Well, we’ve been featuring lots of real estate shenanigans here at the cottage lately, so it’s only natural that our Tuesday Trash Day roundup of festering browser bookmarks should feature some good ol’ real estate info. Feel free to opine on the selections in the comments. And remember, no wagering.
The businesswoman, who became president of the popular fast-food chain in 2010 and now has an estimated net worth of $7.3 billion, explained during a new episode of Allie Beth Stuckey’s “Relatable” podcast that it’s “not easy” living and working in California anymore.
Forgive me, but for a moment when I saw the headline about an in and out heiress, I mistakenly thought her mother was a very successful courtesan.
The 19 Bigger Cities with the Biggest Price Declines of Condos (-12% to -24% from Peak through June)
The 19 cities with price declines of 12% to 24% through June:
Oakland, CA: -24%
Austin, TX: -24%
Saint Petersburg, FL: -21%
Fort Myers, FL: -17%
Sarasota, FL: -17%
San Francisco, CA: -16%
Boise, ID: -14%
Jacksonville, FL: -14%
Detroit, MI: -13%
Denver, CO: -13%
Tampa, FL: -13%
Arlington, TX: -13%
Naples, FL: -13%
New Orleans, LA: -12%
Seattle: -12%
Reno, NV: -12.0%
Mesa, AZ: -12%
Portland, OR: -12%
Aurora, CO: -12%
That’s funny. That’s a list of 19 places I don’t want to live in. Perhaps I’m the problem. But I doubt it.
Planning for Home Maintenance Expenses: What Every Homeowner Needs to Know
Many homeowners use the “1% rule.” This means you should save about 1% of your home’s value each year for maintenance. For example, if your home costs $300,000, aim to set aside $3,000 per year.
Older homes or homes in rough climates may need more care. In those cases, 2% of the home’s value might be more realistic. You can also track your yearly spending to see what amount works best for your situation.
At the very least, save enough money to afford home insurance, a pile of oily rags, and a carelessly discarded cigarette.
1 in 7 Pending Home Sales Fell Through Last Month, The Highest June Level on Record
“Sellers are willing to make deals because in today’s buyer’s market, they don’t want to lose out on a sale once they have a buyer under contract,” said Van Welborn, a Redfin Premier agent in Phoenix. “A few years ago, when the market was more competitive, sellers were able to tell buyers to move on rather than pay for repairs found during the inspection period. Now, sellers are they’re doing whatever they can to close the deal. I have one buyer who discovered a septic issue on an ultra-luxury home and was able to talk the seller into reducing the price by $1 million.”
If you have a million dollar septic problem, I suggest you stop eating at Taco Bell.
Former Warren Buffett exec makes bold real estate bet
Investor Ian Jacobs, a longtime protégé of Warren Buffett and a former Berkshire Hathaway executive, is doubling down on Union Square in downtown San Francisco, according to a July 1 report in the San Francisco Standard.
Jacobs, who leads the investment firm 402 Capital, has gone into escrow to buy 111 Ellis Street, an office building at the corner of Powell and Ellis streets. The building was once home to Blondie’s Pizza and sits near several still-vacant retail spaces.
Berkshire Hathaway has around one trillion dollars of assets under management. This guy bought a shuttered pizza joint. Bold, indeed.
Decoded: 5 things brokers can do to increase walk-in traffic
To many in the industry, walk-in business is dead — and I’m unsure if natural causes or our failure to adapt as an industry dealt the final blow.
In the years following the pandemic, we “returned” to our downsized offices, but after a few weeks or months of tepid effort, many threw in the towel. Now, it’s a chicken and egg conundrum: Most agents don’t want to sit in an office alone when the only walk-in they’re likely to get is someone selling Girl Scout cookies, and potential clients aren’t inspired when they see a cubicle graveyard.
But walk-in business — when we get it — is superior to internet inquiries. It is every licensee’s goal to be belly-to-belly with a live human seeking an address change.
I’ve always preferred going belly to belly with a live human. Mortuaries kill the mood.
