Frustrated Sellers Who Just Want To Move
A report from CBC News in Canada. “Planned homes in a new Whitby subdivision are on sale for up to $90,000 less than similar homes in the same development were a year ago. Good news if you’re house hunting now. Bad news if you bought into the development a year ago. Last January, Astrid Poei and her husband Sheldon Fisher purchased one of more than 100 lots in Phase 1 of the new Queens Common community. Phase 2 of the Mattamy Homes project re-launched this month with the same sized lots and floor plans offered at lower prices. Poei and Fisher say they were ’shocked’ to find out that homes and lots very similar to the one they purchased are now on sale for $75,000 less than what they paid. ‘It’s painful,’ Poei said in an interview. ‘There are no building materials on site, there is no foundation poured, so I don’t understand how we are paying more than someone who bought a couple of weeks ago.’”
“The answer, according to Mattamy Homes Canada president Brad Carr, lies in what was an unprecedented year of change in the GTA real estate market. ‘Recently prices in the GTA have drifted downwards,’ Carr said in an interview. ‘Obviously we need to respond to be able to sell at prices purchasers are willing to pay.’”
“Despite ’short term ups and downs,’ Carr is confident the homes will appreciate in value over time, as has been the case historically in the GTA, and says buyers who are in it for the long run have nothing to worry about. ‘Just like the buyers are extremely happy in a rising market, they have to appreciate that the same decision could go the other way,’ he said. ‘To come back a year later and see the same house that we bought is now $90,000 cheaper, that’s not cool,’ said Dionne Thompson, who also bought in Phase 1.”
From The Guardian in the UK. “Owners of luxury London properties are having to knock more than £1m off their house prices to sell them. Mayfair-based property buying agent Garrington said homes in the capital’s most exclusive neighbourhoods have been reduced in price by an average of 9%. In Knightsbridge, the most expensive area, prices have been cut by an average of 12% – £927,000.”
“Jonathan Hopper, managing director of Garrington, said sellers are having to take drastic action to realise the value of their homes. ‘There is huge discounting of super prime properties above £5m at the moment,’ he said. ‘A lot are being discounted by 10 or 20%.’ Hopper said that in one example a Knightsbridge home first listed on the market for £20m in the summer of 2016 was in the process of being sold ‘very quietly’ for £15m. ‘They are frustrated sellers who just want to move,’ he said. ‘But this is not happening on the open market, it is all happening behind closed doors.’”
“Henry Pryor, an independent luxury property buying agent, said sales of high-end properties had all but dried up and he expected sales to slow further as the date for Brexit approaches. ‘It’s a Siberian winter out there.’”
The Asia Times on Thailand. “In a report published in December, the Agency for Real Estate Affairs estimated that 397 new housing and condominium projects were launched in Bangkok last year, putting 117,112 new units to the market, up 8% year-on-year. ‘In Thailand, there is no shortage of housing at all,’ says Sopon Pornchokchai, president of the Agency. ‘If this trend goes on in 2018, a bubble burst can be witnessed in 2019 or 2020.’”
“Colliers International Thailand, a property consultant, estimates that some 36,000 condominium units remained unsold in the capital at year end, or about 23% of the new supply. For other realtors, the unsold estimates are even higher. The glut is particularly noticeable in the lower-priced, single unit condominiums that have proliferated along Bangkok’s new mass transit lines, attracting mostly Thai investors buying for their own use or as speculators aiming at the rental market.”
From the Malaysian Insight. “A call has been made for the government to address a potential glut in affordable housing that arose from ever increasing government and private sector schemes, The Edge Markets reported. ‘We don’t want an oversupply of affordable homes like what we had with the PPR (People’s Housing Project) where there was an oversupply years ago,’ said CBRE WTW Kuala Lumpur director Ungku Mohd Iskandar Ungku Ismail.”
“There are 21 non-landed home developments which were completed in the Klang Valley in 2017, supplying an additional 8,300 high-rise homes into the region, bringing the cumulative supply to 46,400 high-rise homes. There will be an incoming supply of about 14,000 high-rise homes entering the Klang Valley property market, Iskandar said. Bank Negara Malaysia, in its latest quarterly bulletin published in November, said the number of unsold residential properties is at a decade-high, with a majority of units being in the RM250,000 and above price category, beyond the income of most Malaysians.”
“The central bank said the oversupply of office space and shopping complexes in the major states is expected to be exacerbated by incoming supply, potentially becoming more severe than during the Asian financial crisis.”
From the BBC on China. “Employees at a brick factory in southeast China who were collectively owed some 90,000 yuan (US $14,050; £10,080) had their unpaid wages topped up in bricks, it’s reported. According to the Xinhua News Agency, some 30 factory workers in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, agreed to receive 290,000 bricks in exchange for 80,000 yuan of their owed earnings. Xinhua says that their employer, who has not been named by local media, is still trying to figure out a way to repay staff the remaining 10,000 yuan that they are owed.”
“The story has ignited lively debate on Chinese social media, with many users of the Sina Weibo microblog expressing concern. ‘Why is it always rural migrant workers that are paid in arrears?’ asks one. Others make jokes at the expense of China’s housing bubble, saying that the situation has become so bad that bricks constitute a decent substitute for finances.”
