Turning The Tide Of Soaring Property Prices
A report from Toronto Storeys on Canada. “Premier Kathleen Wynne says she had serious concerns about the government sticking its nose in the red-hot, runaway housing market in Toronto, despite being urged to weigh in. Wynne said it became clear to her that market behaviour was ‘irrational.’ ‘It (housing prices) seemed irrational to me. It didn’t seem to be based on anything … I was concerned that there was no downward pressure on the market,’ she said. ‘It just got to the point where it just felt irresponsible not to do something.’”
The South China Morning Post on Hong Kong. “Hong Kong’s leader says she has never pledged to turn the tide on surging property prices in the city, which has remained the world’s priciest home market for the seventh year. Instead, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor claimed what she hoped to reverse was the housing shortage. Lam’s latest remarks appeared to deviate subtly from her policy address, which stated that both ‘the current shortage in housing supply and surging property prices have resulted from both external and internal factors’ and that her administration was determined to rectify the situation with the greatest effort.”
“Critics have slammed plans she introduced in her maiden policy address in October, saying they have failed to stop home prices from skyrocketing. ‘I have never said [I would] turn the tide of the soaring property prices as [they] could be triggered by a lot of factors,’ she said, adding the government cannot suppress the home price hike.”
“Sammy Po Siu-ming, chief executive of Midland Realty’s residential division, said Lam’s policy to focus on boosting supply was ‘going in the right direction.’ ‘It is very difficult to try to curb property prices when housing demand and investment demand are both so strong. Trying to control demand is not the way to go,’ Po said.”
The Korea Times. “A supply surge of apartments across the country in 2018 is expected to help stabilize housing prices. The surplus number of apartments will reach 440,000, up 14.5 percent from this year. The figure is also the most since 1988, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and market research firms said. The incumbent administration is expected to welcome the increase of apartments as it has tried to curb rising real estate prices. For President Moon Jae-in, it has been one of his top economic priorities.”
“Under the initiative, the government plans to start large-scale construction projects aimed at supplying 2 million residential apartments in Seoul alone. Koreans have poured their money into apartments as prices have steadily increased over the past few decades. There were a few exceptions to the rising prices such as the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and the global financial crisis in the late 2000s, though.”
“In particular, the previous Park Geun-hye administration tried to boost housing prices to invigorate the economy, which led to abrupt appreciation of real estate values. One of its negative side effects is the snowballing household debt, which has topped 1,400 trillion won. Left-leaning President Moon promised to stop the trend. The oversupply of apartments is expected to help him achieve the initiative.”
The Japan Times. “Once a phenomenon primarily associated with rural communities, abandoned homes are permeating suburbs and worming into crowded cities at an alarming rate. Over 8 million properties across Japan are unoccupied, according to a 2013 government report. Nearly a fourth have been deserted indefinitely, neither for sale nor rent. In Tokyo — where 70 percent of the people live in apartments — more than 1 in 10 homes are empty.”
“Nomura Research Institute projects the number of abandoned dwellings to grow to 21.7 million by 2033, or roughly one-third of all homes in Japan. Meanwhile the population, which peaked nearly a decade ago, is forecast to fall 30 percent by 2065, creating an ever-increasing pool of uninhabited houses. ‘There is no single answer to the problem,’ said Wataru Sakakibara, a senior consultant at NRI who led the think tank’s study. ‘If this continues, at some point it may be necessary to consider limiting new construction. But that would have a substantial impact on the economy.’”
From Reuters on Norway. “Norway’s tightened mortgage regulations, in place since the start of the year, are working as planned and do not need to be repealed, Prime Minister Erna Solberg told Reuters. ‘What we’re seeing now is a normal adjustment of the housing market after years of rising prices,’ Solberg said. ‘I see no need to alter the regulations. What we have in place is working pretty well at the moment and has helped put breaks on prices,’ she added.”
From The Times of Israel. “Last month, during a session of the Knesset State Control Committee devoted to Israel’s ‘ghost’ apartments,” a representative from the Central Bureau of Statistics dropped a bombshell. Merav Pasternak, the deputy director of statistics for the government body, told the panel that the number of Israeli ghost apartments — apartments that sit empty most of the year — is not 40,000 as previously estimated, but 159,700.”
“If accurate, the figure would make Israel one of the leading countries worldwide in ghost apartments per capita. The adjusted number is significant because apartments left empty by wealthy investors from abroad are a hot-button issue in many Western cities, including New York, Miami, London, Melbourne and Vancouver. In these cities, real estate prices have risen astronomically over the last decade.”
“As a 2017 UN Report explained, in cities that are ‘prime destinations for global capital seeking safe havens for investments, housing prices have increased to levels that most residents cannot afford. The UN report decries the ‘financialization of housing’ whereby hundreds of billions of dollars of global wealth are being invested in real estate and transforming real estate markets. ‘Massive investment of capital into housing markets and rising prices should not be confused with the production of housing and the benefits that accrue from it,’ reads the report. ‘The bulk of real estate transactions of that sort do not create needed housing or long-term secure employment.’”
“But it is not just legitimate global capital that critics of the ghost apartment phenomenon decry. In many cases, these apartments are a vehicle for money laundering, they say. While the UN report does not cite money laundering as a key cause of this phenomenon, many mainstream news reports have done. ‘Why New York real estate is the new Swiss bank account,’ read a 2014 New York Magazine headline on the topic. An article entitled ‘The Kleptocrat in apartment B’ appeared in The New Yorker in 2016, while The New York Times titled a July 2017 report on the issue ‘When the empty apartment next door is owned by an oligarch.’”
From News.com.au in Australia. “Property prices have been swinging wildly across Sydney regions in the aftermath of the recent boom due to the once soaring market hitting unexpected turbulence in 2017. A review of real estate data for the year showed prices finally peaked in July after nearly five years of runaway growth. North Ryde in Sydney’s northwest had the biggest fall in prices, with the median unit price tanking 16.8 per cent. A few kilometres to the west, median unit values fell 8.6 per cent in Rydalmere and 6.8 per cent in Ermington.”
