#Multiple people who go insane /pos over my old man

[questionablealibi]

Posting this silly doodle separately 👀

Heres the link to the post i made that it's related to ^^

[dangermousie]

Heelo mousie! Love your blog! Do you mind recommending some of your favourite Chinese BL novels or shows?

I've seen the untamed and read it. I'm currently reading heaven's official blessing and I saw the donghua. Anything other than these two?

Awww, thank you!

Novels: I am gonna be lazy and literally copy/paste the entire danmei section of my top 10 web novels post (except MXTX’s stuff since you are already reading it.) Let me know if you need help finding any of these.

Lord Seventh - I am only partway through this so far, but it’s already on the list because it’s smart and somehow intense AND laid-back (not sure how this works, but it does) and is honestly just a really really solid and smart period novel, with the OTP a cherry on top of a narrative sundae. Plus, I love the concept of MC deciding he is not going for his supposedly fated love - he’s tried for six lifetimes, always with disaster, and he’s just plain done and tired. When he opens his life in his seventh reincarnation and sees the person he would have given up the world for, he genuinely feels nothing at all. (Spoiler - his OTP is actually a barbarian shaman this time around, thank you Lord!)

Golden Stage - my perfect comfort novel. Probably the least angsty of any danmei novel on this list (which still means plenty angsty :P) It also has a dedicated, smart OTP that is an OTP for the bulk of the book - I think you will notice that in most of the novels in this list, I go for “OTP against the world” trope - I can’t stand love triangles and the same. Anyway, Fu Shen, is a famous general whose fame is making the emperor   antsy. When he gets injured and can’t walk any more, the emperor gladly recalls him and marries him off to his most faithful court lackey, the head of sort of secret police, Yan Xiaohan. The emperor intends it both  as a check on the general and a general spite move since the two men   always clash in court whenever they meet. But not all is at is seems. They used to be  friends a long time ago, had a falling out, and one of the loveliest  parts of the novel is them finding their way to each other, but there is  also finding the middle path between their two very different  philosophies and ways of being, not to mention solving a conspiracy or  dozen, and putting a new dynasty on the throne, among other things. It always makes me think, a little, of “if Mei Changsu x Jingyan were canon.”

Sha Po Lang - if you like a lot of fantasy politics and world-building and steampunk with your novels, this one is for you. This one is VERY plot-heavy with smart, dedicated characters and a deconstruction of many traditional virtues - our protagonist Chang Geng, a long-lost son of the Emperor, is someone who wants to modernize the country but also take down the current emperor his brother for progress’ sake and the person he’s in love with is the general who saved him when he was a kid who is nominally his foster father. Anyway, the romance is mainly a garnish in this one, not even a big side dish, but the relationship between two smart, dedicated, deadly individuals with very different concepts of duty is fascinating long before it turns romantic. And if you like angst, while overall it’s not as angsty as e.g., Meatbun stuff, Chang Geng’s childhood is the stuff of nightmares and probably freaks me out more than anything else in any novel on this list, 2ha included.

To Rule In a Turbulent World (LSWW) - gay Minglan. No seriously. This is how I think of it. it’s a slice of life period novel with fascinating characters and  setting that happens to have a gay OTP, not a romance in a period  setting per se and I always prefer stories where the romance is not the only thing that is going on. It’s meticulously written and smart and deals with  character development and somehow makes daily minutia fascinating. Our   protagonist, You Miao, is the son of a fabulously wealthy merchant,   sent to the capital to make connections and study. As the story starts, he sees his friend’s  servants beating someone to death, feels bad, and buys him because, as  we discover gradually and organically, You Miao may be wealthy and  occasionally immature but he is a genuinely good person. The person he buys is a barbarian from beyond the wall, named   Li Zhifeng. It’s touch and go if the man will survive but eventually he does and You Miao, who by then has to return home, gives him his papers  and lets him go. However, LZF decides to stick with You Miao instead, both  out of sense of debt for YM saving his life and because he genuinely  likes him (and yet, there is no instalove on either of their parts, their bodies have fun a lot quicker than their souls.) Anyway, the two  take up farming, get involved in  the imperial exams and it’s the life of prosperity and peace, until an invasion happens and things go rapidly to hell. This is so nuanced, so smart (smart people in this actually ARE!) and has secondary characters who are just as complex as the mains (for example, I ended up adoring YM’s friend, the one who starts the plot by almost beating LZF to death for no reason) because the novel never forgets that few people are all villain. There is a lovely character arc or two - watching YM grow up and LZF thaw - there is the fact that You Miao is a unicorn in web novels being laid back and calm. This whole thing is a masterpiece.

