Airbnb co-founder @jgebbia explains how Joe Biden’s border crisis was the start of what drove him to leave the Democrat Party.
And on the same day:
Malcolm Gladwell says “trans athletes have no place in the female category.”
He admits he was cowed into saying that it was ok.
Yes, they are all opportunists. But the fact that it’s now become opportune to say the obvious without fear is a very big deal.
P.S. Found more immediately after posting:
I would like to see that as a good thing, but I now have a retching reflex to the phrase “AirBnB cofounder”.
AirBnB is mainly successful not because it’s a great business, but because it enables a particular type of fraud that is… probably a huge part of why we can’t buy a house.
Here’s how it works:
https://themoneyknowhow.com/loans-based-on-rental-income/
They don’t of course, mention the fraud part. But this type of loan means that if you own a couple of houses, list them on AirBnB for $200/night, and then pinkie-promise the loan company that people are really, truly, actually gonna rent your AirBnB every single night for all eternity, then the loan company will give you a loan based on this imaginary rental income.
Now, even though *you don’t own the AirBnB houses* because they’re still mortgaged out the wazoo (and probably they’re both listed as your primary residence so you got the good mortgage rates and the state downpayment assistance help), you can borrow a crapton MORE money on the estimated rental income, and use it to make cash offers on *other* houses, which you then list as AirBnBs and borrow yet more money on.
And then, we, working-class family trying to be responsible with money, no debt, good credit, we get out there and make a bid on a 900 square foot house in a sketchy neighborhood, hoping, praying, we can finally get out of rentals… and we immediately get outbid by the AirBnB schmuck who can offer them cash no inspection even though his net worth is like negative $500k.
And this is why the AirBnB guy needs to be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail, along with every lender who does this.
Of course he sucks up to current admin. That’s where the money is. Bastard.
Sheesh, what a racket. That really sucks. ☹️
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There are weekend seminars and entire TikTok channels devoted to teaching people how to run this scam. It is everywhere now.
I was curious how “real” this actually is, so I started digging around public records in my area: go on AirBnB, find one nearby, use google maps to get the actual address for it (they don’t give that on AirBnB, though often the photos show the house number), then use Propwire to look up the owner, the sales history, and the mortgage instrument number… then you can take the mortgage number (or book and page number) to county public records (all online these days!) and see the actual mortgage, as well as what other properties the person owns.
With that info, you can tell if the person is committing occupancy fraud– item 6 in the mortgage usually will have terms for occupancy, this is gonna be your primary residence for at least a year– if it’s listed on airBnB and purchased less than a year ago, odds are good that’s occupancy fraud.
But what I see much more frequently is stuff like I found in my neighborhood: house purchased for $140k, but the mortgage is an open line of credit for $300k, owner lives five states away, and owns several residential properties, total value 2.5mil. That’s what you’d expect for people doing the TikTok REIbro thing: buy, borrow more on ‘equity’ or ‘rental income’ (that you may have lied about), use that to buy more, rinse, repeat, and live on the overage with basically no longterm plan for ever paying any of it off. It’s kind of like opening new credit card accounts to pay off your old credit card accounts, but on a much larger scale.
And in the meantime, all those houses are off the market for people who just want a house to live in.
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Yes, I was pleasantly surprised to see this choice of headline from ABC of all places
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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