I try and remember that part of my service is to keep the rivers and streams as clean as I can. And I charge a lot.
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It's common. I've seen the Tesla driving homeowner side eye the lifted pickups and dumpster full of drywall and lumber scraps.
We don't have pick up recycling around here and people don't want to pay me to haul it. I had a customer say that they'd care care of it. We filled a 12x12 room to the ceiling with cardboard.
You know what's "eco"?, not building a second home that sits mostly empty.
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Or just plain flatlining (letting inflation do a silent price reduction), propped up by lack of inventory because people won't list their homes at a loss compared to what their neighbor sold for a year or two earlier...the desperate will still pay the higher prices on the homes that do come up, but inventory won't loosen until either more time passes or something changes.
Here things seem to be sitting on the market and eating price cuts, but they are all overpriced or crappy properties (or both). My neighbor's way overpriced townhome was just delisted after sitting on the market for 8 months with multiple big price cuts (all while earning them no rental income as they kicked their tenant out to sell).
Things that are desirable can apparently still sell quick, as I learned this week as I convinced myself to significantly increase my budget to make an offer on a house my wife and I both loved only to have them accept an offer from someone else within 2 days of listing. I thought the price was a bit too high, but there's just not many options out there and apparently I'm not the only one willing to pay.
Fuck, looking for a SFR up to $700k? Don't look in San Diego, as the selection is fuckin pathetic.
Could be. From my perspective on the builder side, we are seeing a big slowdown as developers have a tougher time getting financing and making their projects pencil (caveat that i dont deal with SFR).
Its a tough condundrum- how do we slow down financial growth to sustainable levels, while at the same time speed up home building?
Heh, My wife works in the non-profit environmental world and has been questioned about our choice of vehicle being a gas guzzler when we show up to an event in my 20yr old 4Runner. Nevermind that the person doing the critiquing has had 3-4 different(albeit very fuel efficient) new vehicles in that time period lol.
What is the environmental footprint a new vehicle and disposing of an old one vs the relative difference between driving the two vehicles. Probably favors keeping the old.
It does. I'm not sure of the actual math/impact but I've looked it up fairly recently as I've been in the market for a new/used car. The current prices have kept me from buying one but the resource use favors keeping the old one, I have not checked on if it matters what kind of old car you drive.
Depends on the part of the environment and tech delta. LA air quality didn't improve because people kept limping along their smogless shitboxes.
Recycling vehicles has come a long way. I just did a quick search and Wikipedia says ". A lot of carbon dioxide is added into the atmosphere to make new cars. It is calculated that if someone traded in an 18 mpg clunker for a 22 mpg new car, it would take five and a half years of typical driving to offset the new car’s carbon footprint. That same number increases to eight or nine years for those who bought trucks." I have no idea how inclusive the study was of the mining and manufacturing end. Pretty cool European Union has an End of Life Directive for vehicles.
I am going through amoral dilemma now. Want to buy a hot tub. Do I really want to support the creation of another piece of trash that could be around forever? Would buying used be the better option?
I dealt with a couple of our biggest SFR spec home builders this month. I have a lot of experience from their side of the table having worked for builders for a substantial part of my career. It was really interesting to see how spoiled they have been by the last decade. One is extremely organized, very skeleton crew, conservative in land acquisition and the number of spec starts they have going, reasonable in pricing, and the other is the opposite. I would have concerns about how much longer builder #2 will be in business.
I think that's an underrated thing about recessionary economies... those that make it are stronger. A bit of a shuffle is normal and healthy.
I mostly "dirt pimp" for myself and close friends and family, so I have a lot of gratitude that it's not my only income stream right now. Reading this thread it's evident that we do a poor job as an industry in representing ourselves. TGR and mags often have *unique* perspectives that don't align with the general public, but I think this is a clear example of a vast difference between perception and reality. Only 26% of active brokers make $100k a year or more compared to 38% of the general public.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ome-in-the-us/
https://www.darinpersinger.com/blog/...t%20impossible.
That's a fair dilemma. I think there's a lot to be said about being conscientious enough to care. I am sometimes critical of myself for deliberating over such things when most folks just pat themselves on the back that they can afford it.
I've considered building one myself out of stone and tile. It would be a cool project, probably wouldn't save you any money though. A friend of mine is a pool guy, they aren't rocket science to plumb that's for sure.
I am not looking at the enviro impact equation. I'm looking at the Toadman pocketbook impact, and it's pretty brutal. Sticking with the current 15 yo rig for now. Though it's probably going to cost me some coin on some engine repairs here before winter really sets in.
On the home front, there are 4 full custom million plu$ builds going on within 2 blocks of me. Seems like those that have the cash are still full speed ahead.
