House Einstein Podcast #129 Transcript

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Osman: All right. So you're probably wondering why the thumbnail of this podcast, podcast 129, says Indian summer. And what does that have to do with real estate? And on the surface, it really deals with seasonality. And the market has already started cooling dramatically. Most people think that. The real estate market is just in line with the summer, but it isn't. Most buyers that were serious about buying this year during peak season have either acquired their homes or have decided to rent or postpone. And so the heat is off the market. And the buyers that are still in the market and will continue to be in the market from now through December typically are more measured. They're more conservative. They're less likely to engage in bidding wars. And from their perspective, and we represent several of them who are currently in the market, it feels like they can be more patient. They can offer lower. They can wait if they can't come to terms with a seller versus being caught up in the frenzy of a bidding war. So from a buyer's perspective, we're entering into what I would have called an Indian summer type market where the weather's still really nice, and the leaves are changing, and everything is beautiful. We've got cold nights. lemon yellow sunny days. And it was a term that I remember growing up very clearly from upstate New York. But what I was told by someone close to me is that this term might be offensive to people of a Native American origin. And I decided to ask AI. So this, if you're following frontier models, I actually asked Fable 5, which I guess some of you will probably be offended that I used Fable 5 for such a... Such a low -level

Hamish: Question. Getting canceled is no low -level question. I mean, that's a good point. I don't think you can get canceled anymore. I think that everyone's

Osman: Decided that you can't. Anyway, I don't think you can get canceled anymore. Given who is not canceled. Yeah, right. I think we can agree that canceling is no longer a thing. But I asked Fable, which is Claude's latest model, is it okay to still say Indian summer or am I offending someone? And this is the answer. Short answer, you're probably fine in most contexts, but it's worth knowing the debate. Indian summer, that stretch of warm weather after the first frost, has been flagged as potentially problematic for a couple of reasons. The origin is murky, but some proposed etymologies are unflattering. One theory holds it comes from colonial settlers viewing Native Americans as unreliable. So an Indian summer was a false summer. Similar logic to clearly derogatory Indian giver. Other theories are neutral. It may simply refer to the season when Native peoples in the Northeast did late harvesting and hunting. Because nobody actually knows the origin, it's hard to definitively call it a slur or definitively clear it. And I think that was good enough. That was probably good enough to say it's okay to say Indian summer. But this is my opportunity to tell you that as someone of Indian origin, whose parents were born in a country called India, that Native Americans calling themselves Indian at some point in time is going to be no longer acceptable. This is a high horse or a soapbox, a hill that I will die on. And I sort of laugh it off. And I've gotten into this debate with several people of Native American origin when they call themselves Indian. I ask them, where in India is your family from? Or what sort of Indian food do you cook? Like, what makes you Indian of Indian origin? And they just laugh it off. But it's sort of funny how Native people still call themselves

Hamish: Indian. That's true. And I mean, because I'm thinking, they would be called American, right? Native Americans. Native American makes sense to me. Yeah, or just American. But that's been

Osman: Co -opted, I guess, by a white man. Or just American. Or Native. In fact, I think Fable nailed it by not describing them as Indians. They very clearly described them as Native peoples. Yeah. Which are not the same thing as the people with the bumper stickers that run around Colorado claiming

Hamish: To be native. Those guys. You could just say local. I'm a local, right? A local is somebody... But rather than saying I'm a native, like Coloradans that are born here say that they're natives.

Osman: I just don't understand this strange pride of place that seems to affect some people and they feel... this identity pride that they didn't based on who whose body they were born from that they had nothing to do with i i just don't understand it and i don't understand it with the bumper stickers and i don't understand it with people claiming how many generations they've been living in the state i mean the state's only been around

Hamish: Since 1860 that's true i i think like and not to i mean maybe i'm taking the stance for them but i'm not um it's because like my understanding that there's so many people moving in they're like well look at me i've I'm here before it was cool. It's a hipster thing almost. Hopefully

Osman: It's fading. I think everyone's sick of the native

Hamish: Bumper sticker. Once it gets obnoxious enough, it starts to die down, hopefully. All right,

Osman: Well, let's circle back to real estate because we are going to talk about market conditions and how they may be swinging toward the buy-side and how sellers should be thinking about what they might be doing to prepare for a much cooler market in the fall higher interest rates and uh and more competition to attract a buyer and we'll do that from a data perspective which is which is usually how we roll at House Einstein we don't just feel you how we think the market's

Hamish: Doing we talk about we learn you we yeah well

Osman: We go to the data and the data at this point august 12th for july is pretty baked so i think we did talk about it last week we're going to hit the city of uh we're going to hit Boulder County this time around I will also add is unfortunately I am a little sleep deprived so if I sound fuzzy brained please take that in mind I got four hours of sleep last night and it is something I'm working on I think it has to do with not exercising as

Hamish: Much as I used to because of this ankle injury

Osman: So now that I'm cleared for running which I just had my first run this morning Oh, nice. Per the PT. Hopefully my sleep will improve. But with all of that said, welcome to the House Einstein podcast, podcast 129. I'm Osman Parvez. This is Hamish Crabbb. Hello. Welcome. And let's go through our docket. Before we do, of course, we have to give you our little disclaimer. This podcast is entertainment. If you are a House Einstein client, just reach out to your House Einstein agent. If you're a prospective client or would like to learn more about. What the brokerage does, you can find us at HouseEinstein. com. House Einstein, the brokerage, is the sponsor of the podcast, but they are not the same as the podcast itself. This podcast is entertainment. Please don't make any important decisions on anything you hear. We're just here to amuse you.

Hamish: If you want to make important decisions based on what we say, reach out and see if we're a good fit for a client -service relationship.

Hamish: Yeah, absolutely. Until then, as Joe Pesci says,

Osman: We're here to amuse... Well, he doesn't say that. He says, what am I? Here to amuse you? Oh, you don't know this? You've not seen Goodfellas? Okay, I'll add it to... Have you seriously not

Hamish: Seen Goodfellas? We've got a shared movie list,

Osman: So I'll add it in there. How is this possible?

Hamish: Okay, all right. Do you even know who Joe Pesci is? No. For those listening to the podcast, visualize

Osman: My surprised look. Sometimes the generational differences between Hamish and I catch me by surprise. And that would be one of those moments. Okay. Our docket for today. We are going to do a post-mortem on a recent transaction. That's our closing table topic. And we're going to go into some depth on... what went right, what went wrong in this transaction, and also some of our takeaways for how we might deal with this circumstance in the future. Tales from the Trenches, we will be talking about, this one's a little tricky because it's in play. Yeah. But it's so, we will anonymize it to a great extent. So there's all these strange noises outside today. Somebody's

Hamish: Using the faucet out front. Is that what's happening? Yeah. What are they using the faucet for? I don't know. I've never even heard anybody use that faucet. What are these strange sounds? Okay. All right. Well. It's always the recording day. It's always. Well, yeah. I mean, it's the trash

Osman: Trucks. It's random noises outside. Yeah. So bear with us for that. So we'll be talking about. This Tales from the Trenches. Yeah. There's. It's really a super interesting start to a negotiation. And hopefully it will eventually result in us coming to a deal. But it's also a situation where our buyer is very much willing to walk away and the listing agent's absolutely not helping it. And if only the seller knew what was happening behind the scenes, I think they would be rather disappointed in their choice of agent. So it's another one of those spectrum of competency conversations. But we'll go into specifics about that. And then we've got six properties in our sales of the week. And let me pull this up for you. We will be talking about 640 South 68th Street, which just closed for 9.5. That's called Lodestar Ranch. Lodestar Ranch. It's a home that was on the Hearth & Stone Tour over a year ago. And that first agent got fired. Second agent. Worked it for a while, and then the property was pulled. We'll go into a lot more detail, but eventually it did attract a buyer and was sold, I think, off market. So it wasn't officially back on when the buyer locked it down. There's some takeaways for that. And then we've got two properties at very similar price points in Newlands that I think are worth a discussion. 3007 10th Street, which closed for 4.8 on August 7th, and 2675 Dakota Place. which closed for 4.1 on the same date. And then we'll be talking about 160 South 36th Street, which is a super interesting Martin Acres ranch that I think will be setting close to a high-water mark at 1.2 for a ranch without a basement. And we'll talk about the reason why.

Osman: And how some insider knowledge of what's marketed as open space might surprise you of what really is that space. So it's a warning for buyers that you really should, and I'm not saying it's a bad deal when we're going to get into it, but it is one of those things where you should really read the market language, the broker remarks, the public remarks with a keen eye to accuracy and vet. Trust but verify. So we'll be talking about that. It's a good thumbnail too. You don't even know what we're talking about, but I've

Hamish: Got some detail there on what actually. No, I know. I'm like, you're talking about 36th Street.

Osman: Yeah, I'm talking about 36th Street. Great location. Yeah. But is it really open space that it backed to? Okay, 3280 Dartmouth Avenue, one of our most important clients, locked that down last week.

Hamish: And he's been gracious enough to share some details

Osman: Too. We'll share some insider details on 3280 Dartmouth, which is also in Martin Acres. And then our last one is 3601 Arapahoe Avenue, which is a unit at the Peloton on the third floor facing west. Lovely view of the traffic over Arapaho and the paint store. And luxury residence, it just closed for $845. And yeah, the Peloton, I've got a long history with the Peloton, so we'll be talking about the pros and cons of that development, as well as the massive amount of inventory that is currently on the market at

Hamish: The Peloton. I was going to say that's sending you down a bit of a rabbit hole to see just how much inventory was currently for sale there. A bit shocking, actually. Pretty insane. Quite

Osman: A bit shocking. And I think we'll contrast it a little bit with Gold Run, where we happen to have, and this is a good segue right to shameless self -promotion, we happen to have a multiple client, I think it's six times, if he does this

Hamish: Transaction with us. This is the Breckenridge client, right? We don't share any details, Hamish. You're giving away details. Is that too much? It's too much. We don't share too many details.

Osman: But it is a client who has a property at Gold Run who might be interested in selling it. It is not officially on the market, but we know enough about it that I think I can talk about it. And if that interests you, please reach out and maybe we can put together a deal. In the news, our hot takes section, we're going to talk about the four measures that are on the November ballot. And the most recent council meeting where the Downtown Development Authority failed to get enough votes, it was a split decision. And Mark Wallach's resignation is already being felt because if he had been on council, it would have been clearly a yes or no. And instead it's split

Hamish: And that defaults to no. Good point. All right.

Osman: And that will be our topics for today. Of course, we always have a carve out. And my carve out. Well, I think we're just going to make you wait

Hamish: For our carve-out. Yeah, fair call. Let's just

Osman: Tease them and say, I think you'll be enlightened.

Hamish: Maybe. For Osman's. Maybe you'll be enlightened. Yeah, for mine. Maybe both. Yeah. All right. Well, let's get into it. That was a long intro.

Osman: And that's probably because I'm sleep -deprived.

Hamish: Yeah. I mean, it was a friendly one. I'm going

Osman: To drink some coffee from Amante. Our neighborhood coffee shop here at House Einstein. However,

Hamish: Non -sponsored. Our sponsorship loyalty remains to House Einstein, the brokerage, not the podcast. I know. I'm not wearing our merch. But Amante's

Osman: Coffee is great coffee. And Sync Accept is now open. And I feel like promoting Uptown is something we can do because it's such a great location. And it's getting better. There was a lot of fear over the library. And those fears, I think, are largely gone. So anyway, Amante's fine. Trident

Hamish: Is still my favorite. And then there's the whole Bamoca and everything happening in North Boulder soon. Oh, yeah. It's going to keep... We're keeping an eye on it. Well, hopefully our location here keeps getting better. Without derailing too much, do you think we'll get a supermarket up here

Osman: Sometime? I think there's actual structural reasons why we can't, including when the subdivision of Uptown was created, where the library is, they prohibited a grocery store. Yeah. A food

Hamish: Desert by design? By design. Oh, my. Yeah, by

Osman: Their title constraints about putting in a grocery store there. They intentionally tried to avoid

Hamish: A grocery store up here. That's insane. And now

Osman: We're trying to figure out how do you squeeze

Hamish: One in. It's totally a food desert up here. Yeah, and that's one of the biggest complaints I hear about it is, I mean, Lucky's isn't complaining, but anywhere else there's a canisteria down the street if you like meat. And that's going to

Osman: Go away. Yeah. And if you like, and it's not just that they've got great Latino, Latino grocery

Hamish: Store has got great stuff. Yeah. Might step through. All right, let's get into it. Yeah. Postmortem.

Osman: Circle. So that's the actual address of the property, and it's a really unusual... in that it is legally a condo. So this is a detached single-family house. You look at it, it looks like a normal house, but it's part of an association that had a pretty high monthly dues, and in exchange for that, they took care of the exterior, they took care of the roof, they took care of the landscaping around the property, but not in the enclosed backyard. I think that might be yours. They even

Hamish: Offered to take care of the inside. Inside the fence? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. It

Osman: Was a whole thing. Okay, so exterior landscaping is included. And of course, let's caveat this,

Hamish: That this is recollection, right? So if you're

Osman: The buyer of this property and we missed something

Hamish: Here, we're not redoing that. Yeah, good point.