Stains of Filth (Yuwu) - want the emotional hit of 2ha but want to read something half its length? Well, the author of 2ha is here to eviscerate you in a shorter amount of time. This has the beautiful world-building, plot twists that all make sense and, at the center of it all, an intense and all-consuming and gloriously painful relationship between two generals - one aristocratic loner Mo Xi, and the other gregarious former slave general Gu Mang. Once they were best friends and lovers, but when the novel starts, Gu Mang has long turned traitor and went to serve the enemy kingdom and has now been returned and Mo Xi, who now commands the remnants of his slave army, has to cope with the fact that he has never been able to get over the man who stabbed him through the heart. Literally. This novel has a gorgeously looping structure, with flashbacks interwoven into present storyline. There is so much love and longing and sacrifice in this that I am tearing up a bit just thinking of it. If you don’t love Mo Xi and Gu Mang, separately and together, by the end of it, you have no soul.

The Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2ha/erha) - if you’ve been following my tumblr for more than a hot second, you know my obsession with this novel. Honestly, even if I were to make a list of my top 10 novels of any kind, not just webnovels, this would be on the list. It has everything I want - a complicated, intricate plot with an insane amount of plot twists, all of which are both unexpected and make total sense, a rich and large cast of characters, a truly epic OTP that makes me bawl, emotional intensity that sometimes maxes even me out and so much character nuance and growth. Also, Moran is my favorite web novel character ever, hands down.

Anyway, the plot (or at least the way it first appears) is that the evil emperor of the cultivation world, Taxian Jun, kills himself at 32 and wakes up in the body of his 16 year old self, birth name Moran. Excited to get a redo, Moran wants to save his supposed true love Shimei, whose death the last go-around pushed him towards evil. He also wants to avoid entanglement with Chu Wanning, his shizun and sworn enemy in past life. And that’s all you are best off knowing, trust me. The only hint I am going to give is oooh boy the mother of all unreliable narrators has arrived!

The novel starts light and funny on boil the frog principle - if someone told me I would be full bawling multiple times with this novel, I’d have thought they were insane, but i swear my eyes hurt by the end of it. I started out being amused and/or disliking the mains and by the end I would die for either of them.

The Wife is First - OK, this one did not make my top 10 web novels but it’s a sweet, fun gay cottagecore fest. Our ML, a royal prince, and his spouse, a smart if delicate aristocrat, keep house, eat noodles, play with their pet tiger, make out and spoil each other rotten, while occasionally fighting battles and outwitting their court enemies. It’s so very mellow. That couple redefines low drama - they are both nice and functional and use their brains. It’s as if a nice jock and a nice nerd got together and then proceeded to be wholesome all over the place.

I mean, the set up could be dramatic - our ML the prince, lost his fight for the throne and is about to be killed. The only person who stayed loyal to him is his arranged husband the aristocrat guy who ML never treated nicely since he resented marrying him (marrying a man in that world is done to remove someone from the ability to inherit the throne.) And yet the husband stood by him not out of love but beliefs in loyalty blah blah. Anyway, he transmigrates back into the past right after their wedding night and is all “I got a second chance OMG! I don’t want the throne what is even the point? I want to live a good long life and treat the only person who stood by me really well!” And he proceeds to do so to the shock of the aristocrat who had a very unpleasant wedding night and generally can tell the man he just married would rather eat nails than be married to him. But soon enough (no seriously, it’s not many chapters at all) he believes the prince is sincere blah blah and then  they get together and they pretty much become cottagecore goals.

In terms of dramas, I only do period dramas (or novels) so I am not the person to be able to recommend any modern BLs. There is a flood of upcoming (hopefully) period BL dramas but it’s relatively thin on the ground now. The two I will recommend is Word of Honor (which is AMAZING) and Winter Begonia (which I just started watching but which owns me already.) I have a tag for both - the one for the former is huge and I cannot recommend either strongly enough. I’ve heard good things about The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, but I am not big on mysteries so haven’t watched it for myself.

In terms of the upcoming BLs, the ones I am most looking forward to are Immortality and Winner Is King, but The Society of the Four Leaves also looks promising.

