So if you remember guys in our May 22 post, we told you that Joe Rogan was goanna move over to Spotify and the deal was great for both parties, Joe made over 100 millions dollars in the deal and the Spotify stock went up by 2 billion dollars at the time.
But we also told you our opinion having some insight into Spotify over the years and knowing several of their employees political views we told you that they would try to censor The Joe Rogan show.
Now several employees have tried to push the Spotify management to censor the Joe Rogan show.
And they want to see the script ahead of time and they want to have a mandate not to upload the show on to Spotify if they feel that it is not inline with their political views at Spotify.
The CEO Daniel EK is still standing behind Joe Rogan and the freedom of speech and this is all good!.
But what you do as a viewer or a listener think is goanna happen when 500+ Spotify employees starts to protest to the management and the Joe Rogan show start to impact the whole company.
We can tell you this much, as we have seen over the past decade that when a majority of the employees starts to protest it does not take long for the management to act in favor of the protesters.
Creating mayhem and protesting in large numbers seems to be the new norm to get your point across and to force the management’s hand to act in favor of your proposal or demand.
With a few rouge employees you can part ways with them, by firing them or buying them out of their contracts but when you have the majority of the employees demanding the same thing you are quite screwed as management.
So we told you that this can go two ways, either Joe Rogan is willing to let Spotify censor his show or he is not.
If he does not want to allow Spotify to censor his show then there is only one way out and that is that Spotify and Joe Rogan part ways and he goes back to You tube.
And most likely he will keep half of his money in the contract.
So this will be a very interesting case to watch going forward.
There is an illusion out there in the world that if you sign with a multinational company and you are promised creative right to continue you work, that the global company will honor that, so far it has never worked out that way for the artist.
Dont take our word for it, ask some artist who have signed some contracts with labels or companies how much creative control they have had left after the deal has been signed, no matter what they where told prior to entering that agreement.
So one of the things we remember when 9/11 came and went this year again, is that memories fade, we know that for a fact.
World trade centers 1 and 2.
So i was in New York in late August of 2001, and i was visiting one company in tower 1 just 2 weeks prior to the attacks.
So it really shock me, and the person i had a meeting with worked on the top floors and did not make it out.
The kindness we saw from people towards each other after the attacks for a period 3 months time give or take a few weeks, is a lesson well worth remembering.
So we will touch on a subject that you can use in your everyday life and that is that when you loose a relative or a friend, dont forget their family!.
So what do we mean by saying do not forget the family of your friend or relative?.
So usually in the first year you have some contact with the survivors and then slowly it gets less and less for each year that goes by.
This is very normal and happens in 99% of the cases.
But there is something that you can do to really honor and remember your friend or relative and that is to stay in touch with the family and specially if there is children involved that loses a parent.
And it is specially important if it is the father that passes away, that there is a male figure involved in the children life.
So we do not care if you disagree with this statement, it is a fact that children who grows up without a father figure and specially a good father figure has a an incarceration rate of 15 times compered to a child that has a father figure to look up to in the developing years.
Children.
So can you give one or two Saturdays or Sundays a month to children that has lost a parent and specially children that was lost a father.
So giving your time is so important and this is a great way of honoring your lost friend or relative by caring for their family.
And we know of several people who gives 2 Saturdays a month of their own busy schedule to bring passed away friends children to soccer games or Hockey games or other activities for a 5-6 h day.
And this makes all the difference in these children’s life.
There are some families who have a great social network of relatives who can step in and fill this role, but there is equal amount of families where for instance a single mother of two children does not have parents or siblings that can come and help out emotionally with the kids, and she is on her own to raise them.
So the advice here is that when you lose a good friend or relative, check in on the family and stay in touch and give of your time.
Because even if you have children of your own, there is always room to care for your lost friends Child/children also time wise, bring them with to your families activities and if you do not have children of your own you have even more time on your hands.
And dont say you dont have the time ,you do, it is just about time management on your part.
Stay in touch, care for others, this is the message you should take away from this article.
So we have talked about the NYC real estate market in the past, but what does the current situation mean for people looking to move to the city in 2020/2021?.
Because we have talked about the almost 20.000 empty apartments and people leaving in droves from New York to other cities around the US and out to the suburbs.
So we will now tell you what you should expect if you are looking at moving to Manhattan or to New York city as a whole.
We will start with the good news for you as a renter looking to move to the city, it has never been a better time than in the end of 2020 to sign a 1-2 year lease on an apartment.
We will advice you, yes (not advise) but actually advice you to offer half of what landlords are asking for apartments for rent in 2020.
So if the landlord is asking for 5000 dollars offer 2500 and accept nothing more than the 2500 dollars.
Also remember that there are a lot of really nice apartments in Brooklyn and even in Manhattan if you will be willing to live around 100th street and upwards.
We do suggest that you find one or two room mates if you are single, because safety will be counted in numbers in the upcoming 1-3 years time in the city.
Here is the reason why?, we will see the empty apartments increase to 40.000 in the next 18 months time.
Now you ask why is it gonna be this many empty apartments in the end of 2021.
So there is a 9 billion dollar deficit in the budget of the city in the upcoming two years time.
There has already been talks abut laying off 25.000 city employees and there is a 1 billion dollar cut in the police funding.
On top of all this the plain clothes division is closed down, do you remember 21 jump street with Johnny deep from 1987?.
That was undercover work(plain clothes division type of work).
So we will see a huge spike in crimes and violent crimes like rapes and robberies , carjackings you name it.
And 2020 modern city will take giant leap backwards 35-40 years and it will not be safe or nice in the city for many years to come.
And with this many tax payers leaving and homeless people moving in instead,you will see the same type of homeless problem as we have seen in San Francisco and Los Angeles over the past 10 years time.
Any time there is revolving doors from you being arrested until you get released back out on to the street and with very good social programs homeless people will flock to these cities,and with that comes high crime rates to fund a drug habit.
Homeless.
So we are not blaming the homeless here in this article, but it is just the brutal reality of the current and upcoming situation.
So more and more taxpayers will leave and most likely 50% of all restaurants and brick and mortar stores will not re-open again.