Osman: But snow removal on the sidewalks and that sort of thing is all part of the association duess, but they're expensive. And most people have a mental model of when they buy a single family house, they might have an association dues, but it's quarterly, it's de minimis. It's to keep some landscaping looking pretty that's part of the commons. But taking care of the entire exterior and the roof and paying hazard insurance on the outer walls is something that is not in the wheelhouse or mental model of most real estate buyers. And this caught us a little bit off guard because it resulted in a much longer listing than I anticipated. And that's because the buyer pool... So this is the take -home lesson for you. as a listener or viewer, when you go to buy a property, if you choose something that is not in the targets of the majority of the market, when you go to sell this property, you could have a very long listing period. And this is one of the value adds your agent can bring. They should be warning you that what you're about to buy might be perfect for you. You might be completely in love with it. But you may pay a penalty when you go to sell this someday. And I hope you call us when you go to sell it. But when you do, I want you to know it could be a long listing because even though this is perfect for you, it appeals to a very small segment of the market. Could be

Hamish: Quite painful of a selling process, right? And same thing as like, it doesn't appeal to everyone. So you might find it as a deal when you were a buyer. You might have to give that same deal when you go to sell it, right? You might be a... Yeah. It'll be more difficult to sell. So. Well,

Osman: How do you comp it? Right. So initially we started by comping it to single family houses that had lower HOAs and doing, and then we did an adjustment on the value of the HOA or really the, the decreased purchasing power that the monthly HOA dues would be pulling down from a buyer that is looking at it as what's the max, you know, the purchasing power is a decisive factor in this price range, right? The monthly payment. So we looked at it that way after we had it on the market a while. We thought our initial stab was, well, people will understand that there's a trade-off, right? You're paying whatever the number was, like $450

Hamish: A month or $500 a month. You're paying that,

Osman: But you're also not mowing your own lawn. You're also not replacing your roof. I think water was included. So there are all these things, and your monthly insurance cost is lower. But that's

Hamish: Not how buyers view it at all. Yeah, it requires, I think, a little bit of additional mental work from the buyer to even wrap their head around, okay, if I'm spending a little bit more here, maybe I'm spending a little bit less here, and my monthly payment kind of nets out, right? I

Osman: Mean, this was something I remember in my startup days, and that was every time you introduce a new way of thinking, or have to explain why something is better, it's not obvious to the consumer, you're creating a hurdle in the process. And those hurdles are objections that need to be overcome. And those objections often aren't overcome.

Hamish: You're often struggling to overcome them. And

Osman: Even though this was a great house with a really interesting design, three bedrooms up top, two bedrooms in the basement, really lovely. three

Hamish: Bedrooms in the basement two up top three in the basement two up top three in the basement but uh the loft was really readily could have

Osman: Been another bedroom yeah like this is a very spacious family -friendly house it still didn't appeal to them to the what i would call the majority of the market i almost said the meat of the market

Hamish: But we're in boulder so you're gonna say the tofu of the market or whatever you want to call it um and you know what i mean maybe it's not so much on the post-mortem i think that we're looking within but The MLS doesn't really make it easy for you to communicate specifics about an HOA or something to that effect, right? Putting yourself in a buyer's shoes, you might be completely fine with this type of HOA structure, especially considering the benefits that you get out of it. But, I mean, man, there's no way to put that

Osman: In as a specific criteria. Not as a field, but in the listing description. Totally. sold the HOA. Instead of being on the defensive about the HOA, we went on the positive side and really hit hard on, look at all the great things this

Hamish: HOA provides. And I still believe that the HOA is great. I think the HOA is great too. I mean,

Osman: This little office condo has a higher HOA than that. They're right neck and neck. We get nothing here and they get a lot for... We get our emails

Hamish: Ignored here. That's something to write home about. But no, exactly. There's value out of that HOA, and we did sell it in the listing description. And part of the postmortem, towards the end, our seller had a packet kind of outlining exactly where your money went for the HOA and how they

Osman: Worked it out. So the other lesson is if you have something like that, it would be better to get all that marketing material up front. And it just didn't occur to us that this was such a mental hurdle for buyers to get their head around. But as the deal went on, or as the listing went on, and we got one offer that was pretty low, and then they bailed for random reasons. And then we got another buyer who eventually closed. Very similar demographic of people, a little on the older side, and had obviously had real estate of their own. where they did all the maintenance, right? So if you've done the maintenance yourself for decades, you suddenly value your free time a lot more than you value the 450 bucks a month. So that's who the target audience ended up being. And we did have one more round of price adjustments where we realized that there are several townhomes that are attached

Hamish: With... Is that our people? It's not our people.

Osman: Okay. With very similar couple of townhomes that are attached with... with very similar associations and square footage, just no backyard. But this also didn't have much, like it doesn't have a

Hamish: Big spacious backyard. It's like a token patio

Osman: Area. So we eventually adjusted pricing to that. And then the last piece on this was the location, right? This particular location, when you looked at Longmont, where this home exists, there's like a lot of density of cheaper homes to the east. And then there's density of more expensive homes in, say, the Renaissance neighborhood to the west. But in this spot, it's sort of like not a lot going on. So from a location perspective, you're more... how do you price this right right

Hamish: There's not necessarily like the location premium that you would expect from like a renaissance or the homes out east it's just not easy so like

Osman: If you're pricing a home when there's lots of similar homes that sold in the last three to four months right and you have two or three competitors that also are similar functionally you can then look at the factors that are local like within the neighborhood how is this home positioned how is its condition compared to the others how is its layout And then is it updated or not? Like all of these things come in, but you already have the data set to price accurately. Right.

Hamish: If you don't have the data set. And probably a recent sales history too. I think this one

Osman: Was pretty sparse. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There's no comps. So if there are no comps that make any sense, how are you figuring out pricing? And we're so data driven. And I want to add one more piece that ultimately our clients are going

Hamish: To make the call on what to price. Always do.

Osman: Yeah. We're going to give them guidance and then we're going to go see the competitors and then. we'll tell them where we think it should land based on the those competitors and the sold comps but this one had all these unique aspects to it that made that particularly challenging correct

Hamish: Me if i'm wrong we looked at this one we were like it's more or less like a condo HOA type of community with i think two or three standalone homes that reap the same benefits We were looking at it like a single family home adjust for, from a price perspective, we were looking at it from a single family home adjust for like the HOA, you know, give or take. Right. Yeah. That's one approach to pricing it. Do you think if we looked at it like, and I think you might've already said this, but like if we looked at it like condo plus maybe a slight. slight premium because it's standalone like started at the condo pricing

Osman: And then i mean that's certainly another way we could have approached it yeah and there's so many different ways to slice the onion but ultimately the price wasn't really the objection it was just the limited appeal of this type of product the price just has to make sense so if you're valuing a company right in the public markets you can use the discount cash flow approach to valuing a company you can do a multiple of its earnings there are lots of different ways to value companies and there are lots of different ways to value houses And ultimately, the valuation is really important. It's part of the marketing strategy. But knowledge of depth of market, I think, is actually even more important. And you're relying on your agent's expertise, sometimes which is subjective, in terms of desirability. And some of these agents will run around and honestly underprice because they don't want a

Hamish: Nine -month listing experience. And if they sense

Osman: You're not confident in the price, this is the part where I got to say your agent, in theory is supposed to be your advocate and it's supposed to be representing you but let's not pretend

Hamish: They're not representing themselves without a

Osman: Doubt and if they get a sense that you are uh soft on pricing yourself as a seller like you're not confident and they can push you to a lower price they will and the reason is because that home will sell faster it's less work for them maybe they'll even get lucky and get multiple offers and they can you know wipe their hands clean of this process in 60 days instead of 120 or 180 or as some of these listings we'll talk about a lodestar over a year on market right

Hamish: There's many millions right these are challenging

Osman: When you have a relationship that goes that duration um philosophically the client should be well educated and advised and then needs to make the call but if the agent is not in agreement on where we are with pricing strategy the agent really should exit rather than take the listing

Hamish: And hope that the seller comes to yeah there's got to be some point of alignment I mean, I've

Osman: Been in that circumstance where the seller wants a much higher price and my answer has been, okay, let's list it at that higher price. How do you feel about, let's agree on a predetermined pricing adjustment after two weeks, three weeks. If we have not gotten an offer, can we come back to where I think the price should be rather than throw a Hail Mary and just stay out there forever and nothing's going to happen? Like we're just going to stay on market? Yeah. and wish or hope that the market responds when we clearly has shown you buyers have told you they're not interested.

Hamish: And it's like, this is very Hail Mary price when I have, and this particular home type, super comparable. So like, you know, you're like, I've got 30 comps showing why it should not be this price. And you've got sellers saying, nah, 50

Osman: K more, right? 50 K more. I think that sucker's out there even after on the market six months.

Hamish: And there is dumb money, but not typically in like the very comparable home market either.

Osman: Well, I'm thinking like Martin Akers type of deal. Time is the real teller of whether you're the dumb money or not, right? So if you're willing to let it sit, because this is what often happens on the buy-side, you will go see a hot new listing and there will be information shared with you that gives the impression that this thing could fly off the market tomorrow. Yeah. Right? Like you just saw one that we won't mention the address because it's an active listing. But when you saw it, you realize, wait a minute, there's all sorts of signs of structural repairs. And I don't think you need to go frenzy for this one. It

Hamish: Might be priced right. Considering the structural.

Osman: Otherwise, initially it looked low. And given the fact it has significant, and from the photo you shared, did not look like professional work.

Hamish: Oh, I believe at least on the email we just got it was. It looked professional? Yeah. Before we get too far or far afield, that particular home, not mentioning the address, their HOA is $130 a month. They've got a pool and a community garden. And a community garden. Well, you just

Osman: Gave away what property we're talking about.

Hamish: You'd have to look very hard. All right. But

Osman: That's a unicorn. Well, there's very few of those houses. Yeah. And I love that location in Boulder. It's super unique. And that community commons and pool thing is... Anybody that's tracking Boulder real estate, especially some of our past clients, know exactly what property I'm talking about now, so we need to stop because it's an

Hamish: Active listing. I'm going to circle back to that when we cover the Peloton, speaking of HOA dues and stuff. Just hitting that nail on the head, I think, one more time for this Hover Ridge home.

Hamish: So there's just not a place in the MLS search criteria. Again, if you're looking for search alerts or something, you have to have a buyer's agent who is actively going through homes that you would say no to and reading the listing descriptions to really understand the value of this home. Because there's such little depth of market, people have such a little tolerance, I think, for HOAs to begin with, they're just going to filter no HOA. And they might miss this home, which was great and very valuable for the HOA. um just based off of that filter alone at the

Osman: Price point it was better than standalone single-family houses with no HOAs dramatically better

Hamish: It was 20k less than the house that i paid for and far less maintenance more bedrooms you know um i i like my location more and there's a few other things i don't know it's a different rate environment right i wouldn't have fired it now but like i every time i was there i was like dang like i can't believe it hasn't sold yet and it's just this mental people cannot overcome

Osman: The HOA hump so if you're shopping be careful

Hamish: Buying a home like that that might be perfect

Osman: For you but in reality appeals to a very small segment of the market and the other post-mortem piece on this the big takeaway was we um our client asked us so we did our normal staging consultation which means we go through the property we photograph it in detail and then as a team all four of us will create a PowerPoint presentation room by room that gives you a prioritized list of things that we think you should address, whether it's paint or decluttering or moving furniture around the room or adding a plant. That's all part of this PowerPoint presentation. And usually

Hamish: It's over 50. I believe this one was like 52.

Osman: Yeah, usually it's over 50. They're pretty extensive.

Osman: And it often acts like a punch list for our clients to then do what we've asked them to do to prepare the home for sale and we assist with that process with contractors and so forth but once we're live we don't normally come back in and stage and it was our client who asked us is it possible to get a professional stager in yeah and most of the professional stagers i've worked with do not work in homes that are occupied and will not work with the seller's possessions because they just don't match their design aesthetic and the conflicts between the seller and the stager i lost a listing years ago when we tried to do this and the seller was so offended by the advice we gave that they fired us took it super they took it personally and so um Most of the stagers I've talked to don't do this service. And it turns out that one of our stagers does. And I was really caught by surprise when I asked her, would you consider working on a home like this that has a family living in it? And she agreed to do it. So kudos to her. And I think that her suggestions really helped, actually. It addressed some of the things that were subtle, but affected emotions in the property. Staging

Hamish: Is one of those things where... there's absolutely a skill for it. There's almost a knack. And then some of the recommendations, you're like, man, that's common sense, but I didn't even think of it. Like white linen. Duh. Totally. The obvious

Osman: One. And we don't even think about it because normally you just have whatever colors that work in your bathroom, but you're not thinking about the emotional impact of the color of the towels

Hamish: In the bathroom. Psychological, however it is. But no, fantastic stager. And they did work. I don't know. I don't remember if they mixed. furniture with the owners or not? They brought

Osman: In some pieces. Yeah, they did. And the seller finally put away a lot of pieces and that helped a lot. And finally the property closed. And so we're deeply grateful for those clients. And they were, there were two-time past clients and one of them said, absolutely. I'd love to work with you again on the buy-side. So when I'm ready, I will reach out. And so that, that's great to hear. And I think we did good work, but there were some lessons there in terms of setting expectations and being. more aggressive in pricing earlier in the year i think would have been helpful and also checking with our stagers to see if they offered additional although we did the staging

Hamish: It's one of those things where you hear no once or twice and you're like okay that's just never

Osman: Going to be an option well the experiences have been so rough exactly and it would not surprise me if the stager says i'm done i'm not doing it again yes i mean some of the messages she sent me from inside that house were well what to say we're aggressive about whether this was going to be a successful project or not she had

Hamish: Her doubts and where it was i think This was a longer sale. It was challenging in many ways. I'd honestly say thank you to the sellers for their trust in us. I think throughout the whole process, as challenging as it was, they still turned to you, Osman, for the final word and your experience and your guidance through it.

