If you sold a home to an iBuyer over the past 12 months, you were probably rooked – and you may have grounds for litigation.

If the iBuyer did not explicitly disclose to you that listing on the MLS would be to your best financial interest in a madly accelerating market, you were overtly and objectively misled. A licensee misleading a customer creates agency – omission is deception, deception is advice. Arguably, you were gulled out of a substantial portion of your equity in an undisclosed dual-representation: You were advised to make a mistake by the party – agent AND principal – benefitting from the error.

Until now, class action lawsuits for undisclosed dual-representation have been the belles of the real estate litigation ball. But how about a class action lawsuit against an entire class of gonophs? All of the iBuyers can and should have their licenses put to the test: Are they fiduciary – and hence massively-redundant double-dealers – or are they somehow exempt from the real estate licensing laws?

In other news:

CNBC: Homebuilder confidence is still high, but it slipped this month as construction costs grew.

Redfin.com: Interest in Relocating Remains Elevated, With Nearly 1 in 3 Redfin.com Users Looking to Move to a Different Metro.

CNBC: Homebuyers aren’t seeing savings from falling lumber prices – here’s why.

Mike DelPrete: The Rise of Power Buyers. See above and add two more rookings: The buy-side and the financing.

City Journal: A Nation of Rentiers: The notion that homeownership should be a primary tool for building wealth is mistaken.

Helen Raleigh: Public Schools’ Systemic Problem Isn’t Racism Or Money. It’s Teachers’ Unions.

If you’ve never shopped from behind bulletproof plexiglas, your opportunity may present itself soon – but it won’t last.

I lived in Fun City, where the rule of thumb is, if it’s not locked up, it’s counterfeit. When I took my wife to my old home town in Illinois, she was amazed to shop in her very first plexiglas convenience store: You can touch the merch once you’ve paid for it. And a decent RiotScore™ for any neighborhood could be established from the number of plexiglas-shielded cashiers.

Plexiglas means the merchant believes the law can’t keep up with the crime, and he is not only almost certainly right, he was almost certainly late in every passive protection he put on his inventory. Almost no one steals, but those who do will steal beyond all reason if not actively opposed.

Witness San Francisco, where the plexiglas will only briefly precede the “Final Closeout Liquidation!” sales.

What bulletproof plexiglas really means is: Last sucker standing. But you can’t outrun the bottom-line, so even the suckers will be gone soon.

Good luck getting you prescriptions, granny. Good luck getting food. The police are no longer on your side.

In other news:

John Hinderaker: California Nightmare.

SocketSite.com: Visualizing All the Vacant Office Space in San Francisco.

The Federalist: More Americans Could Live In Beautiful Neighborhoods If The Right Stopped Propping Up Suburbia.

Roger Kimball: Are You Having a Free Speech Emergency?

City Journal: The Panic Pandemic: Fearmongering from journalists, scientists, and politicians did more harm than the virus.

LidBlog.com: Why America Is Losing To Marxist Democrats In Two Sentences.

After actually reading his settlement statement, not as common as you’d think, a seller remarked that I had paid 60% of the sales commission to the Buyer’s Agent. Why hadn’t I taken the lion’s share, or at least split 50/50? My answer was simple, one you will have read here before: Don’t bind the mouths.

Brian Brady is going to show Buyer’s Agents how to bring home the bacon by first delivering the goods, but I prize Buyer’s Agents just the way they are for their aboriginal and sine qua non function: Brokerage.

Brokerage is at its essence the introduction of buyer to seller, and Brian is correct that just that much is very easy to do without Buyer’s Agents by going to the Realty.bots. That’s how we recruit tenants for the rental homes we manage, since we don’t want Tenant’s Agents coming between us and the principals, anyway.

But we do all our own vetting on rental applicants, so a Tenant’s Agent is doing literally nothing of value to us but introducing his client to us.

Not so Buyer’s Agents. Their introductions come with elaborate qualifications – along with someone to do most of the scut work, while absorbing much of the downstream liability. In short, a Buyer’s Agent is a Sub-Agent for whom I bear no legal responsibility. I pay them 60% of the sales commission and they do 80% or more of the actual effort it takes to get to closing. I don’t hate those numbers at all – and we always pay the whole damn pizza, regardless of what I’m getting.

