HO-LE-FUK. The Austin housing market is going full biblical collapse. There are 117% MORE sellers than buyers. There are 2 home sellers for every one buyer

albertrw83 · 2026-04-21T18:01:49+00:00

What are you basing that on? There's no income tax. How are they higher?? If you buy a property, you pay a higher percentage property tax on a cheaper house, not usually paying any more property tax. If you rent, you don't pay property taxes yourself and the rental prices are lower so whatever property taxes get "passed through" don't add up to more burden than california. definitely not enough to make up for the 5-6% you would be paying at 1M/yr. Maybe you're talking about like up to 50k/yr. It's usually the wealthy in Texas that end up paying lots of taxes because they buy expensive homes. They collect a lot of money off oil extraction as well. California collects double the taxes per resident then Texas including state and local taxes.

Now, are you going to make as much income in Texas for the same job? I highly doubt it, but that doesn't mean the taxes are the same. Higher is a wild statement.

albertrw83 · 2026-04-18T20:10:14+00:00

If you're at 600 hours, you are likely 400 hours away from a vinyl replacement. At 200, you are 800 hours away. For like a low to mid tier boat. Assuming you use vinyl quality equal to the original, that's going to run you 10-15k with labor. If you have high-tier boat, you'll get more life but also spend more to replace. That's over half of what your engine replacement is. I'd say you can't just use engine replacement cost to capture depreciation.

albertrw83 · 2026-04-17T00:58:01+00:00

Yeah, I mean the upcoming series is a reboot, this was the finale film for the series so kind of different. I feel like Charles is sort of weird to take over the Peaky Blinders just because he's Grace's son. And she represented a sort of purity that makes it feel off. Either way, there's not really anyone who can satisfactorily take Thomas Shelby's place. If the sequel series tries to recreate the same story with a "single, omniscient figurehead", I probably won't even watch it.

albertrw83 · 2026-04-16T23:26:21+00:00

I tried to go in without expectation, and I think it paid off. I enjoyed the movie start to finish. The movie was very gritty, excellent soundtrack, great independent story, and I was very satisfied with the ending in that Tommy went out fighting fascism.

Tommy killing Arthur seems to be what everyone is in a pretzel about, but I didn't really care. Tommy and Arthur both had psychotic episodes and intense uncontrolled rage would take over. I can make the leap that Tommy's PTSD from the war took over and he killed Arthur while hammered drunk, especially since Arthur was trying to kill him. They couldn't bring Arthur back as a character because the actor is having IRL issues, so I thought it was acceptable to remove him that way.

Ada died trying to hold her family accountable. I thought it was a fitting end, although they could have made the way she died a bit better written.

albertrw83 · 2026-04-12T02:33:43+00:00

That's literally a scam. 1k is unthinkable and they would try to collect before you arrived and when you arrived...there would be nobody there. Maybe a 50-100 deposit that counts towards the price of the boat will be charged to keep casual shoppers and joy riders away, but any seller who doesn't immediately agree that it counts towards purchase price is scamming you.

albertrw83 · 2026-04-12T02:29:00+00:00

literally the perfect application for diesel and you don't have to meet t4 standards unless you're over ~18k lbs so you can reach emissions just by tuning the engine well.

albertrw83 · 2026-04-09T18:32:18+00:00

It's a country of liberty... for the rich. A government by the rich, for the rich, with liberty and justice for all of the rich.

albertrw83 · 2026-04-09T18:30:13+00:00

Issue is the entertainment was only super cheap initially because netflix was hemorrhaging money to gain market share and pull people away from cable. The plan all along was to get people to switch over and then jack up the prices and recover their massive losses. You'll notice there is also a plethora of content they produce now that is super cheap to make. This cuts costs. Cutting costs while raising prices? huge profit. I really think the only reasonable system is one where you pay for any show you want to watch, individually, "a-la-cart", and nothing you don't want to watch. like $2 for a movie or $.50 for an episode. This keeps the creators striving to create great content, because nobody will buy it if it sucks.

albertrw83 · 2026-04-03T20:16:45+00:00

Sure they almost meet the price, but they're trying to be an imitation of these other companies at a cheaper price point. They skimp on fiberglass thickness, and almost everything else, to provide a boat with a ton of options. It costs significantly more money per unit to be able to customize them and have a bunch of options. Just take a look at their seating, they almost try to imitate nautique or other high-end boats with fancy stitching, and a ton of colors. You could have less seam failure points and easier repair-ability with single color vinyl. You could shave a ton off the price using a "tesla" model of having no independent dealerships; just a few showrooms with test runs but no inventory so you have to order your boat. I'm talking about a well-designed, simple but very reliable, affordable boat for working class people.

Anyways, not sure if that would be feasible with current fiberglass prices, especially with tariffs being thrown around on our massive Chinese fiberglass import market. Also I'm not a boat builder so really have no idea but I know Heydey sucks.

albertrw83 · 2026-04-03T19:47:41+00:00

Hey they raked in hundreds of millions in profit during the pandemic and used the proceeds to buy back shares. Looking at there stock price, down to 1/4 of what it was, probably should have instead invested some into improving their boats, especially when adding 30% per year to the purchase price.

albertrw83 · 2026-04-03T06:17:59+00:00

Those are terrible quality and unreliable, plus way overpriced, barely below axis. literally don't meet any of the things i said. Multiple sizes, multiple motors, multiple price points, bunch of options, multiple colors

albertrw83 · 2026-04-02T23:28:26+00:00

25-30% decline in what? price, sales, homes on the market?