Osman: Well, it was a good transaction and I deeply appreciated the client's trust in us. We also learned something about... discount buy-side agents oh yeah and we have not we're not going to mention the name of the agent but i will say that spectrum of competency well i just not being available on the phone ghosting us with her own questions and we responded that's a funny one very strange behavior and initially um we were excited that they were a discount agent because that meant more money that we actually just passed on through to our clients because we wanted them to net more and we didn't realize how much more work this agent would would create for us but that is so the way the listing agreement we talked about this already the way the listing

Hamish: Yeah so we've discussed this already we don't

Osman: Need to go into more details on on the post-mortem of that property we'll stop at this point and

Hamish: I'd say for what it's worth and maybe like a silver lining or something for this agent it wasn't so that they were incompetent to me at least it was more that they just weren't around

Osman: I bet they have another full -time job. Yeah. Because they were mostly not available during the day. Yeah. And they asked us to do things that normally they should be doing for their

Hamish: Client, drafting contracts. Yeah, that one was, I was like, okay, I'll give you. We have the

Osman: Resources, okay? We are well -resourced at House Einstein thanks to your participation and our team. Yeah. And everyone's licensed. We can do those things. But at the same time, it's a weird request. And we're like, okay, we'll write the amendment for you. We'll reach out to your lender. No sweat. And we'll get the language your lender. lender wants to fix this for you shouldn't you be doing okay all right no problem we'll do it but yeah i will say that i don't think we will automatically be um be moving that commission difference over to the to the owner of the property when it clearly results in more work and we can have a conversation i think that if we get a discount agent that's offering on one of our listings we need to have the conversation of okay if this agent does their job then i'm totally fine with the split that we'd agreed to but if they don't do their job then we're going to go with what the contract says which i mean i just said agreed to but really what was expected is what i'm trying to say like the normal split could be three two two eight something like that and instead we're just going to do like if they off the buy-side agents one percent we're going to We're going to have a conversation at closing if you feel like that you need to get some of that back. But typically our clients are very happy. They feel like we've earned our commission.

Hamish: We've done good work. And we can back that up.

Osman: And we can usually back that up. Okay. So let's talk about our tales from the trench. Really

Hamish: Quick. Kudos to the buyers. I personally love the property. And hopefully you are not having such a long listing period if you do decide to

Osman: Sell down the road. If you do decide to sell, you just expect it to take a while. price aggressively because you got a discount a big a big discount on the listing because of the limited market appeal and that's something you need to keep

Hamish: In mind when you go to sell it yeah tails all

Osman: Right tails from the trenches hamish titled this

Hamish: Walk the talk thanks for calling that out i was really proud of that that's truly what we wish

Osman: This agent was doing so we're in the middle of a negotiation i guess you could say sort of it might be a long negotiation it might not come to fruition at all But we identified this home as a really good fit for our client. We took them to see it and we took them to see it twice. It's been on the market a couple of weeks, so it's not going anywhere in a puff of bidding war frenzy. It's sitting there. And we took the time to deeply analyze the comps and try to get our head around the list price. And quite frankly, we couldn't. And so we decided to go ahead and submit the offer anyway. And we substantiated the offer with an analysis of the comps. And I mean, it was a bit, right? That analysis is not something that most agents do when they submit a low offer. We felt like it would be helpful to the seller to see where we're coming from.

Hamish: This particular buyer probably wanted that analysis from you anyway. So you had it ready. Oh, yeah.

Osman: Our clients are very analytical and we're grateful for that. And they wanted to go through the comps. This is what I call going to the war room. You tell me you want to write an offer. You love this house. Now we try to figure out, is this price right? And the price is wrong. The price is way too high. It doesn't make any sense. And we can't get our head around it. So we wrote up the offer with a cover letter that explained which comps we're using to price it. And we submitted the offer. And the response was no response, right? So when you write a low offer, there's two things that are likely to happen. The more likely response is no offer, no counter. they're playing the we're offended card you're too low to even consider offering not even acknowledging receipt right yeah right now like they're just basically saying take a hike come back with a real offer and the other approach is that they'll they'll come back with their real where their number is right now like what number gets this done because you know you're not getting your list price so where are we with this and most sellers will keep some small reserve for Additional negotiation. Yeah, but they have a number in their head, right? Like I'm selling a van right now. It's listed at 49,000. I have a number in my head that I'll let it go for. I'm just putting it out there, huh? The adventure van. Ron Burgundy's on the market, right? Like it's

Hamish: Listed higher than I think it'll sell. Motivated

Osman: Selling. Everybody wants a discount. So when you offer low, you expect either no response or you expect their real number or hopefully close to their real number. And I usually encourage my clients to counter. right like this is a cash buyer and they're analytical that's true yeah so show me the analytical response and the answer was no and this is the part this is what i want to get to okay which is liar liar pants on fire yeah the listing agent responds that the seller has a number of opinions of value by third parties that substantiate the list price. You're almost verbatim, aren't you? Yeah, because I read that. Because opinion of value is more of an investment banking term. So it always catches my attention because that's what we used to call our CMAs. Agents usually say CMA. Opinion of value is something that Wall Street uses. Broker Price Opinion is something that appraisers or relocation companies, stuff like that, sometimes will go get BPOs. So this lingo is all basically the same thing. It's an analysis that substantiates the list price and eventually the selling price. And this agent said multiple opinions of value. And it really caught my attention. I'm like, okay, interesting. So I asked him if they would be willing to share those multiple opinions of value so I could show it to my client and maybe we could reach terms. And no response. Yep. Nothing. Nothing. So a week later, I called. And I got him on the phone, and I said, we'd love to see that analysis. Oh,

Hamish: You got him on the phone? Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay.

Osman: He picks up. And we'd love to see that analysis. If you have that, please share it with me, because it could move our client to coming up in price.

Hamish: Yeah. Our client's not set in stone. Our client's

Osman: Not set in stone. He said, absolutely, and then ghosted out. And the reason he ghosted out was because of what we suspected, because the multiple opinions of value are bullshit. and you could beep that. You probably had to beep that. But we know it's a lie. Liar, liar, pants on fire. There are no multiple opinions of value. If there were, you would have sent that, especially after being asked twice for what you claim to exist. So it's so infuriating and so easy to avoid lying when you lie about something that is so, it's just so dumb. I don't know what else to say about

Hamish: This. So opinions of value mean something. clear cup to you and i'm i wonder he's like yeah it's just an opinion you know like he's like yeah it's just your opinion man he's trying to like hide behind you know the wishy -washiness of

Osman: Of the word opinion but it's third parties multiple opinions of value this is verbatim from the email and i My client, of course, is very patient, and this is a long -term client. And so we've been friends for many years, and he's really astute and a really savvy investor. And his reaction was just disbelief. And this is one of the things I hate about our business, is I have to continually apologize for the misbehavior of counterparties. I constantly have to say, I know he said he had these things, but I think he was lying, so don't expect him to come back with actual opinions of value or even a comp or two. Like, throw me a bone. Which comp did we miss? Genuinely, yeah. Show me the one we missed. And we know this neighborhood really well. We've seen most of these houses. We know why one's sold for a premium. We know why one's sold for a big discount. And it's just... it's just infuriating and frustrating and it's embarrassing, frankly, when our counterparties in this industry behave so unprofessionally. So ghosting out twice, we're still trying to date this house. I just sent the listing agent an email this morning saying, hey, I want to follow up on some other things. I'm not going to push on this anymore. Because at this point, if I continue to push for these multiple opinions of value, it's going to be offensive to him. And my job is to try to... get past it. Like

Hamish: We're trying to work a deal. So the ball's in his court there, but you can continue conversation on other points around the deal. Yeah. We can talk about other deal points. And then we are,

Osman: I'm asking for documentation about other things that they described in the listing. So we're going to hopefully get that from them. And it should also signal to this listing agent and hopefully the seller, if they get a message from this listing agent that our buyer is actually still here. We're still serious. The home's still available. Do you want to? kind of reach out

Hamish: And work on this? Are your sellers getting kind of antsy? I bet they are. Maybe. There's additional factors to this that might... Oh, that's right.

Osman: We think they have a buyout number from a third

Hamish: Party, and we'll leave it at that. In the same email, the multiple opinions of value, and I'm just looking at your reply where you put multiple opinions of value in quotation marks. He says they have two separate... Second showings today. And this was... Ten days ago? Yeah, thank you. So kind of like one of our most engaged blog articles that's on our website is the other offer fake. And well, if you end up not offering or not coming up in price on your original offer and you have two second showings on the same day that your offer was declined and ten days later the home is still available. I know. It kind of becomes a little bit obvious. The fact

Osman: That he said two separate second showings, it just screams lying. And it's really funny because years and years ago I worked, this is between undergrad and grad school, for that one year between I worked at an Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche

Hamish: Dealership. This is when you had the yellow Audi?

Osman: No, I had the yellow Audi decades later. I was younger than you are right now. I was like 23 years old. 22 years old and very fresh and bright -eyed and eager. Of course. And so naive about human nature. So naive. And I'll never forget, I learned so much from that experience. Tons. But the manager at the time, he came in one day and we were just kind of having casual conversation because... it's car sales and he just throws out that you know what he really does is lie from the moment he walks in to the moment he leaves he just lies all day long he's like i

Hamish: Like you you know what my secret is lying that's

Osman: Pretty much what it was and i was so like shocked at this comment that even in like now decades later 30 plus years later i this this comment still right just around 30 years later this comment's still like yeah shocked me it's such a level i'm like and that's what this agent i think does i think this agent just lies as part of their nature that's their salesy way of being and they think by claiming multiple opinions of value and claiming their multiple second showings that will cause our client to panic right the scarcity price they'll feel the fear of losing it yeah and they think that'll work and it might work for some people particularly if they're poorly advised But if they're disciplined and they're experienced negotiators, they can see through this. And if you're willing to lose it, and that's the conversation I've had multiple times with this client, are you willing to lose it? And he said, absolutely. And I've said, great, because there's always another house. And I don't care how long it takes either. It's got to be the right house at the right time at a price that feels fair. He's not even greedy. We have clients that are like, I want to steal the house. And that's a fall discount client mentality, like the third and fourth quarter. We're going to talk about this more in detail later in the pod. But late third quarter, early fourth quarter, that's discount season. You can sometimes negotiate surprisingly large discounts in certain price ranges and segments because the seller is capitulating.

Hamish: They're done. They need to get out. One of the things I hate about this job is I have to apologize for the other agents so often. It's wild. You've got lying agents. You've got agents that don't want to look at comps, that have multiple opinions of value but nothing to substantiate it. And we're in rounding the $2 million price bracket. Right. Forgive me for being naive, but you would expect that at this price point you have some genuine commensurate professionals with a lot of data behind them. Our client, for example, ready to walk, has their investment thesis, has their BATNA, everything laid out. Has liquidity, ready to buy it tomorrow. Exactly. They're liquid. And then we are dealing with sellers and sellers' agents that are just however it feels, man. I

Osman: Mean, it is a fascinating aspect of this industry, and it reminds me also of my investment. world experience prior to real estate and one of the things that became very evident working for this large family office in denver was that you only like you don't look at small deals because the amount of due diligence required and the professionals that are required to be in the deal to do that need to get paid right so beyond this below a certain threshold You weren't making no longer making any sense. Yeah. And right on that edge, the multiples were very attractive so that we were constantly looking for small deals that were just large enough to meet the numbers. But you're absolutely right. With one point five, two million, three million dollar deals, which are very common in Boulder, you would expect a very high level of professionalism and thoroughness and expectation that the buyer is going to be extremely thorough. Yeah. And instead you get this like I don't know what to say, like cavalier, casual. randomness that is constantly the source of embarrassment that we have to apologize for. And I don't mean, I don't mean to say that arrogantly. Okay. I want to back up and stay on this topic for a second. I feel very clearly that sometimes I, I may tend to sounding like I'm better, but we're just trying to do our best. I don't think I'm better than other agents. I'm just trying to do our best. And I'm encouraging you and the rest of our team to do, to help our clients with their due diligence, to conduct our negotiations expertly, to be prepared. to understand the patterns in negotiation that are very common and to help our deals move smoothly to closing. And also when you're on the buy-side to select very carefully and be willing to walk away when one of those things are not right. And coming back to the price point. Like our client that's in the middle of this negotiation, he's not looking to steal the house. Right. He's willing to pay a fair price. He is very realistic. He knows he's not stealing a house, especially in this market. I mean, maybe in the fourth quarter, we'll find him a fantastic deal. But finding a fantastic deal is no longer his priority. Finding the right house at the right time, given his constraints, is what really matters. He's got his priorities

Hamish: Right. So we're not. Posturing ourselves is better than the competition. What we are, I think, exhausted about is the lack of effort from our counterparties. Shocking lack of effort. We just want to see you trying, and that's awesome. You don't have to know everything, but work with us. These non -starters don't get any deals done. I think it's

Osman: Laziness, to be quite frank. It's laziness and sort of... good old boy mentality that that results in this type of behavior and it's also bad selection on the part of the list of the seller and they

Hamish: Just didn't do their due diligence they it's

Osman: Just somebody who honestly there's a sense of urgency and care that i think is really important for agents to have and Um, they also need to have skills and professionalism, but urgency means that like you prioritize your clients. It's, but is it not worth my time to write a counter and go through the analysis as we're quote so far apart? The answer is absolutely not. In my opinion, you should seriously consider responding unless you have other offers that are, you know, actually real, in which case you could focus on those people and you should. Yeah.

Hamish: Um, market market update. Okay. Let's do it.