“Numerous units were being constructed in these suburbs and in surrounding areas such as Macquarie Park and Epping. There was also the added impact from rampant home building in areas further afield such as Sydney Olympic Park and Parramatta, which gave home seekers a greater selection of properties. The improved choice removed much of the pressure on buyers to offer higher prices to secure the properties they liked — a phenomenon that drove much of the price increases during the housing boom of 2013-16.”
“Suburbs Annandale and Forest Lodge recorded the biggest price falls across the inner west, with median unit values decreasing 13-15 per cent. CoreLogic analyst Cameron Kusher said unit construction had such a marked impact on prices because it coincided with weakening investor demand brought about by bank restrictions on interest-only loans. ‘It was probably the biggest change (this year),’ Mr Kusher said. ‘If banks clamp down further on loans, which they may do in 2018, there could be further acceleration in the current downturn in prices.’”
Any concern with the government sticking its nose in the housing market by guaranteeing or buying mortgages?
Any concern with the government sticking its nose in the housing market by dropping rates to zero?
Any concern with the government sticking its nose in the housing market by bailing out banks?
Any concern with the government sticking its nose in the housing market by not throwing bankers in jail for fraud?
Any concern with the government sticking its nose in the housing market by not making banks eat their bad loans?
Etc.
+++++
“Premier Kathleen Wynne says she had serious concerns about the government sticking its nose in the red-hot, runaway housing market in Toronto, despite being urged to weigh in.
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/reevely-ontario-will-run-deficits-despite-the-healthy-economy-watchdog-says
“Ontario is facing years of worsening deficits because none of the major parties has a plan to make the province’s spending line up with its income, says the government’s Financial Accountability Office.”
This is what happens when you elect a socialist as your premier, Ontario. As everyone knows, eventually you run out of other people’s money.
Good luck.
I’m a few points away from ditching Canadian stocks,oil hit 60 and I’m out
All these stories of empty homes and apartments all across the world.
And yet the media can’t connect the dots.
Cheap and easy money at zero percent interest rates guaranteed up by the world’s central banks WILL find a home.
And those first in line (i.e - the banks and the 1%ers) will reap the most benefits.
Do you want inexpensive housing stock?
Do you want plenty of housing stock available to rent/buy?
Do you want housing and apartments lived in?
Do you want housing stock that logically ties into the local income of an area?
Raise interest rates to 10%
Make banks eat their bad loans
Put bankers in jail for fraud and not following GAAP
Guarantee NOT ONE mortgage
See - that was easy. And it didn’t even cost the taxpayer a penny (well, maybe for feeding the jailed bankers).
Make it so!!
Is this the previously unannounced part of the Trump/Yellen economic program?
13 trillion in private household debt
20 trillion in govt debt
7 trillion in corporate debt
BloCKchaiN= priceless
Remember all that debt started off as credit
Its just not physical cash that creates inflation.
1. Why does no one (except moochers and the 1%ers) want to live under liberal/progressive state laws and taxes?
2. Why do many who leave such state hell holes then continue to vote for liberals/progressives in their “new” lower tax and less regulation homes? Did they NOT learn their lesson?
3. Add why do liberal/progressive states think replacing their native middle class with third world moochers is a good things? Does it really all boil down to how they will vote for and to keep hold of power? I guess so.
++++++
Nearly 450,000 People Fled These Three Deep Blue States In 2017
The Daily Caller | 8:23 PM 12/26/2017 | Will Racke Immigration and Foreign Policy Reporter
Three Democratic-leaning states hemorrhaged hundreds of thousands of people in 2016 and 2017 as crime, high taxes and, in some cases, crummy weather had residents seeking greener pastures elsewhere.
The exodus of residents was most pronounced in New York, which saw about 190,000 people leave the state between July 1, 2016 and July 1, 2017, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released last week.
New York’s domestic out-migration during that time period was about the same as it was in the same time 2015 and 2016. Since 2010, the state’s outflow of just over 1 million residents has exceeded that of every other state, both in absolute terms and as a share of population, according to the free-market think tank Empire Center.
Despite the massive domestic out-migration flow, New York’s net population grew slightly, largely due to high levels of international immigration and a so-called “natural increase” — the difference between births and deaths in a given year. New York’s net migration was about minus 60,000 residents, but the state had 73,000 more births than deaths, resulting in a net population growth of about 13,000.
Illinois was not so fortunate. Long-beset by twin budget and pension crises and the erosion of its tax base, Illinois lost so many residents that it dropped from the fifth to the sixth-most populous state in 2017, losing its previous spot to Pennsylvania.
Illinois’ domestic out-migration problem has become a nightmare for lawmakers, who must find a way to solve the worst pension crisis in the nation as the state’s tax base shrinks year after year. Illinois’ Democratic-dominated legislature has tried to ameliorate the situation with tax hikes, causing even more people to leave and throwing the state into a demographic spiral. Illinois experiences a net loss of about 33,000 residents in 2016, the fourth consecutive year of population decline.
California was the third deep blue state to experience significant domestic out-migration between July 2016 and July 2017, and it couldn’t blame the outflow on retirees searching for a more agreeable climate. About 138,000 residents left the state during that time period, second only to New York.
However, because California was the top receiving state for international migrants, its net migration was actually 27,000. Add to that number a “natural increase” of 214,000 people, and California’s population grew by about just over 240,000, according to the Census Bureau.
According to the Tax Foundation, New York, Illinois and California had three of the five highest tax rates expressed as a percentage of per capita income, with residents paying 12.7 percent, 11 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
Fastest 5 growing states in 2017 (by % population growth)
1. Idaho
2. Utah
3. Washington
4. Nevada
5. Florida
Class: what do 3/5 have in common? Bueller? Fry? Simone?
Time’s up. Pencils down.
Answer is no state income tax.
close to CA?
