amarante

I am not sure how property taxes affect what was being discussed which is fair market value. The issue of whether poor people can afford to live in their older homes when they become more valuable and thus are assessed at a higher property tax is irrelevant for most people. Either they can afford the property taxes especially since they have no mortgage if they have lived in a home for a long time or they sell their house for much more than they bought it for if for some reason they are too poor to pay property taxes. Also - high property taxes aren't a phenomena in many places which have a good commercial tax base. For example, property taxes in New York City for residential property is relatively low because of the strong tax base versus some suburban areas which have high tax rates because of school systems typically. But even the highest tax places in the NY/NJ metropolitan area are still relatively low as a cost of housing if one has no mortgage to pay - assuming one is living in a normal suburban home - let's say $15,000 per year which means that your taxes are approximately $1250 per month which is still extremely low for housing costs. You couldn't rent something in those areas for twice or three times that.

Regular parties thrown by private people is not the same as events at a commercial establishment unless these people were the party animals of the neighborhood and having large parties with valet service every weekend as well as possibly during the week. I might have dinner parties but that isn't the same thing as having even a small restaurant next door. 🤣

My understanding is that the current downturn in the market is very regional and some places are not really down that much. As always location location location as even in 2008 homes in desirable areas retained their value much more than those in which the location as questionable. In the Southern California market, the west side of Los Angeles retained value because 1) people wanted to live there and 2) those living there didn't have to sell at distress prices and so they just chose to stay in their homes versus homes way out in the boonies which were houses for people who just wanted to buy a home without regard for its actual value and many of those people had to sell because they had bought with the crazy mortgages that had large balloon payments due. I thought the HH bought the house across the street as I thought she had said that it was still a good move. I had thought that she probably heard it was for sale and bought it prior to the show. The first home (duplex) was never going to be chosen with a tenant in place.

Actually they might still be in a better financial position than someone who is looking now because their monthly payments for mortgage will be far lower than if they bought now. Even if the price dropped on a home their monthly payments would be higher because of higher mortgage. The only time the price matters is when you sell. I have been living in my home for more than 20 years and the price has gone up and down since I've lived here. It doesn't affect me in anyway since I don't want to sell; don't want to refinance and never thought I was richer or poorer based on what the price of my home was at any point in time. And for the record, even if I sold at less than highest price I would still be well ahead in terms of appreciation since I purchased. An article from today's New York Times reporting on how the market is now even more difficult for first time buyers because the rise in mortgage interest rates has increased monthly payments so even though prices may have dropped a bit, homes are even less affordable. Also they are competing with older cash buyers who don't need mortgages so interest rates are irrelevant https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/realestate/first-time-buyers-housing-market.html I think you can make it work if you are hosting the occasional private party. I live in the Hollywood Hills and there is little or no street parking even for the casual guest. Many people now UBER up to visit friends rather than attempt to find parking. However the issue is that when you have a commercial venue, you will be infiltrating the neighborhood and annoying neighbors on a constant basis as opposed to the occasional party where most gracious people inform neighbors and/or even invite them to an open house type of situation. Also I think that when people come to a commercial venue, their expectations of how long it will take to get their car are quite a bit different than at a private party. At a private party most people would be thrilled to have a valet even if it takes awhile for their car to be returned.

I officially have a new *rant* to add to my list of HH idiocies. My old list included Asking if the countertop was granite after expressing a "need" although lately people have been asking about quartz as that is now the newer trend Sub idiocies are asking if marble is more "upscale" than quartz or granite Asking if floors are wood - if you can't recognize plastic from wood maybe you don't need them. But multiple times people have been calling a single bowl under-mounted kitchen sink a farmhouse sink. NO NO NO NO - A "farmhouse" style sink is one the has an 'apron" in front and the basin and sides of the sink are continuous to the apron. It can be made of Fireclay, enamel, stainless steel or copper but it always has the "apron" - that is the distinguishing feature. And of course the realtor who pulls remodel figures out of their arses and claims that a bathroom renovation can be done for $3000 and wood floors installed for the same amount over the entire lower floors.

