"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."
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.
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.
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.
All used homes in the US are sold “as-is”. It’s caveat emptor doctrine.
Now, there are laws against misrepresentation. There is a disclosure form that is required which asks you about defects. The seller can admit them or decline to answer, but if the seller knowingly lies about a property defect you can sue to recover damages.
Real estate agents have a lot of liability here because they are bound to disclose things that could have been “reasonably known” - which is a definition that can be tortured in every direction. For example, bedrooms: in my state a bedroom must have a closet to count as a bedroom. Except sometimes it doesn’t have to have a closet to count as a bedroom. The exceptions are literally described as “some older homes had bedrooms without closets” - but “older” and “bedrooms” is left to the interpretation of your legal council and the investigator when it becomes an issue.
> The pair - natives of North Manchester in the United Kingdom who now live in Houston, Texas with their three children - had been searching for homes near Nashville, Tennessee when they came across the property.
Why is the BBC clarifying what country Manchester is in but omitting where Tennessee is? Very strange for a British publication.
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.
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.
> 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 (€200).
I tell them okay, instead of the €200 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 €200? “Probably not sir..”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."