Re: new vs old cars. I was just discussing this with my SO today as we drove in her 2011 car. Even my 2004 Element gets the same or better milage compared with new (non hybrid) mini-suvs. Shit, my sister's high school Honda Civic got 40mpg.
I'm keeping my old cars until they die. New cars are just not worth the cost (environmental or otherwise).
Stats are hard to validate. There’s a lot of fluff out there due to the industry being so marketing driven.
According to this article 49% are full-time and 22% are part-time. Don’t know how they account for the other 29%.
I think you can assume that all 10% of brokers that make over $150k a year are full-time. No matter what you’re selling it’s a lot of work to close $150k of commission in a year. Highest individual commission I’ve worked on was $48k as .02 of a $2.5M commercial building and it it took 18 months to close. So, that’s still only 20% of full time agents albeit those numbers are hard to qualify.
https://www.thewarrengroup.com/2020/...%20this%20year.
^^^ It would be fascinating for me to see what other agents actually net. I know there are agents that gross way more than me, but by the time you add up what they spend on their full time assistant, mailers, magazines, newspaper ads, videos, personal coaching and more, they might not take home all that much. They say the best way to make money in real estate is to make money off of agents, and I think that's true. There are a million shiny objects out there that agents spend money on.
I don't think the public has a good understanding that agents don't actually get that commission check, either. Their brokerage does, and then they take their cut. A new agent at the local Sotheby's is only going to get 50%, and that's after corporate Sotheby's takes their 7% first. That $30K you think the agent is getting for a $1M sale at 3% can be under 14K for the agent, depending on their arrangement.
It’s kind of sad that the backbone of the law suit is really that agents are resistant and generally bad at talking about our compensation.
It’s a complicated situation and we haven’t really scratched the surface of the real issues, but what’s clear is there’s a lot of resentment and little appreciation for what we contribute. That alone is pretty sad.
If you ever want to bounce numbers I’m an open book, although it sounds like we employ similar strategies. I can tell you first hand, it’s easy to get in over your head with a big budget. I watched a partner nearly lose his mind.
An acquaintance is a realtor in SF and has moved up to the $3m+ properties on average.
Her most recent mailing boasted about listing a house at $4.1m, and offer accepted for $4.8m in 17 hours with a 14 day close.
Doesn't that mean she priced it too low, and did virtually zero work to sell this property? Wtf.
I still think it needs to be a flat fee business model rather than a percentage of the sale.
Who determines the flat fee?
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Agents
"Flat fee" one-size-fits-all pricing won't work but a negotiable lump-sum payment could, and you could make it competitive that way.
we could negotiate the peasants out of the market
There are plenty of flat fee brokerages out there if that's what you're into. My brother owns an assist-to-sell brokerage in Denver as one example. Beyond that, commissions are always negotiable, so if you want to tell your agent "I want to pay $X instead of X%", there isn't anything stopping you/them.
I had a good experience using your brother to sell a house.
I still had to give a full commission to the buyer's agent to be competitive.
When I bought that house I negotiated with the buyers agent and split his commission. I found the house, he just represented me in the sale.
I'm pretty sure the vendor is still in charge as to what they tell their agent to list at or what price they will sell for, but
if RE agents were of absolutely no use and people could sell their own RE
how do agents still exist ?
Yup, it’s like a good accountant. Sure, you may think you are savvy enough to know all of the deductions, deferments, etc, etc…but you most certainly don’t.
Good accounting firms have other accountants check their work as a matter of routine, what chance do you have unless your shit is really simple?
(This only applies to very good accountants and RE agents, of course)
All forms of social are slathering over this as the death of the buyers' agent. What they're not getting is that buying a house would be like buying a car from a dealership. They hold all the cards, and grind people on the TruCoat every day for a living.
All the Realtors I have used were people I knew, all I knew before they became agents. My initial agent was a friend from the ski area, super smart lady who is worth millions now.
In my experiences the vig has been worth the cost.
I mean, in my limited experience, that's what it's like even with a buyer's agent. We went through three agents trying to buy during the pandemic, the last one was the best of the lot but still set us up with a yes-man inspector whose primary focus was making sure the sale went through. We were the idiots buying remote during COVID, and he definitely didn't represent the house accurately
Agreed, buyers agents should be worth the money paid to them as they have a bunch to do in getting you into a home. The listing agents are worth not so much from my experience. $10k in comp should cover it at the most unless you require all sorts of fancy advertising in destination magazines.
None of the buyers agents my wife and I have ever used have been useful at all. My first one actively fucked me over in terms of being asleep at the wheel on some stuff. I know of some now, but would have loved a flat fee option.
The interesting thing in my small town, is about 5 listing agents get 80% of the listings. Average sales price is $3.5M. Even at 1% that is $35k and I know they charge more.
A few years ago I tried an experiment offering listing properties for 1% or $20k max in the local paper where they all advertise. 0 takers after 6 months. I was amazed.