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There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Technology (page 1 of 60)

October 29, 2020

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

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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The Washington Examiner: Kids today: 4 in 10 call Constitution ‘outdated,’ OK with silencing speech.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

October 25, 2020

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

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Once upon a time in my young career, I used to think about sending little notes to flailing sellers, telling them why their houses weren’t selling. Arguably, this would have been a violation of Article 15 of the NAR Code of (ahem) Ethics, but it would have been bad form regardless. Besides, I was making good money by picking off those mis-marketed listings for my buyers.

The terrible marketing errors of the REO listers is how we survived the downturn. I built software to predict how much I could underbid them and still snag the house. I wrote last Summer about how to apply those ideas to underbidding the iBuyers – who all seem to come from the REO world and who mis-market accordingly.

I confess: My current listing praxis is more than just a little informed by studying all the bonehead marketing mistakes I’ve seen over the years.

So for Daniel Morillo, newly hired by OpenDoor to convince Wall Street they’re not a joke, using just one listing, I will show you why OpenDoor’s houses sell slower and lower than they should – even in a market as hot as Suburban Phoenix at Peak 2020.

The first extracurricular research project I did for Zillow, when I was working as a pricing algorithm, concerned closing-cost concessions in their sales. They didn’t know what questions to ask, so I kept giving them incredibly-detailed technically-correct wrong answers.

What they actually wanted to know was this: “Why do so many of our transactions entail concessions?”

The answer? Because they’re mis-marketed. This is true of all listings: Discounted offers denote blood in the water. Since 2014 at the latest, in Metro Phoenix a properly-marketed bread-and-butter home should sell above, at or near fair-market-value in under 15 days, ideally under 5, to an all-cash or well-qualified conventional buyer. If you’re taking offers with closing cost concessions, you did something terribly wrong.

As it happens, the last research project I did for them, in June 2019, involved a much more direct question: “Why are a third of our listings over 90 Days-on-Market?”

The answer? They and all the other iBuyers were and are getting a Read more

October 23, 2020

Overnight News: Yesterday was peak 2020 – and the climax of the Biden clan.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Ya think it's easy?

“I like toast – especially peanut-butter toast.”

As I foresaw, yesterday was one for the record books – and let’s pray that record is not eclipsed. I had a bunch of Biden corruption links, but I ditched them all. If you want to know about it, you will. And Joe is toast, regardless.

CNBC: Redfin CEO expects ‘absolutely insane’ demand in housing market to last into 2021. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Forbes: Compass Founder & CEO Robert Reffkin Weighs In On Today’s Real Estate Market. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Existing home sales surge 9.4% in September.

Forbes: Mortgage Rates Hit New Low.

CNBC: Hamptons real estate prices break records as New York City wealthy flee to the beach.

The Federalist: Amy Coney Barrett Will Be Confirmed Because Kavanaugh Battle Taught GOP To Stop Getting Played By Democrat Dirty Tricks. If there are going to be smears, they’ll start now, when she can’t answer them.

City Journal: The Last Presidential Debate, Please.

Rod Dreher: No Families, No Children, No Future.

City Journal: Confronting Covid: The American response has been far better than critics acknowledge.

October 22, 2020

Overnight News: Pucker up: Today just might be peak 2020.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Ya think it's easy?

“Is everyone who vouches for a creep also a creep?”

Looking for a great debate question? Try this: “Vice President Biden, a week from the day after tomorrow is what date?” But the debate is just the end of this day, and there promises to be tons of ugly news before then. Buckle up: It’s about to get 2020 on you…

Housing Wire: The housing market faced uncertainty in March, but now ‘it’s a circus’.

Housing Wire: MBA forecast for 2021: Prepare for rising mortgage interest rates.

Housing Wire: In a bid for stability, FHFA and FHA extend forbearance policies.

City Journal: Budgeting Through Rose-Colored Glasses: For states and municipalities, assuming endless economic and population growth can bring disaster.

Frontpage: The City is Killing America: America’s real problem are urban problems.

The Washington Free Beacon: The Media’s Futile Information Suppression Complex: Hunter Biden’s corruption sees the light of day despite their best efforts.

American Greatness: The Antifa Industry at Work.

