Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 797

I read the first few sentences of this article and immediately thought to myself, "Yup, this is the world we now live in. Attention spans are dwindling." And since Monday was back to work for many of us, I figured it was timely.

The piece is about Mark Manson's new book called, Everything is Fucked: A Book About Hope . In it, he talks about anxiety, depression, intolerance, and the attentional challenges that are, arguably, a result of today's modern economy.

His proposed solution is something he calls the Attention Diet. Similar to how it's important not to eat bad things, it's important, in today's information economy, not to consume bad things. And like junk food, there's a lot of junk information fighting for our attention. I like the parallel.

Here are the 3 steps to the Attention Diet:

1. Correctly identify nutritious information and relationships.

2. Cut out the junk information and relationships.

3. Cultivate habits of deeper focus and a longer attention span.

Put even more succinctly, it's about filtering for quality in a world of endless information. Here's an interesting line from Mark: "Because in a world with infinite information and opportunity, you don’t grow by  knowing or doing more ,  you grow by the ability to correctly focus on less. "

Related post: The value of saying no .

I was at a family dinner over the weekend and the topic of the Florida homestead exemption came up. The Florida Constitution bestows a number of advantages upon homeowners (provided the home is that person’s primary residence). And like all rules, it impacts behaviors.

For one, your primary residence is largely protected from creditors, meaning a sale generally can’t be forced in order to pay back what you might owe. If you’re out there in the world “betting the farm,” this might be a way to protect yourself.

There are also a number of property tax benefits. You can reduce your assessed value by certain specified amounts, and any increases are (I think) capped at the lesser of 3% or the rate of inflation. (Related post: California’s Proposition 13 .)

As we’ve talked about before on the blog, this second exemption likely creates a disincentive for longtime homeowners to sell/move, as even a lateral move would result in possibly much higher taxes. So why move unless you really have to?

The counter argument is that it helps fixed income retirees not get squeezed by rising taxes (and that’s an important consideration in Florida). But it also means that first-time/younger buyers end up shouldering more of the property tax burden — at least initially.

If any of you have strong opinions about the Florida homestead exemption, I would be interested in hearing from you in the comment section below. I am not a lawyer or a tax expert. So please don’t consider this post as any sort of advice.

At the beginning of this year, a16z announced that they co-led a $175 million investment in the real estate company Loft . Based in São Paulo, Loft is doing in Brazil what Opendoor is doing in the US. They are bringing more liquidity to the residential real estate marketplace, and it turns out that the need for this is even greater in Brazil. That has apparently made Loft one of the fastest growing real estate companies in the world today. Here are some interesting facts about residential real estate in São Paulo. And here is a talk by Alex Rampell (general partner at a16z) on how software is going to eat the real estate world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRPH3K1GXj0