With a Tenant’s Agent, I’m paying for the referral and nothing else – pure brokerage – and therefore we don’t pay: I can attract thousands of semi-focused looky-loos for ten bucks a week on Zillow – and I only need one motivated, qualified party to score.

But with a Buyer’s Agent, I am temporarily onboarding a very dedicated, very focused, very highly-motivated personal assistant/transaction coordinator – for this one transaction. We’re as careful about the agents Read more

There’s Pacaso news linked below, but it’s just a regurgitated press release. I’ve written a ton about them, but that makes one of me. But if the real estate market is turning, it will turn first and worst on marginal products – those easiest to do without.

That means all luxury homes, but especially second homes – by definition ostentatiously-wasted money. Redfin has made much of second-home purchases over the last year, but Redfin can also demonstrate that the fever of this real estate market tracks perfectly with the inverse of each home’s TransitScore: The harder a house is to get to from rioters, the higher the price.

Taking account of that – “Let’s buy a place where we can work-from-home far-from-rioters” – how many of last year’s second-home purchases will turn into this year’s permanent residences? How much of last year – in all single-family-detached homes – was a two-step buy-and-bail?

I’m not implying financial chicanery, just strategy amidst uncertain circumstances. How the future shakes out depends on whether the buyers can continue to work from home. But if there are people sitting on two houses while they try to figure out which one to shed – that implies future market weakness on both ends, as the artificial withholding of inventory wanes.

Bad for Pacaso? You figure that out. I think they have no business masquerading as a business: I think they have discovered what I knew from the first – everyone hates sharing with strangers – and are attempting to soldier on to an IPO despite the emperor’s very-hairy nudity. If they care to dispel any of those suspicions, I’m easy to find – as Pacaso’s many enemies already know.

But a weakening in demand for houses in second-home locations will be very bad for the suckers who already bought Pacaso time-shares. You paid double at the top of the market, y’all. You’re going to be together for a while, like it or don’t…

In other news:

Housing Read more

I haven’t written much about the 1/6 riot in Washington. It was obvious to me at the time that it was a set-up – piss off hot-headed Ants, then call them racists when they complain about it. The fact that Trump did not see this coming and that he abandoned his supporters as soon as the racism lies started are two strikes against his future ambitions.

But: The riot was not an “insurrection.” It wasn’t even much of a riot. It is being treated as a Reichstag Fire event by the Democrats because that’s what Marxists do – as was easily foreseeable. But that reaction is a contradiction of everything America has ever stood for, and that matters.

Everyone being imprisoned over 1/6 is a political prisoner – representing a complete betrayal of everything the United States has ever said on the subject of political prisoners.

No one deserves this treatment, but they are being persecuted precisely because they are true patriots, steady wage-earners, proud tax-payers and reliable supporters of the military, the police and of civil order as such.

Actual criminals deserve and get better treatment. The 1/6 martyrs are being persecuted for being the best Americans – by the worst.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates dip slightly to 2.88%.

Redfin.com: Share of Homes Bought With All Cash Hits 30% for First Time Since 2014.

The Daily Wire: Florida Boat Owners Are Running Supplies To Embattled Cuban Protesters.

Stella Morabito: Why Communism Should Be Tried For Its Crimes Against Humanity.

Christopher Rufo: Going All In: The NEA pledges to bring critical race theory to a public school near you.

Election-theft news is now dropping daily, with the Arizona audit so ripe it were wise to expect a very big “news” event to distract us from it.

If you have been paying attention, you’ve known since election night that the election was stolen. The depth of resistance to audits – from both parties – suggests that many, many races were stolen. If ever again there is fact-reporting in the “news” business, we may someday find out how many elections have been stolen, over how many election cycles.

Regardless, it is beyond stupid to pretend that Slow Joe Biden is anything other than the puppet of the corrupt forces who stole the election – second in his loyalty only to the Red Chinese, who bought China Joe fair and square a long time ago. For Republican politicians to cooperate in any way with this regime is treason-by-prostration – but that’s what they’re good at. Meanwhile, everyone else should simply mock Creepy Joe – the man who made the corruption of the Ruling Class undeniable.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Home Sales Dipped 1.2% From May to June, the Largest Late-Spring Decline Since At Least 2012.