And just to start the day off right:

New York Post: Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition about sordid sex life unsealed.

October 20, 2020

The #iBuyers are super good at mulcting buyer’s agents with science. That’s why they can’t price.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Why are iBuyers nicking buyer’s agents for commission? Why do broke Dairy Queens charge extra for napkins? It’s because they’re broke. Whatever bullshit they tell you – they’re broke.

Mike DelPrete is worth reading, so long as you understand that, like The Inglorious Knob, he is one with The Borg. Just lately I mentioned that the iBuyers in Phoenix are nicking buyer’s agents for commission – which is just the kind of dick move you expect from financially-inept sociopaths. Coincidentally or not, yesterday DelPrete came forth with a defense of this stunt, insisting that it’s all a matter of the devilishly clever deep science that undergirds all things iBuyer.

You bet.

Why do broke Dairy Queens charge extra for napkins? It’s because they’re broke. Whatever bullshit they tell you – they’re broke.

To accept DelPrete’s argument, you would have to insist that iBuyers are optimizing a marketing cost – to their long-term disadvantage – before they optimize their resale pricing. Hundreds of iBuyer employees have read me on their pricing errors, but they have learned nothing. They are now convinced they have gotten good enough to cheat their marketing partners, when they have not yet even been tested by the market.

Here’s the truth: The iBuyers are financial disasters in the best real estate market ever known to man: Suburbia after the riots. They are temporarily able to divest their inventory, but this is caused by the buyer frenzy, not by any new marketing skills acquired by the iBuyers. They suck at resale marketing, as will become obvious, yet again, when the market turns.

The iBuyers are inept at real estate investing and marketing. That’s why they have to cheat buyer’s agents. Stealing from the defenseless is all they’ve got…

October 12, 2020

I am the applecart. How do you propose to motivate me?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here today. Gone tomorrow?

I have a brand new business idea.

At first glance, you might call it lead-gen, except that I hate that kind of wheel-spinning. What nerds call leads, I call inquiries – and the difference between inquiries and crap is that nobody wastes that kind of time on crap.

Instead, as I have discussed, I am interested in in-real-life marketing strategies, this as a way of neutralizing the Realty.bots where they are worst – at Sociability.

So what I have is a way of creating a warm network of around 200 people interested in self-improvement, each deploying their varied talents to engender a self-amplifying mutual-improvement machine. Generates listings for me – from people already sold on me – but it generates opportunities for everyone involved.

Even better, it’s totally replicable: There’s room for a group like this every three miles on every freeway in every city in North America. We spend all our time looking for better people, when, instead, we should be cultivating better people – starting from the inside out. Eminently doable – and there’s work in it for everyone.

There’s a hitch, for now: What I am talking about is inescapably social in a world in quarantine. I had all this worked out when Coronavirus came to call. But this is temporary, and we all know it. When I’m ready to jump, the people I want to meet will be ready to jump, too.

The bigger question would be: Why should I?

I am the applecart. In my head are the means to create jobs in my own business while encouraging the creation of jobs in many other businesses.

Why should I bother?

So you know, for now I am not bothering. We haven’t marketed for new business in ten years, and I am not committing to anything new between now and the election. If Trump wins, I’ve got twenty years of growth to plan for. If Biden wins, my applecart will very quickly come to resemble an armadillo.

Yours, too, I should expect.

Profit is faith and follow-through – not faith in the magical but simply an unwavering belief that the follow-through Read more

October 9, 2020

Overnight News: The RiotScore™ of Chiefs of Police: When are you safe? When should you flee?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Ya think it's easy?

“C’mon, look at me: Some of my closest friends are police dogs.”

There is no rioting! More importantly, there is no denial of the rioting that is not happening, anyway! How can you know that’s all true? Because there are no police chiefs quitting in disgust all over the country, that’s how! So there!

Urf… Meanwhile: Yesterday on BloodhoundBlog:

Brian Brady: October 2020 Mortgage Rates Report: Cheeseburgers can only get so cheap.

Greg Swann: Listing Clinic: How I list and sell for top dollar in under seven days-on-market.

And in the rest of the world:

Redfin: U.S. Home Prices Up 15%, Largest Growth Since at Least 2005. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. How could a brokerage based in Seattle be expected to know anything about the impact of rioting on real estate?