Osman: And this is in real time. Okay. Unlike, uh, the generic. analysis you might be getting in your email from somebody this is real time and all of this data by the way is available to your to your agents if they are on the MLS either of the major MLS's have access to the same report and interestingly the report updates continually so it's not a static report we got a static report from land titles person yeah a couple of days after the month ended and We appreciate it. I appreciate it, but it's also from the same source. I thought they were using their data, and I thought they maybe were using county data. You can get a direct data feed from the county. It's a little expensive. I thought that's what they were using, but they're not. They're just using the same source. They're using the MLS, which is ARM's length transactions in theory, and should be reasonably accurate. It's one of the reasons

Hamish: We use this data. Something that I've started doing at closings now that I find kind of fun and interesting is closers see tons of deals so i've been like you know what are what are the rates you're seeing and they're able to give you kind of like yeah i'm seeing this on the five -year ARM or the 30 -year fixed and um most recently around seven percent but it's just you know a fun little coffee table talk and they're the ones most you know they see the most deals

Osman: So Closers are a very valuable source of information. And absolutely, we talk to them every single time to see what's going on and what insights they can share. So for sure. Okay, let's go into the data from the MLS. Boulder County detached single-family houses, not condos and townhomes. Visualizing. Great. Visualize that pretty little single-family house. 375 new listings hit the market last month, and that's a decrease year over year of 8.1%. And when you look at the pattern, it's very much heartbeat, right? Like the market peaked in terms of new listings in April this year. And last year, it was May. Previous year, it peaked in May. And the year before that, June 2023, it peaked in June in 2023. So the market is not always peaking the same month. But April and May is pretty typical. And since then, new listings have been on the decrease. Inventory, homes for sale, 918 houses for sale, down 11.2 % from a year ago. And that is pretty indicative of a market that started to swing back the other way. Under contract, 268 single family houses were under contract last month. That's a decrease of 6.6%. And closings, closings were up 8.9 % year over year. 305 single family houses closed last month. And then let's do the price per total square foot on a median basis. Let me make sure I get this right. Last month, the median sale price for a single-family house in Boulder County was $330, down 6.8 % year -over -year. And interestingly enough, there was a little spike the previous month. June was $369, $39 higher. Sales of the week. Yeah. All right. Like nothing happened. Like nothing happened. Nothing just changed at all. Nope. We were just on a little adventure. Had to step away and come back. stay tuned good thing for yeah i don't know if that'll be a carve out we'll see all right our first sale of the week is 640 south 68th street and also known as Lodestar Ranch um it's an interesting property that we saw during the hearth and stone days which was a luxury home tour that is no longer um and it was something that clearly was not selling it had been on the market quite a while And originally they did a coming soon at 20 million, which was just an astoundingly high price. And after that coming soon period ended, they relisted it at 16.5. So almost immediately went from 20 million coming soon to 16.5. This is back in 2024. So two years

Hamish: Ago, April of 2024. Yeah. I mean, prices haven't necessarily been going upwards in the luxury

Osman: Segment since then. so well it's when you're when you're pricing something that is this rare most sellers shoot for the fences and because there aren't good comps and they have an inflated sense of its value they really go high um and that was the case here so the property was on the market then at 16.5 from april all the way through january when it was pulled off the market for a few weeks not sure if much of anything happened at that time period it came back in in march of 2025 and they quickly cut the price to 14.8 um and then weirdly so it was on the market all summer so this is the sort of thing that just looks erratic in terms of guessing a value the property was uh was listed at 14.8 and then um they put it to 21 million

Osman: Yeah, that's why the price jumped in October of 2025 to 21 million. Sorry, no, in July, it jumped from 14.8 to 21. And then in October or late October of 2025, last year, the price was cut to 10 million. No real explanation of what's going on with the pricing. So you're all over the place from 20 to 16.5 to 14.8 to 21 to 10. Which is called, it seems like a guess the price strategy. I was going to say, the luxury

Hamish: Segment, it's kind of no secret that a lot of the pricing is aspirational. When it starts doing stuff like this, it's a really bad look, personally. And maybe I'm a little harsh, but you can be aspirational, but don't start bouncing around, because it becomes guess the number. It becomes

Osman: Clear that the seller is not confident in their price at all, especially when they cut it to 10 million from 20 million. And it's weird that you go from 14.8 to 21. It's just erratic. And I feel that it's important for sellers to have a well -advised and consistent strategy in terms of pricing. Now, look, it could be that the sellers drove that, right? They said, my God, I got to sell it. Or they got... They got wind of another sale. They thought their water shares were worth $5 million. They suddenly thought that for whatever reason. And the listing agent said, okay, if you want to list it at 21, if you think that'll really get the market's attention, then I'll do it. Chuck it back up. So it's also indicative of an agent that has bad client management. But it could also be that the sellers were the erratic ones and not the agent. We don't really know. But the house itself was fantastic. It was dated

Hamish: Inside, okay? And from the exterior, too, I think it does show a little older. Oh, it's totally

Osman: Old. So this is a storage tech, if I recall correctly. This is one of the founders of storage tech. And when we were in the house, there was actually quite a bit of memorabilia that related to storage tech's early days. Jesse Aueda is one of the other founders that I've had the pleasure of interacting with once. So we're talking about some very affluent people that were incredibly successful. These are waves or virtuous cycles of entrepreneurship that occurred in the front range decades ago and continue to occur today. But this was one of the trophy homes that was built in incredible land. I mean, spectacular landscape. I want to say, how many acres of land we're talking about? We're talking about almost 55 acres of land and supposedly well -protected with conservation easements that included significant shares of water. So valuing the water is another piece of this, and I'm not going to throw out a number, but I heard a number recently about what these shares were perceived as valued. So that was part of the transaction. But the interior of the home, it's going to need a complete redesign,

Hamish: Right? Yeah, some things are coming back. I think like the gorgeous wooden ceiling is okay. But yeah, there's just going to be some contrast changes. You know, the carpet is definitely older. That looks landlord grade by today's standard.

Osman: Totally. Yeah. The vaulted ceilings are spectacular. The landscape it's in is spectacular. It's almost 12,000 square feet. It's a very expansive property.

Hamish: It is called the Ranch, right? Lodestar Ranch?

Osman: That's my recollection of the name of it. There is a video. It's backing up the ranch name with its size. Hamish, I think if you want, I'll give you a link to the video. You can put the video from the first listing agent on the property because it's actually quite... a lovely video that they produced although shockingly low um view count on the video which yeah no loads are a state i think is how it was oh that's it loads

Hamish: Well it earns its estate name too is 100 in the

Osman: State quality property so then what happens okay so um agent number one gets fired or left not clear what happened there but the end of um march of this year that listing agreement expired And they relisted it with another agent in August. So actually, it wasn't officially relisted. So that's the interesting piece of this. If you look at the current listing, it's sold. The status was just sold, right? It didn't actually hit the market. So when you look at that listing, that's the most interesting thing about this, is that there is a buyer's agent and there is a listing agent. And even though it had never officially was remarketed, separate agents separate brokerages i think um what likely happened is the buyer's agent who the agent who represented

Hamish: The buyer right waited for it to go off market

Osman: No i think they i think they just uh it was a timing factor And at that point, the first agent's commission had already expired. It's unclear whether this buyer saw the house while it was lit. So this is the type of thing that ends up with a procuring cause lawsuit, by the way. Colorado may not be so strong in procuring cause, and I don't want to advise anybody from a legal perspective. But I do have knowledge of past deals from Nantucket where lawsuits were involved. And it was exactly this type of scenario where the buyer saw it with agent number one. being a listing agent, and then wasn't ready to negotiate, didn't make an offer, couldn't come to terms. It all fell apart. And then months later, the seller has started to work with another agent, even though they haven't finished their marketing yet. And that buyer's agent calls the new agent and says, hey, I'm ready to write an offer. And so the new agent ends up selling the house, even though they didn't do all the work that was involved for the last two years. So that's the kind of thing that really angers agents. I don't know any of the details. Yeah, just from where you're sitting. I know nothing other than I love the house. And I also think it was mismarketed, especially from a price perspective. Yeah, it starts to

Hamish: Dilute the grandeur of the house when the price jumps around so much. And I think starting at $20 million is a very aspirational price. I mean,

Osman: People think their homes are worth a lot more than they are. That's like the oldest story in

Hamish: Real estate. Hey, for what it's worth, too, I mean, when are you building a home of this size in Boulder County again? Oh, yeah, forget it.

Osman: It's done. Until that moratorium is lifted, which it may never be, you can't build a house like this. No, I think that at 9 -5, I think it's very well bought. The buyers, I think they got a screaming deal on a home that if you put... a million into it is a $15 million property. Like I think that range would be appropriate. Um, if it's redesigned, like, look, nobody likes this glass block. It looks very nineties. I hear

Hamish: Glass blocks coming back. What? Yeah. Really? Yeah. We'll see. I mean, TBD on that being proven, but, um, what do you think about the location? It's pretty close to where some of our other clients recently settled. I think just off South

Osman: Boulder. Oh, it's a spectacular. Jesse Oueda's house is also in the same spot. Like this is some of the most prime real estate in Boulder. It's pastoral. It's just south and west of Spanish Hills. It's that little green belt of farmettes and 100 % is an amazing location. Those in the know. know this spot as spectacular. But also, if you look at maps, you'll see there's lots of little ditches running through there. So you want to pay attention to the floodplain and also what CDOT and the City of Boulder and CU will be doing with the flood wall, which will be in play just to the northwest of this location. Oh, good point. Yeah, as CU South is developed. I don't think it'll have much impact because it's still pretty elevated in this spot. So awesome, awesome property and a very interesting deal story. So if anybody knows the real story and wants to tell me... Come on the podcast. Well, yeah, you're welcome to come on the podcast. We love podcast guests and we're getting a bit of a following among agents. We'll call it the

Hamish: Lodestar Dissection. yeah the lodestar post-mortem

Osman: I mean welcome the agents involved in the deal to come talk about it but frequently agents don't

Hamish: Do that um do you think there is a higher risk for kind of like a procuring cause lawsuit um not just i think because of the affluence of the people involved but more so because of the I feel like the commission for an agent is so

Osman: Much higher, the stakes. 100%. Yeah. When you're looking at a commission that's that big, it increases the pool of available money to pay for lawyers to go fight this out. Yeah. And I don't know if any of that's even relevant. No. Okay. But I do know that if I spent two years working on a listing and... And then less than six months after or eight months after we broke up, it sells. And if it turns out it's sold to somebody I showed it to, I don't know. There's a saying that you don't see your clients. And I think that's right. Good business practices is to let it go and move on. But sometimes people get their egos involved, their emotions involved, and make bad business decisions. Because it reflects poorly on you if you're engaged in litigation with your own

Hamish: Client. These things happen. Yeah. It's emotionally tolling to go through a legal process too, I

Osman: Believe. And again, I'm not saying that's what happened here or what happened here. I want to reiterate that. It just smells like, oh, what happened here? It's sold off market. Well, how would it have sold off market if... How did that buyer learn of it? Did they learn of it through all the marketing of the first agent for the last two years? That's the first question I would want to know. And does procuring cause even apply here? And in some states it doesn't, and I have never been in a procuring cause lawsuit personally. I just have heard of them. And, well, this one has kind of a smell to it, a scent in the air.

Hamish: And, like, genuinely, there's no, I don't think

Osman: You're implicating. Okay, I want to be clear. And there are great agents involved. I don't even want to comment about performance. Beyond what we've already talked about. So we'll just let it go. Our next two are sort of an interesting tale of two properties, both closing the same day, both closing in the same ballpark price range. And keep in mind that as buyers move up in price, they are more elastic in the price range they are willing to consider. So most of our clients that have been in this price range in Newlands, they would have looked at both of these houses and would have been comfortable at the price range of both of these houses. 3,007 10th Street is the first one we'll talk about. Built in 2007, 5,500 square feet, six beds, six baths, and it was built right at the end of compatible development. That's the ordinance that came into play and restricted large houses on small lots, for which Newlands was ground zero. And it's very unlikely that you could build a house this large again. Likely they got their permits done just in time to not be restricted by the compatible development ordinance of that time period. It's a 9,000 -square -foot lot, six beds, five baths, very nicely designed. In fact, I would say the design is still very current. It probably has had some updates in terms of paint and interior finishes since the home was built. So it looks very turnkey. I mean, that kitchen looks very trendy and modern. All the light fixtures are definitely not from 2006 or 2007. So 100 % it's had a lot of updates. The fans on the upper level are probably from 2006 or 2007. But mostly it's updated, right? I would call this home. turnkey and i would have probably asked the seller to swap out the fans personally

Hamish: Because it just that's the one thing at this

Osman: Price point i mean yeah at this price point it's like the one thing what why do you have like 20 year old fans that look like 20 year old fans

Hamish: But i'd call it current right current yeah not contemporary not modern but current oh i don't know you're getting into yeah you're trying to gotcha me on contemporary i will you know what's outdated is the roof color The shingles? Yeah, it's got that. Oh, yeah, I suppose so. Beige is out. Beige is like the beige suit of... The biggest controversy we've ever faced. That's

Osman: 10. So the proper... Let's talk about where the location is. You are just northeast of 9th Street. Just northeast of... Sorry, just northeast of North Boulder Park. And you're far enough away from Broadway that you're not going to be impacted by the traffic. And Delwood and 10th is maybe a little bit on the busier side. Delwood definitely gets through traffic, but it's still a pretty decent location. I would call it for Newlands, maybe a C. It's not an A. It's definitely not a B. It's definitely not an A. It's definitely not a B. The reason it's a C, which is passing, is that Delwood is a little busy. But you do get the benefit of the park being so close. I'd

Hamish: Say you also kind of want to be west of 9th.

