Real estate operator running opportunistic deals across Europe. I write about the parts of AI in business that actually move money.
Switzerland
Joined January 2009
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1/ Three local models on a Mac mini handle the volume in my setup: press, emails, notes, documents. Parsing, enrichment, search.
Everything they produce gets stored in local databases.
Opus 4.7 only shows up at the end, on curated context.
24GB of RAM. Cost of electricity. Here's the architecture.
Fernando Gutierrez retweeted
The europoor meme can be funny, but it's also midwit and wrong.
As someone with both EU and US passports who's lived in both sets of elite poles (SF/NYC and BCN/BER/PAR), let me just give you the TLDR:
-The percent of GDP spent on welfare in the US is the about the same as the EU (smidge under).
-The effective tax rate in the coastal US is about the same as the EU (smidge under).
-Both are (former) middle-class societies where much of society feels the social contract is broken. In the US, elites abandoned the middle-class decades ago, and the well-to-do in states like CA/NY have reconciled themselves to paying almost half their paychecks and getting nothing in return, planning to insulate themselves from the suck by paying for private everything: neighborhoods, schools, medical care. If their earnings keep on rising, they're OK with it.
In France, that bourgeoisie hasn't been decimated yet, and they still expect (delusionally perhaps) basic social infra like schools to function (which is what these protests were initially about). The infra in Europe is a lot better than in the US, despite the GDP delta (New Yorkers can only dream of a subway like Madrid's). But that's clearly eroding in time, without the wage growth (or private social infra) to allow for a paid workaround.
-The free healthcare blah blah meme is fake: the public health systems in Europe have collapsed to the point it's mostly a public/private hybrid, for anyone with a solid paycheck, and fuck you if you're poor, go to the public system (which is the ER in the US). Guess what? In Europe you've got deductibles, in/out of network and all the same shit as in the US (though yes, the cost is still lower, though more or less correlated with wages).
-Boomers on both sides of the Atlantic are living in a dated lala land, but they vote to keep the system in place. In Europe it's legislation and printing money to prop up pensions; in the US, it's legislation and printing money to prop up housing prices and the stock market, which is the American 'free market' version of pensions. Rampant inflation and cost-of-living problems in both, with youth locked out of housing and living in precarity.
-Both are struggling with having been historically middle-class societies
US better positioned only because it has more economic growth (hello 80 hour weeks), and (obviously) leadership in critical fields like AI. But the foundational problems of an out-of-touch elite, incoherent immigration policy, and general social malaise that sees no meaning or purpose at the End of History is absolutely the same in both polities.
Americans who mock what's happening in Europe simultaneously believe some X mirage about what Europe is (and have never lived there), as well as don't understand what's going on in their own country. The French Revolution happened a few years after the American one, and once again, the two countries are echoes of each other, as similar countries tend to be. France is probably the most 'American' country in Europe, in all the republican senses of the word (and no the Yookay isn't in Europe).
Fernando Gutierrez retweeted
Republics and democracies fall, inevitably, because they enable the masses to vote for benefits from the state.
The charade of "free" stuff pulls, slowly or swiftly, the state into fiscal insolvency. Debt grows faster than the economy, which is mathematically unsustainable.
This process can be slow, or fast, but always occurs.
The best imperfect solution is to keep states both small and decentralized. Small so that the masses have less incentive and capability to draw from it, and decentralized so that failures of a state are localized and minimized rather than global and catastrophic. A well-educated populace that understands the virtue of markets and views the state with utmost skepticism is very helpful, and just as rare.
America until the 1930's did a good job of this. Switzerland today arguably still does.
America and France, and most or all of the others, are headed to the same destination. Voting will not change the game theory of the system (remember how Trump was going to reduce the government and then grew it larger than Biden?).
European and US bond markets will collapse and then these protests will look like child's play.
There is nothing that can be done to prevent it, nothing stops this train, alea iacta est
Optimists should hope and work for the smallest states possible to rise from the ashes of the large ones.
Fernando Gutierrez retweeted
The biggest, and stupidest, myth in European politics, particularly popular in France, is that Europe suffers the consequences of "austerity" and "neoliberalism". In the biggest 5 countries in Europe, more than half of the population makes its income from the state, less than half from the private sector. This is what makes the problem of reducing the welfare state so impossible: more than half of the voters are net recipients. No surprise that Italy's budget has not been balanced in 100 years, France's in 50 years (ooh la la, l'austérité!!):
-France: 30 million from the state versus 21m private sector workers. State spending is 57% of GDP, taxes more than half the economy. The budget hasn't been balanced in the lifetime of most French (since 1974).
