#estate sale liquidators

[jerryantiques]

Unlocking the Best Estate Liquidation Services in New Jersey

In the realm of estate liquidation, finding the right services tailored to your needs can be akin to navigating a maze. Fear not, for we are here to guide you through the intricate world of estate liquidation NJ. With our comprehensive expertise and dedication to excellence, we are committed to providing you with unparalleled assistance every step of the way.

Understanding Estate Liquidation in New Jersey

Before delving into the specifics of estate liquidation New Jersey services, it's imperative to grasp the concept itself. In essence, estate liquidation encompasses the process of efficiently and effectively disposing of the assets within an estate. Whether it's due to downsizing, relocation, or the unfortunate passing of a loved one, estate liquidation ensures a seamless transition while maximizing the value of assets.

What Are Estate Liquidation Services?

Estate liquidation services encompass a wide array of offerings designed to facilitate the smooth execution of the liquidation process. From conducting estate sales Montclair NJ to appraising assets and managing the logistics of liquidation sales, these services cater to the diverse needs of clients in New Jersey and beyond.

How Do Estate Sale Liquidators Assist?

Estate sale liquidators play a pivotal role in orchestrating successful estate sales New Jersey. Leveraging their expertise in pricing, marketing, and sales strategy, these professionals work tirelessly to attract prospective buyers and maximize returns for the estate. By meticulously assessing the value of each item and employing proven sales tactics, estate sale liquidators ensure optimal outcomes for their clients.

Unparalleled Estate Liquidation Services in New Jersey

When it comes to Estate sale liquidators in New Jersey, excellence is non-negotiable. As industry leaders, we take pride in offering a comprehensive suite of services aimed at exceeding our clients' expectations.

Tailored Solutions for Every Client

We understand that each estate is unique, and as such, we approach every project with a customized strategy tailored to the client's specific needs. Whether you require assistance with downsizing, relocation, or managing the assets of a deceased loved one, our team is equipped to handle every aspect of the liquidation process with precision and professionalism.

Seamless Execution, Exceptional Results

From the initial consultation to the final sale, our team is committed to delivering a seamless experience marked by efficiency, transparency, and superior results. With a keen eye for detail and a relentless pursuit of perfection, we leave no stone unturned in our quest to maximize the value of your assets and ensure stress-free estate liquidation sales.

Transparent Pricing, No Hidden Costs

At the core of our ethos lies a commitment to transparency and integrity. Unlike other estate liquidation services that may surprise you with hidden fees and exorbitant charges, we believe in upfront pricing and honest communication every step of the way. With us, you can rest assured knowing that your estate sale NJ is always our top priority.

Elevate Your Estate Liquidation Experience Today

Don't settle for subpar estate liquidation services when you can partner with the best in the liquidation estate sales business. With our unwavering dedication to excellence and a track record of success, we are poised to elevate your liquidation experience to unprecedented heights. Contact us today to learn more about how we can assist you with all your estate liquidation needs in New Jersey and beyond.

[downsizemanagers]

Downsize Managers | Estate Liquidator in Bridgeport CT

Ours is among the most renowned Auction Houses in Bridgeport CT. We offer a wide range of items, from rare antiques to modern collectibles. We are passionate about providing a fair and transparent bidding process for both buyers and sellers. Furthermore, we have a well-earned reputation as the best Estate Liquidator in Bridgeport CT. With years of industry experience, we have the expertise and knowledge to handle any size estate. We take pride in our professional and compassionate approach to every client, making the process as stress-free as possible. So, get in touch with us today to find your next treasure.

[importanttidalwavereview]

Fountain Hills Estate Sales | Professional Estate Liquidation Services - Fresh Start Estate Sale

Looking for trusted Fountain Hills estate sales services? Fresh Start Estate Sale provides expert estate liquidation and downsizing solutions in Fountain Hills. Our dedicated team ensures a smooth process, helping you sell valuable items from furniture to collectibles. Whether you are moving, downsizing, or managing an estate, we deliver a stress-free and efficient experience.

[shawnrealty]

Maximize Your Estate Sale with Professional Liquidators | Tips for Downsizing Homeowners

Some individuals unknowingly sell valuable items at a loss when downsizing or managing an estate. Estate liquidators can assist with pricing, marketing, and selling, but it's crucial to vet them carefully. Prepare by organizing, researching values...

