🎧 Rather listen? Today's issue, read aloud: Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
Today’s track: The National, “Fake Empire”
Saturday morning I woke up well rested and did my normal wellness routine.
It takes me about an hour and a half. I lift, I stretch, I do a crazy amount of things. I’ll save the full rundown for another day. (I wrote a little about how your morning starts the night before back in April, if you want the preview.)
So I’m sitting there in the middle of it, and there’s a big pop.
And the whole neighborhood’s electricity went out.
I did the thing every good citizen should do. I went to Claude and said, hey, how do I report an outage? Then I had AI do it for me.
Then they came to my house.
Apparently, we were the culprit!
A squirrel. It lost its life, but it shut down the system.
And I just sat there thinking, how fragile is the system?
The number one cause
I sent it to one of my buddies, one of the leaders of a small local electric co-op. (A co-op is a power company owned by the people it serves. You see a lot of them out in the counties around Louisville.) He said squirrels are the number one cause of outages.
He’s not exaggerating. The American Public Power Association, the trade group for community-owned power companies, tracks this. Across the whole country, squirrels come in third, behind trees and worn-out equipment. But in the Midwest, squirrels are number one, about 19% of the longer outages. And their tracking shows squirrel outages spike in the spring and the fall.
It’s fall.
Most squirrel outages are small. A neighborhood, a bucket truck, a few hours. But it got me thinking about the big ones.
If you were in Louisville in September 2008, you remember. The leftovers of Hurricane Ike blew through on a Sunday, and over 300,000 LG&E customers lost power. That was about 75% of everybody LG&E serves. They told people it could take 10 to 14 days to get everyone back on. It’s still the biggest outage in LG&E’s history.
One squirrel takes out a street. One windstorm takes out a city.
It’s in the air right now
Lately this has been weighing on my heart. I’ve shared it with a few friends, and it’s been on their minds too. So I’m guessing it’s part of the collective conscious right now.
Here’s why. Late last month, the United Kingdom launched a campaign called Be Ready, telling every household to keep three days of supplies at home. Bottled water (about 3 liters per person per day, a little under a gallon). Food that doesn’t need cooking. A flashlight and a radio. And cash, a mix of bills and coins, in case the card machines go down.
And here at home, the Pentagon is working on a program called FORTRESS. The goal: every major military base in the continental U.S. able to run for at least 90 days on its own. Its own electricity, water, fuel and communications, with no help from the civilian power grid.
So our government is telling our military bases to be self-sufficient for 90 days. What are they telling us, the citizens? The official guidance at Ready.gov, run by FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), is at least three days of food and water for every person in your house. Honestly, I’d rather have a week.
So do with that what you will. Take it seriously if you want, or don’t. But if you think it’s something worth taking seriously, tell your friends. Your family. Your parents. Your grandparents.
Nothing crazy
I’m not talking about a bunker. Go to Costco instead of Kroger this week. Or Sam’s Club. Buy a little bit in bulk. You save some money, and then you just have that bulk. Find the room, find the space.
Here’s the short list, in plain English:
Water. One gallon per person per day is the U.S. rule of thumb. A family of four for a week is 28 gallons. That’s a few cases and a couple of the big jugs.
Canned food you’d actually eat, and a manual can opener. Work it into your regular meals so nothing expires on the shelf.
Batteries and a headlamp. A headlamp beats a flashlight because you get both hands back.
A phone power bank, charged.
Some cash in small bills.
A couple weeks of any prescriptions, and food for the pets.
Nothing crazy. It’s just better to be prepared than not prepared. I think we’ve all learned that. If you have the means, grab some extra canned goods. That’s it.
I wrote in August about setting up Future Rob. Same bet here. If nothing ever happens, you have a full pantry and saved a few bucks. There’s no losing side to it.
The homeowner version
This is a real estate newsletter, so here are a few house things most people never think about until the lights go out:
Know where your main breaker and your water shutoff are, and show everybody in the house this week.
If you have a sump pump in the basement (the pump that keeps groundwater from flooding it), a battery backup is one of the cheapest insurance policies in Louisville. Storms knock the power out right when the sump needs to run.
A full freezer stays cold about 48 hours with the door shut. Half full, about 24. The fridge, about 4. Keep the doors closed.
