Tag Archives: real estate

The Apologia Of An Awakening Real Estate Agent

25 May

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Reader “Phil” had the following to say, in response to Thursday’s post, Real Estate Marketers Now Out To Get Your Kids.

His words are an object lesson for real estate industry professionals everywhere (my bold added):

As a licensed real estate agent myself, I would like to suggest a difference between single office agencies and franchise groups. The typical stereotype of a real estate agent is derived from the high flying top 3%. There is no doubt there are some wankers in the industry. The rest that I know are hard working good people who support families and employ staff of 10 to 15 on average. That goes for many of the offices within franchise groups.

Since 2008, I have stood back and looked at the industry a bit differently. I have recognised that most real estate agents have no idea that it is bank credit expansion that causes house prices to rise. Or as Steve Keen explains, actually “growth” in credit expansion.

This is only possible due to legislation allowing private banks to use housing equity as security to create credit. We just continue to do this as that appears to be the way it always was. (IMO housing should be a consumable not an asset).

BTW, hat tip on your recent article exposing those who foster the continuation of the “housing industry” as a financial derivative.

Back to the franchise groups and franchises in general (Parasites!!!). This is not unlike usury or rent seeking. They take franchise fees from hard working small businesses and promote corporate ideals. The LJ Hooker promotion is revolting IMO.

I keep returning to your story of the used car salesman. Most people just keep doing what they know to do to get by or maybe get ahead. We are all preyed on by those who control and promote the FIRE structure.

As one who is now seeing the reality of this I feel a responsibility to speak. Much as you do. I tend to do this even as it makes me an outsider. Strange that huh?

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Real Estate Marketers Now Out To Get Your Kids

23 May

With thanks and a tip of the hat to reader Richo, we will hold our tongue and refrain from railing against the abject greed of our times, the predatory DNA and absence of morality of all in the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sectors, and also from invoking the merits of capital punishment, as we instead merely copy verbatim the following news story from the Herald Sun, and let the words speak for themselves:

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ONE of Australia’s largest real estate agencies is targeting children as young as four as the next generation of home buyers.

LJ Hooker is following in the footsteps of fast food, toy and clothing giants, planting the seeds of brand recognition in very young children.

The company makes no secret that its educational app and dedicated kids website, launched this week, are designed to encourage kids to become future LJ Hooker clients.

Georg Chmiel, LJ Hooker CEO, describes the digital pitch to kids, predominantly aged from four to nine, as an industry first and a clever initiative to raise brand awareness.

“LJ Hooker is successfully building a positive relationship with the next generation of Australian real estate tenants, buyers and sellers,” Mr Chmiel said.

The app and website’s central character Mr Hooker bear – LJ Hooker’s international mascot – could hardly fail to attract kids. He frequents community events throughout Australia, has his own range of merchandise, and Mr Hooker Bear’s suit is available for school hire.

Since it’s launch almost 2500 have signed up for the app, Mr Hooker Bear’s Letter Pop, which is designed to entertain kids, freeing up parents’ time.

“Children attending open for inspections and marketing appraisals are often bored and cranky, now they can have fun with an element of practical learning,” Mr Chmiel said.

“It’s almost like catching two fish with one rod, the app and site address the distraction element with modern technology to keep kids engaged while at the same time building brand awareness in a nice way.”

The app is available for free.

LJ Hooker said it began cultivating brand recongnition in children with the Next Barbie Dream Home campaign last month.

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Marketing experts say brand loyalties can be established as early as age two, and by the time children head off to school, most can recognise hundreds of brand logos.

Digital technology is one of the most desirable marketing mediums to target children as it is part of youth culture, and parents generally do not understand the extent to which kids are being advertised to online.

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Barnaby: The R/E Market In The Bayside Suburbs Does Not Seem To Reflect The Coming Diluvium Apocalypse

4 Jun

Senator Barnaby Joyce writes for the Canberra Times (my emphasis added):

Well, you have just shivered through one of the coldest autumns on record. Where is that cursed button to warm things up a little? But, warming or cooling, there is no doubt that the ”Just say yes” carbon tax campaign has been a welcome circuit breaker to remind people that they just don’t want a carbon tax.

Last night I sauntered down to Kingston and had my usual spaghetti puttanesca and a glass of merlot. The restaurant owner repeated the regular chant on the carbon tax that I hear all the time. ”What is all this garbage about and how much is it going to cost me?” It is not that Labor cannot sell the message it is that there is no message to sell.

It appears the closer you get to the inundation zone of imminent sea rises and harbour views, the higher the fervour for a carbon tax. It is slightly paradoxical that the real estate market in the bay-side suburbs does not seem to reflect the coming diluvium apocalypse.