Someone pays $10 for $2,000 worth of gold coins and $30 for a $3,000 1960’s Gibson acoustic guitar.   These are extreme examples, but some homeowners sell their family estate items at big losses because they didn’t know the values of those items.  Also, some coffee mugs sell for $100 and vintage bottle caps sell for $20 each. If you are downsizing and have time, then you may research sale…

[estatemax]

All about EstateMAX! A Full Service, Estate Sale and Move Management Company- Take What You Love & Leave the Rest to EstateMAX

                             

[rapidflowflex]

KIRBY

WELCOME TO KIRBY'S ESTATE SALES, Kirby and his team of qualified professionals can assist you through all stages of Estate Liquidation and Clean Out services. Our full-service, turn-key company provides estate sales (organizing, staging, pricing, on-site management of sales, and removal of items after the sale) as well as item appraisals and complete clean.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

A decade ago, a hedge fund had an improbable viral comedy hit: a 294-page slide deck explaining why Olive Garden was going out of business, blaming the failure on too many breadsticks and insufficiently salted pasta-water:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/000092189514002031/ex991dfan14a06297125_091114.pdf

Everyone loved this story. As David Dayen wrote for Salon, it let readers "mock that silly chain restaurant they remember from their childhoods in the suburbs" and laugh at "the silly hedge fund that took the time to write the world’s worst review":

https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/the_real_olive_garden_scandal_why_greedy_hedge_funders_suddenly_care_so_much_about_breadsticks/

But – as Dayen wrote at the time, the hedge fund that produced that slide deck, Starboard Value, was not motivated by dissatisfaction with bread-sticks. They were "activist investors" (finspeak for "rapacious assholes") with a giant stake in Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden's parent company. They wanted Darden to liquidate all of Olive Garden's real-estate holdings and declare a one-off dividend that would net investors a billion dollars, while literally yanking the floor out from beneath Olive Garden, converting it from owner to tenant, subject to rent-shocks and other nasty surprises.

They wanted to asset-strip the company, in other words ("asset strip" is what they call it in hedge-fund land; the mafia calls it a "bust-out," famous to anyone who watched the twenty-third episode of The Sopranos):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

Starboard didn't have enough money to force the sale, but they had recently engineered the CEO's ouster. The giant slide-deck making fun of Olive Garden's food was just a PR campaign to help it sell the bust-out by creating a narrative that they were being activists* to save this badly managed disaster of a restaurant chain.

*assholes

Starboard was bent on eviscerating Darden like a couple of entrail-maddened dogs in an elk carcass:

https://web.archive.org/web/20051220005944/http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~solan/dogsinelk/

They had forced Darden to sell off another of its holdings, Red Lobster, to a hedge-fund called Golden Gate Capital. Golden Gate flogged all of Red Lobster's real estate holdings for $2.1 billion the same day, then pissed it all away on dividends to its shareholders, including Starboard. The new landlords, a Real Estate Investment Trust, proceeded to charge so much for rent on those buildings Red Lobster just flogged that the company's net earnings immediately dropped by half.

Dayen ends his piece with these prophetic words:

Olive Garden and Red Lobster may not be destinations for hipster Internet journalists, and they have seen revenue declines amid stagnant middle-class wages and increased competition. But they are still profitable businesses. Thousands of Americans work there. Why should they be bled dry by predatory investors in the name of “shareholder value”? What of the value of worker productivity instead of the financial engineers?

Flash forward a decade. Today, Dayen is editor-in-chief of The American Prospect, one of the best sources of news about private equity looting in the world. Writing for the Prospect, Luke Goldstein picks up Dayen's story, ten years on:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-05-22-raiding-red-lobster/

It's not pretty. Ten years of being bled out on rents and flipped from one hedge fund to another has killed Red Lobster. It just shuttered 50 restaurants and declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ten years hasn't changed much; the same kind of snark that was deployed at the news of Olive Garden's imminent demise is now being hurled at Red Lobster.

Instead of dunking on free bread-sticks, Red Lobster's grave-dancers are jeering at "Endless Shrimp," a promotional deal that works exactly how it sounds like it would work. Endless Shrimp cost the chain $11m.

Which raises a question: why did Red Lobster make this money-losing offer? Are they just good-hearted slobs? Can't they do math?

Or, you know, was it another hedge-fund, bust-out scam?