[quasithinking]

Gravity’s Rainbow: Part XIII

If you were a reader thinking "I wonder what The White Visitation looks like and one compelling story about the patients who used to be housed there" then this is the section you've been waiting for! Because it begins with those things! In the story about the patient who escapes from The White Visitation when it used to be solely a place to house the insane, we learn that the Lord of the Sea has been named Bert. This might be important later. Try to remember it's a Pynchon novel. Every weird bit with a general eating shit directly from a woman's ass or some guy jerking off on an encoded war missive is probably important! The White Visitation slowly became more than a mental hospital as the war began. The new military occupants' first piece of business was to set up a broadcasting station to broadcast paranoid thoughts into Germany on a constant basis; it's why The White Visitation was chosen: high on a cliff overlooking the sea and facing the Continent. It was the perfect place to beam wireless paranoia directly at the German people. A BBC broadcaster named Myron Grunton took up the job. And being wireless, his paranoid programs also infiltrated the dreams and daily life of the locals. How could it not? Paranoia isn't exactly a domesticated and controllable entity. Myron's broadcasts became the first iteration of Project Black Wing. The idea of Project Black Wing began when Pirate brought back intel on a group of ex-colonial Africans—the Hereros—now living in Germany and involved in a secret weapons program for the War. What better subject to fire up paranoia among the Germans than the possibility of a race war brewing, based on the Hereros' vengeance for Germany's colonial and genocidal treatment of them back in Africa in the early 1900s? They named them the Schwarzkommando and they broadcasted, continuously, descriptions of the possible (probable!) danger of their discontent. Moving on from Project Black Wing, also headquartered at The White Visitation is our Pavlovian and his dogs, Pointsman. As the War is nearing its end and victory is in sight, Pointsman grows more and more desperate and disillusioned. His experiments have not provided him with any material to make his name known; the War, while being an apt conduit for funding, turned out to not be the ideal situation for Pavlovian ideas. And he knows that when the War ends, so will his revenue. This is why he is so desperate to get his hands on Tyrone Slothrop and his bomb predicting boners. It's hard to show how making dogs drool can be turned to usefulness in the war effort. But figuring out the cause and effect, discovering the stimulus present to give a man's penis the ability to predict where a rocket will fall, how can that be denied by the people parceling out the money?! Pointsman's biggest obstacle to more funding is Brigadier Pudding. "Ernest Pudding was brought up to believe in a literal Chain of Command, as clergymen of earlier centuries believed in the Chain of Being. The newer geometries confuse him. His greatest triumph on the battlefield came in 1917, in the gassy, Armageddonite filth of the Ypres salient, where he conquered a bight of no man's land some 40 yards at its deepest, with a wastage of only 70% of his unit. He was pensioned off around the beginning of the Great Depression—went to sit in the study of an empty house in Devon, surrounded by photos of old comrades, none of whose gazes quite met one's own, there to go at a spot of combinatorial analysis, that favorite pastime of retired Army officers, with a rattling intense devotion." That's Pudding. Pynchon adds more that evocative opening description of Pudding which is well worth reading but my goal isn't to transcribe the entirety of the novel here! I'm just trying to come to an understanding of what is happening in every section of this book. That's not going to be easy because I already feel like I've failed with the Slothrop's Sodium Amytal hallucination. One of the great things about reading a 1973 Thomas Pynchon book in 2020 is that I have the Internet at my disposal. So when Pynchon says something like "Maud Chilkes, who looks from the rear rather like Cecil Beaton's photograph of Margot Asquith, sits dreaming of a bun and a cup of tea," I can simply Google "Cecil Beaton's photograph of Margot Asquith" and voila:

Maybe, for some reason, I'd have already been familiar with this if I'd read the book in 1973. But I doubt it! Unless there was some big Cecil Beaton revival that year.

