Slashdot Mirror
Unpleasant Surprises for Online Real Estate Buyers
prostoalex writes "Buying expensive items online from the people you've never met without any guarantees on the seller's part might seem a bit risky even for an experienced Internet shopper. The 'hotness' of the real estate investment market apparently influences some cash-heavy investors to look for opportunities online. When the entire transaction is done via a click of the mouse, and the deed for newly bought real estate arrives in the mail, some unsuspecting buyers might discover that a cozy house near the bus line in the middle of a busy street might imply a criminalized neighborhood and proximity to crack house. The New York Times investigates negative experiences of people buying investment real estate online."
"Buffalo has been particularly hard hit by online flipping, as the city's persistent population decline and high foreclosure rates have created a glut of some 20,000 vacant houses."
Lots of fresh water, summer temps don't go above 90, winter temps above 0, sports teams, cheap housing...
I never could understand why Phoenix is gaining population and Buffalo is losing population.
If you buy something as expensive as a house without even bothering to take a look at it beforehand, you can't blame anyone but yourself. This is not a piece of bread -- you can't just shrug and throw it away.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Real estate, of all things, is something that someone should look at first. Is the entire world becoming a shut-in?
i have 50 million of your american dollers stored in bank account.
my bank manager (mr arran) tells me i need an american to sign them over.
if you can help me to withdraw it from bank i will give you 40 percant.
yes, thats right i said 40 percant. you will get a whole 15million american dollers for helping me.
sinerity yours
mr wamo
liqbase
Even a picture isnt enough-- there was a house in our neighborhood where the owner kept over 100 rabbits. With free run of the place. The house looked okay from the outside, maybe worth $260,000. But my friend the real-estate appraiser valued it at -$22000. That's how much it would cost to tear down the house, minus the value of the land.
These speculators are no different than penny stock "investors" ... who could possibly feel sorry for them.
Yeah that would not be so good to have a house on a busy street next to a crack house...or a brothel...or a bar...or anything else other than a house.
Buying items from a reputable, well-tested online company like (for example) Newegg or Amazon is one thing.
Buying collectibles off eBay is one thing.
Buying a big ticket luxury item - ANY such item - cars, real estate, houses, deeds...that's misguided at best unless you live in proximity to the seller and can see it (inspect it) yourself presale. We have a term for people who will buy things like this with full and total trust in the seller. It's called "sucker."
Or, if you're a proponent of our legal system, "plaintiff."
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
If something sounds too good to be true, it most likely is. Why do people stop thinking when greed becomes a factor?
Someone sells you something for FAR less than what it should be worth, provided they're not lying. Bonus question for $1000: Why should they? Would you sell your house without at least getting a rough quote from some online service how much your hut is worth? Hey, we're talking a few 1000 bucks at the very least here, it's not like I'm selling some old junk that might be someone's treasure, a house is a house, and by its very nature, it has value! And everyone, literally everyone, knows that.
So why should you think someone does NOT know that a house is worth more than a few 1000 bucks, especially when it's somewhere in downtown?
Just like with used cars. When the year old car that's been driven only by a cute old granny, always just to church and back goes for less than 1000 bucks, would you buy it?
I wouldn't even buy the story, and certainly not the car!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
from the article:
"Mr. Hoyt said he had repeatedly appealed to eBay officials, asking the company to make specific changes, like informing sellers that they must comply with New York State disclosure laws and requiring a copy of written sales contracts. But Mr. Hoyt said he had received little cooperation from the company.
"What eBay is doing, in my opinion, is immoral," he said. "They have a responsibility to not facilitate activity like this."
Wait a minute, eBay has a seller rating system, eBay has an escrow service, so who in there right mind buys a HOUSE sight unseen, from an unrated or negatively rated seller, without using escrow? I think this is a problem with some people, they make stupid buying decisions and then turn around and want the listing agent (or the government) to take some sort of responsibility for it.