Congressman Jim Jordan: What Did Fauci Know And When? His Emails Point To Panic, Lies, And A Possible Cover-Up.

Jazz Shaw: Good question: Where is the outrage over Biden rejecting Cuban refugees?

The Federalist: Thanks To Neil Gorsuch, The Biden Administration Is Forcing Employers Everywhere To End Free Speech And Put Men In Women’s Bathrooms.

Seth Barron: Don’t Even Think About Calling the Cops: For New York City progressives, not even violent crime warrants police intervention.

What’s worst about China Joe Biden’s stolen presidency is how thoroughly it diminishes America. We were founded on ideals – incorruptible justice, equality before the law, due process – and a banana republic junta betrays all of that, repelling allies and emboldening enemies all the while.

Slow Joe yesterday went to the scene of the crime – Pennsylvania – there to slime the people uncovering his election fraud despite near-universal opposition. America is holding hundreds of decent tax-paying Americans as political prisoners, this to argue that Antifa is not the Brown Shirts. Sleazy Hunter Biden is openly selling presidential favors, which crimes no one is permitted to notice. And the United States is refusing refugees from where? From Cuba, where they’re running from political persecution and not in pursuit of loot.

If America is ruined, it will have been ruined by all of these tragically-underfathered children oscillating out of control, screaming into the void in ravenous hunger for the loving restraint that will never, ever come. But ruined nations are led by men like Sleepy Joe Biden – raging incompetents racing from here to there to paper over their lies while everything else goes to hell.

Everybody knows the election was stolen – and thank goodness for that! The worst shame of all would be to think that Americans chose to afflict themselves with Creepy Joe Biden.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage applications jump 16%.

CNBC: ‘New York is back’ — broker says the city’s real estate market is heating up at all levels. Ahem: “We still are at near-record levels of inventory. So the sellers are going down to meet the buyers at their prices. The buyers have options.”

City Journal: California Fleeing: Some deny the Golden State’s demographic decline, but data make it hard to ignore.

The Federalist: Will Movie Theaters Become The Next Blockbuster Video Stores?

City Journal: Why Cops Are Quitting: Police officers no longer feel that they have the public’s support.

Newsweek: Critical Race Theory Has No Idea What To Do With Asian Read more

I was a kid on my own in the Manhattan you see in Moscow on the Hudson – a chaos made of polyglot aspirations and anti-literate violence.

The building I lived in was a mini-United Nations in beehive form – that plus opera singers. Notably, we had two distinct populations of refugees, very dark Haitians fleeing Papa Doc’s predations and very white South Africans evading the eternal peace plans of Winnie Mandela. They set themselves apart among all New Yorkers by speaking in whispers – the indicia of paranoia – camouflaged, I’m sure they thought, by their languages.

Not so much, as it turns out, if you make the mistake of speaking near me. I’m not an eavesdropper, per se, but I am very much a scavenger of small, arcane details: It’s the stuff of good fiction. I had enough French in those days that the Haitians had no secrets from me, and Afrikaans is Dutch is English. Whichever spies they were hiding from surely overheard them, too.

I muse on all this now, with both Haiti and South Africa in the news. South Africa may have fallen by now, and Haiti has yet to rise – ever. Marxists versus the sane? Grasshoppers devouring Ants? Cads overwhelming the few remaining Dads? Or is it just bad luck that shunts Nemesis to the places that can suffer her least?

In other news:

Redfin.com: Homebuyer Competition Eases in June as More Homes Hit the Market.

The New York Post: DNC, Biden allies want phone carriers to vet anti-vax messages: report.

Victoria Taft: Democrats Move to Take Over Your Credit Score and Go Full ‘Woke’ – Just Like Communist China.

Daniel Payne: Sharp increase in police resignations after Black Lives Matter protests in 2020: study.

Brad Polumbo: Exclusive: Cuban Activist Explains What’s Really Motivating the Cuban People’s Uprising.

