Tag: real estate

Are You Broken Like Me?

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized


Women are inherently maternal—raised to put others before self. This is the cost…

I think I may be broken. Not the quirky, cute type, but really cracked, unable to compartmentalize my desires from those of the people I love. I don’t stand up for what I want because I often lose sight of what that is exactly. I feel an initial desire for or against something and often state it, but that voice is drown out by my husband, or my kids’ objections or justifications in opposition to mine. My desire to please seemingly becomes more gratifying than getting what I thought best or actually wanted.

I don’t like Disneyland, but every year we ended up at the theme park throughout our kids’ formative years. I don’t care for camping, or hiking, or petting zoos, or pumpkin patches, yet was consistently one of the few parent volunteers to chaperon our son’s Boy Scout outings, our daughter’s Girl Scout adventures, and many of their school field trips. I’ve told my husband 17,000 times I want him to plan and execute a romantic getaway for the two of us, yet in 30 years of marriage I’ve been the only one to invest the time to create memorable vacations we both appreciate.

It can be argued that I’m getting what I want with my husband happily joining me on the vacations I plan. And it’s true I was glad to turn our kids on to safe, family fun experiences going to theme parks and camping trips annually. So giving in to what I personally don’t like or want to do isn’t only negative. The problem with acquiescing to everyone else is I never know how annoyed, tense, and most recently insane I’ll feel until I’m actively engaged in doing what I fundamentally didn’t want to.

Case in point…

We’re looking to buy a home in specific areas north of San Francisco, within our very tight budget. We mistakenly moved up to the Seattle area 5 yrs ago and have been looking to come home to California since. We’ve yet to find a house we both agree on. Either my husband or I can nix any property, and the other must agree to walk away without resentment. But this rule between us has been getting harder to maintain as the years have passed.

Looking for a home is never easy, especially since this will be our last, the one we leave to our kids so they’ll never know homelessness. I look at Redfin 5x a day. Every few weeks a listing gets our hopes up that ‘this is the one,’ only to have them dashed when we visit the wreck of a house, or get outbid three times over.

Last week we found two homes in the areas we’re looking for within the price range we can afford. One was exactly where we want to be in Petaluma—a rare find with very few homes for sale in that particular neighborhood. It sold within 48 hours of listing. Halfway into our 13 hr journey driving down to see the property, we got a call from our realtor that the house went under contract with another buyer. We offered 100k over asking with contingencies of seeing the property and getting inspections, but the seller went with their first offer which our realtor claimed was also over asking and required no inspections.

The second property was in the low, dry hills of Novato—picture a fire waiting to happen cuz their insurance carrier does! The lot was tempting—over a third of a flat acre—and the cost of the house was at our threshold, but doable. The owners had turned their two bedroom into four, the additional two bedrooms a garage conversion built on a thin concrete slab. No central heating or cooling in over half of the house. In other words, the attractive listing turned out to be cheaply constructed, jury-rigged crap.

The two homes we saw have been typical of our home-buying journey, which is why we’ve yet to actually purchase a home in the very competitive housing markets we want to live. Nonetheless, we decided to extend our stay and see what came up for sale.

We stayed over a week and saw 16 properties, some new listings, some days, even weeks old. Most were overpriced wrecks. A few were clean, and my husband insisted they were “Fine!” He wants to be back in the sunshine. So do I, but these ‘fine’ homes had less than 7000 sq ft lots. Living on top of the neighbors didn’t seem ‘fine’ to me, especially coming from the 1.5 acres we have now.

We went to see a home in Novato, though it had been on the market 11 days. Any property over a week on MLS indicates there are issues with the house. As we perused the interior, we were both impressed by how clean the home was. Good layout, though dark in many rooms, but enough space for our two adult kids, and my husband and I to set up separate offices.

The kids will be moving in a year or less, I told my husband while we walked the small property. And the lot was only 7200 ft. It was in a 3/10 flood zone. It was at the base of a bone dry hill, blocking sunshine and an extreme fire hazard. There was a monthly HOA fee of $200, and the community pool that money funded was almost across the street.

“This house is fine by me. It’s fine for me. It’s big enough for all of us. It’s quiet, and it’s fine.”

It wasn’t ‘fine’ by me, but I could feel his frustration mounting. All he wanted was to move back to the Bay. The 5 yrs we’ve been in Seattle he’s complained non-stop about the grayness. The cold. The dripping rain. I, too, want to come home (I’m native CA), but not just any house in any neighborhood and end up with a house and property we don’t want like we did moving up here.