Here's a hint. The supplier who provided Red Lobster with all that shrimp is Thai Union. Thai Union also owns Red Lobster. They bought the chain from Golden Gate Capital, last seen in 2014, holding a flash-sale on all of Red Lobster's buildings, pocketing billions, and cutting Red Lobster's earnings in half.

Red Lobster rose to success – 700 restaurants nationwide at its peak – by combining no-frills dining with powerful buying power, which it used to force discounts from seafood suppliers. In response, the seafood industry consolidated through a wave of mergers, turning into a cozy cartel that could resist the buyer power of Red Lobster and other major customers.

This was facilitated by conservation efforts that limited the total volume of biomass that fishers were allowed to extract, and allocated quotas to existing companies and individual fishermen. The costs of complying with this "catch management" system were high, punishingly so for small independents, bearably so for large conglomerates.

Competition from overseas fisheries drove consolidation further, as countries in the global south were blocked from implementing their own conservation efforts. US fisheries merged further, seeking economies of scale that would let them compete, largely by shafting fishermen and other suppliers. Today's Alaskan crab fishery is dominated by a four-company cartel; in the Pacific Northwest, most fish goes through a single intermediary, Pacific Seafood.

These dominant actors entered into illegal collusive arrangements with one another to rig their markets and further immiserate their suppliers, who filed antitrust suits accusing the companies of operating a monopsony (a market with a powerful buyer, akin to a monopoly, which is a market with a powerful seller):

https://www.classaction.org/news/pacific-seafood-under-fire-for-allegedly-fixing-prices-paid-to-dungeness-crabbers-in-pacific-northwest

Golden Gate bought Red Lobster in the midst of these fish wars, promising to right its ship. As Goldstein points out, that's the same promise they made when they bought Payless shoes, just before they destroyed the company and flogged it off to Alden Capital, the hedge fund that bought and destroyed dozens of America's most beloved newspapers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print

Under Golden Gate's management, Red Lobster saw its staffing levels slashed, so diners endured longer wait times to be seated and served. Then, in 2020, they sold the company to Thai Union, the company's largest supplier (a transaction Goldstein likens to a Walmart buyout of Procter and Gamble).

Thai Union continued to bleed Red Lobster, imposing more cuts and loading it up with more debts financed by yet another private equity giant, Fortress Investment Group. That brings us to today, with Thai Union having moved a gigantic amount of its own product through a failing, debt-loaded subsidiary, even as it lobbies for deregulation of American fisheries, which would let it and its lobbying partners drain American waters of the last of its depleted fish stocks.

Dayen's 2020 must-read book Monopolized describes the way that monopolies proliferate, using the US health care industry as a case-study:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

After deregulation allowed the pharma sector to consolidate, it acquired pricing power of hospitals, who found themselves gouged to the edge of bankruptcy on drug prices. Hospitals then merged into regional monopolies, which allowed them to resist pharma pricing power – and gouge health insurance companies, who saw the price of routine care explode. So the insurance companies gobbled each other up, too, leaving most of us with two or fewer choices for health insurance – even as insurance prices skyrocketed, and our benefits shrank.

Today, Americans pay more for worse healthcare, which is delivered by health workers who get paid less and work under worse conditions. That's because, lacking a regulator to consolidate patients' interests, and strong unions to consolidate workers' interests, patients and workers are easy pickings for those consolidated links in the health supply-chain.

That's a pretty good model for understanding what's happened to Red Lobster: monopoly power and monopsony power begat more monopolies and monoposonies in the supply chain. Everything that hasn't consolidated is defenseless: diners, restaurant workers, fishermen, and the environment. We're all fucked.

Decent, no-frills family restaurant are good. Great, even. I'm not the world's greatest fan of chain restaurants, but I'm also comfortably middle-class and not struggling to afford to give my family a nice night out at a place with good food, friendly staff and reasonable prices. These places are easy pickings for looters because the people who patronize them have little power in our society – and because those of us with more power are easily tricked into sneering at these places' failures as a kind of comeuppance that's all that's due to tacky joints that serve the working class.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

[dejavuestateliquidator]

Estate Liquidation Auctions: Everything You Need to Know

An estate liquidation auction is a sale of all or part of the contents of an estate, typically held after the death of the owner. Estate liquidation auctions can also be held to downsize an estate, settle a divorce, or simply to sell off unwanted items.

[estateinventoryservices]

Efficient Estate Clean Out Services

Our efficient estate cleanout services offer a streamlined process with expert guidance. Our experienced team handles sorting, organizing, and proper disposal of items, including hazardous materials. Maximize asset recovery as we identify valuable items for potential sale or auction. Trust us to ease the burden and stress of estate cleanouts with professionalism and care.

