patrick.net

Darrell In Phoenix says

An attorney is always your best asset.

Yeah, that's what all the evil fuckers say.

Biff

Nah, hiring a lawyer to do a real estate deal seems far superior to me than hiring a commission-based agent.

A lawyer doesn't give a hoot what you buy, if anything. They are strictly by-the-hour.

An agent wants you to overbid by as much as possible as quickly as possible.

Their motives are very different.

LOL, I see that both RE agents and lawyers are pretty much universally hated though.

What kind of low-life scumbag wants to get paid in FULL up-front before even ever doing anything? A lawyer

My favorite line from some dumbass RE agent with way too much perfume on: "A coat of paint will cover those cracks."
Neither profession has ever added any value to my life or anything that they have been involved with in relation to me.

upisdown says

What kind of low-life scumbag wants to get paid in FULL up-front before even ever doing anything? A lawyer

no one! you are not obligated to pay anyone until their product is delivered or services rendered.

Ha ha, I envy you because apparently you haven't had the need for their legal services. Most, if not all don't work that way, either.

I would use a lawyer to purchase real estate over a realtor because I think I could save a lot on the commission. In this rare case, it appears to be the better option. I would be very careful about locking down the costs up front.

That doesn't change the fact that lawyers are truly, deeply evil fuckers. I was simply pointing out that thinking realtors are evil and lawyers are not is crazy ironic.

Biff

Patrick,
If there's one thing that could(SHOULD) be learned from your site is that: when it come to buying into the housing market, you have no friends.

Yes, I see and agree with your point of view, but in the past I used a lawyer for some legal paperwork, and what has since taken another to turn around in a couple of days, he tried to milk me pretty hard because of the price and deal and knew how good that it was and I wasn't about to pass it up. I was quite a bit younger then and ignorant of how some things or people work, but it was a very good deal regardless.

upisdown says

I used a lawyer for some legal paperwork, and what has since taken another to turn around in a couple of days, he tried to milk me pretty hard because of the price and deal and knew how good that it was and I wasn't about to pass it up

How did he try to milk you? Billing more hours than necessary?

Basically, but he took right at 2 weeks to review and submit addendums that like I referred to above, took somebody else a couple of days. The sellers were hounding me and I in turn had to pester him, with little to no responses from him or basically blowing me off. Then, when it came time to settle up with him he kept hesitating and saying how it was soooooo much more work involved than he anticipated, and hit me up for double of our agreed upon price. He held up the deal and I come close to losing it because the sellers were really desperate for money and to sell, and the longer that they waited and thought about it, the more the original deal changed.

sorry patrick. as much as i hate to say this, your site sucks now.

i didn't complain when you replace the news articles with some combination of new articles and forum threads. or the innumerate number of layout changes. or the crashes while you do development on a production system.

you have to pay the bills and i understand. so i hope you understand i hate seeing ads at the top of the page, enough that i'm questioning whether i want to visit the site anymore. i'm not asking you to make changes of course, just to consider there may be others that are turned off by said ads.

i know you're trying to making a living from this site (and i hope it works out), i think you've tried all the non-asshole ways to make money and maybe it's come to ad placement as a last resort. keep thinking of ideas though, as mark cuban likes to say: "it just takes one good idea to get rich."

you're a good guy and i wish you luck.

Lawyers are fine for standard/common RE transactions where everybody pretty much uses the same form anyway. Pay a flat-fee and you're out. You can save some money in a purchase IF you can negotiate the commission that would have gone to the purchasing agent out. But in a standard purchase anybody with a high-school education could probably navigate through that form just fine, and wouldn't really need a lawyer for that standard transaction anyway, right?

However lawyers can be sharks when it's a non-standard transaction or if a problem arises. If you're going to say that realtors are biased because they are commission-based and maximize their profits based on a high-selling price, lawyers are biased because they charge hourly and maximize profits by padding their billable hours. The more complex the case, the less you understand, and the more the lawyer can bill and expense.

Get an unethical RE Agent or Lawyer and you're screwed either way.

Hysteresis says

i hate seeing ads at the top of the page

Premium users don't see the ads.

Premium is $5/month, first month free.

Hysteresis says

it just takes one good idea to get rich

Tell me that idea and I'll make you premium forever.

The current idea is just to make the best forum on the internet: fastest, least spam, good tools for controlling obnoxious users, etc.

The current idea is just to make the best forum on the internet: fastest, least spam, good tools for controlling obnoxious users, etc.

Step 1: Don't allow people to have multiple accounts.

zesta says

Step 1: Don't allow people to have multiple accounts.

How can I tell if a person has multiple accounts though?

There is already a limit of one account per email address.

I could add a cookie so that the same browser could not be used for multiple accounts, but they could just clear all cookies between logins as different users.

I could block multiple users from being on the same IP address, but that would block everyone at a corporation or university which funnels all traffic through one proxy server.

Darrell In Phoenix says

zesta says

Step 1: Don't allow people to have multiple accounts.

Exactly.

Start with bigbsy, roberto, LIEwog, etc.

As far as I can tell, those are all different people with different email addresses and IP addresses.

1. If I were running the site, I'd ban by IP address. Since it would probably be done only in extreme cases, the probability of banning an entire university/corporation would be small. Realistically, the number of people that are going to create multiple accounts simply to troll are probably pretty small.