And when there is not that added value to got a high tax rate(city surge charge) like fancy restaurants and Broadway shows, the wealthier people will continue to leave while the crime rates keeps going up each month.
So the lower paying jobs will not come back, but there is a lot of higher paying companies who still wants to maintain their businesses in the city.
And these companies will have to replace many of the workers that have families and will not come back to the city no matter what.
So if you are well educated and willing to move to the city you are in luck.
But remember this will be a very dysfunctional city and you need to be very careful visiting central park and other parks during evenings and during the night time.
And there will be less cops that can protect you.
The really unfortunate situation is that the subway system have now been taken over by the homeless in every cart, so there is a big risk of disease being spread in the subway system more now than in the past 30 years time.
The game changer is that now you can use LYFT and UBER , that you could not use in the 80s and 90s if taxis where to expensive for you.
Also employers will start to accept to pay for the employees to and from work by car services like LYFT and UBER.
So if you are single or a couple and you don’t have children and you wanted to live in New York once in your life time, this could be a cheaper time than ever before to give it a go!.
Because rent will be half price for a few years to come.
And to you guys saying that New York will always bounce back, we are not saying you are wrong, but the question is to which year will it bounce back to 1985 or 2015?.
This is such a different situation than we have ever seen in the NYC so nobody can say for sure, more than that the city will have to make huge savings in the upcoming 5 years time and this will affect the live quality of all New Yorkers rich or poor!.
So a lot of people have asked us , are real estate agents lying when they say that the US real estate market is heating up in the fall of 2020?.
So the answer to this question is more complex that you might think.
Here is the full explanation to this question that a lot of people have asked mrlifeavdvise about in the last few week.
Soho.
So Manhattan real estate is dead period!, there has never been a renters market like it is right now, and the political decisions being made at a city level as we speak are completely crushing the real estate market in New York and mainly the little island of Manhattan.
So as an renter you can offer 2500-3000 Dollar for an apartment that was listed for 5000-6000 dollars in January 2020.
Because many landlords holds mortgages and they need to pay anywhere from 2500-3000 dollars a month in carrying costs for an apartment that they rent out.
So it is much better to have some money coming in than no money coming in.
Many landlords have not been willing to discount more than 10-20%, but those apartments will be sitting on the market for years to come.
The enlighten landlords have understood that this is a force majeure situation and you have to as a landlord make sure that you lose as little money as possible for the next upcoming years.
So as a renter it has never been a better time to rent than right now in the New York city.
The down side is that it is not the same New York as it was 6 months ago safety wise, because once you lower the police presence in a mega city you will get a huge spike in crimes, and we are closing in on 1980s levels if nothing changes within a years time.
People are leaving in droves and they are not coming back any time soon at least.
It is still to early to count out New York city due to its very favorable location on the East coast, but we do not see the city coming back anywhere close to what it was before Covid-19, in the next 20 years at least.
What many are forgetting is that the spike in people and mainly younger people leaving the city started already in 2018 so way before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the city hard.
Also you need to keep in mind that the commercial real estate will take an even bigger hit in the upcoming years compared to the private real estate side.
It is estimated that over 60% of the brick and mortar stores and restaurant and coffee shops who are now currently closed will not re-open.
So then some analyst say, but hey they got a lease for another 24 months time, yes this is very true but we do not expect more than maybe 20% of those lease holders to pay, so it means that there will be an 80% default rate on those commercial leases.
So you will probably as a young professional have an easier time finding work in New York city if you stay and your rent will be half of what it was, if you change apartments, but the big down side will be that the city will be very unsafe both during day and specially during the night time.
The big losers are the two professionals who have made the real estate journey in the past 15-20 years time and who are now living in a 5 million dollar apartment and they are carrying a 3 million dollar mortgage, when there are no buyers for these apartments any longer, the foreign buyers have complete dried up, so the nest egg that had accumulated in their real estate journey is almost gone entirely.
So today their apartment is worth 3 million if they can find a buyer.
So they can not leave and they are then forced to stay as prioners to there apartment, of course they can try and rent it out, like 40.000 others are trying to do right now.
Then we have not even mentioned yet the previously built unsold luxury apartments that are thousand on there own, that was built for foreign buyers in mind during 2017-2018.
These are almost completely empty apartment buildings, just sitting there collecting dust.
So the real estate outlook look for New York city is really looking grim in the the next upcoming years.
For Los Angeles the outlook is pretty much the same as for New York, and the real estate market has been much colder in the past two years. Mainly because Chinese and Asian buyers have not invested their money into the LA real estate market.
So the house prices have take a big hit also during the Covid-19 , with a few suburban exceptions.
LA skyline.
So the renters market is also looking really good for the next few years to come.
Regarding safety, LA has not been anywhere as safe as New York has been since Rudy Giuliani started the cleaning up process of the NYC in the 90s.
So this safety factor is not the thing driving people out of California, but more it is the very high taxes as much as 54% that are seeing people leaving in droves.
It does not help that the state of California is pretty much broke anyway you slice it.
So the new thing is San Francisco SF, who are now seeing a mass exodus of young taxpayers leaving towards Colorado,Arizona,Texas and other places, and in are moving more homeless people into the city to take their place but on the streets. And instead of bringing in tax revenue they are costing the remaining taxpayers big time.
The homeless problem is something that we are not really blaming on the homeless, its a massive systematic failure on the state,city and at a federal level. And it needs to be fixed A.S.A.P. and prisons and Jails are is not the solution, but rather rehab and mental health care.
The silicon valley build out in the past 15 years time, has been the driving force behind the most expensive real estate prices outside of Hong-Kong.
So you where paying 5000 dollars for a 250 SQFT studio, now you will be able to rent it for half off in the upcoming years.
SF.
So what the Covid-19 has shown is that you can work remotely and it does not lower the production for companies.
So many companies will make the decision to cut wages/benefit packages by 25% , but in return you can sit is Waco Texas in a beautiful 300.000 dollar home with a big back yard that you will pay off in 5 years compared to you renting in the Silicon valley/Bay area, it is the same money.
So the companies will save money on salaries and commercial real estate costs.
