Augie

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. This has helped me a lot in life.

I skipped to the end. Did anyone else refuse to click?

OK, in 2018 we played them in OP, then 3 straight years in Nashville. We also played in Nashville in 2015. Interestingly, all games were played in October. I guess, at least lately, they like to save conference games until later in the season for the most part. I enjoyed attending three of those games in Nashville, missing only the Covid/no fans game. If you ever have an opportunity to see a game there, I highly recommend it. It’s an OK stadium, but a GREAT setup with the pedestrian bridge from downtown to the game. .

So…..the challenge is upon YOU to decide the most creative way to start a thread about THE EXACT SAME THING, in a way that nobody notices. For the one thousandth time. Good luck!

Umm, the Rams? But do they get a vote? I think we should get outraged that this hasn’t happened already!!! Torches and pitchforks!!! How incompetent! Fire everybody! OK, I feel a little better.

Hypothetical trade threads are my favorite! 🙄 They are pretty much ALL ridiculous. I know better than to click, but here I am. This is all on me. I freely admit it.

Do you mean Futbol? Ted Lasso is the man! But I was hoping for a few more seasons before he got a new gig!

….the kind of thing that can happen when owners make decisions instead of hiring qualified GM’s and getting out of the way.

We played in Nashville for four straight years. Sometimes it just works that way. Division vs division, best team against best, worst vs worst. My dilemma is which team to try to hit on the road. Several good options. At least I can cross of Detroit. Who knew they were still in the NFL? .

I’ve posted this before, but I met a guy in the Chicago airport on the way to the opener who said he was Mitch’s uncle. We were chatting as half the plane was going to the Bills game, and he said it would be Mitch’s last year. I said I thought he had one more year on his contract, and he just shrugged and said “well, you know….” Sat with him and his wife on the flight talking about Mitch at home and his family. It seemed legit. I didn’t know what to make of it, and I was hesitant to post, but if his own family is telling strangers in airports…..🤷‍♂️ The guy has all the money he will ever need and a young family. If he wants to be sure he can be 100% there for his family for many years to come, I wish him well and thank him for his time with our Bills. .

The Clowney hype was MUCH greater, largely due to one play in college where he was completely unblocked and it made a good highlight. No question I’d rather have Oliver, especially at this point. It was amusing how Clowney thought every team in the league would be knocking on his door, and he just sat, and sat, and sat….before taking what he could get. It’s how we roll with the deep rotation and a lot of guys to pay. We want to be sure our guys are fresh for the last 13 seconds of every game! I apologize, I am seeking help.

And maybe for the rest of my life. As much as I hate being on the wrong end of the outcome, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a better football game. I had planned to have a party for the AFC/NFC Championship games. Not because the Bills were expected to play, but because an old friend used to do it and it was the best party of the year. More football, less hype. He went all out with things that were extravagant for us back when we were young and poor. We moved into a new house last month that seems made for a party and I wanted to break it in. From the last 13 seconds on Sunday night the wind was sucked out of my sails, now I’m not so sure.

…..BUT, there are still a bunch of folks who would still just have to say “but we should have taken Mahomes!”

Josh seems to give you a better chance to look like a genius OC and create opportunities for a HC gig. Not personally knowing any of the players involved, this seems objectively to be his best path assuming he wants to be a HC some day. What is his relationship with Daboll like? How close are they? I have no idea. I should add, what does McD think of him? Are we sure that he would be McD’s first choice? Again, I don’t know. He could attract some fine candidates to that situation, but I suspect Josh would rather keep him, and that should carry some weight. .

First of all, I don’t claim to “know” anything, but I do have impressions. I think there is much less mortgage shenanigans than there were back in the last boom, but it’s still there to some degree, and always will be. I don’t think a gradual rise in population can account for the current spike. I think it’s more likely that second homes/vacation homes and investment rental properties and intended flips are more popular and the low interest rates have a lot to do with that. I also think Covid has changed the way people live and work. My wife works with a lot of people in NYC. Some of them have not been in the office in a couple years and have moved out of the city or moved to places with some extra space to accommodate some office space. Our son and DIL just bought their first house. Because they are both working from home, their first house has FIVE bedrooms to accommodate offices for each of them. I’m not saying that explains the surge in demand or prices, but there was extra interest in the place with all the bedrooms which drove up the price a bit. One last thought jumps out, but it’s just a gut feeling. Places like Atlanta attract people for jobs. Almost everyone I know here moved to town for a job. That leads to a more stable market, albeit still with rising values, than places like Florida or Hilton Head, SC (where we lived for 30 years before Atlanta). Those warm weather, second home, vacation rental types of places have almost NOTHING available on the market. People see cheap money and are willing to have their dream winter home, or a place they can rent for part of the year and use when they like. Some are just looking to make a quick flip and earn some easy money. The more desirable areas seem to have higher peaks, lower valleys and FAR more volatility. Back in 2004-2005 in Sarasota, FL the biggest broker in town had agents personally putting in multiple contracts on pre-construction condos looking to flip them because by the time the development was done the would certainly be worth more in all the frenzy. I had a college buddy living in Boston call me about buying pre-construction condos in sleepy Englewood, FL, and he wasn’t sure where Englewood was or what it was like! I’m glad he didn’t do it, because the bubble popped shortly thereafter. Many projects stood partially completed for years. People realized they were “under water” on the investment property or the home that was a stretch for them (“get as much as we can, it will only go up!”). Nobody wants to be under water, and they look for a way out. “Why keep paying when it’s worth less than we owe?” We lived a few doors from an attorney and a real estate developer. They lived highly leveraged and on the edge in a magnificent home worth millions. When the music stopped their home went into foreclosure and instead of developing real estate they started a new business. They had a website that was something like walkaway.com. They helped people get out of their properties and helped negotiate with the banks to cause as little damage as possible. Sorry, it seems I’ve rambled on a bit. Just re-living some nasty times. I hope and pray THIS is nothing like THAT, but some of it does feel familiar. .

