01.18.09 - Do You Have Septic or Sewer?
01.14.09 - Proposed Amendment to the Distressed Property Law!
01.13.09 - Short Sales and Excise Tax
01.09.09 - A look back to 2008 With a Resolution for 2009: "Just Say No"
01.08.09 - Happy Birthday Elvis
01.07.09 - Hot Off The Presses! Revised Home Valuation Code of Conduct
01.07.09 - What is the impact on your future ablity [sic] to purchase and/or refinance?
01.06.09 - $1.75 is a Bargain!
8 posts in 18 days, maybe one of them interesting. The P-I may not be officially out of business yet, but it looks like SREP is effectively dead already.
Another real estate agent suggested I blog for business. That's what it's called. So I read blogs from the west coast for a while before posting a comment on Rain City Guide. Ardell tore me up one side and down the other worse than anything I've gotten here. OK fine, I kept reading.
It was on the Real Estate Professional site that some one made a comment that was attacked by what was termed "the flying monkeys." It turned out to be people from the http://www.seattlebubble.com site in Seattle Washington.
It was horrifying.
Then the same thing happened over on the Rain City Guide. Ardell posted something completely off the wall that sounded like Real Estate stuff, but had nothing to do with anything.
The "flying monkeys" allowed me to interject some comments into the Rain City Guide until it got to be way too much. There is very bad information there that solely attempts to promote mortgages and discount brokerages, attorneys being a big part of that.
In reading other Real Estate sites I find the same feel good posts to make the site more "sticky." Pretty pictures, cute stories, and a good dose of in depth analysis goes a long way with consumers.
Real Estate is not rocket science. The threshold is low because it is a hard job. It is NOT a commissioned sales position. It hard, dirty, disgusting work. It is fixing rot, dealing with renters, and being smart enough to buy and sell well. It is a business of brutal negotiations.
People in the Real Estate business are in it for life. Real Estate is an addiction. It's the juice. You buy it, sell it, see it for the dirt it is, and the possibilities it can be. You make numbers in your head and know to the penney the price of a water heater.
In the world of Real Estate sites this site fits Real Estate the best. It's the home of the "flying monkeys." It's brutal.
Lets revisit the 6 factors from the original "crazy" post that started this whole thread.
1. The Boeing Factor:
Layoffs. Some orders put on hold or cancelled.
2. The Microsoft Factor:
First layoffs in the history of the company. Vendors and contractors not having their contracts renewed. Expansion plans put on hold.
3. The Google, Expedia factors:
Expedia stock price way down and rumored to be going private. Google going through layoffs and shedding contractors en masse. Significantly scaled back expansion plans in Kirkland.
4. New commercial development in Bellevue factor:
Commercial development in Bellevue has slowed considerably with many projects on hold.
5. Luxury players moving to the Eastside factor:
Retailers are getting hit, but high-end retailers are being destroyed. Neiman-Marcus specifically just went through a bunch of layoffs.
6. The local mortgage factor:
Forclosures increasing at an incredible clip. Meanwhile closed sales are down in the gutter.
That's a whole lotta FAIL, but about par for the course for a Realtor®.
I just read the first page of this post today for the first time. This must have been the begining of the "flying monkeys" reference. Yes, in hind sight the post by Debra was miscalculated.
This week after meeting some of the people who frequent here I've been thinking that there is very bad information about Real Estate filtered through the internet. One comment made to Mack in the original Real Estate Professionals post was very on target, he has only been in Real Estate during the good times. A very large majority of agents have been in the business less than ten years.
Real Estate changed in that time dramatically.
A Real Estate professional lives by the numbers. A property is worth what it will rent for. There is a return on investment. Dollars go in to make a profit. Investment in Real Estate can off set regular income by tax advatage. By tax advatage I mean deducting mortgage payments as business expenses.
Real Estate is a business. Real Estate is a multi trillion dollar business. I would venture it is the biggest business in the world, because I think every inch of the world is owned by somebody.
By now some of you must have figured that I'm a lousy real estate agent. I have opinions and express them freely. Yes, the price of Real Estate was unsustainable in 2006 and I told everybody to sell. By 2007 it was beyond comprehension. People held out, wanted more money, but I sold, and investors sold. Lot's of investors unloaded in 2005,2006,2007.
The amazing part is that Real Estate Professionals didn't hammer at the basics of Real Estate. There were good purchases in all of those years.