CNBC: Red-hot home prices have more consumers saying now is a bad time to buy. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. Are buyers waiting out the post-election riots?

Redfin: 6.5% More Americans Looked to Relocate to Red and Swing Counties than to Blue Counties in the Spring. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. Well, at least we know for sure it’s not because of the rioting Redfin never seems to discuss.

CNBC: Empty rental apartments in Manhattan triple, nearly hitting 16,000. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. What’s bleeding all the fun out of Fun City, do you suppose?

Housing Wire: Average U.S. mortgage rate drops to 2.87%.

CNBC: Coronavirus mortgage bailouts fall below 3 million in pandemic’s sharpest decline.

Forbes: Despite Option To Pause Payments, 400,000 Homeowners Fall Behind On Their Mortgage. Not sure if this is connected: Can we look forward to a wave of ‘buy and bail’ foreclosures in Ant-abandoned cities?

Yahoo Finance: Opendoor and other iBuyers’ sales stall despite hot housing market. Very fun article on the scaled cluelessness of buying for resale against the market. The bigger fun doesn’t start until they get to sell that way – for years on end.

Forbes: Alma Maters For Sale: America’s Small Colleges Were Already Hurting Pre-Covid. Things Are About To Get Worse.

Bloomberg: Inside a California Covid Revolt.

Fox Business: Cities are losing police chiefs and struggling to hire new ones. The RiotScore™ of Chiefs of Police: Read more

October 4, 2020

A Sunday sermon for the Phoenix iBuyers: “Do not bind the mouths of the Buyer’s Agents.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“I was going to pay you this whole pizza, but instead I’m keeping a quarter of it for myself. Why? Because you can’t spell sociopath without Ci, that’s why.”

I don’t list a lot, right now, but I have been working for years to list perfectly: Highest/safest/soonest offer in minimal Days on Market. I haven’t done my numbers in a while, but I’ve been under seven days, on average, for a long time, typically selling at or above Fair-Market Value. I sell bread-and-butter houses, and I sell them fast, for top-dollar, with no hassles and minimal showing-damage to the property.

Because I have a listing right now, I am aware of the competition. Interestingly, I ran across listings from both Zillow and OpenDoor that significantly underpay Buyer’s Agents.

Note well: Brokers are advised to avoid discussing commission rates amongst each other, since free speech and free assembly don’t count if you’re in business. Whatever. I certainly have the right to talk about commissions all alone.

So first: I hate it that the Listing Agent pays the Buyer’s Agent. We say the seller does, but the lenders would never allow that, just as they don’t allow buyers to pay for their own representation. Instead, the seller pays the Listing Agent a lot more than he will typically earn, with half or more of that commission income going to the Buyer’s Agent. You say the buyer is getting representation. I say I am paying a brokerage fee: The price of the introduction. If you don’t see the Agency problem here – I am buying your fiduciary’s loyalty, aligning his interests with mine and my seller’s and against yours – the NAR would love to have you testify on its side in the upcoming lawsuit over this idiotic compensation scheme.

But second: I Corinthians 9:7-10: “Do not bind the mouths of the grunts on the ground who are delivering your dinner!” Buyer’s Agents don’t work for their brokers, they work for Listing Agents. Freelance. On spec. They live on dreams and promises, too many of which don’t come true. They drive hundreds of miles a Read more

October 1, 2020

Dear Spencer Rascoff: How many rich people do you know who like sharing things?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Understanding wealthy people and their real estate needs.

Looking for a real estate startup that is having its very best day?

Launching today, Pacaso – how many great names were passed over for this? – wants rich people to buy expensive second homes – and then share them with other owners.

VRBO meets time-shares, except that nobody actually likes staying in temporary spaces. It turns out there really is no place like home.

People hate sharing their most intimate spaces. They hate sharing driveways, for goodness sakes! I find it hugely implausible that any significant fraction of one-percenters will buy a second home to share with strangers.

Geekwire: Ex-Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff jumps back into real estate, launches startup with former colleagues to help people buy second homes.

PRNewswire: Pacaso Launches to Create New Category of Second Home Ownership; Secures $267 Million in Funding

The website: A better way to buy and own a second home.

