221–230 of 346 posts
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Real estate for normal housing is definitely not a high pressure sales job.
Agreed - I laugh when people call me a “salesman”. Matchmaker and project manager are more in line, with a whole lot of very specialized knowledge of finance, marketing, negotiation, soils, fencing, construction, environmental law…
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And it got sold! I happen to remember this https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64389615 I suppose leading with a picture of it actually on fire is better than a post or pre fire photo.
Would that not be a total writeoff, given that it's a timber building?
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>Home inspections that aren't really "inspections" and are just there to grease the skids I hear this a lot on here and I wonder what state people are in or if the laws are somehow different elsewhere. In the states where I do business, there are state mandated checklists of systems and inspectors could be held liable if they don’t show reasonable care and professionalism in gathering the data for their report. The i…
Colorado here and that wasn't the case for me. There were many, and varied things missed in my inspection. The biggest was the entire HVAC system being messed up. The furnace was incorrectly installed, improperly sized for the house, and didn't even have any return ductwork installed. The air flow seemed really bad in the bedroom and so one day I decided to climb up into the attic and take a look. The problem with th…
Also - I’m about to stop recommending one of my recommended inspectors, because he’s at best a “B”. He catches most issues, but the level of care isn’t what I want for my clients. There’s another guy I used to recommend but again, he’s nearing retirement and getting sloppy.
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Totally agree on the inspection. They're next to useless - a friend bought a home a few years ago, super-weird water heater/HVAC system (co-mingled, WTF), never mentioned by the inspector. When it broke a year later, it was a VERY expensive fix, and I think they might have recovered a few hundred $$ from the inspector (on a many thousands repair). An agent is only getting 5-6% of the home value (assuming no split wit…
5-6% of the purchase price still seems like a huge amount. Of course I don’t really know how many houses decent agents tend to sell per year.
Sample of 1, but my agent was frequently closing several homes/week during peak season (Spring, early Summer). At the time (2017), typical listing would be $500-$1 million (Fairfax County, VA).
So I'd guess 20-30/year for her.
Broker keeps 30-50% of the commission.
So, a good agent in NoVA is probably making $250-$500k/year (but has to pay their own payroll taxes and stuff out of that, IIRC).
completely baffling and infuriating to me as you have no way of knowing what you're looking at. easiest job in the world here.
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The reply was a bit harsh, but let's not act like the real estate industry isn't riddled with skeezy practices. 1) Home inspections that aren't really "inspections" and are just there to grease the skids 2) Buyer's agents don't have a fiduciary duty to protect the buyers. 3) Pricing "knowledge" that is typically public info, just locked behind access restrictions 4) predatory lending practices It's a very incestuous…
> The reply was a bit harsh, but let's not act like the real estate industry isn't riddled with skeezy practices. Let's not pretend like this doesn't apply to almost every industry either...
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I love McMansion Hell. It’s hilarious and I’ve learned from it. People with atrocious taste and enough money to impose it on the world should be exposed to ridicule.
The British seem to have a well-established culture of "taking the piss" out of one's superiors, whereas the US seems to have zero tolerance for biting the hands of the corporate overlords who feed us. I'm saying that as a Canadian who is exposed to both cultures. Also sorry .
It's punching down.
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> That's how all photos should be - original, no editing, no staging; The second entry at the moment is an example of really bad staging.
The second one is the fake bookshelves one (at least for me). I think that the house really has been lived in with that hideous wall. But yes there are plenty of bad staging photos, and at least one totally ridiculous photoshop (the sofa planted completely out of perpective and in front of a mirror that ought to be reflecting it).
I would also want it to actually fit on the wall and not be awkwardly cut off on the right edge.
This is a reddit, not HN.
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The British seem to have a well-established culture of "taking the piss" out of one's superiors, whereas the US seems to have zero tolerance for biting the hands of the corporate overlords who feed us. I'm saying that as a Canadian who is exposed to both cultures. Also sorry .
McMansion Hell isn't about taking the piss out of one's superiors, it's about looking down on the lower classes without the refined architectural taste of the author and audience. It's punching down.
In fact, the article you posted here traffics to a large extent, with either implied or explicit ridicule, in the attempts of what look like struggling and desperate people to sell their neglected properties.
One should not laugh at people with bad taste. It’s bad taste combined with power and money (Trump: a convenient example) where the lack of taste makes the world uglier, because it’s jammed into the public eye.