amarante

In the roster of hair brained schemes devised by Max, this one made no sense even as a way to theoretically help patients. If patients literally can't afford to purchase meds for chronic conditions like blood pressure and insulin it is completely valid to set up a program in which the meds are GIVEN to the patient to manage chronic illnesses. Also the cost for these kinds of meds is very low especially if purchased by a large medical facility - my generic very effective blood pressure medication only cost me about $6 from the pharmacy - this was the total cost and not just my share. That is the kind of clearly evident cost savings benefit to a community hospital since their patients would not need to be treated in the ER for conditions caused by their chronic conditions not being treated by low cost drugs. And if someone literally has the need to treat an ingrown toe nail send them directly to a podiatrist for treatment - Medicare and I suspect Medicaid actually reimburse for this if it is a medical necessity and not just having one's nails painted. And of course in New York City there are ways to get subsidized transportation for low income people.

Rochester must be an economically depressed area if the housing stock is that inexpensive. Not that I liked any of her choices but those same depressing choices - especially the large Victorian would have been much more money even in non-primo locations. FWIW I googled Rochester housing prices and evidently the City of Rochester has the dubious distinction of having the highest tax rate IN THE COUNTRY - not just New York State. I guess it's all relative since a high tax rate on a $100,000 home is still going to be less net than a lower tax rate on a more expensive home. In some of the suburbs surrounding NYC the taxes for a *standard* middle class home can be $15,000 a year.

Obviously not every marketing tactic works for everyone. For whatever reason you don't want to pay over asking price but there are rational reasons why a realtor prices a home expecting it to go over asking. Also the realtor in your example was completely candid that they expected it to be a multiple offer situation so you knew that it was unlikely that your offer would be accepted so that was on you. Maybe with the market softening this scenario will change and there will be new tactics used to increase potential sales. Because for a realtor to a great extent it's a numbers game in terms of getting people in the door to look at a property. Also realtors actually get new clients through open houses even if they don't buy the specific home.

As I posted above many homes are deliberately priced lower than what the seller wants or the agent thinks the house will ultimately sell at. There are a variety reasons to do this starting with your home showing up in more searches when people have filtered for an "up to" price. Many people might not have a realistic idea of the market and so when they see a house they like they are willing to bid up to fair market value. Also there is no doubt a pschological aspect to getting people in the door and having them extend even an initial offer and the realtor then letting all of the people know there are multiple offers. People might be tired of looking - realize this is the best they will get for the money or have in someway emotionally moved themselves in. The reverse of this is when a seller has no real need or desire to sell and sets a price that exceeds fair market value and the house will just sit on the market because the seller won't sell unless they get their high asking price. There is an apartment in my condo that has been listed for over a year - many apartments have been sold in that period but this one lingers on the market because the price is unrealistically high. Seller has zero motivation to sell as it is her pied a terre and she bought years ago so has no mortgage and just relatively low taxes and monthly condo maintenance fees. But it is cheaper and more convenient for her to have a pied a terre when she wants to come into the city and/or she has lodged friends for awhile as well so she has no reason to sell.

This reminded me oddly of The Great Gatsby although there is no narrator. We the audience can substitute for Nick as we observe the rich going about their monied pursuits. I was especially reminded of this quote from the book because there was also a similar set of escalating circumstances in the book caused by rich people oblivious to anything but their immediate desires. Obviously Gatsby was and is a masterpiece and this was just a piffle They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

The New York Times had an excellent article today on why starter homes aren’t built anymore. Essentially it is because it is economically impossible to build and homes that were originally built as starter homes years ago are now selling for half a million like the organic Levittown houses. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/upshot/starter-home-prices.html?searchResultPosition=1 I grew up in a two family house in Brooklyn which my parents bought in 1955 for $15,000. It recently sold for over $1 million. Even adjusted for inflation that amount is only equivalent to about $160,000.🤷‍♀️

Yes - that is just you deciding that you don't want to pay fair market value for a specific home. You don't have to buy it and seller doesn't have to sell it. FWIW often homes that sell above the "asking price" are deliberately priced lower in order to get multiple offers. That is because a house with a lower asking price will appear in searches for more people who might decide that they are able and willing to pay more for the house they want. For better or worse home sells for private residences are generally a very pure example of the capitalist market system since fair market value is determined solely as an agreement between two people. ETA - And not that I have a crystal ball but I doubt that a flat in The Haight is going to decline by 50%. The Haight is a highly desirable neighborhood in a highly desirable city and even during 2008 housing prices didn't decline that much in desirable neighborhoods because the people living there didn't have to move as they could afford their mortgages for the most part and people still wanted to live in those areas. The areas that declined precipitously were not in Beverly Hills or the equivalent.

