What real estate listings reveal about our cultural addiction to hype, delusion, and the slow rot under the surface.
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For the last several months, the Collapse Life team has been engaged in the noble, ancient ritual known as ‘the house hunt,’ in which one trades sanity, savings, and sometimes a right arm for the dream of shelter.
The search has been broad and exhausting, to say the least, because house hunting in 2025 feels more like hunting for a wild animal.
Allow us to set the scene: you start out cloaked in a camouflage of dejection bordering on disinterest, in order to thoughtfully shield your budget and enthusiasm from the prying inquiries of a selling agent. Armed with Google StreetView and some finely-tuned Zillow alerts, you scan the horizon and zero in with laser precision on the elusive, yet majestic, beast known as Habitable Dwelling Within Budget.
The fact that nearly 50 million other Americans are chasing the same dream offers little comfort. Regardless, a seasoned hunter never worries about the competition; years of experience tangling with skilled adversaries means saccharine hyperbole and quaint euphemisms don’t faze you in the least. You see these traps miles away.
Right?
Here’s an example of what one of those decoys might look like. This was an actual listing the Collapse Life team read just the other day:
“This property is an outstanding choice for anyone looking for a luxuriously remodeled home at a great price. This home features like-new appliances, a stainless steel refrigerator, a large front and back yard, washer and dryer hookups, beautiful vinyl plank flooring, and carpet in the bedrooms! This home will not last long!”
But there’s a problem. The photos and reality don’t compute. The “remodeled” home is a beige box of despair, replete with a sagging porch and moldy ceilings. Even before engaging the necessary olfactory glands so useful to the hunt, it’s obvious the bedroom carpets will reek of stale cigarettes and cat pee. Yes, the “like-new” fridge is stainless steel, but it is far from unstained.
Naturally, this doesn’t just apply to real estate — it’s everything from resumés, job descriptions, social media captions, political speeches, product packaging, venture capital pitches… truth has been replaced by Chat GPT’d artifice. A NerdWallet survey earlier this year found that nearly 7 in 10 Americans believe the housing market has never been worse for buyers, and it’s little wonder why. The game is totally rigged.
https://www.collapselife.com/p/the-end-of-truth-real-estate