From Fairfax Media on New Zealand. “There has been a sharp increase in owners selling houses and apartments for less than they paid. One in 10 apartments sold in the third quarter of 2017 went for less than their owners paid for them, according to CoreLogic’s Pain and Gain Report. CoreLogic head of research Nick Goodall said Christchurch saw the highest level of loss-making resales of residential properties. More than 11 per cent of Christchurch homes sold in the third quarter changed hands at a loss.”
“The median length of time loss-making sellers had owned their property was just 4.5 years, indicating some recent buyers of houses and apartments had ditched their investments when the capital gains they had expected did not materialise, Goodall said. ‘This may be a sign of market fatigue with buyers choosing to cash out of the market rather than risk holding the property and potentially experiencing further loss,’ he said.”
Investors bore the brunt of loss-making sales, CoreLogic found. The median loss for Christchurch home-owners who sold for less than they paid was $39,000. The median loss-making seller in Auckland was left $34,000 out of pocket, before selling costs are taken into account.”
From News.com.au on Australia. “It could be a bad year for housing prices if building approvals are anything to go by. With the housing market teetering on the edge of a serious downturn, apartment developers seem to be having a ‘last blast.’ Building approvals data released last week shows a serious uptick in the number of homes that were approved. The timing of this big push is fascinating because November is exactly when Australian capital city housing prices started falling. The developers didn’t know in advance that was going to happen, but they might have sensed it. After all, what could drive such a big uptick in building approvals is the sense that it is now or never.”
“It’s curious there’s still many apartments being approved in Victoria, after real estate agent Mariecris Tagala last year claimed more than half of new apartments in Melbourne’s CBD, Docklands, and Southbank have sold at a loss since 2011.”
“Markets are supposed to co-ordinate supply and demand. But that’s a hard job when supply takes a long time to come online. If you’re halfway through building a big development when the market falls by 10 per cent, you’re in a bind. The losses involved in finishing the properties and selling them for less than they cost to build will almost certainly be smaller than the losses involved in abandoning the project, so you have to push on to get at least some money back. This is the essence of the boom and bust cycle that characterises property.”
‘It’s painful,’ Poei said in an interview. ‘There are no building materials on site, there is no foundation poured, so I don’t understand how we are paying more than someone who bought a couple of weeks ago.’
Deerfield, MA Housing Prices Crater 23% YOY
https://www.movoto.com/deerfield-ma/market-trends/
Total inventory now and a year ago is 4 houses… I really want you to be right, but I’m tired of this boy who cried wolf nonsense.
DebtDonkey
Hillsboro, OR Housing Prices Crater 11% YOY On Skyrocketing Housing Inventory
https://www.movoto.com/hillsboro-or/market-trends/
Median price for a single family home in the above referenced link a year ago = $199/sqft…. today = $212/sqft.
How is this anywhere near “cratering”? Again I would for this bubble to pop, but I don’t understand the non stop “x market is cratering” comments when the links provided show no actual cratering…
Hey Spooner,
The median list price is down 11%. You don’t buy a square foot of house. Do Realtors ask you how many ft2 of house you’re in the market for or rather what is your price range?
All else equal (age, bed/bath count, neighborhood, lot size, quality of construction, etc.), a larger house will sell for more than a smaller house.
It ain’t rocket science.
When a house is priced lower than other houses, it sells because the other houses are overpriced.
It’s quite simple really.
$/sqft is important when looking at housing markets. In the areas that are usually referenced, yes, the median list price has lowered. But, almost always, so has the size of the house. Therefore, $/sqft is another tool to assess the health of that particular market. Especially, when the inventory is as low as it is when Senior Housing Analyst or Mafia Blocks posts.
I remember looking up one of Mafia’s towns. It was a small town of mostly SFH and a few 1980s cheap condos. Very few transactions. From the data, the enter price model was skewed by when new complex of ~15 high-end condos had opened, making up the bulk of transactions. So the $/sq ft went up, but overall the price cratered because the price of the new condos was still less than prices for SFH.
I’ve always tended to believe that larger houses have a lower $/sq foot simply than smaller houses when most other things are held constant. I look at it similar to why when you buy in bulk you tend to get a better price to unit. There are fixed costs to build, and a smaller house lets you spread those fixed costs around less sq feet.
Incorrect.
$/sq ft valuation is poor indicator as it excludes all other items. Where there other structures included in the transaction? An additional lot? Kickbacks?
$/sqft counts when estimating and bidding work.
There are fixed costs to build…
Such as?
Consider that the whole time the bubble was expanding the size of houses was going up.
“There are fixed costs to build… Such as?”
I would say land, regs, permits, fees.
It seems that when you start to build larger you get more economies of scale.
I think the reason house sizes were increasing was due to the MID and the fact that so little down is required. Builders are incentivized to build as large as possible, realtors want to sell for as high as possible to earn their commission, etc. And, when you look at the $/sq feet on larger homes, it looks like you are getting a better deal. Why not stretch?
There are certain aspects to construction that are costly on a per square foot basis.
Adding a bathroom, as an example, is much more expensive that simply deciding to make a bedroom a bit bigger. So, typically, a 3/2 is going to be more costly than than a 3/1 of the same square footage…and will sell for more–even though it’s the same size.
Likewise, a smaller 3/2 will often sell for more than a larger 3/1.
Lots of things contribute to a home’s utility, and accordingly, it’s value. At a certain point though there are diminishing amounts of utility for the n+1th bathroom, or bedroom.
So, one would likely pay a lot less to get that 6th bathroom than the 2nd one.
