Author: Greg Swann (page 3 of 208)

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.”

Inside my head, I have never felt myself to be a day over nineteen years old, but in fact I am a walking antique. In consequence, I can see everything that has gone wrong with education since it was ruined in my behalf. I hope I am not smug: I am crushed by my ignorance, so great I cannot even weigh it, much less comprehend it. I know how much better education was 50 years before I hit the books – but I know how much worse it is now.

Lately I am beswarmed, it would seem, by trivial, obvious spelling errors. It is a given that most people younger than me can’t read to any profit. The ability to spell properly is sustained by reading lots and lots of properly-spelled text. The implication would be that, not only can paid writers not spell, they don’t read very much, either. And these same facts must also be true of their editors, who are literally paid to know better.

My solution would be Latin, of course. No one who can decline in linguam Latinam can confuse affect for effect – nor any a-, ad- (accusative) words for similarly-spelled e-, ex- (ablative) forms. Attic Greek will work, too, to make you exacting and to train your memory. But spelling is grammar in Latin, so if you get it wrong, you get everything wrong.

Looking for an easier answer: Mark down, consistently, for spelling errors – in school but more importantly at work. At a minimum, they are indicia of carelessness, and carelessness breeds catastrophe.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Housing Market Update: One-Third of Homes Find Buyers Within a Week.

CNBC: Foreclosures are surging now that Covid mortgage bailouts are ending, but they’re still at low levels.

Andrea Widburg: Thanks to Biden’s policies, prepare for a cold, expensive winter.

Kyle Becker: Internal Capitol Police Documents on Ashli Babbitt Shooting Released: ‘No Good Reason for Shooting,’ Judicial Watch President Says.

American Thinker: The silver lining in the Democrats’ assault on kids in the Read more

A Christmas carol in celebration of all the festivities so far:

It’s going to be a Facebook Christmas!
Nothing will be under the tree!
You didn’t vote for Biden
because he’s always hidin’
but the only name that counts starts with a Z!

So it’s going to be a Facebook Christmas!
Empty shelves from sea to shining sea!
“Own nothing and love it?
Tell all those clowns to shove it!”
But they’ll be nothing left to own eventually.

Because it’s going to be a Facebook Christmas!
The paradise the billionaires foresee
includes no middle classes
nor none with elapsed passes
but they don’t know they’ll be hanging from the tree!

That’s why it’s going to be a Facebook Christmas!
The last Christmas any one of us might see.
They promised “No malarkey”
they delivered oligarchy
so your deliverance will come to you for free!

There will never be another Facebook Christmas!
Yours is a freezin’, wheezin’ destiny.
But when the day comes ’round for dying
let there be no denying:
Facebook was a suicidal luxury!

In other news:

CNBC: Today’s tight housing market is already overbuilt, one analyst says.

CNBC: Weekly mortgage demand stalls, as rates jump to highest level since June.

RedState.com: Supply Chain: We’re Running out of Food – Thanks to Biden.

PJMedia.com: Big Trouble Ahead as Record Number of Workers Quit Their Jobs in August.

Paul Bedard: After 30 years, Clarence Thomas now ‘the most important justice’.

Betsy McCaughey: Dems’ Attack On Smart Kids.

At the Arrowhead Towne Centre Mall, where Loco Willie drives the choo-choo train, the Lego store is right next door to the Build-a-Bear store – this so parents can have both their arms torn off at the same time. Whatever gender-confusion might be found among the tweens and all those evertweens, the lines are bright and the lanes are clear for three- and four-year-olds: Girls like girly stuff and boys like warriors and weapons and every manner of manly jobs.

There is a middle ground: Mega and Duplo blocks are all about blocks – and dexterity – not grown-up identities. But Lego blocks are about ships and battles and airports and architecture.

Little boys play with simulations of manly efficacy because they are powerless and they know it. Their games are all about achieving results that are, so far, entirely beyond them.

Divorce is the best way to rob boys of a masculine role model, but stripping masculinity from everything boys touch won’t make anything better – it will just make our conquest by manlier men that much easier.