I didn’t have kids either in my 30’s but I just had moved on from that kind of manic level of partying and enjoyed other stuff more

Totally although the insanity of the "wedding" venue made me lose focus on the first craziness. I don't know what she means by senior residence home. Oklahoma might be a place where there is no regulations for this but where I am these kinds of assisted living facilities are regulated and have real requirements in terms of having some kind of medical staff available and what kind of services are being done? Any kind of dispensing of medication requires that it be done by someone with at least an LPN license. Are they going to provide people to help with so-called "acts of daily living" - i.e. help with dressing, bathing and even eating. Providing food requires people familiar with institutional cooking in terms of safety and many places strictly regulate nutritional aspects of food provided for seniors in assisted living. Staffing has to be 24/7 and would include daily housekeeping generally, laundry etc.

The couple from San Francisco moving to Berlin had to be putting on an act. Surely no one who lives in the Bay Area would be shocked that a two bedroom apartment in the heart of the city/desirable for young professionals would be small and expensive. I didn't even think the apartments shown were that small or that expensive. And - again - many people in expensive metropolitan areas don't have a spare room for guests. At most they have a pull out sofa in the living room.

Like everyone else I think the Oklahoma story was even more bogus than most of the stories where at least they are generally only *fake* fighting over styles I can't imagine how you could possibly host a wedding or other catered event in that space. If she is thinking of doing monetizing the space in some way the only thing I can think of would be renting it as a party place of some kind. I have never been to a wedding or other kind of "formal" event where anyone wanted or needed a pool The kitchen also made no sense for true catered events because the kitchen is NEVER visible - no one at the reception for a wedding wants to be able to see the kitchen staff cooking. And yes - how do you hold an event and expect one powder room to be sufficient for guests. So you would need Porta Potties which is generally not what most people really want at a formal catered event. And even though Oklahoma is probably the Wild West in terms of regulations, I can't imagine that you can stage sizable parties without appropriate fire safety in terms of exits. And logistically even if you have valet parking, are the valet parkers going to clog the streets with cars. And what about the noise - most residential areas have noise restrictions and the houses were fairly close to each other. Ironically my friend was talking about a Halloween bash that is hosted annually by a very wealthy guy in Beverly Hills. He is very aware of keeping on good terms with his neighbors and so he invites everyone in the area who might be disturbed OR he provides them with a free night at the Beverly Hills Hotel (or equivalent) if they aren't party people. Lots of celebrities and no one complains. Of course it is only once a year.

The recycled story lines The chimera - I can't believe this is a coincidence - that two shows came up with this incredibly rare occurrence. Not just that someone had this but that a conviction rested on the DNA. Perhaps the medical consultant for both show read a theoretical article in a medical journal Also was it last season when Bell's background was going to be potentially weaponized when he attempted to actually get the Medical Standards Committee to take action? Isn't there any other aspect of the place that could be demonized

This is the third time a son has killed his parents after lying about attending college. There was the Porco son in upstate New York who took an axe to his mother and father. The mother lived and denied that it was her son who had done it. There was Thomas Whitaker (Sugarland, Texas) who tried to kill his whole family in order to collect the insurance and estate. His father lived but his brother and mother died. The father lobbied extensively to get his death sentence commuted to life. And of course others like the Menendez brothers but the lying about college attendance was unique in these three cases and being found out appears to have precipitated the murder I think it is such an alien thing for most people that it is beyond comprehension and being able to dismember a body takes a special kind of mental pathology because dismembering strangers is beyond what most people could do - let alone parents or children. And yes this one was really just half a story because there was really nothing in it to make one even have a clue as to why the son felt that killing his parents and dismembering them was something to do. Not that I am excusing abuse but there was absolutely nothing to indicate that their home life was in anyway horrendously dysfunctional. And beyond that his sheer idiocy in terms of the half baked manner in which he tried to cover it up. I do understand the concept of innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt but in this specific case I wonder how the defense attorneys actually were able to even attempt to argue that despite finding the parents bones in the family fireplace with pictures of the fireplace being on for hours AND the son being spotted at the location where one of the parts was found - that it didn't mean that he was guilty - that there were other possible explanations. Why not attempt some kind of plea agreement rather than go through the complete charade of the case - of course the kid's solicitation of an appeals attorney probably meant that the kid himself was unwilling to take a plea of any kind.