Never run a portable generator inside, in the garage, or near an open window. Carbon monoxide has no smell.
Landlords: text your tenants the outage numbers below. It takes a minute and it makes you look like a pro.
And here’s how to report an outage in Louisville in about ten seconds, no AI required:
LG&E: text OUTAGE to 4LGEKU (454358). Your cell number has to be on your account. Or call 502-589-1444 or 800-331-7370.
KU and ODP: 800-981-0600.
Live outage map: lge-ku.com/outages
Out in the counties on a co-op? Save their outage number in your phone today, while the lights are on.
See a line down? Stay away from it and call 911. Treat every wire like it’s live.
The other system people are worried about
While we’re on fragile systems, people keep asking me if the housing market is about to break too. Here’s what the numbers say right now. Some of it looks scary. The most important number says the opposite.
First, the scary-looking stuff:
Foreclosures are climbing. Foreclosure is when the lender takes the house back because the payments stopped. About 303,000 U.S. homes were in active foreclosure in September, according to ICE (Intercontinental Exchange, a company that tracks mortgage data). That’s up 37% from about 221,000 a year earlier, and the highest since early 2019.
Builders are nervous. The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index is a monthly survey of how homebuilders feel about the market. (NAHB is the National Association of Home Builders.) It just dropped to 29, the lowest since 2012. Anything under 50 means more builders feel bad than good. A record 43% of builders are cutting prices, and 65% are offering incentives like paying closing costs or buying down your rate. That’s 19 months in a row above 60%.
Buyers are sitting on their hands. Mortgage purchase applications, meaning people applying for a loan to buy a home, are down about 60% from the pandemic peak, per Redfin. That’s back near 1995 levels, lower than at any point in the 2008 to 2012 crash. With mortgage rates above 7%, pending sales (homes under contract that haven’t closed yet) are near record lows, and a record 14% of September deals fell apart before closing.
Now the number that matters most. Only 2.2% of homes with a mortgage are underwater, per Goldman Sachs. Underwater means you owe more on the house than it’s worth. In 2008, it was roughly 1 in 4.
That’s the whole difference.
In 2008, people who got in trouble couldn’t sell their way out, because they owed more than the house was worth. So the keys went back to the bank, the bank dumped the house, the house down the street got cheaper, and it snowballed. Today, almost everybody has equity. If you hit a rough patch, you can usually sell, pay off the loan and walk away with a check.
So this isn’t 2008. It’s a slow market where the buyer has leverage.
What that means for you in Louisville:
Buyers: you have room to negotiate. 280 Jefferson County houses cut their price in the last week alone. Ask for closing costs, a rate buydown, repairs. Then ask again.
New construction: 80 brand-new homes in Jefferson County have already cut their price, from $199,900 up to $1.595 million. If two out of three builders nationally are offering something, ask what yours will throw in before you sign anything. And bring your own agent. The builder’s salesperson works for the builder.
Sellers: price it right on day one and get ahead of the inspection. With 14% of deals falling apart, a pre-listing inspection (paying an inspector before you list, so there are no surprises later) is cheap insurance.
Investors: a rising foreclosure count today turns into bank-owned listings months from now. The supply is coming. Get your financing lined up before it does. I wrote about where to find bank-owned and foreclosure homes in Louisville last week.
Homeowners who are behind: if you or someone you love is missing payments, don’t wait for the bank letters to pile up. With equity, you have options early that you don’t have late, like selling on your own terms instead of losing it at auction. Text or email me. No judgment, just a plan.
Ride the wave
And then there’s the worry about some big thing going on with AI that’s going to cause problems.
I don’t know. I just can’t imagine. I’m just saying it’s better to be prepared than not prepared.
But here’s what I do know. I’m definitely a power user with AI. And it’s been recognized by the AI companies, if that makes sense. I get to play with stuff months and months before other people do, doing R&D (research and development) with these companies.
So I’ll tell you: the future is going to be insane.
I’m automating every facet of my life, for all my businesses. I said it back in July: nobody wrote a swan song for the elevator operator. The jobs change. The world keeps turning. The people who pick up the new tools become more.
So with AI, let’s prepare for it too.
Better to ride the wave than be crushed by it.