I listed a few more negatives about the house. The price point was at our limit, and our property taxes and utilities would be at least a third more. And being tied to another HOA for a pool we’d never use was a waste. Standing in the kitchen, I told my husband I did not want the house. He heard me. So did our broker who let us in.

My husband was clearly upset I was rejecting the property. A house I’d rejected earlier that day he’d also said was “Fine!” (It wasn’t fine, and not just to me because it’d been on the market for 35 days.) He ‘suggested’ we go look at the pool area as we were leaving the house, regardless that I’d just said I didn’t want the home. I followed him across the street, still on the page of a no-go, but seeing how upset he was stung.

  • Was I expecting too much home or land for the money we had?
  • Every property comes with problems. Were the issues so bad with this home I couldn’t be happy here?
  • Am I just being gun-shy from the mistake of moving up to Seattle?

We left that house, and while viewing others my husband spent the rest of the day trying to convince me the Novato house was “just fine!”

  • He thinks we can afford it, and if we live very tight, we likely can.
  • He likes how big the house is, with enough space for all of us to live comfortably.
  • The location is good, he reminded me multiple times, an area of Novato I’ve said I like.
  • We’d finally be back in the Bay, in sunny CA. Home!

We saw no other houses worth considering by the end of that day. My husband was tired of looking, and the Novato house had a lot going for it, he reminded me as we headed back to our hotel.

I, too, was exhausted by our endless search but was willing to keep at it, though I could tell my husband was reaching his limit. “If you don’t want this house, I want to stop looking for a year,” he told me earlier in the day. We’d previously agreed to work hard at finding a place before another dark PNW winter. Going back home and have him sour, annoyed, and pouting every gray day there wasn’t working for him, or us. It’s why I agreed to put a bid in on the Novato home. “This isn’t the house,” I told him when we docusigned the paperwork. “We’ll have to move again in a year or two, scale down when the kids move on.”

Earlier, and still, he wasn’t really listening to me. He’d told me time and again he wanted our next home purchase to be our last, but even the threat of moving again didn’t dissuade him from signing the bid.

Twenty hours later, we were dining at a Thai place in Novato and we got a call from our realtor that the sellers accepted our bid.

I put my fork full of crispy noodles down on my plate. I couldn’t breathe. I looked across the table at my smiling husband. I did not smile back. I excused myself and went outside where I paced and tried to regulate my breathing and slow my heart rate. It works, sometimes, if I tell myself to chill. It didn’t work right then.

I couldn’t think to form words. I kept seeing this too dark, too big, too expensive home we were about to buy in my head and there wasn’t one good feeling to latch on to, even the many my husband had iterated.

I went back into the restaurant and managed to tell him we had to leave, pack up our meal and go. I explained I was having a meltdown, a full blown anxiety attack I did not understand, and that I wanted to go over to the house again, see what we just bought. He didn’t question me. We went back to the house and stood on the porch since we couldn’t get in without our realtor who was off celebrating her birthday.

We stayed on the porch through sunset. It was mostly quiet the half hour we were out there. A guy played basketball by himself at the mini park next to the pool, which stayed empty even though it was a holiday weekend. The rhythmic bouncing of his ball was annoying, but oddly calming, as it gave me something to focus on. My husband touted the quiet, the house size, the end of a 5 year search, finally coming home. He dismissed my meltdown as nerves about moving, which, he informed me is right up there on the stress meter as marriage, divorce, and child birth.

I’m scared, I admitted.

“I know,” he’d said. “But we’ll make it work.”

No, we won’t. I don’t want this house. I didn’t say it aloud since I wasn’t totally sure at that point. Instead, I burst into tears and cried the 15 minute drive back to our hotel. My husband said this house is FINE. I agreed to bid on it, said YES, even though I told him a lot of valid reasons we should say NO. Now we were locked into a binding contract that I wasn’t sure we should follow through with or how to get out of.

My brain locked up. Never happened to me before. Even under extreme stress, I usually can think (rationalize?) my way through to clarity. Not this time. My husband drove in silence. I could feel him shutting down as he always does with strong emotions. He’d be no help, and likely a hindrance in me managing my panic attack. He’d castigate me for agreeing to put in a bid. And he’d have been right to do so.

