There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Greg Swann (page 28 of 209)

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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

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…

Overnight News: “Heard any good jokes lately?”

Ya think it's easy?

“If you make a mistake, do it again, right away, louder and faster. I think Eddie Van Halen said that.”

Can’t seem to get a grip on the news? Can’t quite put your finger on the problem? Feeling overexposed, despite your isolation? We’ve got you covered – everything but your lap top:

CNBC: Homebuilder sentiment sets another record high in October. The Valley of the Ever-Fecund Sun is festooned with sticks. Cranes, too.

Housing Wire: What could drive mortgage rates in 2021?.

Housing Wire: Mortgage forbearance rate falls to lowest level since mid-April at 5.92%.

Paul Bedard: ‘Broken Arrow’: Cities and police ready for election violence.

Daily Caller: ‘The City Will Be On Fire’: New Yorkers Reportedly Prepare To Flee Homes To Avoid Election-Related Unrest.

The Federalist: We Gamed Out The 2020 Election And Found Our Constitution Can Handle The Madness.

Frontpage: Twitter Operates as Biden’s Censorship Arm.

Joel Kotkin: Democratic Civil War.

Reason: San Francisco Won’t Reopen Schools. But It Will Rename Them.

Overnight News: The slo-mo shattering of China Joe.

Ya think it's easy?

“I’m with Joe: Take a nap. Who know what could change in a couple of hours?”

Why is there no real estate news? Could it be more than just the weekly weekend laziness? Values dropping precipitously anywhere? Any way to explain that without mentioning the riots that are draining those cities of the best of their Ants? Will we need to supplant the RiotScore™ with an ArsonScore™? Meanwhile, when will Joe Biden figure out that his pooch is completely screwed?

Forbes: Why Real Estate Investors Shouldn’t Expect A Repeat Of 2008.

City Journal: New York’s Year From Hell.

The Federalist: White House Expert Scott Atlas Censored By Twitter.

Daily Wire: Director Of National Intelligence Confirms Hunter Biden Laptop ‘Not Part Of Some Russian Disinformation Campaign’.

Daily Mail: ‘The Joe meeting happened, the emails are correct and Joe took 10% of equity’: Bannon says EVERYTHING reported in Hunter laptop scandal is true and reveals how lawyer for Biden’s son tried to get hard drive back – proving ‘it’s no Russian intel op’.

The Federalist: The Biden Corruption Scandal Isn’t About Hunter, It’s About Joe.

The Hill: Censoring the Biden story: How social media becomes state media.

American Greatness: Establishment Disinformation Is Killing Western Democracy.

NBC San Diego: San Diego Unified School District Changes Grading System to ‘Combat Racism.’ Grasshoppers don’t need to be schooled to be Grasshoppers, but Grasshopper schoolteachers still need to get paid.

Overnight News: Is Hunter Biden Qanon?

Ya think it's easy?

“Blood makes noise? Imagine a scent you can never quite remember and yet never quite forget. Now multiply your sense of smell by a hundred.”

The headline is a joke – but so is everything else. Hunter Biden is not Qanon, but Qanon only matters just now because BLM and Antifa have been rioting for months – so that certainly must be the fault of chair-bound net.cetaceans. The impeachment fiasco was this same kind of disinformation scam writ large.

Forbes: Amazon, Apple, Google And Facebook Are All Scooping Up Office Space In New York—Despite Predictions Of The City’s Demise.

CNBC: Why millions of freelancers fear a Biden presidency may put them out of work. Everyone in the 1099 world should be keeping an eye on this ball.

New York Post: Here’s how the media is misreporting COVID-19’s death toll in America.

Frontpage: The Coronavirus Experts Were Wrong, Now They Need Scapegoats: It’s not about fighting the virus, but punishing political and cultural enemies.

The Federalist: The Biden Emails Prove Impeachment Was A Sham.

Information Liberation: The Hunter Biden cover-up and the architecture of disinformation. As discussed above. I rewrote the headline to make it actually summarize the article.

Matt Taibbi: Facebook and Twitter’s Intervention Highlights Dangerous New Double Standard.

Western Journal: The Topics for the Final Presidential Debate Have Been Announced. “The currently embattled Commission on Presidential Debates announced Friday that the candidates will discuss leadership, the coronavirus pandemic, issues of race, families, national security and climate change.” No foreign policy, no economics, no Hunter Biden. Totally not fixed.

