About Ruchin

About this blog

This is a blog and nothing more complicated than that. Nothing is deleted once it is up, so the archive is the full record, written to the standard of the line under the logo, Homes bought, fixed and sold.

Ruchin exists for one reason. Most pages about Selling, renovating and buying a home are written to sell something, and very few are written by people who will still be here to answer for what they published.

Who writes here

You can see who wrote what, and you can see everything else they wrote. That is deliberate, because it makes a bad article expensive for the person who wrote it.

Thaddeus Lorne, Selling and auctions editor. Thaddeus worked as a sales agent for twelve years and called more than three hundred auctions before he moved to writing about them.

Marisol Kemper, Renovation writer. Marisol has renovated three houses with her own hands and money. Two made a profit and one did not, and she writes mostly about the one that did not.

Kenji Nakashima, Games and data writer. Kenji plays city builders and house flipping games and reads housing price data for fun, then writes about where the two meet.

The topics

• Games. City builders, house flippers and design games, and what they get right or wrong about real property.
• Selling. Auctions, private sales, agents and setting a price that actually attracts buyers.
• Renovation. Renovations that add value, the ones that do not, and how to tell the difference before you spend.
• Buying. Inspections, offers, contracts and the questions to ask before you sign.
• Moving. Packing, timing and getting through the first week in a new place.
• Neighbourhoods. Choosing a street, reading a suburb and checking what the listing photos leave out.

Each piece sits under exactly one heading. Readers arriving from search mostly land in games, selling and renovation, so those sections get looked after first.

The money side

Hosting and research come out of the same pocket that buys the things we write about. That keeps the running costs honest and the pace slow.

The limits of this site

There are questions we routinely decline. Anything that depends on facts only you can see, and anything where being wrong would cost you real money on our say so.

How an article gets made

The method is dull and it works. Explain what happens, explain what it costs, explain what can go wrong, then stop writing.

We buy what we write about. It is slower, it is more expensive, and it is the only arrangement that lets us say a thing was not worth it.

If you want the mechanics rather than the summary, the editorial policy has them, including what we refuse to publish.

Telling us we are wrong

Tell us which line is wrong and why, at [email protected] or through the contact page. Small errors are corrected the same week. Anything that changes the advice gets a dated note at the bottom of the article.