We forget that at the time if a property was on the market more than a month it was a "dog" listing. It was over looked by agents who were making comments about not looking at anything over a week old, or was it a day on the market. Two investor I know got very good deals by making low, low, low offers that were accepted. One guy was offer 50% of asking price. Today he doesn't seem so stupid because some people needed to sell for a variety of reasons.
Real Estate is a business, not a sales job. You're either addicted to the business or not. I can tell you what most Real estate addicts will tell you that Real Estate is a great business except you have to deal with real estate agents.
Yes you need an agent and the agent should be working in your best interest. I am a pit bull. When you hire me I work for you. I take my job very seriously. My analysis is complete. i refuse to write bad deals for my clients, Writing bad deals is what radfun is for.
When I market a home it is a serious business of getting it to look like a bargain. I only list properties i personally believe in. it has to have value. If you have trouble seeing the value I can explain it to you in depth. It's more than statistics or data. In many cases it's an intangible.
A buyer or seller, for the money paid in commisions should get value from an agent. A commision is really pretty cheap for what a good agent can probvide you in negotiating skills. There are many good agents. You would need to look for them and get them to agree to work with you. Most good agents are interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them.
I'm sorry things got so far out of whack. They never should have by all that is the basics of Real Estate. There are rules that got broken, but it was a time of mass hysteria.
01.18.09 - Do You Have Septic or Sewer?
01.14.09 - Proposed Amendment to the Distressed Property Law!
01.13.09 - Short Sales and Excise Tax
01.09.09 - A look back to 2008 With a Resolution for 2009: "Just Say No"
01.08.09 - Happy Birthday Elvis
01.07.09 - Hot Off The Presses! Revised Home Valuation Code of Conduct
01.07.09 - What is the impact on your future ablity [sic] to purchase and/or refinance?
01.06.09 - $1.75 is a Bargain!
8 posts in 18 days, maybe one of them interesting. The P-I may not be officially out of business yet, but it looks like SREP is effectively dead already.
Perhaps, Macky Mack can bust out with another rap...about bubble headz.
Real estate prices continue to decline, foreclosures continue to rise, and those who literally have no empathy sit back and comment "that they saw it coming, and it is everyone's fault but theirs".
Many in this group even seem to gloat that there is so much financial ruin, because that financial ruin is imagined to be their financial gain. Kind of a disgusting form of gloating, because these friendly folks aren't just after the really, really wealthy to lose a fortune, they seem to want to see everyone lose at every level, so they can gain. This group of humanity isn't the Robin Hood model of fabled lore, these folks are something lower, something more base and ugly, and I'm getting sick of hearing from them, as their only solution offered is always the same: "bring on the failure, I can hardly wait".
...
Right now, today, we need the housing market to stabilize. It is the critical path to stopping the loss of jobs. Creating 4 million new jobs in the next 2 years is a great idea, but it's too slow. This next week should bring some new announcements, and I hope that some of them offer something for 'today' instead of 'tomorrow'.
I just have to laugh at this idea that we can somehow shoot a silver bullet and "stabilize" the housing market (in other words, STOP the price decreases) without any regard to the underlying financial fundamentals that have governed housing prices for decades (well, up until 2001 or so).
Anybody looked at the housing market in Flint or Detroit MI lately? In some cases, they can't even GIVE houses away! Now should the government go in and try to 'stabilize' the RE market in that area? Surely they should qualify or at least be near the top of the list! But to what end? Should the gov't decide that a 3/1 house should cost on average around $100K and then try to make that happen across the nation? Wouldn't that be fair?
Stabilizing the housing market (even if it were possible) wouldn't really do much to stem job losses at Microsoft, Boeing, the automakers, and at many other places. Might save a Starbucks or two!
OK, I'm done, going to call in my claim for last week's unemployment now . . .
The thing that drives me crazy is that our nation went from having a relatively sound economy built on manufacturing and innovation to having a sham economy built on consumer spending, real estate appreciation, and leveraged financial trickery.
Then, when the sham falls apart as it was destined to do, the reaction is not "oh dang, that was stupid... we should never have thought this was a good way to operate an economy." Instead, the response is "oh crap, somebody bail out housing and prop back up the house of cards!!!"
The thing that drives me crazy is that our nation went from having a relatively sound economy built on manufacturing and innovation to having a sham economy built on consumer spending, real estate appreciation, and leveraged financial trickery.