True, but I’ll bet their property taxes are onerous. It could be worse, as there are states with onerous property taxes AND a state income tax.
Exactly. States like CA, NY, NJ have high income tax AND high property tax AND high sales tax.
Only 14 states have lower property taxes than California.
Those high California taxes are needed to buy votes.
SFMF: millenial snowflake who received trophies for coming in 5th
Whaaaaa?
Don’t try to hide behind pretend confusion. It’s too obvious to hide.
Go easy on the DebtDonkey.
Idaho has an income tax we also have snow ❄️ And low wages and are a right to work state which a lot of Californiaians don’t understand
From yesterday, the usual open borders narrative:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-26/a-road-map-for-reviving-the-midwest
Step 1: Import millions of unskilled, uneducated peasants from Mexico
Step 2: ??
Step 3: PROFIT!
Why don’t they import millions of high-school educated unemployed troubled “youths” from the cities?
2. Why do many who leave such state hell holes then continue to vote for liberals/progressives in their “new” lower tax and less regulation homes? Did they NOT learn their lesson?
better question: Why don’t they fix the problems up in their people’s republics instead of coming down here and clogging up the roads with their weirdo vehicles?
Bremerton, WA Housing Prices Crater 18% YOY
https://www.movoto.com/bremerton-wa/market-trends/
‘the previous Park Geun-hye administration tried to boost housing prices to invigorate the economy, which led to abrupt appreciation of real estate values. One of its negative side effects is the snowballing household debt, which has topped 1,400 trillion won. Left-leaning President Moon promised to stop the trend. The oversupply of apartments is expected to help him achieve the initiative’
You can go that route. Seems sorta unnecessary. It’s a waste of resources and leads to defaults and lending collapse. We dance around the real issue: how do you recognize the problem in the first place? In the case of Toronto the 30% jump last spring scared them. A little tax, some restrictions - crater. Just like Vancouver. Or Sydney or Auckland. Yes it takes a while for the air to bleed out but first stop the speculative frenzy.
We all know Bernanke re-inflated this bubble. We all know governments feed on this thing like a tick. It’s a way to make up for a lackluster economy. Sure, refinance - buy a car or go on vacation. It doesn’t add anything to the long term sustainability, but taking the easy way out and kicking the can is how this globalist machine works. Eventually the cracks appear. Take the future into your hands or face the consequences.
Bernanke et al re-inflated the bubble to help the banks, not the general population or the economy. It was always about bankers, with Geithner and his “foam the runway” comment as proof. I don’t think they gave a rat’s ass what happens to anybody or the general economy so long as the special interests were made whole on their bad bets and got to keep their loot.
“Norway’s tightened mortgage regulations, in place since the start of the year, are working as planned and do not need to be repealed, Prime Minister Erna Solberg told Reuters. ‘What we’re seeing now is a normal adjustment of the housing market after years of rising prices,’ Solberg said.”
I look forward to President Trump’s similar announcement some day soon.
Trump can’t do much until 2019.
Most of the mortgage regulations are driven by Mel Watt, head of the FHFA. The FHFA is an Independent Agency, which means the President can’t fire Watt. Trump can nominate someone else in 2019.
Yikes
Big gov scks
This is LA???? Jeebus, looks like a third world slum in Africa or South America. I knew there were homeless there, I didn’t know it was that bad.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5214593/Christmas-Day-2017-Downtown-Los-Angeles.html
This is right there:
420 S San Pedro St APT 531, Los Angeles, CA 90013
Studio 1 bath 720 sqft
Pending
$400,000
Year Built 1922
HOA $470/month
2/09/17 Pending sale $400,000 $555
11/09/17 Price change $400,000-0.5% $555
10/03/17 Price change $402,000-0.7% $558
09/04/17 Price change $405,000+2.5% $562
08/01/17 Listed for sale $395,000+135% $548
04/02/09 Sold $168,000-3.9% $233
03/28/09 Listing removed $174,900 $242
02/14/09 Price change $174,900-11% $242
01/30/09 Listed for sale $196,500-1.7% $272
12/12/08 Listing removed $199,900 $277
11/29/08 Listed for sale $199,900-21.8% $277
08/28/08 Sold: Foreclosed to lender $255,622 $355
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/420-S-San-Pedro-St-APT-531-Los-Angeles-CA-90013/79798174_zpid/
Tax history:
2017 $3,207 – $255,196 +2.0%
2016 $3,207 +2.3% $250,193 +1.5%
2015 $3,133 +1.4% $246,436 +2.0%
2014 $3,091 – $241,610 +71.4%
2012 – – $141,000 -7.8%
2011 – – $153,000 -20.3%
2010 – – $192,000 -28.1%
2009 – – $267,000 -29.6%
2008 – – $379,440 +2.0%
2007 – – $372,000 –
Imagine paying all that money, for the privilege of being next to Skid Row.
Evidently Skid Row has looked like this for decades, so I’m not sure who to blame for this? Illegal immigration? Reagan closing mental institutions? Democratic party rule?
And evidently none of those homeless had the ambition to mob the camera car.
The really sad stories are the ones who have jobs and still have to live in a tent or a car. You would think that the city could come up with the funds to convert those trashed buildings into some kind of dorm situation.
Reagan? LOL. There was nothing like this in the 90s. Or even the 00s. This is a recent phenomenon that started right around a certain Kenyan went to DC.
California is the most impoverished state in the country.
A problem only made worse by Obama
People who blame Reagan for homelessness are total morons. Accepting the absurd premise, Democraps have run the cities and all the generous social welfare programs for at least 30 YEARS and yet they have not been able to solve the problem. Really? Either Reagan was an evil genius, libtards are too stupid to solve any of societys problems, or they really arent interested in solving problems at all, instead milking uncle sam while supposedly “helping” the poors. Repeating this nonsense of blaming Reagan just shows how allergic to thinking and logic most people are.
LA skid row has been around probably forever, it just keeps spreading as the skills and corresponding wealth gap widens and drugs become more available. Drugs open up a portal to despair and evil that is very difficult for a soul to escape IMO.