Whether or not readers of Gravity's Rainbow in 1973 would have recognized this image, it's beyond doubt that 80 year old Brigadier Pudding would have used it as a point of comparison in 1944. He probably jerked off to that image on multiple occasions as a wee lad of 63. The point of Pudding's mini-biography in his introduction is to point out that he's not really happy being in charge of doling out money to a bunch of maniacs who nobody would have thought twice about pre-War but he's too old and set in his outlook to be of any serious use to other parts of the war effort. Here, have a line that broke my heart: "In the ARF wing, the stolen dogs sleep, scratch, recall shadowy smells of humans who may have loved them, listen undrooling to Ned Pointsman's oscillators and metronomes." It's just one line so it only brought me to the brink of weeping as opposed to the section on the Dodos and the other section on the Hereros' plans for generational suicide. And now we get into discussions of Pavlovian theory. It's not as confusing as Alan Moore's Lucia James chapter in Jerusalem (I mean, what is? Could I have at least chosen something understandable without unending hours of torturous speculation and guesswork? Like maybe Memento or Lost Highway?) but more confusing than the boner I get reading and Archie and Jughead comic book (because of Veronica, of course! Va-va-va-voom! If it wasn't for Veronica, the boner would be more confusing than the discussion of Pavlovian science). It's sad that I don't understand it because I'm pretty sure it's all this smart theoretical stuff that is the key that unlocks the door to the room where all the good porn is hidden. The porn is a metaphor for postmodernist themes. One dog, Vanya, has entered "the 'equivalent' phase, the first of the transmarginal phases." That means her response to the stimulus is no longer dependent on the strength of the stimulus. Her response is the same no matter how great or how meager the stimulus. Vanya's body and mind are literally being changed by her exposure to overwhelming stimuli. She no longer perceives a difference between inconsequential stimuli and life-and-death stimuli. Vanya has become numb to not just subtlety and nuance but to any degree of difference in outside stimuli she's exposed to. This is commentary on us, isn't it?! Especially in a time of war where rockets exploding around us have become just a part of our daily lives. It's an example of Roger's earlier confession to Jessica upon driving by scenes of devastation where people are searching for the living and wounded. "Once Roger and Jessica might have stopped. But they're both alumni of the Battle of Britain, both have been drafted into the early black mornings and the crying for mercy, the dumb inertia of cobbles and beams, the profound shortage of mercy in those days. . . . By the time one has pulled one's nth victim or part of a victim free of one's nth pile of rubble, he told her once, angry, weary, it has ceased to be that personal . . . the value of n my be different for each of us, but I'm sorry: sooner or later . . ." See? This is why this project is good for me in understanding Gravity's Rainbow. Because now I get why all the Pavlovian stuff! It's making sense! After the bit about the dog Vanya, Pynchon describes Brigadier Pudding's weekly group meetings. It's fucking hilarious but I won't go into it here. It's another example, 80 pages in, of how hilarious this book is and, at the 80th page or so, easily still a surprise, especially if it's your first time reading it. A reader could easily make it this far having missed the truly hilarious other parts of the book (like, say, maybe the reader thought of themselves as too intellectual for toilet humor or slapstick. Why, they would have been doubly, but sternly, apoplectic over Poinstman's hunt for a dog that winds up with his foot stuck in a toilet!). But I submit there's nobody who could get to this section and not think to themselves, "Oh! Ha ha! Good show, chap! Mighty funny, this!" Unless, of course, they missed it because they were so confused by the transmarginal stuff it caused them to miss the way Brigadier Pudding's meeting devolves into other topics so that they read the entire section and thought, "Oh! I mean, what? 'Vertical interest'? I don't get it." One scientist, Géza Rózsavölgyi, is concerned not with Pudding's meetings but how everyone at The White Visitation will be funded after the war. He believes they need a powerful program to justify their existence rather than a charismatic leader able to secure funding through pure force of ego and will. The work is what should matter; it is what should drive the science. Currently, Géza Rózsavölgyi believes that Tyrone Slothrop is their best bet for studies which will lead to a promising post-War program. And so Géza Rózsavölgyi sets out the parameters for Chapter Two: "Precise-ly why," leaps Rózsavölgyi, "we are now proposing, to give, Sloth-rop a complete-ly dif-ferent sort, of test. We are now design-ing for him, a so-called, 'projec-tive' test. The most famil-iar exam-ple of the type, is the Rorschach ink-blot. The ba-sic theory, is, that when given an unstruc-tured stimulus, some shape-less blob of exper-ience, the subject, will seek to impose, struc-ture on it. How, he goes a-bout struc-turing this blob, will reflect his needs, his hopes—will provide, us with clues, to his dreams, fan-tasies, the deepest re-gions of his mind." Eyebrows going a mile a minute, extraordinarily fluid and graceful hand gestures, resembling—most likely it is deliberate, and who can blame Rosie for trying to cash in—those of his most famous compatriot, though there're the inevitable bad side-effects: staff who swear they've seen him crawling headfirst down the north façade of "The White Visitation," for example. "So we are re-ally, quite, in agree-ment, Reverend Doctor. A test, like the MMPI, is, in this respect, not adequate. It is, a struc-tured stimulus. The sub-ject can fal-sify, consciously, or repress, un-consciously. But with the projec-tive technique, nothing he can do, con-scious or otherwise, can pre-vent us, from finding what we wish, to know. We, are in control. He, cannot help, himself." Christ that was a pain in the ass to transcribe! Basically, the plan is to expose Slothrop to the rocket in more direct and intimate ways than just wandering around London getting boners where rockets will land. See what he makes of it. See how he reacts. Watch his paranoia run out of control until the world is exactly what he thinks it is: people manipulating his life to the point that he has practically no free will. And, I mean, yeah. How does one account for the observers observing the observation ruining the experiment? I mean, if you're manipulating a guy to see how he reacts and he reacts by assuming his entire world is being manipulated, does that mean, you know, anything?! Oh, and who is Rosie trying to emulate? What person is the most famous Soviet war-era compatriot? It sounds like it should be Spider-man! I said the section begins with a description of The White Visitation. But that's nothing compared with the actual detailed description of the building on which the section ends. It's practically a treatise on postmodern architecture. And that's it! This was a most enlightening section to re-read. How come we can't just re-read books instead of having to read them first before we can re-read them? They'd be so much easier to understand!