Japan's manufacturing based economy is not doing so well:
1)The Japanese industrial production data and METI forecast was bad beyond all imagining. Industrial production might fall by 1/3 in the 12 months ending in January. It could fall in a mere four months between November and February by more than half the U.S. Great Depression decline which took almost four years.
Gee, what got her panties up in a bunch? Is it because she has no listings (note the the one listing it says she has is actually listed by another realtor according to the MLS if you check redfin). BAIL ME OUT! ANYBODY THAT DOESN'T SUPPORT BAILING ME OUT IS TERRIBLE, SICK PERSON!
I really like that Mack takes the time to reply to the one poster, only to say it's not worth his time. That guy is a piece of work and almost makes that PI blog worth reading for the entertainment quotient.
Gee, what got her panties up in a bunch? Is it because she has no listings (note the the one listing it says she has is actually listed by another realtor according to the MLS if you check redfin). BAIL ME OUT! ANYBODY THAT DOESN'T SUPPORT BAILING ME OUT IS TERRIBLE, SICK PERSON!
Maybe she's mostly a buyers agent?
Also, does anyone know the date (approx) that Ardell finally saw the light? She's so reasonable now I'm trying to figure out when it flipped from, "I don't give a RA about banks."
But, you have to admit that Mack at least is amusing. I never knew that I had so many personal deficiencies until Mack was kind enough to point them out, and I never knew that I was so utterly lacking in professional skills.
Besides, it is going to be a lot of fun quoting his posts back to him a year from now...
Besides, it is going to be a lot of fun quoting his posts back to him a year from now...
Yep, just over a year ago, Mack and the RE gang were mocking people who thought that housing was overpriced as losers living in their parents' basement missing out on the big RE party due to their lack of cojones.
Now that the hangover has set in, we are supposed to provide yet more enormous subsidies to housing so that these RE "Professionals" can continue to party like it's 2005.
By allowing the housing industry to begin a catastrophic collapse beginning approximately 3 years ago, we've seen everything normal and stable change from a pro-active model, to a fear-based, take-no-risks model. Certainly things were far too rah-rah-go-go-go, but I do not believe that the best decisions were made, which means today we have got to move faster, which does create more risk.
Gee, what got her panties up in a bunch? Is it because she has no listings (note the the one listing it says she has is actually listed by another realtor according to the MLS if you check redfin). BAIL ME OUT! ANYBODY THAT DOESN'T SUPPORT BAILING ME OUT IS TERRIBLE, SICK PERSON!
Maybe she's mostly a buyers agent?
Also, does anyone know the date (approx) that Ardell finally saw the light? She's so reasonable now I'm trying to figure out when it flipped from, "I don't give a RA about banks."
Probably about the time she went underwater on her house... breeds a certain clarity
but to be fair to her she has never exhibited same class of myopia as the SREP crew.
I rarely check in on that blog (only when linked from here), but when did it become so vitriolic? Just looking through, it seems like there are only three remaining personalities: whiny broke-with-no-transactions agent, pissy refuses-to-elaborate-on-why-he's-so-smart-despite-being-so-wrong agent, and half-crazed non-sequitur-won't-give-a-straight-answer agent.
They use to be laughably myopic over there, but now they are just pathetic.
The thing that drives me crazy is that our nation went from having a relatively sound economy built on manufacturing and innovation to having a sham economy built on consumer spending, real estate appreciation, and leveraged financial trickery.
Then, when the sham falls apart as it was destined to do, the reaction is not "oh dang, that was stupid... we should never have thought this was a good way to operate an economy." Instead, the response is "oh crap, somebody bail out housing and prop back up the house of cards!!!"
Thanks Tim! I maybe check out their site once or twice a month these days, I just can't stand the back-slapping party they are usually having with each other.
And I know, some people just don't get it and never will. But I'll still give it a try, once . . . and then I'm done!
I just don't get it though. Her arguments make no sense. Let's take a simple example. Is a person going to typically have more disposable income if they buy a house or if they rent? Right now, it's pretty clear that the answer is 'B'. Renters will have more disposable income to spend on cars, flat-screen TVs, vacations, and the like--that's a lot of consumer spending right there that has absolutely nothing to do with the housing market.