I'm not trying to relieve any of the responsibility for this off unscrupulous sellers (it is in fact immoral to intentionally rip off buyers), however at some point buyers need to have enough common sense to do at least a modicum of due diligence don't you think? Apparently people think that caveat emptor doesn't apply on the Internet, when in fact it's probably the most important consumer protection mechanism, especially when most of the tools you need to do your due diligence are at your fingertips (MLS services, city records, etc..,)
Also from the article, this one IMO is a true "gem"
"Mr. Krug said Mr. Tanner had asked him the same question. "I told him the first thing he did wrong was buy a computer," Mr. Krug said."
Amen Mr. Krug, Amen.
They don't tell you you're going to be across the street from a crack house. Yeah but if you get 3 more crack houses you can then upgrade to a bordello, and that's where the money is...
Honestly, the same issues this article is shedding light on apply to any major purchase you make online. A lot of cars being sold online have small defects in them, they state the cars year and mileage, but fail to mention that it was abused for several years and doesn't quite shift properly, etc. Caveat Emptor applies to every major situation - and it's harder to be fully aware of what you're purchasing when you're riding 100% on how someone else describes it.
LINUX ONLINE POKER: Linux Poker
Why do people seem to think that buying on the net is that much easier?
No matter how you're buying something, you need to do some research into what exaclly you're buying.
I thought they were talking about Second Life or some MMORPG.
Right up until I read the article anyway.
Umm, can I submit a response later?
And I worry about buying a $20 item on eBay based on a description and a photo......
http://www.busyweather.com/
I always thought the rules for buying online is "Never spend more than you are willing to lose" unless you would trust the website with your life.
Hell these guys got a house, they could of just got a garden shed put on illegal land or fake deeds. May not be the super nice advertised place hey said, but they could at least give it to a charity working with these type of people (read : homeless, prostitutes, etc.) and let them turn it into a safe house of sorts to supply food to people if nothing else.
I like muppets.
De4r Customorbe:
....
Your Payp01 account has been hadding suspcicious "stuff" go on, please to make your correction!
Update your info
---------------- skip ahead to site
Please enter your credit card number, security number, expiry, date of birth, mothers maiden name, social security, ATM pin and your home address for our databases!
Suprisingly those still catch people.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Well, the buyer can just turn around and resell it on eBay -- hopefully recouping their loss. One idiot can sell to another, right?
But I'm concerned by this sentence: "The practice, local government leaders say, is destabilizing already weakened urban neighborhoods by displacing legitimate investment." That is a real problem. Perhaps it should be illegal to purchase a house unless you sign something stating that you (or your legal representative) has seen the place in person. I mean, you cannot legislate intelligence, but you might be able to erect a few barriers to stupidity.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
A fool and his money are soon parted...
as well they should be, fools shouldn't be allowed to keep it.
By CAUCASIAN, I assume you mean the typical neo-Nazi WASP credential -- in which case I would argue that you are wrong. I worked for a city development office that put out about a 100+ 8-1/2x11 book on neighborhood crime statistics. When we moved to Baltimore, one of the first things I did was go to the city hall and ask for a similar set of stats on their neighborhoods. They looked at me like I was a martian, or at least a leftist agitator, so, in a moment of inspiration, I asked where the Jewish neighborhoods were. THAT they knew. Haven't regretted it. And in the subsequent move to our current city we did the same thing. It's great. We can watch the crime on TV from both the inner city _and_ the exurban white welfare meth lab trailer parks and apartment complex suburbs. In contrast, our very much inside-the-beltway, but not "inner" city, neighborhood public school has the highest test scores in the state.
So do Jews count as CAUCASIAN in your equation, Dudster?
> This really surprises anyone? I thought terms like "ideal for a DYIer!" have always meant "about to collapse" ?
It surprises many people. There are plenty of people who, when faced by something that looks like a bargain, or looks like they're getting a good deal & ripping off the buyer will jump at a business chance without thinking things through, because the scammer has successfully planted an image in the buyer/victim's own mind. Imaginations are a powerful thing, and work against the victim.
A relative of mine (no relation apart from by marriage) came across his first nigerian scammer email a couple of years ago. He spent days thinking over the options and planning how to rip nigerianscammerguy off of all his money, instead of just getting 10% of the $50million promised.
I gave the guy a handy hint, advised him it's a scam and these guys will just try to take money from him and keep promising but never delivering. That's when he said he knew it must be a scam, and unveiled some 'foolproof' plan to get the money from the nigerianscammerguy but not reveal who he was or send them much money at all.
