[HN Gopher] Terrible real estate agent photographs
___________________________________________________________________
Terrible real estate agent photographs
Author : thunderbong
Score : 677 points
Date : 2023-06-30 11:44 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (terriblerealestateagentphotos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (terriblerealestateagentphotos.com)
| globenetinfo wrote:
| [dead]
| tomlin wrote:
| This is a reddit, not HN.
| dehrmann wrote:
| The refugees have to go somewhere.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Generally, the use of wide angle lens is a big nuisance in real
| estate photos. Everything looks 2x bigger than it really is. I
| understand they want to show more of the house, but take a few
| normal 35-50mm lens pics please.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Man these aren't even half bad, compared to many of the local
| facebook market listings I see almost daily.
| interfixus wrote:
| > _The actual toilet in which Friedrich Nietzsche realised God is
| dead_
|
| The actual caption which made me wonder if he was wrong.
| mike_hock wrote:
| It's one of those websites that have a shelf life of five
| minutes.
|
| It's _hilarious!_ I can 't believe those are _real_ pictures
| taken by _real_ realtors! It wears off pretty quickly.
|
| And as is typical for these websites, eventually they get under
| pressure to keep producing new content even when they don't have
| any actual bad realtor pics on hand, so they start reaching.
|
| What do you expect them to do if the property is still inhabited
| by the current tenant/owner? The doors both say "Diana," so what?
| mtmail wrote:
| Friends run https://mappery.org/ which is just photos of "maps
| in the wild". All user contributed. They have a backlog of
| several months of photos. Once you have enough followers you
| get a lot of submissions.
|
| https://plaintextoffenders.com/ stopped after 10 years and 5880
| posts which is more than one post per day, all user
| submissions.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > eventually they get under pressure to keep producing new
| content even when they don't have any actual bad realtor pics
| on hand
|
| Ever looked at a property website? There's an infinite supply.
|
| Myself, I prefer bad estate agent written copy; much of it is
| comically awful.
| mhb wrote:
| Relax. Just have a chuckle. No one's asking you to invest in
| their IPO.
| glonq wrote:
| Certainly not until I see a business plan that includes NFT
| and LLM. /s
| walthamstow wrote:
| So many of these pics are in Britain and for good reason too, we
| have some of the dodgiest and shoddiest housing stock in the
| developed world.
| LandR wrote:
| The one with the all the white / biege colour books, I'd actually
| love to have all my books on my bookshelves with the same colour.
| I like all my books, but I think it's quite ugly with how
| different all the colours are.
|
| Obviously I'd still want to have the name of the book on the
| spine though. Or to be able to have it colour coded by genre or
| something, just something more aesthetically pleasing really.
| generalizations wrote:
| Just make dustcovers for them. Print the names on the spines.
| Would take a minute to do, but totally doable.
|
| (Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/993/)
| lreeves wrote:
| I can't tell for certain but I'm pretty sure that's a book-
| shelf wallpaper pattern.
| dmbche wrote:
| Take half if a sunday organising it however you like - it's
| worth it!
| xyst wrote:
| i wouldn't be surprised if most of the photos are from FSBO (for
| sale by owner) listings
| rightbyte wrote:
| Many of those photos are not really funny, but sad. The author of
| the site does not care if he kicks downwards. Bad taste memes
| without the innocence of being a teenager ...
| aktuel wrote:
| This is entertaining, however in most cases it's not the photos
| that are terrible.
| tgv wrote:
| It's more the captions than the photos. E.g., the one that says
| "this is where the magic fails to happen", under a drab bedroom
| with a double bed, is a fairly accurate picture of the current
| state of that room. It also has a pillow on the bed that says
| "the best grandma in the world". Not exactly the most exciting
| thing, making the caption a bit cringy. Unless grandma is a
| failed witch.
| astura wrote:
| Did you miss the "art" on the walls?
| [deleted]
| dwater wrote:
| https://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/post/7091754064184.
| ..
|
| There's also erotic wall art, which in my mind an agent that
| gave a shit would have removed for the listing.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| The title is ambiguous; you could read it as "photos taken by
| terrible real estate agents".
| tokai wrote:
| The byline is "Inexplicably bad property photographs". So its
| clearly the photographs that are supposed to be bad. But
| almost all of the photographs are objectively not bad. They
| are exposed and framed correctly. Showing some (mostly bad)
| real estate.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I took it to mean "these are bad photographs because they
| fulfil their purpose (selling houses) badly". That covers
| poor photographs AND poor properties. I'd argue the agents
| are also poor (in the not-good-at-the-job sense)
| themselves, as a result. A photograph can be technically
| perfect and still bad.
| thih9 wrote:
| This seems more of a "terrible real estates" than "terrible real
| estate agent photographs".
|
| Sure, sometimes it's the latter and sometimes it's both, but in
| most cases a photo just shows the property and its flaws. And in
| this context I'd say that's a good photograph.
| obblekk wrote:
| "As the sun set on a sleepy evening, all across town the washing
| machines waited to make their move."
|
| Loved this site. Gave me a really nostalgic feeling of the web
| from 2010 era. Early social media.
| al_be_back wrote:
| That's how all photos should be - original, no editing, no
| staging; If I want excitment, I can Prompt a Generative-AI
| platform to create mind-bendingly-creative imagery.
|
| I've wasted so many days viewing flats/apartments because the
| Photos looked amazing, and the actual property was utterly awful.
|
| issues: - narrow/steep Staircases - very old photos (now the
| place a dump) - fish-eye lenses (or similar) enlarging the space
| - etc etc et bloody cetera :(
|
| nice post
| asdff wrote:
| Photos are basically showing you if the property is worth
| inspecting by hand. I've seen it go the other way too, terrible
| photos and a fine place.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > 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.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| 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).
| alok99 wrote:
| I think the fake white bookshelf wallpaper has a certain
| aesthetic about it. I would like it in an AirBnB type of
| place, but definitely not in my own house.
|
| I would also want it to actually fit on the wall and not be
| awkwardly cut off on the right edge.
| al_be_back wrote:
| well, either the 2nd photo is fake bookshelves (stock
| image, white-label), or it's a painting/decorating job gone
| horribly wrong lol
| blowski wrote:
| https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1381671922/3d-books-on-
| shelv...
|
| I'd guess it's this. I think you can colour it yourself
| after you hang it.
| oefrha wrote:
| No editing you say? I raise you the funniest listing on the
| site:
| https://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/post/6876067332328...
| afterburner wrote:
| This looks like a sofa took a selfie
| Zak wrote:
| > _fish-eye lenses (or similar) enlarging the space_
|
| What focal length would you like the photos to be taken at?
| timcobb wrote:
| 28mm full frame
| Zak wrote:
| Because most smartphones are similar to that and most
| people will think of it as the standard camera field of
| view, or some other reason?
| timcobb wrote:
| To be honest I was just joking/thought for a second and
| decided that 28mm probably sounds right: 16mm would be
| useful (would show a lot) but also deceptive (too wide),
| and anything more than 28mm like 35mm or 50mm would be
| too narrow for capturing a space.
| swarnie wrote:
| Half of these just look like really terrible British homes people
| have died in.
|
| IE bought 40 years ago, never changed, the children just want a
| quick cash out now.
|
| I've viewed a dozen that would make it on to this blog this year
| alone.
| hereonout2 wrote:
| Depressingly, am looking at these thinking yeah these are
| pretty much par for the course in the UK. They must look
| laughable from a US perspective, but quite standard for a UK
| buyer without a boat load of equity built up.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Fun website. Please make it less aggressive on the lazy loading.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I've heard that AirBnB used to send out their own photographers.
| _" Do things that don't scale"_ I guess.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is amusing but more suitable for Twitter than HN.
| [deleted]
| furyofantares wrote:
| Real estate photos have some bad incentives.
|
| It's a lot of work to visit a house you might want to buy, but
| there's about 0 percent chance you buy one without doing so. So
| the agent must optimize to get you there, essentially by lying
| with photographs.
|
| This sets wrong expectations, and it's always disappointing to
| visit because it's never what the photos told you.
|
| You get used to it as a buyer, but setting you up with wrong
| expectations isn't really what the buyer or seller wants.
|
| Some of these aren't really bad photos, they're just a hard thing
| to sell. And some others are bad only because they're too honest.
|
| Many are just bad of course. But the fire one is brilliant.
| readenough wrote:
| We made the offer on our current house without seeing it and I
| know several others in the same situation.
| hyperific wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of fuckyournoguchicoffeetable.tumblr.com
| Borrible wrote:
| Why does Sartre's "No Exit" haunted by "Hotel California" as
| Muzak come to mind when looking at these images?
|
| Living Hell Rooms
| rootusrootus wrote:
| These are just funny. Truly terrible real estate agent photos are
| the ones that distort the image so much to make the room look
| bigger that it has no real bearing on reality.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| When I moved to Seattle back in 2011 and was looking for a place
| to rent, I noticed that almost all the photos across multiple
| listings looked like they were paintings or architectural
| renderings or something. I could not figure out what was off
| about them.
|
| A friend pointed out that the lighting was off because every
| single one was photoshopped with one of a few pictures of a sunny
| blue sky with just a few clouds in the background, despite likely
| having been taken on a grey, fully cloudy day.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| FWIW: NWMLS will fine agents if the photos have been "too"
| doctored... adding some blue sky is generally considered ok,
| but anything that hides a material defect or camouflages the
| actual attributes of the house is a no no.
| asdff wrote:
| Does photoshopping furniture all over the flooring and walls
| count? I've seen plenty of that, seems standard actually
| since now you don't need to pay for staging.
| mikeg8 wrote:
| Digital staging always looks a little off though. Also,
| open houses. If planning on an open house, which can be
| very beneficial, paying for staging may be worth it. Was
| for me at least.
| brookst wrote:
| I mean I would pay a huge premium for a sunny house in Seattle.
| _ah wrote:
| This is the famous "Czech Sky".
| https://seattlebubble.com/blog/2010/09/30/real-actual-listin...
| mike50 wrote:
| A cash grab rip off of McManshion hell? Anyone citing the New
| York Post on their website better be trolling or a parody.
| craigching wrote:
| Reminds me of https://www.cakewrecks.com :)
| jahsome wrote:
| An acquaintance of mine is an FBI investigator and moonlights as
| a higher-grade Realtor.
|
| He would use the same memory card and high end camera both during
| "stakeouts" for surveillance photos as well as listing photos for
| the homes he was selling.
|
| One day he uploaded the entire contents of the memory card to the
| MLS on one of his public listings, surveillance photos and all.
