Today's track: Twilight — Elliott Smith

I ordered something on Amazon around 9 p.m. the other night. It was on my porch by 4 a.m.

Seven hours. Overnight. While I was asleep.

If you'd told childhood me that, I would've said that's magic. Are you kidding me? That's insanity.

And it's not just packages. There are self-driving cars on the road right now that don't even have a steering wheel. You can get on the internet from the top of a mountain. We've sent people who aren't career astronauts into space. Regular people (well, regular people with a lot of money, but still).

I'm 38. I think in my lifetime, space tourism will be pretty normal. The first 150,000 people or so will pay a fortune. After that it'll get affordable, the same way flying did.

William Shatner went up in October of 2021. He was 90, the oldest person to ever go to space at the time. Captain Kirk himself. And when he came back, he said it felt like a funeral. He looked back at Earth, then out at all that black, and felt grief. It made him feel small.

I'm not worried about that happening to me. I think I'd be taken aback by the vastness of it. Everything out there, everything it could bring, everything we haven't found yet. That's the optimism in me. The curiosity. I don't think it'd be depressing. I think it'd be cool.

Same view. Two totally different feelings. It all depends on what you're looking for.

Even the boring stuff is wild when you stop and look at it. Air conditioning. We keep our houses at the same exact temperature all day, every day, all year. We live in little biodomes.

Do you guys remember the movie Bio-Dome? Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin, 1996. I thought it was so funny as a kid. I remember watching it like, what is happening here?

Here's the part I didn't know as a kid: it was making fun of something real. In 1991, eight people sealed themselves inside Biosphere 2, a three-acre glass building in the Arizona desert, to see if humans could live in a self-sustaining world for two years. They made it the two years. But the oxygen inside kept dropping, and eventually the team had to pump some in from outside.

Thirty-five years later, a lot of everyday life has quietly become what they were trying to build. Self-driving. Self-delivering. Our farms are getting more automated every year. Everything's getting more self-sufficient, and that's crazy in and of itself.

It was a curious time back then. This is a curious time right now.

Which brings me to today's track.

Elliott Smith was a songwriter out of Portland, Oregon who played quiet, close-up songs. In 1998 his song "Miss Misery," from Good Will Hunting, got nominated for an Oscar. He played it at the Academy Awards in a white suit, alone with his guitar, and lost to Celine Dion and the Titanic song. He was totally fine with it.

"Twilight" is from his last album, From a Basement on the Hill. It came out in October 2004, a year after he passed away at 34. Two people who loved him finished it for him.

The song is about meeting someone who's kind and good to you, right when you're not in a place to let it in. And at the very end, the song sort of trails off. You can hear crickets and night frogs, and a little melody that climbs and then falls. Is it a happy melody? A sad one? It's kind of both.

That's twilight. It's not day and it's not night. It's the in-between.

It's Shatner's view and mine at the same time.

And it's where the Louisville housing market is right now.

On Friday I told you the market flipped. Louisville is sitting at 3.5 months of supply. In plain words, that's how long it would take to sell every home on the market if nobody listed anything new. Under three months, sellers are in charge. Three to six months, it's balanced. Nobody's really in charge.

We're in the twilight. Prices are still holding, but buyers have more choices and more time than they've had in years.

And in a market like that, the deal usually doesn't come down to price. It comes down to terms.

That's why I've been beating the same drum lately. Assumable loans and seller financing. Over and over. Because that's where everything's heading.

Quick refresher, explained from the ground up:

An assumable loan is when the buyer takes over the seller's existing mortgage, at the seller's old interest rate. If the seller locked in at 3% a few years ago, the buyer might get to keep that 3% instead of paying today's rates. I broke the whole thing down in The Loan Comes With the House.

Seller financing is when the seller acts as the bank. Instead of the buyer getting a loan from a lender, the buyer makes monthly payments straight to the seller. That one's in Thirty-Nine Percent.

The more agents understand these tools, the better they'll be able to explain them to their sellers. And the more sellers hear it explained well, the more deals get done that otherwise wouldn't.

So here's some news I'm hyped about.

Harry Borders, my mentor, who owns Borders & Borders title company, confirmed with GLAR (Greater Louisville REALTORS, our local realtor association) that he can teach a three-hour class on assumable loans and seller financing. Everybody's really hyped about it. I'll share the date as soon as it's set.

If you're not an agent, or you can't make the GLAR class, I bet Harry and I can put something together for you too. A public class or a webinar. Assumable loans, seller financing, whatever you want to dig into. Reply "HARRY" if you'd come, so I know how many chairs to pull out.

Every one of those creative deals needs somebody who can actually get it to the closing table. That's Colleen.

Colleen Reilly is Winner Realty's COO (Chief Operating Officer), my best friend, and the best transaction coordinator in the business. A transaction coordinator, or TC, is the person who takes a deal from signed contract to closing. Every deadline, every signature, every call to title, the lender and the attorney.

She's handled 420+ transactions over eight years. Novations. Short sales. Land contracts. Lease options. Assignments. Assignments. Assignments. Assignments. She has literally seen everything.

And there's no other TC in this business with that kind of transaction volume who's this empowered with AI, tools and resources. Best in the business. She's so efficient people sometimes ask me if she's a real person. She is. I promise.

Her company is Closings with Colleen. If you're a wholesaler, be sure to schedule time to talk with Colleen. Reply "COLLEEN" and I'll connect you two myself.

Now the fun stuff.

I'm throwing a huge Christmas party this December. Not a holiday party. A Christmas party.

I've got a few vendor slots left, and I'm packing a pretty good budget. We want to throw down the gauntlet with this one. It'll be hosted by me and Winner Realty, with some great sponsors behind it, and I want it to be one of the most memorable, special nights of your entire year. You won't want to miss it.

We'll also be announcing some really cool things coming up. They'll open doors for you to meet like-minded people who are out there actually doing the work.

If your business wants to apply for one of those last vendor slots, hit reply and let's talk.

And if you're an agent wondering what it's like over here: every morning at 6:30, Winner Realty agents wake up with four or five different lead types to work, every single day. On top of that, we pass around any warm, organic leads that come in. Nobody's sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.

As always, we're looking to raise some hell.

Curious era. Curious market. I'd rather be curious than scared.

Tomorrow: The Wall. $875 billion in commercial loans come due this year, and some of them are on your street. If you own, buy, or have a balloon payment coming, you'll want to read that one.

📊 Last poll: Thursday I asked if you're an explorer or a dialer. Explorers took it with 55%. Depends on the day got 36%, dialers got 9%, and still on the surface, honestly, got zero. Not one of you. I'll take it. A room full of people who want all six tools is my kind of room.

Today's poll:

Results in tomorrow's issue.

📅 This week in Louisville real estate. Here's what's worth showing up to:

🏆 The Top Five is ready like always. Five real deals on the Louisville MLS (Multiple Listing Service) this morning, plus five ripe for a lowball and the number I'd offer. Reply "FIVE" and I'll send them to you personally.

Curiously,
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.

The Morning Bergeron daily track playlist

PS: Go shopping. Here are some different ones than my usual lists, live on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) right now:

And be sure to check out all of our off-market deals at OffMarket.deals.

PSS: You might've noticed some more somber, melancholy vibes in the tracks lately. It's really just that when it's fall, I like to lean into those vibes. Twilight was one of my favorite songs growing up. I don't know why, it just super resonated with me. I hope it finds an audience with some of you, and if you've never heard it, I think you'll appreciate it. I'm not trying to drag you down, though. Just enjoy. Enjoy your fall.

PSS: My Last Rodeo (8/12 starts today…home stretch!)