Calculated Risk: Business Week on Jim the Realtor

by Bill McBride on 4/07/2013 10:02:00 AM

I've been posting Jim the Realtor videos for years. The earlier videos were very funny as Jim toured REOs and drug houses. He also posted videos about short sale fraud, and recently on the buying frenzy in San Diego.

Peter Hong at the LA Times called Jim "The Hunter S. Thompson of real estate" and?Nightline Truth in Advertising: One Realtor's Strategy to Sell Foreclosed Homes

Here is another story on Jim from Karen Weise at BusinessWeek: The 'Hunter S. Thompson of Real Estate' Chronicles the Bust?and Boom

Jim Klinge sighed as he made his way through a foreclosed home littered with empty bottles of rum and mattresses. It was 2008, and Klinge, a real estate agent, was filming a YouTube (GOOG) video for his blog documenting the housing crash in the cul-de-sacs and condos north of San Diego. As he opened a closet, daylight illuminated walls splattered with black mold spores, like a tie-dye project gone awry. ?Oh, lovely,? Klinge said. ?People were living in here like this, looks like. They were lucky to make it out alive.?

Five years later, Klinge?s videos tell a different story, one of limited inventory and jampacked open houses, bidding wars, and quick sales. ... He made the videos to shock sellers into lowering their unrealistic asking prices, but most clung to their illusions. Buyers, on the other hand, ate it up, as did economists and the press. The economics blog Calculated Risk began embedding Klinge?s videos, and in April 2009 the Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story calling Klinge ?The Hunter S. Thompson of real estate.?

There is much more in the article.

Here is an REO tour from Jim back in early 2009 (check on the difference in the MLS photos and Jim's video):

Source: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/04/business-week-on-jim-realtor.html

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