So this is not good news for the Bay area and for the Bay area real estate.
Golden gate.
So this area together with the LA area has a huge homeless population and that makes it even more difficult to see a re-surge in the real estate market in California in the upcoming 10 years time, because the homeless situation will take a decade at least to fix.
Then let us flip the coin towards Florida and Texas real estatemarkets.
Here we see a hot market, hotter than maybe ever before.
People are buying homes unseen, or just a walk true on the real estate agents phone.
And these buyers are mainly coming from these 3 major cities New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
And when you can find a Florida home for 400.000 dollars, you buy it sight unseen because if you dont, someone else will have pulled the trigger on the property before you are able to go and see the house for yourself in person.
Florida.
So the benefits for a buyer in the Florida real estate are huge compared to the three big cities we just talked about, so the Florida real estate market will stay hot for at least another one to two years time.
So the same thing that goes for Florida goes for Texas, Texas has never seen this kind of red hot real estate market that it is in right now.
Texas farmhouse.
The lower taxes the lower home prices, but still being sunny weather states, is a huge selling point for newcomers from New York where the weather is okay for only 6 months out of the year for instance.
And with the high taxes in California and New York the Texas real estate will keep going up, there is also a lot of land to build on in Texas and this is a good selling point also.
The Austin real estate is overvalued right now compared to the Dallas Forth worth area for instance, but Dallas home prices are also going up every month.
So a good advice from us would be to look beyond the bigger cities in Texas and maybe you will find your dream home, dream area in a smaller Texas town.
The one final note we want to leave you with is that 20 years ago the internet speed was very low and it would not have been possible to work remotely, in 2020 we can work almost anywhere in the world with the fast broadband and internet speeds we have access to these days.
So here you go, here is the real explanation when realtors are talking about surging markets, they are for sure surging markets in some states but not others.
If you are a first time home buyer, check out our to do list to cover your bases as much as possible, you find the link here below to our shop.
SO SOME OF OUR CLIENTS HAVE ASKED US TO UPDATE THIS OLDER ARTICLE AND WE ARE DOING SO NOW TODAY.
So New York has experienced a mass wealth flight in the past 6 months time and the city will never be the same again that it was prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
WE WILL SEE A TSUNAMI OF BANKRUPTCIES AND MORE THAT 60% OF ALL RESTAURANTS,NIGHTCLUBS AND COFFEE SHOPS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RE-OPEN AGAIN!.
And this just feels horrible, but there is a very weak leadership in the city when it comes to the elected politicians and we can not see that the commercial or the residential real estate bounce back ever to the levels it was prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
So New York is backsliding right now back to the crime levels of the 1980s and that is not good for the city and more and more people are looking to leave the city.
And in California and Los Angeles there is a huge problem with inventory sitting and becoming stale even if many news outlets would like you to believe that the housing market is heating up again, it is not, they are just playing around with numbers.
And now there are even talks about raising taxes up to 54% in California, it just sounds nuts to any sane person!
So let us start with stating once again that we have nothing against California or New York city , what so ever.
But also as real-estate expert i have to point out the huge differences that we can see between these three markets, and we will also explain why so many people and families are leaving California and instead are moving to Texas.
Let us just look very simply at an average hard working family of which both parents are working full time in New York city or Los Angeles.
Let us say that their combine income is 220.000 dollars each year pretax.
They are working mid level jobs and non of them are management.
So let us look at California and Los Angeles for say to begin with, and what we can clearly see is that the average home price is around 700.000 dollars.
This is a truth with some serious modifications to it, you do not get pretty much anything for a family these days in the Los Angeles metro area for under one million dollars.
But actually you will pay at least 2 million dollars if you want to live in a decent house in a decent neighborhood.
We are not talking Beverly hills, Brentwood, Malibu, Bel air, when we are talking about the 2 million dollar mark.
We are more talking about areas like Los Feliz, Hollywood hills east, Tarzana, Sherman oaks, and the last one here Sherman oaks have been a big family driven area for the past 10 years time and the prices have gone up a lot during that time frame in the VALLEY.
LA
The real estate prices are now in 2019 higher than they where before the great recession in 2007-2008, and where the bubble busted in 2008-2009.
So this is the home-buying situation in California, and in the San Fran area, the so called bay area and it is even worse in areas close to the silicon valley area.
Then if we look at the property taxes they are around 0.79% in California and you have a sales tax at around 6%.
So now you might jump out of your seat and say hey mrlifeadvise, that is actually a much lower property tax than the national average which is around 1.5%.
That is a very true statement, but then keep in mind how much more a home costs to buy in California compered to Texas for say.
So there is no reason to think that the migration from California to Texas will stop anytime soon.
All of you know, when you have a 1-1.5 million dollar budget and you end up looking at a dump in Silver lake, that is way to small for your family, or something more of a new construction in North Hollywood for instance, you feel dirt poor.
Or should we use the well known NEW expression (house poor).
Simply for hard working Americans , you will have trouble finding a good family home and still make a life for yourself and your family.
Because when your mortgage and HOA and other fees , electricity , garbage, water comes into play not to mention the property taxes, forget the restaurants and the other fun activities for your family, without maxing out your credit cards very quickly along the way.
So California is a losing proposition right now , when it comes to keeping hard working families inside its city and state limits.
NEW YORK CITY, YOU ARE SO PRETTY!.
So New York has even a bigger problem than California has with its real estate prices and an average home costs around 800.000 dollars, and the same goes with new York as with Los Angeles you really need to take this sum and triple it, if you want something a little bit better than a dump.
New Tork city.
If we look at the property taxes , we are looking at an average of 2.5% give or take, and the sales tax is ball park at 9%.
So then you say, you dont have to live in the Manhattan, you can live in Queens or Harlem and Brooklyn.
That is very true, but once again if you are looking at a home from 1-2 million dollars you will have to live outside of Manhattan with your family to avoid a total dump!.
And the prices have rapidly gone up in Brooklyn , the Park slope area mainly over the past 6-8 years time.
And Harlem is also changing rapidly, so the prices are also going up there also.
