If you are interested in female advancement and equal opportunities for women, consider watching the remaining matches of the women's soccer World Cup in Australia. Overnight, the quarter final match between host country Australia (the Matildas) and France was one of the most iconic sporting clashes (female or male) that I have seen. Canada's women were bundled out of the tournament 4-0 by the Matildas, but are the reigning Olympic champions and we have Christine Sinclair as our ambassador for the game. Sinclair is a noble and gifted athlete from Burnaby BC. She is a role model for all youngsters and the world's highest goal scorer. More goals than even Messi and Ronaldo. I love football (soccer) and I love how the women's game has attained such high quality at the elite level. I have many connections to the game, including being the business manager for a young Canadian female player who is currently making the jump from university to play professionally in Spain. We found her an agent in Europe, had meetings with the agent earlier this year in Montpellier, France, and are almost finished negotiating terms with her new club. Canada's governing body Soccer Canada is in disarray though because of inept management. Nonetheless, the women are one of the world's elite teams and the men played in their the second ever World Cup last year after a sudden improvement of form under an inspiring coach (John Herman), who moved to the men's program after elevating the Canadian women's squad. Let's give the women's game a boost and throw our support behind the national team. And let's watch some iconic athletes Down Under at a tournament that is now at the semi final stage. The final matchups are: Spain v Sweden (Tuesday) Australia v. England (Wednesday) Australia v England, the old colonial rivalry, will be a barn burner! UPDATE...congratulations 2023 Women's Football World Champions Spain. And a special shout-out to England goalkeeper Mary Earps who delivered the loudest F-Bomb ever seen but not heard on live television after saving a Spanish penalty in the final. You didn't need to be a lip-reader to figure out that Earps was rather chuffed with herself. I've no idea who the F-Bomb was directed at. It was more of a cosmic curse ridding herself of life's unearthly baggage in a moment of unbridled relief and joy. Look it up., It will make you feel better.
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AuthorCameron Morrell has been developing and investing globally in real estate since the 1990s. He works with his limited partners to acquire land and build multifamily dwellings across Canada. Did you know that homeowners in Australia sell their real estate by auction? Did you also know Canada has begun doing this too for farmland? Australia first. Would-be buyers arrive at the house nice and early and mill around the front gate. The sellers, or their agent, hire an auctioneer. Bidders need to register with the auctioneer in advance and are given a number. The sellers usually set a reserve price – the minimum amount that will be accepted – but no one knows what it is. The auctioneer will usually start low and try to build energy in the crowd as excited bidders up one another with the price they are willing to pay. Sometimes, if the auction energy is flat, the reserve price won’t be met. In that event, even if you made the highest bid, the house will be ‘passed in’ and the auction is over. People leave empty-handed. In reality, this stalemate often leads to bidders making a better offer in private one-on-one negotiations and the house sells anyway. If the invisible reserve price is met, the house is now ‘on the market’ and bidders work hard to win the auction. Willing buyers raise their hand and each bid is acknowledged by the auctioneer. Australian house auctions feature little of the hyper, slurred, speed language that you see on TV at cattle yards. Bidding is slower. When bidders fall away and only one is left, a final price is declared and ‘the hammer falls’. You just bought yourself a home.. and usually for far too much. The successful party is expected to write a deposit cheque on the spot for 5-10% of the house price and the balance is due upon the formal signing of contracts. Why Auctions are Bad for BuyersAuctions favour the seller. They play into crowd psychology in which people’s emotions get whipped into a frenzy and they can’t stop bidding, even when they have exceeded the limit they set for themselves prior to the auction. This emotions-fed process feeds into an area of behavioural economics called heuristics. Despite claims by traditional economists that human beings are predictable in their behaviour, responding rationally to incentives and rejecting any option that does not optimize their utility (enjoyment), we all know this is wrong. Every one of us makes foolish decisions on a daily basis. Sometimes we even know the negative consequences of those decisions advance, and no matter how painful the known consequences, we still make the wrong choice. One heuristics finding is that human beings are more afraid of losing something they already possess than acquiring something they