Now a homeowner will certainly spend more on upkeep of their property and structure, which will shift their spending towards home-improvement stores, but will reduce their discretionary spending overall. The only way that housing ties into buying a car, in general, is if they use their house as a piggy bank to buy that new (or really-cheap-right-now used) Hummer! That's not anything that is sustainable, because once you extract 100% or 125% of your equity, the party is over. We can NEVER build a sustainable long-term economy on that!
Is a person going to typically have more disposable income if they buy a house or if they rent? Right now, it's pretty clear that the answer is 'B'.
It's only clear if you have half a brain. I know a family. Tried to sell their condo last summer so they could buy a house but couldn't get the price they needed to cover commissions and fees. Now they're going to put it up for sale and again and hope to get $10k more than they were offered last time. The wife admitted that it was cheaper to rent right now and they might rent after they sell the place (they won't), but then later said that the tax deduction is so huge that their housing cost is basically the same as renting.
I think that on some base level they understand that renting is much cheaper, but at the same time they don't want to have to admit that they have been foolishly overpaying for their condo for the last 4 years only to just break even on the selling price (which they definitely won't).
Just watch. If the housing industry isn't stablized, job losses will mount. Renters spend lots of money, but they really don't generate very many jobs, and that is the crux of the difference.
and
Without new homes or office space or manufacturing space being built - who will need to buy new hammers, nails, siding or roofing material? Who will need to buy new ovens, dishwashers, refrigerators or sofas? Who will need to buy new copper plumbing, or a new furnace or new electrical wiring? Who will need to hire a new accountant or accounting software if they've laid off all their employees?
Yup. Jobs + housing industry = something of major value to all of us.
She's holding on to this "backbone of society" thing and won't let go.
Anyway, it seems the Seattle-PI RE blog is going to go out with a bang here in the last couple weeks. Tensions are high and the busy "professionals" who "thrive" in a "fun" down market seem to have plenty of time to banter back and forth with lowly renters.
Just watch. If the housing industry isn't stablized, job losses will mount. Renters spend lots of money, but they really don't generate very many jobs, and that is the crux of the difference.
Well, she kind of sort of has a point. Renters certainly do generate fewer jobs (at least over the last 5 years) on average than buyers. Of course, HELOC also created auto, TV, and coffee jobs. That genii is out of the bottle, and I expect that for the next few years cash rich renters will drive the economy more than house poor owners.
Renters spend lots of money, but they really don't generate very many jobs,
Actually, if you want to generate a lot of jobs locally, eat out a lot at fancy restaurants - restaurants are extremely labor intensive, and probably buy more local goods and services than just about any other industry. Burdening yourself with an expensive mortgage so that much of your income goes to far away banks and Wall Street does much less for the local economy.
Unfortunately, RE agents don't get to collect 6% of the cost of your restaurant meals...
Those people over there are the most ill-tempered, misguided fruitcakes anywhere. Sorry they were so successful with their "career" during the bubble, but get over it and move on. I really can't believe I continue to waste my time reading that blog, but it's such a slow-motion train wreck I can't stop!
And I'm so sorry that Mack won't be around anymore to "educate"...
NOT!
It's hard to believe that he still thinks he going to win the interweb by shouting down anyone who doesn't agree with him. Shouts go out to Amused, Per Se and the rest who still converse rationally with that nutjob.
Comments
01.18.09 - Do You Have Septic or Sewer?
01.14.09 - Proposed Amendment to the Distressed Property Law!
01.13.09 - Short Sales and Excise Tax
01.09.09 - A look back to 2008 With a Resolution for 2009: "Just Say No"
01.08.09 - Happy Birthday Elvis
01.07.09 - Hot Off The Presses! Revised Home Valuation Code of Conduct
01.07.09 - What is the impact on your future ablity [sic] to purchase and/or refinance?
01.06.09 - $1.75 is a Bargain!
8 posts in 18 days, maybe one of them interesting. The P-I may not be officially out of business yet, but it looks like SREP is effectively dead already.
Another real estate agent suggested I blog for business. That's what it's called. So I read blogs from the west coast for a while before posting a comment on Rain City Guide. Ardell tore me up one side and down the other worse than anything I've gotten here. OK fine, I kept reading.
It was on the Real Estate Professional site that some one made a comment that was attacked by what was termed "the flying monkeys." It turned out to be people from the http://www.seattlebubble.com site in Seattle Washington.
It was horrifying.
Then the same thing happened over on the Rain City Guide. Ardell posted something completely off the wall that sounded like Real Estate stuff, but had nothing to do with anything.