Sorry, Spencer: My read is that this is the very worst iBuying idea I have heard so far. Prove me wrong.

September 30, 2020

Overnight News: What ELSE happened yesterday?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Ya think it's easy?

“Television is always boring until someone rings a doorbell.”

Catch any TV last night? Catch up on what you might have missed:

Housing Wire: Home-price index gains the most since 2018. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Forbes: The Housing Market Inventory Shrinks While Home Prices Climb. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: Mortgage demand falls nearly 5%, even as interest rates set another record low.

Housing Wire: Consumer confidence posts biggest surge in 17 years.

PJMedia: Tulsi Gabbard Raises the Alarm: ‘Ballot Harvesting Has Allowed for Fraud and Abuse.’

FEE.org: The President Has an ‘Internet Kill Switch.’ A Bipartisan Group of Lawmakers Wants to Change That.

HotAir.com: In Louisville, Blackmail Lives Matter.

City Journal: A Primal Struggle for Dominance.

The American Mind: No Coup For You.

City Journal: Bush v. Gore Redux?

The Federalist: This $1,500 Robot Will Talk To Kids So Parents Don’t Have To.

And: Future bleak humor in the making:

Vanity Fair: “This Does Feel Like A Different Moment”: As Public Support For Black Lives Matter Drops Off, Will Corporate America Stay The Course? American corporations are making themselves captives to their worst hiring decisions. None so deserving – but someone should tell the shareholders.

September 29, 2020

“Apparently, Opendoor and Zillow and Knock and Flyhomes and Offerpad have been wasting hundreds of millions on all those data scientists and CompSci Ph.D.’s from Stanford.” –Rob Hahn

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That sounds right to me. 😉 The waste is not their salaries but the financial havoc they wreak as the very-most-backseat of drivers. That is to say, iBuyers suck at real estate investment, and their hubris prevents any sort of improvement.

“Are YOU notorious? Have you ever BEEN notorious? Well, I have… Not necessarily wise – but compensated.”

Yes, I’m Trump-quoting real-estate consultant The Notorious Rob for fun in the headline, just like the TV “news” does.

But: It turns out Eric Blackwell knows where to poke the Pooh bear’s mincing minions.

My experiences with Rob Hahn have not been pleasant, and this and his other posts are tl;dr, even assuming he knows anything worth reading about, an assumption I do not make.

What’s funny is that Señor Notorious is right here, despite his snark: As soon as the market turns, all of those poindexter models collapse.

And note well: There is ALWAYS something to howl about at BloodhoundBlog.

September 25, 2020

Overnight News: Hey! Be nice! Don’t poke the Pooh bears! They’ve got big money to lose – and you can help them squander it!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Ya think it's easy?

“We have alpacas in our neighborhood, but I’d just as soon break into the fridge.”

For all of me, I prefer to think of iBuyers as whales, the very rich dumbasses who unknowingly fund the entire gambling ecosystem. But bears works, too – poorly-adapted, slow-witted, no match for three or four smart dogs working together. When they get lost and wander down into the desert, they leave nothing but sun-bleached skeletons behind.

So, yeah: Poke! Do your worst, Pooh bears. Your wins are imaginary. Your losses are legion – so far.

Yesterday on BloodhoundBlog:

Eric Blackwell: Zillow: Whatever you do. Don’t poke the bear. Lol. Poke!

Brian Brady: Mortgage Refinancing and Forbearance: Three Balls, You Walk, One Strike, You’re Out.

As for the rest of the world…

Redfin: Home Prices Just. Keep. Climbing. National Median Now Up 14% from Last Year. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: New home sales crush expectations, but the supply is running out. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Redfin: New-Construction Home Listings Drop 4% in August, Reversing Course From July’s Rebound. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

SFGate.com: Bay Area applicants flood program that pays them $10,000 to leave California.

Fox News: Gun sales in major swing states up nearly 80% this year: Will it have any bearing on election outcome?

The Daily Signal: Public Schools Across Country Promote Black Lives Matter, Organize Protests.

TaxProf Blog: Welcome To The Turbulent Twenties.

Anchorage Daily News: Brown bear breaks into Alaska Zoo, kills alpaca named Caesar.

