Hints for hiring a listing broker

Listing with a broker is usually a waste of time and money, but sometimes it's necessary.

Here is what you should expect:

1. That they have customers.
2. That they bring them to your house.
3. That they sell the value of your property.

Number one means they are selling houses. You should get a report from them monthly (better yet weekly) showing their sales in you price range. Terminate them if you don't get the report or if they consistently show no sales. If they don't have customers, they will try to use open houses to attract attention from other brokers who have customers. Don't waste your time.

Number Two. They must bring their customers to see your house. Your house won't sell if the customers don't see it. If the agents are selling other houses (see Number One) but not showing yours, fire them.

Number Three. You must get full value for your house, if for no other reason than to pay the broker. When they say, "Your price is too high", they are really saying, " I have failed to sell the value of your house." Terminate them immediately.

You need to know the value of your house before you contact them. Comparables from a broker are only designed to run down your price and make it easier for them to sell.

Why Do People Hate Their Jobs

Great Article by  James Altucher. Click Here
It's kind of a downer, but really true.

I limped out of the meeting and said, “excuse me”, and took the elevator down 67 stories, went to Grand Central, limped home, and never went back to work at that job. 

Every day I try to practice reversing that. I do that by listening to the body, the mind, being grateful, being around positive people, sleeping a lot, eating well. 

But having a job and being controlled by Masters ruins the practice.  

 Jobs are modern-day slavery. We are paid just enough to live and not more. You are punished if you ask for more.  

- We are often verbally abused on the job and we take it because we think it’s normal that people would yell at us. 

- The government gets up to 50% of your paycheck and then 10-20% of that goes to kill people on other parts of the planet, including our own children. 

- We are deluded into thinking our job-friends are our real-friends. With our job friends we talk about pens, genitals, and cubicles. We stop having real-friends. 

- There’s a glass ceiling. It doesn’t matter if you are a woman or minority or a white man. The glass ceiling is that you aren’t allowed to make more than your Master, even if he’s an idiot. 

- You realize that all the dollars you spent on degrees to get you a job that will make you happy were completely wasted. You were scammed but you can’t let the next generation know how stupid you were so now you become part of perpetuating the scam.  

- A trillion dollar marketing campaign forced you to buy a house you didn’t really want and now you will “lose a house” you never really owned if you don’t bow down to the Masters every day. The words “The American Dream” were coined by Fannie Mae in a marketing campaign 40 years ago to sell mortgages to slaves.  

- Your spouse is tired of hearing about your job after six months. And you couldn’t care less about hers. Ten years later you wake up next to a total stranger. 40 years later you die next to one  

- Your IRA was not intended to provide for your retirement. It was intended to take money from you every month so you remain chained to your cubicle. Inflation then takes 90% of your IRA.  

- Over time everyone is getting fired and being replaced by younger, cheaper, more temporary, more robotic, versions of you. You see this but are afraid to do anything about it. 

Cross posted here.