Castles Surrounded By Moats

Flanders

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The incomes cited in this article are instructive in that they are contributing factors in the destruction Realtors are guilty of:

Jan 28, 2019, 06:12pm
Here's How Much Real Estate Agents Earn In Every State
Andrew DePietro

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2019/01/28/real-estate-agents-salary-state/#308cd3d53e58

If you want to identify a major player funding the education industry you need look no further than this country’s Realtor associations in every state. That single industry has the most to gain from property taxes in the form of sales commissions.

Realtors lobby for higher property taxes in order to churn residential home sales in desirable, well-established, suburbs. “A Tax Increase For Education” is the tried and true sales campaign. Never mind that many elderly Americans on fixed incomes are driven out of their homes because of higher property taxes. Ditto younger Americans who fall on hard times.

Incidentally, every private residence is a cash cow for the education industry. The cow pays off like a winning lottery ticket so long as a residence is livable. Do the math. Many private residences have been paying property taxes for a century or more.

Homeownership in the U.S. permits Americans to live in a private residence only so long as they pay their property taxes. That is why it is so sickening to hear Democrats say things like “Homeownership is up.” What the hell does that mean under Socialism? To Socialists it means that more Americans have real property the government can confiscate. Basically, only those people who pay their taxes with tax dollars can be said to have any property Rights at all.

Realtors do more to keep the borders open than every business entity looking for cheap labor. Keeping upward pressure on private home sales benefits Realtors. Few realize it, but Realtors would lose hundreds of billions of dollars in commissions —— trillions in the decades ahead —— should the real estate market tank because the borders were secured. Realtors and illegal immigration is a marriage between sleazy partners that neither will acknowledge.

QUESTION: How many American homeowners would willing accept a huge reduction in the value of their property in order to end illegal immigration? ANSWER: NONE. The good of the country cannot compete with artificial paper profits on a home.

Incidentally, the land and the building are separate sales items. Buyers and sellers should know the value of the land before doing business. In short: Combine the two values before you talk to a real estate salesman. In many cases the seller gets far less than the land is worth.

The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895)

At the time that pronouncement was laid down in Europe it sounded pretty good to people who had no property. The basic method used to impose the Communist dictate on American homeowners is quite simple: Confiscation.

Living indoors is a tax liability

Homeownership is also the tightest grip Socialists/Communists have on the individual’s throat. Try breaking that grip by not buying a home and you are left with the choice of paying exorbitant rent, living in a slum, or finding yourself a clean room outdoors. Under the present system of real property taxation there is nothing but subservience to one entity or the other.

Do not pay your property taxes and the Socialist teachers’ unions will bounce you out into the street faster than an old-time slum lord ever dreamed of doing. I am singling out the teachers’ unions because they are the primary beneficiaries of property taxes but not the only ones.

From a Socialist/Communist perspective property taxes are a far greater detriment to individual liberties than the income tax because property taxes gives the government and the teachers’ unions far more leverage over the homeowner than does the income tax.

Property taxes should be done away with BEFORE repealing the XVI Amendment. Property taxes are not federal yet. However, if the Income Tax Amendment is repealed the federal government will turn to collecting a federal property tax.

Did you ever hear a politician of any stripe brag about property taxes being up, too? Big government parasites do not want homeowners in communities where taxes are still relatively low noticing that Socialism is slowly creeping its way towards them.

Fear of the federal government turning to property taxes for income should be a very real fear to Americans because candidates for federal office sweat bullets at the thought of turning the teachers’ unions against them. Why should that be? Property taxes are levied by each state or local community; so anyone running for federal office should not be afraid of the teachers’ unions. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority are afraid because local property taxes pay salaries and fund lucrative pension plans.

Major and minor political parties cater to, as well as fear, the teachers’ unions because the Ministry of Propaganda is squarely on the side of teachers. Not squarely behind teaching the three R’s at the elementary level which no one is against, but squarely behind teachers feeding at the tax trough for all they can get.

Obviously, the members of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the NEA do not want anyone holding federal office they do not approve of. They know that the day might come when the federal government challenges the things teachers’ unions have been getting away with for so long. Teachers’ unions want office-holders in Washington who are indebted to teachers.

In addition to the tax dollars teachers get they force Socialism/Communism on children and young adults. I use the word force because no other word describes it so well.

Property taxes dictated by teachers’ unions is not the only problem. The EPA is claiming ownership of the property Americas are taxed for “owning.”

