Real Estate: A Dogshit Stock

Real estate prices.

There were reasons so many people believed they would fall.

The government had given its word. The public could hardly help being moved.

"Now that's reassuring!"

"A government that actually reels in real estate… thank god I voted, sob."

"Wooo!!!!"

Politicians. People had long assumed they didn't care about ordinary lives—that they were busy lining their own pockets. For the first time in living memory, an administration seemed to be putting effort into actually talking to the public.

They rolled out policy after policy. Surely home prices would be reined in soon. Nothing to worry about, right?

The thinking was natural enough. Blind faith in a real estate crash wasn't just a one-sided delusion.

And in fairness, prices were being reined in. In a rising-rate environment, real estate was always going to feel the pressure.

You could see it edging down, bit by bit. And as for the criticism that the real problem was how much it had already risen—

Counter-data flooded in. Real estate prices seemed to be undergoing Normalization. Community users were satisfied. A few held different views, but—

They were thoroughly purged. Downvotes piled up, moderators swooped in, and the post was deleted. Community opinion locked into a single heart, a single mind.

Home prices would be reined in soon.

And they accelerated it. DentureAng users had been running a campaign for some time now.

The Don't Buy Real Estate movement. Designed to put muscle behind falling home prices.

It was possible. DentureAng was a community with a high age bracket — forties to sixties. People who already owned property, or planned to buy. Even if only a quarter of them participated, the impact would be meaningful.

At least inside the community, that was how it felt. Everyone thought the same thing. Anyone who didn't had been shut out. They held a fierce conviction that real estate was going to crash—

Reality, as always, was cruel.

If you could take everything the news said at face value and live by it, the world would be a wonderful place.

As if that would ever work.

The way the world actually turned never allowed for that. Which was precisely why a certain profession existed.

"Wow~ just like you said, sir — real estate really is bouncing back!"

"Well. That was always going to happen."

"You sound like this situation is completely obvious to you?"

"I told you it would."

An investor. The things he watched weren't limited to corporations — governments were on the list too.

There's a reason policy-related stocks are always the hottest names in the market.

Did they genuinely have the will to support something? He dissected that question more carefully than anyone. And the conclusion that surfaced was this: they had zero intention of reining in real estate.

"He never said he wouldn't, either. If reining it in starts to hurt too much, he might just ease off halfway through."

He'd said it on an economics channel. Even so, public opinion split down the middle.

Even when you tell them the truth without changing a single syllable.

It was simply fact. The real fact. But human beings were creatures who believed what they wanted to believe. A comfortable lie always landed softer on the heart than an inconvenient truth. That was the story for ordinary people, at least.

"Sir…"

"Of course the President is an extraordinary person. How could she not be extraordinary. But that doesn't mean her words are the words of a divine being, does it?"

Common sense, to an investor. On broadcast, though, there were limits to what you could say. The reason he was appearing in the first place—

Is to raise my profile.

To get his name attached to the big, headline-making events, the media was indispensable. He had to stay within acceptable bounds.

"The President cares so deeply about human rights — you really think she'd deliberately drive real estate up? She just didn't anticipate that running several laws at once would freeze transaction volume solid."

If you wanted to play in the big leagues, after all. Stirring up the real estate issue had been worthwhile.

It's a field ordinary people actually care about.

Everything was going according to plan. The real estate accumulation, and the work of making his name known.

"I heard you've been buying real estate yourself, sir — congratulations on catching the bottom."

"Nothing to congratulate yet. We're only just entering the early stages of the uptrend."

"Ah… so about that."

There still hadn't been a decisive event. Nothing the news would splash across the front page.

Well.

No matter how well you called stocks, it was never enough. Ordinary people simply didn't care. Real estate was a different animal.

Even the MC was tip-toeing carefully — that much was obvious.

"A specific apartment complex! I won't say which one, but I've heard you've been buying there?"

"Which one?"

"I don't know the details myself, but given how much buzz it's generating…"

The process of a rumor spreading. The more people who came to know him—

The more they start paying attention to the fine details.

So which stocks should I buy? Real estate worked the same way, in broad strokes. Some districts rose more than others. And if there was someone who knew which ones—

Followers were born. Because they were ordinary people rather than investors, their faith ran that much deeper.

And there are ways to make money off that, too.

Influence. In a capitalist world, it was something you could convert directly into cash. A single word from him could move the market.

"Thank you for the donations! We've got a lot of viewers asking questions right now, you know?"

"Well. So it seems."

"It would be great if you could give us an answer…"

It was possible. Nothing was off-limits. The same game he'd run plenty of times in the old days.

But to run it the exact same way—

The board was too small. It wouldn't generate enough change from his credibility.

"Talking about properties I've bought on a live broadcast is a bit awkward."

"Even just a simple reason, though!"

"Just… I don't think the Seoul Mayor is going to manage a fourth consecutive term."

Just a little taste. Nothing more.