Eventually, he ended up losing about $2500 to the scammers getting played right into their game. Why? While he knew it was a scam, he made the stupid mistake of believing the $50 million actually existed. It clouded his vision, and all he could see was a mental image of his bank statement with 7 digits in the black. Same with real estate, the buyers make an image in their mind of what they're buying, and don't lose it - even buyers of property who get to inspect it will see what they want to, unless there are major differences between description and reality.
I am contacting you with this fabulous business offer. I am selling a property at a bargain price of $50000!. I have prepared some pictures here.
Yeah, got hit by the unexpected shipping charges...
I always wondered where people that won the powerball spent the money.
I'm sorry, but anyone buying a HOUSE on the internet obviously isn't spending money they worked very hard for...
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I repeat the previous sentiments: buying property on eBay w/o escrow, what are they thinking?
I do web work for a realtor who sometimes sells commercial properties (apartments etc.) to clients who've never seen what they're buying in person. Then again, he's with one of the larger agencies and does the actual purchase through traditional channels.
Plus, with the virtual walkthroughs I'm doing, the client has a pretty good idea of what they're buying beforehand. So yes, buying properties "online" is possible, but the client needs to use their brains a bit when choosing who they work with.
Just for the concept, I still regret not being able to say I got a new car for $3999.99 in 1989 when a local dealership was dumping Yugos. Same thing for some of the stuff on ebay. How could a piece of that resort timeshare outside Kwa Zulu Natal not be worth $1500?
Well, let us count the ways, right?
If you want to get a good overview of what you are buying, try typing the address in Google Earth and then see what lies around it.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
But, no one has suggested using Google maps/earth. That's what I would do even if I were buying locally.
I was once on a trainging flight and as I passed over this really expensive neighborhood, I saw a quarry not more than a few hundred yards away, tucked in a very heavily forested area. I'm sure after they spent mega$$ on their McMansions, they were probably surprised by the blasting and all of the trucks going by.
Now, I'd make sure there wasn't any surprises like that if I were buying a home.
Saturday is April 1. Slashdot will be shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.
If it had been contaminated with toxic waste (e.g. from a meth lab), he could have ended up owing thousands or millions to the government for clean up costs.
Does anyone else notice that those with extreme reacist views never have the moral courage to put their names to them.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Some online real estate deals are, for the most part, safe.
For example, wilderness purchases if you should have the inclination to build a getaway cabin. Granted, there are no structures most of the time, it's just the land.
Another example would be buying fringe properties. If you believe that a company or a city will eventually want to expand into a particular area, you might want to buy the land if you have the chance to get in early enough. You would have to look out for potential immenent domain problems though. A friend of mine inherited basically a huge field when his parents died in a small town in central Arizona. About 3 years ago, some company wanted to build a retirement village with a golf course. They paid him 7 Million for a stupid field. Sweet!
Other potential online purchases would be castles. Yes, that's right, castles. There are dozens and dozens of mansions and castles that sit in what was formerly East Germany. The original owners have simply abandoned them and the local authorities auction off the properties. Many times they go relatively cheap, like a couple thousand dollars cheap, if you don't mind the renovation costs. They can make great vacation spots or quiet retirement villas.
Just out of curiosity, I cruised over to ebay and searched for real estate in Buffalo. Surprise, surprise, a 'Mr. Burt' is listing a fixer upper for a very low price. Coincidence? I don't think so. I was going to insert something here about not buying sight unseen, but then I sat back and thought about it and realized that I might very well have done the same thing. Dropping 3K to own a bit of real estate doesn't seem like a bad flyer. How bad could you get hurt? This was actually a wake up call for me.
Still .. beautiful plumage!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Idiots. Fancy not even researching the area where a house is!
I don't feel very sorry for these people. They should have known better.
OTOH the people 'flipping' these houses aren't exactly nice people either, and seem little better than scammers. Clearly sales of houses online should be subject to the same laws as selling them elsewhere - i.e,. the description has to be accurate, as the article says.
He should be thankful he is only $30,000 down on the situation. A lot, but not life-changing. If you can't afford the risk, then don't take it.
