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Cold calling real estate agents - is there a law against it?

Some real estate dickhead just rang my mobile (which is not advertised anywhere) saying they were "just in the area" and wanted to do an appraisal on a house we own in

<suburb name>

.

It's an agency we don't use for any purpose, have never used for any purpose, and have never approached for any reason.

Is there some sort of legal issue with some smarmy sales knob looking up property owner details and cold calling them?

Makes me feel all gross that their grubby mitts are pawing through my deets somewhere in the hope of being able to stick a tongue up my bum and get a taste of some back door cash.

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46 comments

  • There should be a law against owning properties you don't live in.

    That said fucking with real estate agents I can get behind so do whatever on that front. Maybe consider not being a landlord though.

    • There should be a law against owning properties you don’t live in.

      I'm trying to picture what this looks like. Who do we rent from if we can't afford to buy a house in this alternate vision of the future? There is no way that 20-year-old me working at servos had the capital to buy a house. I had zero savings and a low income.

      I see you invoking the Maoist uprising in another comment, but I'll be honest - the years following that uprising were hard for a huge swathe of the population (not to mention fatal for Millions more). I would not want to live through a Chairman Mao. Modern China happened despite Mao. Not because of him.

      • You literally cannot conceive of a reality wherein a home does not have to be rented from a parasitic landlord?

        You cannot conceive a future wherein you don't have to afford a home?

        Also Mao is a beloved figure for many because he lifted millions out of poverty and ended the brutal feudal system that preceeded him. He also famously said "no investigation no right to speak" and you clearly need to do some investigating.

        This is akin to a freed slave asking "who do I serve then?"

        • I can't conceive the land not belonging to someone, no. That's not how our society works. And before you break that, I'd want to take a good look at what you'd replace it with. Because the objective facts are that this system is the best thing tried so far.

          Mao did none of those things. He was a destroyer, not a builder. He dabbled and experimented through the Cultural Revolution, and was directly responsible for millions of deaths as a result. After killing everyone with an education he could get his hands on, he used Soviet know-how to start moving from an agricultral to Industrial nation. Forgetting in the process that those agricultural practices were feedign his population. Whoops!

          I have no idea why he has such a following. Is it because he tore the whole system down? Is it because he wrote some essays? China didn't start developing until years after Mao left office.

          • Wow an aussie not respecting indigenous land stewardship practices? I'm shocked.

            Man go fuck off back to wherever your european colonizer ancestors came from.

            You honestly better hope we never meet. Because if we do it's

          • I can't conceive the land not belonging to someone, no.

            This is just basically like saying "I do not know anything about history".

            The land used to be called "the commons". It was owned by nobody. It was everyone's land.

            It was taken over by a system called Enclosure, in which the common land was stolen from the people and "Enclosed" by a small few people who took over.

            I have no idea why he has such a following. Is it because he tore the whole system down? Is it because he wrote some essays? China didn't start developing until years after Mao left office.

            The average lifespan in China was 33 when Mao launched the revolution. It rose DURING the revolution, during civil war conditions simulteously alongside a literal fascist exterminationist invasion by the Japanese. The life expectancy during this period rose despite war because the communists were improving the conditions of the people immediately.

            The life expectancy upon Mao's death was 64. It rose further after his death.

            Life expectancy does not rise when people's lives are getting worse. He certainly made some mistakes, but you are making an utterly fatal mistake here by looking at "x number of people died" in isolation instead of looking at it in comparison to what existed before.

            And if none of that is enough for you I leave you with this:

            It has been estimated that, by the 19th century, 40–50% of all Chinese women may have had bound feet, rising to almost 100% in upper-class Han Chinese women.

            The ending of footbinding alone justifies Mao as a positive thing all by itself. Without ever having to discuss literally anything else. It was a horrific practice. There's plenty more to use as justification, but footbinding by itself is singlehandedly enough to justify it all.

            • Everyone the Maoist revolution killed fucking deserved it. And I am not talking about the environmental causes of the famine that coincidentally happened afterward. But everyone the Maoist revolutionaries killed fucking deserved it.

      • I see you invoking the Maoist uprising in another comment, but I'll be honest - the years following that uprising were hard for a huge swathe of the population (not to mention fatal for Millions more). I would not want to live through a Chairman Mao.

        If you think it was hard to live under Mao, you should see what it was like before him.

      • The practice of "renting" needs to die in a goddamn fire. Single family homes should never be "rented". Temporary (6-month to 5-year) occupancy of a single family home should be done under a "land contract".