We need to have designated encampments where basic facilities exist, order is loosely maintained, and they are isolated from residential and commercial areas unless and until they demonstrate that they can get along in society as productive members. Containment is necessary.
You have to remember liberalism is a mental disease. So really they are blaming Reagan for not keeping themselves locked up, LOL
Yep, its been 29 years since Reagan left office…that excuse is getting long in the tooth.
Ronald “Mommy?!” Reagan deregulated and liberalized credit. Charge!
Obama is not and never was a “Kenyan”. Not even half-Kenyan. An all-American boy, born of two American parents, right here in the USA.
The truth is stranger than fiction, IMO.
Two American parents? Not quite. Barrack Hussein Obama Sr. was not American. He was a Kenyan who was in Hawaii temporarily. He was never an American citizen, not even a green card holder.
But his mama was American, which makes Hussein Jr. an American as well as Kenyan.
where do you get your facts, mother us citizen, father was not
Come to think of it did he even have a father? He is the son of God, is he not?
where do you get your facts, mother us citizen, father was not, should add that pretty sure father and later his step-father were both muslim. Step father and mother/O lived in indonesia where O went to school during his younger years
I watched this documentary by Joel Gilbert. Fascinating stuff. Made sense to me. He bears a far greater resemblance to Frank Marshall Davis than he does O senior. And if you’ve ever followed any of Malik Obama’s (alleged half brother) tweets, interviews, etc., it makes even more sense.
https://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/dreams_from_my_real_father
It’s an interesting premise.
all irrelevant
LOL, I don’t why people get so uncomfortable when I post that. Mighty Mike got all over my case the last time I posted.
Really a very pedestrian story, in some ways very much duller than the whole Kenyan false birth certificate intrigue.
It may well be that the birth certificate is bogus, but not for the reason people think.
In one of his interviews, Gilbert said he had spent some time with a friend of Obama’s youth, and the guy said that phony ID was a thing in that part of Hawaii. Everybody had phony ID, it was just what people did, for pranks and passing checks or getting into bars or whatever.
Frank Marshall Davis was a communist, a drug dealer and a pimp so him being Obama’s father makes sense as the apple doesnt fall far from the tree. I’m not even sure Ozero knows who his biological father is - and I’m not convinced of his mom’s story either. The indonesian his strumpet mom was shacked up with when she lived there looks a lot like Ozero.
http://www.teapartytribune.com/2014/01/27/the-real-obama-an-indonesian-muslim-socialist-puppet/
meh, his mom’s story is one of a rebellious young woman who wasn’t happy about her CIA father uprooting her from her life in Washington state, where she had friends and enjoyed school and a social life.
All of a sudden she gets plunked down in a strange place in Hawaii and she’s not too happy about it and has no friends, etc. So she gets involved with a married college teacher with all these exotic ideas. It’s not an unusual story. The unusual part is the CIA thing all mixed up in it.
As Amazing Russ used to say “You won’t believe what happens next!”
Obama got most of his facial structure from his mother’s side. His chinline is exactly like Grandfather Dunham. I don’t think there’s any there there.
I disagree, somewhat. I saw that area in the 80s, there were plenty of what were then called Winos living on the streets down there. But not as many as now. And they generally just slept on or under cardboard, they didn’t have tents and tarps all over like now. If they had a shopping cart to keep their stuff in, they were living large.
‘There was nothing like this in the 90s.’
Yeah, not sure where you got that info but you might wanna check the source. Skid Row has been like that for decades. That’s why they call it Skid Row.
‘by the 1930s, Skid Row was home to as many as 10,000 homeless people, alcoholics, and others on the margins of society’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_Row,_Los_Angeles#cite_note-serenade-4
The problem is that it isn’t just Skid Row anymore. Over the past few years homeless have shown up in places they never were before.
I jump over at least a couple of homeless people just sprawled out on the sidewalk now in West Hollywood on my daily run. I think the most I saw were 8.
I watch the tents line Sunset Blvd as I drive to work.
I’ve been screamed at by crazy homeless people where I work in Glendale. Homeless construct huge tent cities miles long along the Santa Ana river in Orange County.
Some of this is economic, and a lot of it is that our leftist controlled state reclassified crimes and released thousands upon thousands of drug addicts and criminals on to the streets.
Exactly. There have always been shady parts of any big city.
But there has never been anything like this, at least not post Great Depression. This is homeless cities next to middle and upper middle class neighborhoods. Like literally next to them.
CA is a 3rd World state for all intents and purposes. A small % of ultra rich people, maybe 10-20% middle class and the rest in poverty. All with nice beaches and good weather. It’s basically Brazil.
See this video, it’s a guy bicycling through Orange County’s shantytowns. That’s Orange County, the place that was once synonymous with CA’s wealth and prosperity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yRZbbJ9kyg
From December 2016:
“[Asst. Chief Michel Moore, who oversees the LAPD’s patrol operations] attributed the crime jump in Los Angeles to a combination of factors, including a resurgence in gang violence and the growth in homelessness. He also pointed to criminal justice reforms such as Proposition 47, which was approved by California voters in November 2014 and reduced some drug and property offenses from felonies to misdemeanors.”
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-crime-stats-20161227-story.html
Of course no mention of the millions of illegals in the LA area. Oh right they’re all valedictorians about to enter Harvard, so the MSM keeps telling me.
‘But there has never been anything like this, at least not post Great Depression.’
EHHHH, wrong answer. Skid Row has been a thing since, during and after the GD. Go check the link (and the references) and post something factual to refute, o/t, you’re just talking sh^t.
You don’t strike me as either intelligent or truthful. Are you a realtor?
Admittedly this is off topic.
It’s been a few months since the massive Equifax data breach, and I have a question for the gallery.
What have you done, if anything, to protect yourself in the aftermath of the breach?
Which data breaches are more concerning: The ones you know affected you, or the ones you don’t know about that affected you?