Yep. It’s water under the bridge. Whining and complaining won’t help. Learn from this, and continue our upward trajectory. PERIOD. .

THANK YOU for something positive! I was afraid to click, but I’m glad I did! Stuff happens in life. We still have Josh and a bright future.

NEWSFLASH: Bass, McD, Beane nor anybody else care what you “need”. You’re a guy on the internet, just like me. They owe us nothing along those lines. They will take care of business in-house, as they should.

I agree with the bolded part. I remember the early 90’s when we would lend to a restauranteur to buy a $500K house in Hilton Head (a lot of money now, a LOT of money then) because we knew we could sell the loan without recourse. I wouldn’t lend this guy money to buy a used car, but we could lend him money for that house. He never made the first payment, but it took years to get him out. It wasn’t our problem, because the loan was sold, then resold. The lender gets paid for that deal, then moves on. Some are not looking out for your best interests. The question went from “will we get our money back” to “can we sell it before it goes bad”? It all went downhill from there. And that loan is sitting in your pension fund. I have no idea what he can or cannot afford, or what the market will do going forward. I just hope everyone does their due diligence and doesn’t swing for the fences too often. Being a contrarian rather than a follower can be helpful at times. Our son and DIL bought their first house in the last year. We warned them and they are fully aware that they are looking at a 5 year minimum window and do NOT freak out if there is a bit of a dip coming up. But they weren’t looking to make a profit, they wanted a home with a yard to start a family. We used to view our home as our largest asset and only invested in ways that would maximize that. Now? We do what we want to the place we live and if it doesn’t yield the best return, at least we got to enjoy it.

I’d rather go out vs the Champs. It makes us look better, but more importantly it will help to keep the greatest game I think I’ve ever seen alive as part of that history. THAT was a game for the ages, and despite the outcome I don’t want it forgotten.

This is part of why I was glad to buy one house (for what they paid 3-4 years ago before it was ever publicly listed) and sell TWO other properties at the same time. It’s insane right now! I looked at our last two neighborhoods in Florida a couple months ago. Out of more than a THOUSAND houses, there was only one active listing. “Sure, ask anything you want!” CRAZY! It’s up to maybe a half dozen now. Yay. This is unsustainable. It feels like 2004-2005. Then came 2006. You couldn’t GIVE real estate away. If you Google real estate cycles, you are likely to come across articles saying about 18 years. You can do the math. I’m not trying to scare you, but when a college buddy I hadn’t heard from in years called me from Boston in 2005 asking about pre-construction condos in a dumpy part of Florida he had never been to, I knew we were in trouble. My hope is for an adjustment so I can afford a place back in Sarasota in a few years when things normalize.

Is this a rule of some sort, or just an inability to get thru processing. We used to process and close them at same time. It’s the most efficient way to do it BY FAR if you have enough equity. Current appraisal, current title exam, survey, etc. On our recent purchase in December we used a guy in NJ (again) who just steamrolled everything thru. EDIT: There used to be a government program we used on a house we flipped. I think it was a 203k? You get the purchase money financed and funds for renovations are included that you can get on draws, just like a new construction loan. Might be worth a Google search and asking a mortgage broker if it’s still around. Not everybody handled them, but it was perfect for our situation. .

I try to get to the Bills home opener and one road game a year. KC is high on my list of places to attend a game. It “feels” a bit like a Bills home game, said the guy who’s never been there. I don’t know why, but I guess a no frills stadium and super passionate fans in a non-glitzy city who love to tailgate are a big part of that.

The house we just bought was with a 30 year loan, fixed for the first 15 years under 3%. A month after closing we were allowed to pay it down by about half after selling two other properties and adjust the monthly payment. The money is so cheap I hated to pay it down, but we too hate debt. It’s the only debt we have, and we will just pay it off before my wife retires. As much as we hate debt, it just feels wrong not to borrow some of this stupidly cheap money!

I know NOTHING about 401K loans but I used to do a lot of second mortgage financing. A HELOC (home equity line of credit) will be a variable rate because the line will be out there usually for 20 years and the bank doesn’t want an in-house loans with fixed rates lines of credit that long. If it’s a term loan at a fixed amount for a fixed number of years, they can adjust their balance sheet accordingly. But if you got a line of credit now at say 5%, you could wait 10-15 years until the bank is paying 8%-12% on CD’s or money markets and draw your line fully down to put it back in the bank at a higher rate. Banks don’t like that idea. We had HELOC’s for many years, just in case an opportunity comes up and you need quick access to funds without moving things around. If you have enough equity banks (or credit unions, don’t forget them!) will usually pay all your closing costs and hope you draw on it at some point. It’s nice to have out there just in case. Our last HELOC was from a credit union not far from where @Royale with Cheese lives and might be nice to have, regardless of what path you take on this deal. I believe the interest is still generally tax deductible too, so there’s that. And rates are crazy low. Good luck figuring out the best option and with the whole process.