Osman: Generally don't you or is it i don't i don't think that has that big of an impact whether you're one or two streets west or east of ninth it's when you get to the what i think of as the waterfront which is yeah up west west of fourth street where you are a budding open space and we're going to talk about that with our next listing let's just talk about the price history really quick it listed on july 9th it was under contract pretty much right away and it sold for 265 000 over list which is Pretty significant and likely indicates that there were multiple offers involved because why else would you be compelled to spend that much more? And in a bidding war, we definitely encourage our clients to trust but verify because a lot of agents are not giving full. They're not giving confidence that these

Hamish: Other offers are actually real. I think our last pod, we read out the. their like broker and seller make no guarantees on anything to do anything

Osman: Whatsoever don't believe a single thing they write but clearly the buyer thought there were multiple offers because why else would they go higher and they probably were right it's a really nice house and it's very difficult maybe even impossible to build a house this large again in Newlands because of our current restrictive environments environment for larger homes let's move to the next one 2675 Dakota Place its competitor And weirdly, they put Newlands in the parentheses in the address. I don't know what that's about, why the listing agent felt the need to do that. Well -established agent, very strange. But 6,000 square foot house built in 2006. So they completed it just a year earlier than the other one, right? Than 3,710th Street. And this house is a completely different story. So interestingly enough, this one actually abuts open space. Waterfront. It is right on what I think of as Boulder's waterfront, which is the equivalent of waterfront, which is abutting the west side of open space. You're right there next to Sanitas. And it's got a decent -sized lot, 10,316 square feet. It's a larger home. And the thing about this house is that it looks far older. Like the choices that the buyer made and also the fact that it likely has not been updated since construction. When you look at all the kitchen finishes and the woodwork, it screams 2006. So the other one had all sorts of updates. And walking in, you could be convinced it was a home built in 2020. This house, there's no arguing that this is an older home. It likely has Ephus in the exterior looking at the... the art you know what what the finished exterior looks like from the photos i would be looking carefully for ethos so it's a home that needs a lot of updating and it was listed in august of last year at 4.8 nothing happened so by the way not a great time to list and that's one of the things we've already mentioned that the market's cooling in the fall late summer and fall we are headed into In this Indian summer of ours. Into an Indian summer for buyers and into the winter of discontent for sellers. And so by January, they'd had enough and they cut the price to 4.4 or just under 4.4. So they took 425,000 off the price, about almost a 10 % haircut. And guess what? Nothing happened. It sat there on the market until July, only a few weeks ago. And the buyer negotiated another 150,000 off the price and it closed at four and a quarter. I'm sorry, 4.125. Any disclosed concessions? Nope, it was a cash deal. It was an EXP agent, and that always makes me laugh, but EXP, okay.

Osman: And so the question for you, Hamish, which one's

Hamish: The better house? Well, you know what you can't change or update or upgrade? The location. And so for me, waterfront. And also these pictures, I mean, they're fine for listing photos, The pictures looking out over that waterfront, the open space, I almost just sighed with envy, but how nice would it to look into that direction, look over that open space, and know that essentially there's nothing for good. I mean, it's a steep

Osman: Hillside with professional landscaping, but you look out your windows and you see beautiful open space. You see nature. And that's it. You abut open space, and as far as your mind can think. For the most part, it's just continuous open space. It's like being actually oceanfront. It's psychologically benefiting. It's relaxation. Nature is all around. And the biggest issue in Newlands is the lack of privacy. We have represented multiple buyers, and this has been a challenge for all of them, is that the price point you would think would connote. Because that's something that people that can afford homes in this price range crave. It's something they desire. But Newlands, often the lots are very narrow and they're oriented east -west, which is not beneficial for a lot of reasons. And so you end up with backyards that people can easily peer into. And I think that factor is also why the homes that are directly north of this location. The homes that are on Calmea, the homes that are on Hawthorne and Juniper are so valued because they have privacy

Hamish: And much larger lots. Their own little kind of enclave space. Same with Fraser Meadows. If you're like, I know kind of a weird parallel to draw, but like Martin Acres, similar build date to Fraser Meadows. But Fraser Meadows has that kind of mature landscaping and that slightly larger lot to give you a more private feel versus the

Osman: Way Martin Acres was developed. Homes like this will not be built en masse again. Subdivisions like this will not exist again because the dirt is too valuable. And the profitability is to build luxurious homes on very small lots. But overall, I mean, Hamish is absolutely right. The location is what drives the value here. And I think the buyer at 2675 Dakota Place got a much better deal than the buyer on 10th Street.

Hamish: And you know, I think the only reason they put Newlands in parentheses is because it's Dakota Place. And they're worried that somebody's going to read Dakota and think Dakota Ridge. Okay,

Osman: That's valid. That's a good point. I think you nailed it. That's the only reason why you would write Newlands in the address line. Right. Because when you see Dakota Place, you think it's in

Hamish: Dakota Ridge. Right. Good point. And it's weird, but yeah, I can see why they did it. Okay, but

Osman: At the same time, give buyers some credit. Right.

Hamish: Right? Don't assume your market is stupid. Well,

Osman: It just looks really weird, and it certainly didn't help it sell faster, right? This thing was on the market for just under a year. Yeah. Think about it. I don't know. I feel like the mistake a lot of sellers make is to conclude that the buyer is not going to do their due diligence, that the buyer is not thorough, and that they can pull the wool over their eyes. And unfortunately, it does happen. But it's better to assume intelligence, especially for affluent buyers in Newlands. So Boulder is one of the best, this is the lack of sleep talking. Boulder is one of the most well -educated cities in the country, at least when it comes to higher education as a percentage of diplomas in our community. And I just assume people are really smart, but sometimes they're

Hamish: Not. sometimes they're not but yeah hey kudos to the Dakota Place buyer um outstanding value

Osman: Play and well kudos to both honestly they're both gorgeous houses and they if you really want to turn key and do nothing which most buyers do okay most buyers don't want to buy a house and then spend six months remodeling it yep um then 10th street was was your house and you're very close to the park and you still have the

Hamish: Compatible development win right of the size

Osman: Of your great house yeah it's just i think the better buy was Dakota Place assuming you had the patience to do the remodel if you don't have the patience for it then or you don't value you don't care about backing to open space then clearly 10th street was a better choice but boy you're looking at six hundred thousand dollars difference in value so for six hundred thousand dollars you could do a lot to Dakota Place a lot a lot

Hamish: Yeah okay And at that size too. But yeah, yeah.

Osman: All right, let's talk about 160 South 36th Street in Martin Acres. The home was listed at just under 1.2. It sold for a very small premium, $1,212,000. It hit the market, oh, July 17th. It was under contract pretty much immediately. And it closed less than, well, just three weeks later. So cash deal. and no disclosed concessions on the transaction. I happen to know Martin Acres very well. I have lived in that community for many years. Don't currently live in that community, but it is a location that we track closely. And what I really liked about this listing is that it's a larger than typical ranch, but it's still retained its garage. So likely it had an addition at some point in its life. And when you look at the photos of the house, it's reasonably updated. It has nice vaulted ceilings. It's got a design language that is consistent. The kitchen, you know, feels a little small, a little cornered off, but maybe it still has decent flow. I mean, the room is opened up. It's just, I don't know about that style of cabinetry. That does make it feel a little dated. Let me get there. Yeah, but overall, I think this is a really lovely house for a certain segment of buyer that is growing in size, and that's typically older buyers that want fewer stairs. What I found really interesting about this, though, is that it was listed as... First, they named it the Tree Door House. I don't know what that's about. It is net zero. That's

Hamish: Definitely beneficial. Wow, really? They're not just throwing that around? Tree Door House? No,

Osman: Net zero. No, I hope not. Let me read all the disclaimers. No, there are no disclaimers in the broker remarks, strangely enough, but there's all sorts of information about it being a net zero house, which is great. I believe it. I don't think that this listing agent would have marketed it as net zero when it really wasn't. But what's interesting is it talks about it backing directly to open space. So let's talk about that for a second. Let me pull up the map and make sure I got this right because I don't want to misspeak. The thing about that back to open space about this property is first it's a riparian corridor streamway, which could potentially flood. So likely you're in the 500 -year flood, but we'll double check that. But really the issue is further to the north is the former head start. And let's

Hamish: See. Let me get the map up. That's that empty lot now with the parking lot in there? It's the

Osman: Empty lot. Okay. For a period of time, there were random cars being parked there. It was kind of a question mark of what was happening here.

Hamish: Right next to an elementary school. Because Head

Osman: Start is closed. Yeah. It is right next to, yeah. It's not right next to the elementary school.

Hamish: It's across the street from it. Right. Okay.

Osman: And I think Head Start eventually did sell that property. Oh, wait a minute. Oh, no, no, no. I'm confused. did i get the right address 160 south 36th let me see 160 south yeah it is on okay no no i was thinking it was on i apologize um no it is in that spot no no i'm exactly this is this lack of sleep talking boy this podcast is going to be fun for those of you first listening when i'm sounding all confused it is right next to what was um the head start property and that property was i guess eventually deeded to boulder valley school district so that's why it's now

Hamish: Contiguous it's it's part of the school district

Osman: It's not actually open space still yeah and if you look closely at it that it's not connected to the school property it is actually separate so what would keep the school from selling it

Hamish: And developing it yeah putting in some classrooms

Osman: There or something or anything right like you know the schools are pinched it doesn't have to be classroom they could sell it to a private

Hamish: Developer And then you can backtrack, but as the listing agent, you can backtrack and go, no, I mean the space is open back there. Not that it backs to Boulder County Parks open space. I think that's the umbrella a lot of these agents

Osman: Like to... I mean, if it's owned by the open space and mountain parks, it has a higher chance of actually being protected open space. But this is not protected open space. Yeah, this is BVSD. It is owned by BVSD. And for a while it was owned by Head Start and whatever government program was running that. And so when you look in that area, directly behind it is a, what's the zone called? Boy, this is the lack of sleep again. It is a flood zone. It's a conveyance zone. So you're looking at a high risk of flood flowing through, not into the property itself, but directly to the east of the property in that. behind you in that quote -unquote open space so pretty unlikely that they would actually develop directly behind the house but just to the north of that um it it quite possibly could be developed and it was at one time head start so um i in fact i would expect it to be developed right because the value of that that little parcel To the north, it's Martin Drive. To the east, it's the creek. That value is really high. That particular parcel is in the 500 -year flood. 100 % could be developed and is not subject to floodplain restriction. I don't recall seeing people camping in here personally, but I have seen them camp in other

Hamish: Places along this particular creek. I think its proximity to the school keeps the camps down. Not as a broad statement. From a public use standpoint, that little lot of land would be great for like a lock and leave bike storage or something, being that it's right on the trail there. I think it

Osman: Would be great as a neighborhood coffee shop. Oh, that'd be sweet. I don't think that the money

Hamish: Side of that. I'd love to see stuff like that.

Osman: Maybe it could be like a Mamdani grocery store coffee shop. Because the only people that have the money to develop that and sell coffee and groceries is the city. Because the economics of the value of that parcel. are are it's so valuable that i'm talking about the head start parcel that yeah how do you like get your if you're buying a land for such a high number you have to develop it in a way that makes profit for the developer so i don't see the coffee shop in its future but i would love love to see it yeah yeah i'm with you this is why we can't in

Hamish: A dreams are free scenario right yeah well this

Osman: Is why we can't have nice things um okay So that, I think, does set a high watermark. I have not run that analysis myself. It's just based on

Hamish: My past analysis. Yeah, and it's no basement,

Osman: Larger ranch, yeah. So what premium do you pay for that backyard, Hamish? You know directly behind it they can't build because it's in the

Hamish: Flood zone unless they redo it. Conveyance, right,

Osman: Yeah. It's high hazard unless they do some sort of Army Corps reengineering of Bear Creek. It

Hamish: Doesn't carry exactly the same premium. as the fourth street home or that Newlands home Dakota Place that's it um because it's not endless open

Osman: Space to me personally you don't have views over it it's just it's sort of this wet riparian corridor behind you which is great for wildlife and privacy it's going to feel very jungly yep same with

Hamish: That curved kind of entryway thing they've got going on there as a premium uh i would pay there's

Osman: It's worth there is some premium to what about 10 percent 10 i usually reserve for things that are protected views okay um non non -protected view and it's not a view right if it was on the other side of the creek which we've seen homes sell on 38th street that side yeah for sure there's a premium because you get the views of the flat irons but when your house is facing the flat irons your backyard doesn't have that view maybe if you went up and pop the top but this is a really lovely home as it is so and it's net zero they've invested so much money into it um i think that if you're comping you have to take into account all the mechanical improvements that they made into this house to make it net zero and they're claiming 180 grand so even if you discount that 180 grand wow by half it's still it's still a pretty well -bought house i think

Hamish: I think they got a good deal yeah it's a I mean, these no -basement ranches, they're truly less is more. You're a little bit minimalist, and especially, like you say, the build date, you've got small storage. People weren't quite as materialistic back in 1955 as we are today. You know, that's such a harsh way of putting it. How about just people own more stuff today? Yeah, that's a real

Osman: Way of putting it, yeah. Nobody is minimalist

Hamish: From the 1950s. No, and we're not Scandinavian either. That's a whole different tier. But if

Osman: You're interested in more about... open space that isn't really open space, you can check out our YouTube video, Red Flag Open Space. It's something that can help educate you on what is and is not open space. And anytime you see a listing that says open space, take it with a grain of salt because it probably isn't. I would just assume it's not, or at least not fully protected unless proven otherwise. So write the contract maybe as if it is, but make sure your due diligence contingencies include vetting whether it truly

Hamish: Is protected or not. Yep. And I'll put a link

Osman: In the description for that. All right. Our next one is 3280 Dartmouth Avenue. It's a property that closed on Friday. This is formerly a daycare and had been listed with a lease in play. The property had been rented to CU students. And for some reason, the seller decided that they wanted out. And we don't really know the motivational factors, although we've heard there were other investment opportunities they were eyeing. And that's why they decided to sell it. So it was listed on June 24th and was on the market for several weeks before a lucky buyer put it under contract. And it closed on August 7th, just last Friday. So we happen to know one of those lucky investors. I personally am one of the investors who acquired this house after asking our clients. So we have two sets of clients whom this might have been a fit, but they would have needed to wait a year. to occupy it because of the lease unless they were willing to bribe the tenants, which in some cases tenants are bribable. College students in particular might be bribable, but that would be a more challenging negotiation. If your investment thesis is hinging on that, it may not work out because sometimes parents who are actually the ones funding the rent are going to say, no, we want our kids focused on studying, not moving again. But you never know.

