What did we talk about? Below is the Edited Transcript

let’s start a fire

Hey there everyone I’ve got a fascinating story today about a real estate developer that, let’s just be honest, not the best person in the world.

Before that I wanted to go over a few things. One we’re up to 14 subscribers, up from five just last week so thank you all for subscribing. I know that there’s actually more non-family members than family members subscribed so I really appreciate that.

And then, I would love it if you give me a call three one four two seven four three nine six four and told me your stories about renters, neighbors, HOA’s, real estate agents, anything that’s fascinating that you want to talk about. And then, if you don’t want to call me you can always email me at media@deerwoodrealtystl.com. One of the things that I’d really love to talk about a lot is the real estate agents and what always happens to me is I’ll get a story about someone that that feels they were done wrong by their real estate agent or their real estate agent was a moron. And, I don’t know if I wasn’t in the deal so I have no idea what what was going on. I do find it fascinating people will tell me real estate stories .. like oh I had a bad real estate agent or anything and I’m standing right there. Didn”t think to call me? It’s like now you’re telling me how bad the other person is… I don’t understand. But I will bring a perspective I think that you can relate to. At least in those types of stories sometimes it’s not the agent. You know sometimes it’s the other side and then other times it’s 100 percent the agent. So we’ll just dissect some of those things and then of course with the HOAs and the neighbor disputes, I just… those make me laugh all the time.

But today’s story, not that funny. We’ve got a real estate developer that……really not a great fellow.

For those of you who don’t know me my name is John Schink and I am the founder and managing broker of Deerwood Realty here in St. Louis. We’re a small firm. We operate mostly out of St. Louis County, St Louis City, St. Charles and Jeffco. So if you’re you know, needing context as to who I am that’s who I am. I’m a broker in the afternoons and weekends I show houses and work with buyers and sellers, and in the mornings I podcast. So that’s that’s kind of how it goes.

So today’s story let’s get to that. Today’s story is a fascinating one. It’s from the department of justice and the headline is real estate developers sentenced over five years in prison for conspiring to commit arson. And it says that almost a decade ago the defendant decided that he could use his power and influence as a real estate developer to burn families out of their homes homes that he wanted to develop and flip at a profit.

And then the department of justice everybody seems to have these, I don’t know from the government, seems to have these corny lines and so let me read this corny line to you and the reason why they have it is because people like me will read it it says, “and if you’re a real estate developer in this city and think that you’re above the law then think again unless you want to see your own plans go up in smoke.”

Okay, so getting through the story it says “between 2011 and 2013 the defendant directed his co-defendant and co-conspirator to set multiple fires at resident residential buildings that the defendant wished to develop and was planning to acquire or had recently acquired. The purpose of the fires was to terrorize and thereby drive out the occupants of these buildings whose lawful removal achieved through eviction or voluntary buyout payments proved to be too burdensome for the defendant either because of the time or cost involved to achieve a vacant premises otherwise deemed ripe for development.” Then it goes on to say, “although no person was physically harmed as a result of these fires certain of the fires resulted in substantial damages particularly in the case of a single-family home in Albertson, New York which was largely incinerated and from which the members of the family who lived there escaped with their lives but not any of their multiple pets who were burned alive, or their belongings, which were largely destroyed.”

So yeah, that’s the real estate developer out of New York. And so, as usual, I have questions. Let’s just get to them right now.

So the first one. So this guy thought it’s better to set fire to the buildings than to have them evicted? I just think that’s disgusting under any circumstance. And, obviously it’s against the law. So, he’s been put in prison, but can you imagine? Can you imagine renting from this fellow? And you have to worry that your building is going to get burned down? Your house is going to be burned down? I mean it’s just too much

And so, it’s not the neighborly thing to do. I wanna kind of expand on some of the stuff we talk about. You know, What do you do? or What can you do? and What would be the neighborly thing to do? And you know, in this case it’s not a neighbor it’s a landlord or developer, so what he chose to do doesn’t seem to be the right thing to do. I can’t think of anyone that says, Oh well, I can’t…. these tenants are really pain in my butt. I’ll just burn their house down!

That’s just wrong. And then going along with that I’m a real estate broker and there are people that hate real estate agents and I’m well aware of it. We charge too much. We’re no good. We’re stupid. I get it. I hear it all the time. And I understand real estate agents get it but real estate developers, depending on what kind of development is, they get it or they don’t. But but this guy. This is reason number one that people hate real estate developers. I mean, can you imagine the gall to think that it’s okay to burn someone’s house down? Well, or to burn your house down with someone else in it? I mean sometimes there’s a reason why people have labels and certainly for this guy.

And then, I wanted to say that home fires are catastrophic. I don’t know if you’ve ever met somebody that’s had a house fire but they lose everything, or mostly everything, and it’s not like they can just go right back to their house and everything’s fine. It’s a terrible situation. So this, Even if there was no one living at the house at the time, this guy decided to to burn these houses down. It’s not the right thing to do. It’s just terrible. And so that leads to my next thing.

He gets just over five years of prison time.

And what do you think about that? You know, I’m stupid enough to still believe in redemption of people.

But at the same time it just seems like to me five years isn’t enough.

That was that was a terrible thing to do. And you know in 2021 the idea that the guy is not going to get caught and he did it. They set five fires total. I mean, they can figure out chemically what people use to start fires all the time. I mean, it just, to me it just wasn’t a well thought out plan. Just dumb.

And finally, one thing I wanted to mention: we live in a world where it seems we’re always focusing on the positive and there’s nothing ever bad or evil. I think that’s totally wrong. When I was growing up we had the soviet union and the soviet union was the was the enemy. It was communism. And we all had a kind of, a unified goal to defeat communism. Now you know, you can argue if that was a good thing or a bad thing but it did teach us that there was evil in the world. And now with the social media and things like that it’s you know everything’s fun. Everything’s happy. Everything’s great. And then it’s like until someone gets murdered. like And that’s kind of what I wanted to bring up there’s evil people in this world and this guy this is just evil. This is bad.

You know, be aware. Start paying attention to your surroundings. Start paying attention to the people you do business with. You know myself, we’re a small enough brokerage. If I don’t have a good vibe about a person. If they’re,you know, a jerk to my agents or a jerk to me, just not not good people, I don’t have anything to do with them. It’s life is too short. And I don’t know if it modifies their behavior but I just not interested in dealing with those kind of people. And so I want to say the same for you out there is just know that there’s bad in the world. I mean this is a convicted felon! I mean, this is no doubt that he that he did it. Just be careful out there.

With that less than happy note I’m going to head on out. Thank you for all the support. It’s been wild this week and I’ll catch you on the next one.

Source Link: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/real-estate-developer-sentenced-over-five-years-prison-conspiring-commit-arson