The "flying monkeys" allowed me to interject some comments into the Rain City Guide until it got to be way too much. There is very bad information there that solely attempts to promote mortgages and discount brokerages, attorneys being a big part of that.
In reading other Real Estate sites I find the same feel good posts to make the site more "sticky." Pretty pictures, cute stories, and a good dose of in depth analysis goes a long way with consumers.
Real Estate is not rocket science. The threshold is low because it is a hard job. It is NOT a commissioned sales position. It hard, dirty, disgusting work. It is fixing rot, dealing with renters, and being smart enough to buy and sell well. It is a business of brutal negotiations.
People in the Real Estate business are in it for life. Real Estate is an addiction. It's the juice. You buy it, sell it, see it for the dirt it is, and the possibilities it can be. You make numbers in your head and know to the penney the price of a water heater.
In the world of Real Estate sites this site fits Real Estate the best. It's the home of the "flying monkeys." It's brutal.
1. The Boeing Factor:
Layoffs. Some orders put on hold or cancelled.
2. The Microsoft Factor:
First layoffs in the history of the company. Vendors and contractors not having their contracts renewed. Expansion plans put on hold.
3. The Google, Expedia factors:
Expedia stock price way down and rumored to be going private. Google going through layoffs and shedding contractors en masse. Significantly scaled back expansion plans in Kirkland.
4. New commercial development in Bellevue factor:
Commercial development in Bellevue has slowed considerably with many projects on hold.
5. Luxury players moving to the Eastside factor:
Retailers are getting hit, but high-end retailers are being destroyed. Neiman-Marcus specifically just went through a bunch of layoffs.
6. The local mortgage factor:
Forclosures increasing at an incredible clip. Meanwhile closed sales are down in the gutter.
That's a whole lotta FAIL, but about par for the course for a Realtor®.
This week after meeting some of the people who frequent here I've been thinking that there is very bad information about Real Estate filtered through the internet. One comment made to Mack in the original Real Estate Professionals post was very on target, he has only been in Real Estate during the good times. A very large majority of agents have been in the business less than ten years.
Real Estate changed in that time dramatically.
A Real Estate professional lives by the numbers. A property is worth what it will rent for. There is a return on investment. Dollars go in to make a profit. Investment in Real Estate can off set regular income by tax advatage. By tax advatage I mean deducting mortgage payments as business expenses.
Real Estate is a business. Real Estate is a multi trillion dollar business. I would venture it is the biggest business in the world, because I think every inch of the world is owned by somebody.
By now some of you must have figured that I'm a lousy real estate agent. I have opinions and express them freely. Yes, the price of Real Estate was unsustainable in 2006 and I told everybody to sell. By 2007 it was beyond comprehension. People held out, wanted more money, but I sold, and investors sold. Lot's of investors unloaded in 2005,2006,2007.
The amazing part is that Real Estate Professionals didn't hammer at the basics of Real Estate. There were good purchases in all of those years.
We forget that at the time if a property was on the market more than a month it was a "dog" listing. It was over looked by agents who were making comments about not looking at anything over a week old, or was it a day on the market. Two investor I know got very good deals by making low, low, low offers that were accepted. One guy was offer 50% of asking price. Today he doesn't seem so stupid because some people needed to sell for a variety of reasons.
Real Estate is a business, not a sales job. You're either addicted to the business or not. I can tell you what most Real estate addicts will tell you that Real Estate is a great business except you have to deal with real estate agents.
Yes you need an agent and the agent should be working in your best interest. I am a pit bull. When you hire me I work for you. I take my job very seriously. My analysis is complete. i refuse to write bad deals for my clients, Writing bad deals is what radfun is for.
When I market a home it is a serious business of getting it to look like a bargain. I only list properties i personally believe in. it has to have value. If you have trouble seeing the value I can explain it to you in depth. It's more than statistics or data. In many cases it's an intangible.
A buyer or seller, for the money paid in commisions should get value from an agent. A commision is really pretty cheap for what a good agent can probvide you in negotiating skills. There are many good agents. You would need to look for them and get them to agree to work with you. Most good agents are interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them.
I'm sorry things got so far out of whack. They never should have by all that is the basics of Real Estate. There are rules that got broken, but it was a time of mass hysteria.
Perhaps, Macky Mack can bust out with another rap...about bubble headz.