don’t have. In plain English, people with little are willing to take risks to build their future. Those with much - a car, a house, a good job and so on - hunker down because they don’t want to lose anything. They stop pursing risk and become conservative, often to their detriment. A notable exception to this heuristic is Elon Musk. He made a fortune as one of the team that built PayPal. Instead of buying a mountain retreat and diving into his money pile for a daily swim, he reinvested his entire fortune into new business ventures: Tesla, Space X, Solar City, the Boring Company, and so on. He almost bankrupted himself in the process. In June 2023, an interviewer questioned Musk about paying too much for Twitter. He also asked him how he felt about all the public hate he receives, and how his constant tweets about political issues wind people up, costing him and his shareholders revenue as people turned away from Twitter. Musk took an inordinately long pause – the kind that is so length that it would normally be broadcast; the kind of pause that would make you feel like someone were having an aneurism if you were at a dinner party. Think Mitch McConnell 2023. That long. Musk used the massive pause to remember a line a character spoke in the 1987 movie The Princess Bride: “You know, I’m reminded of the scene in the Princess Bride…great movie …where he confronts the person who killed his father and he says, ‘Offer me money. Offer me power. I don’t care!” Few people could utter that phrase and mean it. But Musk’s behaviour – as strange as to may seem to many – supports it. Why Buyers Always Lose at Real Estate AuctionsBuying anything at auction is a recipe for paying too much. It leads to impassioned, emotional decision making while under duress. An audience of onlookers, with no stake in the game, will egg you on. You egg yourself on because auctions are a form of casino. You get trigger happy and can’t stop yourself form putting in one more bid (or five more bids). That leads to a fast-swirling vortex of responses from competing bidders. Everyone just want to win, regardless of the consequences, when they should be thinking about the rational consequences of overpaying for an asset. Very few people possess the dispassionate, critical thinking-controlled mindset needed to succeed at an auction. They fear losing what is ‘theirs’ (which is the fleeting moment when their latest bid is the highest one) rather than thinking about overpaying in the heat of the moment. Auctions lead to speculation, which is not investing. Speculation relies on luck for a successful outcome. Investing is a rational activity that requires strong critical thinking skills and patience. You will be greatly rewarded for the deals you don’t do than most of the ones you do end up pulling the trigger on. Finally, there is also the scourge of dummy bids. Sellers plant fake buyers in the crowd and who bid up the price. Buyers end up bidding against themselves and end up paying far more than the property's true market value. Dummy bidding is illegal in Australia, but, just like on eBay, it still takes place. Did you know that Canada has entered the business of auctioning real estate?https://www.clhbid.com/ allows you to bid on farmland across the country. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land are currently on sale at this website. One listing that caught my eye is a monster spread of 74,000 acres near Kelowna, British Columbia, with separate auctions for the livestock and farm equipment. The property is being pitched unabashedly at Americans, especially those from California. It highlights how lavish the ranch house is, the quality of its high-end finishes, its stunning design, and how you can even access the property with your own helicopter. Here’s the sales blurb: Yellowstone North of 49 With a combination of deeded acres and grazing land, this incredible 73,670-Acre working ranch offers an opportunity to own a piece of the wild west while relaxing in the lap of luxury. The bespoke estate home and additional guest house are perfectly designed for entertaining in the heart of British Columbia. Located a mere hour's drive from Kelowna, BC, the ranch boasts 5 Zimmatic pivots, numerous water wells and tens of thousands of acres for the cow herd. https://www.clhbid.com/auctions/yellowstonenorthof49/ The sales video uses the deep, raspy male voiceover usually reserved for truck commercials and even compares the BC ranch to the one in the Netflix series Yellowstone, telling bidders to “get dirty and dusty”, “all while diversifying your wealth portfolio” and creating “your own Yellowstone empire in British Columbia”. I have no affiliation to CLH Bid nor this Kelowna property. I’m just taken aback by how beautiful this home and property are.
The online auction begins 8am August 14, 2023 and opening bid is set at $5,900,000 CAD. BYO helicopter and U.S. passport. Best, Cameron My mission is to help busy people invest in large & lucrative real estate development projects they would otherwise not have access to. |
Cameron MorrellBusiness Educator Archives
November 2024
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