How did they build................

.............................all those cathedrals?

 Despite the acceleration of technological progress, indeed because of it, one of the few scarcities in the future will be a long attention span. There will be no shortage of amazing materials that can do magic, astounding sources of energy to make anything happen, and great reserves of knowledge and know-how to accomplish our dreams. But the gating factor for actually completing those big dreams may be the distractions that any society feels over the centuries. What your parents and grandparents found important you may find silly, or even embarrassing.

-Kevin Kelly, from here

Financial rules..........................

 Holding a credit card balance from month to month is one of the worst financial decisions you can make.

The first rule of personal finance is you pay off your credit card balance every month.

The second rule is don’t forget rule number one.

-Ben Carlson, from here

 The greatest trick the devil ever played was making you believe that the pessimists are the good guys.

-Packy McCormick, as culled from this list

On fishing in different ponds...........

 This country has challenges and the higher education system is near the top of the list. However, one thing that is far from challenged is its vast depth of talented, driven, hopeful, and resourceful young people. The key for businesses looking to hire young talent or investors trying to find the next great company is to seek out and identify these young people and give them the opportunity to shine.

-Ted Lamade, from this post

In the background.................

Four Tops.........................Greatest Hits album

 

Luxury..........................

 

    via

Damned if I know..............................

     more fun here

Seven............................

 

..................ways to be different:

7.  Zag when others Zig

It is not called Boyle's Guideline...

 There’s no such thing as work life balance. There’s simply life. And you spend part of your life at work.

-Seth Godin offers more here

On stress................................

 

...........................................relief.

Chris Lynch.......................

 

..................suggests that we choose wisely:

Riddles...............................

 And who are we to solve it? All the same, we ourselves form a particle of it, of the society of which we ask, Where is it going, to the devil or to God?

-as Rob Firchau channels Vincent van Gogh

We can only hope..................

 

.......................that the answer is "yes."

Stephen Landry.......................................

 

........................posted an exceptionally good week.

Our friend at Sippican Cottage........

 ........................makes some observations:

When I returned, I looked around, and realized the world I was born into was completely gone. I’d been watching it sluice down some sort of drain for so long, that I wondered if I was some sort of involuntary antichrist, making each tomorrow worse than today, every day since I was born. The whole 200,000,000- way handshake seems to have been totally replaced with nothing but a Balkan competition to see which sect could pull themselves to the top of a greasy pole with nothing but a Netflix login screen at the top. The competition was desultory, because no one wanted any job but greasing the pole. Climbing is a lot of work.

Pondering the future...........................

 ............of the commission-based real estate market.

Ben Carlson asks some good questions.  We've been pondering this idea for a while.  The current system has been in place my entire career, so please forgive any bias you find here.

We have long believed that real estate agents bring value to the marketplace.  Going forward we will find out if the marketplace agrees.  

Long overlooked in this discussion is the amount of "free work" real estate agents provide.  If you know a real estate agent, ask them how many properties they have shown and offers they have written that don't materialize into a sale.  You may be surprised by how often that happens.  The current system allows for - accounts for - all of the "free work."  Will it be missed if it goes away?   Do you believe prospective real estate buyers will be willing to incur costs even if they are unsuccessful in buying?   

An enlightened way to look at this commission business is to say that the transaction pays the fee.  Not the seller and not the buyer, the Transaction.  No meeting of the minds between buyer and seller - no deal and no commission.  No successful completion of the buyer's due diligence inspections - no deal and no commission.  No successful arrangement of financing - no deal and no commission.  The transaction costs typically have been funded on the seller' side of the settlement statement, primarily because it eases the transaction's completion.  Reasonable people can disagree on what "fair and reasonable" transaction costs should be.  Fees have always been negotiable (you can look through my past files and see the truth in that), but, generally in the marketplace with individual seller and buyers, incentives matter.  Just remember - the transaction is paying the fees.

It strikes us that, for all the noise about commissions and who is going to benefit, the true seismic change coming out of the court action and settlement agreements will be the impact on the National Association of Realtors (NAR) itself.   As a trade association with over a million and a half members scattered all over the country, NAR has had some success in the political arena over the years.  The Realtors Political Action Committee (RPAC) raises significant dollars every year from the Realtor membership.  Those dollars go to support politicians and positions considered to be beneficial to NAR's perceived interests.  While not monolithic (I stopped giving RPAC money years ago because of their "fight to the death" attitude on mortgage interest deductions), NAR does speak for an awful lot of folks.   One outcome from the lawsuits and settlement may be to fracture the association membership, weaken RPAC, and break the back of NAR's perceived political influence.  If I was a more cynical person, I might believe that was the end game with this whole thing.

Anyway, this post started out by saying Ben Carlson asks some good questions. It will take some time for the real estate marketplace and industry to find the answers to those questions.

Sunday...........................

 ..............................................seven:

5. You do not need permission to change.

Recalibrating...................................

 ..............................................success.

Another.........................

 ...................................................prudence.