NOTE: For as long as I can remember Americans were told that if a criminal is not given a fair trial we all lose our Rights. Have you ever seen that same principle applied to the timber industry, mine owners, and ranchers when their property Rights are diminished or taken away by the EPA? If their Rights are taken away, it must follow that my Rights are also lost.

Parenthetically, there are two popular images of teachers. Mr. Chipping and Ichabod Crane. Hollywood movies, and television shows worked long and hard to make Americans believe that Mr. Chips is a true picture of today’s teachers. It is not working. The image of Ichabod Crane persists because he, too, was an accomplished parasite before the welfare state existed. The fact is that Americans should view teachers collectively as Ichabod Crane rather than Mr Chipping.

Teachers do not beat children these days because they would get their sorry asses sued; nevertheless, the Socialist garbage they force on children does more lifelong emotional harm than does a caning.



In a small way How Green Was My Valley reminded me of the cultures our European ancestors came from. When they got here they waned to work for themselves in a country free from government oppression. In so doing they built a country that did the most good for themselves and for everybody else.

Illegal aliens come from cultures where the governments are also oppressive, yet immigrants from Latin America and Africa come here looking for a benign government that will care for them. How they treat their own children best shows the cultures they came from. I cannot imagine our European ancestors sending their children on a dangerous journey in the care of human traffickers, nor can I imagine an illegal immigrant punching out a teacher who abused his young students. My point: If they do not arrive with the stuff that made this country great neither they, nor their children, will find it in welfare state programs.

There are four tax collecting entities in the US: Federal, state, county, and local governments. Those four constitute one taxing authority. One tax collector will never question another tax collector’s absolute authority to tax. The Right to collect taxes is the only absolute Right the federal government allows the states to exercise. If you have doubts, take a look at the things the federal government is ordering states NOT to do. Enforcing voter identification is one.

Every tax increase in this country is planned and controlled by Socialists in Washington, D.C. no matter which entity actually collects the taxes or whatever names those taxes go by.

The only difference between state and federal taxes is the method of collection. The states have the “method” advantage because they can confiscate real property, while the federal government cannot do a hell of a lot about it if tens of millions of Americans refuse to work at the same time they refuse to pay a tax on their incomes.

Bottom line: Taxation is a game of Ping-Pong with the taxpayer being the ball. The federal government taxes income until it sees serious resistence forming; then it tells state governments “We got enough for a while, now you go and get some.” The states say the same thing to local governments especially in major cities.

You can see the game being played when the federal government cuts funding to higher education, welfare programs, or whatever. The states then tell the Ping-Pong ball “We must raise your taxes to make up for the shortfall.” Back and forth goes the ball. Ending the game by taking the paddles away from the players did not appear to be an option until some North Dakotans decided to take the paddle away from one player.


“No tax should have the power to leave you homeless,” said Jim Cox, a state representative in Pennsylvania who has proposed legislation to eliminate the school property tax in the state where, he said, such taxes have led to residents’ losing homes to sheriff’s sales, entering into reverse mortgages or simply moving away.


North Dakota Considers Eliminating Property Tax
Monica Davey|
Published 1:57 AM ET Tue, 12 June 2012 Updated 10:15 AM ET Tue, 12 June 2012

https://www.cnbc.com/id/47776155

The truth is that funding the education industry with property taxes turned homeownership into an ever-increasing, never-ending, tax liability.

Every home should be a secure castle surrounded by a constitutional moat. Neither tax collector, nor trial lawyers, nor the Courts, nor creditors, should have the legal authority to confiscate a primary residence. We now live in the year 2019; so it is time for a constitutional amendment protecting homeownership from nineteenth century Socialism. After all, private property is supposed to be protected by the Constitution anyway; so the legislative task should not be too difficult.

Before anyone points to the economic upheaval that such an amendment would trigger, consider this: There is no immutable law that says local and state government must be funded by property taxes; so a new freedom from government is worth any amount of adjustment to the way the economy now works.

Quite a few men and women died for a taste of freedom from oppressive government; so embarking upon a few years of financial upheaval is not a big deal. And every non-Socialist American will know that the prize at the end of the road will make the journey well-worth the disruption. Americans will gladly tackle any problem if they know that a little more individual liberty will be the reward.

The way the economy now works puts Americans on the road to LESS freedom.

Should an amendment protecting absolute homeownership ever be ratified it will be the most substantial constitutional Right Americans have acquired since the Bill of Rights was ratified. It will be a Right that every American can has —— not so-called Rights that are nothing more than privileges designed to benefit one group over everybody else.