Osman: It is worth the effort if you want to try to

Hamish: Exit out of that lease sooner. Yeah, it's an

Osman: Option. But that year -long duration and, frankly, the condition of the house made it so that it wasn't attractive to our clients. And we checked with both of them before I pursued it and negotiated a pretty good deal. It sold for $928,260. But what's not disclosed in this description is that that included the buyer's agent commission, which we threw into the deal. If you're comping this, you're wondering why that deal was super low. And it was. Even without the buyer's agent commission, I feel like we got a very good deal for the investor.

Hamish: Some reasonable inspection items, too. Oh, and

Osman: It's worth mentioning that. So one of the sellers in the LLC is an individual I met years ago and have always had a lot of admiration for in his way of doing things, his business approach, his kindness. his positive vibes like this is somebody i've always liked and really what's funny is i think i met him the first week i moved to boulder wow uh in this is like may or april of two well i moved back to boulder with my well it doesn't matter all those details we'll just we'll just say i met him early when i moved in to boulder and yeah and so i'm glad to see him still doing so well and throughout the transaction he was fantastic and the agent that represented him miles kunkle also did a great job in negotiations and communications and in handling the inspection objections and resolution um as we often recommend to our clients we just focus on the big ticket items the ones that are that were not visible and obvious the ones that potentially could be expensive to repair we pushed that over to the seller and they agreed to address them and they did so in a reasonable way yeah tenants seem great and i think it's going to be a good long -term investment i did run this one through my investment property model and Put in enough equity to make sure there's enough cash flow to cover any unforeseen expenses. And with the model, I always do worst case, base case, and best case. So if you're one of our clients, I'm happy to

Hamish: Show you this investment model. Very much client

Osman: Only. In fact, I'll give it to you, and you can use it for your own investment thesis. But the base case is what we think is going to happen. And what we think is going to happen looks like it's going to perform. at a very attractive internal rate of return. And the worst case looks like it's going to basically track better than a savings rate. It should keep up with inflation and then some and pay for itself. So we were looking at roughly a 6 % IRR over a 10 -year hold. And if it's base case, we're looking at closer to 12 % IRR. And best case, of course, we knock it out of the park, but who knows? The lot size was one of the attractive features. It's a larger than typical lot. And that was interesting from a due diligence perspective because it had been combined to make this lot so big. It probably cannot be subdivided, but those rules are still very much in play. So our thought process was maybe in 10 years it becomes a family estate. Maybe we build an ADU and move family members.

Hamish: Into this house and we live in the adu like we

Osman: Have very close friends in the neighborhood it's a super walkable location to the grocery store to the park to the open space that's the real open space that's directly across broadway you could start accessing that from a social trail right next to nist and hike right up on a colder mesa it's one of my favorite spots great running trail great point all these things doesn't have a garage but doesn't really matter for a tenant -occupied property. So we'll see. And I'm not the type of person who will actually probably sell it in 10 years. No, I don't think so. Your investment should always have an exit strategy in it. And I like to have a holding period in my investment models, and 10 years is minimum.

Hamish: Yeah. I think I showed this to two of our three clients, you being one of them, the principal investor. And this home had its oddities. buyers our clients that decided they didn't want it i think were completely accurate in passing on this um it is slanted for investors or somebody who would completely scrape it and rebuild um there's there's going to be things that i'm sure you know like a tenant wouldn't mind because they're not living there permanently but it's something that i think it would be very there are some expensive things that a buyer would want to change if they were planning on making this layout Yeah, principally. Student tenants

Osman: Love the bedrooms and bath count. Five beds, four baths. Kids love to live together. It's

Hamish: Baller. It divides down well. So it's split amongst five people. The rent's reasonable. And the finishes

Osman: Were intended largely for daycare. So it's already

Hamish: Been baby -proofed. It's wearable, yeah. And

Osman: So I think it'll be a good investment. It's sort of funny. I don't know if I should say this, but I did run this by... one of uh one of our close friends and past clients and to see what he thought of it and he's like it seems like a great investment um it's one of those things where you do minimum maintenance to keep it going and you hope the tenants burn it down yeah that's

Hamish: A great way to put it which of course you don't

Osman: Really hope the tenants burn it down but You

Hamish: Get the idea. You're not hurting if it does.

Osman: Look, this property is almost nearly what I would consider fully depreciated. It's functional. It passes smart regs. It will work as a housing unit for students. And we've had great relationships with our student tenants. We've warned them about the rules in Boulder. We want to be on a really

Hamish: Positive working relationship with them. There's a required disclosure now that puts out the rules for them to sign every lease. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. So that's the story of 3280 Dartmouth. and it is added to yeah quarter acre yeah quarter

Osman: Acre a lot great location okay let's move on to our next one 3601 arapaho avenue d319 is our very last sale of the week thank you for bearing with us through this process and it really caught my eye because first i've been tracking the Peloton since it was first developed and then partially first developed and then finished a few years later It was really offered right at the peak of the cycle and the market started coming down. So the first wave of buyers saw a pretty significant decrease in their values. The Peloton is a really attractive location because it's designed from the beginning. It's a very attractive development because it was designed for sound isolation from the get -go. The clients that we've represented have told me that they hear nothing between the units. And the standalone community center, three -story community center with rooftop pools and hot tubs. it's spectacular you actually feel like you get something for your association duess which are 770 a month for this particular property 1431 square feet two bedrooms two baths it was listed at 874 in april and they dropped it in at the end of june 868 not much of a haircut and a few weeks later it went under contract and it sold for 845 and the buyers that that decided this was the one had a lot of options at the Peloton because yeah i mean i don't know how many were on the market when they wrote their offer but when as of right now let me give you

Hamish: The number yeah i think you said 20 there are

Osman: 20 Properties 21 properties on the market at the Peloton and of those 21 properties only three are under contract so you have 19 no sorry 18 to choose from how many months supply well they're all over the place in price right and function you're looking at smaller units that uh that are at 533 000 all the way to 1.5 million dollar units okay that are closer to 1400 square feet and when you look at the actives um in roughly the 1400 square foot level you see there are there's one at 830 there's one at 839 so the person who bought this at 845 didn't pay more much more than what the typical asking prices are yeah and they chose one that has mountain views but also views of the paint store and views of arapaho avenue i still think the Peloton is a really attractive place to live for adults because of the lock and leave nature the quietness

Hamish: Of the place and the community yeah the community

Osman: Center you get what you get some value on like a lot of associations from that community center And it's a location that's not that far from everything in Boulder. So if you need a peter or peter, how do you say that? I say peter, but I think that's wrong. If you need a second home in Boulder, and by the way, it's under a million, so it's not subject to the property tax, to the second home vacancy tax. This would be a really nice lock and leave option. It could be close to the grandkids, or maybe you're just here for Sundance or something like that. It's a solid play. Or maybe you just want to travel a lot. That's your deal at this point in your life. And you don't want to deal with maintenance. And you don't want to live next to students in a stick frame construction, multifamily housing development. But if you do want to be living next to students, we happen to know of that gold

Hamish: Run two bedroom, two bath. Oh, that's true. Did we already do shameless? Rehash that because I feel like we might have done a different shameless.

Osman: Okay, so shameless self -promotion. We're going to segue right there. A six -time past client.

Hamish: Oh yeah. I think we already talked about it.

Osman: So if you are interested in something at Gold Run, which is much closer to see you right on the bike path, also has a community center, but is stick frame construction that occasionally burns down. It does have a history of fires. I mean, some of them are sprinklers. We do know of a really nice top floor unit with a loft, which frequently people put a third bedroom into at probably a very fair price. And if that interests you, reach out and we'll talk about it. Yep.

Hamish: And I guess, do we want to mention anything about the listing agent or the company that sold this

Osman: 3601? I don't think so. Okay. But you will notice, I guess I will just suggest that you look at the photos and ask yourself if that represents what an $845,000 home should be marketed like. And keep in mind that the listing agent, their primary mission is not... higher -end homes.

Hamish: Resident, yeah. That's not their bag. They're not a buy -sell bag. Maybe give them a little

Osman: Bit of leeway in your criticism of their work. And that's why, yeah. But yeah, Hamish is right to call out that it certainly wouldn't meet our

Hamish: Standard of marketing. I believe they're selling their own, and so they kind of have the tolerance for what type of photos they want to list. You're

Osman: Saying this is like one of their own properties? I think so, yeah. Why would you say that? Just

Hamish: By nature of the company. The tax address of

Osman: The property, Hamish, is Miami, Florida. Oh,

Hamish: Well, I'm very wrong. I take it back and everything Osman said is true. It has a name attached to

Osman: It, Levitt Holdings, North Miami Beach. I don't

Hamish: Think it's one of their portfolio properties.

Osman: I think that they had the rental for many years for whatever reason and they had the existing relationship and that trumps marketing prowess but hey they look they got it sold so yeah and also there's 18 others that are not selling yep so i think that they got their job they got it done but i think that might have to do with the size it might have to do with the so when you're evaluating condos you really have to think about the orientation within the development and there are some that are worth like look the mountain views are worth more than the bus garage views on the south on the north side you want the south views even though you've got arapahoe buzzing below you at least you're not Looking at a bus

Hamish: Garage. Right. Or hearing it. Or hearing it.

Osman: Well, you shouldn't really hear it that badly

Hamish: Because of the design. But still in the Peloton. But yeah, no. Okay. You're completely right.

Osman: Those are sales of the week. And we've done Shameless maybe twice this podcast. And that again, I'll

Hamish: Take ownership of that. Hey, once again, guys, there's this Gold Run condo. This is Osman at

Osman: Sleep deprivation. Okay. When I'm repeating myself, we're getting a little bit rambly. I have no excuse. All right, let's talk about the measures Boulder is putting on the ballot in November.

Osman: There are four of them. There's a vacancy tax that will apply to homes that are valued. I think it was over a million. What was the number? Am I confusing the New York City's? I think you're right, though. Is it just unoccupied? Right now, I think it's just unoccupied. Unoccupied homes, owners will be charged up to $4,000. Nope, just $4,000 a year. This is so strange the way it's worded. We'd have to actually dig into the specifics.

Hamish: I don't know if this is accurate. We are putting

Osman: It on your radar. But there's a vacancy tax that is being proposed by staff, and it likely will pass because people that don't live here, guess

Hamish: What, also don't vote here. A quick note on that. Neither of us live in the City of Boulder. Okay.

Osman: I just think it's fun. I mean, that's true. Yeah. Although we're here and the office is in the

Hamish: City of Boulder and most of our clients are in

Osman: The City of Boulder. And I only live 20 minutes up the canyon. So you make it sound like it's a dirty secret. It's not a dirty secret. I live in Four Mile Canyon. It's not a dirty secret. Your house is in Broomfield. Westminster? Westminster.

Hamish: I'm not in the safest city in Colorado, unfortunately. But no, good point. It's kind of beside the point, especially you're so ingrained in Boulder and

Osman: Me increasingly so. But I feel like this is an important thing to think about. What is the precedent? Is that really where we want to raise capital by taxing those people that own second homes? Will that meaningfully increase the housing supply? I think it's just going to turn people... I think it's going to turn some people off from Boulder that would have otherwise bought a second home here. And the people that... The price point of second homes for those people is just so much higher than... It's not going to magically increase the middle. the middle income housing market in Boulder, which is what is sorely lacking. Our missing middle is not going to be solved by taxing second homes. And I guess the problem I have with it is it's just, it's just, it's not the tax. It's the misspending. It's the, it's the way the city spends money and then looks to our residents to figure out a solution when they don't want to look at it, making our spending more efficient. And it's just insanity how the

Hamish: City spends money. So, and yeah, I'm, Just on a personal note, I understand the reasoning behind implementing a vacancy tax. What they plan to use the funds for is murky at best to me and also doesn't really seem well justified. I understand, oh, if we do this, then it's possible that we'll increase the housing supply or get people that are holding onto properties to get rid of them. But I don't think that the... use of the money and the projected income is lukewarm at best um i just don't it doesn't seem like a it feels half -baked this proposal is probably the best

Osman: Way i can well i think the way part of it that's half -baked is it's probably gonna suck us into a lawsuit that we're probably gonna lose because there's already a precedent in california where um taxing second homeowners has been declared

Hamish: Unconstitutional or that's what It's been benched. And we'll move up in the court system to the

Osman: Next level. So likely this is where this one's going to end up. And my understanding is it's also what council has been advised that this is probably where we're going to end up is in a lawsuit that the city will likely lose. But we'll find out because I think it'll probably pass. It's very easy to point your finger at people that don't live here but are affluent enough to buy a second home here and say, hey, you should fork over another $4,000 to $7,000 a year. And you know what? That's trivial. If you own a million -dollar house, it's a trivial amount of money. It's not about the money. It's about the principle, and it's about where the