| I'm pretty sure everything was up for a few days before being
| cleaned up.
|
| It's been years but I still haven't made up my mind on whether
| that makes him a worse agent of law enforcement or real estate.
| passwordoops wrote:
| I err to the side of incompetence, but want to believe it was a
| deep cover op to penetrate an enemy org by making them think he
| was compromised and had to act as a double agent, immediately
| rendering him a triple agent on behalf of the FBI...
|
| Maybe I can moonlight as a writer in Hollywood
| jahsome wrote:
| The entire scenario is pretty unbelievable, and played out
| like an awful Adam Sandler movie. If I hadn't witnessed it
| with my own eyes, I would have trouble believing someone with
| dueling top credentials such as his could possibly be such an
| idiot.
| smugma wrote:
| Realtor top credentials? That made me LOL.
| epcoa wrote:
| Yeah, I know right? And the higher end you go has nothing
| to do with any competence - your clientele becomes more
| and more like the fucktards that bought into SBF.
| jahsome wrote:
| I mean to say that among Realtors he was pretty elite,
| whatever that means. Put another way, he dealt in million
| dollar listings, not just average family homes.
| grimjack00 wrote:
| Depending on the location, soon enough million dollar
| listings will be average family homes.
| jsight wrote:
| If you were getting any significant number of million $
| homes, why would he keep the day job? Real estate
| transaction fees are pretty high.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| They might like the work.
| pksebben wrote:
| It's possible that his connections and encounters from
| his work as an agent formed the foundation of his 'book'
| - and being a real estate agent is like 99% about
| building that book and 1% about doing things the rest of
| us might refer to as "work". Many if not most of the
| successful agents I know are moonlighters for this very
| reason.
|
| Not ragging on real estate agents, it's not an easy thing
| to pull off; convincing someone to hand you 3-6% of the
| biggest financial transaction they've ever made just for
| you to negotiate for what's probably a grand total of a
| few hours and do some online shopping. And they do
| provide value insofar as knowing the landscape can really
| help a client avoid getting bent over a barrel.
|
| Source: did it myself (poorly, which is why I'm in tech).
| hiatus wrote:
| Government pension, avoiding traffic tickets among other
| benefits, I'm sure.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Makes sense. Triples makes it safe. Triples are best.
|
| Clip: https://youtu.be/8Inf1Yz_fgk
| reaperducer wrote:
| _He would use the same memory card and high end camera both
| during "stakeouts" for surveillance photos as well as listing
| photos for the homes he was selling._
|
| This really surprises me.
|
| I would have assumed that an FBI memory card used for taking
| surveillance photos would have all kinds of security and
| encryption on it for chain-of-custody purposes. Otherwise, the
| photos won't stand up in court.
|
| The healthcare company I work for has cameras it uses for
| photos, and for HIPAA reasons those cards are encrypted and
| secured. They won't even mount on an unauthorized computer.
| wpietri wrote:
| Why would you say it wouldn't stand up in court? As long as
| the agent shows up to say, "Yes, I took these photos of real
| things that happened," that strikes me as the heart of the
| evidence.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Because companies like Canon sell multi-thousand dollar
| cameras and attachments to police agencies that are
| designed to make sure photographs can't be tampered with so
| that they're admissible in court. There can't be the
| possibility that a rogue cop altered a photograph, or the
| case can get thrown out.
|
| It's why the cameras police departments use cost 5x more
| than the consumer versions.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| He surely should have lost his job or worse.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I would have expected his job have guardrails in place to
| prevent this sort of mishap, like a full audit log and chain
| of custody of all evidence gathered during these
| investigations, as well as SOPs on the handling and storage
| of such evidence.
| jahsome wrote:
| Physical evidence is perhaps handled with a greater regard,
| but from what I understand, background info gathered during
| surveillance isn't always intended for use in court and
| often really only serves to further the investigation
| itself. Usually a stakeout is gathering enough probable
| cause to effectively justify requesting search warrants,
| which is when the "real" investigation kicks off.
|
| My shared connection to the Realtor dope I wrote about
| originally is someone I'm quite close to, and through them
| I've learned some pretty alarming realities of law
| enforcement.
|
| It seems like the higher up the chain you look, the more
| indifference or incompetence you find.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| > It seems like the higher up the chain you look, the
| more indifference or incompetence you find.
|
| Well, let's say, you have a really competent
| investigator. Is _that_ the person you want to be
| promoted into a position where they are not doing any
| investigating anymore? In that light it 's good to have
| the incompetent higher up so that the people doing the
| real work are those that are competent. :)
| koheripbal wrote:
| Nope. Usually all the court needs is his attestation that
| he always had sole custody of the evidence
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >An acquaintance I know is an FBI investigator and moonlights
| as a higher-grade Realtor.
|
| I really, really, really tried my best, but the only
| appropriate i could think of was "Fucking hell!".
|
| Are you sure they're not a realtor masquerading as a....well,
| at this point, who gives a shit?
| jahsome wrote:
| It's always stuck with me he was basically at the top of both
| fields, yet somehow simultaneously and spectacularly
| incompetent in both roles.
| ruph123 wrote:
| This reminds me of the "Worst of Chefkoch" blog [0].
|
| Chefkoch is a German website where users share recipes. Some of
| them show off their unholy contraptions in gross photos which is
| then collected by the mentioned blog.
|
| [0]: https://www.tumblr.com/worstofchefkoch
| SeanLuke wrote:
| We just had pictures taken of our house to prepare for renting
| it. I live in fear of being put on this website.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| meh. i mean, there are bad photographs, and then there's bad home
| decor (or at least, non-conventional ones). this site doesn't
| really differentiate the two. not interested in laughing at
| people for having unconventional taste, or for being poor, having
| mental illness, or whatever. call me humorless if you want.
| pnut wrote:
| Image site that prevents me from pinch zooming on images.
| quaddo wrote:
| [dead]
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| We only have about two years left to explain this masterpiece:
| https://tmblr.co/ZATxmv1uEj_En
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Over 9000 puzzle material right there.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Surprisingly frequently, photos of NYC listings are taken at
| strange angles and are so blurry or small so as to be useless. I
| thought this site was going to talk about these sorts of
| listings.
|
| I really don't understand 1) how people take such
| bad/blurry/small photos or 2) why they choose to use them in
| listings.
| bluedino wrote:
| Wide angle HDR photos of listings should be outlawed.
| mtmail wrote:
| Interview with the author https://www.digitalesbild.gwi.uni-
| muenchen.de/inexplicably-b...
|
| "KP: Is it important for you that the photos actually originate
| from real estate marketplaces? If so, how do you verify their
| origin?
|
| AD: Yes, that's actually really important, otherwise the blog is
| just unverifiable user-generated content. If an image is
| submitted without a link, or no agent's logo on the image, or I
| can't find the source online, I tend not to use it. I'm sent lots
| of images taken by agents of something funny or shocking they've
| seen in a property that day, but if the image hasn't been taken
| for the purposes of marketing the house, I don't use it."
| junon wrote:
| This is incredible given some of the listings. The fact one of
| the pictures is the house on literal fire, coupled with this
| context, goes to show that some people really don't belong
| anywhere in marketing or sales.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > The fact one of the pictures is the house on literal fire,
| coupled with this context, goes to show that some people
| really don't belong anywhere in marketing or sales.
|
| Namely, honest people who aren't total shitbags always trying
| to put one over on their fellow human beings for profit.
| jhony1104 wrote:
| A youtube video from the buyer:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbbwv-ZbXDk
| pksebben wrote:
| Man, that's actually pretty fascinating - to watch that
| then the 10th video in the series (from a month ago) where
| the roof is getting shingled. I'm usually turned off by the
| "broadcast yourself" lifestyle but I'll admit this one is
| pretty cool.
|
| HGTV, eat your heart out.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Pt 10 link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebagb6zxZuU
|
| If you're in the business of making content and
| advertising yourself... I could see how buying a burnt
| mansion would be compelling.
|
| At the end of the day, my perspective is that builders
| like decreasing risk.
|
| Anything saved after a fire is a risk. What's still
| structurally sound? If so, what are its new limits?
|
| Custom = time and money. And everything in a post-
| catastrophic damage rebuild is custom.
|
| Sure you can do it, but it might be cheaper (from a total
| cost perspective) to demolish and rebuild from scratch.
| xyst wrote:
| I don't know what compels people to live in these
| McMansions. Perceived status? Second vacation home? Fuck
| you money?
|
| American lifestyle is so wasteful. It's disgusting. Climate
| change is impacting everyone and these rich assholes
| continue to waste resources on shit like this.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| You don't know what a McMansion is. This place is an
| actual mansion.
| gus_massa wrote:
| You shouldn't have asked ... https://mcmansionhell.com/
| slim wrote:
| The guy will pump the mansion and sell it for $5M in 3
| years
| [deleted]
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Maybe they just like them? There's no accounting for
| taste.
| djbusby wrote:
| There is no near-term direct consequences for their
| choices. The feedback loop is too long. Not sure how to
| solve for that.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| I agree that it's wasteful but let's leave "climate
| change" out of it and call it what it really is:
| ecological load.
| brandall10 wrote:
| RE: the fire, problem properties are actually a hot market...
| flippers love those. In reality that's a fantastic photo for
| marketing purposes.
| stef25 wrote:
| Isn't the damage from the fire trucks' water worse than the
| fire damage ? It's like the whole house going through a
| very long car wash. Wood, electricity must be wrecked.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That much damage means it's getting gutted to the
| structure to be repaired anyway. And wood is pretty much
| impervious to water, especially a one-time thing like a
| drenching from a fire truck. We build houses in pouring
| rain all the time, it's not a big deal. Sometimes it adds
| a week or so to the build time, but frequently it has no
| effect at all.
| jandrese wrote:
| If you were planning to gut the place to flip it anyway
| this is not a problem.
| lelandfe wrote:
| "Motivated seller"
| Fatnino wrote:
| Firesale
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| It's a great excuse and the price is usually right to
| rebuild to your taste. Almost all new construction happens
| in areas that are newly developed. It's cheaper to rebuild
| these houses than to tear down one that's sold for a price
| that includes the structure.
| fallinghawks wrote:
| Hot market indeed
| intrasight wrote:
| Not exactly the same but close. There was a listing a couple
| blocks away from my current house. Nice brick colonial.
