House Flippers

The two perennial complaints about California real estate are that it's both too expensive and in short supply. This objective, observable reality fits neatly into the established dogma of economics; as supply dwindles, prices inevitably rise. Likewise, the expense and supply narrative fits neatly into the polarized ideology of American politics, with each end of the spectrum shaping an emotional, sometimes compelling argument from a very narrow set of "facts". But economists, politicians, and talking heads, in general, all fail to understand both the broader picture and the ugly details of the housing situation in California. The powers that be seem incapable of wrapping their heads around the systemic inequity of profit-oriented cash buyers over families financing a home to live in, and the solutions that politicians propose completely miss the mark. In other words, house flippers are fucking up the housing market in California and everyone trying to "fix" the problem is only making it worse.

There are two big schools of thought, aligning more or less with political religiosity, on how to address housing costs in California. The reaction on the left is to build "affordable" housing. Democrats, and others that have a vested interest in pandering to the working poor, like to push the idea that California is inherently too expensive for anyone to live in without giving any reason for the high prices save for some vague dog whistling about one-percenters. And this makes sense because making promises to subsidize the largest item in most familys' budgets is a winning strategy. But in effect, low-income housing institutionalizes poverty, creating ghettos where poorer people are shoved into and forgotten. Low-income housing doesn't address the root cause of why housing is so expensive in the first place, and it necessarily segregates society into groups of haves and have-nots - a move with far-reaching implications that affect a person from birth to death (public schooling, criminal and police activity, food scarcity, job opportunities, infrastructure, mental and standard healthcare, etc).

On the other hand, the reaction on the right is to slash regulations so that, or so the argument goes, housing can be built quicker and more economically. Republicans and others with a vested interest in the financing of massive real estate developments (commercial and residential) like to pretend that there are literally zero properties for sale and that the only solution is a mad building spree on every square inch of land in the entire state - especially lands with some environmental significance. As with the Democrats, this is a move that panders to a specific voting block and does nothing to address the root cause of high housing costs. First and foremost, there is always housing on the market. There exists NO large city with exactly ZERO houses, condos, townhomes, or multiplexes on the market. Secondly, ignoring environmental and zoning regulations is a short-sighted move with long-term costs likely to outweigh any short-term economic gains. Examples that come to mind include building developments on floodplains, in regions prone to drought and fire, or entire cities below sea level.

The problem isn't that there aren't enough homes on the market, nor is the problem that the real value of homes is out of reach of the average Californian. The problem in California real estate is speculation and house flipping. The problem in California real estate is that cash buyers with no intention of living in the homes they purchase are taking homes from families, doing a nominal amount of superficial work on the home, and then putting the homes back on the market at super-inflated prices. The market should be able to correct for this, right? Prices are too high, a surplus exists, so that should drive prices down. The reason that the market is failing to stop this sort of behavior is that there is a critical mass of flippers that are doing this; they're over-paying for properties and then over-pricing them when they put them back on the market. In essence, flippers have created a sort of monopolistic hive of assholes that, while not necessarily colluding together, are still fucking everything up for the rest of us.

I'll give my own anecdotal experience as an example. I spent nearly two years looking for a home for my family. It was incredible to watch the market heat up, with prices rising literally by the week, far outpacing our own income growth - because who the fuck has an income that grows with each passing day? I would lose every bid that I made, sometimes by bidders that would come in at over $100k over asking. It was insane. But the most unbelievable part came when, one to six months later, I would see the same houses back on the market, freshly painted and with a price tag $50k to $150k over what the home had been bought for only a few months before. In some cases, houses would literally sell for twice the price they had gone for less than six months before.

The reason I had so much trouble buying a house wasn't that inventories were low, in fact, as I've already said, there are always homes for sale. Nor was the reason that I don't make enough money. Our household income is far above average, even in California. I have few expenses and a healthy amount of savings. I could easily afford a home that was reasonably priced. The reason I had so much trouble buying a house was that flippers, with tons of cash, would swoop in and pick up properties, give them a paint job and a granite countertop, and then dump them back on the market at an astronomical price that I couldn't afford... but that another cash buyer would gladly pay to repeat the flipping process again on the same property. The home buying process is set up to favor people with cash, people that will over-pay, and people that are well connected in the industry - in other words, the market is set up to reward speculation and disadvantage real home buyers.

At one point, I was talking to a real estate agent at a house showing and I started to complain to him about cash buyers scooping up reasonably priced homes and flipping them for insane prices. His advice to me was something along the lines of "you can be angry at the market and never get a home, or you can go with the market and make some good money by buying and selling properties". He was completely missing the point. I'm not a house flipper. I didn't want to flip a fucking house. I wanted a place to live in, where my kids could run around in the yard and develop fond memories of their childhood. I wanted a home, not an investment. But in this country, in this state, in this market, it seems that everyone has been hard-wired to look for a get-rich-quick scheme. Everyone is hustling to cash in, and those that are cashing in are ruining it for the rest of us by exploiting weaknesses in the bidding process and driving up prices.