[bluemoonestatesalesspartan]

Blue Moon Estate Sales - Spartanburg, SC | Estate liquidator in Spartanburg SC

Our Estate Sales Company in Laurens SC, specializes in helping clients navigate the complex process of liquidating an estate. Our experienced team can handle everything from organizing and pricing to marketing and conducting the sale. We take pride in providing a seamless and hassle-free experience for our clients, ensuring they receive maximum value for their items and peace of mind. Moreover, we have a well-earned reputation as the most notable Estate Liquidator in Spartanburg SC. Our goal is to create monetary benefits for you by helping you get rid of unwanted or unused items – ensuring seamless estate sales. So, if you need our expert assistance, call us today.

[jerryantiques]

Maximizing Your Success with Estate Sales in New Jersey

Welcome to our comprehensive guide on navigating the world of estate sale NJ! As estate liquidators based in the vibrant state of New Jersey, we understand the intricacies and nuances involved in orchestrating successful estate sales liquidation events. Whether you're a seasoned investor or a first-time attendee, our expertise and dedication to excellence ensure that your experience with estate liquidation services is nothing short of exceptional.

Understanding Estate Sales

What Are Estate Sales?

Estate sales NJ are unique events where the possessions of a home are sold off, typically due to major life events such as a death, relocation, or downsizing. These sales offer a diverse array of items, ranging from furniture and antiques to collectibles and household goods.

The Role of Estate Liquidators

Estate liquidators play a crucial role in facilitating the smooth execution of estate sales liquidation. They are experts in pricing items, marketing the sale, managing logistics, and maximizing profits for the estate.

Key Factors for Success

Strategic Planning

Successful estate liquidators NJ sales require meticulous planning and organization. From setting a date to sorting and staging items, every aspect must be carefully coordinated to ensure a seamless experience for buyers and sellers alike.

Effective Marketing

Utilizing various channels such as social media, email newsletters, and local advertisements is essential for attracting a diverse pool of buyers to your estate sale NJ. Our team employs cutting-edge marketing strategies to generate buzz and drive foot traffic to your event.

Professional Presentation

First impressions are crucial for estate liquidators New Jersey. By investing in professional staging and presentation, you can elevate the perceived value of your items and entice buyers to make purchases.

Our Commitment to Excellence

We pride ourselves on delivering unparalleled service and results to our clients. With years of experience in the industry, we have established ourselves as leaders in the field of estate liquidation sales. Our dedicated team works tirelessly to exceed your expectations and ensure a successful outcome for your estate sale.

[importanttidalwavereview]

Fountain Hills Estate Sales | Professional Estate Liquidation Services - Fresh Start Estate Sale

Looking for trusted Fountain Hills estate sales services? Fresh Start Estate Sale provides expert estate liquidation and downsizing solutions in Fountain Hills. Our dedicated team ensures a smooth process, helping you sell valuable items from furniture to collectibles. Whether you are moving, downsizing, or managing an estate, we deliver a stress-free and efficient experience.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for refusing to sell something to someone? 🏠

I (20s, male) work in estate liquidation with my aunt (50s, female). At this house, we have a step stool for sale. It’s the same step stool we used during set up, and since it came with the house, we’re selling it.

However, this stepstool is old. It has a crack in the first step, and it bows pretty badly under my weight. (250 lb) I had to go and buy a new step stool that was certified for my weight just because I refuse to die at work.

I guess we forgot to price the step stool, because a woman came up to me asking how much it was. I told her, and then pointed out the damage to it and said it was a pretty weak step stool. I told her,

“Let me be totally honest with you. It isn’t a good step stool. It does it’s job, but it bends pretty terribly under my weight on the first step. I had to go and get another from the store just so we could set up the sale because I didn’t feel this one was safe.”

She thanked me profusely for my honesty. She told me she’d been looking for a step stool for her father with onset dementia, and that it would definitely not hold him if it couldn’t hold me. I then proceeded to tell her where she could get one. (The same place I got mine.)

I guess my aunt overheard me, because she called for me and told me that I shouldn’t be “refusing sales”, and that it was her risk to take by buying it. I said I just wasn’t comfortable knowingly selling a broken step stool under those circumstances. I guess I get where she’s coming from, because the company has been really struggling and we need all the sales we can make. And I also agree that customers should thoroughly check and test items before buying them. My family is divided on the issue, so I want to ask unbiased people for some advice.

AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[estatemax]

100 or so, Angi's (List) and BBB Maryland Real Client Reviews of EstateMAX Services

PODCAST https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeeWOjIciFXuKiyb-tZMjLeG8hxCHU_TX If you’re reading this it might imply you are in the market for an estate sale company. To be more detailed for you, to bore you to death with our great reputation… here is every review EstateMAX has ever been awarded with, to date. It’s hard work. I’ll take every positive word ever…

[rapidflowflex]

KIRBY

WELCOME TO KIRBY'S ESTATE SALES, Kirby and his team of qualified professionals can assist you through all stages of Estate Liquidation and Clean Out services. Our full-service, turn-key company provides estate sales (organizing, staging, pricing, on-site management of sales, and removal of items after the sale) as well as item appraisals and complete clean.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Leveraged buyouts are not like mortgages

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's an open secret: the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation, because if we called finance tactics by their plain-language names, it would be obvious that the sector exists to defraud the public and loot the real economy.

Take "leveraged buyout," a polite name for stealing a whole goddamned company:

Identify a company that owns valuable assets that are required for its continued operation, such as the real-estate occupied by its outlets, or even its lines of credit with suppliers;

Approach lenders (usually banks) and ask for money to buy the company, offering the company itself (which you don't own!) as collateral on the loan;

Offer some of those loaned funds to shareholders of the company and convince a key block of those shareholders (for example, executives with large stock grants, or speculators who've acquired large positions in the company, or people who've inherited shares from early investors but are disengaged from the operation of the firm) to demand that the company be sold to the looters;

Call a vote on selling the company at the promised price, counting on the fact that many investors will not participate in that vote (for example, the big index funds like Vanguard almost never vote on motions like this), which means that a minority of shareholders can force the sale;

Once you own the company, start to strip-mine its assets: sell its real-estate, start stiffing suppliers, fire masses of workers, all in the name of "repaying the debts" that you took on to buy the company.

This process has its own euphemistic jargon, for example, "rightsizing" for layoffs, or "introducing efficiencies" for stiffing suppliers or selling key assets and leasing them back. The looters – usually organized as private equity funds or hedge funds – will extract all the liquid capital – and give it to themselves as a "special dividend." Increasingly, there's also a "divi recap," which is a euphemism for borrowing even more money backed by the company's assets and then handing it to the private equity fund:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

If you're a Sopranos fan, this will all sound familiar, because when the (comparatively honest) mafia does this to a business, it's called a "bust-out":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

The mafia destroys businesses on a onesy-twosey, retail scale; but private equity and hedge funds do their plunder wholesale.

It's how they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And it's what they did to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

It's what happened to nursing homes, Armark, private prisons, funeral homes, pet groomers, nursing homes, Toys R Us, The Olive Garden and Pet Smart:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

It's what happened to the housing co-ops of Cooper Village, Texas energy giant TXU, Old Country Buffet, Harrah's and Caesar's:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

And it's what's slated to happen to 2.9m Boomer-owned US businesses employing 32m people, whose owners are nearing retirement:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

Now, you can't demolish that much of the US productive economy without attracting some negative attention, so the looter spin-machine has perfected some talking points to hand-wave away the criticism that borrowing money using something you don't own as collateral in order to buy it and wreck it is obviously a dishonest (and potentially criminal) destructive practice.

The most common one is that borrowing money against an asset you don't own is just like getting a mortgage. This is such a badly flawed analogy that it is really a testament to the efficacy of the baffle-em-with-bullshit gambit to convince us all that we're too stupid to understand how finance works.

Sure: if I put an offer on your house, I will go to my credit union and ask the for a mortgage that uses your house as collateral. But the difference here is that you own your house, and the only way I can buy it – the only way I can actually get that mortgage – is if you agree to sell it to me.

Owner-occupied homes typically have uncomplicated ownership structures. Typically, they're owned by an individual or a couple. Sometimes they're the property of an estate that's divided up among multiple heirs, whose relationship is mediated by a will and a probate court. Title can be contested through a divorce, where disputes are settled by a divorce court. At the outer edge of complexity, you get things like polycules or lifelong roommates who've formed an LLC s they can own a house among several parties, but the LLC will have bylaws, and typically all those co-owners will be fully engaged in any sale process.

