Today's track: Buena Vista Social Club — El Carretero
Lot of big things got announced this week. Let me walk you through them.
Mayor Greenberg just announced Anthro Energy is bringing a new manufacturing facility to Louisville. $42 million. 110 new jobs. Another company that looked at the whole map and picked us.
That keeps happening here. At some point it stops being a coincidence and starts being a signal.
City Council is voting this week on an incentives upgrade — rebates on building permit fees, consumer use tax, and sales tax to attract and expand businesses. The new piece adds support specifically for small businesses.
The city is literally writing checks to make sure growth keeps coming. The infrastructure of growth is being built while most people are still debating whether Louisville is a real market.
Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities are exploring small modular nuclear reactors — working with a Maryland-based company to meet growing energy demand in Kentucky.
That last part is the sentence. Growing energy demand. When utilities start planning for more power, they're not guessing. They know something is coming.
Republic Bank & Trust — Louisville-headquartered community bank — just made the Forbes World's Best Banks 2026 list for the first time ever.
Our institutions are getting recognized globally. Capital follows credibility.
Meanwhile, the national housing market just hit a record imbalance.
There are roughly 630,000 more sellers than buyers right now. Sellers outnumber active buyers by 46% — the largest gap ever recorded. High mortgage rates, elevated prices, rising layoffs, uncertainty — buyers have pulled back hard. Sellers are cutting prices, pulling listings, or just waiting.
Here's what I want you to hear in that: there are motivated sellers out there right now who need solutions, not just offers.
If you're a buyer sitting on the sidelines waiting for rates to drop — stop waiting and start thinking creatively. Seller financing is real. Assumable loans are real. Terms matter as much as price right now. There are sellers who will work with you if you come to the table with something that actually solves their problem.
Get an offer in their hands. A real one — something that makes sense for them. That's how deals get done in a market like this. Not by waiting for perfect conditions. By creating solutions.
It's Friday. The weekend has some room in it.
I've been reading the Count of Monte Cristo lately and I have to tell you — it reads like an absolute soap opera banger. I mean that as the highest compliment.
Here's something that makes it even better: it was published as a serial. Newspaper installments, starting in 1844. Readers got chunks of the story week by week — the way you'd binge episodes of a show today. Dumas was often writing the next installment while readers were already consuming the current one. Brutal deadlines. Constant pressure. He was also perpetually, catastrophically broke — despite being one of the most commercially successful writers of the 19th century. The book made so much money that he built an actual castle. Château de Monte-Cristo. Then promptly had to sell it because he'd spent everything else.
I've also been picking up Swann's Way from time to time. Marcel Proust. Completely different animal. The man lined his entire bedroom with cork so no outside noise could reach him — spent years barely leaving that room, writing one of the longest novels ever put to paper. 1.5 million words across seven volumes. Severe asthma, barely got out of bed. When he finished Swann's Way the major publishers rejected it, so he funded the publication himself. Dense, beautiful, a little overwhelming in the best way.
Two completely different writers. One sprinting against newspaper deadlines, building castles, losing everything. One sealed inside a cork room, writing in total silence, barely leaving.
Both left something worth reading.
Maybe this weekend you pick up one of the great works and see if it resonates. Or create your own thing — write something, build something, start something. It's going to be rainy. That's the perfect excuse.
Great time to read. Great time to create.
Warmly,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Winner Realty | OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company | HireMySub.com
The Morning Bergeron daily track playlist: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/the-morning-bergeron/pl.u-pMyl2GlSW1N3qv
PS: Today was supposed to be my surgery day. My surgeon got injured, so we're pushed to May 26th. I'm taking it as more time to prepare — more walks, more sun, more protein, more muscle. Going in stronger than planned. To everyone who reached out, thank you. It means a lot! One more thing — I'm making it a goal to get 3 to 6 deals under contract before I go under on May 26th. Partly because I can. Partly as a publicity stunt. Winner Realty is so systematized and efficient that the machine keeps running while I'm literally being chopped up. If you've been thinking about buying or selling, now is a great time to find out how we operate. Don't be a stranger — I'm here.