Top 25 Best Places to Live for Quality of Life
21. Somerville, Massachusetts
Best Places 2025-2026 Rank: 226
Population: 82,140
Median Home Value: $861,806
Median Household Income: $127,440
Just five miles from Boston is Somerville, a town known for its diversity and robust arts and entertainment scene. In fact, after New York City, Somerville has the most artists per capita than any other U.S. city, boasting over 20 city squares filled with markets, theaters and restaurants. Somerville notably ranks No. 21 in health care access and places in the top 15% in both air quality and the safest places to live in the U.S. Its walkable neighborhoods and connections to the green, orange and red metro lines make the Boston city center accessible to Somerville residents.
Starts right in with a tangled passive voice sentence. Beautiful. And Somerville? That Somerville? The one we used to call Slummerville? Well, things change. Maybe it’s perked up enough to make a list of places with a high quality of life. Let’s check how safe it is:
I’m unsure of what a “high quality of life” would entail, exactly. Polite muggers? Carjackers who put premium gas in your car while they’re driving it around? Inquiring minds want to know.
LA burglar who killed American Idol boss was junkie w/ repeat arrests
A burglar accused of murdering ‘American Idol’ executive Robin Kaye and her husband was a ‘junkie’ well known in the neighborhood with multiple previous arrests, including assault.
Raymond Boodarian, 22, lived just 13 minutes from the $4.5 million Encino home where 70-year-old Kaye and her husband, Thomas DeLuca were shot dead during a suspected break-in last week as the local man sought to rob the well to do couple.
It’s unclear how this will affect the “quality of life” rating of Encino.
Well, that’s it for the bookmarks roundup. I hope the quality of life where you are is just ducky today.
3 Responses
People and businesses fleeing the Soviet Socialist State of California isn’t really news any more, it’s becoming expected. All we can do is hope that they don’t poop the bed wherever they move to the way they did in what is rapidly becoming the next Zimbabwe.
And the investment guy buying the 5-story building in SF, CA, is probably going to be making a killing…no, wait, that’ll be the folks peeing and pooping and shooting up on the streets next to his building. Good luck. He must have gotten one heck of a deal from somebody who has had enough and just wants OUT.
And as far as quality of life goes, here in NW Wyoming the leading tourist town doesn’t need to look very far for an example of how to best live life…the Mayor of Cody, WY was just busted for multiple offenses related to DUI, and spent the weekend in jail. The Cody cop that busted her had to call the Park County Sheriff’s Office to process her because of the “potential” conflict of interest. Yeah, tossing your boss into jail might be a good fantasy for some folks, but long-term it probably doesn’t work out all that well. That’s not as big a deal as it might seem since both departments actually work out of the same building and often respond simultaneously to calls.
But right now our biggest quality of life issue are the hoofed rats (excuse me, mule deer) that keep eating all of my aspen saplings. Apparently I’m not that good at spelling, since auto-correct put in “deer candy” when I tried to type “aspen saplings”, but that’s okay. So I have a big roll of 2″x4″ wire mesh about 5 feet tall, and I cut lengths of about 10 feet and make little cages to put around selected saplings, and stake them to the ground with plastic tent stakes, the ones with the little hook on the top to catch the bottom wire. It keeps the rats out until the trees get big enough for the bucks to destroy the trees by scraping all the bark off them with their antlers to get the velvet off in the fall.
I’m really, really tempted to buy a paint-ball gun and about 5 different colors of paint balls, and pop them when they’re contentedly munching on our foliage. They no longer pay any attention to the madman yelling at them, and only flinch when I hit them in the butt with rocks, but paint-balls sting when they hit. I’ve got a feeling that we’d end up with circus-colored mule deer running around the gully, and then nobody would actually hunt them in the fall for fear they were mutants or something. The neighbors might get upset, too, and then I’d have Game and Fish coming after me for molesting wildlife. Hey, if they’re in my yard, they’re my deer, not the state’s. If they want to lay claim to them, they can come over and keep ’em from from eating my poor little baby trees.
Hi Blackwing- Somehow that’s worse than the whitetail deer that used to come into our backyard and eat the blooms off the roses. But not by much.
We put a wire cage around my wife’s roses, too. They love to nibble on them despite the thorns, and the rose hips in the fall are apparently addictive for deer. They love to trim all of the flowers off the columbine as well.
About the only things they don’t eat are the day lilies and the irises.
I still like the idea of hitting ’em with paint-balls. If I could get phosphorescent glow-in-the-dark ammo, then maybe drivers could see them in the dark as they play chicken with the cars.
“Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“To show the mule deer it could be done.”