But in any event, all else equal, a larger house sells for more than a smaller house.
Consider that the whole time the bubble was expanding the size of houses was going up.
And the size of people’s brains has been shrinking.
How true Karen. Not yours though, not living in the mania.
His post didn’t say anything about inventory. It referenced prices. Try to follow along.
Canadian interest rates have been going up.
Which means housing prices will be coming down - even without a bubble deflating.
I hope they understand what a recourse mortgage is…
They might have to change the national anthem to “Ouch, Canada!”
I’m guessing they’re also having a brutal winter and flu season much like the US is currently. If you’re going to overpay, better to do it somewhere with nice weather, eh?
You’re paying more because a gun is being held to your head and you’re scared.
Well, at least they didn’t throw their money away on rent, right?
Or bitcoins.
From the comments to the NZ article:
‘Well surprise surprise. I can’t speak for the rest of the country but for the Auckland market, its generally accepted that only around 60-70% of the huge increase in the average house between 2009 and 2017 could be attributed to economic fundamentals (low interest rates, ridiculously excessive immigration, minimal housebuilding under National etc).
The remainder of the increase was due to any or all of the following - all hugely prevalent in Auckland:
1) Greed and materialism (keeping up with the Joneses)
2) Fear of missing out
3) Gross overstatements by real estate agents of the value of houses they were selling
4) Buyer stupidity in believing these agents and other people with a vested interest in keeping the ponzi scheme alive’
Another:
‘I totally understand for apartments, our subdivision has several new ones sitting unsold for over a year now. Some are even unfinished for that period or more as no one wants to live buy, so developers don’t want to sink more money into them only to have them sit there unsold. I don’t think the apartment style living is floating anyone’s boat here in Christchurch. ‘
And comments from the CBC article -
“”It’s painful”? How? That was the price you were happy paying for it last year. You purchased at the peak of the housing cycle. You have nobody to blame but yourselves.”
“If the price went up, would they still complain? Or offer to pay the difference? Doubt it.”
“Greed sometimes bites you on the bum. Things happen. I am sure a large chunk of the people had ZERO intentions of living there. Just a buy and flip. Too bad so sad. Move on.”
Online media will have to start disabling the comments section lest the silent majority get a little too loud and ruin the illusion that no one saw it coming and everyone was totally on board for the glorious prosperity-making rebubble.
It’s a Russian plot!
If the price went up,they’d just smugly say “Well, I’m a smart investor”
its generally accepted that only around 60-70% of the huge increase in the average house between 2009 and 2017 could be attributed to economic fundamentals
Now that’s a knee slapper.
The median wage in NZ is 49000 NZD (36K USD)
The median house price: NZ$480,000 (US$341,520). It’s even higher in Aukland NZ$825,000 (US$586,988).
So prices are over 10x annual salary, there is no MID, no 30 year fixed rate loans and their rates are 5-6%
Yup, based on fundamentals, no bubble here folks, move on, nothing here to see.
Perhaps they have built in a century of commodity price increases based on the unstoppable Chinese housing boom?
Milk always goes up.
‘In Thailand, there is no shortage of housing at all,’ says Sopon Pornchokchai.’
Indeed Sopon, and there’s no shortage anywhere as these FB’s are finding out.
Narrators gonna narrate:
http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/24/news/economy/daca-dreamers-homeowners/index.html?iid=hp-toplead-dom
So, the mortgage industrial complex extended at least seven mortgages to an individual on a temporary visa.
But wait, there’s more:
How about that? They have an ownership rate far above the national average! And I’ll bet they’re all astronauts and doctors too!
Spin that narrative, baby!
‘So, the mortgage industrial complex extended at least seven mortgages to an individual on a temporary visa’
Not only that, they’ll give a loan to a straight out illegal alien using his roommates income to qualify, and have been doing this for 2 years. Oh, but lending standards are so tough!
File under:
When government guarantees a loan then the mortgage company will lend to anyone no matter what
And
Want to screw a well functioning system? Get government involved.
Funny how Japan, China, SoKo and other Asian Tigers don’t need Refugees or Dreamers to prosper.
Here’s another helping of the globalist narrative:
http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/16/smallbusiness/euro-car-parts-sukhpal-singh-ahuwalia/index.html
Never mind all those London moped gangs that rob businesses and mug people, they’re just misunderstood cultural enrichers. In London the pizza and other food delivery guys ride bicycles, and there are neighborhoods where they won’t deliver.
In China I think they pulled migrants in from the hinterlands to man the factories. Didn’t give them resident status in said cities.
Correct. Which meant their kids had to stay “home” with Grandma and Grandpa and go to school there. Which in addition to all the usual negatives that go with family separation, it means Chinese New Year is particularly insane now because all those workers get their one chance to go home to their kids each year. Coming up in a few more weeks. I’m headed over on February 3rd.
I am in China now. I will report in over the next two weeks. It’s a very interesting country. I have an AirBnB in a highrise complex. Studio apartment. It’s a great deal, but no central heat. It appears the complex is well occupied.
It’s a great deal, but no central heat.
Hahah…so you’re south of the magic line. I do get tired of freezing indoors in the winter. Are you in Shanghai?
I had been wondering about that. If a mortgage homeowner is deported, what happens to his stuff here in the US? Specifically houses, monster trucks, bank accounts, etc.