So the one benefit that New York has on Los Angeles is that they have a fully functioning subway system that can help you out with your commute back and from your place of work.
(I know Los Angeles has a subway system , but good luck riding it around the city) this is from someone who knows the LA from the inside and out, commute wise.
So here you have the same high costs for all the extras like Water,Garbage and electricity,property taxes, but you also have very high costs of child care if you are two working adults.
In Los Angeles, you can find undocumented child care (nannies) who will help you cut a piece of your child care costs.
This is a bit more uncommon in New York, even if it of course also exists there.
So once again, a lot of people are migrating also from New York to Texas.
And the young people usually opts for the very HIPP , Austin, area, and families usually goes for the Dallas and Houston metro areas , where there are a lot work possibilities.
So now let us talk about Texas and what really drives people to Texas?.
First of all compered to Los Angeles and New York city you dont have a personal income tax to pay, which is huge.
The real estate market is an outlet price market or if you want to call it a bargain market compered to LA and NYC.
Dallas.
So if we look at Texas the medium home price is somewhere around 197-199 thousand dollars.
And Dallas has an average home price in 2019 at around 212.000 dollars.
Houston has an average home price of 290.000 dollars.
And Austin has the highest of these three places with an average home price of 301.000 dollars which is a rise of almost 40% in a ten year period, which is a lot!.
So the same goes here as for LA and NYC, you have to increase your budget price if you want something better and in a better area.
But compared to LA and NYC you only in most cases have to double your budget from the medium home price in Texas compared to almost having to triple it in the other two cities like LA and in the NYC.
So for around 400.000-600.000 dollars you get a really nice family home in these cities.
And the one thing we also have to look at is that even if Texas has a 1.86% property tax which is almost double to the national average in America the home prices are much lower, the so called(assessed) prices, which the tax is normally calculated from.
The sale tax is around 8.5-8.8% in Texas, which is on the higher side for sure.
So for a family bringing home 200.000+ dollars each year pretax, the Texas migrating is very understandable if you are coming from California or New York city.
Where this take home pay is almost at a poverty level, which feels almost ridiculous to say out load, but it is in these two cities.
Simply put, you will get much more bang for your buck, in Texas than you get in these two other places.
And your salaries will not be much lower in Texas, if lower at all!.
Specially if you work mid level in a company and you have a lot of skills to bring to an employer but you are not management.
And every parent knows how good it feels to be able to bring your kids on that holiday or let them play hockey which is an expensive sport to play today.
Because you have money left over for that, you are not house poor in Texas, and your mortgage is not keeping you up at night.
So then someone might come and say, but hey there is so much more to do in LA and in the NYC than you have to do in Texas.
And i usually answer when somebody leaves a comment like that, in this way.
In Los Angeles the most overrated place is the beach, and on an average an Angeleno will visit the beach once a year.
So if we take away the beach, from this equation what else does LA have that Dallas for instance does not have?.
So usually there is no good answer to that question.
So you can ask yourself this question, why am i paying true my nose to live in California?.
And the same question goes out to the people residing in NYC, why am i paying true my nose to live here in this concrete jungle?.
Of course there are more to do in the NYC than there is in Dallas, but Dallas has enough to do without getting boring to live in.
And Texas is also as a great state to raise a family in.
There are a lot of good and healthy family values in Texas.
So mrlifeadvise fully understand why families and people are emigrating out from the LA and NYC METRO AREAS into TEXAS.
So because some people feel that i might be attacking LA and the NYC this is not true at all.
I actually like both cities a lot, but to raise a family in these cities has just gotten harder, and harder for each year, and if you look back 25+ years it is like night and day, to get the ends to meet on a monthly basis.
So then some of you might answer me like this, my job is in LA or NYC , and i can not move!.
Then my question to you is this, have you even tried to look around in cheaper states for a similar job, or a job that you can handle, with your education and work experience level.
Please remember that it does not always have to be the exact same job description, usually you can do much more than you think you can.
I know what i am talking about, i made a big mistake in my life buying a home for my family for 1.7 m dollars when we could actually only afford a 1.2 million dollar home at that time.
So we lived in a great area, but we had no extra money to do anything, even if i liked the area a lot the 30 min move to a neighboring area made all the difference in how the family lived on a daily basis.
And it created so much tension with in the family, so after a 5 year period we did down grade to a 1.2 million dollar home and we here no longer house poor!.
So i understand the urge when you are bidding on a home that you love,and your family loves, but please always think twice about, can you actually afford this home or not?
The bidding wars are one of the most scary things when it comes to buying a home.
The urgency to get the place makes you do stupid financial things, in the heat of the moment.
And usually you want to take a step back when you are 10% over your budget for a home.
I usually say that the 10% mark you might be able to swing, but when a home goes from 1 million dollars to 1.3 in a bidding war you should usually step out from it before you make a huge mistake for you and your families future.
Hi, everybody, we get this question a lot these days in COVID-19 times, when some companies are doing very well despite the Covid-19 PANDEMIC AND SOME COMPANIES ARE IN BIG TROUBLE.
So what we know from research is that the first generation start it, the second generations grows it and refines it and the third generations squanders it.
So this is of course not 100% true with all companies, but the general rule is that the second generations should sell the family company and the third generations should do something else with their lives.
The stress level that comes with taking over a family owned business in the third generations is very hard to cope with.
Stress
There is also one very important aspect that families do not talk about and that is that the sibling rivalry that can happen when you run a family business it can destroy the family bonds for ever.
Siblings
So siblings can have these horrible falling outs over a family run business.
And it is very important that the generation that is handing down the family business structures everything properly legally to avoid these sibling rivalries.
So when you work in a family business it comes with a lot of pressure and it is usually very bad for the family relations.
If the business does well then it is , who makes more money, and if it goes bad it is who does not pull their weight enough in the company and the blame game goes around, and never really stops.
Office space
So there is something to be said about selling the family business just is the right moment to keep the peace in a family.
We know that families who do not work together gets along much better with each other , than families who also works together.
There is people who will disagree with this article, but quite frankly as a business consulting company who mainly deals with family run businesses and companies that have several family members involved in them , we can say with certainty based up on our experience that this statement is very true.
