until the baby is old enough to run away screaming – while sending cornucopias full of cornucopias, orchards of orchards, into combat.

Ci in power is always tyrannical, but when that power is challenged, pro forma niceties are dispensed with – and that’s when the bodies start to pile up.

The hyper-compliant have believed since they were toddlers that theirs is the only safe path to survival. As we are already seeing in Australia, Ci will vigilantly kill you – more in sorrow than in anger – to keep you safe.

In other news:

Bonchie: The Tyrannical Scenes out of Australia Grow Darker and More Disturbing.

American Greatness: Democrats Can’t Have It Both Ways on the ‘Great Replacement’.

Julie Kelly: Times Reveals FBI Role in January 6.

Linked below, there is apparently a TikTok video of a real estate agent accusing iBuyers of nefarious market brilliance. He’s in Nevada, where Florida goes to blow its reputation for probity, so that alone may explain his conclusions.

Mine are the opposite: The iBuyers are terrible marketers. They buy low from idiots, but they have cultivated a whole new garden of flippers who will pay more – and who have the iBuyers’ marketing to attract sellers. But to this day, the sell like REO agents – like intern REO agents: They do everything they can to leach the marketing value from their marketing efforts.

I’ve bitched about this before, in detail, but here’s a current example: OpenDoor has a listing on Coggins Drive in Sun City. A couple of months ago, a good gust of monsoon wind grabbed their yard sign and twisted the post 45 degrees in the ground. Yes: That much wind. Note also: Months ago. What’s fun is that the sign is still tilted that way. Nobody serviced the sign because nobody services the listings – the listings that sit on the market forever, just like any mis-marketed REO.

My take: If you got beat by an iBuyer, you suck and you belong in another business. They do, too, but there is no point in you racing them to bankruptcy.

In other news:

MarketWatch: Viral TikTok accuses Zillow and competitors of manipulating the housing market. Here’s what’s really going on.

Housing Wire: New home sales rise for second consecutive month.

City Journal: Ending Homelessness? No – just more of the same federal policy.

Michael Fumento: The Myth of ‘Long COVID.’ For all the twists and turns of the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps none is stranger than so-called “Long Covid.”

Andrea Widburg: A look at the terrible plight of one of Biden’s political prisoners.

Townhall.com: New Report: More Americans Are Choosing Charter Schools Over Failing Government Schools.

I link from here every day, and this blog has always been about linking out – not as link love or click bait but as further proof: For anyone telling controversial truths, a link is a footnote.

Even so, I never link to paywalled sites: That would be pointless. My first post at BHB was about the futility of holding ordinary information hostage, and, in a world where being-linked equals being-visible, making the links to your information non-functional is worse than pointless.

Ad-block-block, if you must, but now you must surmount my aversion to unblocking you – just this once – before I can even decide if I might want to link to you.

Wanna be unblocked forever? Just tell the truth, like the epilepsy-inducing circus poster that is The Daily Mail. Charging me money to tell me lies I can’t share is beyond stupid.

In other news:

CNBC: Mortgage rates rose sharply this week – and there could be more increases on the way.

CNBC: The Evergrande crisis may just be a ‘tempest in a teapot,’ says analyst.

The Washington Times: U.S. facing biggest homicide rate increase in 60 years.

Stacey Lennox: Voting With Their Feet: Parents Taking Their Kids Out of Traditional Public Schools in Astounding Numbers.

City Journal: Blame Biden, Not the Military: The president can’t dodge responsibility for the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.

Apparently the best thing managers can do, in the midst of a nationwide labor shortage, is to fire people in bulk…

I smile: Reality will not be suppressed.

Every trade requires mutual agreement. Left over from medieval serfdom, left over from equestrian Rome, left over from the aristocratic Greeks, employment practices have followed the master/slave model, rather than the free trader ideal.

Guess what’s changing at last?

Golden handcuffs will only buy you so much sociopathy, especially when the capital cost of most jobs is plummeting.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Housing Market Update: Homebuyer Demand and Sellers’ Asking Prices Get a Late-Summer Boost.

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates continue to idle at 2.88%.

Yahoo Finance: FedEx just painted a disturbing picture of the job market.

RedState.com: The Feds Are Forced to Release January 6th Surveillance Footage and Narratives Crumble.

City Journal: Immigration Yes, Multiculturalism No: America benefits from immigration – when it thoroughly vets newcomers.

Christopher Rufo: True Privilege: CVS launches a program that forces hourly employees to discuss their “privilege.”

Angelo Codevilla: Stopping The Decay Of Western Civilization Begins With A Great Educational Reset.

I’m finishing a rehab-from-hell right now, and the owner reminded me that we had done another one, seven or eight years ago. But neither of those compare to the worst house we ever worked on – the worst house we ever redeemed.

