One year ago today: October 14, 2023, Davida.
Five years ago today: October 14, 2019, a generic day.
Nine years ago today: October 14, 2015, early politics.
Random years ago today: October 14, 2009, drowning in money.
Oops, another Biden boner. He allocates $612 million in hurricane relief—to the bloated utility companies. Here’s a picture of one of hundreds of parked cars vandalized by Leftists at last day’s Trump rally in California. A teen has beeb arrested in an Oslo hotel for throwing a pancake at an 86-year-old German tourist and yelling “Luftwaffle!” Fortified by a pancake breakfast, I’m going to build a locking set of cupboards in the scooter shed for the gas cans. I don’t know what went wrong, but taking no chances. Alaine was in contact to update they are still digging out from the flood and they are still on generator power.
Lofty.ai is back in the picture but we have a number of stumbling blocks. First, there is no source that explains in any real detail how the system works. Sorry, bois, jargon does not work, we know all your moves have standard classical terms and that’s how you should be expressing it. Real estate investing is not the time or place to wow us with trendy euphemisms. There is also the underlying non-explanations of how the blockchain works. They are sneaky as hell on this one, but no more so than any other site I’ve looked at. They really go through hoops to avoid a layman’s description of the process.
My overall impression is they are like a bank saying if they lose your savings, your quarrel is not with the bank, but with what they invested in. Yes, if you are thinking I would normally ignore such bastards. That’s where other factors take over. The buy-in is so cheap ($50) that I consider this cheap tuition to learn the ropes. As ever, I will sift through the bullshit and discover exactly what is going on—and it is always items they intentionally contrived to obscure. Caltier, I will soon know more about their operations at street level than they do. I said at street level, Elliott.
I read through several dozen user reports on Lofty, several weeks apart for some months how. Ere long you spot the pattern. Similar-sounding glowing reports that rarely quote any figures. It’s all about amazing, best, easy, and awesome. The few that state numbers don’t usually add up, but there are a rare few who have a clue what they are talking about. I singled those out for analysis and it is on this basis I will continue. For example, one guy invested $100 and reported earning $14 after a year. While he expressed disappointment, my interpretation was that’s great. All the taxes, repairs, headaches, and shuffling done for him plus 14%? I’ll take it.
What’s more, I’ve applied my classical “reverse-retirement” logic to work back from my goal to what is required to achieve it. I don’t have enough exact figures at this point. My goal is $100 per month. I conclude that to get any straight answers, the easiest path is to jump over the bullshit artists and plow some money into the works. Kind of the opposite of FAFO. If you want along for the ride, stay tuned. I repeat my advice that you never invest in anything you do not understand. I don’t understand blockchain, but I understand real estate.
Who remembers Bob Diamond, the overages guy? I am still a paid up member and may look at it again after the election. But I am not happy he sold one of my few remaining private S. American e-mail addresses to the scam and spam bunch.
KremlinWorld.
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What info I have from Lofty, I spent two hour putting to the test. I mean the info that counts, not the tons of garbage that float around any on-line work-at-home schemes. I found 13 reviews with data I could use, but same as myself, each was very reluctant to state how much money was required to achieve the results. This is the major goal of my quest, I’m held back now only by the unusual amount of personal information that Lofty.ai pokes into. Fortunately, I have a complete set of such “data” ready for just such trial runs. It should arrive here from Tennessee today. You must become a member of Algo, an instant problem for many investors.
The first alarm is that Lofty.ai is not involved in management of the properties and thus have no established standards. Shall we say, property managers can vary in performance. Next biggie is that while you are buying into fractional real estate, Lofty does not tell you the purchase price of the properties. You find out only when it sells and the market is shaky as hell. Paying close attention to the complaints, it seems there is little to stop the “landlord” from pocketing the money, which makes it a legal matter that can tie your money up for years.
From said reports, it is evident none of the people who report good earnings know very much about generally accepted accounting principles. While I find few details on people getting their money back out, I spot the ease with which they can buy and sell their “tokens” with other members, bypassing lawyers, brokers, and agents. This greatly appeals to me. One new term they use I also like, they call it a “smart contract”. In pre-web parlance, this is good old escrow. The money is held in a separate third-party account until all parties meet sales requirements. This attracts me because I know the hefty escrow fee I paid on my cabin for maybe three minutes work.
Here is a picture of a Trump sign projected on a water tower in Hanson, Massachusetts. Bloggable because it drove the town council bonkers. You see, like many places in that part of the world, the Democrats took over only the administration, not the hearts and minds of the people who just wanted to be left alone. They tried shining bright spotlights to wash it out, hired a PR firm for something or other, and have issued the maximum fine on the nearby homeowner. The projector is on his private property. To me it is another demonstration that Democrats lack the brains to learn anything new. The maximum fine is $100 per day, so the homeowner went on GiveSendGo and already has $3,000+. Well past the election date.
ADDENDUM
While I am not analyzing Lofty as a company, rather the process of this blockchain fractional ownership, here are some factoids about their operation. Buying property in the USA or Canada is an awkward process that can take weeks. Fees and taxes can add thousands to the price. Part of why I’m looking at Lofty is parallel to when I purchased this cabin. Simply put, if you pay cash, it takes care of 80% of the government and bank bullshit. Such add-ons can easily tack $10,000 to the purchase price. In my case, it was less than $1,900 (but still!).
Lofty is new, with 7,000 users. The largest account is $2.2 million, the smallest is their minimum of $50. The latest tally on the number of properties bought is almost a year old, with 148 properties. Each one has an average of 231 Lofty purchasers who vote on things like repairs and rental increase, meaning that is one unwieldy bunch indeed. Reading between the lines, the average Lofty investor makes $248 per year--but zero data on how much it cost them to do that. One of my first tasks is to calculate out how much they each invested to get that.