It is not so much that siblings and family members wants to butt heads with each other, but business environment is very stressful and normally you work with people that are your colleagues, but then you go home for the day, with family your lives are so entangled with each other, so you never really get that stress free zone.
So even if it is difficult to let go of a family owned business sometimes it is the best thing you can do , is to sell it outright and then share the proceeds and let everybody go their own way.
Let us give you a typical example of a fight that takes place in a family owned business, so let us say that the sales manger/marketing manager wants to spend 25.000 dollars on an ad for the business, and the CEO does not approve of that spending, and they are brothers and they have a huge fight over this one thing on a Friday.
Then there is a family birthday the next day and they need to see each other on this Saturday and play nice.
Compared to if they only would work together and not be related, so then they would see each other on Monday where cooler heads can prevail.
So working in a family business is a really tall ask for anybody and it is something that you should normally avoid if you can.
If you are an owner of a family business and there are constant fights within the business , maybe let som people go or just sell the business outright and keep the peace in the family.
Because family matter and it is very important, and never ever let money come between you and your family.
So this is an article that a lot of our clients have asked us to write for a long time.
And we done a 20.000 Euro test over a period of 90 days with more than 30 online casinos who carry games from Netent, play n go and no limit and many other providers.
And here is the result of this play true ,wait for it! , -MINUS 20.000 EURO.
Yes you heard us correct the loss is staggering 20.000 euro over a 90 day period playig the same 15 games at 30 different casinos all over the world online.
We used bonuses and we played without bonuses.
So with all bonuses we had over 40.000 Euro to play with and our max bet was 4 euro per spin and we played usually between 0.50 cents to 2 euro per spin.
We played millions of spin, and we where never over 3 times our deposited sum ,. which usually was between 400-600 euro per deposit and per casino.
So we all know that the RTP (return to player) is usually between 94-98% on online slots, meaning that you lose 4-6% on a 100 dollar/euro play true on average.
Slot machines
So the interesting thing with online slots is that all of your RTP is saved from years back and it does not matter where you play the same slot machine, the main computer for individual software providers know that you are playing that slot, regardless of which casino you choose to play with.
So let us give you a few examples so you know what we mean by this that the main computer knows where you are playing, take a very popular slot that is called Punk rocker from no limit and it is about the Sexpistols band out of UK.
If we play at Casino A online at 2 eur stake, and then we move on to casino B ,the stake starts at 2 eur there too, then at casino C the same thing happens.
Let us take the slot Motorhead from netent for instance , the same thing happens here if we play at a 4 eur stake at casino A and the same stake shows up at casino B and Casino C WHEN WE START PLAYING.
So this is why people are so confused when they win 1000 euro/dollars at one online casino and then they change casinos and they are ice cold and they end up losing this 1000 pretty quickly at the new casino.
The interesting thing in our play true test was that we where not able to win in a single session more than 2-3 times our deposit, and we where able play true and meet the bonus requirements in 42% of the times.
But the really interesting thing happen when we had meet the bonus requirement at a 300 Eur/dollar bonus and we got 300 Eur/dollars in bonus money, we had 600 Eur/dollars, not one single time where we able to go up to 900 euros/dollars or higher before the machines took it all back, regardless of what providers of slots we played at.
So one would think that if you win 500 Eur/dollars at netent slot machines you can switch to no limit , microgaming, ELK or play n go slots and you will not be punished for the win since you switched game providers, but we got robbed each time.
So we know for a fact that a lot of providers of online slots did upgrades on their slots in 2017 and 2018, and clearly based on conversations with long time online slot players, these upgrades made the slots much colder and many features where taken away(did not show up again) for the player that we have talked to that have played these same games for years.
So from Thomas a client of us out of Sweden for NEGA our gambling treatment program, he has 5 million spins on Motorhead slot machine from gaming provider Netent stored and he has shown us that not a single time did he get on the free spins features 5 ace of spades, and even getting 4 takes on an average 252.0000 spins,after this slot upgrade from netent in 2017/2018.
What is interesting with this is that he had so much information documented that we could see the Motorhead machine that he had lost more than 100.000 Eur/ dollars on over a 6 year period.
So on 5 million spins he had one big win with the 600 times the money which is the biggest win you can have on the slot which is a full screen of LEMMY the singer of the band Motorhead.
So clearly there are a lot of sings that the playing time on a 100 EUR/DOLLAR deposit is only 1/4 of what it was prior to the software upgrades from Netent and other providers.
The second thing that we have on record is that the average spin amount on no limit slots to get a free spins feature are 294 spins based up on 1 million spins at a stake of 1Eur/Dollar, and the average free spin win was 47 times the money.
So you do the math here on these machines and how impossible it is to win over time.
You can still deposit 500 Eur/dollars without a bonus and play it up to 1000 Eur/dollars and take it out and never ever play again online, and you have won, but if you continue to play after your first winm you are in for a rude awakening.
There is also an interesting fact base on Thomas 5 million spins on the Netent slot motörhead that after 2017 the free spin feature is coming in between 288-294 Spins now these days compared to 167 spins prior to 2017 software upgrades.
And the average win on motorhead free spins is 28 times your stake compared to 56 times your stake prior to the game software upgrades in 2017.
We do find it very interesting that it has gone down from 56 x to 28x which is exactly half of the win amount compared to pre 2017 software upgrades from Netent the slot provider.
This is very true, a lot of streamers of online casinos like the Bandit and others do hit these mega wins.
But you need to remember that they play sometimes over 24 h straight and probably they play 80+ hours per week on these machines.
So of course if you play this much you will have most likely one big mega win per week, that you can put up on you tube channel, and try and get people to sign up to casinos true their links to get money from the casinos back to them based on your losses usually, so called affiliate marketing for online casinos.
There also seems to be a correlation between casino streamer and big wins on online casinos, compared to normal slot machine players.
There are rumors that they get a better wins from casinos because they stream so much.
The one thing that we have never really understood is that for instance the UK casino streamer who we feel at least is honest about the risks with getting hooked on online slots, but every time almost when he is down 40.000 Euros at least he hits a 45.000 Euro win?!.