[rebeccahpedersen]

Another Bright Idea?

TorontoRealtyBlog

“They’re going to do it, just watch,” I told my colleague as he shook his head and said, “They can’t.”

But I’m more cynical than my colleague.

More experienced too, but I think the cynicism is more important in this regard.

Where some people might look to see logic, reasoning, and some semblance of normalcy, I’ve been trained to anticipate poor judgment, fantasy, and whatever other descriptions you can conjure up to explain something that just won’t work.

“Insanity” is defined as doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.

And those of you who have been reading TRB for years, will probably think you’ve read this blog post before.  But I assure you, it’s a different story.  Just with the same theme.

If you read my “More MLS Musings” posts, you know that I have my “favourites.”  My favourite example of real estate agents doing terrible jobs, which frustrates me beyond belief, but which makes me laugh, nevertheless.  The agents who capture themselves in the mirror when taking photos (when a professional photographer should have been hired), the photos of inanimate objects, or close-ups of faucet running, and how about photos of the home-owners sitting on the couch?  I have one of those queued up for the next edition…

So when it comes to the topic of “awful listing strategies,” you shouldn’t be surprised to know that I have a favourite there as well.

I love the agents who list the same property, over and over, with different “strategies” regarding the price, when all the while, they’re merely grasping at straws, as they price up, and down, up and down.

Know what I mean?

For those agents who list at, say, $999,900 with an “offer date,” hoping to end up with multiple offers, and a sale price of $1,200,000, who are not successful on offer night, then terminating that listing at $999,900, and subsequently re-listing the next day at $1,199,900 with “offers any time” is a reasonable course of action.

You can admit that your “strategy” of under-listing and holding-back offers (if you can call it a “strategy”…) didn’t work, and thus you have no choice but to list at a higher price, one which, presumably, is some combination of fair market value and that which the seller desires.

I have done this exactly once in my career, and it was in May of 2017 right after the market dropped.  I’m pleased to say that pricing games are not my favourite past-time.

But what do you make of a situation when the property comes out at a low price, then the price is raised, then it’s dropped again, then it’s raised, and so on?

It’s brutal.

And nothing short of moronic.

I would speculate that in almost all of these cases, it’s not the fault of the market, or the time of year, or the buyer pool, or even the listing agent for not doing his or her job.  It’s simply that the seller wants too much money.

Age-old story, right?

There’s one house I’ve been watching on the east side for quite some time now, and while I don’t take pleasure in the shortcomings of others, I will say that “I was right” from the start.  I knew this house wouldn’t sell, but more than that – I knew it would be re-listed over and over.

How can you tell?

Well there are a variety of factors, including, but not limited to: the listing agent is out-of-area (and while I know some people think their cousin from Hamilton is just as capable of successfully listing and selling a house in Davisville Village for top dollar, but they’re not), the house was over-priced to begin with, the renovation is not what buyers in this demographic are looking for (meaning the owner/renovator didn’t do any homework), the choice in features/finishes is odd, and the best part – the agent had no problem blatantly lying on the listing.  I don’t know in what area this flies:

Front parking pad eh?

Guess what?

Anybody can look up legal front parking pads through the city of Toronto through this link:

https://www.toronto.ca/data/transportation/residential_locations/residential_locations.pdf

The fact that the parking isn’t legal is an issue, since the owner is factoring in $75,000 for a spot, when the buyer pool isn’t, but my bigger concern is that neither the agent or the seller thought it was an issue to detail this on the listing.  It shows they don’t know their buyer pool, and they’re taking liberties.