By the way, there’s a relatively new poll out on DACA, conducted by Harvard and Mark Penn (Penn was Hillary’s 2008 campaign manager):
————-
77% support DACA recipients with work permits and path to citizenship:(66% Republicans support)
54% support physical/electronic barrier (wall): (32% of Democrats)
20% support open borders as mentioned by Hillary
32% support 50K diversity lottery
79% support immigration based on merit vs. family ties
Preferred general level of immigration: 500,000/year (current is 1 million/year)
————
The Dems tried to extrapolate the support for DACA into support for near-full amnesty. This poll supports amnesty for ONLY 800K, with major strings attached. Not looking good for Dems.
————————
*I always wondered how many illegal immigrants “self-deported” themselves in 2009-2010 by driving their $50K 72-month monster trucks back across the border and never making another payment. How much of a hit did Toyota take on that?
If Toyota, Ford or GM lent a dime to an illegal in America based on a temporary and unlawful obama EO in direction violation of longstanding US Law.
They deserve to lose every penny.
++++
How much of a hit did Toyota take on that?
This isn’t related to DACA. This was closer to Bush II Administration. Illegal immigrants were making huge cash in the housing boom. IIRC, there was easy credit fr trucks as well as houses. Then when the bubble popped in 2008-2009, the work dried up and immigrants self-deported south. And what better transport to go home than the shiny monster truck they bought during the bubble. Musta made a yuuge impression with their buddies.
Anything with a loan lien that falls into arrears will be repossessed. If it’s paid for they shouldn’t lose it, and they will probably sell it before boarding the one way flight home. They should be able to keep bank accounts, but I would expect them to close them out as they will need the cash back in the old country.
79% support immigration based on merit
makes sense
But who is going to drive us around when we’re too drunk and rape and rob us after we pass out?
https://nypost.com/2018/01/23/uber-driver-in-us-illegally-charged-with-4-rapes/
BTW, is Uber still a thing? I dont hear much about it in the news lately, maybe everyone is too busy mining da crypto to go out anymore.
BTW, is Uber still a thing? I dont hear much about it in the news lately, maybe everyone is too busy mining da crypto to go out anymore.
On a business trip recently (to a place that isn’t overpopulated with Taxis), we opted to NOT rent a car, which would have been standard for the same trip 5 years ago, and decided to use Uber instead.
In addition to saving the rental car cost and fuel, we also saved the extortion-level parking fees at the hotel ($50 per night).
We figure our total transportation cost was reduced by more than 50% by using Uber.
Rental car companies are toast…and eventually paid parking garages.
Wow. In San Jose with free parking I concluded that a rental car was better unless you could keep it down to one round trip a day (maybe 3 total legs if you needed to stop off for food). But any more than that and you should definitely get a rental car. I’m assuming you were in NYC because I haven’t seen parking that expensive anywhere.
Coastal So Cal, not NYC. If I was in NYC, I could easily taxi/subway, etc.
I also wasn’t going very many places…my Uber rides were typically $10.
Free parking is a big difference…if our parking was free, then it would have been much closer, but probably still cheaper to Uber given how little we moved around.
95% of DACA homeowners have mortgages.
So is he saying that 95% of the DACA population has a mortgage, or that 5% of the DACA who bought houses owns them outright? Neither is plausible. Is it part of Latin culture to talk yourself up?
It’s the narrative.
As Apt 401 would say, our betters are telling us that Dreamers are not only model citizens, but that also they are better than us and without them our economy will hurt, if not outright collapse.
For all we know, Diego Corzo rents an apartment with 4 roommates and buses tables at Applebee’s. I don’t believe a single word that comes out of CNN, or the MSM for that matter.
Every time these immigration debates come up, people miss the most obvious answer. Let’s model our policy on that of Mexico. I’m sure we can point to programs where illegal immigrant persons living in Mexico are allowed to bring their children, put them in schools and are given Mexican government backed loans to buy multiple Mexican shacks, right?
sounds like 401 must think that he’s better than many
Being that none of us knows him personally, and he has never come out and said that h’s better, it would be presumptuous to believe that.
All he does is mock the leftist, globalist narrative du jour.
All Americans have got it better than many. Some of us don’t think that should be thrown away and that our laws should be upheld.
Second floor amenities electrical room:
https://i.imgur.com/0L1DpuB.jpg
Listen to your betters…
Nice sweeps Sparky. GRC or Al?
Second floor pool deck:
https://i.imgur.com/l8BnvsE.jpg
Listen to your betters…
Being that none of us knows him personally, and he has never come out and said that h’s better, it would be presumptuous to believe that.
All he does is mock the leftist, globalist narrative du jour.
There appear to be a long list of people that he looks down, starting with those that he calls betters. In other words, he’s better than the betters and many other people.
better than the betters
Did you build this? No. I did:
https://i.imgur.com/ZzrRbhv.jpg
And for your head — A Tribe Called Quest — Award Tour (1993):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKXMZlw_efM
Listen to your betters…
Yeah, definitely I did. Your work was OK, though I know a guy who could probably teach you some things.
Your work was OK…
I’m an experienced Plant Engineer. I have approved or not such work on many projects. Not housing but process plants. I think you are complete and total ass.
You seemed to have not understood the humorous banter between me and 401.
“Corzo, who also co-owns a real estate franchise in Austin, estimates that in his experience 95% of DACA homeowners have mortgages.”