  • Maybe what he said at the house is right and I’m just panicking over moving.
  • He really wants to move home and so do I. Maybe this is the best we can do.
  • Maybe the house won’t be so bad. It’s big enough, and quiet, even though it’s rather dark and we’re moving home for the sunshine, and the kids are moving out and we don’t need this much space, and it costs too much and we don’t need additional HOA fees, and—
  • Maybe I’m bat shit crazy for agreeing to buy a house I don’t want to please my husband.

He finally asked me what was going on as he pulled into a parking space at our hotel. When I told him I didn’t know and needed some space to figure it out I wasn’t lying because right then there was a war in my head. He went up to our room and I stayed in the car and wept. I struggled to breathe, and see through the blinding headache that felt like my eyes were popping out. I needed help finding clarity since my brain didn’t seem to be functioning so I called a friend.

“Make a list of the pros and cons of buying this house,” she told me after twenty minutes of listening to me freak out with the opposing voices locking up my brain. She helped me realize my full body meltdown to winning the bid was telling me something, and I should at least acknowledge it. Bless her!

Couldn’t help crying again up in our suite as I apologized to my husband for freaking out. I knew I didn’t want the house by then, but was afraid to disappoint him. Instead, I offered up my friend’s suggestion, and my husband worked with me on a pros and cons list. By midnight, it was obvious where buying the house was trending, and even he was moving toward withdrawing our bid. He suggested we decide what to do in the morning since nothing was going to happen at that hour, so we went to bed. Well, sort of, since neither of us really slept.

“You realize this could cost us forty five grand in earnest money?” my husband asked me in the morning when I informed him I was 100% sure I did not want to buy the Novato house.

“It won’t. We have an inspection contingency.” Thank God we did! In popular markets, brokers push buyers to waive all contingencies. In five home purchases, we never have, regardless if there’s ‘pre-inspections’ provided by the sellers.

The moment we docusigned our bid withdrawal my headache began to subside. I could tell my husband was relieved too, especially after our daughter called to inform us the house was priced $200k over comparable homes in the area. We hadn’t run comps before bidding. Our bad!

We left the Bay area the next day. The drive back up the coast I mused we were in the same position as when we came to check out those two houses—still homeless down there. But my husband disagreed. We learned a lot, he insisted.

  • Never bid on a house without an inspection contingency!
  • Always run comps of the area to see if the house is competitively priced.
  • And never, ever agree to buy a house I don’t want.

Easier said than done. Women are inherently maternal—outwardly focused. We’re raised to be caretakers, put others before self. But I, too, learned something on this last trip. Almost instinctively, I want to please so badly I rarely fight for my position in the face of opposition. I eventually (sometimes quickly) cave with resistance to my preferences and desires. And to fix this part of me, I’m gonna have to stand up, even go to battle when necessary to be heard, respected, and come away whole.

The 5% Factor in Finance

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

I had a conversation with my former financial advisor when the markets were crashing back in ’08. I asked him to give me an estimate, his best, ostensibly educated guess when the market might turn around or at least stabilize. He assured me it would be soon. The credit default scandal had already been exposed. Real estate foreclosures had been assessed and the losses factored into financial projections. The fact is, he offered with conviction, in any industry one had to account for a certain amount of corruption. Maybe 5% of the people in any given field were evil. The evil had now been weeded out and the markets would bounce back to its mean of 8 to 10% growth or better annually soon, he’d promised.

Turns out, evil abounds in the financial industry. From Michael Arougheti (Ares), $85 million in 2024, to Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase), $39 million to Varun Krishna (Rocket), $25.89 million, and their corporate cronies with eight figure bonuses, these bank execs and mortgage brokers horde properties, creating our current housing shortage turning us into a renters nation, and control the markets at their whim with risky investments (which they call ‘financial products’) for personal gain. My advisor had to be grossly low on his 5% estimate of evil in finance.

According to forensic psychologist and author Robert Hare, it is possible, even likely, that the percentage of evil is greater in the financial industry than most any other field. Money attracts greedy people. Those who choose a career pursuing money, instead of building, inventing, engineering, teaching, are generally looking for what they can get from society instead of what they can give to it. In Snakes in Suits, Mr. Hare claims at least 10% of all those in finance are psychopaths.

The 5% (or more) who callously exploit the rest of us is what makes the free-market system they support a myth. That 5% evil controls 95% of the financial markets of the world. The enormous scale of capital they play with has proven to collapse economies, robbing millions of their life savings, their jobs, their homes.