This house came onto the market in mid-December for $1,499,000, and again, I can’t say that listing in mid-December, in this area, was a good decision.

But nevertheless, the price was the issue!  Price and strategy.

First and foremost, this house was never going to be worth $1.5M.  It was probably worth $1.3M, maybe a bit more.  It was on the worst street in the area, backing onto a major road that’s home to commercial buildings.

But secondly, and most importantly, there was an “offer date.”

My inner cynical old man was going nuts.

“Wait, so you’re priced at $1.5M and you have a hold-back on offers?  Oh, and you’ve got ‘Seller Reserves The Right To Review Pre-Emptive Offers’ written on the listing?  How presumptuous!  Oh please, oh please let me submit a pre-emptive offer!  Will you review it?  You will?  Oh goodie!”

Oh puke!

Talk about misreading the market!

If this was listed at $1,199,900, with a holdback on offers, then okay.  I understand the strategy.

But the high price and the holdback on offers is like asking your Dad to borrow the car, but telling him you want to down a 6-pack first.

Surprise of all surprises, this property did not sell on offer night.  I mean, it also didn’t sell with a pre-emptive offer, but frogs have also never rained from the sky (that we know of…).

The listing was terminated just before Christmas (because that’s such a great time to be on the market…), and clearly the buyer pool lamented their opportunity to “bid” on this wonderful offering.

But, buyers rejoice!

The house reappeared in early-January at a new price: $1,099,900.

Huzzah!  The same house that didn’t sell last year, now $400,000 cheaper?

Yes, it’s true.  Except it’s not really available at $1,099,900, you see, the seller and the agent have devised this brilliant strategy of under-listing the home, and then holding back offers.  I know, I know – it’s such a novel concept that it’s tough to comprehend, but this is the genius behind the $400,000 price drop, even if they have already signaled to the market that they actually want $1.5 Million.

But wait…..

…..do they want $1.5 Million?

Would they “settle” for a mere $1.5 Million, I meant to ask?

But of course not!

The first time they were on the market, they listed at $1.5 Million, held back offers with the expectations of getting more, and then upon receiving zero interest, they terminated the listing.  So suffice it to say, they would not “settle” for a paltry mill-and-a-half.

This became even more apparent one week later when, surprise, surprise, the $1,099,900 listing was terminated, and the house was re-listed at….

    $1,549,000!

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

That’s how the saying goes, but I think the way the saying was intended had the assumption that you would not try the exact same method fruitlessly, when you yourself were not in control of the outcome.

These sellers can wish and dream all they want, but eventually they have to come back to reality.  No?

This house is simply not worth what they are asking.  Not even close.

And the funny thing is – there’s nothing for sale in this area.  Buyers are starving for listings, so if there was ever a time and a set of circumstances when this would work, it would be now.

But it won’t.

I mean, it didn’t.

Because the house was on the market for $1,549,000 for exactly one month, and then the listing was terminated.

But……and there’s always a but….

…..guess whaaaaaaaat?

The seller and the agent have a new strategy!

After listing “low” at $1.5 Million and holding back offers, unsuccessfully, they re-listed even lower at $1.1 Million, again, holding back offers unsuccessfully, then raised the price to $1.55 Million.

So what’s the new strategy you ask?

How about going right back to the well for another delicious wooden-cup full of well-water?

Yup, they’re now on the market for $1,299,900, with an offer night.

Because using the same failed strategy only four weeks after you had previously used it, and failed, is a great way to succeed.

I believe the kids say, “Double-yoo-tee-eff?”

I don’t understand it.

I mean, I understand the greed, but I don’t understand the stupidity.

The other day, I was playing hide-and-go-seek with my daughter, which was really cute, and really fun.

She hid in the hall closet, and even though I knew she was in there, I did what a Dad is supposed to do, and walked around asking aloud, “Has anyone seen Maya?”  And even though I could hear her giggling in the closet from twenty feet away, I continued to look around until she couldn’t take it anymore, and stuck her head out to say, “I’m in here, DaDa!”

We played a subsequent round with me hiding (they never find you behind the curtains, but you have to turn your feet parallel to the baseboards), and eventually my wife helped Maya find me, and we had a laugh.

Then Maya said, “My turn now, DaDa,” and I closed my eyes, and waited for her to hide.

I’ll give you one guess where she hid.

Those of you with kids already know.

She hid in the closet, again.