- Germany: 35 million adults from the state, versus 34 million from the private sector. 10% of the population is registered as severely disabled. Public spending is over half of GDP. Germany has had a continuous budget deficit since 2019.
-Italy: 23 million from the state, versus 20.5 million private-sector workers. Public spending is 51% of GDP. Italy has had a budget deficit every year since 1925, for 100 years.
- Spain more people get their income from the state since 2024: 18.21 million from the public sector versus 17.9 million people working in the private sector. Since 2025, Spain also had more government employees than self-employed workers (autónomos) for the first time in history. State spending is at 45%, budget has not been balanced since 2007.
- UK: 54% of households now receive more in state benefits than they pay in taxes. State spending is 44.5% of GDP, taxes (40%) are at their highest since 1950, the budget hasn't been balanced since 2001, and 1 in 5 new cars is paid by the government through a bizarre state disability scheme (Motability).
Probably intentional so the buyer knows everything is new.
$900k house AND the flipper was too lazy to remove the protective coverings off the appliances BEFORE pictures. Have Mercy
This happens in Europe too, but it compounds thanks to insane privacy protection laws.
Real estate rationale:
Person: I wanna see this $5M house
Agent: ok it’s by appointment and pre vetted / qualified buyers only. Please send proof of funds (bank letter, statement or brokerage) OR a loan pre approval
Person: I’m not comfortable with the sellers knowing I how much money I have
Agent: ok you don’t have to show your entire net worth just around $5M
Person: yeah I don’t want them knowing I’m rich because they’ll try to take advantage of me
Agent: ok if you’re looking at a $5M a house then it’s obvious you have $5M+ in cash or ability to borrow yes? Otherwise why would you be looking at a $5M house
Person: yeah I’m not comfortable
Construir es caro y es el principal componente del problema de accesibilidad a la vivienda.
Da igual que sea de manera tradicional o prefabricada, al final hay normativas que cumplir y gente a la que pagar.
La cruda realidad es que mucha gente no puede acceder a una vivienda porque su trabajo no vale tanto como el de todos los que tienen que trabajar para producir esa vivienda que quiere.
Y luego ya hablamos del problema de suelo y los impuestos que soporta la vivienda.
Decidme que no soy el único gilipollas que seguía pensando que una casa prefabricada costaba 100.000 €.
Porque he cometido el error de ponerme a mirar precios.
Y me he encontrado esto.
Modelo Vega, de Atlántida Homes.
🏠 200 m²
🛏️ 4 dormitorios
🚿 3 baños
🏭 Casa modular/prefabricada
Desde 436.000 € + IVA.
Cuatrocientos treinta y seis mil euros.
DESDE.
Y obviamente necesitas una parcela donde ponerla.
Mi cerebro se había quedado anclado en que una casa prefabricada era precisamente la forma de tener un chalet evitando dejarte medio millón en construirlo.
Que si se fabrica en módulos.
Que si reduces tiempos.
Que si industrializas procesos.
Que si hay menos imprevistos que levantándola ladrillo a ladrillo.
Pues resulta que hemos industrializado hasta el sablazo 😂
Y ojo, antes de que venga alguien del sector a matarme:
Esta no es una caseta de jardín con ruedas.
Atlántida la vende como llave en mano, con proyecto, trabajos técnicos, cimentación estándar, equipamiento, etc.
Es una casa seria y las calidades evidentemente influyen.
Pero precisamente por eso me ha explotado la cabeza.
Yo asociaba:
PREFABRICADA = alternativa más barata.
Y parece que el mercado la ha convertido en:
PREFABRICADA = rapidez + diseño + eficiencia + precio más predecible.
Lo de barata ya si eso otro día.
Porque además no es una excepción rara: en su catálogo hay modelos de 117 m² por 301.500 € + IVA, 148 m² por 318.000 € + IVA y 178 m² por 425.700 € + IVA.
Así que necesito que alguien que controle de construcción me resuelva esto:
¿Qué ventaja económica real tiene hoy una casa prefabricada frente a construir un chalet convencional?
Porque como me digáis que 436.000 € + IVA SIN TERRENO es un precio normal…
Creo que el que estaba prefabricado era mi concepto de la vivienda.