How is this possible with the random number generator that many casinos claim to have installed for honesty.
So from outside there are a lot of red flags for sharp business people when you look at online slots.
And the same thing goes for online casinos and sports betting, that if it was possible to win over time you would see huge hedge funds hiring people to play online all day.
And the truth is, that it is just a black hole for 99.99% of the players gambling on online slots.
So do not waist your hard earned money trying to win over time on online slots, the mathematical edge is not there for you so you will lose a lot over time.
What online casinos like is to give you weekly promotions so you deposit 50 Eur/dollars you get 50-100 free spins for instance and this is to keep you playing and keep you depositing every single week money into your account.
Let us say that you deposit 100 Eur/dollars every week and you lose that for 52 weeks in a year, this means that you have lost 5200 Euros/dollars over one years time.
Now let us say that you would buy gold for the same amount every week, what do you think is your chances of losing money on this over time is?, you guessed it, you will make money over time there is no doubt about that.
So what about saving 100 Euros/dollars each week in stocks on the stock market over many years time.
With diverse stocks you will most likely make money over time also on the stock market.
So online slots are like crack cocaine for your brain and they are designed for you to get hooked on them.
One thing that would be really interesting would be to see the real RTP/ROI for all the casino streamers and also to see what the last line on the spread sheet looks like December 31 th each year for them on the playing the slots, they do make most of their income in suckering in other players true there links and with special offers.
So we welcome any of you readers to give us your input into this matter with online slots, if you disagree with us on this topic.
We also know that a lot of the smaller casinos do not make a lot of money on players, usually most of the money goes to the game providers like the big NETENT for instance in cost of leasing these games from them.
But do not use bad language in the comment section since we are professional business people and we are used to having disagreements with clients or business partners but professional people deal with this in diplomatic ways, trolls and children they scream bad words at you and make a fool out of themselves each and every time.
If you have already fallen into a gambling addiction or a online slot addiction you can always buy a license for our gambling treatment program called Nega, you find the link here below.
So this is not an article about i told you so!, when it comes to NYC and LA real estate markets that we have written about before in this blog.
But here are some facts about New York city real estate in the beginning of August 2020.
NYC
5% of all residents have left the NYC and another 15% are looking to leave, the city is spiraling out of control as we speak, we have even homeless outside of 20 million dollar apartments on the upper east side shooting up heroin on the streets.
So you guys who remember the NYC in the 70s and 80s and early 1990s you know what is coming your way, for you others you are in for a surprise, and not a really nice one.
Police are quitting in droves and here we are, and the rent on Manhattan will drop by a good 30% in the upcoming 24 months time both private and commercial rent.
But make no mistake that the apartments that are trading for 5 million dollars these days will trade for 3 million within 3 years.
So many people are moving away to Texas and Florida and this will affect the NYC real estate prices for a long time to come, both for renters and sellers.
It is not fun to sit with an apartment that you bought for 5 million dollars last year and there is no offers or only 3 million dollar low ball offers coming your way.
So a lot of sellers will get into deep trouble in the next few years in New York.
So as you know NYC is really expensive to live in these days and if you move to Florida or Texas you get a big house for 500.000 dollars ,but in NYC you get a shoe box in the Bronx or Brooklyn for that price.
Of course the COVID-19 pandemic has also accelerated the leaving from the NYC and the same goes for LA.
Democratic run states with high taxes and being weak on property and personal crime is not a good mix for real estate prices one bit.
So what about the LA real estate market? , so we know that houses that traded for 15 million dollars in the last few years are trading closer to 10 million dollars these days.
And very well off people are actually eating the losses on houses they paid 15 million dollars for a few years back and they take 9-11 million dollars for the same property these days.
Hollywood hills
So now we have covered the super expensive real estate ,but what about the normal to mid level 1.2-3.5 million dollar homes, what will happen to those prices.
So the cheaper homes will trade at close to the same level they have before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the reason for this is quite simple people and families need to live some where.
But homes close to down town and certain areas like Venice for instance will drop in price due to the unsafe environment, even more so than it was pre covid -19.
Down town Close to downtown. Venice.
So families will look at properties as far away from Skid row and down town and Venice where the home less population is growing by the numbers each week.
Now we need to help the homeless and fixing the mental health and drug issues, this is a bigger topic but all of this will drag down the real estate prices.
Now you need to remember that New York has 4 times more cops than LA has, okay LA has also the Sheriffs , but there is still much fewer cops in the LA area than you have in the NYC area.
So some might say that this is now a good time to buy a home in the next 24 months time when the home prices are dropping from ATH levels, and yes if you are gonna stay in LA or the NYC this can be a good time to buy that home you could never afford before.
But keep this in mind we are living in a brand new world and there are no signs that LA and NYC will ever become as hot markets for real estate as they have been in the past 20 years time, so be careful when you buy, because you might be sitting with that property for a very long time to come.
Final thoughts: so when better off and wealthy people do not feel safe in a city they leve, and with that a large tax base with them and this is the big risk for both the NYC and the LA metro area that if taxpayers leave towards better run states there will be even less money to fix problems in these cities, and of course this all will affect the real estate prices both on the buying and renting side of things, it will be a renters and a buyers market for the next 36 months to come in these very large cities one on the east coast and one on the west coast.
Hi,guys here is a client(KEN) his wife bought Nega from us and this is his story, he wanted to share, and he is more than welcome to do so.
Hello everybody, my name is KEN and i am 44 years old.
I live in Venice beach with my wife Meg who is 36 years old and my two teenage daughters Kim and Liv who are 14 and 16 years old.
So i work in my own small business i am an expert on plumbing and all new technologies that are available for today’s plumbing for both larger and smaller projects.
My story is that my father came from money, but he gambled on everything and ended up drinking himself to death in a small apartment in Santa Monica that my uncle paid for in his last 15 years.
He was 61 years old and this is more than 20 year ago.
So i saw as a child all the horrible situations my family was put in, me and my mother and sister due to my father always gambling away all of our money.
My parents divorced when i was in high school and i did not see my father very much after he moved out from our home in Hancock park.
