Month: December 2007

Movoto And Reality Hitting The Boston Real Estate Market

The Boston Real Estate Blog says that Movoto has come to town. It’s another disintermediation play like Redfin and ZipRealty, although I haven’t bothered to figure out what their specific angle is, because I don’t really want to buy a house right now.

See, I spend a lot of time drooling over loft condos, because that’s the kind of shallow yuppie I am. So I looked up a few in my neighborhood and found 7 Park Ave, which is asking a million bucks and has been on the market for over a year. I used to live across the alley from that building. It’s nothing special, and it’s shadowed on one side by the tall, unattractive apartment building I used to live in. Yeah, the library garden on one side makes up for that a little, but not much. And sure, the condo residents get offstreet parking, but it’s just not a million-dollar condo. Spacious, yes – 3BR, 3500 square feet. And well-appointed, too, with granite countertops (the harvest gold appliances and shag rugs of the ’00s). Whoever owns this place must be a real admirer of Manny Ramirez, who has had his condo on the market for two years now without a nibble or a price reduction.

There are a lot of fancy loft condos in this neighborhood for a lot less money, and they’re not moving either.

If they all started cutting their prices by, say, forty or fifty percent, then I’d consider trying to get a loan. (Yes, I know, I’m going to rent forever because I am too cheap to pay all the various fees, which strike me as deliberate insults. Shut up.)

Do Cats Eat Bats?

I went down to the basement today to get the laundry and opened the door into the basement and there was a thing that looked kind of like a chunk of lint or a sock hanging on the edge of the door. I grabbed it and it was warm and furry and surprising. I dropped it and jumped back. It was a bat. It wasn’t moving. Did I stun it? Was it sick? It can’t have been dead. It was still warm and twitchy when I grabbed it and dropped it.

I opened the door and shoved it out gently into the cold. It didn’t move. Later I checked back and it was gone.

Flown away? Eaten?

Who Needs The Daily Show When You Have Real News Like This

Krugman points out that comparing Dick Cheney to Darth Vader is hardly fair. After all, Darth Vader once served in the military, and his contractors at least finished building the Death Star.

My father points out that Dick Cheney was actually not a terrible person forty years ago. Conservative, sure, but not vicious. It was only after his first or perhaps second heart surgery that he became the vicious monster he has become today. He’s not the only person to have had personality changes following heart surgery. In a lot of cases, people take their post-heart-surgery lives and use them as an opportunity to turn into evil bastards. Only Dick Cheney, however, seems to have been in a position to turn his years as an evil bastard into war crimes.

Idiots… In… Power!

Changes in tax code should be revenue-neutral. Just like with the Massachusetts income-tax repeal, which has been described as “public policy arson”, we’ve got a similar situation at the national level. Congress, under pressure from the prez, is shooting itself in the foot. Yes, the AMT needs to be fixed. But it needs to be fixed in a revenue neutral manner, and instead Congress has just said it’s going to pile up some more damn debt.

I Am Not Optimistic

I found a real-estate blog focused on Charlottesville for a friend of mine who lives there, and sent it off to him without thinking. And then I looked at it again and it’s one of those ones done by a Realtor who thinks they’re smart because they understand that the National Association Of Realtors is sleazy. It’s not a terrible blog, but nothing special, really. (Update: The blogger saw this post and sent back a really polite comment and now I feel guilty for insulting him. I’m not going to deny doing it, but… two blogging-without-thinking moments today. Ouch.)

My friend wrote back: “Cville/Albemarle is owned lock/stock/barrel by the realtors. How come? Why is it that the stockbroker’s back was broken by the on-line brokers — saving consumers 90% or so on commissions — but Cville/Albemarle is still owned by the commission-heavy Realtors? … It’s a cartel. Some smart people have got to figure a way to break this system….”

I replied that, sadly, there are quite a few smart people dedicated to perpetuating it as well. But I suppose that could be said about more than just real estate markets. Sure, there’s potential for reform and transparency, but I’m not optimistic.

I’m not optimistic about the prospects for a lot of things. Mechanics and politicians and veterinarians are going to keep being sleazy bastards. Massport and the MBTA will never be reformed. It’s not so much The System as the fact that any system is only as good as human nature, and human nature just isn’t that good.

Maybe I’m particularly gloomy today because I’ve watched too much of A+E’s “Intervention,” a show I’d call the sleaziest reality show ever if I hadn’t already used that phrase to describe “A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila.” Every episode is the story of two different addicts and how their parents got them to go to rehab. It’s mostly white women, possibly to make the suburban audiences more comfortable, possibly because that’s who gets intervened on the most. I don’t know. It’s riveting, and although I know it’s shameful emotional pornography I can’t stop watching.

Then again, I could be permanently damaged by the video I saw today over at Ectomo. I won’t even describe it, but you should definitely watch it. With headphones. The screaming is the best part. Well, that and the fact that someone kept filming the whole thing. Can you say “older brother?”