201–210 of 244 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to go to Sundown yearly, a long time ago. I'm not saying it's great, but I did learn to ski there. https://www.sundownmtn.com/the-mountain/snow-report-trail-ma...
Well there you go - see I learned today there's a ski hill in Dubuque!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rock Island, Illinois was listed on Salary.com several times as one of the five least expensive places to live in the U.S. Our winters are not very pleasant, but if you like to ski, there is plenty to indulge within a two hour drive.
If you like to ski, Illinois is close to the last place you should be living.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are essentially a market maker for housing. You can sell your house to them _today_. It's necessary that they pay you substantially under market. If you want a good price, it'll take you 6 months to sell your house. You're paying a premium for immediate execution. Once you punish the fraud and crime, there's no problem left IMO. There's multiple of these companies competing and you should price shop before selli…
There’s a general problem with low friction transactions being used to exploit people with diminished capacity, particularly when intermediaries are involved (another common one in UK is signing them up for multiple phone contracts) and there may be some regulatory innovation possible in this area. Punishment after the fact is not sufficient if it doesn’t adequately prevent this population being exploited.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this misses the forest for the trees; the handful of cases where they broke the law are nowhere near as deleterious as the rest where they didn't. I can't think of a better time for new regulation than a hedge fund extracting home equity from desperate people.
What legislation could you make that wouldn't be a case of the side effects being worse than the disease (bearing in mind how often we dont realize there are side effects or their severity)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the cases mentioned specifically, the buyer has broken a law already (at least two are fraud) or the contract is invalid (lack of mental capacity). This isn't really a story per se. People are doing illegal stuff or stuff that won't hold up in court if challenged. We have a system for it - it works ok, not fantastically. We don't need new regulation for cases like this, we just need better execution on the existin…
Someone who is selling their house for pennies on the dollar most likely can't afford to police lenders and keep them honest via lawsuits, especially sellers like those in the OP who are mentally disabled.
Reminds me of recently reading an opinion about how thrifting has been ruined by the upper middle class. The person expressed how thrifting is a necessary need when growing up poor and how the trend of thrifting in popularity among middle class has reduced the quantity of quality items to basically none. Quality of life I believe is getting worse for a lot of people regardless of how long we can force people to stay…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry you've had such bad experience with realtors... just some thoughts: -- My experience with real estate attorneys has been as mixed as your experiences with realtors. Some know what they are doing, many do not. Many care about billable hours just as much as the outcome. YMMV. -- Some realtors care about volume, and some care about their fiduciary responsibilities to your business. If they are actually a Realt…
> If I make you an extra $50K and I get $10K for that service, I've earned my money. That's totally fair on the surface. But it's also impossible to demonstrate. Nobody can know if the house would've sold for 50K less if a different (less competent) realtor sold it, or if the owner sold it on craigslist or wherever.
While no individual knows for sure what their next best alternative was, their hunches and hindsights add up to a reliable picture in aggregate (that I’ve seen, anyway.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are essentially a market maker for housing. You can sell your house to them _today_. It's necessary that they pay you substantially under market. If you want a good price, it'll take you 6 months to sell your house. You're paying a premium for immediate execution. Once you punish the fraud and crime, there's no problem left IMO. There's multiple of these companies competing and you should price shop before selli…
There’s a general problem with low friction transactions being used to exploit people with diminished capacity, particularly when intermediaries are involved (another common one in UK is signing them up for multiple phone contracts) and there may be some regulatory innovation possible in this area. Punishment after the fact is not sufficient if it doesn’t adequately prevent this population being exploited.
I use eBay's "Buy It Now" functionality all the time, in preference to the "Wait 7 days and deal with snipers" auctions. I fully know that I'm trading low-price for low-friction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Mass homelessness is new to Australia. It's used to be a small number of people here and there. The obsession with owning real estate has turned our society into landlords and renters, with renters paying the mortgages on their landlords investments - mortgages which are spiraling up due to interest rate rises. Nearly all the members of parliament have extensive housing portfolios so they have disincentive to fix it.…
And now the ALP secured 715,000 additional ballots. Genius. Why try to improve the situation for the Australian people when you can literally "import" ballots?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 e…
> who do you or the government think you are to take options away from people and profits Yes, who do they think they are, taking options away from grifters and swindlers from their deserved profits? The nerve on these people.