Townhall: Amy Coney Barrett Makes Us All Want to Be Better People.

Unchained Melody: “Blood Makes Noise.”

Is this song about contact tracing? Add your own backstory. I referenced it yesterday on Facebook, citing the obvious takeover of the New York Times by Critical Theory Marxists. I love it in all kinds of ways, but, at its most accessible level, it is a concise reflection of ontology: The physiological consequences of emotional distress.

I’d like to help you doctor
Yes I really really would
But the din in my head
It’s too much and it’s no good
I’m standing in a windy tunnel
Shouting through the roar
And I’d like to give the information
You’re asking for

But blood makes noise
It’s a ringing in my ear
Blood makes noise
And I can’t really hear you
In the thickening of fear

I think that you might want to know
The details and the facts
But there’s something in my blood
Denies the memory of the acts
So just forget it Doc.
I think it’s really
Cool that you’re concerned
But we’ll have to try again
After the silence has returned

‘Cause blood makes noise
It’s a ringing in my ear
Blood makes noise
And I can’t really hear you
In the thickening of fear

Blood makes noise

Overnight News: Does Slow Joe even know he’s gotta go?

Ya think it's easy?

“Turns out there’s more than one way to land a landslide.”

By now it seems obvious that Rudy Giuliani will keep dripping incriminating evidence against Joe Biden and his family until Biden withdraws from the race. By that time, millions of ballots will have been cast for him, and whatever mad rush there is to print new ballots in time for Election Day, neither Democratic candidate will get enough votes to beat Trump – probably not anywhere. There are half-a-dozen scandals that should have imprisoned Biden, Obama and Hilary Clinton – but even here they are being shielded by the Deep State. By going around the usual channels, and by raining down chaos in OODA loops of slow-reveals, Giuliani is going to put the entire DNC on tilt. This is an amazing, virtuoso performance of politics as 4D chess.

Forbes: Covid-19’s Impact On New Home Purchases And Designs.

City Journal: Mandates and Liberty: The public-health establishment must be clear about its reasons for imposing Covid-related measures. It will be interesting to see what shakes out at the end of this. The only way to get rid of oppressive health mandates is to limit the state government’s police powers. Let’s see if that happens – anywhere.

PJMedia.com: Brady White’s Cop Confessions 2: ‘There Is a Mass Exodus in Law Enforcement, Nationwide.’ As with the overturners of applecarts, no one foresaw cops and sports fans who are not doomed to take abuse.

Glenn Greenwald: Facebook and Twitter Cross a Line Far More Dangerous Than What They Censor.

PJMedia.com: How Close Is the U.S. to Civil War? A War Correspondent Is in Portland to Find Out.

Overnight News: When the whole world’s out to get you – and you melt hearts, anyway…

Ya think it's easy?

“Ya wanna talk about injustice? Never once in my life have I eaten anybody’s homework!”

Yesterday Donald Trump worked his normal day, gave a two-hour speech at a rally, then fought off Savannah Guthrie, armed with still more DNC talking points. He won the crowd, resoundingly, and could have scored with a bedazzled Biden voter among the townhall questioners. With frequent breaks, Joe Biden did not visibly collapse on stage. Neither candidate managed to deal with Hunter Biden and his sticky laptop.

Daily Mail: ‘Get me any house in Maine!’ Out-of-state buyers from New York City, Boston and DC are flooding the Maine property market causing home values to surge 17% and supply to hit a ‘historic low’. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: ‘Hottest real estate market in the world’ may be Palm Beach, Florida, brokers say. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Average 30-year mortgage rate for purchase loans falls to another all-time low.

City Journal: Liberty, in Sickness and in Health: Judicial skepticism is reining in pandemic emergency orders.

National Review: Twitter’s Un-American Censorship of the New York Post.

New York Post: Biden doesn’t get one question on Hunter Biden exposé at ABC News town hall.

City Journal: Wealth and Risk: Many factors contribute to racial disparities in household wealth accumulation, but one is mostly overlooked.

Overnight News: Paperboys dictate terms to newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton. Let the O’Keefing begin!

Ya think it's easy?