Most of us put our earnings in the bank or the market and hope our savings will grow. We depend on those in charge of most everyone’s money to know what they’re doing and manage the money we entrust to them wisely. Most of us don’t have the time or inclination for in-depth study and monitoring of the markets. Even if we did, it is rarely possible to get an intimate and transparent view inside most corporations. We rely on our government to monitor and avoid financial catastrophes. The ‘08 crash is an example of what happens when they don’t. The Trump administration is another, while he and his 5% — bankers; brokers, energy and tech execs — sets up our economy to profit themselves at the cost of 95% of the rest of us.

A ‘free market’ system strives to maintain very few restrictions, touting supply and demand will regulate economics. And though this is a lovely idea, like communism, it doesn’t work in the real world. The economy collapses when demand is only from the [wealthy] 1% of the population that can afford anything. Public companies with no limits on growth, minimal regulations, limited liability, no accountability, and lack of transparency virtually invite exploitation by the few, but none the less formidable percentage of evil. Our ‘free market’ invariably becomes controlled by a small minority of wealthy shareholders who represent only their own interests. This corrupts the entire society by shifting the balance of power to a handful of narcissists, if not out and out psychopaths, as Robert Hare claims.

Republicans and conservatives scream socialism if the government regulates the markets beyond ‘protection of property and against force or fraud.’ But everyone pays the price for the 5% that continually redefine the term ‘fraud.’ The 5% evil controlling the financial industry continues to take ridiculous risks and impose absurdly high costs and interest for excessive yields to line their pockets. And the fact is, it IS socialism when taxpayers are forced to bail out banks and brokers who were, and are still indifferent to the suffering they cause — the very definition of ‘Psychopath.’

We will never be able to ‘weed out’ evil from humanity. A certain percentage of our population will always be narcissists, care exclusively about their own welfare over the society in which they live.

Regulations on our financial industry must be imposed and upheld to keep evil in-check and limit the damage the 5% will surely cause again and again. We are more than willing to put sanctions on countries that support terrorism. If we are truly ‘by the people, of the people, and for the people’ of this nation, we must sanction the evil in our system as well.

The Problem with Realtors

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

I’m looking to buy a new home in Northern California. I peruse Redfin 5xs a day, (and yup, I’m OCD about real estate), then send links of homes that spark my interest to our real estate agent. This agent quickly and efficiently sold our last home a few years back. She made $81,000 on the sale. She’d sold our home in mid-summer 2022, racking up her 35th sale that year.

Our agent, Karen, knew us for 2 weeks collectively. Two weeks! And she didn’t focus on our property alone in those 2 weeks, so hours spent on selling our house was likely less than 40. That’s $2,025 an hour. That is obscene!

I’ve heard many realtors say, “Well, we have to split our commission with the buyer’s agent and our brokerage,” as if this is an excuse for how much they make off home sellers, and now buyers as well. Karen has a 70/30 split with her brokerage meaning she keeps 70% of $81,000, which is $56,700. Even splitting her commission with the buyer’s agent, Karen made over $700 an hour for placing an ad on MLS, showing our home to whoever showed up, and “staging” our home, which we paid for out of pocket.

Honestly, realtors are greedy middlemen/women, who offer little to no value. In fact, for private buyers and sellers of property, they are literally in our way, an anchor we are forced to engage with and pay because the real estate industry has set it up this way.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is the largest lobby in the country, lobbying congress and city councils to do their bidding. Try selling your home as a private owner (‘for sale by owner’ — FSBO) and agents won’t show it unless they get a commission on the sale. Worse, they bad talk the FSBOs to their clients. I know. Tried selling a rental property on our own and the few potential buyers who came by told us their agents refused to show our house because they wouldn’t, ‘in all good conscience, waste their client’s time showing them crap.’

I’ve never actually met a real estate agent or broker with a conscience.

I get this is offensive, but is it not offensive, in fact vulgar to be ripped off for tens of thousands of dollars with every property sale?

The real estate agents/brokers I’ve known, and I’ve known many, have taught me not to trust them. Ostensibly, when we hire them, they claim to be on our side — negotiating for us, regardless if buyer or seller. But BEWARE! This is a blatant lie they deliver to potential clients with ease.

Sent a link to a home of interest to Karen a few days ago. She tried to convince me to buy it even though the house was flooded so badly in the crawlspace it could not be inspected. The traffic noise from the fwy “doesn’t bother me,” she told me, though the background hum of traffic drowned out her voice on the videos she sent me. “You should start your opening bid at 1.7 to be in the running,” she said, though the house was listed for 1.5M, and a wreck.

Another home I sent her was literally falling off the side of a hill that I couldn’t see in the photoshopped images from Redfin. Before going to see it, Karen assured me the home was “perfect for us,” even after our inspector (not the one the listing agent hired) found massive cracks in the foundation. Karen insisted we get an offer in quickly to be ‘in front of the bidding war’ the seller’s agent created by listing the house so low (as if it had nothing to do with the fact the house was falling off a hill). Karen did the same when she sold our house. “I want to create a bidding war,” she’d told us. Well, of course she did with the house so undervalued, but the bids were well below the home’s real value. Our $150k hit translated to a quick sale and only a few thousand in commission loss for her.

She undervalued our home for sale to make money fast. She’s overvaluing any home we look at buying to make the most commission possible.

My half-brother is a residential agent. His IQ is below 100 (making academic or practical learning difficult), busted for stealing cars and selling weed (when it was illegal) again and again through his teens, failed out of middle school then high school, and retired at 55 a multimillionaire from his home sales in Simi Valley, a Christian enclave north of Los Angeles.

My half-brother is Born-Again and used his influence in the local churches to promote his real estate business to the mostly immigrant Latino influx. These were hardworking men and women, generally with two or more kids. They’d gathered together just enough savings for a very small down payment on a new home in the housing developments popping up across the valley. Of course, my half-brother knew all this about them. Yet, he convinced these ignorant folks that an adjustable-rate mortgage would get them into a house because ARM loans require little down and had relatively low monthly payments.

In 2008, the real estate industry crashed and the low ARM loans his buyers signed on for turned monthly mortgage payments from $2500 to $4500 virtually overnight. Thousands lost their homes to foreclosure in the following 5 yrs, unable to maintain their monthly payment. Brokers and agents manipulated the numbers to get these folks an absurdly low down payment, not caring or even considering that in as few as 3 yrs their payments would skyrocket.

How would my half-brother know he was screwing his clients pushing ARM loans? All ARM loans “balloon.” The ARM “teaser rate” is attractive to lure the low-income in but screw them over time. Banks always win, get the most they can.

Like realtors, I’ve never actually met a banker, lender, or person in finance with a conscience.

While the banks, regulators, and rating agencies were publicly slapped in the 2008 Crash, I heard no mention nor read one article about realtors pushing deceptive loan practices on buyers.

My sister flips housing with the help of her husband. My brother-in-law is a commercial broker. The two of them are millionaires 10xs over from their adventures in real estate. From drowning a kitten in a neighbor’s pool at 5, to forging our mom’s signature on report cards, to shoplifting, to wearing whatever facade necessary to get what she wanted, my sister seemed without conscience growing up.

I’ve worked with well over 30 realtors in the purchasing and selling of personal and rental properties over the last 30 yrs. Without exception, they all have ONLY ONE agenda — too make as much money as quickly as possible. They claim their value add is an extensive knowledge of the housing market, but with tools like Redfin, I am able to find homes that interest me as quickly or quicker than agents busy showing properties or marketing for more clients.

Last Saturday my DH and I went to several open houses. The realtors didn’t know virtually any details about the houses they were selling. No clue where the water heater or furnace were, whether the house was gas or electric, age of roof, the crime rate or local school ratings…etc. The prices were hugely variable, some hundreds of thousands less than comparable houses only a block away. The listing realtor likely recommended the seller undervalue their home to create a ‘bidding war,’ as our agent, Karen, did with ours.

November 2024, a law was passed forcing buyers to sign agreements with a realtor before viewing any property. This nationwide law also requires buyers to give an average of 3% commission to the agent were forced to sign with. Used to be ONLY the seller paid the realtor’s commission out of the money from the sale. Now, realtors get upwards of 7% — 9% commissions making it impossible for most first-time buyers to get a home with the additional payouts agents require.

There are realtors on every corner because it is a simple test to pass with no real education required, and the monetary rewards can be limitless. These are middlemen/women with their hand out, greedy, manipulative, ugly people. They are not ‘on your side.’ They are not your friend. Yet, we are forced to work with them, by the laws the NAR lobby put in place.

Want to know why you can’t afford to buy a house?

Your realtor will tell you that you can, even when you can barely cover your current rent. They’ll tell you the house is solid even when it’s flooding or falling off a cliff. They’ll tell you to overbid your offer to “be competitive” regardless of the real value of the home. They’ll tell you to undervalue your home when selling to create a ‘bidding war.’ And for screwing you, they’ll demand upwards of 6% or more in commission from the seller (they do not have to disclose) even if they negotiate 3+% from the buyer.

My family of realtors, to the 30+ I’ve worked with over the years, I’ve never once found an honest agent. When I was a kid, I too felt proud of my half-brother watching him dance with our mom around the living room of our childhood home because she was so proud of him passing the realtor’s test (third time’s a charm). Now I understand it was the only career he could have had — real estate agent, or car salesman, or insurance salesman, or drug pusher for big pharma — morally corrupt, greedy middleman careers without a conscience.

SaaS Apps that F**k You

by jcafesin, posted in saas
Saas Apps that Screw You
or
Why U Can’t Get that House, that Job, those Tickets…

I’ve been house hunting on REDFIN for over 5 yrs with no luck. The homes I want are either too expensive, a flat-out ripoff, or an offer is accepted within 24 hrs of listing. We’ve bid on 5 houses, and we’ve been ‘out bid’ every time.

I’ve defaulted to using Redfin.com almost exclusively, as they released MLS (Multiple Listing Service [of homes for sale]) data within minutes of the broker’s listing. ZILLOW, REALTOR.com, and their like often show new MLS listings hours later.

I assumed that Redfin was helping me find a home. But what this SaaS (Software as a Service) offering is really doing is screwing most potential home buyers like you and me. Making MLS listings available the moment a property is listed for sale to everyone online, globally, does NOT ‘level the playing field.’ Democratizing MLS listings introduces 50+ interested buyers at every doorstep, jacking up housing prices with fierce competition for the same property.

Real estate brokers love this software! They now give you access to their paid MLS subscription (Matrix), knowing we all get it from Redfin anyway. Promoting “competitive bidding” makes them richer with every sale.

Book a trip on HOTELS.com or EXPEDIA lately? Ever? If you use travel apps you are spending more than you need to. Guaranteed! You’ll get a better hotel rate if you call the places you’d like to stay, and talk directly to their front desk. I’ve booked family vacations for 21 yrs now, and every single time, without fail, from Victoria, Canada, to Venice, Italy, the rates are cheaper if you book directly by calling the places you plan to stay.

The original idea with travel apps was they’d buy in bulk and sell at a discount. But like Pets.com, these sites quickly learned the destinations were not very flexible on their rates, so they ‘pivoted’ their SaaS with marketing. They sold users on ‘Packaged Deals,’ but you’ll be locked in to their ‘deals,’ which often aren’t ideal, and your vacation will cost more booking through them, even though they advertise that they save you money. Travel apps offer you no real value, and often rip you off, adding charges to cover the cost of maintaining their business.

Same goes for most middlemen SaaS offerings. It cost money to run their platforms, and they pass that cost on to their paying customers.

Ever use ANGIE’S LIST, or HOME ADVISOR, or THUMBTACK to get recommendations for services from contractors to dentists? Most of their good ratings are LIES. Angi’s, and their like, are advertising platforms. They are like Phone Books in the olden days. The BUSINESS PAYS these SaaS apps to have their name appear in search results. Even on Angi, the listing may be free, but your business will be buried in their search returns if you do not pay their ‘premium’ rate. Few (if any) of the good ratings and reviews awarded the businesses are real. Either the business solicited friends and family to post good reviews, and/or they hired an outside marketing firm to create high ratings (usually from India or the Philippines doing click scams). Angi and their like bury the negative reviews (as does Google), as pissing off their paying clients would be bad for their SaaS business.

These SaaS recommendation sites say they do a standard background check, meaning criminal records to professional license, but that’s about it. A few say they reach out to the vendor’s customers by phone, which they may, but with contacts the business gives them. Maybe they get the wife of the vendor on the phone, and of course, she just loves his work! High ratings mean you’re more likely to hire them. And the business is more likely to keep paying Angi and Thumbtack to appear on their lists.