All here should do the following:
Credit freezes. From the big three. On all wife/husband/all children accounts.
IRS PIN (no one can file taxes in your name without the PIN. You get a new one each year).
Check all bills carefully. Sometimes fraudsters will ping a credit card for a dollar or two to see if you notice. Any strange bills take care of AT ONCE.
Most calls to your home/cell about credit fraud are fake. If you think it is legit, hand up, check the phone number from a bill and call back.
The IRS will NEVER EVER CALL YOU. They will mail you any questions, audits, bill etc.
All sound advice.
I’m still operating off my free 3 years of credit monitoring due to the OPM breach, LOL
Credit cards are pretty good at self monitoring fraud. I’ve had several transactions denied by my CCs that looked suspicious. One was trying to get an Uber in Canada. I needed to call in and verify that it was really me. Another was buying something on Amazon and having it shipped internationally, both Amazon and the CC card were suspicious.
For stuff like someone getting my SS number and using it to work? I check my SS statement yearly to make sure the numbers match up to my actual income.
Also one of my CCs provides a free monthly credit score. I look at that and if I ever were to see a sudden drop, I’d order a full credit report and see what’s up.
But I don’t believe any of those monitoring services provide any value.
Life is simpler if you are not a credit junkie in the first place.
You can still be a victim even if you keep a zero balance. I don’t think I would want to live without a credit card at all, it’s not safe.
DebtDonkeys can’t function in life without loads of debt.
I have and use CCs but no debt.
I know. I carry two. If I’m traveling and one gets a mysterious charge that I dispute I need the other one to put gas in the truck until I get home to pick up my mail. Happened twice this year.
A slower pace of buying things on the credit card helps one to recognize funny stuff.
Yes, it’s good policy to have at least two credit cards for that exact reason. I’ll share a tale that happened to me a few weeks ago. I was using my government travel credit card while on a business trip. I attempted to buy gas using the card, but the card was declined (so I had to use a personal card which was not declined).
When I returned, I called the credit card company (JP Morgan Chase). It turns out that the gas station I attempted to buy fuel from is on their list of businesses which have a higher-than-average incidence of fraudulent credit card purchases, so they immediately suspend any of their credit cards that is attempted to be used at that business.
Without any communication to the card HOLDER except for “SEE CASHIER” at the gas pump display.
You’re not naive enough to really think being debt free = no risk of identity theft do you?
Even though you may not use credit, there is a credit file for you at Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.
Ever go to the doctor? All your personal info is in a database somewhere that could be hacked.
Ever work for an employer? Your data is somewhere that can be hacked?
Ever pay taxes? Then your info is in an IRS database, that can be hacked.
Which means someone in Ukraine most likely has all your personal info as I type.
I always “mis-print” my SSN on all doctor’s office forms…
‘Why New York real estate is the new Swiss bank account,’ read a 2014 New York Magazine headline on the topic. An article entitled ‘The Kleptocrat in apartment B’ appeared in The New Yorker in 2016, while The New York Times titled a July 2017 report on the issue ‘When the empty apartment next door is owned by an oligarch.’
Don’t forget the safe deposit box in the sky.
Realtors are liars.
Oakton, VA Housing Prices Crater 5% YOY On Falling Rental Rates
https://www.zillow.com/oakton-va/home-values/
*Select price from dropdown menu on first chart
Anyone heard anything about mortgage loans getting more creative lately to move property. My son said that he was at a Christmas party where several attendees were RE. They told him interest only loans are been pushed hard. Also that PMI requirements are being creatively rolled into the mortgages along with other fees.
Has been going on since 2009.
We no longer produce much of anything in the U.S. For decades now, we have sent dollars and Treasury bills over to China in exchange for consumer crap that minimum-wage workers dutifully place onto the shelves of big-box stores.
All that paper is coming back to us now, and we realize too late that what goes around eventually do come around. Those distant Asians who were willing to do the dirty work of production for us all those years are buying up the patches of dirt we used to call our own, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Enjoy your low prices, Wal-Mart shoppers. Enjoy your stock market boom, shareholders of hollowed-out companies that have become a hundred glorified variations of Pier One imports. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
40 years ago we were afraid that Saudi Arabia was going to own all of the USA. Then it was Japan. Now China.
Our “securities” over in China aren’t going to be enough to even begin to solve their own debt problem.
“We no longer produce much of anything in the U.S. For decades now”
You’re stuck in 1950s mentality when “produce” meant an assembly line. Google produces a lot. As does Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Of course, a great deal of what those firms “produce” isn’t produced in the USA either.
Don’t you work for one of those companies, in Colorado, which last I checked was, you know….in the USA?
Manufacturing is very strong in the US, but it’s share of US GDP has been declining as other sectors (notably the FIRE sector) has been gaining. Also, the number of jobs attached to manufacturing has been shrinking forever. More machines, less people. Plenty of stuff is still made in the US though. Also, global supply chains means things are made and assembled everywhere.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/07/133561265/3-ways-of-looking-at-manufacturing-in-america
More machines, less people.
less people doing jobs machines are doing now, but more jobs overall in a prospering economy.
Don’t you work for one of those companies, in Colorado, which last I checked was, you know….in the USA?
Part of it is in the USA, but a very big part of it is not. Cheap foreign labor includes people with STEM degrees.
its a nightmare for the QA department trying to keep quality up on the Chinese manufacturing. Constantly having to make long flights over to China to get the truth because they won’t tell you on a video call.
I’m one cube over from one QA guy I swear hes going to drop dead from stress any day now.
I do hear that some high tech manufacturing is coming back to the US now especially if its mostly robotic made.
In the international trade area, the language is almost always about how we must export, and what’s really good is an industry that produces exports. And if we buy from abroad and import, that’s bad. But surely that’s upside-down. What we send abroad we can’t eat, we can’t wear, we can’t use for our houses. The goods and services we send abroad, are goods and services not available to us. On the other hand, the goods and services we import, they provide us with TV sets we can watch, automobiles we can drive, with all sorts of nice things for us to use. The gain from foreign trade is what we import. What we export is the cost of getting those imports. And the proper objective for a nation as Adam Smith put it, is to arrange things, so we get as large a volume of imports as possible, for as small a volume of exports as possible.