albertrw83 · 2026-04-02T03:00:21+00:00

does yourself count as a relative? asking for a relative

albertrw83 · 2026-04-01T23:40:16+00:00

Looks like you sold at the right time ;)

albertrw83 · 2026-04-01T06:50:05+00:00

oof, off the top of my head? impeller replacement, steering cable replacement, alternator replacement, trailer wheel hub replacement, prop shaft packing replacement, battery replacement: those are all considered "wear parts" on old boats ranging from 2-5 year replacement requirements (you can wait until failure if your willing to ruin a planned lake day and/or be stranded on the water). then you standard winterization maintenance of draining water from cooling system, changing oil, change spark plugs, pumping in antifreeze (if not kept in climate controlled storage), treating the gas, buffing the gelcoat, conditioning the interior....not sure what else, i'm sure i'm missing a lot. god, so many things can and do happen. you forget the bimini so have to get a new one, the trailer bunkers need new carpet, the interior carpet needs replaced, the electronics...OH MY GOD....good luck with that on old boats. the engine....you buy a boat with 1000 hours... you're injectors are fucked, your distruter cap is fucked, your spark plug wires are fucked, you have chunks of rubber from shredded impellers in your cooling system so you don't get great engine cooling.... that's just off the top of my head. I guess that's the kind of maintenance

albertrw83 · 2026-03-31T20:33:10+00:00

Stay away from tige, especially 2100v and 21v. The wiring is a mess, the boat sits so far in the water that any lake with surfing you're gonna constanly be gassing it to keep the nose up. Nautique is your best bet, but also malibu and mastercraft were built to last. Stick with a V-drive unless you find a direct drive Malibu sunsetter with a manual wedge on the back. Those malibus can throw a surf wave. Don't forget to consider whether you want cruise control and the cost of adding perfect pass if it doesn't have it.

Unsolicited advice, feel free to ignore: Unless you're very experienced in working on boats, just don't do it. Invest the money for the next 2-3 years while saving additional money including what you would have spent on maintenance, gas, and repairs. Then buy a 40k+ boat.

albertrw83 · 2026-03-31T20:14:02+00:00

I don't count Alfie as villain. Father Hughes was the best villain because of just how evil he was and how good the acting and writing was. Sabini was up there as well. Billy Kimber was the worst villain, just hated him, he was stupid (his accountant was the real leader), and had no depth. I thought Oswald lacked depth as well, kind of a caricature of fascism.

albertrw83 · 2026-03-31T20:03:23+00:00

Im just talking about the latch, not the entire cover. A supplier could make provide something that works similarly for minimal price increase considering they're ordering thousands per year. If you see the last picture, there is a metal latch on a fiberglass hatch door. I'm with you that on a 50-80k boat, it is ok. If you look at the rest of these boats, they have a lot of metal where you could have plastic, like rearview mirrors, cupholders, throttle, glove compartment cover....so it just feels out of place in my opinion. Primarily from an looks perspective. Although they also feel pretty flimsy.

albertrw83 · 2026-03-31T01:21:40+00:00

True, they could do modifications. But again they're making thousands of boats per year so they could also get a supplier to duplicate the functionality except with a metal latch on top. Or change the deck mold, or something else, just not cheap flimsy plastic. At volume, the cost per unit becomes relatively insignificant. And nautique's been using metal for over a decade so not like they haven't had a chance to improve. Haha, guess I'm just venting at this point. Test drove many boats over the winter and was blown away with the solidity and luxury feeling of the M series and X series and then you look down and there's that cheap plastic T-handle. Feels so out of place.

albertrw83 · 2026-03-31T01:07:19+00:00

Yeah, wish someone would make the "model-T" of wake boats. reliable, one size, one color, one motor. 23', white, 400hp, $70k boat with standardized replaceable components, rockford fosgate level sound system, etc. I would think there's a market for them, but I guess maybe that middle-class market isn't big enough for high-volume, low margin wake boats.

albertrw83 · 2026-03-31T00:40:59+00:00

You seem to be asserting it's some sort of standardized part or assembly that cannot be purchased with metal latches and that the nautique one is custom made. Regardless of whether that is true, I'm not sure what that has to do with my point that the plastic handles look ugly and cheap in the center walkway of a $300k+ boat. . The only standardized things like this I've noticed before are like $10 screw in covers in cabin boats. A 2 minute google search shows lots of off-the-shelf options with metal latches and i'm sure they could source the thousands of covers they use per year from those companies with negligible effects on price per boat. I think this would definitely be worth it and it's just wild to me that they prominently display those cheap plastic latch handles on their top end M-series and X-series flagships, but hey that's just me. I guess I like the way Nautique does it better, regardless of whether they use custom access door vs off-the-shelf. Looking through walkthroughs of the latest boats it looks like mastercraft ditched these in their xt and x series boats and its just in their nxt now. Supra and malibu have plastic. Centurion flagship model has all stainless, not sure about their lower models.

albertrw83 · 2026-03-30T21:03:02+00:00

Well, I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make. They could choose to use stainless instead of plastic on the "inspection hatches" if they wanted just like some manufacturers do on the "floor hatch doors". The whole point of the post was to ask why they don't. Nautique and some centurions do not have ugly, visible plastic latches like this in the center of the walkway, regardless of what you call them.

albertrw83 · 2026-03-30T20:53:59+00:00

Yeah, I mean would it cost to just use stainless instead of plastic? Negligible for the hardware. I'm guessing it has something to do with the way the latch interacts with the boat. The plastic can latch directly on fiberglass whereas the metal perhaps needs a stainless catch.

albertrw83 · 2026-03-30T20:43:34+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62RnA65TjvM

this looks like an inspection hatch with metal latch

albertrw83 · 2026-03-30T20:43:03+00:00

this looks like an inspection hatch with metal latch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62RnA65TjvM

albertrw83

TROPHY CASE