“How about that? They have an ownership rate far above the national average! And I’ll bet they’re all astronauts and doctors too!”
No, he said 95% of DACA homeowners have mortgages, not 95% of all DACAs. Big difference. He means only 5% of DACA homeowners don’t have a mortgage on their house.
Somehow I think the word “affordable” and its meaning were lost in translation….
++++
From the Malaysian Insight. “A call has been made for the government to address a potential glut in affordable housing that arose from ever increasing government and private sector schemes, The Edge Markets reported. ‘We don’t want an oversupply of affordable homes like what we had with the PPR (People’s Housing Project) where there was an oversupply years ago,’ said CBRE WTW Kuala Lumpur director Ungku Mohd Iskandar Ungku Ismail.”
‘Recently prices in the GTA have drifted downwards,’ Carr said in an interview. ‘Obviously we need to respond to be able to sell at prices purchasers are willing to pay.’
‘To come back a year later and see the same house that we bought is now $90,000 cheaper, that’s not cool,’ said Dionne Thompson, who also bought in Phase 1.’
But. Land shortage. Worker shortage! How could these guys possibly cut 90k Canadian pesos off a dirt lot? It’s almost like they were just greedy bastards all along.
‘The timing of this big push is fascinating because November is exactly when Australian capital city housing prices started falling…what could drive such a big uptick in building approvals is the sense that it is now or never.”
‘It’s curious there’s still many apartments being approved in Victoria, after real estate agent Mariecris Tagala last year claimed more than half of new apartments in Melbourne’s CBD, Docklands, and Southbank have sold at a loss since 2011.’
‘Markets are supposed to co-ordinate supply and demand. But that’s a hard job when supply takes a long time to come online. If you’re halfway through building a big development when the market falls by 10 per cent, you’re in a bind. The losses involved in finishing the properties and selling them for less than they cost to build will almost certainly be smaller than the losses involved in abandoning the project’
There’s that supply and demand thing again, blowing up in someones face. Joshua trees popping up everywhere and they start even more shacks!
Ugh. Housing in Austin sees going up and up. Rents have softened due to overshpply.
However, my SO wants to trade debt. He has ~$80k in student loans, which he wants to pay off & buy a house. Home prices didn’t crash in Austin during the previous crisis, so he is very incredulous they ever will b
He says he would rather put his monthly payments towards a tangible (investment property) than intangible debt (student loans).
It has been very difficult to reason with him.
Sounds like the NAR needs an updated version of “Suzanne Researched This”
The Bart & Suzanne Show
January 19, 2018
“Although home prices in the area have been going up for quite some time, Brian Talley, owner of Regent Property Group in Westlake, said that the recent peak is more a reflection of growth for the entire Austin metropolitan area rather than something unique to Lake Travis-Westlake. Talley said he had seen some softening on the higher end of the market over the past two years but did not expect the area trend to reverse any time soon. The number of homes sold has decreased each month since June. The median price of homes sold has also decreased since June, and the number of days homes spent on the market increased in the past six months.”
“Talley said he is bullish on the area being able to at least maintain the status quo. ‘As long as we avoid a national or global [economic]catastrophe,’ he said.”
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=10318
So wait, he wants to pay off his student debt AND buy a house in Austin?
That student loan debt is *not* intangible. The debt bought a very tangible college degree which led him to a job with a very tangible paycheck. If he doesn’t repay the loans, his paycheck can be very tangibly garnished.
Are you two formally married? You might want to discuss before you start buying a house together.
He wants to solve the problem of massive student debt by adding massive Real Estate Speculator debt? What could possibly go wrong?
Friends with benefits buying a house together (when they actually have no money to do so) always ends well. Right?
Blue, IIRC, this might be the same Brett in Austin who *ahem* inherited a rather tidy sum. And it’s the SO who wants to expend some money…
In which case, Brett needs to be thinking about pre-nups in addition to rings and papers.
Ok, stupid question - does he have $80k lying around and another $XXk for the downpayment to a house?
Or do these newfangled Sofi/Rocket loans roll the student debt into a giant mortgage + extra loan, kind of like how people roll the leftover debt from the last car into their new car loan?
That’s a good point. There might be some info missing from Brett’s post: “trading debt…would rather put his monthly payments toward” a house makes it sounds like SO wants to stop paying the student loans altogether. Or perhaps he and SO are moving in together and SO has a condo to sell, and pay off the loans, and then the two buy a house together.
Whatever the situation, these are huge financial transactions that they shouldn’t enter into as only friends. Nobody knows the future. They can swear commitment on the washing machine spin-cycle that their love is forever, but courts won’t care unless they see signed papers. If something goes wrong, it will get messy fast.
“He has ~$80k in student loans, which he wants to pay off & buy a house.”
Pay the debt off with credit cards, then go BK.
Careful Swan advising people to commit fraud. They probably wouldn’t get away with it.
It was sarcastic, but anything goes these days, evidenced by the massive fraud that is carried out in plain site by Megacorp, Inc, without so much as a whisper from authorities. Hey, why can’t the little guy play, too?
Serious question. Instead of paying off the student loans, could someone charge all his expenses like groceries and cars on the CC, saving the checking account for the student loan, pay off the loan, and then declare BC? Effectively, it’s the same as paying off the student loan with CC. Is that still fraud?
Would this be categorized as fraud or more of a strategic default? I honestly don’t know.
It’s not your decision. Read up on bankruptcy rules and you will get whose decision it is.
