This is so true, the typical RE agent profile is pretty lol. The only good RE agents I had were a brother/ sister team that inherited the business from their dad. That sounds like a recipe for bad service but their dad taught them to work hard for their clients.
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I had a good experience when I was selling my house while living in a different country. I had failed to sell it on my own in 6 months. She staged it with furniture and paintings, arranged and attended showings, and negotiated up $10K or so from an initial offer. Maybe I got ripped off, but it felt like a blessing at the time.
You saying it wasn’t immoral made me think. It’s interesting, my instinct is to say that it is immoral because I am hiding information that lets them make an informed decision. However, I know with 100% certainty that I will pay my rent for the full lease unless I die. So in actuality, they will make the best decision if they are given imperfect information.
I’m still too much of a life nit/rules nit I think, but that was an interesting way to think about it.
I had similar lines of thought while writing it. Certainly it’s moral to impose a good outcome on another person even if by deception, and it’s trivially easy to compose a thought experiment to illustrate this.
I never imagined using one as a renter, and when my friend referred me I thought it was a little crazy, but she’s been a huge help given that:
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My knowledge of that specific area is somewhat limited, and she knows it like the back of her hand.
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She lends me credibility given my profession and is advocating for me.
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She’s good at scheduling several showings in a row and figuring out the schedule so I can see more places in less time, and she can get keys out of drop boxes rather than needing the other agent there, which also increases the flexibility on when I can see places.
I think a lot of the takes here about using an agent to buy/sell are accurate for people like this group - smart people who are willing, able and good at doing their research and understanding the market, as well as comfortable negotiating for a lot of money.
For the average person, it may be worth it just to get a sense of how the market is moving, what a fair price actually is, and to have a good negotiator - which of course is totally dependent on the realtor’s skill and hard to assess.
I think that you can much more easily argue that it is immoral, than you can argue that something bad will happen to you as a result of doing it.
It depends. If your friend gets a dumb haircut and people tease him a little behind his back, are you in the right to cut his hair to make him look better while he sleeps?
Doesn’t that breach a different moral code, as well as raise unanswerable questions about what a good haircut is lol?
I was just imagining you are making his life better through deception. Probably a half-baked thought experiment lol.
If on the other hand you and I were having a drink before you leave to watch a super hero film , and you leave your ticket on the table, it’s morally imperative of me to destroy the ticket.
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Logically I agree. I’m being results oriented, but I’ve had a lot of freaky and absurdly unlikely things happen to me in my life, which makes me very cautious about assuming that some random longshot with really bad implications simply won’t happen. I know this is results oriented and not necessarily wise, but it’s also a small sample size situation and I just don’t want to worry about it.
I’m not sure how you can possibly play poker for a living. Sounds like you’ll fold if someone is drawing live to perfect runner-runner against you.
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I’ve usually got 0.5% to 2% of my net worth in play, never more than 10% and that’s like a once a year type situation. I’m a nit about stuff with unacceptable/dire consequences even if it’s an extremely unlikely outcome, and I am a bankroll nit. Once I put my money on the table, I’m making straight EV decisions - I’ve already mitigated unacceptable risk by managing my bankroll well.
Once in my life I wanted to fold a hand I knew I was supposed to call because I was scared. I was into the game for like 300bb and 1,350 BB effective to start and my opponent overbet flop, then overbet jammed like 10x pot on the turn. I had QQ on like a T99X board or something like that. I tanked about a minute, knew I was supposed to call, and was scared. I took three deep breaths and decided I’d run back through the thought process a second time to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, make sure to think through the live reads on previous streets and that street as well, and if it was a call, it was a call.
It was a call, I called, he had a gutshot, I held.
Random aside, it was the only time most of the regs were actually happy to see another reg felt the whale for a massive pot. He had been a huge asshole to two other players - taunting them and even doing a celebratory dance when he had felted them for a few hundred BBs with a suckout. I was the only one who had him covered, so I was the only one who could cause him max pain, and they wanted to see him suffer.
It’s also the only time I’ve been enough of a dick to needle a guy after destroying him for hundreds of BBs. He had asked me to buy a $1K chip off of him so he could go make a sports bet on like Loyola Marymount as a 1-point favorite or something, and I refused because I didn’t really want more chips and he was being a dick to other people. Normally I’d accommodate that as a consummate pro, but if someone’s an asshole, maybe not. About 10 minutes after I felted him, I looked up and his team was up like 20 points in the first half.
“Wow, great call on that game dude. Shame you didn’t get the bet in!”
About 20 minutes later I felted him on his second bullet for like 150bb. That time, the rest of the table was less enthused about my good fortune and felt that some redistribution of wealth would have been more appropriate.
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I’m not much of a NLHE player, but I can’t imagine ever calling that turn bet. I’d fold the flop against 90%+ of people, just because overbets are so rare. Even the maniacs almost always have it when they bet way more than normal.
Before COVID, most of my NLHE was live 1/2, early afternoons.
Yeah there aren’t many players you want to call that against, but this guy was special.