Anybody looked at the housing market in Flint or Detroit MI lately? In some cases, they can't even GIVE houses away! Now should the government go in and try to 'stabilize' the RE market in that area? Surely they should qualify or at least be near the top of the list! But to what end? Should the gov't decide that a 3/1 house should cost on average around $100K and then try to make that happen across the nation? Wouldn't that be fair?
Stabilizing the housing market (even if it were possible) wouldn't really do much to stem job losses at Microsoft, Boeing, the automakers, and at many other places. Might save a Starbucks or two!
OK, I'm done, going to call in my claim for last week's unemployment now . . .
The thing that drives me crazy is that our nation went from having a relatively sound economy built on manufacturing and innovation to having a sham economy built on consumer spending, real estate appreciation, and leveraged financial trickery.
Then, when the sham falls apart as it was destined to do, the reaction is not "oh dang, that was stupid... we should never have thought this was a good way to operate an economy." Instead, the response is "oh crap, somebody bail out housing and prop back up the house of cards!!!"
Japan's manufacturing based economy is not doing so well:
(from http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/02/ ... abyss.html)
I agree, that was an excellent post JP.
I really like that Mack takes the time to reply to the one poster, only to say it's not worth his time. That guy is a piece of work and almost makes that PI blog worth reading for the entertainment quotient.
Maybe she's mostly a buyers agent?
Also, does anyone know the date (approx) that Ardell finally saw the light? She's so reasonable now I'm trying to figure out when it flipped from, "I don't give a RA about banks."
From Fri Oct 19, 2007 10:33 am
Now that the hangover has set in, we are supposed to provide yet more enormous subsidies to housing so that these RE "Professionals" can continue to party like it's 2005.
Yep, the bubble was "normal and stable"...
Probably about the time she went underwater on her house... breeds a certain clarity
but to be fair to her she has never exhibited same class of myopia as the SREP crew.
They use to be laughably myopic over there, but now they are just pathetic.
And I know, some people just don't get it and never will. But I'll still give it a try, once . . . and then I'm done!
I just don't get it though. Her arguments make no sense. Let's take a simple example. Is a person going to typically have more disposable income if they buy a house or if they rent? Right now, it's pretty clear that the answer is 'B'. Renters will have more disposable income to spend on cars, flat-screen TVs, vacations, and the like--that's a lot of consumer spending right there that has absolutely nothing to do with the housing market.
Now a homeowner will certainly spend more on upkeep of their property and structure, which will shift their spending towards home-improvement stores, but will reduce their discretionary spending overall. The only way that housing ties into buying a car, in general, is if they use their house as a piggy bank to buy that new (or really-cheap-right-now used) Hummer! That's not anything that is sustainable, because once you extract 100% or 125% of your equity, the party is over. We can NEVER build a sustainable long-term economy on that!
I think that on some base level they understand that renting is much cheaper, but at the same time they don't want to have to admit that they have been foolishly overpaying for their condo for the last 4 years only to just break even on the selling price (which they definitely won't).
Leanne:
and
from: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/real ... e=2#252367
Anyway, it seems the Seattle-PI RE blog is going to go out with a bang here in the last couple weeks. Tensions are high and the busy "professionals" who "thrive" in a "fun" down market seem to have plenty of time to banter back and forth with lowly renters.
Well, she kind of sort of has a point. Renters certainly do generate fewer jobs (at least over the last 5 years) on average than buyers. Of course, HELOC also created auto, TV, and coffee jobs. That genii is out of the bottle, and I expect that for the next few years cash rich renters will drive the economy more than house poor owners.
Just a guess though.
Actually, if you want to generate a lot of jobs locally, eat out a lot at fancy restaurants - restaurants are extremely labor intensive, and probably buy more local goods and services than just about any other industry. Burdening yourself with an expensive mortgage so that much of your income goes to far away banks and Wall Street does much less for the local economy.
Unfortunately, RE agents don't get to collect 6% of the cost of your restaurant meals...
They could get jobs as waiters and get 10-20% of my restaurant meals.
Uh-oh. More drama?
That requires actual work, though.
Eat now or be priced out of this restaurant ... forever!
And I'm so sorry that Mack won't be around anymore to "educate"...
NOT!
It's hard to believe that he still thinks he going to win the interweb by shouting down anyone who doesn't agree with him. Shouts go out to Amused, Per Se and the rest who still converse rationally with that nutjob.