Today’s track: People Are Strange — The Doors
I’m stuck on 39 species. Thirty-nine.
I’ve been itching to break 40 — that clean little milestone — and it just refuses to happen. And it’s my own fault for how much I’m out there. I sit outside a lot, get the app going, and every time something lands I think oh, is that a new one? — and then it isn’t. I’ve seen it before. Forty stays elusive precisely because I’m paying so much attention. The birds are not cooperating with my ego.
But I’ll take the consolation prizes. Had a great blue heron show up for the second time, and I just stood there like — whoa. Cool. A repeat visit from a bird that big feels like it means something, even if it doesn’t move the number.
Then my friend Lindsey came over and planted five bushes in my backyard. Raspberries, blackberries, some hybrid things in that same family — all of them should bear fruit, which is the exciting part.
Lindsey’s a physical therapist here in Louisville, but only in bouts. She’ll work a stretch, save it up, then go live in Mexico for a while and stretch that money out down there — close to the water, close to nature, exactly the life she wants. She just built that for herself. I think that’s pretty brave, and honestly pretty cool. Most people talk about a life like that. She actually went and made one.
She’s in town for one of her working stints, and she spent part of it putting fruit in my ground. It was a genuinely fun little project — the kind of thing I didn’t know I needed until it was already planted.
I think the birds are going to love it. The dogs are going to love it. I’m going to love it. Everybody wins — assuming I don’t kill them first.
That’s the catch. I’ve got to actually be diligent with the watering. And watering is exactly the kind of low-stakes daily task my brain loves to skip. The ADD wants to wander off to the next shiny thing. But these bushes are right in my scope of view now, so I think I can keep a good eye on them. And I’ve got AI here helping me nurture it, too.
A whole little ecosystem — plants, birds, dogs, and a robot keeping me honest on the watering schedule. Fun side quest.
Last thing on the list: I need to get the bird feeder back up. And to do that, I have to get a squirrel pole — one of those baffled setups — because the squirrels absolutely attack the thing. Destroy it.
Let me be clear: this is not a lack of love for squirrels. I was fully in the “squirrels are fun, let’s hang out, let’s learn about them” camp. Still am, philosophically. But there’s a difference between admiring a squirrel and letting one demolish your feeder every week.
So — fancy feeder, squirrel pole, the whole arms race. It’s not personal. It’s just backyard geopolitics.
Before I sign off — Cameron Keehn (one of our Winner Realty agents) and I just taped an episode of The Talk of Louisville Podcast, and we had a blast. Give it a watch.
Happily,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Schedule a time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind.
The Morning Bergeron daily track playlist: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/the-morning-bergeron/pl.u-pMyl2GlSW1N3qv
PS: The market’s got a berry patch of its own right now — a lot of stuff sitting on the vine. We’re up to 3,802 active listings, with inventory up 39% year over year and 30-year mortgage rates back up to 6.49%. 177 properties have been on the market 200+ days. Multifamily’s at 161 active units. And there are 184 land deals sitting 240+ days .
And the macro backdrop tells the same story. Retail sales this morning were a split screen — motor vehicles and e-commerce both ripped +1.9%, but furniture flatlined at 0% (down from +1.6%) and clothing slipped to -0.3%. Furniture’s the tell for people like us: folks buy couches when they move. Flat furniture spend is a frozen housing market wearing a disguise. Pair that with jobless claims falling to 208k — a two-month low, well under the 216k estimate — and you get the whole picture: people have jobs, people have paychecks, people just aren’t moving. That’s not a demand problem. It’s a rate-and-confidence freeze. And a market where employed folks sit still while listings age past 200 days is exactly where patient buyers with creative terms do their best work.
These folks need solutions. Are you solutions-focused? If so, we should talk.
And if you want to start closer to home — here’s what Winner Realty has available right now. Bring us an offer. Let’s make something happen!
One more thing: we’ve got a ton of updates rolling out at OffMarket.deals and a fresh wave of new deals just posted. Be sure to check them out.