Absolute homeownership means that a primary residence will be beyond confiscation. Just so there is no misunderstanding. The protection only kicks in after the deed is in the prospective homeowner’s name. Mortgage lenders would hold the deed until it is redeemed. Mortgage lenders would not be protected from their creditors. That is how it is now; so there is no radical change involved.


NOTE: Anybody can buy as many private residences as they want, but only their primary residence would be protected from confiscation. For instance, a husband could own one primary residence and a wife another so long as their names are not on both deeds. Additional properties would be taxed as commercial property. Taxing commercial property would remain exactly as it is.

Undeveloped land would also remain the same in accordance with state and local laws.

Philosophically, the best way to cripple Socialism is with one constitutional chop. Absolute homeownership protecting every primary residence is the way to get the most bang for the buck with the least amount of legislative hanky-panky. Instead of trying to jerk every parasite out of the public trough, just stop putting feed in the tub to begin with. Starving the leeches away from the trough is the way to go. Besides, the thought of watching American Communists tapdance around such a constitutional amendment just tickles me to no end.

In addition, ownership of a primary, non-commercial, residence should be absolute in order to revive the original American Dream and increase incentive for first-time homeownership.

Homeownership used to be the American Dream in my youth because it freed families from the clutches of the hated landlord. Property taxes were very low on a single family residence in those days and everyone believed that no matter how tough things became they could always beg, borrow, or steal enough money to keep from being put out in the street by the tax collector. (Remember Scarlett O’Hara and the green dress made from drapes?)

Unfortunately, the American Dream now means a prominent spot at the public feed tub. I cannot count the times I heard federal officials —— after being appointed to a high-level federal job —— say “This is the American Dream come true.” Their dream was is accompanied by a heartfelt tale of humble beginnings. To hear any government official make such a statement because he or she got a government job is a little scary if it turns out to be true because the question then arises “Where did everyone else’s American Dream go?”

In truth, Americans never stopped struggling to hold onto the Rights they were given when this country was founded; so freedom-loving Americans going for a new Right for everyone will be a unique challenge.

A pitched battle against the amendment I suggest is sure to take place when you look at the list of people and institutions who will oppose it. If nothing else comes out of the fight will at least separate Socialists from decent-people.

Finally, no one I knew in my youth ever gave a damn about freedom of the press, or religion, or speech for that matter. Americans still care about property Rights above all else, while illegal alien democracy-loving parasites focus on their Right to:

. . . petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Parenthetically, while illegal aliens are living in their Third World shit holes they are certain if they had democracy their peculiar shit hole would magically become Shangri-la. So it is no big surprise that our own democracy-loving scum welcome illegal aliens as allies.

In any event, Americans with good sense realize that the XVI & XVII Amendments are twisting the First Amendment into Rights for the government class, and privileges for organized religion priesthoods.
 
Throw your sabots into the machinery, girls!!!!

In the mean time, in my area, the value of residential property is declining while the value of commercial property is rising as far as taxes.
 
UPDATE


Realtors do more to keep the borders open than every business entity looking for cheap labor. Keeping upward pressure on private home sales benefits Realtors. Few realize it, but Realtors would lose hundreds of billions of dollars in commissions —— trillions in the decades ahead —— should the real estate market tank because the borders were secured. Realtors and illegal immigration is a marriage between sleazy partners that neither will acknowledge.

A class action suit sounds good, but I doubt very much if any court will break the economic chain that binds so many to Realtor Associations; homebuilders, home repair companies, advertisers, to name a few, and of course education industry parasites who feed on property taxes:

The truth is that funding the education industry with property taxes turned homeownership into an ever-increasing, never-ending, tax liability.

A new class-action lawsuit takes aim at real estate agents and the tools they use to do business, and housing industry watchers say it could revolutionize the way Americans buy and sell the biggest asset they’ll ever own.

The suit was filed in Chicago on behalf of anyone who sold a home through one of 20 of the largest listing services in the country over the past five years. It charges that the mighty Washington-based lobby National Association of Realtors, as well as the four largest national real estate brokerages, and the Multiple Listing Services they use, have conspired to require anyone selling a home to pay the commission of the broker representing their buyer “at an inflated amount,” in violation of federal antitrust law.

Homeowners who are ready to sell their properties usually hire a real-estate agent to represent them by staging the home, photographing it, adding it to the MLS, marketing it, and showing it to prospective buyers. Sellers agree to pay that person a commission on the selling price of the home. That commission has traditionally been known as the “6%,” but it’s a little more complicated than that.

