Hello, Apexians, and welcome to Tuesday.
Although I didn’t mention it yesterday, Kim and I made an offer on a house over the weekend. We found a nice home listed for $649,000 and decided we loved it enough to throw our hat in the ring. After hours of crunching numbers in spreadsheets, we offered $777,777 (not joking) with no repairs required and a $50,000 appraisal gap waiver.
Crazy, right? Yes, it is.
But the even crazier thing is that there are likely ten or twenty other offers on the place — and most of those are probably for more than we’re willing to pay. I’d be shocked if our offer is even in the top five.
The housing market is batshit crazy right now. And because I’m still deep in this process, my first two stories are about various aspects of that craziness.
“My experience selling my house FSBO — for sale by owner.” [/r/RealEstate on Reddit] — “One risk I didn’t realize is Real Estate agents hate FSBO. Hate it. Some will not show your property to their client (they told me this). Others will try and trick you into making a mistake so they can get you delisted and you will have to go with an agent. Be leery of agents asking for anything special.”
We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship. [Granola Shotgun] — “Thirty years from now all the new homes she’s selling will slip into the ‘old’ category and will gradually fester as taxes rise and the middle class migrates to new greenfield developments. These older places (the homes being built today) will then be populated by lower class people with fewer resources and less status thereby reinforcing the perception that it’s best to move on if at all possible. These are fungible, forgettable, disposable places that rapidly age and are then left to quietly decay.”
“I’ve saved too much. What should I splurge on? [Bogleheads forum] — “I am 72 and have saved far more than our needs. I thank the powers-that-be for my good fortune. I need less than 1% of my investments annually to maintain our lifestyle, and most of that 1% is spent in give-aways to grown-up kids (and grandkids) and charity…After decades of being sensible, what are your splurges in your 70s and 80s?”
Why one man has gone two decades without money. [Capital Daily] — “Motivated by reasons more pure than stress relief, Johnston ditched money almost two decades ago, and he says there’s no going back. His last purchases—beer, cigarettes, pot—occurred 18 years ago, he says, on his 31st birthday. He claims he hasn’t spent any money since. It’s true, his friends have told me. No money at all.”
While the above story is interesting, it’s important to point out that the subject in question has gone without money the same way Henry David Thoreau lived a life of simplicity by Walden Pond: by relying on the money of others. Neither person truly gave up cash. They just let others use cash for them.
Okay, that’s it for Tuesday. Come back tomorrow. Maybe I won’t have any stories about real estate? (But honestly? I probably will.)