She went right back to where she hid before; same strategy, even though she knew that I had seen her implement this strategy before.

It wouldn’t make any sense, except for the fact that my daughter is 2-years-old.  So she thinks I’m of the exact same mental capacity as she is.

That’s exactly what’s going on with the sellers of this house described above, except they are, more than likely, not 2-years-old.

They seem to think that even though they showed their hand at $1.5M last December, then again at $1.55M last month, they can re-list “low” with an offer date, for the second time, and yet some way, some how, the buyer pool won’t expect to find them hiding in the closet yet again…

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[rebeccahpedersen]

Another Bright Idea?

TorontoRealtyBlog

“They’re going to do it, just watch,” I told my colleague as he shook his head and said, “They can’t.”

But I’m more cynical than my colleague.

More experienced too, but I think the cynicism is more important in this regard.

Where some people might look to see logic, reasoning, and some semblance of normalcy, I’ve been trained to anticipate poor judgment, fantasy, and whatever other descriptions you can conjure up to explain something that just won’t work.

“Insanity” is defined as doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.

And those of you who have been reading TRB for years, will probably think you’ve read this blog post before.  But I assure you, it’s a different story.  Just with the same theme.

If you read my “More MLS Musings” posts, you know that I have my “favourites.”  My favourite example of real estate agents doing terrible jobs, which frustrates me beyond belief, but which makes me laugh, nevertheless.  The agents who capture themselves in the mirror when taking photos (when a professional photographer should have been hired), the photos of inanimate objects, or close-ups of faucet running, and how about photos of the home-owners sitting on the couch?  I have one of those queued up for the next edition…

So when it comes to the topic of “awful listing strategies,” you shouldn’t be surprised to know that I have a favourite there as well.

I love the agents who list the same property, over and over, with different “strategies” regarding the price, when all the while, they’re merely grasping at straws, as they price up, and down, up and down.

Know what I mean?

For those agents who list at, say, $999,900 with an “offer date,” hoping to end up with multiple offers, and a sale price of $1,200,000, who are not successful on offer night, then terminating that listing at $999,900, and subsequently re-listing the next day at $1,199,900 with “offers any time” is a reasonable course of action.

You can admit that your “strategy” of under-listing and holding-back offers (if you can call it a “strategy”…) didn’t work, and thus you have no choice but to list at a higher price, one which, presumably, is some combination of fair market value and that which the seller desires.

I have done this exactly once in my career, and it was in May of 2017 right after the market dropped.  I’m pleased to say that pricing games are not my favourite past-time.

But what do you make of a situation when the property comes out at a low price, then the price is raised, then it’s dropped again, then it’s raised, and so on?

It’s brutal.

And nothing short of moronic.

I would speculate that in almost all of these cases, it’s not the fault of the market, or the time of year, or the buyer pool, or even the listing agent for not doing his or her job.  It’s simply that the seller wants too much money.

Age-old story, right?

There’s one house I’ve been watching on the east side for quite some time now, and while I don’t take pleasure in the shortcomings of others, I will say that “I was right” from the start.  I knew this house wouldn’t sell, but more than that – I knew it would be re-listed over and over.

How can you tell?

Well there are a variety of factors, including, but not limited to: the listing agent is out-of-area (and while I know some people think their cousin from Hamilton is just as capable of successfully listing and selling a house in Davisville Village for top dollar, but they’re not), the house was over-priced to begin with, the renovation is not what buyers in this demographic are looking for (meaning the owner/renovator didn’t do any homework), the choice in features/finishes is odd, and the best part – the agent had no problem blatantly lying on the listing.  I don’t know in what area this flies:

Front parking pad eh?

Guess what?

Anybody can look up legal front parking pads through the city of Toronto through this link:

https://www.toronto.ca/data/transportation/residential_locations/residential_locations.pdf

The fact that the parking isn’t legal is an issue, since the owner is factoring in $75,000 for a spot, when the buyer pool isn’t, but my bigger concern is that neither the agent or the seller thought it was an issue to detail this on the listing.  It shows they don’t know their buyer pool, and they’re taking liberties.

This house came onto the market in mid-December for $1,499,000, and again, I can’t say that listing in mid-December, in this area, was a good decision.

But nevertheless, the price was the issue!  Price and strategy.

First and foremost, this house was never going to be worth $1.5M.  It was probably worth $1.3M, maybe a bit more.  It was on the worst street in the area, backing onto a major road that’s home to commercial buildings.

But secondly, and most importantly, there was an “offer date.”

My inner cynical old man was going nuts.