2. List the ip address or partial ip address next to poster's names. Leave it to individual users to figure out who's using multiple accounts.

3. Have a mod take a look at the logs to see if accounts share IP addresses, ban accounts via email over and over.

.Hysteresis says

sorry patrick. as much as i hate to say this, your site sucks now.

You should no longer visit the site. It provides relevant real estate news and a forum where people can talk about issues. The ads are just about as unobtrusive as they can be. You definitely should no longer visit the site with your delicate sensitivities.

zesta says

1. If I were running the site, I'd ban by IP address.

Probably not. You only say that because you have no real stake in the site. Blocking an IP address is way too aggresive. Blocking users needs to be done with scalpel like precision.

The one thing that still needs fixing is the inclusion of forum posts in the news link area. The forum should contain forum items, the news area should contain news items. Forum posts should not create links in the news area.

Biff

Possibly the best solution for the multiple user or fake user is the ignore function. You can block messages from any user. I have used it a couple of times and it is just short of orgasmic. It's like locking a relentlessly irritating moron in a soundproof closet. I highly recommend it.

Another alternative is a spam flag. If someone gets flagged repeatedly, Patrick could do some investigation. I would guess there are only a few of these people.

The other suggestion that Patrick made about putting an entry in a cookie sounds good to me. It is not foolproof but it is a pretty decent deterrent. I think it would probably solve a significant part of the problem.

Biff

wait until you get sued.

zesta says

List the ip address or partial ip address next to poster's names. Leave it to individual users to figure out who's using multiple accounts

That's a good idea! I'll display the hashed IP address so IP will still remain private, but individual users can tell who is using the same IP addresses because the hashed value will be the same.

Biff Baxter says

The one thing that still needs fixing is the inclusion of forum posts in the news link area. The forum should contain forum items, the news area should contain news items. Forum posts should not create links in the news area.

OK, I think I can do that today as well.

Mark D says

wait until you get sued.

What would I get sued for?

i was talking to the OP.

I have hired some shitty lawyers before (by the way, can you write them up on Yelp without them doing something lawyerly to get back at you?)

but I still don't understand the animosity towards lawyers in this country. If you are disemboweled by your jacuzzi, should you represent yourself? Would the CEO of the company that produced the jacuzzi represent the company his/her self? What is their beverages give you third degree burns and the company refuses to even help with your medical bills? Even denying that paltry sum?

Seems to me, that the gullible are anti-lawyer, which is to say that they have bought into the tort-deforming rhetoric so as to unilaterally disarm to appease their corporate overlords.

That's a good idea! I'll display the hashed IP address so IP will still remain private, but individual users can tell who is using the same IP addresses because the hashed value will be the same.

OK, that part is done. Now if you click on "IP hash" by any comment, you should be taken to a page showing everyone using that IP, hopefully just one person.

Should have done this a long time ago when Dan8267 first recommended it.

Biff Baxter says

The one thing that still needs fixing is the inclusion of forum posts in the news link area. The forum should contain forum items, the news area should contain news items. Forum posts should not create links in the news area.

OK, that should be fixed now.

CL says

but I still don't understand the animosity towards lawyers in this country. If you are disemboweled by your jacuzzi, should you represent yourself?

What lawyers are supposed to be is fine. What they really are is the problem.

Lawyers think that in general, lawyers are just fine, but they most frequently hate many of their colleagues and talk about them having base motivations. People who have never had significant interaction with lawyers may think lawyers are just fine. People whose father or wife is a lawyer often think lawyer's are just fine (they pretty much have to).

People who have had a significant amount of interaction with lawyers generally hate them for the fucking evil that they are.

I could list scores of examples of well known cases where the lawyers were unbelievably evil but I don’t plan to spend the time.

Go ahead and defend them if you are one of them or your brother is one of them. I feel sorry for you if you are unfortunate enough to have to work with them.

Fuck lawyers, except for tax lawyers.

Biff

LOL, so who is the (tax)lawyer, one of those that you mentioned?Biff Baxter says

Fuck lawyers, except for tax lawyers.
Biff

upisdown says

LOL, so who is the (tax)lawyer, one of those that you mentioned?

No. I don't know any tax lawyers. A friend once told me he thought he found an exception to my rule about all lawyers being evil. I was skeptical, and then he said tax lawyer. I think he was right.

The tax system is completely fucked up and unfair. The government is unfair in many ways. I think not sending money to the government is righteous. I don't see who is getting hurt if you lower your tax payments.

On some macro level you could say some services wouldn't be paid for. The government is run on a credit card. Politicians on both the left and the right are to blame. I absolutely think that not sending money to the government is righteous.

But if you want to kick some tax lawyer in the nuts, you have my blessing. There has got to be something wrong with you if you choose to join that profession.

Biff

P.S. – I’m talking about a situation where you voluntarily go to a tax lawyer to lower your taxes, to actually increase the amount of money in your bank account without suing someone. There is no gun to your head. You go strictly for benefit and you can choose to pay for these services or not use them.

I suppose if you had a tax problem that required the services of a tax lawyer that they would then do evil. So I’ll revise my tax lawyer exception to include only the benefit situation described above. I believe there are tax lawyers who only do that kind of work.

Biff

Biff Baxter says

But if you want to kick some tax lawyer in the nuts, you have my blessing.

I agree and I got a good laugh out of the above quote from you.