Sellers can really only negotiate with the agent they’ve hired, while agents representing buyers are generally assured of a standard 3% commission. That means that a seller’s agent who’s willing to negotiate, or one that works for a discount brokerage like Redfin RDFN, +2.93% , will be paid less than a buyer’s agent.

Buyers can choose to be represented by an agent, or to go without one – but in any case, all commission money for both sides of the deal is always paid by the seller, thanks to a 1996 NAR rule known as the “Buyer Broker Commission Rule.”

In order to list a property on one of the many regional databases known as Multiple Listing Services, agents must abide by the Buyer Broker Rule. Listing on the MLS is essential for making a sale, and most MLSs are controlled by local NAR associations.

“The conspiracy has saddled home sellers with a cost that would be borne by the buyer in a competitive market,” the lawsuit says. “Moreover, because most buyer brokers will not show homes to their clients where the seller is offering a lower buyer broker commission, or will show homes with higher commission offers first, sellers are incentivized when making the required blanket, non-negotiable offer to procure the buyer brokers’ cooperation by offering a high commission.”

As MarketWatch has previously reported, many housing observers call Realtors a “cartel” for the way they purposely steer clients to transactions in which traditional ways of doing business are observed.

See: Meet the tech-savvy upstarts who think they can finally give Realtors a run for their money

Rob Hahn is founder and managing partner of 7DS Associates, a real estate consultancy. In a blog posted shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Hahn called it a potential “nuclear bomb on the industry.” And in an interview with MarketWatch, he said that he’s taking it “very seriously.”

In large part, that’s because of the heft of the law firms behind the suit. Both Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, and Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro have a long history of prevailing over weighty entities like Volkswagen, for its emissions scandal, Apple, for its e-book collusion, and Exxon , after the Valdez spill.

In response to a request for comment, NAR said, “The complaint is baseless and contains an abundance of false claims. The U.S. Courts have routinely found that Multiple Listing Services are pro-competitive and benefit consumers by creating great efficiencies in the home-buying and selling process. NAR looks forward to obtaining a similar precedent regarding this filing.”

Still, as Hahn put it, past lawsuits have mostly been filed by what he calls “ambulance-chasers,” not the firms behind some of the biggest civil settlements in American history.

That view is shared by Cohen Milstein partner Daniel Small, who called the way Realtors do business “a longstanding problem.” What’s different now, Small told MarketWatch, is that deep-pocketed law firms had done a “substantial investigation” that convinced them that there was money to be made in taking on the entities named in the suit. The firms filed the lawsuit to seek damages for people who have been affected by this behavior, injunctive relief to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Small declined to elaborate on what had prompted the investigation in the first place. It’s worth noting, however, that the suit was filed roughly four months after the expiration of a Department of Justice consent decree against the National Association of Realtors. That settlement was struck in 2008 after the federal government spent several years unsuccessfully trying to rein in what it called anti-competitive behavior from NAR, which felt under attack from internet upstarts.

Read: Realtors will soon be free of 10-year-old Justice Department decree — so what happens to housing now?

Hahn thinks it’s ironic that an innovation that tried to protect buyers, by providing them with representation in a complex and deeply emotional transaction, has soured the market so badly. Many housing watchers have long argued that real estate services should be paid for a la carte, or in a sliding-scale fee structure, rather than a flat commission, whether that’s 6% or 1%. But, Hahn said, “there’s no chance whatsoever that the industry goes that way voluntarily.”

What’s more likely, he thinks, is that the American system will come to resemble real estate markets in Australia or England, where sellers and buyers each pay their own broker – or don’t. After all, buyers are usually “cash-strapped,” Hahn noted: saving every nickel for a down payment, closing costs and moving expenses. While the entrenched interests in the American real estate industry will argue that’s not consumer-friendly, Hahn says he’s “never seen a study that says buyers get screwed” without representation.

A former lawyer himself, Hahn isn’t sure how to handicap this case. But if it prevails, he thinks enormous changes are in store for the industry. The ranks of buyers’ brokers will likely be decimated, and the infrastructure behind the MLSs and the local associations will wither away too.

A spokesperson for Realogy RLGY, -0.76% said, “We believe this case has no merit and will not be commenting further.”

A spokesperson for Keller Williams said, “It’s not our policy to comment on pending litigation.” A spokesperson for RE/MAX Holdings RMAX, -1.37% declined to comment, and a request for comment by Berkshire Hathaway-held BRK.B, -0.28% HomeServices of America, Inc. was not returned.