In our current system, we have a perverted dichotomy of both unrestricted capitalism and heavy-handed, ineffective government intervention which ends up simply institutionalizing poverty and not addressing the root causes of the problem. Liberals want to shove all the poor people into projects while conservatives want to milk every last penny from this state's natural bounty and fuck the consequences. Meanwhile, economists are sitting back, twiddling their thumbs, assuring everyone that the market will find an equilibrium, ignoring the human factor that's running the train straight off a cliff.

If we want to fix the cost of housing in California, or anywhere else, then we need to end the practice of house flipping. Homes should be bought by families that intend to live in them, not by assholes that are only looking to turn a profit.

Empress Theresa

I just watched this interesting video on the book Empress Theresa by Norman Boutin. I skimmed a bit of the book, and honestly it's pretty terrible, BUT I applaud Boutin for both hacking the internet and getting a bunch of people to read/review his book and also for sticking to his guns and being completely uncompromising.

I'd written a post a few months ago about being an uncompromising, singularly focused, solitary writer. tl;dr just write your book, proof it, and get it published. Stop pussyfooting around with honing your art or whatever. Granted, Boutin apparently spent upwards of four decades putting this book together, so he took his sweet time; but in the end, he published something and didn't bother perverting his writing the the ideas and judgments of other people.

What you write should be your own. Don't apologize. Don't capitulate. Stick to your fucking guns and shamelessly defend your work to the bitter end. But FYI your writing is probably really terrible and you'll die in obscurity.

The Solitary Writer

Recently, I came across this quote from Judy Reeves' book Writing Alone, Writing Together:

“For all the ideas of writer as solitary, tortured soul alone in her cramped garret or shambled studio working into the night, in reality writers, like the rest of humanity, are basically communal creatures. We search out our own kind and build community as naturally as we breathe. It is within community we connect with others and, through our connecting, find home.”

When I first started writing full time, I had this idea in my head that there would be some sort of writing community that I would want to get involved in. I looked around online, subscribed to various subreddits, went to a couple meetings for local writing groups, and made a real effort to interact with other writers that I felt were on par with me in terms of notoriety and skill. I don't really know what I was looking to get out of all these social interactions. Maybe I was just curious to see how other "real" writers did it. Maybe this was my half-ass attempt at marketing. But whatever the case, it very quickly became painfully clear that other writers are annoying as shit and I couldn't stand them.

What I found when I probed various writing groups is that the people in these groups are, for the most part, not there to be productive writers. The people in these groups were there to complain, to whine, to get attention, sometimes to troll. I think I expected to find a group of writers that wrote prolifically and published often who would egg each other on and post maybe infrequent updates about their work but mostly keep focused on completing their next project.

Maybe this speaks more to my own personality more than any short comings in other people. I'm a person that is very results oriented. When I would read post after post of writers who had spent multiple years working and reworking a 60k work manuscript, I just wanted to scream PUBLISH THE FUCKING BOOK. When I would read guys bragging about their 400k+ word fan-fiction that was only just getting started I could only shake my head. PUBLISH THE FUCKING BOOK. Ugh, and then there are the writers obsessed with "honing their craft" who seem to get off on the anxiety and self-flagellation of submitting work to be "critiqued" by anonymous people on the internet. JUST PUBLISH THE FUCKING BOOK.

Writing is NOT a communal effort. Writing is art created by one person (or maybe more if that's the sort of thing you're writing). What you write is your own vision. Having someone else critique or mold that vision so that it fits their own vision is stupid. It seems to me that writing is the only art form where the artist willingly submits their work to be changed by someone else. I don't get it. Obviously, you should have your writing proofed for spelling and grammar mistakes. But in my opinion, that's as far as it should go. Write your work, have it proofed, get it published. Don't let someone else piss in your soup.

Writing is NOT a communal activity. If you're chatting, tweeting, hanging out, whatever, then you aren't writing. To write, you necessarily have to be alone with your own mind. You have to sit in front of your machine and pound out each letter one at a time without the help or input of anyone else. There's only room for two hands on a keyboard. The trope of the solitary writer is a true reflection of the realities of being a productive writer and anyone that has written anything will know that this is true.

Anyway, there's my two cents on the whole writing community thing. I'll admit, I still feel like I should be involved in some way with a community that revolves around writing. I think it would be fun to hang out with other writers and have deep intellectual conversations over whatever we're writing. But then I think about the mountain of writing work I have in front of me and realize that I'd rather spend my time being a productive writer than chit chatting with other people that are not.