There’s always something to howl about.
This is brutal and opaque and it kills me in every version of it I hear. This is a movie of the mind, and it is built to make you squirm.
What’s going on? I keep coming back because I can’t quite tell…
I’ll never know how you got into such a mess.
Why do the bridesmaids all have to wear the same dress?
Fred Eaglesmith is the best country songwriter since Townes shambled on. His work will survive because of songs like this one.
“I wasn’t always a Realty.bot. I used to drive a driverless-Uber. Hardly ever hit anyone.”
When we first met, Brian was using the internet to take business away from white shoe lenders and I was using it to scare up clients who wanted to avoid the sleaze of the supermarket-magazine-advertising Realtors.
That is to say, we were using the internet as guerrilla marketers against competitors who were not – or who were not any good at it, anyway.
How now, russet Bloodhounds?
The opposite, yes? Now our most-threatening competition is very adept at marketing by internet.
The Guerrilla Bloodhound’s response: The three ideas in the headline can be subsumed by one idea: In Real Life. And that notion is best understood in longtime BloodhoundBlog contributor Jeff Brown’s formulation: Belly-to-belly.
Be here now? You’ve got it, they don’t. Your best marketing advantage, by now, is that you are not on the internet, that you are present in real life and can address the issues paperwork exists to paper over.
Until they burn up all the excess wealth fools accord them, the Realty.bots will take as much business as they can from Driven and Cautious principals. The former value time over money, while the latter seem to think computers can’t cheat. Those folks may not be completely gone from your life, but they are all of online-shopping’s target market. Your value propositions and their values are a poor match, going forward.
The Incandescents will always be represented. If you’re good at selling luxury, historic, architectural or other jewelry-box homes, your world is secure. Bots can’t do what you do as a real estate analyst, but they can’t even touch what you do as showmanship.
And that leaves the Sociables, who are wise to wonder – continuously! – if they are being taken. They are yours and you are theirs because they do not trust a transaction this huge to what might as well Read more
“Prices always shoot up for no reason!”
Forbes: Will The Latest Stimulus Proposal Stop A Potential Housing Crisis In 2021?
Redfin: Home Prices Rose 11% in August—Biggest Gain in Over 6 Years.
Housing Wire: More young adults live at home now than during the Great Depression.
Forbes: Topeka, Kansas Is Looking To Lure Remote Workers With A $10,000 Incentive.
Yahoo Finance: Analyst: Neither Trump or Biden care about soaring federal debt, deficit.
City Journal: Apocalyptic rhetoric about climate change is undermining the fight for pragmatic solutions to the West’s fire crisis.
Reason: Homeschooling Hits a Tipping Point.
The Federalist: Study: Up To 95 Percent Of 2020 U.S. Riots Are Linked To Black Lives Matter.
City Journal: Against Wokeness: Conservatives must understand the threat posed by critical race theory.
Me, this morning, at LinkedIn:
The words that are going to matter, when all this #iBuyer nonsense all blows up, are: “Agency with an interest.”
“Totally not a clown! In fact, someday soon I’ll be the guest of honor at thousands of lawsuits!”
Translation: They don’t get to gull their clients to their own benefit, the way other marketers can.
iBuyer with an upgrade? iBuyer with an bridge loan? iBuyer with an upsell to a traditional listing instead?
In which of those scenarios is the iBuyer not blatantly self-dealing.
Want an easy test? Quoting me again, on a huge host of real estate agency issues: “If you have a preference, you have a problem.”
There’s the broker’s duty of supervision in there somewhere, too, but that just seems comical.
In due course, the Designated Brokers at the Realty.bots are going to look a lot like cops this Summer: Fallguys for ploddingly predatory poindexters.
None so deserving, fellas. Unlike the billionaires who made you their bitch, you know the law.
“Going up?”
Housing Wire: Bought right out of a job? When one OpenDoor closes… Opendoor announces merger with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. in bid to go public.
Forbes: Opendoor’s Cofounder Talks Covid, Growth, And The Quest For Profits As The Company Goes Public.
Housing Wire: The words that are going to matter, when this nonsense all blows up, are: “Agency with an interest.” EasyKnock launches solution that lets homeowners lease back their home after selling.
CNBC: Homebuilder sentiment soars to record high, but lumber prices raise a red flag.
Housing Wire: Mortgage lending volume in 2020 likely to break records.
Connect Media: An monument to a dying industry in a dying location? Los Angeles Approves Tribune’s 56-Story DTLA Tower.
Redfin: Coastal Migrants Boost Las Vegas Home Prices, Up 8% in August, Amid High Local Unemployment Rate.
Housing Wire: Virtual notary adoption surges as businesses rush to close transactions remotely.