This carries over to the terminology we use. When people talk about a favorable balance of trade, what is that term taken to mean? It’s taken to mean that we export more than we import. But from the point of view of our well-being, that’s an unfavorable balance. That means we’re sending out more goods and getting fewer in. Each of you in your private household would know better than that. You don’t regard it as a favorable balance when you have to send out more goods to get less coming in. It’s favorable when you can get more by sending out less.
–Milton Friedman, 1978
“Americans haven’t had a raise in 15 years.”— Hillary Clinton on Thursday, February 11th, 2016 in a Democratic presidential debate in Milwaukee’
It’s been a lot longer than that.
As prices go higher jobs are destroyed as people cant make a living off those once living wage jobs.
We have had trillions upon trillions of credit creation to keep this thing going.
Seems like the only folks buying treasuries are central banks and folks doing the carry trade stuff.
Would you buy a 10 year bond for a measly 2% when inflation could be 5-10%?
I love it when the talk about inflation and the only thing they bring up is food prices. Food is usually a small percentage of people budget.
We keep getting all these guesses at inflation numbers and bogus stories about 2%.
What is the credit creation and increase in paper currency?
You have inflation from inflating the money supply and inflation from supply and demand forces.
Look at flat screen tvs. prices were going up but now there is more supply than demand as everyone got one and then demand dropped.
And it wouldn’t have changed had she been elected. That was a big component of the Obama “Hope and Change” promise, but during his eight years nothing changed, at least not for the better.
Real Median HH income in 2016 dollars
1985: $50,258
1990: $54,042
1995: $53,380
2000: $58,544
2005: $56,935
2007: $58,149 (Democrats took over house/senate)
2009: $55,683 (Barrack Hussein Obama takes over)
2010: $54,245 (Final year of full Democrat Rule)
2015: $57,230 (GOP takes over Senate/House)
2016: $59,039 (Trump wins)
So really the story is things were going well up until Democrats gained power in 2007. Then the more power they had, the worse things got. As soon as the GOP regained some power, things kept getting better.
We should pas $60K easily for 2017 and I wouldn’t be surprised if we hit $70K by the end of Trump’s second term.
It’s taken 15 years, but we’re above the 2000 peak. And with MAGA on steroids look to be at $65K in the next few years.
in the next few years…
Unfortunately the seeds of what will be harvested in the “next few years” were sown over the past 35 years. Cleansing our system of the waste and excess of monumental credit expansion created over that period will leave things quite different. It needs to happen. It will, it has over and over throughout history.
I know you’re too young to remember 2005 - 2007, but there were reasons the GOP lost in 2006. I think Ben has everything archived.
One thing to consider with HH income is that some of the increase since the 70s has been the increase of women entering the workforce (since this is HH income) and their gradual increase in earning parity.
Another thing to realize is the 2016 increase was the last year in Obama’s term. This was the strongest wage increase among all quintiles in like 50 years, so it was broad-based. It will be good if Trump and the GOP controlled senate/house can keep this trend going. We’ll see the numbers for year 1 in a few months…
Do you really believe wages will triple or quadruple to meet grossly inflated housing prices?
Of course not.
Housing prices will continue falling to dramatically lower and more affordable levels meeting wages.
This is one of the most facile things I have ever read. It’s hard to believe this shithead actually won a Nobel Prize.
Eddie (may I call you Eddie?), puhleeze, if you could spare us the “we” lectures that “we” get EVERY. SINGLE. FRIGGIN’. DAY. from all manner of pundits and opinionators, from the lonely basement keyboard bangers to the syndicated bloviators, I, for one, would really appreciate it.
See, the thing is, I clicked on your link and realized you probably have a few worthwhile things to say from your perch there in paradise, but it comes across like a bunch of self-hating cuckery, and I’m just not part of the “we” that the punditry seems to want to berate here in the US.
Seriously, “we” have to take this crap every day from not only syndicated columnists, but from fellow citizens who somehow think they have a mission in life to give others a raft of shiite about WalMart and Asia and “woe is us, we deserve it”. Maybe it’s a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, I dunno.
Anyway, if you could just sweep all that aside for a bit, I wouldn’t mind hearing your views on the future of intellectual property rights and that sort of thing.
EddieTard?
No, not EddieTard, lol, that Eddie is long gone, I think, unless he’s back under another name.
I just like the name Eddie. This poster has a very interesting background in patents and such, so I’d like to hear a little about that.
buying up the patches of dirt
We are very lucky that the Chinese are NOT buying up the actual patches of dirt, i.e. buying up our farmland, or the land outside our immediate suburbs. Especially in the East, where there is still water. They are more interested in our airboxes in the sky, or in the very crowded areas near the universities on the West Coast.
Best immediate thing to do to ward off the Chinese: End chain migration. And if you really want to have fun, start rounding up the visa overstays. Or failing that, simply stop issuing new visas until all the overstays have left.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2013 / 5:37 PM / 4 YEARS AGO
U.S. clears Smithfield’s acquisition by China’s Shuanghui
Reuters Staff
3 MIN READ
(Reuters) - The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment has cleared the way for Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd’s proposed $4.7 billion acquisition of Smithfield Foods Inc, the companies said on Friday.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-smithfield/u-s-clears-smithfields-acquisition-by-chinas-shuanghui-idUSBRE98513I20130907
Remember, Muslims don’t eat pork, so Obama didn’t care.
“our farmland”
Donk I didn’t know you signed up for a mortgage on worthless dirt too.
You do realize I was using the patriotic “our.” “Our” meaning American farmland in general. And yo’re pretty testy today. How about a snack:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91cX9aS6%2B9L._SL1500_.jpg
Anyway, I think it’s good to have Ed S with us. Would be great to hear some new ideas.