It is a matter of timing. ‘Preferences’ , which are subject to clawback, are transfers which occur within 90 days of filing.
A little planning can go a long way in bankruptcy court.
“Past performance is no guarantee of future results”. Make sure you have a strong, in depth conversation about money and finances with your SO. I’m a strong believer that your life partner is THE most important financial decision you’ll ever make.
Good article…
+++
The Bubble That Could Break the World
David Haggith - 1/24/2018 - Jim Rickards
The chart below shows the CAPE from 1870 to 2017. Two conclusions emerge immediately. The CAPE today is at the same level as in 1929 just before the crash that started the Great Depression. The second is that the CAPE is higher today than it was just before the Panic of 2008.
Neither data point is definitive proof of a bubble. CAPE was much higher in 2000 when the dot.com bubble burst. Neither data point means that the market will crash tomorrow.
But today’s CAPE ratio is 182% of the median ratio of the past 137-years.
Given the mean-reverting nature of stock prices, the ratio is sending up storm warnings even if we cannot be sure exactly where and when the hurricane will come ashore.
The credit-driven bubble has a different dynamic than a narrative-bubble. If professional investors and brokers can borrow money at 3%, invest in stocks earning 5%, and leverage 3-to-1, they can earn 6% returns on equity plus healthy capital gains that can boost the total return to 10% or higher. Even greater returns are possible using off-balance sheet derivatives.
Credit bubbles don’t need a narrative or a good story. They just need easy money.
On top of zero or low rates, the Fed printed almost $4 trillion of new money under its QE programs. Inflation has not appeared in consumer prices, but it has appeared in asset prices. Stocks, bonds, commodities and real estate are all levitating above an ocean of margin loans, student loans, auto loans, credit cards, mortgages, and their derivatives.
Now the Fed is throwing the gears in reverse. They are taking away the punchbowl.
The Fed is on course to raise interest rates again in March, under new chairman, Jerome Powell. In addition, the Fed is undertaking QE in reverse by reducing its balance sheet and contracting the base money supply. This is called quantitative tightening or QT.
Credit conditions are already starting to affect the real economy. Student loan losses are skyrocketing, which stands in the way of household formation and geographic mobility for recent graduates. Losses are also soaring on subprime auto loans, which has put a lid on new car sales. As these losses ripple through the economy, mortgages and credit cards will be the next to feel the pinch.
A recession will follow soon.
“The second is that the CAPE is higher today than it was just before the Panic of 2008.”
But the stock market always goes up!
US Markets
The stock market is off to its best start in 31 years and that bodes well for the rest of 2018
- When the S&P 500 returns at least 5 percent by Jan. 23, the index’s median gain for the rest of the year has been 11.6 percent, Bespoke Investment Group says.
- The S&P and Dow both notched all-time highs Wednesday morning, before paring gains.
- “The history is pretty good for years where the first week starts off strong and the first month starts off strong,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley FBR.
Thomas Franck | @tomwfranck
Published 1 Hour Ago Updated 1 Hour Ago
…
Again, 1982. The launch pad of the present credit expansion (largest in history) I rather think.
It’s a long way down for very many things.
Blue, as much as you want this credit expansion to unwind, I don’t think any of us will live to see it. For example, look at Greece. They were in a worse credit crisis than the US, and still they kept getting rescued. They elected a leader who promised to declare BK and start over fresh, and they European banks still wouldn’t let their credit expansion unwind. And that was Greece. The US is far to big to fail.
Barring catastrophes which dismantles our infrastructure, such as a nuke war, EMP pulse, solar flare, black plague, or ice age, I think we’re stuck.
Housing Donk…. Housing.
Kensington, MD Housing Prices Crater 16% YOY
https://www.movoto.com/kensington-md/market-trends/
For such a smart gal, your memory is quite short, oxide. If the PTB could prevent crashes, the DOW wouldn’t have dropped to 6,500 and change during the last meltdown. In fact, there wouldn’t even have been a meltdown.
Think of how massive this stock bubble is now. From 6,500 to 26,200. It’s so absurd it defies description.
Well, to be fair, 6,500 was absurdly low, so that is a hard starting point from which to measure.
That said, I wholeheartedly agree that 26,200 is absurdly high.
Black swan, you don’t know the history of Blue’s comment. Yes, we had a meltdown in 2008. And guess what, I bought my house at the tail end of that meltdown (early 2012).
Anytime I say to Blue, I don’t think house prices will fall to where they were in 2012, Blue says “oh, but there’s a BIGGER credit expansion going back decades, and when that one pops you’ll be fooked.”
The 2004-2009 bubble was actually a bubble on top of the existing long-term credit expansion. That bubble popped, but the underlying credit expansion has not. In fact, when I bought my house in early 2012, house prices — for a very brief period — were in line with historical prices accounting for inflation.
It’s the underlying credit bubble/expansion that I believe will not be allowed to pop.
It’s the underlying credit bubble/expansion that I believe will not be allowed to pop.
If the PTB really had control of the downside, no downside would ever happen.
I think we’re stuck…
Time will tell. I don’t think any country in history got deeply into debt and just hung there indefinitely. Maybe we won’t live to see it play out but I don’t think it is stuck.
Austin(Holly), TX Housing Prices Crater 10% YOY On Mushrooming Housing Inventory
https://www.zillow.com/holly-austin-tx/home-values/
https://snag.gy/m5EzRB.jpg
We’re #1!