Hamish: Money goes. Yep. For me, where the money goes is the biggest issue. It's like, are we just taxing just to tax at this rate? Well, obviously, Boulder, there's the spending issue. And that, I think, gets us into the second. uh ballot that

Osman: Moves us on to the next one so let's talk about an even bigger number because the tiny amount of money six million bucks is what this could raise for general spending let's talk about the big number and that's the 400 million dollars that staff would like to raise to pay for the lack of maintenance and budgeting and fiduciary responsibility that they've incurred in their mismanagement of our city's assets over the last however many years, because it's not the current staff. It's been building, they say. And now they've attached the repairs to recreation centers as part of this funding measure. So they're trying to... It's a ransom. It's a ransom. If you want your South Boulder Rec Center repaired, then you're going to need us to... You're going to have to allow us to raise $400 million in debt and pay for it through increased property taxes. And then they try to spin it as it's only $400 a year. For $400 a year, don't you want your rec center? And of course, it's a lot more than $400 a year for businesses. And there's already a lot of hand -wringing over vacant storefronts. And it's not going to get better when you tax those storefronts another $1,000 a year. But the bigger issue is not about the tax. The bigger issue is about the mismanagement of our city's resources, the lack of budgeting. yeah the lack of maintenance reserves it's incompetence and a lack of fiduciary responsibility that's my

Hamish: Hot take okay so what your question was uh wouldn't you want to spend 400 million a year for your rec centers and it's or sorry wouldn't you want to spend 400 a year for your rec centers and it's like well i had rec centers before spending 400 others a year why do they suddenly well they're

Osman: Not they're not even that old and they need to be replaced so this is how they've they've they've broken it out they're going to spend 170 million On a public safety center and 9 -11 dispatch facility. $170 million. Okay, $100 million on a new municipal services center. What's Alpine Balsam? Good point. What do we need another $100 million for more municipal services? It's beginning to take shape, Alpine. And aren't most of these people working from home? I didn't see that. Yeah, no kidding. Like most of these people want to work from home. And so why are we spending $100 million on a new municipal services center? $72 million. on a new North Boulder Rec Center and West Age Well Center, and $65 million on the South Boulder Rec Center. And $30 million of renovations to the Penfield -Tate Municipal Building. Critics say the city is asking for

Hamish: Too much with too little specificity about that.

Osman: Why not break it out? Why not have the rec centers be completely separate from the staff buildings?

Hamish: Interesting. It's just $170 million for a facility. That facility has to cure cancer in the same breath as 9 -11 dispatch. Like, that's insane.

Osman: Yeah. I mean, we need to dispatch 9 -11, okay? For sure. And we need to have, people need to have safe and pleasant places to work. I don't have a problem with that. It's putting it where they're probably trying to put it right along the most valuable real estate corridor possible, which is right along the Boulder Creek path. It doesn't have to be there. And guess what? Most of these municipal employees don't live in the city anymore. You could literally build this in Broomfield and they would probably be just as happy to go there because they're commuting

Hamish: Less. Where are we getting these numbers? And also, okay, Boulder Creek, right? Oh my goodness. We'll talk about that being like an extremely valuable piece of real estate for them to develop on. If you are going to inject... this much money into a public service or something, Boulder Creek's already pretty developed and, you know, pretty valuable. Why don't you invest this level of money into a facility in a less valuable area

Osman: Of Boulder? That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Right.

Hamish: Like along Arapaho. Further east. 55th and Arapaho.

Osman: Build it out there. Instead of right along the

Hamish: Most valuable corridor of real estate. It's already been developed and already. Well, okay. But when

Osman: You keep saying already been developed, Hamish, they're not going to like. if they were to build new municipal buildings to the east within the city limits, I don't think it has to be, but let's say they stayed within the city limits, they could sell that land that's along Boulder Creek. They're not going to keep that building. The Penfield Tate building is outdated. It's not particularly architecturally interesting. And certainly the Justice Center is really outdated, also not particularly interesting. So scraping those buildings and developing something different there would be... potentially financially beneficial especially if it was private and we could control it in a way that benefits the community as well as makes developers some money and i'm not a developer i'm not a shill for the developers i just think that that location is not the location to continue 50 years ago 100 years ago that was a location if you could get around the flood issue that's a location that maybe made some sense because it wasn't so insanely valuable

Hamish: Today it's I'm misunderstanding then. I'd say like if Boulder already, then hot takes. But if Boulder already owns it, it's ripe for renovation, go for it. But don't buy new, more expensive stuff. No, they already own it. Yeah. In which case, I'm like, yeah, go for it. Renovate it. Personally. Because I'm like... These are not

Osman: Renovation projects. These are new buildings,

Hamish: Okay? Yeah. $170 million better not be a renovation. Well, yeah, good point. And also, $170 million is an insane... That's not the Penfield -Tate budget, is it? Penfield -Tate is $30 million. Which is still insane. Still far more for a rebuild. But I do think if the City of Boulder already owns the land, keep it. That's just an asset

Osman: Standpoint. I would like to see the analysis of fixing these buildings. Before we're raising $400 million. For new buildings. And the really interesting thing is, you know, this breakdown doesn't match what we were hearing about a few weeks ago, which was mostly about old buildings and repairing them. So this is just brand new buildings for $400 million. And where are the rest? Like, these are only four or five projects. Where are the rest of the projects? I mean, let's

Hamish: Do the math. There's 68 other projects. That's a total, too, right? 68 other buildings. Yeah.

Osman: This is where the staff are, I feel like they're insulting our intelligence, and this is where I feel like the people that are calling for no bailout are absolutely right. We need a financial audit of the entire city by an independent agency to see where the money's going, because it doesn't

Hamish: Make any sense. And it's, to me, at least, like, right, what you're bringing up with those other buildings and now this, feels like they've got a bit of, like, ooh, shiny, ooh, shiny. You know, like, they're just... Switching very quickly

Osman: To a different... It's not just OSHA. It's just what can get it done. The goal is to raise $400 million. That's what we're trying to do. What do we need to write into this proposal that will get voters to vote for it? Well, we need to tie the rec centers to it. And we need to make sure we mention the police building because police and fire, what are you going to do? Not have 9 -11 dispatch? I don't know what we were doing in the past to get 9 -11 dispatch, but we were getting it. So clearly we need... This is like manipulation of voters 101 by staff to try to

Hamish: Get the money. Yeah, and again, these estimates are just the moon. We're in the wrong business. We need to become developers. We need to become very tight with City of Boulder staff. I love

Osman: Our business, and I love serving our clients, and I have no interest in being City staff. No,

Hamish: City staff's developers. Oh, well, maybe. I mean,

Osman: That's a whole other question, is why is it all of the City developers? Okay, let's move on before we end up in conspiracy. corner for this let's move on to the next proposal and that's higher debt limits this goes hand in hand with the 400 million dollars they're trying to raise in a bond issue so right now the charter caps debt at three percent i think that we need to keep debt at three percent i do not think it should always be tied to the value of the overall community of our residents so the value of the residential property i or taxable property so not just residential commercial property too i i think that totally makes sense our city um founders were right to put that in the charter Rather than have it just be an ordinance, it's so much harder for them to change it if it's in the charter. Which is

Hamish: Why they solidified it in the charter, right?

Osman: Right, exactly. So it's vote no on that, and

Hamish: Vote no on 100%, whatever you call it. If it gets taxed, vote no. Out of principle, because

Osman: Of how they're going to spend the money, it's vote no for the $400 million bailout, and it's vote no for the higher debt limit that would enable that bailout. And then the last one's firefighter collective bargaining. And this is also one of those things where, boy, look, no one's going to vote against our fire departments, and they already have collective bargaining. This just also enshrines it in the charter. Right. So I don't particularly have a problem with that. I think that's a vote yes. But I will say that the East Coast and West Coast cities, our large East Coast and West Coast cities, have enormous legacy costs because of the unions for law enforcement and fire departments and public service. and look those public service those things are very valuable but they also have a lot of corruption in them and there's a legacy of corruption in them and my only concern is how do we prevent that from happening in our much newer city some

Hamish: Sort of caveat right or just yeah i'm with you i'm like as it is now yes there needs to be a

Osman: Butt somewhere yes and yes and yes and how do we like how do we figure out a way to Protect ourselves from that. The real question is, why do they feel the fear that this could somehow be taken away from them? That they need to put

Hamish: It in the charter? Let me give you a hot take. They're like, holy cow, the city. Look at them. They're $400 million in deficit. And we're working for the city. We're going to get lumped in with them and become a scapegoat if we don't... I

Osman: Think their lawyers are telling them that... That's an interesting theory. And they're looking at the mismanagement of our city and wondering if they're going to lose their benefits or whatever. But I think their bigger concern is that if it's not in the charter, then a simple vote of City Council can override their ability to collectively bargain. And they clearly want to continue to do that because it's beneficial to them and their interests. So enshrine it in the charter so that a runaway City Council, which I would argue we're almost at, we may even have a runaway City Council right now, can't take away their rights by a simple vote of the majority. So totally makes sense. Go ahead and enshrine it in the charter.

Hamish: I don't think that's a problem, but yes. And that has been House Einstein's, the podcast, not the brokerage voting. Absolutely. The brokerage

Osman: Does not vote and the podcast can't even vote. So this is pretty funny that we get to opine

Hamish: On what you should vote for. Clearly entertainment only. Yeah, clearly entertainment only. Yeah.

Osman: And if I've said anything offensive to firefighters or city staff or council, you are welcome to come on the pod. Reach out. I'd love to hear your opinion. And we will give you more than a fair shot at explaining why we've got this wrong. Reach out. You know where to find us.

Hamish: Yeah. Do we want to hit this next one time -wise?

Osman: I think we skip it. Other than to mention that the DDA, Downtown Development Authority, failed. We already talked about that last week in a vote, and the vote was split. And I don't think we

Hamish: Need to rehash it. But that's an automatic no, kick the can down a year, revisit. Maybe. I mean,

Osman: I think it would have benefited a lot of the downtown owners at the cost of a lot of other people in this community in terms of control over what happens downtown. And look, I want efficiency in decision -making too, so I get it. You want a tight little cadre of people making the decisions for downtown? Absolutely. Only one council person? Absolutely. And I would argue that the people that live downtown have more of a vested interest than a lot of the council people. So maybe it would have been a good thing, but it doesn't matter. It failed. Right. All right, let's get the carve-outs, Hamish, because this has got to be an epically long podcast.

Hamish: I think we're okay. I think it just seems like a lot. But shall I go first? I think you shall. I shall. Let's see what I've got written down.

Osman: Regale us with tales of your IT upgrades. Oh

Hamish: Yeah, it says IT upgrades are over for now. So basically just a recap to the very long listeners here about all the networking and everything that I've done. It's a slow news day for me and my carve out. I'll have more exciting things. But yeah, I have a Ubiquiti based home network. So it's really neat. I've got all my security cameras set up. I've got about 60 days. No, I think I've got three months of continuous recording before the newest file is replaced for my security camera. So that's really exciting. My internet is rock solid. And if it ever fails, I have two backup internets being piped into my router at the same time. So I'm getting an internet source from fiber, an internet source from broadband coaxial, and internet from 5G cellular. So if any one of those fails, it automatically switches over. I've had too many outages and I'm over it. Now all of my networking things are on their individual UPS and their lead acid UPSs. So, you know, not an outstanding runtime, but I'm sure down the line, I'll look at like a lithium battery or lithium iron. I think it is. Lithium ion, iron, iron. Yeah. Or like iron phosphate. Lithium ion phosphate. Iron phosphate. Yeah. I'm seeing a lot of that now. Lifepo. Lifepo. Yeah. Lifepo. So yeah, it's just neat. Everything's kind of clicking along. My brother, I was telling him about all this stuff when I was setting it up, and he's like, yeah, I had a friend who's doing that, and he has the worst internet of everybody I know because he keeps messing with it. And hearing that, I was like, that's not going to be me. And it isn't, and it hasn't been. And I'm just, you know, the urge to tinker creeps in, but I've got it set up the way I want it. I'm happy. A huge shout out to that client for their donation and a lot of the equipment and knowledge. Yeah. We have amazing clients and

Osman: They're so generous with their time and their expertise. And, and it's just been an amazing, Oh, what do you call it? Like secondary benefit of this industry or this business of the business we do is the relationships we build with really successful people that are very generous with

Hamish: Their time. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Um, so I guess the, the latest thing is the computer that I bought has now gained in value because of the scarcity and everything. It's really funny, but. um it came in a case that was just incredibly restrictive to airflow and i didn't realize quite how much until i found a score of a deal on marketplace and swapped it over the other week um but also how much louder it was like the fans used to just be on full tilt all the time and i went into the settings and it turns out they were configured to be on full tilt pretty much like the moment the temperature went up like five degrees the fans just ramped to 100 and so it was a combination of that and then the case not being conducive for airflow at all the computer is faster it's um you know snappier programs run better it's not constantly yelling at me with the fans screaming so just overall um some really nice quality of life things there and also a little update on the solar i have according to excel uh five hundred dollars in stored credits because i've overproduced so much so i've done like a little bit of a calculation on like what

Osman: That means you need to get an ev Yeah. Your next car has to be an EV. I'm well set for an EV,

Hamish: And I'm also set to heat my home this winter entirely off of electric heat. That's spectacular.

Osman: Yeah. I think that's going to pay off for you

Hamish: In the long run. Seven years is my IR. That's amazing. If I can heat over the winter. What EV are you going to get? Ioniq 5 is what I'm looking at. Or actually, I might do Ioniq 6. Have you seen them? They're ugly. Really? And the reason I'm thinking IONIQ 6 is because they look like they were designed for aerodynamics. And it kind of soapboxes for a moment. It bothers me that cars in the future, today's the future, are still designed like bricks. We know about aerodynamics and the principles and efficiency and everything like that. And in theory, we want to do better for efficiency and the climate and things, but we're still designing like bricks.