Housing Wire: Title insurance premiums surging during COVID-19 pandemic.
RedState.com: 5G – and 10G. Symbiotic Wireless and Wired Internet – And Their Government-Free Miracles.
The Daily Signal: Wildfires Will Get Worse Under Decades-Old Liberal Policies, Veteran Forester Says.
AIER: So You Want to Overthrow the State: Ten Questions for Aspiring Revolutionaries.
Entertainment Weekly: South Park tackling COVID-19 with its first hour-long episode. The trailer:
“Don’t fence me in!”
Reason: Federal Court Rules Pennsylvania’s Lockdown Order Unconstitutional.
Upworthy: From England, but still: Security guards took care of employees’ office plants while they were on lockdown for months.
Redfin: The biggest trend in real estate stories? Detailing the ongoing impact of the rioting without mentioning rioting. Redfin knows who is getting screwed worst this Summer, but it won’t say why. Black Homebuyers Face Steeper Price Increases, Sharper Declines in Homes for Sale than White Homebuyers During the Pandemic.
HousingWire: If Biden wins, what happens to Fannie and Freddie?.
HousingWire: Mortgage modifications are on the rise, MBA says.
Forbes: Home Buyer Opendoor Is Going Public In $4.8 Billion Merger.
Car and Driver: Used Cars Are Having a Moment, Creating Opportunity for Sellers.
City Journal: San Francisco’s Deathly Compassion.
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Last week, Freddie Mac published their Mortgage Market Survey, showing that the average rate, for conforming mortgage loans originated, was under 3%. The company who performed the survey (Black Knight), figures that there are close to 20 million homeowners who can refinance now:
The company says there are now 19.3 million “high quality” refinance candidates, the largest number ever. This is 43 percent of all active 30-year mortgages. Black Knight defines a refinanceable loan as one where the homeowner has a credit score of at least 720, at least 20 percent equity in the home, and the potential for a 75-basis point reduction in their mortgage interest rate. These homeowners have potential savings averaging $299 per month, a national aggregate of $5.8 billion per month if all homeowners took advantage of the opportunity. That is the largest aggregate ever available through refinancing.
This is a stupendous amount of potential refinance candidates, maybe more than the industry has refinanced since March of this year. To put things in perspective, I have worked in real estate finance since 1997 and these past 6 months have been the hardest I have worked – ever. It means that my industry could be stretched for another 6 months.
VA and FHA both have loan programs which permit borrowers to refinance their mortgages, if they aren’t taking out money, without verifying their income – that’s a BIG deal as many borrowers have suffered income losses since they originally took out their loan. Borrowers with conventional loans though, must have their incomes re-verified for the refinance. In one respect, income verification protects lenders from making a loan to people who may/may not be able to afford it but, on the other hand, it offers no relief for borrowers who, despite the drop in income, have made their payments through thick or thin.
The regulators however, are trying to address that problem. They propose to amend the definition of a “qualified mortgage” to include those which are “seasoned” for at least 36 months. What that means to the “stuck” homeowners is that, as long as they have paid the last 36 monthly mortgage payments Read more
“Nihil nichts, no?”
RedState.com: A Most American City Becoming Increasingly Unlivable.
The Federalist: What Life Is Like In California’s Post-Apocalyptic Landscape.
City Journal: Let’s Hold On to the Throwaway Society.
Daily Caller: Wildfires Will Become Worse Thanks To Decades-Old Liberal Policies, Says Fire Expert Who Predicted Uptick In Blazes.
Good grief!
Who needs a palate cleanser, some good old fashioned smoke-blowing?
Forbes: 14 Home Upgrades That Will Boost Property Value. Voiceover: “Your mileage may vary.”
What’s the good news, for Monday? Everywhere things aren’t awful, they’re great. Get thee hence and make the most of it!
“Welcome to life off the lead, puppy.”
It’s not well-reported, except in the form of secondary evidence like U-Haul rates and MLS listings and closings, but very-vertical cities are emptying themselves to the benefit of very-horizontal communities. Congratulate yourself again for investing in Phoenix, the world’s largest suburb.
At the moment, we are on fire, and that is unlikely to abate quickly. Demand far exceeds available supply, and the builders are better at writing contracts than erecting structures, for now. Rental demand is strong, too.
Prices have been strongly upward since the first wave of the exodus, surging with the second wave. The absolute strongest marketing characteristic for a home in Metro Phoenix right now is availability.
That’s good, but will it last? The big short-run fear would be whiplash from mortgage forebearances. Foreclosures or sales in lieu of foreclosure could be enough to cool our overheated demand. On the other hand, late-adopter first-time home-buyers are scooping up suburban parcels, too, as a part of the urban exodus.
