The Ugly Truth Behind “We Buy Ugly Houses”

Wth are you talking about? That's capitalism! Everything is worth what people are willing to pay for it. If you have a house that can sell for 300k but you sell for the first person that comes along for 200k whose fault is that?

You people blame these companies instead of blaming the reason people are ignorant. It's their wealth to protect or squander. Is lottery predatory, I bet you think so, payday loans? Car title loans? Casinos? Welcome to capitalism! People lose money because of their ignorance all the time.

I will give you a personal example since you gave me one. Many moons ago, I needed money for an emergency and took out pay day loans, they asked for only basic info and they were fast. i am sure banks would haggle you and give you a better loan anyways but I needed it fast and lost a lot of money because if it. And guess what? i am grateful for those companies that people like you are trying to shut down.

If you think your peers are ignorant then educate them!

I will give you another example, I sold a car I paid in total 10k+ on for a few hundred dollars from a "we buy junk cars" company, just the metal alone could have gotten me more money but I just needed it gone ASAP and I am so glad I did that.

You wanna take away my choices to stoke your freaking ego about how nice and caring of a person you are? Go do that elsewhere! Leave my freedom to make bad decisions alone. Neither you nor the government are my fucking nanny!

If I had a house that needs to close fast even at a huge loss I wanna find the first company I see advertised on a billboard or google results and get liquidity immediately! My wealth. mine! Period.

It feels good I bet to pretend to be the savior of the uneducated poor from the evil greedy corporations, but in my perspective you are the virtue signaling hero wannabe's taking what little freedom we have away.

Millions of americans love predatory businesses, this is a democracy not a technocracy or meritocracy, which means we the people get to have whatever shitty situations we want and your role to affect change is to communicate and engage in debates (I wonder how many won't even participate in this thread seeing me downvoted to max lol) not in silly outrage and virtue signaling, so you can change our minds (and I give you credit for at least replying and trying to do just that).

I don't like deceptive businesses, I just want predatory ones for when I want to be preyed upon. If they promised the best prices that would be a different story but their only claim is that they will give you cash for your crappy house.

It is amazing how many red tapes and regulations and bullshit I have to jump through just trying to exist in this supposedly free society. please stop making things shitter so you can feel like you helped people that aren't asking for your help.

Serious Q: What value do agents add? And what's wrong with buyers and sellers negotiating directly, as in pretty much any other market?

As an outsider it seems that RE agents bring exactly nothing to the table except FUD around the transaction process which they then exploit for commissions so everybody, except the agents, are worse off.

More than happy to be convinced otherwise.

I am not a libertarian FYI. The question is not whether predatory businesses are good or bad, the question is, so long as their advertising is not deceptive, who do you or the government think you are to take options away from people and profits from business owners? Everything from junkfoods to lotteries are "predatory" because poor people who can do better choose them by this logic.

I am simply challenging you to educate people or invent a competition that is better and can advertise better. What you call predatory is a fair business practice given the responsibility of spending your money after being well informed is the consumer's responsibility while the business simply needs to not deceive or coerce consumers.

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Had there not been the tax concessions, those property investors might've not invested in the first place, and thus, there would be an even lower baseline - the gov't's $20BN that they supposedly saved would not have made up for the shortfall either.

I rather the gov't give back the tax dollars in that case. And nothing stops an investor from making a company, and using that mechanism to negatively gear - unless somehow the proposal specifically targeted real estate.

People in australia complain about high property prices often think it's negative gearing causing it - but it's not. Australia is full of rich people, and high income earners. That's why property prices are high.