Citizen Free Press: South Africa looks like Civil War…

J.D. Tucille: Do People Want Their Pre-Pandemic Freedom Back? Polling finds wide support for draconian lockdowns and permanent restrictions.

City Read more

Yesterday in Cuba people were doing the work Americans won’t: Fighting for their freedom. The New York Times is correct in describing this conduct as ‘anti-government’ – just as the January 6th protests were anti-THIS-government. In both countries, the protesters love their country but hate its predatory salve-masters.

The difference? This is the very best ‘anti-government slogan’ I have heard so far: A Cuban protestor to a commie thug: “Shoot me in the chest, motherfucker!”

I don’t drink, but I am delighted to shout “Cuba libre!” Every Marxist dictatorship shames the allegedly civilized, but for America to turn a blind eye to tyranny ninety miles from its shores – to shun a people who have given us so much – this is a stain as ugly any in our history.

In other news:

CNBC: Homebuyers are finally catching a break as new listings rise and mortgage rates drop.

The Daily Wire: Bankers Are Begging Their Employers For Transfers From New York To Florida.

City Journal: The Boomer Wealth Boom.

Martyr Made: The Disillusionment of the Deplorables: How Trump voters formed an ugly—and accurate—view of America’s ruling regime.

“Canadians are a lot like Americans, except they can save money and spell properly.”

That’s a joke I used to make with Canadian investors. This was 10+ years ago, and while it was arguably a fair-housing violation – nationality is trayf – it was demonstrably true at the time: Canadians had money to buy American houses when Americans did not.

Canadians have mattered to Phoenix since Phoenix was Pumpkinville – we are the southernmost city in Alberta – but perhaps never so much as now: Canada is losing its mind. It’s the same crap as here – underfathered wretches melting down over their desperate need for boundaries – but holiness spirals spiral best among the reliably rigorous.

So: Don’t pull out those ‘Reduced!’ riders just yet. With every burning church in the great white north, Canada may be cooking up a whole new batch of refugees.

In other news:

Hannah Cox: What Is the Great Resignation of 2021? (If You Don’t Know, You’ll Want to Read This).

Ronald Bailey: How Much Scientific Research Is Actually Fraudulent? It may be more than you think.

Christopher Rufo: The Enablers: Defending phantom freedoms, certain intellectuals usher in the concrete tyrannies of critical race theory.

Ashli Babbitt was slain in a police shooting so egregious that keeping it secret has become a “whole of government” priority. Former President Donald Trump acknowledged her murder this week – only six months late.

Last night on Fox News, Tucker Carlson finally admitted that Trump’s re-election was stolen – eight months ago.

If the audits come to something, that’s great. If enough of the stolen states become less-stealable, even better. But if you’re looking for leadership, Diogenes, your lamp needs recharging…

In other news:

Housing Wire: Homes are selling well over listing prices as buyers compete against each other.

Housing Wire: Biden renews push for housing in infrastructure plan.

The Daily Signal: San Francisco Political Leaders Out of Touch as City Descends Into Lawlessness.

City Journal: The Prosecutor Exodus: In an adverse political environment, experienced professionals are leaving the field—and crime is surging.

Matt Vespa: Twitter Thread Nails Why Trump Supporters Feel the Way They Do About the 2020 Election.

Julie Kelly: No Relief for Lego Man or Other January 6 Detainees.

I am enmired in a Batman story, and it’s making me cranky: I don’t like Batman. I don’t believe his motivation, and I would not respect it if I did. Batman is nuts, but Batman is also a schmoo.

But here’s the problem expressed generally: What will you do to defend your values when civil authority has abdicated its duty and civil order is thereby imperiled?

The question is inverted, a devolution in human social concourse: Until now, the promise of the police and the military was that they would obviate the need for defense of person and property among the rich and provide it to the poor. Now that these entities are turning their backs on you, what will you do instead?

Batman is both Irreproachable and Untouchable in one, a self-absolving berserker. Don’t be Batman. Batman is nuts. But do be prepared.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Housing Market Update: New Listings of Homes For Sale Surpass 2019 Levels.