Leveraged buyouts don't target companies with simple ownership structures. They depend on firms whose equity is split among many parties, some of whom will be utterly disengaged from the firm's daily operations – say, the kids of an early employee who got a big stock grant but left before the company grew up. The looter needs to convince a few of these "owners" to force a vote on the acquisition, and then rely on the idea that many of the other shareholders will simply abstain from a vote. Asset managers are ubiquitous absentee owners who own large stakes in literally every major firm in the economy. The big funds – Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street – "buy the whole market" (a big share in every top-capitalized firm on a given stock exchange) and then seek to deliver returns equal to the overall performance of the market. If the market goes up by 5%, the index funds need to grow by 5%. If the market goes down by 5%, then so do those funds. The managers of those funds are trying to match the performance of the market, not improve on it (by voting on corporate governance decisions, say), or to beat it (by only buying stocks of companies they judge to be good bets):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/17/shareholder-socialism/#asset-manager-capitalism

Your family home is nothing like one of these companies. It doesn't have a bunch of minority shareholders who can force a vote, or a large block of disengaged "owners" who won't show up when that vote is called. There isn't a class of senior managers – Chief Kitchen Officer! – who have been granted large blocks of options that let them have a say in whether you will become homeless.

Now, there are homes that fit this description, and they're a fucking disaster. These are the "heirs property" homes, generally owned by the Black descendants of enslaved people who were given the proverbial 40 acres and a mule. Many prosperous majority Black settlements in the American South are composed of these kinds of lots.

Given the historical context – illiterate ex-slaves getting property as reparations or as reward for fighting with the Union Army – the titles for these lands are often muddy, with informal transfers from parents to kids sorted out with handshakes and not memorialized by hiring lawyers to update the deeds. This has created an irresistible opportunity for a certain kind of scammer, who will pull the deeds, hire genealogists to map the family trees of the original owners, and locate distant descendants with homeopathically small claims on the property. These descendants don't even know they own these claims, don't even know about these ancestors, and when they're offered a few thousand bucks for their claim, they naturally take it.

Now, armed with a claim on the property, the heirs property scammers force an auction of it, keeping the process under wraps until the last instant. If they're really lucky, they're the only bidder and they can buy the entire property for pennies on the dollar and then evict the family that has lived on it since Reconstruction. Sometimes, the family will get wind of the scam and show up to bid against the scammer, but the scammer has deep capital reserves and can easily win the auction, with the same result:

https://www.propublica.org/series/dispossessed

A similar outrage has been playing out for years in Hawai'i, where indigenous familial claims on ancestral lands have been diffused through descendants who don't even know they're co-owner of a place where their distant cousins have lived since pre-colonial times. These descendants are offered small sums to part with their stakes, which allows the speculator to force a sale and kick the indigenous Hawai'ians off their family lands so they can be turned into condos or hotels. Mark Zuckerberg used this "quiet title and partition" scam to dispossess hundreds of Hawai'ian families:

https://archive.is/g1YZ4

Heirs property and quiet title and partition are a much better analogy to a leveraged buyout than a mortgage is, because they're ways of stealing something valuable from people who depend on it and maintain it, and smashing it and selling it off.

Strip away all the jargon, and private equity is just another scam, albeit one with pretensions to respectability. Its practitioners are ripoff artists. You know the notorious "carried interest loophole" that politicians periodically discover and decry? "Carried interest" has nothing to do with the interest on a loan. The "carried interest" rule dates back to 16th century sea-captains, and it refers to the "interest" they had in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Private equity managers are like sea captains in exactly the same way that leveraged buyouts are like mortgages: not at all.

And it's not like private equity is good to its investors: scams like "continuation funds" allow PE looters to steal all the money they made from strip mining valuable companies, so they show no profits on paper when it comes time to pay their investors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

Those investors are just as bamboozled as we are, which is why they keep giving more money to PE funds. Today, the "dry powder" (uninvested money) that PE holds has reached an all-time record high of $2.62 trillion – money from pension funds and rich people and sovereign wealth funds, stockpiled in anticipation of buying and destroying even more profitable, productive, useful businesses:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

The practices of PE are crooked as hell, and it's only the fact that they use euphemisms and deceptive analogies to home mortgages that keeps them from being shut down. The more we strip away the bullshit, the faster we'll be able to kill this cancer, and the more of the real economy we'll be able to preserve.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy