The Switch

If you're one of the four hardy souls who visit this abandoned dump on a regular basis, I can only assume you're suffering from Alzheimer's. Only someone without a memory could keep returning to read the same post day after day without update. If that's you, you've already read this yesterday.

Now I can't even remember why I started this obnoxious site. I recall getting a little annoyed with BS real estate media reports. Something that may have been noticeable at one time or another. Initially, I had nothing more than mild contempt for the media. It has grown.

It was fun for a while. People talked on forums. Came to visit. Occasionally left a comment. Even babes writing for respectable publications referenced me in their work. The impact had some Tasmanian media peeps actually being more measured in their spruiking. And fewer real estate goons were prepared to take ice-cold stats and pimp them in the media as scorching hot. Someone was watching.

But why did it all dry up? The crash I predicted never came and I gave up? Journalists and real estate agents were hunting me and I had to seek asylum in a foreign embassy? Tasmania's mould ridden housing stock finally destroyed my respiratory system? I bought a house? As I was accused of doing.

Less exciting. It was dead set boredom. How many times can you say the same thing over and over again? I never predicted any crash (well I don't think I did). I said things would get bad. I highlighted the risks and the lies that tried to minimise them. I highlighted those already trashed and the potential to get trashed. There's been no respite in Tasmania's housing market. Sales creeping back to already depressed 2010 levels may tighten the front side of some vendors' pants, but there's still a big hole in the back side of those pants. 

Take the house featured in my clumsy first post. I couldn't script a more perfect way to tie the current identity of this site up. Three years to the day and the joint is finally under offer. Over 1000 days on and off the market. Placed with various agents who stumbled in their attempts to move it. It sold for $450k in 2008...

Yep. Five years and a $121k face value loss later.

While the size of the loss is slightly uncommon, the listed/pulled/relisted game continues in earnest. Houses disappear for six months, only to relist with another agent, before being pulled again. Sure, there are horndogs out there who'll snap a house up they'll like, but there's not enough horndogs to make a healthy market. The agent who first listed this place is now offering great deals on a new Holden Cruze.

There's all manner of theories as to why this happened. All dumb as rocks. The most conveinent, lazy and stupid? The Greens made you overpay for your house, buy that new SUV and got you laid off from your job at a multi-national mining equipment manufacturer. If you believe it was someone else's fault, like the commercial told you, "you deserve it!"

And this brings me to the end. Sometime next month this site will have a new name and a new paint job (and it won't be green). I'll be talking about saving money, saving your mind and how to keep your arse out of trouble, no matter what.

Why? Us cheapskate money saving degenerates who ruin economies because we don't spend need somewhere to go and feel loved.

Seeya next month.