When the realtor reps both buyer and seller it’s dual agency and in some states it’s illegal. Also not all real estate firms allow it for their realtors in states that it is legal. Also there are more limitations in a dual agency agreement plus it’s easier to get fucked over in sales like this for doing something unethical, at least that’s what teachers told me when I was taking classes for my license
Why would you not want to use an agent as a buyer? They get paid by the seller. I get that maybe you can negotiate a better deal if the seller doesn’t have to pay the commission but if you’re using the seller’s agent they’re probably going to want the full commission, and if you’re representing yourself you might have trouble getting your offer accepted if they’re skeptical of your ability to navigate the process. It just seems like the actual savings are negligible if not negative.
Also @anon38180840 I just caught up on this thread. I went through similar trouble with an apartment a few years ago, all the way down to the maintenance issues and the negotiation that started off with “wait here for 5 minutes” (I think they think that’s some kind of power move). Similar results. I think someone nailed it with the prediction that they’re being bought out and it’s creating some backwards incentives with their pricing. If your situation plays out the same way you won’t see any of the money you’ve been promised for your inconvenience, and the thought of getting back at them in any meaningful way will fade after you move out, but good luck.
You know what’s even more of a scam than realtors? Fucking title insurance. They pay out FOUR FUCKING PERCENT of premiums in claims. And if you have a mortgage you have to buy it.
I was offered my #1 choice yesterday, but I’m still waiting on the lease over 24 hours later and they’re saying it could be tomorrow - so that’s making me a little nervous.
Hopefully that’s that, though, and then it’s on to scheduling movers.
Meanwhile, my apartment complex was supposed to give me the $350 credit a week ago and still hasn’t, and they “messed up” and pro-rated my parking instead of my rent for September. No response to my e-mail about it. The parking is $225 a month and I get a $225 credit as it’s free, so they switched it to $210 and $210, but left my $3,060 rent untouched.
I assume the $350 credit being slow to arrive is an intentional ploy, as I cannot cash out of this account they’re crediting into… So I will just underpay by $350 if it’s not in there, and we can go to war over it at that point I guess.
I think someone in here posted something about their landlord agreeing to a credit and then screwing them when they agreed and not paying it… Feels like that’s what’s about to happen. I think they’re going to try to wait for me to pay the rent, then add the credit once I can no longer use it. Pretty smart strategy, obviously. Capitalism and fucking the little guy for the win!
So assuming this deal doesn’t fall through and I’m able to get the lease today or tomorrow and everything looks good, it’s time for some ideas/suggestions… I’m going to have either one or two extra rooms in this townhouse, so I need ideas on what to do with them! It’s got 3 bedrooms, three rooms on the first floor not counting the kitchen, and a finished basement with a small finished side office down there (that will not be my poker office).
It’s also got a deck and a patio downstairs, as well as a garage. So my plan is for the garage to house the golf simulator and maybe a putting area, one bedroom will be mine, one will be a guest bedroom for my parents/friends when they come visit, and one is available.
Downstairs there is what would typically be the dining room, which looks out on the deck/woods and is on one side of the kitchen, and a smaller room that has the doors to the deck and looks out on the deck/woods as well - it could be used for my TV and sofa, or could be ???, and then the living room area that would traditionally be used for the TV and sofa but options are available. It’s in the front with a window looking out on the street.
Downstairs is a finished basement and a small side office that had a wrap around desk in it when I toured the house, even though it was mostly empty otherwise. If the desk stays in I’ll make that a secondary office area if I restart the online flipping business, if not I’ll try to make that my home gym. There’s also an unfinished area for storage.
Anyway, depending on how I lay it out, I should have 1 or 2 extra rooms and that’s after doing the guest bedroom and an office for poker. One thought is to put a TV downstairs in the finished basement on an old tv stand I have with wheels. Thus I could roll it to the sliding glass doors, open them up and watch outside for safe socially distanced viewing of sports with my Dad or my buddy. That would still leave a fair amount of room there, though, and possibly an extra room still elsewhere. I could try to snag a cheap/free sofa on Craigslist. Ideally I’m not going to spend much/any money on stuff that I may only use for a year.
Another idea is to look for a free piano, since I play, and put that in the extra room on the first floor and do like a living room with a piano. I’d just have to pay the cost of moving it, then hope to be able to unload it to someone in a year the same way. I thought about setting a room up as like a home bar and trying to find a cheap/free pool table - I have never played much but always enjoyed it as a teenager at my friend’s house who had a table. But who knows if it’ll be safe to invite people over in the next 12 months.
That’s where I pretty much run out of ideas that don’t cost a bunch of money. Anyone have any good ones? Feel free to think way outside the box lol… My interests don’t lead me toward any great ideas so far: travel, sports, golf, poker, foodie, politics, etc… If I could get my hands on a Skee Ball game cheap, I could do an arcade room around it and relive my childhood, but I wouldn’t want to spend much on something so frivolous and they’re like $1400 when I looked. That’s more of the like, “I’d take it off someone’s hands for free, or maybe spend $50-100,” category.