Osman: Form of a function do you know which auto maker just uh what just hit the top of loyalty rates

Hamish: No starts with a t tesla tesla really tesla is

Osman: At the top of loyalty rates even after elon that's

Hamish: A tough swallow yeah and you just drove one and

Osman: I'm shocked that you wouldn't even consider one

Hamish: No i'm good is it the social pressure it was uh it's not so much so it's definitely partly due to the founder. Right. He's offensive. Yeah. I mean, the whole Roman salute thing was enough for me to be like, I'm good. Oh, I don't think

Osman: He really meant that as a Roman salute. I think

Hamish: He's just awkward. I socially and physically

Osman: And says dumb things. I mean, you could see him doing that all over the second live thing he

Hamish: Did years ago. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And like, I've seen it, but I'm like, that's enough. Okay. Okay. Tesla also, to my understanding, isn't super right to repair friendly. And like, I'm not saying that any other EV company is, but. That's, you know, I'm happy to money -wise draw my line there.

Osman: I will say, I think he's a genius and he's also offensive frequently. And he does what he does. But the product also is made by 40,000 plus other humans other than him that are also working their tails off. And it's American. So I continue to, you know, can you get past, it's hard to get past him. We bought ours before he did the thing. Yeah, exactly. But I did not virtue signal with a sticker. But there was a period when it was so bad that my wife was not driving it to

Hamish: Work because it would be parked outside at CU.

Osman: I just saw a Cybertruck parked at Santo the other day with its passenger window smashed. Somebody put a rock to that window. Oh, absolutely. How would it crack? It would look like a bullseye.

Hamish: It wasn't the demonstration of the Cybertruck. He threw a rock and it shifted. Somebody was

Osman: Probably pounding on that glass to make that crack. People are still angry to this day, and frankly, they should be. I think he did a really bad job in terms of communicating as well as...

Hamish: Yeah, I've got very little faith in the guy. Sure, he's smart, sure, all these things, but I mean... Without going too political and everything. But the body who was supposed to do a post-mortem on Doge, for example, doesn't exist. And there's no post-mortem on the effectiveness of it and everything like that. And it's like, I'm good. I can find my EVs elsewhere. I don't have to tie myself to that individual. And Rivian's tough, especially if I'm going on this liberal path. Rivian's got this huge deal with Amazon for all their vans and shit. Pardon my language, but it's like you want to go EV, but if I'm going to do this diehard principled thing. What, you

Osman: Have a problem with Amazon? A little bit, yeah.

Osman: Okay, I don't know your politics. Maybe we should

Hamish: Stop before we go down this road. I'm curious what you've got against Amazon. I use Amazon all the time, like yesterday. These socks are

Osman: Amazon. You just hate that they're the ones getting

Hamish: Your money. In a sense, yeah. It's like if I can help it. But then again, I can't help it.

Osman: You could go to Walmart. You could go to REI.

Hamish: I don't go to Walmart. You could buy things at

Osman: JCPenney. There are other places to buy things

Hamish: Online and offline you don't have to buy. Totally. And I recognize the hypocrisy there. So it's like, next car will be an EV, though, for sure.

Osman: People hate billionaires. Yeah. Our capitalist system produces extreme wealth for the lucky

Hamish: Few. And local power for the people who have

Osman: Extreme wealth. But some of those lucky few are not just lucky. They're brilliant and have worked their tails off. And I would say Bezos. Particularly

Hamish: Early business. Yeah, for sure. And Elon, too.

Osman: They've been brilliant entrepreneurs. And they've changed the world. But they also have downsides

Hamish: To their behavior that's somewhat ick. And for me, too, that level of wealth buys you political action. Oh, yeah. And the direction you want to steer the world becomes less so much a democracy and more like your ability to spend. What makes

Osman: You think it's never been that? Oh, buddy. It's

Hamish: Always been that to some extent. I just think

Osman: More so now. I think that's a myth. I think it's always been that. I think that's the myth we've been fed as school kids, that we've lived in a democracy where everyone's vote counts. I don't think everyone's vote counts anymore. I think that because of the way... Look, even in turn of the century, newspapers were also massively influential in elections. Railroad tycoons. All the way the country was developed and built involves extreme wealth and haves and have -nots. And the myth that's been fed to us that our vote

Hamish: Counts. I mean, our vote counts just by, I love you listeners, but our vote counts less just because of the existence of the Electoral College, right? Oh, well, that's another topic. I know. But just by nature of that, it's already evident

Osman: There. Yeah. Why did it? Well, okay. All right.

Hamish: We're going to stop. I know. Yeah. And I, and

Osman: I'm also playing devil's advocate. I voted in

Hamish: Every presidential election since I was 18 years old. Yeah. Oh my God. And I have people that

Osman: Complain that haven't voted and I voted for Republicans and I voted for Democrats. Yeah. And I do think it's important to vote, but I'm also realistic about where our democracy is heading and has, and I don't, I don't know if it may has always been like this. We just didn't know. right and some of the things we learned about our presidents and our leaders decades after they passed is

Hamish: Rather shocking in their behavior i i think um and also to cap it out like i have no hard feelings for any tesla owner or rivian owner or anything like that but i and like dude the slates i think slate might be the ev um looking at those and i haven't looked into the ethics of that company right so i recognize my hypocrisy have you seen the rivian r3 yeah that little

Osman: Short hatchback thing that looks like it's it looks like an old volkswagen gulf from the 80s or 90s and it's jacked up a little bit like a rally car yeah and of course they're like ah we're gonna delay production for a few more years

Hamish: Like i know of course you are I went on their whole loan calculator for that. Really? Because I was so stoked about the R3. I think that or the Slate. I really do think an SUV might be decent, though. So maybe not the Ioniq 6. Anyway. All right. Fun topic. But I use Amazon. I use all these things. Let me believe that I have the illusion of choice when it comes to my car.

Osman: All right. I'm just going to go here. This is

Hamish: The thing about millennials. Gen Z right here. Okay. This is the thing about your generation.

Osman: And that is you, you, you hate on the things that you also spend the most money on. Like you don't understand money is voting, right? Like,

Hamish: Yeah, totally. There's this weird behavior where

Osman: There's like almost like a self hatred going

Hamish: On. There is. And like Amazon is an instance where it is entirely my choice to use it. Right. To a certain extent, there are industries where it's like you have no option other than to use your money on the thing that you dislike. right um i i recognize right like that i use amazon while also being critical of it um at the same time if i'm buying a car i'm like the billboard for that brand so everything to that as well i think that it carries a little bit more weight um but yeah without a doubt there's some hypocrisy there it's like let me ask you a question how

Osman: Often do you click the button that says product available from other sellers and see who they

Hamish: Are. Never. You should try clicking it. Because

Osman: What you find is the same product and it might be sold by a small business that's been vetted or a minority owned business or a VA owned business. You can choose the location of the seller. It's the same product. You don't have to go to the cheapest. You can go slightly more. And support an owner of a business that might be more ethical and might pay their employees better. You have that choice in Amazon. You don't have to buy

Hamish: It from the cheapest seller. I make sure that the seller is the brand. Because I've been ripped off before buying. Yeah, fake. So that's what I'll check. Yeah, because I recognize it. Also, there's the argument that's like... and not my stance but the argument's like oh you don't like capitalism yet you buy things you know and it's like well yeah dude like you know i still have a budget i still have to buy things yeah no i get it i get it that's valid that's valid but no i'm i don't know we'll see but that's we are well over on my carve out well i want to just

Osman: Hit one more little piece and that is um when we're talking about shopping on amazon what's really funny is that sometimes i'll go to the like i will often check the actual manufacturer's website and the same product is like right now we're looking at buying a bike rack they put on top of the truck and rocky mounts i believe is a local company um they had a store down down not quite downtown they had a store like at whatever spruce and 30th for years right next to the scooter place And they sell on Amazon and they also have a website that sells. Their website product is $50 more. Yeah. And on Amazon, it's $50 less sold by the same company. It's like a link for them with free shipping. Like, okay, well, I would like to buy it directly from you, but instead you're using Amazon. And selling it cheaper. And you're selling it cheaper with free shipping. So I'm forced to, right? If I care about my pocketbook

Hamish: To use Amazon. And so I've seen the opposite of that. which kind of makes sense. And, but my, so what the, the reason I came up with is that it's less admin for them to sell through Amazon as which it is, right? Like Amazon sets up the shipping there, the distributor and everything versus if you're selling it on your website, you have to do more admin. So you price that

Osman: In. Honestly, this is my take. I think they're lazy. It's easier to adjust your pricing. You sell so much more volume through Amazon. And so you start to ignore your own website. And you don't constantly match the prices. And if they had matched the prices, I would much rather buy from the website than buy through Bezos. But if Bezos is giving me $50, I'm going to go

Hamish: Buy from Bezos. I'm going to take $50 for sure.

Osman: That's effectively what he's doing. He's giving

Hamish: You $50 to use Amazon. On that note, really quick, I guess we're just going to keep, but the whole lawn thing, I was looking at sprinklers on Amazon because I was like, I bet you I could get like bulk sprinklers for cheap. Impact sprinklers, you know, that one? They're so much cheaper at Home Depot in person. Yeah, some things are cheaper

Osman: In person. There's so much cheaper. It's interesting. Like three times cheaper. Those asymmetries exist. It's the laziness of buying it on Amazon that sometimes there's some weird profit built in.

Hamish: I couldn't stomach the cost. That's why I was like, what is the price at Home Depot? So it is, you have to look around. All right, we'll

Osman: Move on to my carve-out. I think we gave Hamish

Hamish: Quite the carve-out. Yeah, sorry. Okay, so I'm

Osman: Going to preface this, and I'll try to do this quickly. This is not originally... come from me in the way that it's, I'm going to talk about it. For many years, I've been, I mean, most of my life, I've been a journaler, a writer. And in the last five years or so, I've really shifted my writing towards focusing on positive things in the future. And I've got a whole structure for it. But one of those structure items is what's coming next. I write about what's coming next and also what would be successful today. And the reason I've done that is I really want to focus on what today would feel like a win. So one of the hard things about this business is that we don't, I mean, you have a boss, but most agents do not. And so how do you know you had a good day today? You don't get validation from your boss or your coworkers necessarily, and you may or may not get validation from your clients. And if you've got good clients, they will give you validation, but most clients don't know how to measure your performance. So they also are not giving you validation. And so you basically are in this isolation as an agent where you have to decide what made today successful or not. Set your goalposts. And this has changed my life by focusing on what today's success is and doing that repeatedly, consistently as part of my morning routine. And the other day, a friend of mine and also an agent and also a coach and also... a very successful entrepreneur here in Boulder. I believe he's one of the owners of Remax Alliance. He might be the owner of the franchise, but he wrote on his Facebook wall, he wrote, I was reading advice from a coach this morning and it really hit home. Vision boards and goals are great, but they don't create momentum on their own. At the end of the day, it comes down to one simple question. Did you win the day? Did you work out today? Yes or no. Did you eat well? Yes or no. Were you actually in business today? Did you talk to clients, prospects, and provide value to the people around you? Yes or no. Did you become a little better today or did you simply pass through another day of your life? The person who wins the most days wins life. It's really that simple. So yes, vision boards are fun and a valuable exercise. Just don't spend the whole day making one and forget to actually win the day. And I couldn't agree with that. more. In fact, I don't know why I didn't like it. I'm going to give him a like now and a shout out to Greg Smith for that inspiration and also alignment. I think we actually align on a lot of things. He often likes, uh, when I post analyses on the market and I like his advice and coaching and mentoring too. I think a lot of agents are not getting coaching and mentoring in the industry and it's nice to see a successful, um, I don't know if he's technically the employee broker, but certainly one of the, one of the principles at Remax Alliance also encouraging his. team to go out there and win the day it's a it's a it's a day -by -day business is the day -by -day life it's not by yes have the vision board absolutely have the big picture think about the big picture but think about what wins the day today yeah

Hamish: The vision board it reminds me of like a new year's resolution where it's like this new year's i'm gonna go to the gym okay but how are you gonna actually do it absolutely right absolutely

Osman: Yeah like i think i saw a few years ago i started doing tim ferris's Past Year Review. Have I talked

Hamish: To you about that? I think so. Every new year,

Osman: Every new year you get to this, get the spiel, do that. Don't do it. Don't do New Year's resolutions.

Hamish: Do a Past Year Review. Yeah. And put those things on your calendar now. And now it's pre -mortems

Osman: As well. Pre -mortems. Oh yeah. Pre -mortems are another Tim Ferriss. I love pre -mortems. Those are great. We should talk about those more when we start the journey with clients. That's definitely. I don't know if it's appropriate for podcast fodder, but for sure. For our internal workings, pre -mortems I think are very useful, especially on the listing side. On the buy-side too, but the buy-side is more dynamic and the listing side, we're selling something. Yeah,

Hamish: A buy-side, we could do it just to do it because I think it is so like, yeah, get them a house.

Osman: Anyhow. All right. With that said, you have squandered another two plus hours with us on the House Einstein podcast. We deeply appreciate your time. You're listening. You're watching us on YouTube or many other platforms that we have pushed the content onto. And we always value your questions and your feedback, whether that's delivered publicly or through the messages you all send me privately. I do read them, although I can't respond to all of them. And thanks again for joining us. If you'd like to learn more about the House Einstein brokerage, you can find us at HouseEinstein. com. And we'll catch you next time. Take care.