But isn't that part of the charm of the show. Their culture is one in which the generations are intermingled in a way that isn't true of *regular* Americans. What is strange to me is that they are still partying at this level in their 30's. I mean by the time I was 35 getting obscenely drunk and waking up with an obscene hangover and then doing it again wasn't something I wanted to do - I had moved on from that kind of lifestyle.

I am fairly sure I knew that you blindfolded horses to lead them out of a barn when I was eight and read Black Beauty. It is a ridiculous plot point that the owners who ran a farm were unaware of how to deal with their own horse's anxiety. Any show that has to consistently place one person as the superhero is just ridiculous.

I thought the layout of the first home was terrible because the only bathrooms were on the lower level. But I also think roof decks are generally not used in real life because shlepping everything up to the roof and back down again is a lot of effort. The high rise was beautiful but probably more than he wanted spend. On the other hand I live in a high rise with an expansive city view so I am prejudiced no doubt. Oddly I do have a fear of heights as I get slightly queasy when looking down or clambering along narrow cliff paths but I am fine in my apartment enjoying the view from the safety of my living room or even my balcony although I don't actually get out on it that often. But surely in his price range there was a nice two bedroom two bath single level condo with a pleasant view of the street.

Just adding to the general Eichler discussion as when these were originally built they were tract homes that were intended to house a typical middle class family. The nice thing about them is that they incorporated some of the best designs of the true MCM homes which were intended to bring the outside in. But they were small scale and the one in the episode. being discussed in Walnut Grove just made a terrible design decision by expanding the kitchen with an enormous island and no living space. It just made no design sense either functionally or aesthetically. I am sure many of the Eichler homes have been updated much more intelligently. If one takes a look at the MCM homes in Trousdale Estates near Beverly Hills for example, there are absolutely beautiful MCM homes but these were built for a wealthier clientele so were more gracious even when originally built. Like Palm Springs many of these have been bought by people who specifically love the architecture and so have been really lovingly and authentically updated.

When news of his being fired first happened, I did a bit of googling and this is not the company where they met. However I think a major component of being fired is that Wild Rose is competitive with the company he was working for which is LifeVantage. Along with the vitamins and supplements, it has skin care, body care and hair care - and those are the same type of products that Wild Rose sells. That season had a major promotional push for Wild Rose and so I can't imagine any company being okay with their head of sales promoting a competitor instead of using the opportunity to push the LifeVantage products. The sex scene was really the icing on the cake. When Whitney was talking about "public figure" being her singled out for being a "business woman" I think it was "code speak" for the fact that her product line was directly competitive with LifeVantage and obviously you don't want the wife of the head of sales prominently pushing competitive products on national television.

That choir audition was ridiculous as there were more judges than people who were actually trying out and that is including the housewives who were there because they were forced to by production. I was actually shocked by the low turnout because typically any kind of housewives event where you get a chance to be on camera and meet the housewives draws a crowd of wannabes. Even if they didn't want to be in a choir and had no singing talent I expect a lot of people to actually show up at the event as something to do.

The whole thing was bizarre because Heather then attempted to still paint Lisa in the wrong by saying that her father was in hospice actively dying at that point. I mean most people who are casual acquaintances would send good wishes if someone is in the hospital because they wouldn't know the nuances of exactly what the medical condition was. My friends didn't know exactly the difference between when my father was *actively* dying versus when he was in the hospital but was being treated and would recover from the specific thing he was in the hospital for