DebtDonkey
Takoma Park, MD Housing Prices Crater 19% YOY
https://www.movoto.com/takoma-park-md/market-trends/
“The law also repeals a deduction for interest paid on home equity loans, except in cases where the loan is used to improve the residence”
No more deductions for cash out Boob jobs, speed boats, vacations like that young then married now divorced couple got as they refied their way through 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 with the ATM machine they purchased to live in back in 2002.
Home sellers in region await impact of tax package
By Alexander Soule Published 11:52 am, Wednesday, December 27, 2017
With Connecticut home sales trending downward this autumn, all eyes in residential real estate will be on the January and February market as a harbinger of things to come in the spring under the new law that eliminates a major tax deduction for many homeowners.
Republicans set the limit on deductible mortgage debt to $750,000 for new loans, with current loans of up to $1 million grandfathered. The law also repeals a deduction for interest paid on home equity loans, except in cases where the loan is used to improve the residence rather than for other life expenses.
The new tax law allows homeowners to itemize deductions on up to $10,000 of state and local property taxes — for both single and joint filers — with SmartAsset calculating at just over $613,000 the assessed value of a Fairfield County home at which additional taxes would no longer qualify for the itemized deduction.
“We … believe this is particularly detrimental to our housing market, as it eliminates many of the key deductions that are instrumental in the home-buying process,” said Michael Barbaro, president of the Connecticut Association of Realtors, speaking of the tax package as Congress readied to send a final bill for President Trump’s signature.
http://www.greenwichtime.com/
Empty Pockets and DebtDonkeys fail to understand that it is grossly inflated prices that destroyed the economy and that only falling prices to dramatically lower and more affordable levels will cure it.
The economy is a corpse and has been for years.
Did you click on the link and scroll down to the bottomm of the page in the Business section where it has a picture showing a pack of Connecticut Donkeys holding up signs that read Unfair Taxes, ENOUGH, $2,600 HIGHER TAXES and that picture is from Tuesday July 5, 2016
“Residents from the Black Rock neighborhood came out en masse to protest a raise in property taxes, during the Bridgeport City Council’s meeting at Bridgeport City Hall in Bridgeport, Conn. on Tuesday July 5, 2016. High profile residents including former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker and former mayoral candidate Mary-Jane Foster were on hand to protest the hike as well.”
Pre-meeting, I wonder if former U.S. Comptroller General David Walk said lets go out there like a bunch of crazed Donkeys?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wiQ18jDWqo
And of course no mention of
$2K tax child credit now available to everyone making up to $400K (before it was $1K and only up to $110K).
Lower tax rates. Old rate of 28% is now 24% and kicks in at a much higher income level.
Doubling of the standard deduction to $24K
So the couple, with 2 kids, earning $200K and buying the $600K home will lose some deductions, but more than make up for it via lower rates, child credit and higher standard deduction.
If you knew nothing about this bill other than what is in the MSM you’d think the ONLY thing in it was restrictions on SALT and a corporate tax cut.
Doubling of the standard deduction to $24K.
This is an outright lie and you have been corrected on it before. Considering the personal exemption is gone the standard deduction going up is a nothingburger.
No, we do not all get the increased child tax credit.
And we don’t all get the $24K deduction either. Please note that I am paying for my house by myself, without a handy spouse to pitch in — if only for tax purposes. I’ve tried a couple calculators and I can’t figure out if I’ll pay more or less in taxes next April.
without a handy spouse…
Exactly.
I have my taxes figured out for next year already. It gets ridiculously simple when you will have no taxable income.
“And we don’t all get the $24K deduction either. Please note that I am paying for my house by myself, without a handy spouse to pitch in — if only for tax purposes. I’ve tried a couple calculators and I can’t figure out if I’ll pay more or less in taxes next April.”
So you are saying you tried to care about money and it worked just fine.
“without a handy spouse to pitch in — if only for tax purposes.”
Get a Hedge Fund spouse like Chelsea
“who along with former banker husband Marc Mezvinsky, purchased a $10.5-million Gramercy Park apartment in 2013.”
Chelsea Clinton: I tried to care about money but couldn’t
BY
LESLIE LARSON
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
June 23, 2014, 5:13 PM
Hillary Clinton insists she isn’t “well-off” and now daughter Chelsea, according to a recent interview, claims she couldn’t care less about money.
“I was curious if I could care about (money) on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,”
https://search.xfinity.com/#web/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Fchelsea-clinton-care-money-article-1.1840138/1
Every one of these sob story articles in the MSM talks about the “typical family”. Which means 2+ kids and $24K standard deduction comes into play, but is ignored in the articles. As are the lower rates.
Don’t get mad at me for being outliers (ie single home owners). The tax code was written to maximize political return. Married home owners with kids > single, kidless home owners. Therefore they will get more of a tax cut. Kinda politics 101.
And I suspect you too will get a tax cut from the lower rates alone.
Eddie can’t possibly be as dense as he pretends.
Married home owners with kids > single, kidless home owners.
Bullsh!t. As of 2012:
Married homeowners with kids living at home: 20%
Single-person household: 28%
Married with no kids at home: 29%
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-families/u-s-families-shift-as-fewer-households-include-children-census-idUSBRE97Q0TJ20130827
OK, I just posted a link to an article which says that there are many more single-person households than married families.
However, you still might be right, because the data doesn’t break down how many of those single people own homes. There are probably more single renters than family renters.
Just listened to an NPR Planet Money analysis on the tax plan. There was nothing new really, but I did like this quip:
“So the important thing to know about this bill is there’s kind of no average person. So you and I can have the same amount of income but pay very different taxes.”
A lot of how this breaks down for the “average” person will be where one lives, how one’s source of income is derived, and which types of deductions/credits one has taken in the past.