Now, Ross Garnaut has given a very pure but diligent study on a very peculiar desire. The Green-Labor-Independents Government says ”no we want our own version of the magic climate penicillin” a quarter dose with twice the kick for the feigned ailment. They want to invent their very own version of the theory of Garnaut relativity at odds with what Garnaut states. They must not believe he is competent and relative to the outcome he wants, which is stopping global warming.

Climate change is one issue; the carbon tax is something entirely different. The Labor Party is skewered by its own report. It talks of changing the climate while only partially and opportunistically adhering to its own prophet. The adherents have a very selective interpretation which ultimately turns his whole message to nonsense.

Garnaut has basically said that this is going to hurt and a tax must go on fuel and go on agriculture and be paid for by you. He has argued that the tax should go on petrol after only one year. Watch weaselly politicians who use the word ”initially”, we know now that initially means one year.

It’s the chapter titled ”Better Climate, Better Tax” which is the one which really gets my attention. How does Australia bring around a better climate when not one competent scientist has stated that Australia’s actions will do anything to change the climate? What is better about a proposed tax that you do not currently have? What is better about you being poorer for no purpose? What is better about taking more spare cash out of an economy which fell at a rate not seen since 1991?

If we keep taking away from people the spare cash that keeps them buying coffees, the spare cash that keeps them going out for dinner and the spare cash that keeps them going to the movies, what are all these businesses going to do when patronage dries up?

We can’t change the global climate from the building on top of Capital Hill but we can do irreparable harm to the economy. We can definitely do that. How much oxygen has this issue absorbed while other far more pressing issues are ignored.

We have seen the disgusting and abhorrent images of animal cruelty in Indonesia and this cannot be excused by culture, creed or ignorance. If you are human there must be some sense of empathy that tormenting and torturing a defenceless animal is wrong but instead we have to continue with a debate about cooling the planet from Capital Hill.

There are troops being killed in Afghanistan but we watch Cate Blanchett in an ad being paid for by Get Up, the ACTU, Greenpeace and others telling us that the carbon tax will create jobs, possibly in the taxation department I suppose.

We have a debt that according to Ken Rogoff of Harvard University has grown by the third fastest in the world since 2007 yet we are more intent on eclectic doorstops of past political figures saying how they would be playing now if only they were in the relevant team.

This country cannot keep going on frolics on issues that it can’t do anything about while ignoring those that it can. While we are tilting at windmills, the debt needs to be repaid, we need to earn an income from our exports and people are struggling to afford just the everyday essentials of life.

As usual, Barnaby is right.

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Premier Wen: ‘Latent Risk’ In China’s Banks

5 Mar

From Bloomberg:

Premier Wen Jiabao warned of “latent risk” in China’s banks and pledged to crack down on property speculation as the government faces the consequences of flooding the economy with money to drive growth.

“The domestic economy still faces some prominent problems,” Wen, 67, said in a speech in Beijing to the National People’s Congress, similar to the U.S. State of the Union address. He also cited excess capacity in manufacturing and weak support for rural-income growth.

Wen’s comments reinforce concern that loans made in last year’s record 9.59 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) credit boom may go bad. Harvard University Professor Kenneth Rogoff has said growth could slide to 2 percent from Wen’s 8 percent target within a decade as a debt-fueled bubble collapses..

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Overheating China Can’t Be Cooled

1 Mar

China’s rapidly overheating real estate bubble cannot be cooled, lending further weight to predictions that the Chinese economy will bust inside ten years:

Even among Western analysts who live and work in China, the major role played by municipal governments in fueling China’s increasingly speculative real estate boom is underappreciated. The actions of those local authorities are at the heart of China’s property bubble, and they explain why the central government’s attempts to cool lending and construction are failing.

The key difference between China’s current real estate bubble and the U.S. bubble that popped in 2007 is this: In the U.S., it was individuals and lenders who made overleveraged, speculative bets via subprime mortgages. In China, explained Northwestern University researcher Victor Shih to NPR, the leveraged debt fueling the speculation comes from local governments, which have borrowed trillions of dollars worth of funds from China’s banking system to develop real estate projects in their jurisdictions.

Rudd Labor, Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, RBA Governor Glenn Stevens, and a lazy, blinkered mainstream media can no longer try to blame Barnaby Joyce’s warnings for scaring off the Sino-cyclical angel on which they have pinned all their hopes for economic prosperity.

After all, there is a growing chorus of leading international economists and financiers all around the world who are warning of a China implosion.  Perhaps our talking-head economic commentators, and the EPIC FAILURES currently in charge of the Australian economy, would like to start ridiculing and smearing all of them too?

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