Developers and marketers of middlemen SaaS apps will argue they are “doing good” for the world, whatever that means. (Doing good for them?) They are ‘setting information free to form an egalitarian society,’ Silicon Valley types profess. But I’ve already established that these apps, and their like jack up the cost of goods and services, as IRL middlemen do. Creators of middlemen software will tell you they are offering you a ‘convenience.’ Bullshit. With a few clicks you too can book flights, hotels, car rentals, arrange appointments with contractors, find a [good] dentist. Do your research and go beyond Google to Bing, DuckDuckGo, Reddit, ChatGPT, Nextdoor…etc., and you can find all kinds of information about a company or vendor, including reviews across a broad spectrum, not just the paid ratings on Expedia or Angi.

Most SaaS apps today require you give them a ton of personal data to utilize their ‘service.’ Additionally, they put ‘cookies’ on your mobile and PC that track everywhere you go online, and IRL (through your phone). Not conspiracy theory. Cookies (sweet and inviting name, right), track and log your behavior to ‘improve your overall [online] experience,’ as well as more tightly target you with advertising the app believes you’re more likely to respond to.

Ever wonder why entertainment events have gotten so expensive? The only way to buy tickets these days is through a SaaS app like TICKET MASTER. And you better hope when you log on the broker site doesn’t crash, or sell you fake tickets, or sell out in the first 3 minutes with millions vying for the same show. And good luck getting a refund if you need to cancel, or the event is canceled. The software IS the service, which generally means little to no actual customer support.

Wanted to go see Barbie a week after it opened with my daughter on her short visit home from college. There were no tickets available at any theater within a 100 mile radius the 5 days she was home because they’d all been purchased in advance online. Before the ‘convenience’ of apps like FANDANGO, or AMC, or REGAL, we’d at least have had a chance to see the movie if we waited in line, even if it meant getting to the theater early to ensure we got tickets. It is neither convenient nor cost effective buying movie tickets with SaaS apps. In addition to the high costs of the tickets, these movie apps charge an additional fee for ‘online processing.’

Look for a job on LINKEDIN or INDEED lately? Find a job post that interests you, and even if the ad has been online less than 24 hrs it still has hundreds of applicants. You’d better have one hell of an amazing skill set, and a CV with all the right keywords that fit the exact niche of the job requirements to get noticed among your competition.

Democratization [a la Google]:

  • The introduction of a democratic system or democratic principles.
  • The action of making something accessible to everyone.

SaaS developers and marketers inject this buzzword into most pitches these days. They’re democratizing the web, upholding democracy, doing good, they’ll tell you. Not sure how many buy into this rhetoric to make themselves feel and appear philanthropic, or it’s all a big sales pitch while they’re dreaming of a billion dollar acquisition or going public and becoming instant millionaires.

Seriously, how convenient is it being robbed of our money and information every time we use software ‘services’?

Let’s get real. Democratizing MLS listings—making them accessible to everyone on the internet—is a BAD IDEA for home buyers, now forced to compete for a home against 20 other offers, a third of those offering cash by corporations that can afford to pay tens of thousands over asking. Democratizing movie tickets forces movie goers to buy tickets sometimes weeks before the film’s release without ever hearing if the movie is any good. Democratizing plane tickets to hotel reservations raises the cost of travel for everyone by exponentially increasing the demand.

Democracy [a la Google] “is a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.” As for upholding democracy, I had no representation to help me get back the over $300 AMAZON PRIME ripped off from me when they signed me up without my knowledge and then made it almost impossible for me to cancel the account.

We are not a democracy, as this country is run by big business, in particular FAAMG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google), the gatekeepers of our personal data run [a muck] by greedy, unregulated children.

Want to know why you can’t afford to buy a home today?

Is the cost of events and movie tickets keeping you home watching NETFLIX (yet another SaaS app that eats up your money, and worse your life’s time, but at least they deliver entertainment)?

Even ChatGPT could not give me an estimate on the number of SaaS applications online today. (It had no clue what ‘middlemen’ software is.) The consensus of search results from multiple sources agree the SaaS industry is growing so rapidly, virtually exponentially, estimates have to be based per industry. According to Statista, the SaaS industry is worth $197 billion U.S. dollars and estimated to reach $232 billion by 2024.

While many SaaS apps provide value, especially for running a business, from CRMs, to CMS, to ERP, most consumer-facing middlemen SaaS apps are not only valueless, they are dangerous. Sucking people in with lies about savings on movies or when booking travel through their app; democratizing information making it impossible for anyone but the uber-rich or cash-flushed corps to act on, and rising the cost of, well, everything, ultimately is neither convenient nor cost effective for 99% of us.