Great initiative for Europe. You don’t need to agree 100% with everyone involved, but this group tops any other think tank, lobby or whatever you want to call this.
An announcement: Under the leadership of Mario Draghi and @patrickc we have set up the Rhine Group: policymakers, economists, entrepreneurs and business people pushing European reforms and the Draghi agenda.
rhinegroup.eu/
A broker sent me a plot in Málaga. I already had the file. A bank had offered me the same one a while back, cheaper, and I passed. Too steep, too rocky.
I sent him the whole study instead of a polite no.
He had walked that site himself and knew none of it.
No commission for him today, but he'll call me first on the next one.
Fed holds. Barely. You can feel real estate holding its breath.
If your return comes from buying at a spread and waiting, you are not a real estate investor. You are running a rates position with a building attached.
If your return comes from fixing something broken, rates move your numbers but don’t decide them.
The bottleneck in my current projects is not financing. Not sales either.
It's finding a builder with real capacity in the next 12 months.
The good ones are booked. The ones who claim they aren't are planning to hire crews that don't exist.
I do this during long drives. By the time I get to destination, I have a coherent document that the LLM has built with my ramblings.
One pattern I find useful for working with LLMs is a nice long ramble session. Sometimes the LLM needs more bits to understand what you're trying to achieve, but you're too lazy to type them. In these cases I like to lean back, switch to /voice and just ramble for like 10 minutes, total mess, anything goes, full stream of consciousness. Sometimes I declare it up top, something like "switching to speech recognition sorry for any typos...". Sometimes I turn it into a small interview of a few turns. But I find that the LLMs are somehow very good at reconstructing long incoherent rambles and often their echo of your own tangle of thoughts comes out quite a bit cleaner than what you started with. The result is that you improve the mind meld and have to correct things less from that point on.
Ya está tardando @mahou_es en lanzar una edición especial de la Cinco Estrellas con solo dos estrellas en lata
Fable 5 guardrails are ridicule.
It flagged me because I asked how to kill this wasp more efficiently.
By the way, it’s a mammoth wasp, mostly harmless, but i had many kids around and I preferred to be safe.
I've done some angel investing myself. It's a very expensive hobby disguised as an asset class.
I went back to the boring stuff where I control the execution.
10 years ago, I wanted to become an "angel investor." Signed up for AngelList when syndicates first came out in 2014.
Invested about $300K from 2014-2019 across 53 deals. Backed the best names and top syndicates on the platform.
IRR: 7.8% 💀💀💀
Partner distribution paperwork used to take days. Board minutes approving dividends, waterfalls, all of it.
Once Cowork has seen enough of your own examples, it's automatic. More accurate than I ever was.
My hardest task this week was holding finished documents for some time so nobody asks what exactly I did with my time.
A big house in a nutshell.
Even if it’s your main house, it will need work. The amount grows exponentially with the size of the house.
Real estate is anything but passive.
People who suddenly find themselves with a big pile of cash commonly go on house shopping sprees.
Aspen. Hamptons. Tahoe. Wherever.
A year later they wake up to realize they have a massive headache they didn’t used to have. They’re now essentially running an annoying business.
A dozen vendors handing things like those 8 acres of plants and grass, that huge pool needs a new pump and the pool company wants $19k, all those trees need to be trimmed, the internet doesn’t work as well in the master bedroom as it does in the living room.
Bills are coming in every day. Things keep breaking.
Oh dang I need a house manager!
Now you’re hiring! Full time or part time? That person seemed great, but wait they need health insurance? How do I get them that? What it’s $20k for them and their spouse?
Ok hired them. But they keep calling me for stuff. I can’t just let them cut checks, but I also can’t be dealing with approving every little payment.
$24k for a roof repair?? Is that necessary? Is my manager really making sure it’s the right price?
I’m paying $200k a year now for random fixes. Now the manager wants to go on vacation on the 4th of July! That’s the week all our friends are coming. Why didn’t she take a week off in September when nothing was going on.
Remind me again why I didn’t just rent a place when I needed it!
Get me out !
The more the government intervenes, the harder it is to make a profit.
The harder to make a profit, the fewer houses get built.
The fewer houses built, the higher the price.
Super tight schedule and a notary waiting.
I saw this from the highway. Took the next exit, turned around, came back.
A demolition done well makes me think about what comes after it. Everything the next project will have to carry.
No time for it. Stopped to admire anyway.