| Listing said "completely renovated". The exterior had been
| painted. In zillow, you can click a "see it in Street View
| which I did. The image was of a house gutted by a fire. I
| remember thinking "how could the listing agent not notice
| that?" and then "Perhaps there's nothing they can do in
| Zillow to turn off that feature". Well, the following week
| the Street View images had been updated. Which resulted in me
| wondering if there's a special Google hotline to request a
| driveby.
| soperj wrote:
| https://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/post/7073623358404.
| ..
|
| For anyone else who wanted to see that one specifically.
| afavour wrote:
| When I see something like that I just assume the realtor
| knows they've been handed a dud listing and is expending as
| little effort on it as they possibly can.
| raincole wrote:
| > goes to show that some people really don't belong anywhere
| in marketing or sales.
|
| Yes, for example, people who think it's a bad idea to show a
| picture of that house on fire.
|
| You can't hide the fact it's burned before. It would be
| illegal. Making it clear so the potential clients think it's
| cheap is your best chance.
| dreen wrote:
| 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.
| hinkley wrote:
| Our old house had problems. When we listed it, the best
| prospect thought we were stupid not honest, so he kept
| trying to get us to lower the price when inspection turned
| something up. In retrospect maybe a picture with the
| proverbial roof on fire might have been a good idea.
|
| Here's the thing about getting a house loan: If you try to
| buy a house for too far under or over market value and
| can't explain why it's that far under market value, it sets
| off all sorts of red flags for lenders. Before we bought
| that house we passed on another because it was a unicorn in
| its neighborhood and our agent was having a terrible time
| coming up with documentation of comparable listings in a
| reasonable distance from the house. And then I discovered
| water damage and we bailed.
|
| If you buy it for 15% under market and have a bunch of
| inspections that say why, that's less of a problem.
| robocat wrote:
| In New Zealand, houses can be sold "as is" which means
| cash only. It usually means that insurance cannot be
| acquired for the house, and mortgages always require
| insurance. It means there are bargains still available in
| my city (Christchurch) because there were so many houses
| damaged by the earthquake a decade ago. There are still
| houses that are about 2/3 the price compared to similar
| insurable houses. Few people can buy the as-is properties
| because most people need a mortgage to buy a house.
| People with cash usually buy better houses. A saw an as-
| is sold the other day to a buyer from the US.
|
| Insurance policies have some queer rules that all
| insurers share - perhaps due to building code, or maybe
| due to a common reinsurer?
|
| Your floor cannot have more than 50mm (two inches) drop
| between two corners of the house, as it can't be insured.
| Unless you can show the unlevel floor existed pre-
| earthquake, in which case you can get insurance! Wierd.
| js2 wrote:
| Life imitates art:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFwS_Dqd-IU
|
| (Scene from Synecdoche, New York.)
| zirgs wrote:
| Of course it got sold. The seller was completely honest
| about the condition of the property.
| LanceH wrote:
| You're going to have to disclose the fire. May as well
| use it to get lots of people looking if you're confident
| in the rebuild.
|
| I do like imagining trying to sell it during the fire
| based on apparent damage done and the perceived
| capabilities of the fire dept. in stopping it.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| The Crassus approach?
| https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/curiosities/crassus-fire-
| briga...
| boringg wrote:
| I thought that too. First fire department - ruthless!
| meshaneian wrote:
| How did they not say "fire sale"??
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Would that not be a total writeoff, given that it's a
| timber building?
| tomcam wrote:
| Only after insurance is factored in
| https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc515
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Not sure what taxes would have to do with it?
|
| You'd have to bulldoze that flat and start from scratch.
| ejstronge wrote:
| Write-off is an accounting term that would seem not to
| have a meaning outside of taxes.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Its meaning outside of taxes is something which has
| dropped to zero value. So if you damage your car beyond
| repair, for example, that would be a "write off". It
| means it's not worth the repair costs because it's
| cheaper to buy a new one.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Right. What it doesn't mean is that the thing being
| written off is valueless, though. I've seen several
| perfectly safe and drivable cars written off because of
| cosmetic damage that would have cost more to fix than the
| car was worth. But the cars were otherwise fine.
|
| Except this part:
|
| > because it's cheaper to buy a new one.
|
| is not true. A write-off is because the repairs exceed
| the fair market value of the thing being written off. But
| the thing is used, not new. The fair market value is
| likely to be well below the cost of replacing it with
| something new.
| jorvi wrote:
| > It means it's not worth the repair costs because it's
| cheaper to buy a new one.
|
| No, it just means insurers are assholes rigging the game.
|
| A simple example: my personal MacBook broke. MacBooks are
| written off in 5 years. My insurer only wants to pay the
| surplus value (EUR200).
|
| I tell them okay, instead of the EUR200 find me a
| replacement MacBook of the same model and year with
| approximately the same config. "Sorry sir we don't do
| that."
|
| Okay, do they think I can find the same MacBook for
| EUR200? "Probably not sir.."
|
| Fuck insurers.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Property in Franklin, Tennessee is obscenely expensive, for
| no good reason.
| avalys wrote:
| Nah, whoever chose that photo knew exactly what they were
| doing - they chose a photo that will appeal to their target
| market, which is people looking to get deal on buying a house
| that they will repair and flip for a profit.
|
| The picture simultaneously shows that it is a nice, stately
| house, and also that it suffered significant damage which it
| needs to be repaired. It's the perfect choice.
|
| There is zero chance that anyone in the market for a house in
| general would choose to buy this one, so there's no point in
| choosing a pretty picture which hides the damage. You'd just
| be wasting your time and that of your potential customers.
| mcpeepants wrote:
| This was my initial impression to, but up-thread there's a
| link to an article about the buyers. Tl;dr they are
| wealthy, wanted a house in the area, and are "super stoked"
| to rebuild it and live there forever.
| brandall10 wrote:
| Well that's the other target market, those who buy it for
| the land to build a custom home.
|
| In both cases, the marketing was correct. It's sorta a
| miss for the article author to not understand that.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| IIRC that's not a flip house. That's in a wealthy,
| desirable area and what is really being sold is the land.
| It's not nearly affordable enough to make flipping a good
| business plan.
| itronitron wrote:
| That's just flipping for wealthy people.
| notahacker wrote:
| The worst ones aren't the funny ones where the homeowners
| have terrible taste, or the one on fire which was brilliant
| marketing for a home nobody was going to buy under the
| assumption it hadn't been on fire.
|
| The worst ones are the subtly bad ones that just manage to
| make perfectly adequate rooms look much dingier or more
| cramped than they actually are because they settled for the
| first cheap snap they could manage without caring at all
| about the lack of lighting and didn't even move stuff like
| clothes drying racks that fill up floor area.
|
| There's a particular flat I might actually consider buying
| that's on the market for a third less than the identical flat
| upstairs for over a year without selling. One of those
| listings has a "view" photo that shows extensive river
| estuary views on a sunny day. The other has the basically
| identical view on a day so wet and grey all you can see is
| the road and warehouse roofs.
| parkersweb wrote:
| And for that reason the horse photo is still one of my long
| standing favourites:
| https://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/post/62824754189
| stef25 wrote:
| With my parents we rented a house once in Italy. There were
| two ponies in the garden, they just walked all over the house
| whenever they wanted to. There was one in the kitchen most of
| the time. In the early-mid 80's people just accepted whatever
| (as my parents did, after driving 4000Km there and back with
| my dad chain smoking in the car and us kids in the back not
| wearing seat belts). The whole experience involved breaking
| at least half a dozen laws & regulations.
| praptak wrote:
| This must be the inspiration for Salvatore Ganacci "Horse"
| clip, the vibes are eerily similar.
| rvba wrote:
| Does the author steal the photos or asks for permission?
| themadturk wrote:
| It sounds like they accept submissions, since they rarely put
| up photos that don't have links to the actual real estate
| listing the pictures comes from.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| I like that they try to authenticate the photos as being from
| actual listings. Of course people could generate crazy photos.
| These are kind of just slightly bad, which makes it
| interesting. Also, I think the captions add a lot.
| hamedsargolzaee wrote:
| [flagged]
| taylorius wrote:
| Aren't quite a lot of these just photos of terrible or ridiculous
| properties?
| pamoroso wrote:
| There are often better photos of $0.99 eBay items than real
| estate listings worth hundreds of thousands of Dollars.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Real-estate photos have improved a lot in recent years. Too much,
| maybe. Ultra wideangle lenses make rooms seem much bigger and
| airier than they are.
|
| But I remember the days where the agent would stand at the end of
| the driveway and snap a polaroid. Invariably these were the
| "garage forward" kind of house, which from that perspective
| looked like a big garage door with a house kind of attached in
| the back, in a by-the-the-way fashion. Awful. Of course that
| vintage of house (mid 80s) kind of was that way.
| paxys wrote:
| Real estate agents can only do so much. While some of the
| photographs are truly terrible, in other cases it's the subject
| matter that is unsalvageable.
| j00pY wrote:
| I actually used to live in a flat share with the author. I don't
| know if that's a good thing or a bad thing
| candyman wrote:
| This reminds me of a site that I miss that was called Regretsy
| and I often had tears in my eyes because it was so funny. Bravo!
| janeerie wrote:
| Oh I haven't thought about Regretsy in ages! That was a good
| one.
| everdrive wrote:
| I was really hoping it was going to be photos of how silly real
| estate agents look in their profiles.
| lowercased wrote:
| That's what the domain name suggests. Every realtor photo on a
| business card I've seen always looks like they went to Glamour
| Shots at a local mall.
| d136o wrote:
| When I was looking for an apartment to rent in Palo Alto I found
| a great deal on rent because I visited a place listed on
| Craigslist that had awful photos.
|
| It turns out the owner was just an older man who wasn't good with
| tech, the place was pretty great in person and I ended up living
| there for a couple of years.
|
| Normal untouched photos are more honest. I also dislike when
| photos make it ambiguous which unit in a duplex is for sale, or
| don't make clear/hide that it's only part of a lot or something
| like that.
| artur_makly wrote:
| oh dang.. i was expecting something more along the lines of this:
| https://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/
|
| .... but for agent portraits.
| dahwolf wrote:
| I'm not in the market for a new home but still do a weekly check
| on property for sale in my town, just for the entertainment (and
| sometimes educational) value of the indoor photos.
|
| I'm still only an amateur voyeur. Pros in my country would attend
| open home day, where you can go into homes for sale without an
| appointment. You take your spouse, tour the homes, feast on the
| free cake and drinks, and never make any offer. A fun and
| affordable day out for the family, kind of like a real-world
| Pinterest.
| mxuribe wrote:
| Oh wow; the captions are devilishly hilarious!
