Now you can get not one, but TWO of ‘em: aceking.info and kingace.info
(this is my first time selling something on eBay. I figured… what the heck. Great business model they have, by the way - they charge you a fee to list your stuff via an entry in their database for which you do all the work. Sweet.)
Though the bubble has burst, our homes are still almost always going to be our single greatest asset. And when we sell those assets, our eyes get as big as saucers when looking at all the apprecation our lovely four walls have accumulated. However, there are some things that can significantly reduce the amount you will realize from that appreciation. Taxes aside, real estate agent fees are the biggest chunk. With a little extra work and/or creativity on your part, the agent fees can largely be avoided.
A typical home sale incurs agency fees of 6-7%, with half going to the selling agent and half to the buying agent. Selling and buying a home involves a lot a paperwork and is a total pain in the ass… but 7% is a steep tax to pay (on a $500,000 home sale, you’ll be paying $30,000 in agent fees). How can you avoid paying it?
To avoid the buyer agent fees, you could sell only to unrepresented buyers. That will limit your pool of available buyers, but it can save you some money. Essentially, though, I think paying the buyer agent fees is nigh unavoidable, which leaves the selling agent.
Traditionally, there’s the for sale by owner route. There are a number of websites that will let you list your house FSBO for a flat fee (as little as $399).
I think a great middle ground (and fast-rising option) is Redfin. They have a flat $2,000 fee like the FSBO sites, but also have experienced sales agents who will show your home and take care of all that onerous paperwork. That $30,000 in agent fees for your $500,000 home just became $17,000 ($15,000 for buyer agent + $2,000 for Redfin). You could potentially save yourself $28,000 if you find a buyer not using an agent.
And that, as my mom would say, is better than a kick in the pants.
I have no association or relationship with Redfin… but I’ll be using them when I put my house up for sale in the near future.
Interesting… and a bad investment
Stocks, bonds or Steen? That’s a question that 19-year-old Ron Steen of Anaheim Hills,Calif., hopes investors will wrestle with.
In August, Steen put himself on eBay (Charts) to pay for his college education, offering 2 percent of all future earnings to the highest bidder, with a minimum $100,000 bid.
What with Steen having to average 1.5M/year until age 65 to match a 6% investment, I’m thinking he’s not going to have any takers. Bonus points for audacity, though.
Here’s a new idea (for me) for gift giving this year - wine! Now, I’m no oenophile or even a connoisseur, but in the under-$20 reds category, I’ve got some decent experience. Interestingly enough, wine.com has a category just for that (though they include whites too. Apparently, some people like it sweet), which makes my choices a lot easier.
We’re generally a shiraz/syrah house, but I’ve heard good things about the Folie à Deux Ménage à Trois Red ($9) and the Cantena Malbec ($18, 90 rating). Of shiraz’ I know and like, they have the Fat Bastard Shiraz for $11, though I can’t seem to find my favorite cheap deal find of the year, the Lindeman Padthaway shiraz 2003 (they don’t appear to carry Lindeman at all. Oh well) and that screwtop Pinot Noir $11 thing that was awesome but who’s name escapes me at the moment. Sigh.
Wine.com also offers glassware, of course, and they have their own most popular gift suggestion ideas as well.
Coming from what is essentially a teetotaler family, the idea of gifting alcohol on the holidays is new ground to me, yet appealing. This year, at least. And remember - a glass of red a day keeps the heart healthy!
I’m a huge believer in buying used things, particularly in areas where immediacy is not an issue and quality does not decline much, if at all.
Yeah, I’m looking at you, books. Textbooks, novels, hardcover, softcover, whatever. Used books markets are the greatest invention in the history of ever. The one I use? Half.com.
This is the least obnoxious banner they have offered (the others are all those lovely animated gifs. Woo.):
I think I saved over $300 last semester on ghostfinger’s textbooks by using half.com for most of the purchases (this was before I knew about Valore., so I’ll definitely comparison shop next semster). Anyway, half.com totally rocks and it’ll save you a bundle of money.
I’m a big believer in giving books away too of course, but iffen I’m going to be buying, the first place I looke is half.com. You can get CDs and DVDs on half.com as well, though I’ve been less successful for those products compared to its competitors (like Amazon marketplace) in terms of savings.
Wall Street is largely a boys club, a place packed with hypercompetitive tough guys proud to wear their machismo on their sleeves. Yet there’s still one investment the Street is generally wary of: porn.
That’s why Francis Koenig, a onetime Wall Street hedge fund executive now based in Los Angeles, believes there are riches to be made by matching investors with “adult entertainment” companies. He believes that plenty of people would back the industry if there were vehicles commonly available to do so.
Think of Koenig as a porn launderer. He makes it acceptable for the DAR to get a piece of some of that $12 billion-per-year smut money.
No, really. And there’s this place that is the leading music shop on the whole of the truck-filled tubular net doohickey, called eye-music. Now, I don’t know why they call it that, since you listen with your ears, but that’s what they call it so that’s what I’m calling it.
Sure, Mondegreen is available for free download … but it’s also on the eye-music even without any videos! Isn’t that cool?
I gave it a look and it’s $1/song and $10/album (roughly). The best part is - you won’t get sued by the RIAA! Sweet!
While trying to figure out how I could monetize my “$100 million and climbing” HSX brilliance, I found Intrade. Holy cow is this awesome. Actual money on politics and news events. Of course, given my recent successful predictions (and GOP shenanigans), this is could just be an even easier way to lose money than Lotto.
Here’s a snapshot of some of the things you can trade in (I don’t know precisely what will come up; it’s a dynamically generated frame):
And their banner advertisement looks something like this:
Yet another thing that’s probably more Chartoo’s forte than mine, but I’m kind of excited about day trading in the presidential aspirations of Saint Rudy. I know. I need to get out more.
The biggest problem I had so far was actually getting money into the system - their security is quite a bit more comprehensive than the one-click universe we’ve been inhabiting. This is good in that I’m pretty confident any phishers aren’t going to be going there to take your money, but it can also be a drawback if you spot a sweet market opportunity for the avian flu’s arrival date in the U.S.
If you click the banner ad above, theoretically I get $50 if you both put some money in and do a bunch of trading over the next 90 days. If you just want to go to intrade.com and skip the lurve-giving to me part, I’m totally OK with that. I’ll just give you the puppy dog eyes and maybe sigh a little bit.
Netflix! Unless you’re a sports or talk show junkie, once you subscribe to Netflix, you no longer need to pay for cable. If you cancel your cable and keep a 3-disc Netflix setup, that will save you anywhere from $30 to $85 per month ($360 to $1020/year).
(if you join Netflix, enter m friends network so I can send you Kstrike>inappropriate movies that you’ll hate suggestions that you’ll love and vice versa)
