It’s not rare. It’s simply overshadowed by the mountain of shit that social media and well… just media in general shove in our faces.

It’s not a conspiracy theory to state that fear is one of, if not the single most effective emotion to create desired behavior in humans. We’ve figured this out and perfected it. Thus, most of us will mainly see things that cause fear and anger, with just enough “eyebleach” material sprinkled in to re-sensitize us to the fearmongering once again.

The world is a stark, bleak place, but it’s also beautiful and filled with wonderful people. It just takes a bit more effort to see them through the fog created by current pop media tech and trends.

Just pointing that out because my folks paid in for a decade and all of it went towards prepaying their payments, none of it counted any extra toward their principal.

No disrespect.

It only goes toward principal if you call and confirm the process for applying payments to principal with your mortgage servicer.

Simply making an extra payment is not a guarantee of paying down principal. Loan verbiage and loan servicer practices vary greatly across the country.

It’s even better than that.

Russia started a war that almost immediately accomplished three things:

1. United the world against Russia.

2. Strengthened the resolve and perceived legitimacy of Ukrainian territorial claims.

3. Crushed the spirit of Russian military

Even if the story about Putin falling down some stairs and shitting himself isn’t true, it’s still a perfect metaphor for this war.

The Russians have unceremoniously shit the bed, then stood up in front of the world, spread their cheeks, and showed us their poopy butthole while wearing their shitstained bedsheets as a “heroic” cape.

It’s both sad, and darkly hilarious at the same time.

Can I be Gregnant?

Bob truly was among the all-time best of us.

We are better as a society thanks to his presence.

Ok.

Why is this your question?

All sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

So, yes.

Edit: also, relevant user name.

100%. An understatement for sure.

He was profoundly eccentric. fascism is among the more tame of his belief systems. Lol.

You are a prime candidate to never hire a Realtor.

You’re paying for experience doing the thing, not the “work” itself.

I’ve had clients that didn’t need me at all, but wanted another set of eyes, even after me explaining exactly why they didn’t need us.

I’ve had other clients who I’ve saved 100k+ worth of mistakes because me and my guys have experience they simply don’t have.

Folks Don’t generally keep track of zoning ordinance changes, basic code conformity, etc. People are also very frequently looking for property that will not, in fact, meet their needs, and don’t realize it until they speak with someone who does know.

10% of folks need no help at all with how simple their needs are. Another 50% could just use a real estate attorney, and have the vast majority of their needs met. In my experience, it’s that remaining 40% that truly benefit from using a realtor.

That said, the act of simply “hiring a realtor” is meaningless unless you are are reasonably convinced the agent has experience in what you are needing. You can hire the best agent in the city, but if you’re buying farmland, this realtor may have minidress about the laws surrounding “usufruct” of the crops currently growing on the land.

A homeowner may be buying out “in the country” to fulfill their dreams of owning chickens, only to find that they’ve purchased a home in a restricted area that doesn’t allow livestock of any sort, regardless of size, while less than a mile a way, it would have been no issue.

A buyer may have no idea that just across the street from their target property, the property tax drops by 2/3 because it’s no longer a historic district.

These are all just quick and dirty examples of where expertise is beneficial. It’s often what you never saw coming that hurts the most.

I assure you, Zillow does nothing a good realtor does, except allow you to see a house and throw some inaccurate numbers at you.

Zillow is fine for a great many people. I personally find Zillow’s numbers to be inaccurate, it’s service to be near non-existent, and to contain a lot of misleading estimates on payments, taxes, etc.

You are correct though. Not everyone needs an agent. Those who do, are wise to seek outside opinions.

Ah. I understood that backwards. I thought you were house hunting and he found an unrepresented property. In that case, it wouldn’t be strange at all.

In this case, he’s already negotiated with the seller (you) for his compensation. He should not be bothering the buyer for anything else.

If he isn’t newish (only a few transaction) or working for a shady broker, this would be unexpected behavior.

It’s worth calling his broker to complain, if he put the deal in jeopardy. If the broker doesn’t make it right, or is dismissive, I would escalate it to the real estate commission.

State real estate commissions don’t fuck around. It is nothing like a police union. One bad apple spoils the bunch, and bad realtors get hit with $10,000 in fines for stuff that’s just standard procedure in other business sectors.

If something was done to hurt your deal, the real estate commission would want to know that. It would also STRONGLY dissuade this realtor from ever fucking with anyone else again. Second offense is usually a lifetime ban, or some huge fine.

Coming from someone with a brokers license: fuck this dude.

Sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt is usually the goal for most groups in power you’d normally be afraid of.

If we trust nothing, uniting against oppression will be impossible. Simply abusing perfect AI reproductions will be enough to have the desired effect: further division.

All we can hope for is symmetrical Development of easily obtainable methods to detect AI generated material.

Was it very sweet?