Also there is a net cost for home ownership. When the San Francisco couple bought their house mortgage rates were lower so the actual cost of the mortgage might have been lower or the same compared to purchasing a theoretically lower priced home now. While it might sting if your home price goes down, it really doesn't matter unless you are selling in the short term. I bought my condo years ago and the price went up prior to the bubble crashing in 2008 and then it soared in the past few years. While the market is softening a bit it really makes no difference to me because I have no intention of selling at the moment. Yes things can change but for most people moving is a choice rather than a necessity. During the last housing crash in 2008 homes in relatively desirable areas didn't lost much value because the areas were still desirable and also the people living in the more desirable neighborhoods didn't have the same quantity of job losses and other financial set backs and so they could continue to pay their mortgages and not be forced to sell. A lot of the homes that went into foreclosure or short sales were purchased on liar's loans with interest only artificially low payments because they were bought by people who couldn't afford them in the expectation that the house would increase in value in a short period of time and they could set easily at a profit or just refinance.

Since there was a bidding war I don't think it is fair to say they were "hosed" because they paid what was then fair market value. I wouldn't have bought it really at any price because I thought the configuration was awful and as I posted I wouldn't want to essentially be in a partnership with a stranger. I wonder if the upper unit was as terrible in terms of configuration because sometimes these "two family homes" as they are called in New York have one apartment that is nicer in which the owner lives and that would make the shared space more feasible since the landlord would probably have the garage and would *own* the backyard as well in most cases and tenant would only use it with permission. And obviously it eliminates the high risk of depending on agreeing with a stranger as to maintenance and repairs. My friend ran away to the Haight during the Summer of Love and I imagine that entire house could have been purchased for $50,000 if that much

I love San Francisco - I love the fabulous "painted ladies" of San Francisco and I am wiling to trade space for location. But I can't imagine choosing the House they did because everything about it seemed problematic. Hell no to a bathroom with only a clawfoot tub and a toilet in a room that didn't have a sink. I am familiar with brownstones in New York City that have been converted into apartments but for some reason this "flat" just hadn't been renovated well or the original layout and size made it impossible to design a workable configuration. I live in a condo so I am not averse to not being in complete control of my housing since condos and coops have an HOA but I can't imagine purchasing a house where my destiny was linked to only one other person - who do you make decisions both large and small? Theoretically a shared outdoor space isn't terrible but how do you set rules with only one other person. And what if the other person has economic issues and stops paying the maintenance fees - not to mention that there will no doubt be larger maintenance expenses like roofing and plumbing - how do you deal with someone who is a cheapskate or broke?

That's a new one for me 😃 and I am in Los Angeles which is an epicenter of extremely bad over done plastic surgery. I do know the look and it isn't a good one as people forget that there generally is a "bone" that protrudes and normal eyebrows are more or less along that protrusion. But I have seen it when women over plucked their eyebrows and so they are left with this very thin penciled on artificial looking things.

Women aren’t removing their eyebrows. They are filling in the same way women use brow pencils and pomades. Microplaning theoretically are very fine short strokes thst are supposed to look like hairs. If it is done well you don’t notice them. They just look good. But like any kind of plastic surgery many women seem to think that very obvious work is the aesthetic ideal 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️so we have created a weird beauty standard in which obviously fake and unreal look is desired among some women.

I think the eyebrows are done with what is called micro blading which is a form of a tattoo for the eyebrows. It isn't as permanent as regular tattoos and so it fades over the course of a few months. But it does generally have a darker look which is fashionable. I suspect also that many of these women are having it done by less talented salon. When it is done by someone skilled it doesn't look weird and artificial but then it trickles down to the masses and looks terrible like a lot of other beauty stuff.

I think the the dressage people both got exactly what they deserved and I believe it was an example of jury nullification. I wouldn't have convicted him under the circumstances either. A pox on both their houses. While I don't believe in frontier justice she didn't die. He had his life turned upside down with the trial and the expense of lawyers - not to mention what she put him through prior to the shooting. It seems as though he is still in the psychiatric facility being evaluated - at least that is what I got from the last moments so he is "serving time". I assume his business is in shambles and who knows if he can build it back again if he gets out.

I also abhor when beautiful vintage woodwork has been stripped off into a characterless room because that isn't respecting the integrity of the original design. However on this show most of the HH talking about adding "interest" don't focus on beautiful architectural details and when their home is revealed it is generally decorated in the most banal of styles. This is especially true of the new builds in which the "interesting" touches are pretty down market in my opinion because it costs too much to really have high level touches. I live on the equivalent of a white box - a condo in a high rise. People have remodeled in a lot of different styles reflecting their personal taste and between the remodeling choices AND the furniture and artwork, none of them look the same or boring.

I agree with you completely but also one of the reasons why Ruth was allowed to keep approximately $1 million is because she had inherited that amount from her parents years ago and so there was an agreement that she could keep it. Obviously it is all relative since $1 million is a lot of money to many people but the reality is that it is the minimum that is needed for retirement for a normal middle class lifestyle. Many middle class people have managed to save that amount through 401 and other investments. Also Ruth had the good grace to go quietly away and purchase a very modest apartment in Connecticut. She never whined or complained or did anything that suggested that she was a "victim". If one believes in karma she also suffered more than the loss of her money as one son committed suicide and the other died a few years later of cancer.