“Shouting for quiet? Yeah, that’ll work…”

Reality is whole and uncontradicted, but a lie is a discrete contrary. Liars don’t think to misrepresent the whole, typically, but they can’t, anyway: There’s too much of it. Accordingly, if you want to suss out a lie, look for the tells that the liar would not or could not have faked. How can you tell people are abandoning riot-wracked cities? Look at the U-Haul rates. How can you tell the cause is the riots and not the virus? Look at the dates of the surges.

So: Before going all NASCAR on themselves yesterday, how might Facebook and Twitter have foreseen that there could be more in Hunter’s laptop than just Burisma? The went all Streisand Effect, making yesterday’s story that much bigger and giving a big boost to today’s O’Keefing. Slow Joe should drop out today. Assuming the Post is working from the slow-build strategy Andrew Breitbart taught to James O’Keefe, tomorrow’s news will be devastating.

And while I don’t typically link to front-page news, you never know what’s going to be suppressed these days…

New York Post: Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm.

GeekEstateBlog: Meet the Real Estate Tech Founder: Austin Allison from Pacaso. How to get and not-get your big idea at the same time: “The idea for Pacaso came from my own experience owning a second home for the first time. I felt like I had achieved a dream and wanted to make that feeling accessible to more people.” I am so proud of my success that I want to dilute it and muddle it with strangers! You bet. Question not asked: “Who wants a beach house in Winter or a Ski Chalet in Summer?”

The Federalist: In Minneapolis, Rage And Fear Have Hobbled A Great American City.

Stella Morabito: Pay Attention To Local Elections, Because Whoever Wins Can Make Your Life Miserable.

The American Spectator: Hunter Bidengate: Fredo With a Crack Pipe, Castro With a Social Network.

City Journal: American Princelings: Hunter Biden and other children of political leaders are favored elites in the Read more

Overnight News: If feminism were about women instead of Marxism, Amy Coney Barrett would be its god.

Ya think it's easy?

“The worst thing about a dog and pony show would be looking up from your TelePrompter and realizing that you’re the goat.”

What’s on your notepad?

Housing Wire: Luxury home sales rise 41.5%, making biggest jump since 2013.

CNBC: Mortgage rates set yet another record low, but applications fall.

MyMove.com: Coronavirus Moving Study: People Left Big Cities, Temporary Moves Spiked In First 6 Months of COVID-19 Pandemic. Temporary move or buy-and-bail? The coming months will tell.

CNBC: Dropbox is the latest San Francisco tech company to make remote work permanent.

The Washington Times: Seemingly spontaneous street violence is organized and pursuing a radical political agenda.

The American Spectator: Yelp Cannot Help Itself: It’s now in the denunciation business, as inspired by Black Lives Matter.

The Daily Mail: ‘I might never play again’: Renowned Japanese jazz pianist Tadataka Unno is robbed of his ability to play after being beaten up by teens at Harlem subway station. Faith and follow-through. What happens when kids grow up knowing that their follow-through will always come to nothing – or worse, lead to abuse?

The Daily Wire: NYT: Experts Confident Pandemic To Be Over ‘Far Sooner’ Than Expected, Trump Efforts ‘Working With Remarkable Efficiency.’

Tall Bachman: Remembering Eddie Van Halen: Three Weeks in ’86.

Overnight News: Baby-killers, riot-enablers and vehement haters-of-hatred lecture captive audience of one on morality.

Ya think it's easy?

“Why weren’t there any pictures of dogs? Dogs are how you make people all gooey and irrational – so they practically beg you to steal their treats.”

The worst part about yesterday’s SCOTUS hearings? They’ll get worse…

The news:

Housing Wire: The forbearance crash bros spoke too soon.

CNBC: Disney says its ‘primary focus’ for entertainment is streaming — announces a major reorg. Bye, bye, cinemas. Bye, bye, malls. All of this was already in motion. The virus is giving us the accrued efficiencies of a three-year recession in nine months.

FEE.org: WHO Reverses Course, Now Advises Against Use of ‘Punishing’ Lockdowns. Who makes history? WE do! We are all a part of the greatest unforced error in human history.

The American Mind: The Black Trump Vote.

The American Spectator: America Reaps What the Left Has Sown.

The American Mind: The Audacity Of Amy.

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

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

Overnight News: Has Joe Biden frolicked things up just in time?