September 24, 2020

Overnight News: Why would the world’s dumbest real estate investor hire himself as his own broker? Because the emperor is definitely not naked!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“The money-making secret to real estate brokerage? Socialize the risks to the seller – not the broker.”

Yesterday’s big news? “The Incumbent” doubles down on dipshit. Dipshit-aficionados rejoice.

Housing Wire: Home prices post record two-month gain, FHFA says. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Redfin: Sacramento, Austin and Phoenix Are the Most Popular Destinations For People Searching For Homes Outside Their Metro Area. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Renovation loans get pandemic boost as homeowners want home offices. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: Coronavirus pandemic fuels affordability crisis for homebuyers. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Dave Stevens: 5 reasons why mortgage rates are going to rise in 2021.

Seeking Alpha: Zillow Offers Will Expand Services in 2021.

Housing Wire: Zillow iBuying program brings real estate transactions in-house by licensing Zillow Homes employees.

Joanne Jacobs: Not indoctrinated, just ignorant.

City Journal: Merit on the Ropes.

Angelo Codevilla: Revolution 2020. Incidentally: CTRL-F ‘riot’; 6 found.

And our own Brian Brady! San Diego Union Tribune: I’m a Republican. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death is both a loss and a legal opportunity.

September 23, 2020

The news is not that Zillow is going to have agents. It’s going to have newbies for agents.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Housing Wire:

A Zillow spokesperson told HousingWire that these people are already employed with Zillow, and will be getting real estate licenses. Zillow said it will not be recruiting for these positions.

“The normal career path is real estate agent to barista, but Zillow’s changing all that!”

It’s a boiler-room job – in the same article, George Laughton says Zillow still won’t be getting its hands dirty. But boiler-room selling and legally-compliant real estate brokerage are two different things.

Whatever. This morning I wrote this to my favorite pricing algorithm, soon to be disintermediated by exuberant, clueless college grads:

Of course this was the plan all along. The funny part? They think they’ve lived through a downturn with Coronavirus. Now they get to play catch-a-falling-knife with their own inventory.

The press release reads like they think the local brokers, like Laughton, are hoarding all the good leads from the failures and fallouts. I hope that’s the reason, just because it’s extra stupid.

Note that the 18 or so local brokers who were not screwed today now know what they have coming.

All of the iBuyers working in Phoenix suck at resale marketing. They make bone-headed marketing errors, common to many poor listers, but they make them by the hundreds. Pulling even more of that work in-house, when Zillow is so bad at it, seems daft – even absent the opportunity to make thousands upon thousands of regulatory infractions.

Prove me wrong, Zillow? You look like nothing but dead money to me.

September 22, 2020

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

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“Totally not redlining!”

The image is a map of Zillow’s sold iBuyer homes in the densest parts of Metropolitan Phoenix.

See that Madonana-like shape running West from the I-17 Freeway. Looks like a pregnant single-mom, doesn’t it? The poster-child of fair-housing law, right there on the map.

Looks like redlining, doesn’t it?

I’ve been watching Zillow’s iBuying results for years now. It always looks like redlining. I warned them about it when I was working as a pricing algorithm.

Is it really redlining? It’s the further fruits of a buy-box that wisely avoids old, small and irregular housing. For all of me, Zillow’s buy-box is much too loose, but the net consequence is that much of the housing Zillow excludes is in contiguous neighborhoods emerging West from the I-17.

Is it really redlining? The neighborhoods Zillow and the other iBuyers exclude in Metropolitan Phoenix are far browner, blacker and redder than the neighborhoods they include. That’s redlining de facto, by disproportionate impact.

Is it possible for investors to work from a buy-box that does not redline in disproportionate impact terms? I don’t see how. The buy-box my investors work from is much more stringent, to the point that we only work in a few subdivisions, by now.

Is it possible for licensed real estate brokers to work as investors without committing hundreds of de facto materially-damaging fair-housing violations by means of redlining? I don’t see how.

That’s why investors should not be licensed, for one thing, but I think it illuminates how poorly thought-out are all the “black lives matterers” among the iBuyers.

Have fun when the lawsuits start – particularly since you’ve all already declared what racists you are.

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