I am not sure if this is a repeat as there are so many with essentially the same scenario so they can blend. My DVR picked up an episode where HH were looking in Walnut Creek, California for a home in the $1 million to $1.5 million range. Wife came from poverty and wanted the "wow" and husband came from a middle class background so he was just interested in a home that was comfortable and felt no need to impress anyone. I live in a high cost of living area so I get expensive real estate but I couldn't help but think that none of these homes were "wow" as they were all essentially middle class tract homes that had escalated enormously because of location - but I digress but after all location location location in terms of fair market value. The first home they looked at was an Eichler and oh that poor Eichler as the people had renovated it - or rather renovated the kitchen and so what had been formerly a modest galley kitchen had been expanded into this enormous kitchen at the expense of the living area which now - literally - only had room for a small sofa with a few feet in front of it before you got to the sliders to the back yard. The kitchen was a size intended for a McMansion and it was such a terrible division of space. Poor Eichler. I get that he is a name developer in that area but I kind of chortled when the real estate agent said he was exclusive because he only built 11,000 homes.

I had hopes for this show but this episode was really bad - too much story that was too easily resolved. None of the complexity of a show like NYPD - I mention this specifically because Bobby Simone was a complex character versus the Smits character in this show who is just a cipher in a uniform with Smits calling it in for the pay check. And the whole restaurant thing is beyond bizarre because it makes no sense to transform a restaurant that had a certain type of patron with a certain price point into an upscale expensive restaurant with $18 grilled cheese situations with duck confit. Yes areas do gentrify but East New York hasn't reached the point where expensive upscale restaurants can make it.

I agree that she was so obviously a gold digger - I never liked her "moll" persona and thought she was a talentless not particularly attractive entertainer when I saw her "act". If I want to see a drag queen I would see a real queen because at least they are winking at us and not taking it all seriously I caught a few episodes of a new Netflix show called Dubai Bling which has some *rich* Dubai residents pretending to be richer and having fake fights etc - standard bad reality set up. There is one woman who presented herself as the wife of a billionaire who was 30 years her senior - and how it was a marriage of love. Not believable but then even less believable when I googled out of curiosity and she was the third (or fourth) wife of a Sheik of some kind who was involved in a famous English divorce that was fairly scandalous - he "divorced" that wife by proclamation which you can do under Islamic law and then married the new wife in a lavish Venetian ball. He died and she is a widow

I doubt that a five year old actually had heard of an en-suite. They had bought the townhouse before this was shot so the kid had seen her bedroom and was essentially describing her bedroom and expressing it as a want for the camera.

I will just add that in the sad sad history of racism in America, many places shut their public pools rather than integrate which also was a hardship for poor white children. But take a listen to Dylan's Only A Pawn In Their Game which is as relevant now for different reasons as it was in 1964 But there are always exceptions like @Empress1. Tennis and golf aren't traditional sports for POC but you have the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods who are prodigious talents. But they had parents who for whatever reason recognized their prodigious talents and were able to nurture them. I think one of the tragedies of bigotry and bias is all the potential wasted or stunted because of lack of just having the ability to see if one enjoys or is good at something.

And of course there is the same scenario in which the wife kills the husband - either a custody battle or some form of greed. I wonder how they managed to hide this level of sociopathic thinking until they murdered someone - although some of them have been managed to get away with multiple dead spouses until they are finally caught. I have never been angry enough to kill someone but I can understand how a relatively normal person would have a break - which is when guns in a home are a direct cause since white heat anger - poor impulse control - a loaded gun - and a person dead - another person in jail - children having horrendous trauma and extended family (siblings, parents) having to deal with grief on both sides - killer and victim. But you really need to have a level of sociopathy to plot to kill your spouse over an extended period of time. I wonder if the mask of sanity ever slips and is revealed to the spouse.

Her hair was really styled well for curly hair - not a tangled mess at all. It's a look and requires a good cut and the correct products. FWIW you don't "comb" curly hair into place because that produces an unattractive frizzy mess. You rely on the cut and coaxing the curls and a correct drying technique. That is about my level of expertise but we mostly went to the shore and ocean swimming is a whole other level. I remember desperately holding out on the five minute tread because the alternative was a horrible walk down to the gym in the dead of winter and then being wet with wet hair and having to walk back. I just about made it.