I meet him a few times a year at the race track in LA and also a few times when we played cards together in some strange card place.
But his life was gambling 24/7 and he bet on the horses,sportsbetting and he played poker and even the slot machines.
I never thought that i would walk a mile in his shoes, but that is exactly what happen to me and my family.
I was not really betting or gambling until around 2005, i started to get a lot of work in the Las Vegas housing boom in 2003 and in 2005 i was one night taken by a client to a casino and i manage to turn 500 dollars into 8250 dollars, i remember that devilish sum so well, since it is this win that started my journey towards what the Nega program calls gambling hell.
So then it became second nature for me to visit the casinos after i was done working.
Usually i arrived on Wednesdays in Vegas and i did not leave until Sunday afternoon.
I could have driven home on Friday afternoon but because i wanted to to stay and gamble so i did not even care to go home over the weekend to my family, just so i could gamble instead 18 h a day.
Like for everyone else it usually starts with a win that triggers your brain to thinking that HEY i won last time , maybe i can do it again, and then the ugly cycle has started like it usually does for most people.
So i started to drop 10.000 here and 12.000 there, and it took around 10 years from 2005 to 2015 until i had emptied all of my families savings including my daughters college funds.
My wife found out and she was very upset which she had every right to be, i had betrayed my own loving family, by emptying out our savings.
So a long story short, we went to couples counseling and i promised not to gamble ever again.
So then 2016-2017 went well and we started saving again, a bit here and a bit there, and i felt that hey i have no gambling problem what so ever.
In January 2018 i am in Vegas again and i am meeting a client who likes to party so we visit a casino, which i have stayed away from by living in Motels not on the strip for the past 2 years time, when i work in Vegas.
I get drunk that night and i start to bet again that evening and now i am hitting my all time low for the next 22 months time.
Between 2005 and 2015 i have lost 700.0000 dollars, but between 2018 and late 2019 i lose another 924.000 dollars on sportsbetting and slot machines in Vegas.
So i have emptied my 401K to get access after penalties to 968.0000 dollars and 924.000 dollars is the sum that i lost in 22 months time.
The last two weekends in Nov 2019 i lost 232.000 dollars in two weeks time and that was it.I remember i had two 50.000 dollar paralys on NHL and NFL with two games in on both out of three and then i missed the third game on both parlays.
In Nhl i had two teams over 2.5 goals in, and then the third team Minnesota scored two goal in the first period and then they lost the game 2-4, so they had 40 min and 7! powerplays and still they did not score one mire that i really needed.
In the NFL parlay i missed by 2 points when my team misses a very easy field goal attempt in the last quarter.
Because i was so behind financially that i did not even bet on single games i did parlays instead to try and win more.
So that Sunday morning waking up in Vegas , then and there i had hit rock bottom, i had lost all of my money and my families money in the process, and i had let everybody down, including myself.
When i drove home from Vegas to LA there where many dark thought during that car ride.
So my wife found out that i had cashed in my 401K and she lost it, and she went online and found the NEGA gambling treatment program , and i was skeptical at first that why should i as a grown man need to hand over all financial decision and access to funds to my wife.
But she made it it crystal clear there and then, either i accept help or she would divorce me, the choice for me was easy i love my wife and my family i can not lose them.
Now almost 6 months later i feel a relief that i have no access to money or funds and i really do not even think about betting or gambling at all right now, i have also cancelled all sport channels and i do not even follow sports anymore, if there is some sports on tv i change the channel.
DAMAGE!, So i have created mayhem for my family, and my kids will not be able to attend college until they are 23 instead of 19 as we had planned.
So my kids will work for 4-5 years time full time and pick up as many extra shifts as possible and we will save as a family towards college for 5 years time.
Then i am hoping that at the age of 50 i can start to fill up my 401K again.
But i will be working to 70-75 years at least, because of my gambling addiction.
I am lucky to have a loving family that supports me and that my wife has not left me!.
But my advice to you, young people out there is this, do not play with fire like gambling truly is in every sense of the word.
Take it from me and from many other before me/you that you can not build large casinos or offer sports book if the house does not always win in the end.
The player/gambler will gamble so much that the house always win over time.
So do yourself and your loved ones a huge favor, do not ever start to gamble and if you have already started then please stop!, immediately, before you do to much damage to your life and to your finances.
Take care,
KEN.
Mrlifeadvise response: so this story is very typical it starts with a win and then the brain gets hijacked, and after awhile it has a life of its own, when the gambler is chasing his or her losses until-it all comes crashing down financially and emotionally.
Hi,guys a client who bought NEGA our gambling treatment program wanted to reach out to us and tell his story so it might help somebody-else who is thinking of giving up on gambling and getting healthier lifestyle in the process.
So here is his story.
Hello everybody my name is Tom and i was born in Huntington beach Los Angeles in 1980.
I had a really good childhood with two loving parents and a 2 year older sister in Jen.
In 1995 my parent divorced and it was a mutual decision between my parents and they handled it well.
My sister wanted to stay with my father in LA since she was gonna attend UCLA .
My mother who is a chef got a job out in Las Vegas at one of the big casinos and i moved with here out there in 1996.
Vegas was much smaller than it is today, but we both liked it and i got along well in my new high school and my mother liked her new job.
I spent a lot of time in the casino where my mother worked, but of course i was not aloud to gamble since i was under aged at the time.
Press forward a few years and in 2001 i turn 21 and this is the first time i try and gamble a bit.
I play with the sports book and NFL and NHL mainly, but i also play the slots machines, the card games really never spoke to me.
Not a lot happens for me when it comes to gambling between me turning 21 and me turning 30, i play every week some slots and some sportsbook but it is for under 2000 dollars a week and it is pretty much break even during these 9 years time.
But my life has also changed a lot during this time period, where i have gone from a young man to a business owner.
I have started my own plumbing business at the age of 24 after going as an apprentice for several years with an older gentlemen that i really liked called Sal, he is sadly no longer with us, but he thought me the ins and outs of the plumbing world and i did and still do both commercial and private contracts for plumbing work.
The amount of houses being built in Las Vegas in the years of 2000-2008 was extreme, and i had in 2006 , five employees in my plumbing business.