Based on the boom in online shopping, and the boom in American's fat asses, I'd have to say resoundingly, YES.
I don't respond to AC's.
The New York Times investigates negative experiences of people buying investment real estate online.
So people bought real estate without ever seeing it and some of them did not get what they thought they were buying? Gee, who would have thought that would happen? Probably the same people that are working with a Nigerian representative to get money out of that country. What better place to park a lot of money they will be getting soon, property purchased via the Internet.
Such people should have their computers confiscated and be barred from using electronic devices. These are the same people that jam forks into toasters and plug to many things into a single outlet.
Wait a minute, eBay has a seller rating system, eBay has an escrow service, so who in there right mind buys a HOUSE sight unseen, from an unrated or negatively rated seller, without using escrow?
The fact that you qualified this post with "if you had used eBay's escrow services, or bought from a highly rated seller" proves that you're one of those suckers Barnum was supposedly talking about. Trusting eBay for any kind of purchase is just stupid. I haven't known anybody who HAS NOT gotten scammed from eBay at least once.
I don't respond to AC's.
I swear the break / brake typos were not deliberate on a conscious level. Not enough coffee for conscious levels yet.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Buying a house site unseen
Accidentally perfect statement.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Caveat Emptor
A Fool and His Money are Soon Parted
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public
SEC v. Zandford (01-147)
The guy spent 10k. On THREE houses.
A deal like that, one would expect them to be on the edge of an active volcano.
At this point, you level those houses and rebuild on the property. 3k doesn't get you a house, it gets you land with house shaped debris on it.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
"When did you ever go somewhere beautiful and see photos of cities with the slogan "get away from it all - go to London", for instance?"
I don't know about London, but New York city is marketed very effectively as a place to go to have fun. And, while I have no desire to live in Manhattan, the property values demonstrate that plenty of people like it permanently.
Also, Las Vegas makes losts money telling people to go there to "get away."
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
That's not imagination, that's just "greed", plain and simple. The 80s seem to have helped people forget that greed is generally a Very Bad Thing (one of the seven deadly sins and all...)
Which is why I always buy property on the Moon on the side facing the Earth, never on the farside!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Really, before you dropped a few thousand on a house you had never seen, wouldn't you at least
look at it in Google Maps?
search the local papers for stories mentioning the street, streets nearby, the neighborhood?
call someone who lived near to it - maybe a business - and ask what they thought of the place?
check any online information from the city/county/state - assessed values, etc?
I know jack about real estate, and I would be doing those in the first ten minutes after the thought to invest came to me.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
People spending hundreds of thousands of dollars with sellers of unknown reliability on land and houses they've never seen sometimes get ripped off.
Film at 11.
If this were fark.com, I'd be adding a pic of a certain reporter with bad hair.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I just bought a house. (not online) One word of advice.. even if you see the property, hire a property inspector. A good one will tell you about all kinds of things like leaking plumbing in the crawl space, dry rot in the roof sheeting, and wireing splices not up to code. I bought my place knowing ahead of time one of the underground sprinklers was broken, the hot tub didn't work, a bad splice in the attic (twisted and taped), and the sub panel for the shop didn't meet code (3 wire service without a seprate ground in a sub panel is not permitted). It is true the house had a few things needing fixing, but the inspection report got $8,000 knocked off due to the extra expenses needed to bring it up to code in addition to the seller having an electrician update the panel.
Use the online yellow pages and find a home inspector. They will provide photos of everyting from the condition of the gutters to the torn screen window, to the rotting bottem panel on the garage door. It was worth every cent of the $750 I paid for the inspection.
Get a licensed home inspector.
The truth shall set you free!
I love shopping online for many items, mostly 'data' type stuff (software, books, CDs, DVDs, etc), but I'm surprised there are people who actually make serious real estate purchases online-only. I won't even buy a pair of jeans online... Some things you just need to see/try in person!
Don't buy property you couldn't see yourself ever living in.
....for Dutch online real estate buyers :)
:)
go to www.funda.nl (the country's biggest real estate website) and search for 'konijn' (Dutch for 'rabbit')
Suprisingly those still catch people.