        Basically, the occupant starts making mortgage payments (principal, interest, taxes, insurance) but title stays with the landlord. The landlord receives only the "interest" part of the payment. The "principal" part of the payment is held in escrow, in an interest-bearing account. This is the occupant's equity in the home.

        If the occupant stays through the term of the contract, title transfers to the occupant, the escrowed principal payments transfer to the landlord, and the contract converts to a private mortgage. If the occupant leaves before the term of the contract, the principal payments are returned to them.

        Land contracts build tenant wealth and drive people toward home ownership. 20-year-old you, with no capital and working a minimum wage job, should be able to enter into a land contract and start building wealth.

        • To drive us toward such a system, we can provide significant property tax advantages to owner-occupants. Investors can only get those advantages by getting the occupant of a property to qualify as an "owner". A renter would not qualify, but a tenant under a land contract would.

          Basically, we phase in an increase in property taxes, and a commensurate (or greater) owner occupant credit. Current owner-occupants will pay the same (or less) than they currently do. Investors who adapt, and convert their "tenants" to "buyers", will also pay the same (or less) than they currently do. Investors who refuse to convert will pay higher property taxes, while also serving a smaller pool of tenants with better options.

        • I'm sort-of following the idea here - and I appreciate that there has been actual thought behind it.

          I'm missing a couple of points though:

          1. Why would a landowner enter into this arrangement instead of just selling the property to someone with the finances to buy it outright from them?
          2. Who underwrites this? Even a Banks with Billions of dollars in their reserve will make me commit a decent percentage of the property's value in the form of a deposit. If you take that away, the landowner is taking a huge risk by entering into this contract. I guess that feeds back to point #1, but assuming an altruistic landowner who just wants to help people - they're gambling their most valuable assets against my ability to slowly dribble money at them. If their tenant loses their job or something and can't afford payments, what happens?
            1. The simplest answer is that the landowner could expect a higher ROI from issuing a land contract or private mortgage than from selling outright. If they do decide to sell, it's going to be to an owner-occupant, or another investor willing to "partner" with a tenant/buyer to secure that owner-occupant credit. The Non-occupant "penalty" should be high enough to kill the traditional landlord's ROI.
            2. I don't think I am taking away the deposit. Where are you getting that?

            The landowner is "gambling" just as much with a land contract as they would be with a traditional rental.

            The private mortgagee can insist on a 20% down payment from the mortgager, just like a conventional mortgagee.

            • Land contracts build tenant wealth and drive people toward home ownership. 20-year-old you, with no capital and working a minimum wage job, should be able to enter into a land contract and start building wealth.

              20-year-old me had no capital, remember? The shabby apartment I lived in back in the 90's was worth less than $100k, but 20% of whatever that number was would still have been well beyond my means.

      • I see you invoking the Maoist uprising in another comment, but I'll be honest - the years following that uprising were hard for a huge swathe of the population (not to mention fatal for Millions more). I would not want to live through a Chairman Mao. Modern China happened despite Mao. Not because of him.

        What was it like to live in China before 1949 compared to after 1949? Please support your assertions with relevant statistics.

    • I can think of a few exceptions. But I think owning multiple properties in the same location for more than a specified amount of time should be illegal or heavily taxed.

      For example, you buy a home and are still trying to sell an old one. You might own two houses for some time. You might inherit a house and need to sell it.

      You might have family in multiple parts of the country or work in multiple parts of the country/world and need a place to live.

      A friend’s mom had severe asthma and was told to leave her home state during the winter and live in Florida.

      But I have a friend who owns like 3 hours in the same neighborhood just as rental properties. That should be illegal/heavily taxed.

    • Yeah, it's a pity there isn't a law against it I guess. If I sold that one extra house I'm hoarding the housing crisis would be pretty much over tbh.

    • not sure we go that far (in a sane system rentals have their place) but absolutely start taxing the ever loving shit out of anything over the PPR. The more houses the more tax. More. More. MOOOOOOOOOORE. They speak the language of money, make it snarl at them.

      And ban corporations / companies / business entities from owning standalone housing and land.

    • Ironic that Mao is discussed and the biggest culprits in the housing market are (allegedly) Chinese nationals.

      Reportedly, in certain Chinese cultures, men (and young men) do not have access to women and you women unless they are a land owner. It doesn’t matter if the land they own is a single-room apartment that has room for half a single bed and never has any tenants, they own land so they get a root. This also explains all those huge ghost cities in China which are all unoccupied high-rises.

      • You and everyone else talking shit about China are not doing so in a principled manner and are displaying incredible amounts of racism and chauvinism.

46 comments