By the time of the financial crisis in 2009 that changed everything in Vegas i had accumulated two 5 bedroom houses one that i lived in and one that i rented out.
They where value to 2 million dollars in 2008 and in 2010 they where valued to 1.4 million dollars.
And i had some other assets also like stocks and bonds.
All of this had come from my some what successful plumbing business.
When the subprime mortgage crisis hit in late 2007-2008 we started to lose all of our jobs, then we had several larger builders that went out of business and we had big invoices that where outstanding towards us, that we where never able to collect anything on.
So in a period of around 6 months everything changed, i closed my LLC and had to let all my employees go and then i started a new LLC and worked alone with more basic plumbing stuff in the Vegas and Henderson area.
I had no private debt and i had my houses and some other assets.
I But i had much more free time on my hands in 2010 so i started to hang more and more at the casinos both with the slots and in the sport book section, and BOY was this a mistake to say the least.
Looking back slowly i was getting sucked into the world of day time gambling and i started slowly to increase my gambling limits.
I had always had always kept my limit the same and it was 1000 dollars a week as a maximum loss that was acceptable for me at the time.
So in 5 years from 2010 to 2015 i manged to lose 723.000 dollars during that time frame.
So i had to sell my rental property to pay of my debts, half of this sum was on sports book and half was on the slot machines.
So here in 2015 i know that i need to quit and quit quickly, with my gambling.
But i am already so addicted that i am simply not able to quit on my own, i try different things but nothing works.
Fast forward another 5 years and i we are in early 2020 and i have now lost my house that i lived in and all my saving stocks/bonds and other savings.
But not only that, i have also taken on a 200.000 dollars 12%interest a years loan
And my family knows nothing about by gambling losses.
In Feb 2020 i have just lost 19.000 dollars in slots during an all nighter at the casino and i am so tired and feed up and i just want to go home and sleep,but i have a full days of work in front of me.
on my lunch break i see an add at Facebook for a gambling treatment program called NEGA (never ever gamble again), which i think is quite funny.
I say to myself what to i have to lose, the program was around 50 dollars and i am actually thinking at that moment do i want to spend 50 dollars today, remember i just blow 19.000 dollars in one night and now i am sitting and contemplating do i want to spend this 50 dollars online today, talk about an addicted brain.
But i buy the program and i download the file and then i dont read it for two days, come Saturday and i have no money for gambling so i start to read the manual the treatment program Nega and first i am scared when i read that i need to hand over my finances completely to a family member or a good friend and also that i need to tell everybody that i am an compulsive gambler so they can help me get clean and healthy.
So i sit and think about this during the whole weekend and on Monday evening i call my Sister in Malibu and i tell here everything that i have lost almost 2 million dollars gambling in the past 10 years.
To my surprise she kind of already had a sense that i was gambling way beyond my means for many years, but she did not want to get involved.
I love my sister very much but we only see each other twice a year, but we have always had a good adult relationship.
So she calls my father and mother, and we have a sit down in Los Angeles the upcoming Saturday, my mother has moved back to LA in 2009, which probably also made me gamble much more since i felt more lonely compared to when my mother was also living in Vegas even if we had not been living together for 9 years when she had moved.
So when i drove out to LA i felt a bit nervous but i had sent my family the pdf-file on Nega and they had all read it very carefully and we decided to give it a go, this was in March, then came the COVID-19 so, i decided to move back to LA and i moved in with my mother.
So the way this works now is that my mother handles all my finances true a power of attorney.
So i when i get paid, she handles all my bills including rent to her, when i now live with her full-time.
I was also lucky enough to have a family that could pay of my 12% a year interest loan of 200.000 dollars, and i will be paying them back over a period of 3 years time.
So i will be 43 years old when i have paid of my debts and at that time i do not have any assets to my name besides by work-truck.
So who has my life changed since i started with Nega?, simply put i have no access to money, so i can not play even if i wanted to, i have 10 dollars each day in my pocket for lunch and a coffee and that is all the money i will have access to during at least a 5 year period.
I do not miss the gambling one bit actually, i feel free when i can not gamble, and i dont have to think about weekly losses any-longer.
Me and my mother have also adopted from the shelter a brown pitbull girl called Lea, and i take here to the beach every day in the evening for 2 hours and i just enjoy spending time with here, if i was not getting clean i would have been stuck in Vegas trying to find funds to go and gamble again and lose again and the cycle would have kept on going.
I am grateful that i am lucky enough to have a strong family that is involved in my treatment and that i will be debt free in 3 years time.
I know several people in Vegas that will never be so lucky they will be in debt for the rest of their lives.
The thing i now really like about Nega is that it forces you to come clean to your family and friends and now they are watching your behaviour up close and this in combination not having access to any money/funds for gambling makes the treatment process easier for all parties.
I also do attend as recommended GA (gamblers anonymous) once week to remind me that i will have to live with this disease for the rest of my life.
And i have also come to terms that maybe i should never have access to more than 1000 dollars in my life, and let others safeguard my future assets.
You have to do the work yourself, but the program tells you how you have to do the work.
So i am truly grateful for the second chance that i have been given for a gambling free life.
I have also accepted that dating will be though when i have to live with my mother for 3 years time to get debt free, but i enjoy all the simple things in life, like walking and playing at the beach with my dog LEA and having a good home cooked meal.
I was not happy gambling and i doubt that many people are who are compulsive gamblers.
So join me in a gambling free life, but buying the Nega PROGRAM on this site.
Take care everybody.
Best wishes.
Tom from Huntington beach.
Mrlifeadvise final words.
We are truly happy for Tom that he has been able to use our treatment program to take the fight with gambling addiction.
The sad truth is that compulsive gamblers brains are altered for over and you can not alter them back to the stage the brain was in prior to the gambler becoming an compulsive gambler.
So this is something people needs to learn to live with for the rest of their lives.
The most important thing is to work on yourself every day and make sure that you do not slip up, and start gambling again.
Nothing good can ever come out of gambling.
Thank you for reading.
Mrlifeadvise.
Life and business coaching at its best!
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