I think Kim has a poor grasp of reality and so I don't really believe that she didn't know how to put on makeup. I just think that she finds any excuse to *blame* her past and find fault. Most child actors are very warped by their experience especially when their money was used to provide for the family. Even the ones who don't wind up dead or drugged out are damaged emotionally by the experience and Kim was I think severely damaged because Big Kathy did not provide any kind of "good" parenting to any of the girls.

Obviously Kim's specific complaint regarding not learning how to apply makeup is ridiculous because anyone interacting with professional makeup artists every day is going to learn how to apply makeup. Maybe not as a child but certainly as a tween or teen you are going to be interacting with them and what kind of idiot wouldn't ask them about technique when they sat in the chair. Many people pay for a makeup artist to give them a lesson. I think what Kim is probably really complaining about is the lack of a normal childhood in which you bond with your girlfriends by putting on makeup; going shopping and even teaching each other how to put on a Tampax. Yeah the makeup might look weird - I look back and shudder at how awful my makeup must have been when I was 15 with weird shading and horribly applied false eyelashes and mascara clumped together but practice makes perfect. Of course today there are all kinds of tutorials on makeup application so you can acquire a skill set. I am not sure any of the Richards sisters had anything resembling a *normal* childhood which probably accounts for their dysfunctionality. Kathy was literally pimped out by her mother in terms of finding a rich husband. Kim was the typical child actress who was supporting the family financially and there are almost no child actors who escape that particular purgatory. There are a few but they were extremely lucky to have a family that was very careful about providing them with as normal a childhood as possible AND they worked on sets in which the children were treated really well. Michael Landon was well known for having that kind of supportive set for the kids on Little House on The Prairie. Kyle ironically might have felt neglected but awful as she is, she does seem to be the most *normal* and functional of all of the sisters.

Did this actually happen. I ask because I find EJ so loathsome that I often fast forward just like I do with the Lip Licker.

My understanding is that whenever the name of a place is prominently shown, BRAVO receives some kind of promotional consideration and the housewives also receive something. As I recall, I once read that when the ladies don’t buy anything it is because they aren’t getting comped merchandise i think the ladies were comped with hats because I honestly don’t see Rinna actually laying $500 for a hat. You don’t generally see them buying anything in the super luxurious places like jewelry stores but generally often only in relatively inexpensive places. Since everything the women shill is done for money or freebies why would Kyle not negotiate a deal. I mean if all of the idiotic places to go on and on about, a store selling cowboy hats is low on the list. Even if you like hats how many cowboy hats does anyone need.

Do you really think we don’t know what is in her heart. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. She has the right to be a hard hearted selfish bitch and anyone observing her behavior and statements has the right to pass judgment.

If you are arguing there is no proof of her doing anything CRIMINALLY wrong you are probably correct as I doubt either she or Tom will be prosecuted for criminal activity unless there are fraudulent loan documents or tax returns she signed. That's how they got Al Capone after all. However there is ample proof that she is has civil liability and so she is on the hook in terms of disgorging all of her stolen money which at this point is close to $30 million dollars. Also she is going to be liable for all of the tax money which I think is now about $5 million dollars. And of course most people have a "moral compass" so that people can be ethically and morally repugnant and corporations do sometimes exercise a "morals" provision and get rid of people who aren't criminals because they have breached the normative standards of decent people.

In this specific episode the realtor said the house was a four bedroom and the windowless basement was counted Of course one can use a windowless room as they want as no one is going to police it. However this type of regulation is truly a safety feature because if there is a fire there may be no way of getting out of the basement because the one exit is trapped. In New York City there have been some deaths caused by illegal wall divisions in apartments.

Lord all of those Toms River homes were dreadful and I think HH chose the worst of the lot - a money pit with a not great layout. Was it the first one that had the death trap bedroom in the basement with no windows? That is not a legal bedroom because there is no window to escape from - and that is rightly illegal. All of the fixes are going to be much more than the chyrons indicated. One man carpenter is not going to be able to do the jobs in a reasonable time period and still actually make a living - and he is a carpenter and not an electrician, plumber, tile setter or structural engineer - relevant if you plan to demolish what is probably a load bearing wall. And I really find complaints that a home is "boring" to be ridiculous. You decorate a home and THAT is what makes a home unique and attractive for the most part. This is especially so since the "historic" house didn't really have much that was really attractive to start with - it wasn't an expensive home when it was built and so it didn't have beautiful woodwork or other finishes.

It might be just my perception but it seems as though COVID has affected how they shoot in locations as a lot of the locations are only the housewives. I do think it is ridiculous that the housewives are gallivanting all around - hugging each other and clearly not exercising any degree of caution - but the production personnel as well as the waiters, caterers, makeup artists, store owners etc. all are wearing masks.