Personally, I've always thought that what has the greatest potential would be to operate an entirely legitimate site that offers a genuine service which requires a user name and password, and then go out and hit the major sites (banking, eBay, stock, etc) and see how many people registered with the same username and password there too. I'll admit to having done this in the past, right up until the day that a site I'd used went bankrupt and a week later, another site with a similar premise was up and emailed me that everything was set up for my profile with them including my old password. Now it's possible that this was a case of the old company renaming itself after bankruptcy and trying again, but I suspect it's just a matter of all of my login information being part of the company assets that were bought.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
The hope of getting something for nothing fuels a lot of industries. Gambling (including lotteries) seems most obvious.
How many people have lost more than $2500 (net) in, say, two years of gambling?
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
But at least working with an agent in most states you have specific legal protections that are lacking in online transactions. It's a lot easier to take action in most states against a crooked agent than a crooked seller. Most times they're mandated to have E&O, the real estate agent's professional liability insurance. State oversight boards are notoriously brutal and inflexible. Real estate agents had such a bad reputation that many states laid the hammer down. As a spurned buyer your chances of getting justice from the state real estate commission or the courts are extremely high if your agent might reasonably have known about a potential problem.
The buyer's agent normally gets their cut from the seller. 90% of the time it doesn't cost you anything to have an agent if you're a buyer. In some areas buyer's agents charge up front fees, so ask first.
Truthfully, even if I had to pay them out of my pocket I'd still use a real estate agent for buying property, especially if it's out of town. If something is really wrong they've got a fiduciary duty to inform you about anything material to the value of the property. If they don't they're risking their license and an E&O claim against their broker. I've found the combination of internet research and a good local agent to be the best combination for my property purchases. Trust but verify what they're telling me.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"Diversity" means one thing : CRIME and WELFARE
Interesting that you put "diversity" in quotes.
When we moved to our current apartment my wife looked up some crime stats for various neighborhoods.
With 100 as the national average:
Some areas of Newark, NJ were 400 or more.
The small town where I went to high school (about 2000 pop, 50 miles from nearest Mc Donald's) was about 25 or so, IIRC. The town has significant Mexican (ex-pat) and Navajo populations.
The town where our apartment is, rated 4. That's right, single digit, 4.
This is the most diverse place I've ever lived, or visited. On my short block (duplexes and single-family homes) there are at least 6 native languages.
My daughter's first grade class had a variety of Christians along with Jews, Muslims, Buddists, and I don't know what religion the kid from Mongolia follows. The school has maybe 20 students that would qualify for free or reduced school lunch.
When I'm in church on Sunday I talk to people from Nigeria, Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Germany, Philipines, Eastern Europe, etc.
We happened to drive through one of those very high crime areas of Newark and my daughter had a question. "Why is everyone the same color?"
Result: In my (perhaps not statistically significant experience) it is the lack of diversity that has a positive correlation with crime and welfare. So, I think it's interesting that you put "diversity" in quotes.
The trouble is that I doubt that I'll ever be able to afford to buy a home in the town where I live.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
From TFA: This might help explain why Greg Tanner, who says he has a knack for "turning one dollar into two dollars," is now more than $30,000 in debt.
Sounds like it should be the other way around. He's doing great turning two dollars into one.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
They deserve everything they get if they can't be bothered to check out what they're buying in person.
Unless, of course, the land turns out to be an environmental preserve, preserved wetlands, home to an endangered species, contaminated by toxic waste, etc...
Yeah, perfectly safe.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Nothing new. Just look at what happened to people in the famous stock crash. They were "speculating," buying shares with the money they expected to get and when the market crashed, they were toast.
Personally, I try to avoid debt as much as possible. I bought my car outright. I don't carry balances on my credit card. If I can't afford to buy something outright, I take a good hard look at whether I'd actually need it. Most everyone in my family works this way, supposedly a legacy of my great-grandfather losing everything in the Crash and passing on the wisdom to his children. We've been lucky enough to be prosperous enough to maintain things this way (I know that there's a good chance I won't be able to buy my house outright as my parents did, for instance), but it's also a matter of good sense, living within our means.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
If you purchase a house within your budget, make a decent down payment, and live in it for a few years to build up some more equity, then for many people a house can be the best investment they'll ever make.