‘Developers opened more new apartments in the Dallas area than any metro area in the country last year.’
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2018/01/23/dallas-new-apartments-us-metro-2017
Considering absorption is negative by several thousand units now, supply and demand considerations would suggest permits halt. Maybe something else is driving it.
I was pitched on a couple of Dallas apartment deals maybe 6 months ago. The main thrust of their message was “jobs, jobs, jobs”. That Dallas was attracting lots of businesses, and that those folks needed somewhere to live.
The answer to my question about supply, the ability to build forever in TX with virtually no government restriction, and the need for the project to have ever-increasing rents for the numbers to work was “jobs, jobs, jobs”.
My assumption is that someone funded the development…but it wasn’t us. My guess is that when someone goes to their investment committee to convince the committee why they should risk someone else’s money, the thrust of their argument was that real estate demand follows “jobs, jobs, jobs”.
I suspect permits will slow, but only when it’s too late for the most recent projects, like a typical development cycle.
Jobs jobs jobs? Where? There are 100 million unemployed adults in this country.
In December, the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent for the third consecutive month. The number of unemployed persons, at 6.6 million, was essentially unchanged over the month.
Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by
0.6 percentage point and 926,000, respectively. (See table A-1.)
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Stamp those feet some more!
“94,785,000 Not in Labor Force; At 62.9%, Labor Force Participation Stuck Near 38-Year Low”
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/no-records-set-august-number-employed-americans-drops-participation-rate
The official unemployment rate doesn’t count those who have stopped looking for work, and it doesn’t count those who are under-employed either. Sorry “Tea Party Patriot” but you’re either ignorant or disingenuous to try to portray those numbers as telling the whole truth.
I suspect both.
We are talking about a single market here. The question was raised about what is driving all the investment in housing in Dallas even though there was negative absorption and a ton of new supply of housing already being built.
My simple answer was the promise of jobs. With employment comes need for housing.
DFW has been adding more than 90k jobs per year over the past several years.
https://stats.bls.gov/regions/southwest/news-release/areaemployment_dallasfortworth.htm#ces_dfw_chart1_201711
That is the “bull case” argument for adding more supply…even though there is a ton of supply already.
It was not an argument that worked on me.
The official unemployment rate doesn’t count those who have stopped looking for work, and it doesn’t count those who are under-employed either.
I’m well aware of all of that. The assertion was about the number of unemployed. Underemployed is something else. If you look up the number for underemployed and discouraged, they probably won’t come close to 93 million.
The 93 million include retirees, including those who retired involuntarily because they couldn’t get a job.
Incorrect. Retirees and students are excluded.
In December, the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent for the third consecutive month.
I find that number to be suspect, and I’ll tell you why.
Last September we had a big layoff at the office, and many of my colleagues got the ax. It took most of them 3 months or longer to find a job, and a few of them had to settle for a contract position that pays no better than the old job, but with no benefits.
I remember during the dot com boom. Back them unemployment really was low. How do I know? Because it was super easy to get a good paying job. Hiring managers were desperate, and if you were competent you’d get a phone call the day after the interview with a job offer.
That was low unemployment and a great job market. If unemployment was really 4%, my colleagues would have had job offers in week or two.
The 93 million include retirees, including those who retired involuntarily because they couldn’t get a job.
The statistic includes everyone aged 16 and older. People who are unemployed are considered to be in the labor force. It’s those who are neither working nor looking for work who are not participating.
my colleagues would have had job offers…
I was cordially “retired” by my employer of several decades upon reaching the age of 65. It’s their culture. I didn’t volunteer. I won’t be filing an unemployment claim as there was a severance settlement and UI makes that time out before you can collect. Then you don’t have an earnings record upon which to base a UI claim. Part of the severance agreement is that I won’t take them to court. There is also a standing agreement that I won’t work for a competitor for two years (they paid dearly for this). I am unemployable. Several colleagues have gone through same and cannot find jobs despite world class qualifications and reputations. There are only about 10 of us in the world with the skillset.
Don’t anyone feel sorry for me about it. I’ve prepared years in advance. I started SS this month and in less than one week of being dismissed the frantic calls for help started. Consulting as a non employee? Ironically, unless the pay was outrageous the IRS would claw so deeply into my SS I wouldn’t be much ahead.
My point is that I am not in the Department of Truth statistic. Just one data point.
I’ll be doing my art.
woodturning mariner com no spaces if anyone is curious. I’m learning some new things.
Incorrect. Retirees and students are excluded.
Hmmm …
if ~37% of the workforce is 94M, then the total workforce is 254M. Add 75M minors and you have 329M, which is the population of the US.
Conclusion: the 94M include retirees.
Incorrect.
They wouldn’t be “retired” if there were a suitable job available. A “retiree” is an individual at SS age or higher.
unless the pay was outrageous the IRS would claw so deeply into my SS I wouldn’t be much ahead.
You ain’t been asking anywhere NEAR enough, if your skill set is that hard to find. If you don’t hear a gulp of extreme pain on the other end of the phone line when you make your pitch, it was not enough. Maybe ask for 40% ownership of the company, too. Don’t be a piker.
I’m intrigued as to the skillset. Sounds pretty cool.
Woodturning is fun.
Tresho,
I really do appreciate your encouragement. The catch is that I don’t want the money. I could play it up big. This time I won’t. I want to go on new adventures. the most valuable thing I have is time.
