In my business I truly don’t care if my client is Republican, Democrat, Liberal or has never voted. The problem happens when I let my own political opinion slip, which I did in my most recent hardcopy newsletter. I received a very nice call from one of my neighbors. She's been getting my newsletter for the past 16 years and she advised me to stick with talking about real estate. It was good advice, and the thought occurred to me that I might be missing out on future business because of the following column I wrote:
“On Friday morning we woke up to more economic turmoil with our president threatening 50% tariffs on goods from the EU if they didn’t come to the negotiating table quickly, and 25% tariffs on Apple products if they didn’t start making their products in the USA. This was on top of the House passing of the Big Beautiful Bill that could both help and hurt the real estate market. It’s helpful because homeowners will be able to write off up to $40,000 in property taxes instead of only $10,000. This will be particularly beneficial to homeowners in Marin County because $10,000 in property tax bills covers about a $750,000 house. The median price in Marin is nearly double that number.
The BBB is hurtful, aside from Medicaid & SNAP cuts, because it will add up to $4 trillion to our national debt, which has made the interest rates on government treasuries go up and fuel another rise in our mortgage interest rates. The rate on the 30 year treasury is now over 5%, and as a rule of thumb the mortgage rates are usually 2% higher which puts us back to 7%. Higher rates have put a damper on what could have been a more robust selling season.
If you’ve got the right property at the right price, it’s still going to move fairly quickly. I recently closed escrow on 953 Patricia Way in Terra Linda for the asking price of $1,429,000. We painted the interior, refinished the wood floors, staged and did about $4,000 in pool repairs. The results speak for themselves as we received an all cash asking price offer with a 10 day closing. Right place, right price, right buyer.”
I’ll admit I crossed the line when I wrote, “aside from Medicaid and SNAP cuts”. In my first version of the newsletter I didn’t include that, but my conscious wouldn’t let me keep it out of the final version. My neighbor appreciated my take on the tariffs, but the fact is that these wild, 2am toilet tweet tariff swings are hurting our economy. I didn’t mention it, but economic uncertainty, driven by the current administration, is keeping a lot of buyers on the sidelines right now. I could have gotten a lot more political had I gone there.
That column was in my 94th edition of the Andy's Patch newsletter. I don’t think I’ve referenced politics even a handful of times in over the years because I know it can alienate potential clients. Despite majoring in Political Science, even tangentially I don’t want to write about anything political. This time I couldn’t help myself. My bad.
It could have been a lot worse. I felt like the column was very little opinion and much more information and analysis. Unfortunately, politics and economics often intertwine. These days people can be very sensitive and territorial when it comes to their political beliefs. I’ve been frustrated with our economy this year and how the housing market has been effected and infected by politics, which is why I let my guard down. In the words of Forest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.