I bought a 6 acre freshwater island sight-unseen on-line two years ago. Of course I did call around to make sure that the local planning office knew of the island and would give me a building permit for it. I also checked google satellite imagery to check on the overall shape and location of the island before I bought it. But I had 24 hours to do all of the research and make all of the connections before I signed on the dotted line.
Result? In my case I couldn't be happier. It is exactly what I was hoping for (well, except for the really bad case of poison ivy I got there last summer...) Bottom line: Use *all* of the technology you have access to if you have to make a decision like that. Even antiquated ones like the telephone.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
However my aunt is a real estate agent and after a few years of flying cross-country for vacations wondered if her investment money wouldn't be more productive elsewhere. So almost on a lark she listed on an online auction site, no commitment to sell. And the bidding went insane!
So she called up Mom, confessed what she had done, then agreed that if the silly numbers were true they'd sell. They ended up having a prospective buyer fly up from Texas and stay in the house for a few days. The buyer loved the place, made an offer that was jaw-dropping by local real estate values, and the place was sold.
However, the buyer was from Texas, i.e. a US citizen. This hadn't been an issue for my mother, after 40-some years in the US she has always remained Canadian, but they did warn the buyer they'd have to look into local laws, particularly as they were dog-breeders and planning to use the barns for kennels, etc.
(By the way, Nova Scotia is cheap and trying hard to make itself attractive to retirees; if you're looking for a vacation place or to retire it's a great place to consider!)
Anyway, within a few years the new buyer had to sell. They'd not done their homework and had instead simply moved and started selling dogs. Apparently when informed they'd have to leave the country and immigrate the legal way they didn't find a peer online to sell the house to and instead sold at a rate far more in keeping with the local norms, and thus took a complete bath on the whole process.
So my family had a GREAT experience, others might not do so well...
Oh, and there's my buddy Richard, who buys a new eMachine PC on sale every year, images it's drive, pulls out and replaces the parts he doesn't care for, then a year later sets it back up the way he got it and sells it online, every time for more then he'd bought it for a year earlier! There really is another sucker online every minute!
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I can sum this up in one word...
DUH!
- Bill
>A homeowner will have to pay assorted taxes, upkeep, and fill the house with stuff.
Unless you are living in your parents basement for free, then everywhere you live you have to pay for...I rather be paying paying some of that back to myself.
>Overall if you're honest with yourself, a house is just about the worst vehicle for an investment there is.
I strongly disagree here and I know I won't convince you, but even if you're right it IS still an investment, whereas your apartment is only a money sink. You will never ever see a return on your monthly bill to rent.
>Being in debt your whole life is not much of a plan.
Whole life? Not if you're smart and pay off principle early and often...and while you are doing that you can take a nice deductible of your taxes.
>And, since housing always works in bubbles, all the other houses went up as well, so even if your house is worth a million so is every other house
Most people don't sell their house so they can move into the next door neighbor's house...
>Granted, I have little space for my hobbies, but I enjoy living frugally in a major city.
I have plenty of space and I pay less in mortgage then some of my friends pay for a 1 bedroom appartment. Oh and because my mortgage is low I can make other investments in addition to my house...That whole not having all your eggs in one basket thing.
More like 633,600 feet.
caveat emptor, dumbass!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Thinking about spending $100,000? Spend $200 for a plane ticket to check the place out first.
True, especially since if you sell your house and you want to live in the same city, clearly you'll pay more for your next house, and any profit you've made gets eaten up by the new house.
Really no difference between this and the Florida swamplands that people were sold many years ago. The "online" part just makes it a little easier to reach out to the pigeons.
JoAnn
Do however be wary of housing inspectors recommended to you by your real estate agent; they may not have much of an interest in making you aware of things that might threaten or delay the transaction.
"I know that there are people that claim to believe in moral relativism. I know that many actually have talked themselves into believing it, against all logic."
I know people who actually believe in moral absolutism -- people who actually have convinced themselves to have blanket faith in something that defies logic at its very foundation.
Not to be too snarky -- but faith in moral absolutes is exactly the same as faith in religion (often intertwined), or even creationism. It is the belief in undemonstrable, untestable universal postulates that is totally illogical, IMO.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
That's the way that the human mind works. Once it believes something, or decides to do something, it takes energy to move it off its current track. Sometimes lots of energy.