Ya think it's easy?

“What do you know for sure when a rumpled old man says, ‘You don’t deserve to know if I have treats in my pocket!’ And who is going to clean up all this drool?”

Speaking of Joe Biden, Barack Obama said, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to [frolic] things up.”

Saturday, I said: “I desperately wanted for this election to be about Marxism: ‘You’re what’s for dinner!™’ Biden wanted for this election to be about Trump. Biden won.”

Guess what? Obama was right: Just two short days later, Biden has managed to make the election about radicalism, at a minimum.

We’ll see how that plays out, but, meanwhile, not much else is news:

Zero Hedge: These Are The US Cities Where Workers Make The Most Relative To Their Cost-Of-Living. Fun take, but why assume work-from-homers will remain in American? Why assume they will even be Americans, in due course?

Forbes: Is Florida The Likeliest To Rebound First From COVID? If only Arizona had a governor like DeSantis…

New York Post: ‘Ghost town’: In-person attendance dwindles at NYC schools. Assuming we do not vote to become North Venezuela, a signal unforced error for Marxism will turn out to be letting up on the stranglehold they have on America’s children. Children can’t get Coronavirus, but some of them are learning to read for a change. Readers are rebels. Ask me how I know.

National Review: If Biden were a Republican.

Issues and Insights: Beyond Court Packing: Here’s How Dems Plan To Create A One-Party State.

Salena Zito: No matter who wins, there is no exit from the roller coaster anytime soon.

Joel Kotkin: Will the Cultural Revolution Be Canceled? The challenge to our civilization is real, but most Americans aren’t sympathetic to social radicalism. I believe no one who worked for what he has wants to see it destroyed. But as everyone in real estate can tell you, a backward-looking approach only gets you so far…

This election is not about Trump, Biden, court-packing, nit-picking or any other media-borne nitwittery. It’s about Marxism and its zeal to extinguish human liberty. First we must renounce the Marxists, but then we must also purge them from Read more

Overnight News: Three ways to be counter-culture in today’s world: 1. Work for a living. 2. Work weekends. 3. Vote like Johnny Rotten.

Ya think it's easy?

“If you’re not committed 24/7, you might as well just take a nap.”

Typical weekend news drought. You’ve got time to read, they’ve got time to vay-cay.

Forbes: Housing Prices Aren’t Coming Down According To Realtor.com. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. The national news is so good, the local news cannot possibly be bad… right…?

Fox News: San Francisco tax revenue plunge points to resident exodus. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. How long will it take for rioter-friendly cities to realize what they have done?

New York Post: Stealing Soho: Luxury retailers terrorized by shoplifting mobs.

Tablet: Left Fascism.

Breitbart: Sex Pistols Front Man Johnny Rotten: ‘Of Course I’m Voting For Trump.’

Overnight News: You can tell Trump is going to lose because everyone hangs on his every word.

Ya think it's easy?

“Howling dogs tell you nothing. It’s what they’re howling about that matters.”

I desperately wanted for this election to be about Marxism: “You’re what’s for dinner!™” Biden wanted for this election to be about Trump. Biden won. The American people had already priced him out of the deal, and now they have seen that his designated-successor is inept in her own unique ways. We are down to a plebiscite on Trump.

Overnight on BloodhoundBlog:

Eric Blackwell: Rama and Sunil Mehra – The American Dream and teaching young lions to hunt. This is the first installment in Eric’s “Howling about the Positive” series of posts.

And from the great big world out there:

Housing Wire: Home prices rose by record numbers last week. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

The Verge: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: For the first time since April, forbearances fall below 3 million.

The Close: Why Agents Make the Best Real Estate Investors—Even During the Pandemic.

The Federalist: A Riot In The Suburbs: Inside The Changing Face Of Wisconsin 2020.

The Hollywood Reporter: Patty Jenkins: “We Could Lose Movie Theater-Going Forever.”

City Journal: Lab Coat Tyranny: California is using “public health” as a rationale to push progressive political goals.

The Washington Free Beacon: Data Reveal How Yale Discriminates Based on Race.

City Journal: Don’t Defend Columbus—Celebrate Him.

And some pure real estate porn:

Forbes: San Francisco’s Billionaire Enclave Sees Rarely Available Cliffside Home List For $25 Million.

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

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