Barrack Hussein Obama sez: we have to censor the internet, for you own good, of course. You don’t want to be exposed to double plus bad ideas, do you? We, the elite will figure out what are good thoughts and only allow those ideas to be shared with you.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-obama/obama-urges-leaders-not-to-split-society-with-online-biases-idUSKBN1EL0LH
NPR aired a segment on this earlier today.
Obama is the most racist American president in my lifetime. There was political correctness before him, coming mostly from academia and the media. But the SJW snowflake lunacy flourished under his administration, and increased exponentially with the emergence of Drumpf.
There’s no coded, muted language now. They speak freely of their hatred of America and the Constitution, and their advocacy of white genocide.
First Amendent freedom of speech can not exist without the protection of the Second Amendment. And any “resistance” that aims to end First Amendment freedom of speech that turns into widespread violence will only end with lots and lots (alot) of dead Antifa.
SPLC blog monitors reading this post, you can’t win. You. Just. Can’t.
“Obama has previously warned that social media platforms can lead people to make snap judgments about complex decisions ”
Like say, oh I dunno, bumper sticker slogans like Hope and Change?
Obama (and Trump) live rent free inside your skull.
That Executive Order puts an end to much, if not most of this stuff. Something tells me the fund for Antifa have dried up, bigly. And also for phony foundations and such.
The biggest threat to the NWO, the Globalist movement or whatever you want to call it, was and is the American white middle class and that is why they are trying to hard to destroy it and they’ve done a pretty good job. We’re on the menu, no doubt about it. You can see it happening over the years: pump in the drugs (going back to the 1960s), take away their jobs/income prospects, propagandize them through “educayshun”, intimidate, invalidate, send ‘em off to war, tell them how horrible they are, and get them to agree and do it to themselves, or to each other. Shame them. Tatoo them. Fatten them. Destroy their family support system.
That’s a LOT of effort, you know. We must be pretty dangerous to them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have to do all that. Seems like the western Europeans rolled over a lot easier and faster. We’re a lot more ornery and tougher nuts to crack.
Not that they aren’t still trying, though. And yet, we’re still standing. Diminished, yes, but still standing.
Which Executive order, pal? I know there were several.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-blocking-property-persons-involved-serious-human-rights-abuse-corruption/
#QAnon and Liberty Targeting: ‘We as truth warriors smell victory’ – Lionel
The Calm Before the Storm
Latest edition:
Q posts
Okay, so the Magnitsky act was directed towards Russian. This executive order is along those same lines but expands the scope.
Earlier this year, the Republican congress, perhaps sensing that Trump was unreliably naive when it came to Russian interference in the election (given that this probably hurts his ego), passed a resolution to limit Trumps power on Russia:
The sanctions, aimed at punishing Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, limit the president’s power to lift the sanctions without congressional approval and were initially resisted by the administration.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/02/trump-signs-bipartisan-russia-sanctions-bill-241242
Is Obama still promulgating internet policy in your corner of cyberspace these days?
Assuming that there are 100 home available , and one on them is bought for investment, holding vacant, leaving 99 available, then you can expect that the next one sold will , usually, cost a little more, raising the supply price.
The investor then sees house price raising on the one he purchased and buys another one, causing supply prices to raise, justifying the purchase, and leaving properties vacant to minimize carrying costs, and so it continues until demand at new prices limits decreases and ,perhaps, the investor would sell.
but until the investor can re-invest sales profit at an amount that will justify sale and re-investment the interest rates have to increase on other ventures to justify such action.
Which means that the government must cause interest rates to rise to drive the home investor to more income investments than the holding of vacant homes
How to stop that is the question.
You don’t have to stop it. It will end without your intervention in ruin and poverty for the gambler. What you need to do is to stay out of the way in the meantime.
Highland Beach, FL Housing Prices Crater 14% YOY As Housing Demand Plummets To 20 Year Low
https://www.movoto.com/highland-beach-fl/market-trends/
That Japan Times article is amazing. Their housing market is practically a polar opposite of the US (or many other developed nations).
Fascinating in general to look at their situation, with a steadily dwindling population. Such a contrast to the ever-growing population of, well, pretty much every other country that’s not a war zone or the size of a postage stamp.
Another article on that site indicates they are cutting back on refugee visas. And they hardly let in any as it was.
With 25 million excess, empty and defaulted houses and population growth at all time lows here in the US, Japan mirrors the US perfectly.
bbbbut bbbbut bbbbut how can Japan prosper without diversity? Don’t they know it’s their greatest strength?
just like in monopoly the banker always wins SErfS!
That’s a fact, Jack.
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
“Former Realtor Accused Of Stealing Thousands Of Dollars From Clients”
http://wsvn.com/news/special-reports/former-realtor-accused-of-stealing-thousands-of-dollars-from-clients/
‘The UN report decries the ‘financialization of housing’ whereby hundreds of billions of dollars of global wealth are being invested in real estate and transforming real estate markets’
China commissioned a report a few years ago that determined they had “wasted” 6 trillion bucks along these lines. The global number has got to be much higher. Imagine what things would be like if all this money had gone into something productive.
Angela J. Davis on Race and Criminal Justice Reform (recorded earlier today):
https://www.c-span.org/video/?438867-3/washington-journal-angela-j-davis-discusses-race-criminal-justice-reform
Funkadelic — Jimmy’s Got A Little Bit Of Bitch In Him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cbD3pDX_6E
The end is beginning.
Bitcoin ‘doesn’t pass the smell test,’ says Massachusetts securities regulator
- Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Galvin says bitcoin “doesn’t pass the smell test.”
- “There is no product here. This is entirely speculation. That’s already been proven by the high gyrations of the value. It’s also subject to manipulation, because no one can explain it no one can control it,” Galvin says on CNBC’s “Fast Money.”
- On Dec. 13, Galvin issued what is likely the first investor advisory on bitcoin from a state.
Evelyn Cheng | @chengevelyn
Published 4 Hours Ago Updated 4 Hours Ago
…
best marketing scheme ever. So many bubbles.
when is the law of diminishing returns going to kick in for QE?
printing money to prop up asset prices is a desperation move.