“Wait, so you’re priced at $1.5M and you have a hold-back on offers?  Oh, and you’ve got ‘Seller Reserves The Right To Review Pre-Emptive Offers’ written on the listing?  How presumptuous!  Oh please, oh please let me submit a pre-emptive offer!  Will you review it?  You will?  Oh goodie!”

Oh puke!

Talk about misreading the market!

If this was listed at $1,199,900, with a holdback on offers, then okay.  I understand the strategy.

But the high price and the holdback on offers is like asking your Dad to borrow the car, but telling him you want to down a 6-pack first.

Surprise of all surprises, this property did not sell on offer night.  I mean, it also didn’t sell with a pre-emptive offer, but frogs have also never rained from the sky (that we know of…).

The listing was terminated just before Christmas (because that’s such a great time to be on the market…), and clearly the buyer pool lamented their opportunity to “bid” on this wonderful offering.

But, buyers rejoice!

The house reappeared in early-January at a new price: $1,099,900.

Huzzah!  The same house that didn’t sell last year, now $400,000 cheaper?

Yes, it’s true.  Except it’s not really available at $1,099,900, you see, the seller and the agent have devised this brilliant strategy of under-listing the home, and then holding back offers.  I know, I know – it’s such a novel concept that it’s tough to comprehend, but this is the genius behind the $400,000 price drop, even if they have already signaled to the market that they actually want $1.5 Million.

But wait…..

…..do they want $1.5 Million?

Would they “settle” for a mere $1.5 Million, I meant to ask?

But of course not!

The first time they were on the market, they listed at $1.5 Million, held back offers with the expectations of getting more, and then upon receiving zero interest, they terminated the listing.  So suffice it to say, they would not “settle” for a paltry mill-and-a-half.

This became even more apparent one week later when, surprise, surprise, the $1,099,900 listing was terminated, and the house was re-listed at….

    $1,549,000!

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

That’s how the saying goes, but I think the way the saying was intended had the assumption that you would not try the exact same method fruitlessly, when you yourself were not in control of the outcome.

These sellers can wish and dream all they want, but eventually they have to come back to reality.  No?

This house is simply not worth what they are asking.  Not even close.

And the funny thing is – there’s nothing for sale in this area.  Buyers are starving for listings, so if there was ever a time and a set of circumstances when this would work, it would be now.

But it won’t.

I mean, it didn’t.

Because the house was on the market for $1,549,000 for exactly one month, and then the listing was terminated.

But……and there’s always a but….

…..guess whaaaaaaaat?

The seller and the agent have a new strategy!

After listing “low” at $1.5 Million and holding back offers, unsuccessfully, they re-listed even lower at $1.1 Million, again, holding back offers unsuccessfully, then raised the price to $1.55 Million.

So what’s the new strategy you ask?

How about going right back to the well for another delicious wooden-cup full of well-water?

Yup, they’re now on the market for $1,299,900, with an offer night.

Because using the same failed strategy only four weeks after you had previously used it, and failed, is a great way to succeed.

I believe the kids say, “Double-yoo-tee-eff?”

I don’t understand it.

I mean, I understand the greed, but I don’t understand the stupidity.

The other day, I was playing hide-and-go-seek with my daughter, which was really cute, and really fun.

She hid in the hall closet, and even though I knew she was in there, I did what a Dad is supposed to do, and walked around asking aloud, “Has anyone seen Maya?”  And even though I could hear her giggling in the closet from twenty feet away, I continued to look around until she couldn’t take it anymore, and stuck her head out to say, “I’m in here, DaDa!”

We played a subsequent round with me hiding (they never find you behind the curtains, but you have to turn your feet parallel to the baseboards), and eventually my wife helped Maya find me, and we had a laugh.

Then Maya said, “My turn now, DaDa,” and I closed my eyes, and waited for her to hide.

I’ll give you one guess where she hid.

Those of you with kids already know.

She hid in the closet, again.

She went right back to where she hid before; same strategy, even though she knew that I had seen her implement this strategy before.

It wouldn’t make any sense, except for the fact that my daughter is 2-years-old.  So she thinks I’m of the exact same mental capacity as she is.

That’s exactly what’s going on with the sellers of this house described above, except they are, more than likely, not 2-years-old.

They seem to think that even though they showed their hand at $1.5M last December, then again at $1.55M last month, they can re-list “low” with an offer date, for the second time, and yet some way, some how, the buyer pool won’t expect to find them hiding in the closet yet again…

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