| igetspam wrote:
| I don't always have good days and I love that there are things
| like this. Some of those quotes have me rolling.
| quaddo wrote:
| [dead]
| msluyter wrote:
| "Limes Against Humanity." ;)
| mxuribe wrote:
| Absolutely brilliant! :-D
| altacc wrote:
| Finally, somewhere to share my a list of dubious property
| listings! In Norway agents hire house stylists to make a house
| look good. Airbeds dressed up to look like somebody just got up,
| magazine pictures on the wall, etc... often to a farcical level
| in a rundown house.
|
| On a similar theme is Zillow Gone Wild
| https://twitter.com/zillowgonewild and McMansion Hell
| https://mcmansionhell.com/
| mjb wrote:
| I viscerally dislike McMansion Hell. It's so mean-spirited and
| snobbish. People build themselves homes in the suburbs for
| their families to live comfortably and safely, and some jerks
| on the internet act all superior about how they have better
| taste. It sucks.
| astura wrote:
| Most suburban homes aren't McMansions.
| ansible wrote:
| > _... or their families to live comfortably and safely, ..._
|
| Well, it is safe-ish, in that street crime is usually not too
| high.
|
| But living in car-centric suburbs, with a lack of common,
| public spaces and physical and social isolation isn't
| _really_ comfortable, or that good for your mental and
| emotional health.
| bamfly wrote:
| The parts that make them bad are mostly about trying to make
| the houses look (even) bigger than they are, and making them
| look fancier than they are _as cheaply as possible_.
|
| That kind of inept, absurd pretension is a recipe for comedy.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > to live comfortably and safely...
|
| If the design goals for the houses presented on McMansion
| Hell were simply that - comfort and safety - I'd have to
| agree with your assessment. But houses appear there because
| they seemingly have one over-arching design goal which is to
| appear impressive and thereby signal the owner's wealth. Most
| of the content points to the sheer purposelessness of certain
| architectural features, highlighting the owner's need for
| recognition over utility.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| McMansions are a symptom of wanting to _appear_ rich, they
| 're expensive, but nowhere near as expensive as something
| built with an architect aiming for taste.
| glonq wrote:
| I immensely enjoy McMansion Hell!
|
| Kate Wagner does a fanastic job of distilling the history and
| language and sensibilities of architecture down into
| something that anybody can appreciate.
|
| And quite the opposite of snobbish, she presents her
| critiques in a raw, geeky, low-brow format that would
| probably feel at home on 4chan or SomethingAwful.
|
| She is not knocking down regular suburban homes and families
| -- she critiques the top few percent who live in
| ostentatiously monstrous homes.
|
| Kate is a treasure and her site is a pleasure.
| [deleted]
| post-it wrote:
| I'm just trying provide a safe and comfortable home for my
| family, me, and my dozen baluster cherub statues.
| leephillips wrote:
| 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.
| glonq wrote:
| 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_.
| mjb wrote:
| 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.
| astura wrote:
| Sounds like you've never seen the website you are
| commenting on.
| leephillips wrote:
| I don't see how you could describe it that way. He's not
| ridiculing poor people. His target houses are usually
| fantastically opulent, selling for well over a million
| dollars. It's the same genre as publishing pictures of
| Donald Trump's gold plated bathrooms.
|
| 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.
| glonq wrote:
| Have you actually visited the McMansion Hell website? It
| is literally the exact opposite of what you are
| describing.
|
| It's looking down on people with >million-dollar, ten-
| thousand square foot homes that are also designed and
| decorated in an ugly and/or antiquated manner.
|
| And the author is never shy to admit her own low-key low-
| brow style preferences; I don't sense any
| refined/pretentious vibes at all.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Possibly. But I also tend to think that the idea is to
| mock the tastelessness of new money, but not, the more
| educated and refined tastes of old money families.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Well, yeah. The nouveau riche are targets, because
| they're scorned by both the people without money, and by
| people with money. Combined with a combination of
| insecurity about their newfound wealth, and a lack of the
| cultural norms and social ties that old money has, and
| hilarity ensues.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Yes. But I think there is something problematic about
| that, in of itself. Old money isn't any more acceptable
| just because they (supposedly) have better aesthetics. In
| fact, on the face of it, there is a lot to congratulate
| the nouveau rich, relative to old money, don't you think?
| In most cases, they worked for it.
| quaddo wrote:
| [dead]
| jhoechtl wrote:
| Highly subjective. Can't recommend. Seems like some aesthetics
| wieners gathered to dismiss others.
| elliottinvent wrote:
| If only all properties were pitched expertly by the vendor, like
| the "never ending property" [1]
|
| With high end 70s chintz and cheese production values.
|
| 1.
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kynbFDou6GI&feature=youtu.be&c...
| borbulon wrote:
| Our house had photos that made it all look so small and close,
| which is the exact opposite of what you get when you walk in the
| door.
|
| We were supposed to be auditioning the RE agent but we walked out
| saying "this is the house we're going to buy."
| tempodox wrote:
| Many of them are veritable horrors, but I find Malcolm's
| staircase somewhat interesting.
| jroseattle wrote:
| Lots of these types of sites from the past ten years, where the
| best ones capture the oddity of the photo with a hilarious
| caption. This one in particular seems really well done.
|
| I expect the next phase of these sites liberally employ the use
| of AI tools for image generation, i.e. "an apartment with a lawn
| mower in it".
| kleiba wrote:
| In my opinion, if anything, what makes these pictures less than
| ideal is the property itself which has nothing to do with the
| real estate agent. It's actually a net positive for potential
| buyers seeing all aspect of the object - what else should the
| agent do, hide unfortunate corners? Right, like anyone who
| actually cares to go and look at the property before buying it
| (so almost everyone) would not see these things anyway at
| inspection time.
|
| What I am used to in the area I currently live in, is much, much
| worse - and actual incompetence on the side of the agent. And
| what's worse, you see it _all the time_! Here are a few
| highlights:
|
| - A total of five pictures for the property, all of which are of
| the outside, none of the rooms.
|
| - Blurry pictures as if someone first had to learn not to move
| the camera in the middle of taking a shot.
|
| - Severely tilted pictures, as if taken on a boat.
|
| - Three pictures of some door (the same door each time, mind you)
|
| - ...
|
| You might think this is a joke, and I wish it was. Unfortunately,
| though, this kind of thing is _commonly_ found on real estate
| websites where I live. I don 't know how anyone can ever get
| traction - I guess it must be a seller's market.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > You might think this is a joke, and I wish it was.
| Unfortunately, though, this kind of thing is commonly found on
| real estate websites
|
| The 2021 ad for our current rental had 1 interior picture. It
| was an old crayon drawing on wrinkled paper. The listing got 50
| applications in the 2 hours it was up.
|
| In that market, an ad that said nothing but 'Rental Available'
| would have been flooded with applications - every day.
|
| It's less awful now. Many people have transitioned to
| homelessness and the rental market has eased up a little bit.
| FastEatSlow wrote:
| > Many people have transitioned to homelessness and the
| rental market has eased up a little bit.
|
| Well that's a sad state of affairs.
| spi wrote:
| I'm not sure we're looking at the same photos... for some of
| them, sure, you're right. But many are bad photos like those
| you mention, except more egregious (hence they deserve the
| place on that site). The "garden" in one picture is rather
| awful, but why put that plastic chair facing against the wall
| to make it creepy on top of that? Why take a picture half naked
| (or not half - thankfully we'll never know) in front of a
| mirror? Why the cheap Christmas tree? Why those two sad soft
| toys in the corner of an empty room? Why a mower in the living
| room? Why include an old man watching TV in your photo?
|
| As for the points you say, I'm not into real estate, I think
| often it comes down to limitations from reality. You know,
| actual _people_ live in those apartments you're trying to have
| pictures of. Maybe they'll just deny you entry (it's their
| place, after all, they might be renting and thus not give a
| damn about you willing to sell the property), in which case all
| you have to show is pictures from the outside. Or they might
| only agree to send you pictures themselves, in which case
| blurry pictures is all you get.
|
| Of course, in general it's mostly incompetence, but hey, if
| everybody were perfect at their job the world would look
| totally different, in more important sectors than real
| estate...
| tiltowait wrote:
| When my sister bought her house, she felt like the current
| owners were actively trying to make it unappealing. Weird
| photos (not as bad as these, mind), staying home during open
| house, etc.
|
| Turns out, the wife _was_ trying to make it unappealing. She
| didn 't want to move, but her husband did. I wouldn't be
| surprised if something like that was the case in at least
| some of these photos.
| afterburner wrote:
| If the husband was determined to move, that just meant they
| would get less money, not that they wouldn't sell. Oh well
| jsight wrote:
| Yeah, I was really expecting a lot of blown out shot with
| terrible exposure, and weird angles.
|
| This was mostly just bad houses. In some cases, the
| photographer seemed to do a decent job of making the best of
| it.
| stefncb wrote:
| Isn't it like that everywhere? It's been this way everywhere
| I've ever lived.
| wombat-man wrote:
| Yeah, or they just reuse the photos from a listing in the early
| 2000s, which is the lowest res camera phone picture. Seriously?
| just go to the property and snap a few pics with your phone.
| Fezzik wrote:
| This is a fun blog. It reminds me of old sites like Fuck Yeah
| Mens Wear, that smartly poked fun at consumerism. These days such
| pages seem to get commercialized and soul-crushed so quickly we
| hardly get time to appreciate them.
| gbrindisi wrote:
| In italy the real estate agent can be sidestepped if you know
| directly the seller, as a consequence the ads they put up are
| comically balanced to trigger your curiosity but not too much
| revealing to let you figure out where the place is.
|
| Such a terrible experience as a buyer, i'm baffled this whole
| charade hasn't been disrupted by tech already.
| SanderNL wrote:
| This is IMO a good example of a situation where tech or lack of
| it isn't the problem.
| zabzonk wrote:
| indeed - one of the uk's biggest on-line estate agents value
| was reduced to just about zero recently
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/17/online-
| esta...
| arkitaip wrote:
| At some point you would have to actually visit the property,
| though? Couldn't you sidestep the real estate agent anyways?