True fact: Things are either adequate or they are not. If you replace or repair the inadequate things, the home is adequate – turnkey livable. If you can work a little “wow factor” into the budget, so much the better. You cannot lawfully rent an inadequate home, but you can sell one – at a discount. To sell a home at its highest attainable price, you must deliver a turnkey value – the more move-in-ready, the better. That’s the bad news. The good news is that rehab done right nets out to a profit at Close of Escrow: You will sell for more than it cost you to get there.

So here’s a house I’m not in love with in the first place: We’re buying trashed foreclosures at the bottom of the market to rehab and hold as rental properties. It’s four bedrooms, and I like three bedroom homes as rentals, plus this home faces East/West, thought to be bad for exposure to sunlight so penalized on resale. I helped investors buy a lot of houses in the collapse, but this is the only East/West house we bought.

But here’s the prize that sold the house: When they abandoned the property, the former owners left their two Rottweilers behind. The dogs had food, and they were rescued alive. But you would not believe the stench in this home. It made it unsalable – which made it catnip to us. If you want to buy cheap, buy what no one else wants.

So we rehabbed an 1800sf doghouse with all the windows and doors open – in the middle of a brisk-enough Arizona Winter. Carpets out and bleach the slab. Kilz brand primer. Kilz brand paint. New carpets, new counters, new blinds. And just like that, a steady rental for a Read more

At some point I will write an extended rhapsody of everything dogs can do that people can do. Here’s what they can’t do: Connect dots.

When I first started playing with Cleo, coming on a year ago, I would announce my presence at the church by texting Cathleen. Mine is a custom ring tone on Cathleen’s phone, and that ring tone became Miss Chioux’s proxy signal that I was there, such that I can’t text my wife, now, anytime, when I know Cleo is around.

Funnier still, the iPhone issues the notification twice, if you don’t dismiss it. So on hearing the second ringtone, Cleo will race to the window to see if I have arrived a second time.

You figure out the underlying epistemology. Here’s an even better puzzler: Cathleen bought Cleo a spiky blue ball that she loves to play with. The spikes keep it from rolling very far, so play is more of a drunkard’s walk – not a long schlep down the hall when she gets it trapped somewhere.

That ball was for the church, but she liked it so well that we got another one for her home. And yesterday we bought another one for our home.

Here’s the epistemology quiz: What does Cleo make of the fact that her favorite ball is everywhere she goes? Does she know there is more than one ball? Or does she surmise the universe just comes equipped that way?

In other news:

The Federalist: Democrats Plan Tax Giveaway To The Rich, Bailout To Blue States.

Heather Mac Donald: Ripping Off the Veil: A British classical music organization exposes the sordid business behind all racial-preference regimes.

American Thinker: Is the Republic dead? Can it be saved?

Mark Steyn: A Hinge Moment of History.

We are moving in forty-something days, and I only just now realized why: It’s Cleo’s other house we’re moving to.

I was up early because that’s who I am, and Miss Cleopatra Chioux – the French Bulldog to whom I am part-time de facto factotum – woke up early to poop because that’s who she is.

But she wouldn’t go back to sleep, and she had Cathleen and me playing her favorite game – “You Can’t Catch Cleo!” – at 4 am.

And the new house has a block wall. Where we are is wide open, and the New River – scorpions, snakes, owls, hawks, coyotes – is right there, so Cleo can never play off the lead. But at the new house, a dog who loves, loves, loves to run can fetch tennis balls until she collapses in exhaustion – perchance to dream of fetching more tennis balls.

I’m losing the New River – Willie’s a mile-and-a-half south of us, in Rio Nuevo, and I’m leaving him there – but we will be fairly close to the Aqua Fria River, so I can continue to seek thorns big enough to penetrate Arizona-fortified bike tires. Close, too, to the Duffeeland Dog Park, which Odysseus loved and which I wrote a lot about in Sun City. So: Even better: Socializing off-lead play, which Cleo – almost a year old – has never had enough of.

She’s with us maybe 100 days a year, but she’s family. Real estate is kids and dogs, never doubt it. She is not how we chose our next home, I swear, but we might as well call it Cleo’s Playhouse.

In other news:

American Thinker: K–12: the Clutter is the Message.

Andrea Widburg: While the Rally for January 6 prisoners was a bust, it still mattered a lot.

Intellectual Takeout: Why It’s Time to Treat the Hammer and Sickle Like the Swastika.

I had precisely this much to do with the events of January 6th: I made sure people I know and love would not be there. It was obviously a mistake – and a glaring example of Trump’s baseline foolishness – if only because, in times of turmoil, a man’s duty is to his own family, his own home, his own values.

Likewise today, still more obviously a mistake. Photos of everyone there would make a nice database of suspected FBI employees.

But note that peaceful protest by non-Marxists is by now effectively outlawed in the United States: Any organized protest is FBI entrapment, backed up by twenty-year prison terms. To engage with any stranger is to invite lifelong persecution.

The solution is simply non-cooperation. We can’t organize in the streets like the British or the French, not without risking prison, but we don’t have to. All we have to do is nothing.