If you want to put some AI and some systems into your business, and you’re tired of running around, hit me up. Let’s talk. Love to chat. Swap notes, whatever you like. I wrote an altar call for the tired yesterday. This is the practical side of it.
And last week, 27% of you said help building AI systems that actually work would get you to a monthly meetup. That’s not nothing.
If there’s enough demand, I’ll put another webinar together. The last one was Steal My AI Stack back in September with 43 people. But this time I want to do more applied sciences. You ask me, “Rob, what about doing this?” And I just do it for you, live. You watch how I do it. And then all of you are empowered.
Reply “WAVE” and tell me the one thing you’d want automated. If enough of you do, we’ll set a date.
Winner Corner
That’s how it works with our Winner Realty agents. I sit down with them for a few hours and help them streamline their business so it lines up with what they like to do and who they like to work with. Then we help them perform.
They wake up to fresh residential and commercial leads in their inbox every morning at 6:30. The systems handle the grind, and they get to go do the part they’re great at. Nobody at Winner starts their day hunting.
If you’re an agent and that sounds good, grab a time on my calendar. I love talking with agents. And here’s more on joining Winner Realty.
Free tools for Louisville buyers, sellers and investors, no sign-up and no email wall: the investment property analyzer, the BRRRR calculator, the Kentucky seller and buyer closing cost calculators, and a lot more on the tools page.
Know somebody who'd like this in their inbox every morning? Send them your personal link. One friend signs up and you get my daily Top Five. Three friends and you get Insider Access.
📊 Yesterday’s poll: Where does most of your week actually go? Here’s what Louisville said, plus the one system that gives the most time back for each answer.
Paperwork and admin, 20%. The system: a transaction checklist that runs itself. Every new contract kicks off the same tasks, reminders and emails automatically, so nobody retypes the same dates into five places.
Chasing leads and follow-up, 30%. The system: an automatic follow-up schedule. Every new lead gets a text and an email the same day, then check-ins on a set schedule, so nobody slips through because you got busy.
Putting out fires (clients, tenants, deals), 30%. The system: a playbook for your ten most common fires. Most emergencies are repeats. Write the answer once, and AI can draft the first reply every time.
Managing people, 0%. The system: one weekly meeting with a scorecard. A handful of numbers everybody sees, same day every week, and a lot fewer one-off check-ins.
Driving, showings and appointments, 20%. The system: self-scheduling and batching. Let people book themselves into windows you pick, and stack your appointments by part of town.
Chasing and firefighting tied for first. Managing people got 0%. Nobody's week is going to people. It's going to the stuff a system could catch before it ever hits your desk.
Today’s poll. Be honest. Next issue I’ll share what Louisville said, plus the first thing to grab for each answer.
If the power went out tonight for three days, how ready is your house?
🏆 The Top Five is ready as always. Five real deals on the Louisville MLS this morning, five ripe for a lowball, and my number on every one. I can’t blast other agents’ listings to a list, but I can send them to you personally. Reply “FIVE” and they’re yours.
Fully charged,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Winner Realty: (502) 305-8915
Winner Realty | OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company
Schedule time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind — book me here.
PS: The lights-stay-on shopping list. Every one of these is clickable, so go be curious.
9 Jefferson County homes for sale that mention a generator in the listing, from $270,000 up to $1.875 million. When the street goes dark, these don’t have to.
65 houses with four or more bedrooms under $200,000, Jefferson County, starting at $53,000. Room for everybody and room for the Costco haul. Investors love these too, because more bedrooms usually means more rent.
280 Jefferson County houses cut their price in the last week. Here are the 100 most affordable, starting at $33,000. A seller who just blinked reads your offer differently.
32 commercial properties, two units and up, that hit the market in the last 30 days, from a $69,900 fourplex up to $725,000. Fresh listings, before the crowd catches up.
Find one you like and text or email me. I’ll pull the numbers and tell you what I’d offer.
All 15 Winner Realty listings on the MLS, in one spot, plus everything on OffMarket.deals, in front of 70,000+ buyers.
PSS: Robot Mowers Invade America's Golf Courses, Putting Groundskeepers On Notice Who saw this coming? We did. Window cleaners are next…among other things of course.
PSSS: Just a reminder we’ve been at it for awhile.