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| In Quebec it's starting to be disrupted by duproprio.com where
| the sellers manages the sale themself. The company takes the
| pictures & 3d scan and provides legal support.
|
| I guess real estate agents are so good at marketing that we
| believe it's a hard job that we can't do ourselves.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| > are so good at marketing
|
| Yes, that's their job and primary purpose. Yes it's hard.
| Most people have anxiety to even talk to their neighbors
| without sweating.
|
| Sure there are lots of idiots out there, like in every
| profession. But those who are not idiots are providing a
| valuable service. Try selling your house yourself and then
| let's chat again about how it's not a hard job that you could
| just do yourself.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| What puzzles me the most is that some people have no
| trouble doing dangerous DIY like fixing their lawnmower
| with some duct tape but are scared of selling their house
| because "legal stuff".
|
| Real estate agent are always hitting the nail with the
| message that we won't have to worry if we hire them. And
| because of that message, people have a tendency to think
| that selling is worrying.
|
| If you are genuinely worried with the selling process, like
| if you have trouble speaking to your neighbour, sure hire
| an agent. Same if you don't have the time to do it
| yourself. You'll pay them for the real service they provide
| and their real purpose.
|
| If you are worried because they told you it's worrying, see
| for yourself.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| Every apartment and house I've bought up to this day in
| my life (and I've moved quite a lot over the decades)
| would have been almost an impossible sale by the owners
| themselves. Their realtor was able to present the place,
| reply with empathy (that is, understood where I was
| coming from and what my interests are) and get back to me
| with important info about the property and district that
| the owners themselves usually had little clue about. The
| owners themselves where often awkward, hard to talk to
| and overall pretty clueless.
|
| So, all those folks definitely got something out of
| hiring a realtor. Nothing to do with "legal stuff". Most
| people are just terrible at presenting and selling
| things. And that's fine. Claiming otherwise is closing
| your eyes for what's out there in the real world.
| snickmy wrote:
| I bet 95% of those come from England.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| From the title, I expected much worse.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I'm looking for an apartment at the moment, and I already amassed
| quite a collection of such photos.
|
| My favourite is an attic divided by a wall of plasterboard, where
| on one side you have a full bathroom, on the other a bed. Floor
| panels everywhere, especially next to the tub. Only one window -
| on the side of the bathroom.
| stef25 wrote:
| These are almost flattering compared to some of the ones I came
| across recently. Check out these beauties
|
| https://www.immoweb.be/en/classified/mixed-use-building/for-...
|
| https://www.immoweb.be/en/classified/house/for-sale/anderlec...
|
| https://www.immoweb.be/en/classified/apartment/for-sale/brux...
| steele wrote:
| Generative AI staging is hilarious
| xmdx wrote:
| reminds me of reddit.com/r/spottedonrightmove but this one has
| properties with interesting design decisions
| hospitalJail wrote:
| About 10 years ago, me and my wife took LSD on a vacation, and
| the sheer uselessness of a real estate agent appeared to us.
|
| What does a real estate agent do? They unlock doors.
|
| Who are real estate agents? We can all think of a few real estate
| agents, none of them are top performers. They are usually on
| their ~4th career before the age of 30. They are the type of
| person to wear a suit in public to pretend that it makes them
| important.
|
| I know an exception to the rule, except he sells multi-family
| real estate, and owns ~10 single family homes himself. I'd hardly
| call him a real estate agent at this point, he is a landlord.
| nvr219 wrote:
| It's definitely a MLM type racket
| pg5 wrote:
| Have you both bought and sold a primary residence without a
| realtor?
|
| Interested to hear about the experience.
| nmcfarl wrote:
| I have done both (I have also purchased with a realtor),
| all in rural Oregon.
|
| I did a FSBO in a tiny town and the property was purchased
| directly by a buyer that was also without a realtor, but
| both sides had a mortgage from a national bank, and
| inspections happened, there was a boilerplate contract (the
| same one the previous realtor used for us buying the house,
| the lawyer's name was on the contract) and a title company.
| The transaction was on rails. Could not have been smoother
| or cheaper.
|
| For that place we knew the local market was small and the
| rumor mill active and figured we could FSBO for a bit
| before we contacted a real estate agent if we needed access
| to the MLS and non local buyers.
|
| As for the time we purchased without an agent, we purchased
| a few 100 acre ranch from our family and did so with a real
| estate contract, seller financing and no mortgage. It would
| have been difficult to get financing at a reasonable rate
| for a property of this kind. This involved a fair bit of
| time dealing with lawyers and neither party is happy with
| the lawyers but the deal got done.
|
| Anyhow - both experiences were good.
| codekilla wrote:
| Bought current house without agent (very desirable part of
| Los Angeles). Selling now without agent. If you buy with an
| agent you put yourself at a disadvantage because the
| selling agent will need to split the commission (typically
| 2.5% a piece or so). When you make an offer on a home
| without a buying agent, suddenly your offer looks a lot
| more attractive to the selling agent, who is the only point
| of contact the seller has into what is happening with their
| property in terms of offers. People wonder how we got our
| house so cheap--bank on the real estate agents being
| greedy. They are the worst, period. I have not met a single
| one who will not double end a deal in 10 years in the LA
| market. Not sure how the current sale will go, but I will
| not work with an agent, I've dealt with too many to make
| that mistake.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >If you buy with an agent you put yourself at a
| disadvantage because the selling agent will need to split
| the commission
|
| I can't speak to California law, but this isn't
| explicitly true in either market where I work. Non-agency
| is a thing in some places, and depending on the terms of
| the listing contract the listing agent might pocket both
| sides regardless if there isn't a buyer's agent.
|
| I'd also argue that there are a lot of properties where a
| buyer benefits from expertise on the part of an agent -
| either negotiating strategies or local market concerns.
| In my market for example understanding environmental and
| construction issues and value add that a buyer won't know
| without doing meaningful research on their own.
| smugma wrote:
| I've seen this happen many times in LA. Never in SF, and
| once in Oakland. I don't have much experience outside
| California but helped friends in Chicago buy a condo. It
| definitely helped that they didn't have an agent and
| leveraged the listing agent.
|
| Not having an agent is generally a big asset when buying
| a home, much more than anything an agent will bring to
| you.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >definitely helped that they didn't have an agent and
| leveraged the listing agent.
|
| Ooof. Gotta be careful with this one and understand
| agency law in your respective state. That listing agent
| may not actually be working for you the buyer, even if
| they help you fill out the paperwork.
| dwater wrote:
| They're not working for the seller either, they're
| working for themselves. They are not a fiduciary to any
| party. You can get screwed by an agent regardless of who
| hired them.
| kube-system wrote:
| > What does a real estate agent do? They unlock doors.
|
| > Who are real estate agents? We can all think of a few real
| estate agents, none of them are top performers. They are
| usually on their ~4th career before the age of 30. They are the
| type of person to wear a suit in public to pretend that it
| makes them important.
|
| Let's not pretend the software engineering world isn't full of
| hubris. Even the title itself is illegal in parts of the world
| because our career isn't a real engineering field.
| jandrese wrote:
| I wouldn't go quite that far. They also handle the paperwork
| and coordination with the other agent, which is not a trivial
| job. It's highly questionable if the value they add is worth 5%
| of the gross sale price of the house, especially in our
| amazingly inflated markets, but few if any agents seem
| interested in working at hourly rates.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >few if any agents seem interested in working at hourly rates
|
| It's because most agents work as self-employed contractors
| under the auspices of a brokerage, and the brokerage is not
| going to allow that. And/ or, in a state using standardized
| legal documents, we don't even have a form for that, which
| means we'd need to come up with an hourly contract from
| scratch - and the brokerages will put their foot down on that
| too.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| In the UK paperwork is mostly done - surprisingly slowly - by
| lawyers.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| This is the practice in many countries and even several US
| states. The listing services we have in the US are not
| universal either, which I think performs a really important
| role in providing information to the public and creating a
| more level informational playing field.
| jsight wrote:
| Same in the US, and for a separate set of fees on top of
| the realtors 5-6%.
| rcme wrote:
| Agents are facilitators of the deal. They are the lubricant
| that gets the deal done.
| smugma wrote:
| Agents are the friction that increases transaction costs.
| scott_s wrote:
| Strongly disagreed. Unless you regularly buy and sell houses,
| when it comes to buying a house, you are out of your depth. You
| need the help of a professional, and you want one who is
| looking out for your interests.
|
| I admit _finding_ a real estate agent who you can trust is not
| easy. I don 't know how to do it, other than from who you know.
| I was lucky, and ours was a friend of my wife's family.
| bombcar wrote:
| Just find one who has been working through a few downturns.
| Hot markets spawn real estate agents like locust, but
| downturns burn out all but the best.
| cwilkes wrote:
| What does a software engineer do? They type on a keyboard.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I had a client who only sold 5million$+ estates and I went with
| them a few times on showings and I bought quite a few houses
| myself in the 5-20k range. The effort made by the estate agent
| was the same; close to nothing. I don't know what's wrong with
| these people and they definitely don't deserve the commission.
| But when I ask just give me the location and the keys, they
| don't do that. So totally useless and yet they want to come
| with you.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Yes, just hand the keys to someone's home to a complete
| stranger, what could possibly go wrong.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Here you have to sign a contract (so competitors or the
| owner don't sell it cheaper to you) and they take a copy of
| your passport and proof of residency. So not exactly
| strangers. And in this cases where I asked for the keys,
| they were local realestate agents I went to school with.
| Not that anybody locks their door over here; it's just
| often not clear what the location is to prevent personal
| negotiations.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| > it's just often not clear what the location is to
| prevent personal negotiations.
|
| Oh no, we had a bug once when our software uploaded the
| property to the web with the address unlocked. The place
| got swarmed by people who would just enter the property
| at any time, not giving a damn about the owner's privacy.
| They were ringing the doorbell, asking about the price
| and if they could see the place right then and there.
| Agents are the first line of defense against shitty
| people.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Eh, with security cameras for ~$20 per camera, you can buy
| a lot of security cameras for the 25k commission.
|
| Heck, you can buy over 1000 security cameras and still save
| money.
| tzs wrote:
| There was a now deleted reply to that, probably intended
| as a joke, about how the cost of electricity for all
| those cameras would wipe out the profit.
|
| I was curious and did the math. I'm using motion
| sensitive security cameras that only record and upload
| when motion is detected. At the places with the most
| expensive residential electricity in the US or the EU
| 1000 of those cameras would need under $5 of electricity
| per year. There's also the thing that the cameras upload
| to. I don't know how much power that uses, but it is
| powered by a 5 W USB power supply so can't be more than
| $22/year.
| [deleted]
| Solvency wrote:
| This is the most cliched HN thought pattern I've ever
| seen.
| asdff wrote:
| Realtors thrive on nepotism though and double ending jobs with
| their friends or even themselves. There's plenty of homes that
| are bought and sold without hitting any public listing site.
| Agents just might call up another agent the know and go "Hey I
| got a buyer for a 3br in these neighborhoods, you guys got
| anything coming up?" and vice versa. Without an agent you are
| locked out of that side of the market and probably at a serious
| disadvantage, overpaying for property that didn't manage to
| sell through this "premarket" for whatever reason which could
| in fact be for red flag issues.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > What does a real estate agent do? They unlock doors.
|
| I think it depends on the local market, but this was certainly
| my feeling when trying to rent a place in London. I visited 15
| properties in a couple of days. Most agents just unlocked the
| door, sometimes seeing the place for the first time, most often
| clueless about the place. Actually a couple of them weren't
| even able to open the door and didn't have the right key.
| jon_adler wrote:
| This is probably because in London, the flat will rent in a
| few days anyway. There isn't any incentive for relatable
| agents to try any harder.
| dataengineer56 wrote:
| In the South East of England I found that estate agents were
| very proactive, stereotypical Audi TT-driving widemen who wore
| suits and had good haircuts and would work hard to make a sale.
| When it came time to sell then I found them to be lazy and
| almost useless, taking bad pictures, writing incorrect
| descriptions and showing no urgency. I guess they figure that
| the house will sell one way or another and the difference
| between a good or bad listing might only be a few % of the sale
| price, which means their cut will only change by PS100 or so.
|
| Alternately in the North East then I had a much different
| experience (albeit only on the buying side) - estate agents
| were almost exclusively women who answered phones, and viewings
| were done by the sellers themselves.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| When I bought my first house, my agent was invaluable. He
| certainly helped me avoid a bunch of bad decisions.
|
| He never actually said "don't buy this house" at any property
| we looked at, but he would point out things I wouldn't have
| thought about like, "it's nice, but I wonder if there's a lot
| of noise from that street later in the day when people are home
| from work" or "I guess you wouldn't want to play with marbles
| in here" (house with a sloping floor likely due to foundation
| shifting) and a lot of other remarks to point out things that
| I, as an apartment dweller, wouldn't have considered.
|
| I may have gotten that first house entirely due to him: I
| wanted to lowball the offer, but he pointed out that that
| neighborhood was a hot area and the house was very reasonably
| priced. I later found out that there was actually a slightly
| higher offer than mine, but since I had offered the asking
| price and came in first, the owners thought it was only ethical
| that they sell to me.
|
| I've certainly met useless RE agents since, but there are
| definitely some that earn their percentage! The guy who sold my
| last house was also a builder and he fixed a problem that would
| have held up the sale on his own dime!
| rightbyte wrote:
| > He never actually said "don't buy this house" at any
| property we looked at, but ...
|
| Taking hints from realtors is a skill. They are so subtle. I
| got exactly the same experience.
| pdntspa wrote:
| There's a South Park episode about this
| WHYLEE1991 wrote:
| I think you highly under-estimate the sales skills and other
| life competencies required to be in a high pressure sales job
| like being a real estate agent. Frankly, I think most of the
| people on this site would be fish out of water in most any job
| that requires social soft skills and that shows dramatically
| whenever ya'll discuss jobs that are outside of the very small
| tech circle you happen to be a part of.
|
| Lets wonder this too, is your job incredibly beneficial to
| society? is it not something many other people can do like
| "opening a door"? I'm sure to you your job is very complex and
| interesting, but to me and everyone else don't you just get
| paid to open or unlock a series of doors metaphorically? It's
| soo odd that you people think that somehow our jobs are the
| meaningful ones lol.
|
| Also never use the term "top preformers" ya sound like a d-bag.
| msluyter wrote:
| Weird, having bought/sold a number of houses in the last ten
| years (our family moved several times), I can't say I've ever
| run into a real estate agent that seemed like a "high
| pressure" salesman. Perhaps its just the market so they don't
| really need to try, but IME the best real estate agents -- on
| the buyers side, at least -- were the ones that listened
| carefully and did a good job of finding houses that matched
| our needs. Definitely requires soft skills/empathy, but not
| really a sales role.
|
| Do such things exist? Are there real estate agents who are
| like "and if you buy today, we'll throw in this grill!"?
| Genuinely curious.
|
| On the general utility of real estate agents... Really
| knowing a market and understanding
| construction/houses/permitting, etc... is a pretty important
| knowledge/skill set. I had one excellent agent figuratively
| drag me away from a condo that she understood to have serious
| foundation/construction defects. The good ones will help you
| understand what's good/bad about a house, problems to be
| alert for, etc...
|
| Like a lot of middle men, I think they do provide some
| service of value. Now, is that worth 3%/6% of a houses value?
| In many cases, undoubtedly not. We sold a house in Austin
| when the market was so hot that we got an eye popping offer
| the day after the agent put a "pending" sign in the yard. I
| think he did like 4 hrs total work. So afaict, the profession
| as a whole acts as sort of a rentier over the MLS listings.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _can 't say I've ever run into a real estate agent that
| seemed like a "high pressure" salesman_
|
| High-pressure job, not high-pressure sales. Real estate
| sales is not a business that's kind to underperformers (in
| the long run).
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| A year ago when our market was much hotter, I listed a
| property that I knew would sell quickly. Where I added
| value though was in knowing exactly when to list it, the
| price to list it, how to build pre-market interest, how to
| bring it to market in a way that would force buyers to
| compete only on price, and ultimately, I got the price up
| another $200k (and other concessions) for my sellers
| because of how I negotiated once offers were on the table.
| So even in a hot market, your agent's skill does matter in
| yielding an optimal rather than just a "good" outcome.
| go_discover wrote:
| New word: Intracriticnescient
|
| Definition: A person who criticizes the group they are in,
| without realizing that they are also implicating themselves
| in the criticism.
| the6thwonder wrote:
| > I'm a people person. I have people skills.
|
| I don't agree.
|
| In my experience, there are people with a talent for talking,
| and have a natural attraction. People just want to talk to
| them. But that's not most people in sales (even if they are
| often top).
|
| The key skills to be successful in sales are similar.
| Dedication, problems solving, and an interest in what you're
| doing. Many here could pick it up.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Yes, they have much more skills than just wearing a suit and
| opening doors.
|
| It's also a job which accomodates way more scum type people
| than you'd see in typical office jobs. As you note the
| incentives are very different, the pressure as well, and the
| recipes for success can involve screwing people over a lot of
| money.
|
| The profession doesn't seem to have much interest in dealing
| with moral hazards.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| > I think you highly under-estimate the sales skills and
| other life competencies required to be in a high pressure
| sales job like being a real estate agent.
|
| Also, be really good looking.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Real estate for normal housing is definitely not a high
| pressure sales job.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| 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...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Yep - it's tricky, but not full on sales. Just a
| definitions thing - I'm not in sales either.
| intrasight wrote:
| Right. "opening doors" can euphemistically describe any
| capable salesperson. Gotta open doors to sell that $100m
| fighter jet. For that matter, it can describe a dealmaker in
| any tech company.
| goolz wrote:
| Yes, and even if you are a "top performer" doing gods work...
| that does not give you any right to belittle others. I
| wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment and would pay money
| to see us as a collective (me included) try our hand at
| something like real estate. I for one know I would fail, but
| that's me.
| cj wrote:
| We software engineers already have tried, and failed to the
| tune of $550 million. Oops.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29087479
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The right thing to do is I think to digitise the process.
| Having a transparent way of following a bidding session
| and subsequent legal arrangement to completion would be
| extremely useful, and would surely scale pretty well.
| goolz wrote:
| "The algorithms are fooling themselves..." I loved that
| comment haha! Great link.
| jsight wrote:
| Sometimes real estate agents fail at flipping and stick
| to brokering other people's transactions too.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| That isnt being a real estate agent, that is
| buying/selling the market.
| cj wrote:
| Ok I'll rephrase: We software engineers tried to buy/sell
| houses using algorithms, and failed to the tune of $550m.
| I think we collectively would have similar success (or
| lack thereof) as actual real estate agents.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| These are two different jobs.
| jen20 wrote:
| Hard disagree. For people taking 6% of purchase price in
| fees, real estate agents need to be vastly better than they
| are. They were insufferable in Austin over the past few
| years, the silver lining of a serious housing crash would
| be watching them try to join the ranks of the productive.
|
| It reminds me of IT recruiters in the UK a few years back:
| [1] sums up the situation very well and applies just as
| much.
|
| [1]: https://gist.github.com/CumpsD/696599d1bd4cd472a056586
| 967293...
| rplst8 wrote:
| 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 market where the agents are friends
| with mortgage loan officers at banks, handymen, inspectors,
| and law offices that handle closing.
|
| The fact that it costs somewhere between 10-15% of the value
| of a home to actually transfer ownership is highway robbery.
| alistairSH wrote:
| 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 with a second agent). And a big chunk of that goes
| to the brokerage.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| 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.
| alistairSH wrote:
| It's highly variable.
|
| 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).
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >And a big chunk of that goes to the brokerage.
|
| Thank you for this - the public should redirect a lot of
| their anger away from the agents and toward their
| brokerages. Likewise - please don't use Zillow, Redfin,
| etc to contact an agent. Call the agent directly, as
| these online sites take a big pile of money out of the
| agents pocket as well.
|
| I want to believe changes are coming in real estate, as
| the long standing brokerage model exploits agents and
| confuses the public.
| Solvency wrote:
| If their inspector sucks that's on your friend.
|
| We searched and vetted and found our own inspector. On
| Yelp of all places, one of the least trustworthy
| websites. It took us less than a day to find someone
| good.
|
| And he found absolutely every single imaginable problem
| even down to the most hysterically unimportant detail.
| Like the tension on one of the kitchen/garage door hinges
| being slightly higher than the bottom door hinge. This
| was on a list of over 100 other things.
|
| The point is, inspectors are jobs like anyone else. Some
| are good, some bad.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The problem isn't whether they find a problem. Even the
| best inspector will miss things occasionally. The problem
| is they have zero legal liability for that miss. The
| buyer is making the biggest purchase of their life on a
| report that cost ~$1000 and has no legal backing (beyond
| maybe recovering the ~$1000 inspection fee).
|
| And then you have home insurance which isn't a whole lot
| better. They might fix the problem or they might manage
| to declare is pre-existing and deny coverage, but even if
| they do fix it, it'll be the lowest bidder installing the
| cheapest parts possible.
| PawgerZ wrote:
| When dealing with Home/Property insurance, always talk to
| a reputable public adjuster or general contractor. I
| worked at a general contractor construction company in a
| state where contractors can also act as public adjusters.
| We routinely caught insurance adjusters overlooking
| damage, lying, or straight up committing fraud.
|
| The laws for insurance are very complex, and all of the
| material standards are locked behind paywalls. For an
| average person (me before I worked there) insurance is
| basically a black box; you can't argue against any of
| their points because they hide the criteria.
|
| >but even if they do fix it, it'll be the lowest bidder
| installing the cheapest parts possible.
|
| This is true, but illegal. You are owed for "Like Kind
| And Quality" according to the law. This means that the
| insurance company can't downgrade your materials, and
| they have to repair the property to AT LEAST pre-storm
| conditions. Additionally, it is your legal right to
| choose a construction crew or contractor of your choice,
| and the insurance company can't veto your decision. After
| the work is complete, make sure that you, the
| construction company, and the insurance company have
| copies of the specifications of your materials and what
| work was done. This way it will be much harder for
| insurance to fuck you over on your next claim.
|
| Most contractors in my area are genuinely trying to help
| the clients. There are some contractors who take
| advantage of the innocent and gullible population,
| though. I hate them just as much as insurance companies.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Sorry, I was thinking of home warranties. You're exactly
| right on home insurance.
|
| Two very different products, the former being a
| borderline scam much of the time, the latter being a
| requirement for financing (and common sense).
|
| Current example for me... house is 50+ year old, with
| copper pipe for water supply. We're starting to get pin-
| hole leaks on some pipes. AFAIK, insurance considers this
| a maintenance item. They'd probably fix a major burst and
| the damage it causes (after the fact) but have no
| interest in even subsidizing preventative work to avoid
| the costly repair.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| "And he found absolutely every single imaginable problem
| even down to the most hysterically unimportant detail."
|
| The fact an inspection document is impressive to read
| doesn't mean it is accurate. If he blew you away with his
| ability to name 100 minor things, but missed a structural
| issue, you'd be screwed, and would have no way to know
| this until the structure starting cracking.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > 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...
| dehrmann wrote:
| High-value emotional purchases attract it more for
| obvious reasons. You see it less in cheap commodities.
| Your transactions at the grocery store tend to be pretty
| honest.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >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 inspectors I use
| pride themselves on the adoption of technology (drones for
| checking out roofs, thermal imaging for heat loss and
| insulation, etc) and often take the better part of a day on
| even small houses. So, I dunno man - I hear this stuff
| about inspectors a lot, but it doesn't jive with what I
| expect the ones I refer to people to actually do.
| js2 wrote:
| Real life example from Chatham County, NC. Family built a
| new house. Passed all inspections. House is not
| structurally sound and they've been advised the house
| needs to be completely rebuilt. They won a suit against
| the home builder, but the builder hasn't paid.
|
| The county inspector was fired, but the county is not
| taking financial responsibility.
|
| https://abc11.com/chatham-county-forever-home-dream-
| nightmar...
|
| https://www.wral.com/family-says-chatham-county-
| inspectors-m...
| traviscj wrote:
| Building inspections are not really the same as purchase
| inspections, or at least don't seem to me like they
| should be. Purchase inspection generally might not see a
| partially-constructed building or blueprints or otherwise
| be able to verify the engineering plan is being followed
| --They're looking for broken/nonfunctional
| appliances/mechanicals/systems, clear fire hazards, mold,
| infestations, and the like.
|
| The outcome of a building inspection is a certificate of
| occupancy where the authority is stating the home is safe
| to live in, the outcome of a purchase inspection is a
| report of things to ask for a discount on, part of the
| purchase negotiation.
|
| The Chatham County thing is crazy, I'm hoping the family
| manages to find someone accountable in that mess --
| clearly either the original architect, the builder, or
| the county let them down somehow. I'm just not sure it's
| really an indictment of the "inspector" profession as
| discussed in this thread.
| hattar wrote:
| 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 the return air missing was immediately
| obvious. When I called the inspector to ask why they'd
| miss something so obvious I was given an excuse and
| pointed toward the part of the contract that states
| they're not liable. I eventually got them to refund the
| cost of the inspection, but it was hundreds of dollars
| back for over ten thousand dollars in missed issues. I
| was only able to get anything because I worked for a real
| estate company at the time and knew the right people who
| could apply pressure.
|
| IMO Home inspections are a total scam.
| mr337 wrote:
| I agree, it feels really odd that making a huge ticket
| item purchase, if something goes wrong the max liability
| it the inspection price. A drop in the bucket for some
| issues they should have brought to light.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Here's something I say to my clients: personally, if I am
| buying a property, I am unlikely to do an inspection
| because I've seen a lot of houses and systems and am
| generally able to assess for myself the quality of the
| systems and construction. But - especially for first time
| buyers - people who buy and sell houses infrequently and
| who don't have a background in these things are at an
| informational deficit. For that reason, while the list of
| things an inspector checks can never be complete, it's
| more information than a buyer may be able to gather on
| their own. Houses are just like software systems - they
| will never be bug free, bugs pop up for various reasons,
| and all an inspector is really doing is telling you the
| state of the system on a given day.
|
| 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.
| mike50 wrote:
| Those issues would require engineering judgment to
| assess. An inspector would be qualified to verify
| function and presence of the heating system.
| AngryData wrote:
| I had a friend of mine get his house inspected when
| buying, they never found (so apparently didn't plug a
| tester into it) multiple loose plugs, didn't note the
| plumbing line wrapped in an inch thick of electrical tape
| for a leak, and said the roof was inspected for leaks and
| "certified" for atleast a year but told 5 years it would
| need a replacement. When their kitchen ceiling started
| bubbling a year in I went up into the attic space and it
| was clear the roof had been leaking since before they
| bought it by the stains and mold it left on the wood. It
| was a complete joke of an inspection, and what makes it
| worse is none of that was hard to access. The attic space
| was accessible from the garage area with no ceiling and
| was easily walkable with 10 ft+ height, the loose plugs
| were in the living room and in plain view right when you
| walk in, and the taped up pipe was 15 feet into a
| concrete basement with a mere glance upward. Not to
| mention the other laundry list of items that weren't
| broken really but should have been noted by an inspector
| doing their job.
|
| They tried to get the inspector for the obvious bullshit
| roof inspection but after getting ran around multiple
| times to the point of needing to hire lawyer to go any
| further. But eventually dropped it when some roofing
| company came by and offered to do the roof for "free"
| through their insurance because of supposed hail damage
| in the area that basically replaced half the roofs in the
| town. That too was probably a scam on the insurance by
| the roofers because we never had big enough hail for
| damage, but they weren't going to complain about a free
| new shingle job.
|
| TL;DR Don't just grab any random inspector, and
| especially never take recommendations from anybody
| connected to real estate.
| bombcar wrote:
| Good inspectors exist. They're not usually recommended by
| agents because they could cause a deal to fall through.
| deelowe wrote:
| In my area, agent fees are 6%.
| rcme wrote:
| The seller is paying the buyer's agent so I'm not sure why
| they'd have a fiduciary duty to the buyer. Agents aren't
| about representation at all. That's what your lawyer and
| lender are for (the lender acts in your best interest in
| their own self interest). The purpose of the agents are to
| make the transaction happen. The seller's agent handles
| this on the seller side, e.g. showing the house, making it
| available for inspections, etc. The buyer's agent makes
| this happen on the buyer's side, e.g. makes sure the buyer
| schedules the inspections, has their lender lined up, etc.
| The agents are there to make the deal happen. That's their
| only purpose.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Neither agent has a fiduciary duty even to the person
| that hired them, in the US. That situation took a lot of
| lobbying to create, and takes a lot of lobbying to
| preserve. The agents can make a deal between them that
| they both profit from and screws both the buyer and the
| seller.
| jon_adler wrote:
| The estate agent percentage in the U.K. is typically around
| 2% of property value in total, paid by the seller, with
| virtually nobody using a buyers agent. I have never
| understood why fees are so crazy in the USA.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Real estate lobbying associations such as the NAR writing
| state laws, massively donating to campaigns, and paying
| huge speaking fees to ex-politicians. I once worked
| pretty deeply in the industry.
| pg5 wrote:
| I disagree with this. You pay a realtor because a good one
| stays up to date with what's happening in the market, has a
| network of vetted contractors/potential buyers/other
| connections, has up-to-date frameworks for handling the
| processes and timing of tricky situations that can arise.
|
| Sure, you can do all that yourself if you want, but for the
| average person, they are providing value.
| mike50 wrote:
| A Rolodex and a limited understanding of the real estate
| market. If they really had expert housing market knowledge
| would they be working as a real estate agent?
| bamfly wrote:
| IME the ones who are successful long-term and make
| _serious_ money do indeed use their market knowledge,
| connections, and access to make real estate plays
| themselves. Move into owning rentals, do some flipping,
| that kind of thing. The easiest path seems to be having a
| spouse who 's in a different, but relevant, career (e.g.
| general contractor).
| tiedieconderoga wrote:
| A good real estate agent can provide a lot of value, especially
| if you're a first-time buyer.
|
| * They've seen a lot of houses, and know what to look out for
| even before you commit to calling in inspectors.
|
| * They've seen a lot of closings, and can handle all of the
| title/law crud. "Quick closing" can be a big plus to some
| sellers.
|
| * They've seen a lot of negotiations, and can help you get a
| feel for how the other party is thinking.
|
| There certainly are people who unlock the door, stare at their
| phone all day, and collect their commission. Those aren't very
| good agents, even if they can get the job done when the market
| is extremely short on supply.
| version_five wrote:
| This will sound harsh, but mostly real estate agents are
| suckers who are actively getting scammed by the brokerage.
| Brokerages have a virtual monopoly (oligopoly) on listings and
| comparable sale prices though MLS (I'm in Canada but I think
| the US is the same) and as such it's in most seller's and
| buyers interests use them. Agents are getting charged all sorts
| of scam fees to market themselves in exchange for getting to
| tap into the MLS. Every ad and stupid video and contract and
| mailer and whatnot is getting sold to them by the brokerage who
| is siphoning off all the money they can. The real suckers are
| the agents, even if they don't really do anything.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| There might be some nuance here between the US and Canada -
| would love to chat over frosty beverages and learn more and
| the system up there as eventually I'd like to expand into BC.
| The MLS fees (I belong to two and will likely join a third
| and possibly fourth) aren't terrible and I would say listing
| services are generally a good thing for both the consumer
| public and agents. But - as you note - the public has a very
| limited view of all the ways brokerages and various third-
| parties try to scam and fleece agents. The overall system is
| exploitative of agents and that has a role in the cost to
| consumers for real estate services. And, name brand online
| services are just another third party looking to make money
| off agents.
| jsight wrote:
| I think you are being a little unfair to them, but at the same
| time...
|
| They get 5% of most single family residential transactions. And
| recently it was 6% that was standard. And the industry works
| really hard to protect those profits.
|
| It is a lot of money that comes right out of consumers pockets.
| moioci wrote:
| > me and my wife took LSD on a vacation
|
| Did dropping acid enhance your vacation, or does LSD also stand
| for something else?
| scop wrote:
| Ha! I feel like I'm in the crazy house as you're the only
| other person who has asked that...all these well thought out
| responses that seem completely oblivious to the doozy of an
| introduction.
|
| "So I once played poker with a gorilla and [insert point]"
| and everybody only talks about the point and not the
| gorilla???
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| 2023throwawayy wrote:
| Taking LSD on a vacation is a pretty mundane thing for many
| people.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Honestly, I had this exact same attitude before my last home
| purchase. We began by assuming that Redfin was good enough. By
| the time the deal closed, we really appreciated what an
| experienced agent with at least a vague awareness of real-
| estate law could do. When the FSBO seller tried to back out at
| the last minute, our (obviously motivated) buyer's agent was
| able to set him straight. Without his help, I'm certain the
| situation would have turned into a nightmare scenario involving
| actual lawyers.
|
| That doesn't mean I won't try the easy/cheap way first next
| time, but it does mean I no longer dismiss all realtors as
| useless parasites who need to be "disrupted" at all costs.
| xyzelement wrote:
| If your wife and you took LSD and it "appeared" to you that all
| doctors do is run around in stupid white coats, would that
| reveal more about the field of medicine or the two of you?
|
| "It requires professional help to facilitate emotionally
| charged, million+ dollar transactions" would be the more useful
| insight.
|
| Very few people chose to forego aan agent when dealing in RE,
| there's a reason for that. I am a finance dude quite capable of
| negotiating etc and I still found out agent super valuable and
| would use her again.
|
| It's possible you know crappy agents who deal in low-end
| transactions but again that may reveal more about you than the
| field.
| alistairSH wrote:
| There are plenty of next-to-useless agents, just like there are
| plenty of next-to-useless software developers.
|
| Our agent (used twice, 15 years apart) was great. Both times,
| in strong sellers markets, so lots of offers made and rejected.
| Lots of last second "OMG, just listed, can we see it
| NOWNOWNOW!"
|
| Very expensive, but so is a house.
|
| Now that I've been through the process a few times, could I do
| it without? Probably. At the right price, would I use an agent
| regardless? Absolutely. The old 6% rate seems quite high for a
| basic sale given online MLS listings, though for a very
| specific home in a small market, might still be worth that (I'm
| think lake homes in my neighborhood - rare listings, selling
| for $50k+ premium over non-lake on same street, often have a
| buyer lined up before listing, so really hard to actually buy
| one without an agent who knows people).
| afavour wrote:
| Having been through buying a home I think I'll push back on
| that a little: our agent knew what was a fair price, what we'd
| likely be able to push the sellers down to, advised us through
| the whole process.
|
| Rental brokers on the other hand... now they're absolutely
| useless and you can sometimes pay astronomical brokers fees
| just so they can sit between you and the landlord.
| eddieroger wrote:
| I had a similar experienced, though I'm biased by being
| related to an agent, but having worked with good ones and bad
| ones, there can be a difference. Bad agents are glorified
| door unlockers and sign placers, but good ones have
| experience marketing, know the market well enough to make
| recommendations, help with staging and making a property
| attractive, and advocating for their client during sales. If
| the game was different, maybe they'd be redundant, but a good
| agent is a real ally and can move a house quickly.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Even an incompetent agent serves a very valuable purpose in a
| real estate purchase.
|
| Without the agents, you'd have two people attempting to
| negotiate a 6 (or 7, nowadays!) figure purchase directly.
| Before it was over, you'd hate the other party too much to
| ever complete a sale.
|
| Agents sit between the two parties and have a vested interest
| in seeing a transaction take place. They talk to each other
| and soften the communication so that you can tell someone you
| want to pay them fifty-fucking-grand less money for the
| single largest asset in their life that they were counting on
| to fund their retirement, and have that met with a counter-
| offer instead of an angry storming off.
| CHSbeachbum420 wrote:
| You do not need an agent to know a fair price lol
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| You aren't wrong, but it means you have to do your own
| research and generally only have access to public
| information. A realtor who knows their market has done that
| research for you (saving you time) and generally has
| information beyond what you can get off Zillow et al.
| afavour wrote:
| I don't need a mechanic to repair my car, either. I could
| spend hours doing the research, risk maybe being wrong and
| fix the thing myself. Or I could hire a professional.
| jsight wrote:
| > our agent knew what was a fair price, what we'd likely be
| able to push the sellers down to, advised us through the
| whole process.
|
| I've seen cases where the sales agent knew the seller's
| minimum and basically told that to the buyer. They didn't
| negotiate on the seller's behalf so much as negotiate to get
| the deal done quicker.
|
| I'm sure the buyer's agent looked good to the buyer. This
| scenario and the one you describe are almost
| indistinguishable, depending on which party you are.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Same. Our realtor wasn't in any hurry to sell us a house
| (showed us 40 houses over about 7 different days actually)
| and wasn't afraid to point out the negatives of the house and
| what we should be looking for in a good first home and take
| into consideration if we ever wanted to resell it. I learned
| quite a bit from him during the process.
|
| He also didn't mind seeing a bunch of houses because even if
| we weren't interested in a house it built up his knowledge
| about the market and could possibly recommend the house to
| others.
|
| We did have another realtor that wasn't like that though when
| we were considering moving to another state, who mainly was
| just there to show houses and never pointed anything out, in
| fact she barely talked.
|
| Didn't really see the value with her, although shortly after
| the mortgage rates jacked up fast and made moving less
| appealing (we looked just before the Fed jacked up interest
| rates), so we didn't go any further in the process anyway.
| Roark66 wrote:
| I have to say I found estate agents quite useful (mostly when I
| was renting). I much preferred dealing with a letting dept. of
| a reputable estate agency than random landlords. Yes, I had
| good landlords(funnily enough when I was quite poor in the
| cheapest accommodation possible), but I had bad ones too. I
| never had a bad renting experience with an agency. Stuff always
| got repaired on time, cleaners got hired to clean common areas,
| electricity and gas got inspected regularly. All those things
| are not a certainty with random landlords and you only find out
| once you've moved.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >What does a real estate agent do? They unlock doors.
|
| Think of real estate agents through the perspective of the 10x
| programmers we love to talk about here. The multitude of agents
| are as you describe - they publish listing photos from their
| phone, they know how to open a door, and then can mostly write
| down what you tell them on standardized forms. A 10x agent on
| the other hand, will absolutely benefit you in the same way
| that a 10x programmer will outproduce. Classic 80/20 rule
| stuff, where you want to be working with the 20 and ignore the
| 80.
| alexpotato wrote:
| Not exactly real estate agents for buying/selling but related:
|
| I remember reading about the fact that, at the time, most
| apartments in NYC were "broker only" (aka you can only see and
| then rent an apartment if you are using a licensed real estate
| broker).
|
| The more I thought about this, I started to see the benefits
| for both sides:
|
| - for the landlord: the broker acts as a filter for people who
| are serious vs "looky loos" (actual quote from a real broker)
|
| - for the tenant: the broker wants repeat business so they
| will, in theory, only deal with reputable landlords
|
| - for the tenant part 2: if you are a busy, hard working
| individual, the broker acts as your "agent" (in the principal
| agent sense of the word) to save you time by going and finding
| apartments for you so that you can focus on your high paying
| job.
| uw_rob wrote:
| The problem with brokers is that they can charge 1-2 months
| rent. That means you can easily be left with a 8k bill for
| moving into a new apartment.
|
| The job literally could not exist anywhere else because no
| one would pay it. But they aren't making any more land in
| Manhattan and they aren't building subway lines quick enough
| so landlords get to pass that expense off to tenants
| alexpotato wrote:
| If you are a top earning investment banker or lawyer, it's
| still worth it to pay that rather than spending 10+ hours
| of your time going to apartments etc. Most of "seeing
| apartments" is "let me get to the apartment by cab (stuck
| in traffic) or by subway (oh, delays, oh well)" so it's
| even less efficient for you to do that vs a broker.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| This one made me ~laugh~ blow air outta my nose:
| https://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/post/7142462056617...
| ansible wrote:
| I'd argue that this is a really _good_ real estate photo. It
| tells you what your next-door neighbors are like.
| nakedrobot2 wrote:
| Is it only me, or are these photos not bad at all? They are real
| and honest, and... just not actually bad photos!
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Having just gone through a year and a half long search for a
| house, I'd like to add another good rule:
|
| If the listing lists a room, but there isn't a picture of it,
| there's usually a good reason.
|
| Real life example: saw a house listed with four bedrooms, listing
| had pictures of two. The remaining two were unfinished to the
| point of not having drywall on the ceiling or finished floor
| materials on the floor.
| ookblah wrote:
| you should see how some real estate offices operate in korea. i
| guess because housing is seen as such an investment in some hot
| areas the offices literally just put the price with the square
| footage, zero photos. maybe a "renovated" note if it has new
| wallpaper.
|
| completely baffling and infuriating to me as you have no way of
| knowing what you're looking at. easiest job in the world here.
| irrational wrote:
| They should have used an M.C. Escher drawing rather than Indiana
| Jones and the Last Crusade for that kitchen picture. I stared at
| it for a good 5 minutes and still can't tell what is going on.
| muxator wrote:
| This site is impossible to visit on my setup. Firefox 114,
| default tracking protection, uBlock origin with default settings.
|
| I am not interested in spending time debugging it, and I can live
| without seeing those photos.
|
| Better spend that time whining here, where I suppose the ratio of
| web developers is high: what happened to web development? How
| come is it so complicated to write a site that displays some
| photos without falling apart at the first not-totally-mainstream
| user agent?
|
| Just wow.
| jp191919 wrote:
| Same here, website doesn't work on FF.
|
| I even tried edge and it doesn't work.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Surprisingly, it's a frontend for Tumblr, with the
| "fuseblue.com" theme.
| muxator wrote:
| Thanks for explaining.
|
| I never really used Tumblr, I just know it's the site Yahoo
| bought many years ago instead of Netflix.
|
| The website in this submission is probably just a low
| technical effort site. This would explain its flaws.
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