We were nearing the top of this market in March, and the top is out there still. There is now nothing like a national real estate market, and it could be that 10%-20% of the nation’s housing stock is being abandoned. What seems certain is more rather than less volatility.
Every one of our investors is sitting on a huge amount of accrued equity. That creates a tax problem, if you sell, unless you can effect a 1031 exchange into another real estate investment. But: If you can, now or sometime soon might be the time to think about banking a riskier win into a safer refuge.
Meanwhile: Excelsior!
“There’s no place like No Place!”
Utopia is a Greek neologism that literally means “no place.” Dystopia, alas, abounds…
Jason Rantz: Amazon takes another major step to abandon Seattle.
ProPublica: They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?
Salena Zito: The forgotten counties will make their voices heard.
Don Surber: How Trump brought peace. Don Surber is an excellent daily resources for eyes-wide-open political news.
City Journal: A Conservative Opening on Urban Policy.
Cathleen and I went on a great big outing today. Big for the Coronavirus-infested world, anyway: We went to the Home Depot in Laveen – 30 treacherous miles from our home, along a fairly new freeway spur. In other words, duck soup in January but somehow a fairly big deal in September.
But what made it an outing was this stupid pandemic, so we made the most of it. Cathleen wore a dress, for goodness sakes. And it put me in mind of this song – as sappy as Tom Waits ever got, but iso granular, so particular, that I feel like we’re right there.
If I can tell that the sellers are divorcing, they are costing themselves money.
That’s the hope, anyway.
Sometimes, alas, the sapling of love withers and dies. Pulling it up by the roots can occasion no end of problems, but the real-estate problem may be the one of greatest financial consequence.
Consider this: I walk into a home, escorting buyers. In the living room there are two pieces of furniture: a big-screen television and a lawn chair.
The bedrooms are empty, except for the master bedroom, where there is a bare mattress. In the kitchen, there are dirty dishes in the sink and half-empty takeout containers and beer in the fridge.
It’s a divorce, of course. Mom and the kids are gone. Dad got custody of the TV.
It would be funny if it weren’t so nakedly tragic.
I get paid to hear the stories that empty houses whisper. This house tells me not just about the divorce, but that the divorce isn’t a relatively smooth one. It hints that the house is in pre-foreclosure or is for sale by a judge’s orders.
It confides in the certitude of silence that my buyers can steal it for tens of thousands of dollars less than market value.
Together, the sellers own a valuable asset. But neither wants to see the other prosper from their past together. So, out of spite, they are deliberately sabotaging the sale of their home.
“I might lose out,” he growls at the big-screen TV, “but at least she won’t win!”
“He can go to hell with that TV!” she seethes from her new apartment.
This is a mistake.
Frankly, both of them should move out, leaving the home vacant. If one is to stay, then they should agree to leave the furniture behind – and clothes in the closets. I should not be able to tell that the sellers are divorcing.
It’s sad the marriage didn’t work out. But properly staging the home for sale can at least help to pay for a happier divorce.
“Ya think it’s easy?”
Forbes: Bubbles happen how? Mortgage Interest Rates Reach Another Record Low, Making Buyers Willing To Borrow More.
Redfin: We noted this yesterday: Who can spot the riots in recent closings? Who can anticipate the looming disaster of all the other listings, unreported here, that did not close? Home Prices Up 13%, Biggest Increase Since 2013.
CNBC: Commercial real estate community comes back from Summer vaycay to find its assets incinerated. Real estate CEO: NYC mayor must make streets safer, cleaner so people will want to return.
HousingWire: NAR: 31% of Realtors say they feel unsafe at open houses.
Reason: Who knew? There Is No Defense for Looting.
PJ Media: Weather Underground Terrorist Bill Ayers Suggests the Civil War Has Already Begun.
And because the reincarnation of every sixties wraith is not quite 2020 enough:
BizPacReview: Killer mosquito clouds rise from swamp, descend on Louisiana livestock and drain their blood.
I love this image from Redfin:
What is the name of the condition where people lie with their words but tell the truth with their deeds?
Are there riots in America this Summer – despite the overwhelming public denials?
Are those riots affecting real estate choices?
Meanwhile: Who thinks that price trajectory is healthy?
Yeesh! Good time to be a seller – and then a hermit!
The question is Cathleen’s, and it really plagues her:
“Why do people hate Realtors?”
Why do people hate Realtors? Because they think they’re supposed to…
Straight-commission sales people in general take a hit, not alone because we might seem to be more interested in the commission than in the work it takes to earn it.
And, of course, there have been no end of unflattering portrayals of real estate agents in art – especially TV and movies.
Here’s my best answer, though:
Why do people hate Realtors?
Because they think they’re supposed to…
