The Real Estate Racket

One of the most prevalent examples of what a ramshackle farce the US economy has become is the real estate market.

Since the US no longer manufactures much, it has fallen back on house and car sales, and student loans to augment its hollowed-out economy.

Walking around my neighborhood, which again has seen a house-building boom in the last few years, I started to notice a few things about the way these houses are being built, and have concluded that the real estate market is one big rip-off; a racket; a cynical conspiracy between the builder, mortgage lenders, homeowners association, and the local government.

These are the four primary things I’ve noticed:

- Too many houses are being squeezed into an area

- Virtually all the houses are large, two-story structures on lots barely large enough to hold  them

- The quality of the workmanship and materials is shoddy

- Houses seem to be overpriced

As with all strange, nonsensical ideas and projects that look, or go bad, money is usually the culprit, and new house construction is no exception.

After noticing the four anomalies above, the following seems to be going on:

Squeezing too many large homes into a small amount of land works out great for the town, mortgage companies, and the homeowners association. The town gets more money in property taxes, and more taxpayers. The HOA gets more dues paying residents. The mortgage companies give out bigger loans, to more customers, and charge more interest.

Another nasty scam that seems to be embedded into these new house sales is that they’re being sold for more than they’re worth. I suspect that the builder is marking them up to pocket future equity, which should rightfully belong to the homeowner.

This way, when someone buys a house, the owner will unknowingly be paying the builder the equity that they should get in the near future. So instead of waiting 10 years to build up, say, 10K in equity, they’ll have to wait twice that long because the builder scammed them out of that first 10K by overpricing the house.

This is reminiscent of the mark-to-market ploy that builders and real estate agents used during the pre-crisis housing boom of the last decade to lend people the estimated market value amount the house WILL be worth after construction, instead of what the house would normally cost to construct. This enticed people to build even larger homes, many of which now stand vacant and unsold.

Now these vultures don’t even care for that. They’re just seeking to drain every unwitting fool that comes along purely for their own benefit.

Everyone makes money, but the owner gets ripped off, bad!

Who knows? Maybe someone is trying to fatten themselves up real fast before everything goes kaboom again?

The builders also use shoddy materials and workmanship. After a few years, the materials degrade, and before you know it you have water leaks, bug infestations, uneven floors, and broken appliances and parts.

I’ve seen it with my own house, specifically the aluminum siding trim which was painted with regular interior paint and is now peeling off all around. I have to spend money on spray paint to repaint all of these. So far it’s taken up a day and a half of work, and I’m not even done. All this lost time and money because of bad workmanship.

I’ve had enough!

I will fix up my house, sell it, and I’m NEVER EVER going to buy a house again anywhere in the US. Since I’m planning to permanently emigrate from this land of sorrows too numerous to count, this won’t be a problem for me. NONE of that money I get for my house is going to EVER get recycled back into this running real estate scam EVER again!

For those staying here, my advice to you as far as home buying is this: find a low-priced, structurally-sound older house that needs work-maybe even a lot of it. Then gut it, and update it. Try to do as much of the work yourself as you can. In the long-run, you’ll be way better off than the schmucks buying these newly-built, vinyl-clad piece of shit McHouses, with no yard around them.