Redfin.com: Home Prices Rose Twice as Fast in Car-Dependent Neighborhoods as Transit-Accessible Areas During the Pandemic. They cannot not lie about the riots, even when it’s as plain as the nose on your face: Ants moved away from places Grasshoppers (i.e., potential rioters) can get to easily.

WolfStreet.com: Americans See the Raging Mania: “Bad Time to Buy a Home” & “Good Time to Sell a Home” Sentiments Spike to WTF Record.

City Journal: The Zoning Tax: In some American cities, regulation costs homebuyers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Stacey Lennox: Putting Cameras in Classrooms May Be the Best Thing for Everyone—Especially Teachers.

The fear-porn media are aghast that China Joe plans to send vaccine cops door-to-door to track down the vax-resistant. Much rending of garments, but who didn’t see this coming?

More importantly: Who gives a shit?

If you don’t have a ‘No Soliciting’ sign at your door, it’s because you like awnings and security doors and satellite TV – and being closed on. In the age of SnooperCops, you may want to add ‘No Trespassing.’ Making war on my own kind – the spewers of verbiage – I might append ‘No Leafletting – Save a tree, no debris.’ And my all time favorite sign, seen long ago in a TV commercial, could wrap things up: ‘No Crybabies!’

Or: You could do what I do: Don’t answer the door.

I am a certified walking antique, but I am one with the smartphone ethic: Texting is immediate without being intrusive, so if I don’t know why you’re at my door – if you just showed up for whatever reason and rang the bell – I won’t be there to greet you.

At our place, a doorbell ring is either a delivery driver – than whom none are more forthcoming, nor quickly departing – or a solicitor who has now become a trespasser and who is no doubt a recidivist leafletter. I’ll stay where I am and sustain my concentration, thanks all the same – although I may in due course disable the bell; I’ve done that in other houses.

I do the same with my phone: If you’re not in my contacts, you’ll go to voicemail until you are. Likewise email. I am avidly attentive to my work, my clients, my agenda, but – for that reason – I shun every kind of spam.

As usual, I’m the systemic solution to the topical problem, but, even so, shunning particular busy-bodies is easy if you are already habitually shunning all busy-bodies.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Fannie Mae: Sellers still thriving as home prices stay high.

CNBC: U.S. housing shortage will be around for ‘years to come,’ says Taylor Morrison CEO.

Housing Wire: Read more

At the middle of the bell curve, appraisers are nerdy introverts who, for whatever reason, didn’t get college-tracked in high school.

Low-status nerdy introverts get picked on in school, and low-status nerdy introverts going to majority-minority (a masterpiece of modern ambiguity!) schools get persecuted. They get short-circuited out of high school before they even get the chance to get short-circuited out of college.

The appraiser licensing process is onerous, eliminating all aspirants who are not well prepared in intellectual capital and well supplied with spendable cash for what amounts to an apprenticeship to a poorly-paying tradesman’s job: Low dough, low status, high risk of conflict and litigation.

Now take the few black candidates who might have qualified for that gauntlet and destroy their prospects with high schools from hell.

I expect it makes no actual difference in housing evaluations, but that’s why there are so few black appraisers: Few black nerds make it out of high school whole – and those who do have much better prospects than grinding away pricing houses.

That argues that appraiser-licensing standards will be lowered to admit marginal candidates, which in turn argues that flesh-and-blood appraisers will be replaced by Automated Valuation Models – only as biased as the software and stone reliable – and then there will be no more appraisers.

But even then, majority-minority high schools will still be hell for everyone condemned to them.

In other news:

CNBC: Mortgage applications sink to their lowest level since before the pandemic hit.

Paul Bedard: Biden is gun salesman-in-chief, threats driving surge in purchases.

Matt Margolis: Wikipedia Co-Founder: Site Has Become ‘Thought Police’ That Shackles Conservative Viewpoints.

Jack Posobiec: America’s Ruling Class And China’s Ruling Class Are More Similar Than You Think.

Julie Kelly: 20 Questions for Nancy Pelosi About January 6.

The Epoch Times: Preschool and Kindergarten Enrollment Drops 13 Percent Nationally.