In other news:

FloridaRealtor.org: HUD Says It Will Make Climate Change a Housing Priority: HUD says it will consider climate risk when underwriting loans (VA, Agriculture, etc.), promoting new energy-efficient housing and updating guidelines for grants. From Brian Brady: “FHA and VA loans are about to become more expensive in Florida – maybe California, but definitely in the Southeastern states. Forget that insurance prices the risk mitigation for extreme weather, this will be an added cost, priced into the loans.”

Michael Walsh: Vaccine Mandates Awaken Calls for Freedom.

The Federalist: The 2020 Election Wasn’t Stolen, It Was Bought By Mark Zuckerberg: The true story of how Mark Zuckerberg privatized the government’s voter registration and vote counting for Democrats in 2020.

John Daniel Davidson: The Purpose Of The Jan. 6 Select Committee Is To Suppress Free Speech.

I’ve seen no “official” confirmation of this, but it looks like some air-traffic controllers and Southwest Airlines employees are sicking-out over the vaccine mandates.

This will cause pain in a world that is asking for it, but it is exactly the right way to communicate where mutually-beneficial trade ends and personal autonomy begins. “You wanna push me around? Be prepared for the push-back.”

This country was founded by people who would rather freeze and starve than take shit from morons. More power to ’em!

In other news:

The Washington Examiner: ‘Housing first’ is a failing approach to homelessness.

City Journal: The Most Frightened Nation: Why the United Kingdom will never be the same.

So here’s the funny part about Cleo’s instincts and the palpably tabula rasa state of her conscious awareness:

Until this week, Miss Chioux did not know what rabbits are for. That’s a funny way of saying things, since it puts telos in the eye of the observer. Even so, Sun City being what it is, Cleo has seen thousands of bunnies in her life, but until one ran away from her, she didn’t know to hunt them.

She sure does now. Every walk starts with a bunny hunt, and if she spots her prey, all near-term prospects of elimination are swapped out for the hunting frenzy. I am coming to be worried that she will never poop in that big block-walled back yard, so avidly will she be hunting for rascally rabbits.

The empathy of her chase – the unerring way she had of predicting and capitalizing on the rabbit’s mistakes – has me rethinking her love for balls, too.

Cleo doesn’t know that what makes the blue blanket snuggly is her own retained body heat. And she doesn’t know that her many toy balls move entirely on her own energy. But qua telos, from her point of view, the balls lack motivation – they are not alive – and so they are inherently less predictable – to her – than is live game.

That’s just fun. Billiard-ball physics is duck soup to us – but running a rabbit to ground – not just the speed but the instant empathy and split-second decision-making – is completely impossible to over-thought-out human beings.

In other news:

Andrea Widburg: Life in Seattle is about to get very interesting (and that’s not good).

Joel Kotkin: Even Elon Musk is leaving California behind.

Clarice Feldman: Green Policies Return the World to Coal.

Cleo is with us, and she and I will be working at the new place today. I installed a TV over there yesterday, so we can have college football on while we work. She likes the colors, I like the cheerleaders.

The stands will be filled with white people, of course, while the playing field will be peppered with black people. What explains this “segregation”?

It’s merit, obviously. The racial composition of the football team will be black, with white, yellow and red people thinly represented in the long tail. This is not racist, it’s selection by merit among racial groups who different skills and talents. It is alike and equally not racist that the chess team is all Asians and Jews. But of course, the football team does not feel itself obliged to recruit a token nerd.

The war on merit is a terrible idea – for everyone – but the people most trapped by it are the ones for whom superior ability is their only way out. Children of moneyed families will always get a leg up, within the system or by escaping it. But it’s the kids of all races who have no one to fall back on but themselves who need and deserve the chance to claw their way out of poverty.

In other news:

David Harsanyi: Biden Administration Is Trying to Intimidate Parents.

Matt Welch: NYC Scrapping Gifted and Talented Program Is a Triumph of Redefining Language: Branding disparate racial outcomes as “segregation” is an effective way in Democratic polities to tear down programs some progressives don’t like.