The tyrant’s chief fear is not of the people turning against him, but of his own henchmen. As Genocide Joe’s Fiascopade extends to three and four performances a day, the upsides to a polite regicide will sell themselves.

What then? Legitimacy literally means the ongoing, uninterrupted consent of the overwhelming majority of the governed. All government compulsion is crime, not just vaccine mandates. Withdraw your consent. When enough people do – then do all tyrants have reason to fear.

In other news:

Housing Wire: These are the hottest housing markets in America.

CNBC: Artificial intelligence is taking over real estate – here’s what that means for homebuyers.

The Los Angeles Times: Watch out, NIMBYs. Newsom just dumped single-family zoning.

Real Clear Politics: The Conservative Temperament Is Dooming America.

City Journal: Heaping on the SALT: Democrats press Biden to reinstate a tax break for the wealthy.

I was showing for Cathleen once, maybe 15 years ago, to a woman who was deeply paranoid about her ex-boyfriend. We were looking at gated, restricted-parking condos because she thought they would be most secure. She was particularly interested in a unit that had nearby access to the parking lot – easy in, easy out.

“For you and who else?”

“Huh…?” And this is maybe why you should never let me cover your buyers.

“Your ex tailgates someone past that door and waits up the the stairs. He rushes your door when you come home and he’s in. There is no security here. You don’t need a condo. What you need is a gun.”

We stopped looking that day and I sent her to Shooter’s World off of Indian School Road – still there – and she acquired a Glock and soon thereafter a concealed-carry permit. She bought a single-family home way out west, by the Aqua Fria River, but she also range-qualified in all sorts of ways and ended up teaching self-defense to women much like she had been.

As it turns out, real estate is kids and dogs – and, when necessary, guns. I love the idea of more women becoming armed, but, unless they are like Cathleen’s client – dangerous men when it matters – many of those women will lose their guns to felons, perhaps thereby becoming felons themselves.

The ideal woman is Yael – naturally nurturing, but instantly homicidal when that’s the only option. But Yael is married. She’s a fallback. A woman needs a firearm for self-defense when her first line of defense – her husband, her father, her brothers, her sons – has already failed her.

Yael was a dangerous woman. A woman alone must either be a dangerous man, when only a dangerous man will do, or she will be a statistic.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates still flat at 2.86%.

Housing Wire: Study: Real estate firms thrive on repeat and referral business. Who knew?

City Journal: The Ashen State: Green myopia is getting in the way of California’s efforts to Read more

Is the real estate market cooling? Not where I work.

To the contrary, good news just blew in yesterday from California: That state’s few remaining sane voters will be packing up and leaving, with The Tarnished State becoming America’s largest Grasshopper sanctuary.

I can’t tell if there is actually a nationwide housing shortage or not: Reporting about rioted neighborhoods, multi-family and apartments is lacking.

But, regardless, single-family housing that is inaccessible to rioters will continue to do well, going forward.

And housing in states hostile to mask and vaccine mandates, should do well, also.

My timeline is 30 days, 60 when I’m hungry for risk. I have no idea what prices will do – especially since prices are a reflection of the hysterical U.S. dollar. But the housing that will do relatively better, going forward, is far, far away from Grasshoppers.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Home Sales Fell 6% in August, the First Annual Decline in 15 Months.

Redfin.com: Housing Market Update: Pending Sales Show Smallest Year-Over-Year Increase in 15 Months.

Joel Kotkin: Recall Reflections: Gavin Newsom’s victory in California is more of a reality check for the Republican Party than an endorsement of progressive policies.

City Journal: Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Is Unconstitutional: The media were quick to criticize Trump when he claimed similar powers last year.

American Mind: Deep State, Deep Trouble: America’s woke generals and the Military-Industrial Complex must be purged to save the nation.

I am agog – and not in the good way.

Entirely too much news, and of course all the matters right now is Afghanistan and election audits, but out of the quagmire, I pick this:

General Milley was outed as a traitor yesterday, but then leaks from within the Biden administration backed that up.

Throwing Milley under the bus means what? He and Pelosi telegraphed the treason on January 8th – real news is often accidentally reported before it is covered up. So is the idea to put Pelosi on notice?

Whomever is pulling Fiasco Joe’s strings doesn’t want to let them go. The message would seem to be directed to the line of presidential succession: If one goes, the all go, all at once.

If Senator Patrick Leahy wants to buy a bottle of Imodium, charge him double. If he wants to buy life insurance, be sure to thank him for the belly-laugh.

In other news:

CNBC: Mortgage demand from homebuyers jumps to highest level since April, after new listings rise all summer.

City Journal: California’s Misguided Education Spending: Throwing billions at a failing education system is the California way.

Kevin Downey, Jr.: Conservatives Are Now Counter-Culture: True Liberalism Is Dead and Antifa Is Pure Establishment. Brian Brady has been making this argument for a decade, at least.