We feel emotions about things that have to do with our well being; part of their function is to give us behioral options when thinking doesn't work too well, and in fact they preclude effective thinking. For example when somebody jumps out at us with a knife, we react with fear or anger, which is better than considering our options. If we tried to consider our options we'd probably fail, until we managed to calm ourselves. One property of strong emotional states is that we just don't assimilate new information while in their grip. Researchers call this period in which strong emotion sustains itsef by reducing your ability to perceive or use new information a "refractory period".
Your story strikes me as a classic example of this phenomenon, and in this case the emotion was greed. It's easy enough in the light of cold reason to see that nobody with 50 million in cash needs to scam $2500 from some anonymous Internet user. Once in the grip of a strong emotion, it's much harder than it sounds to reason this out because strong emotion by it's nature deranges the reasoning faculties. This person may normally be too intelligent to be fooled by a scam like this, if it were presented as something happening to a somebody else.
It's probably not be true that you can't cheat an honest man, but it is certainly much easier to cheat a greedy one.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That is true if you stick to the payment plan the bank lays out, but any payments over that go straight to principal which decreases the interest you have to pay and the length of time it takes to pay off the loan.
I forget the exact formula but one example is for a monthly payment of $370...if you pay $400 per month you save 84 monthly payments of $370 with a net savings in interest of $22,000+. Of course if you pay more principal you'll save more in interest.
Another bonus of owning is that you can actively have some control on the value of your investment. Simply by taking good care of your house and making small improvements can increase the selling price of your house, while at the same time (obviously) increasing your own quality of life.
Well, let's see...
Folks, if you're going to invest in real property, as with many things in life, get a professional or two on your side. Hire your own real estate broker, home inspector and contractor. Your profit margin may be smaller. So small that deals like this don't make sense economically. But if just one of these deals goes south, as this one did, it will cost you 3 or 4 more deals that work out just to break even. Having your own set of licenses, bonded professionals will ensure that at most 1 in 20 deals turns out to be a lemon.
A few hundred dollars spent on an independent home inspector would have saved this guy tens of thousands. Then again, the seller probably would have argued against or just plain refused to allow an inspection. Then again, if a seller tries to stop an inspection DON'T BUY. How obvious is that?
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
That's brilliant. Do you remind him of it at family gatherings? "And my cousin, Bob - that's him over there - actually lost money to these scammers! What a doofus!"
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
be wary of housing inspectors recommended to you by your real estate agent
Good point. Most important is to check them out first regardless of where you find them. Check the BBB. Check refrences. A good one is worth every penny.
The truth shall set you free!
i'm shocked anyone was stupid enough to send thousands of dollars for items they've never seen in person.
I bought a car on ebay once. No money was sent until I actually flew there and had the seller pick me up from the airport in the car. I checked it out that nite and it was fine, and i drove it home the following day.
30,000 miles later and the car's still great, hasnt needed any repairs.
I say "Caveat emptor", I'm tired of people and the courts defending stupid people who do stupid things.
I love the quotes from some of these people!
""You get lulled into a false sense of security with the name eBay, then get scammed in a big way," she said. "If it wasn't eBay, I wouldn't have gone ahead with it.""
" "I told him the first thing he did wrong was buy a computer," Mr. Krug said."
LOL! yes, it's the computer's fault!!
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Seems to me, as I recall, when everyone wants to do it and it gets real easy to do, the end is near and the bubble has burst. Is stuff like this (buying real estate sight unseen over the internet, for God's sake)a sign that the real estate has burst? My answer would be yes. When people are so anxious to buy, sight unseen, with the feeling that they can only make money, the end is near. Hold onto your pocketbooks and wallets!
Don't worry, it's completely SFW :)
They didn't say "only buy from established, known companies".
They said that when you *do* bbuy from other companies, don't be surprised if you lose your money.
It's a risk. The problem is that we live in a society that doesn't want to acknowledge, or even allow, risks. Risks aren't necessarily bad. Sometimes taking them is the best thing you can do.
But be alert, determine the risk, and decide if it's worth it to you.