“This is an important case for many reasons,” Daniel Small said. “Among them is that this is the biggest transactions of most peoples’ lives. There is a lot at stake.”


The lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are aiming at Realtors and their 6% fee
By Andrea Riquier
Published: Mar 19, 2019 2:24 p.m. ET

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/big-name-lawsuit-could-upend-realtors-and-their-6-fee-2019-03-19
 
new apartment complex in Grand Rapids reminds people of castle......
Drone_8_over_The_Grand_Castle_Apartments_3_50391450_ver1.0_640_360.jpg
 
UPDATE

Realtors do more to keep the borders open than every business entity looking for cheap labor. Keeping upward pressure on private home sales benefits Realtors.

Ben Carson has a better chance of tuning straw into gold than he has of denying illegal aliens access to a major welfare state program:

President Donald Trump’s housing agency plans to exclude illegal migrants from subsidized housing, likely freeing up more cheap housing for the many Americans who face rising real estate costs because of legal and illegal immigration.

“Because of past loopholes in HUD [Housing and Urban Development agency] guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens,” an official told the Daily Caller. “As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”


Housing Chief Ben Carson Seeks to Exclude Illegal Migrants from Subsidized Apartments
by NEIL MUNRO
19 Apr 2019

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/...-illegal-migrants-from-subsidized-apartments/
 
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895)


XXXXX

Do not pay your property taxes and the Socialist teachers’ unions will bounce you out into the street faster than an old-time slum lord ever dreamed of doing. I am singling out the teachers’ unions because they are the primary beneficiaries of property taxes but not the only ones.

Do not look on television for this report —— and its implications:

1 state fixing confiscatory property-tax policy
Posted By -NO AUTHOR
05/11/2019 @ 3:19 pm



 
If you want to identify a major player funding the education industry you need look no further than this country’s Realtor associations in every state. That single industry has the most to gain from property taxes in the form of sales commissions.

Realtors lobby for higher property taxes in order to churn residential home sales in desirable, well-established, suburbs. “A Tax Increase For Education” is the tried and true sales campaign. Never mind that many elderly Americans on fixed incomes are driven out of their homes because of higher property taxes. Ditto younger Americans who fall on hard times.

XXXXX

Realtors do more to keep the borders open than every business entity looking for cheap labor. Keeping upward pressure on private home sales benefits Realtors. Few realize it, but Realtors would lose hundreds of billions of dollars in commissions —— trillions in the decades ahead —— should the real estate market tank because the borders were secured. Realtors and illegal immigration is a marriage between sleazy partners that neither will acknowledge.

Ain’t this a bitch. I cannot decide which one is more despicable —— Shit for Brains Biden, or

A coalition of housing groups led by the Alabama Association of Realtors on Thursday filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., challenging the latest eviction moratorium, calling the Biden administration's action "nakedly political" and "unlawful."


Published 6 hours ago
Realtor groups sue Biden administration, CDC over new eviction moratorium

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/realtor-groups-biden-eviction-moratorium-lawsuit
 
UPDATE

The incomes cited in this article are instructive in that they are contributing factors in the destruction Realtors are guilty of:

XXXXX


Realtors do more to keep the borders open than every business entity looking for cheap labor. Keeping upward pressure on private home sales benefits Realtors. Few realize it, but Realtors would lose hundreds of billions of dollars in commissions —— trillions in the decades ahead —— should the real estate market tank because the borders were secured. Realtors and illegal immigration is a marriage between sleazy partners that neither will acknowledge.

Giving Realtors a piece of the action wherever home sales are falling behind is the one and only reason the scum in government are transporting immigrants to locations nationwide.


“The last several months have been extraordinary not only in the level of price gains, but in the consistency of gains across the country,” Craig Lazzara, global head of index investment strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement.


U.S. Home Prices Gain 19.7% in Another Record for Hot Market
Craig Giammona

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...for-hot-market/ar-AAOUEes?ocid=BingNewsSearch

NOTE: Teachers’ unions fund local school boards in order to put pressure on local governments:

Realtors lobby for higher property taxes in order to churn residential home sales in desirable, well-established, suburbs. “A Tax Increase For Education” is the tried and true sales campaign. Never mind that many elderly Americans on fixed incomes are driven out of their homes because of higher property taxes. Ditto younger Americans who fall on hard times.

Incidentally, every private residence is a cash cow for the education industry. The cow pays off like a winning lottery ticket so long as a residence is livable. Do the math. Many private residences have been paying property taxes for a century or more.
 
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