“…woodturning mariner com no spaces if anyone is curious. I’m learning some new things…”
Love it.
There was a complex completed last fall not far from me. It is about 250-300 units. Based on the number of patios w furniture, and cars in the garage, I’d say it is maybe half occupied.
There are 2 more complexes being completed within a mile or so, one has 300 units, the other maybe twice that, it is huge. They’re pre-leasing with 10 weeks free now. Of course the rents are sky high. If they ever fill these things up, the traffic is gonna be bad.
The 28,000 was just for Dallas.
So how many more are coming online this year?
But then a couple of sentences later, the article gives a different number:
Somebody can’t keep their numbers straight.
And I remember reading recently (either I or someone else posted about it here the other week) that permits for multi-family in DFW were on the rise again.
And then there are all the shacks being built everywhere here.
And that’s just multi-family…what about single family?
’some 30 factory workers in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, agreed to receive 290,000 bricks in exchange for 80,000 yuan of their owed earnings…The story has ignited lively debate on Chinese social media, with many users of the Sina Weibo microblog expressing concern. ‘Why is it always rural migrant workers that are paid in arrears?’ asks one’
Wait a minute. These are the rural workers who are supposed to move into the empty cities. We were told the Chinese do things different. But if these former farmers are broke, how are they gonna buy an airbox with a bunch of bricks? What a sh^thole China is.
The joke is on the snob Chinese microblogers.
These 30 Nanchang factory workers started the now extremly popular crypto-brick currency.
With brick-chain technology.
Totally unhackable and secure. Transactions take seconds. Finite amount of bricks to mine.
They are all millionaires in Macau now.
With brick-chain technology.
OK, that’s funny :-).
In Andros, Bahamas it’s commonplace to see construction blocks in backyards. They represent BARTER.
Dollars aren’t money. Bricks are money.
I heard once of a lady trading locust posts to the town to settle her tax bill, having the timber but no money. I wonder how these Chinese settled their income tax obligation.
I wonder how these Chinese settled their income tax obligation.
Income tax seems to be much less of an issue in China. Yeah, they pay some but it’s a very small amount by our standards and seems to be handled almost informally. My understanding so far is that my wife as a small business owner just pays a flat amount each year that is independent of the income her business actually makes.
One of our big concerns is that if/when she gets a green card and the IRS wants to know all of her business, what are they going to say to the Chinese tax documentation that she provides? She isn’t going to have American style books to show them. Of course the advice we get so far is to just tell the IRS she has nothing. I don’t like to think that might be the best solution.
My understanding so far is that my wife as a small business owner just pays a flat amount each year that is independent of the income her business actually makes.
It’s done that way in other countries too. Mom n pop businesses in Mexico do it that way.
2banana’s Law:
Long term democrat rule + public unions + free sh*t army = misery, ruin and bankruptcy
Lord help you if own a house or business there.
*******
The Incredible Shrinking Illinois: High Taxes And Low Economic Freedom Have Led To State Crisis
01/24/2018 - ZeroHedge
Illinois has been losing population for four years. The state’s out-migration crisis is so bad that Illinois has dropped from the fifth-largest to the sixth-largest state, falling behind Pennsylvania. Since 2010, the Land of Lincoln lost a whopping 640,000 people on net to out-migration. The state is shrinking so rapidly that it’s at risk of losing a House seat.
Illinois ranks near the bottom in terms of economic freedom compared with the rest of the country, according to the Fraser Institute’s recent Economic Freedom of North America, or EFNA, report, released in partnership with the Illinois Policy Institute. This report ranks states based on an index of 10 variables related to government spending, taxes and labor market freedom. Only 12 states were ranked lower. Unsurprisingly, blue states California and New York ranked at the bottom of the economic freedom list.
Pennsylvania, which just overtook Illinois as the fifth-largest state in the U.S., ranks 18th on the index of economic freedom, compared with Illinois’ 35th place ranking.
While Illinois continues to shrink, states that rank near the top of the Fraser Institute’s economic freedom rankings are growing. Since the last recession ended in 2009, population in the 10 most-free states has grown 2.5 times faster than it has in the 10 least-free states. Employment and income have also grown faster in the freer states.
If politicians in Illinois want their state’s residents to thrive, the path is clear. The first step: reduce the tax burden. Among its neighboring states, Illinoisans pay the largest share of their income in federal and state income and property taxes. Reducing property taxes should be a high priority – this tax costs many families more each year than their mortgage.
But to give Illinoisans the relief they need, the state of Illinois also needs to rein in the growth of spending. One place to start is the salaries and benefits of its state workers. In 2016, state government workers in Illinois earned 59 percent more than private sector workers on average. Illinois state workers are the highest paid in the nation, when adjusted for cost-of-living. One reason? Illinois gives government unions tremendous negotiating power, which drives up the cost of government.
In 2016, state government workers in Illinois earned 59 percent more than private sector workers on average.
Nice work if you can get it.
The circle of life and death in blue states:
++++
As a condition of employment, employees must join public unions and have unions dues automatically deducted from your paycheck (closed shop)
Public unions are the All-Time largest campaign donors in the political history of America
Public unions give 99.9% to democrats
Democrats get elected
Democrats pay back public unions with public union contracts with insane benefits and golden work 20 years retire at 55 with OT spiked pensions
Taxes must raised and services cut to pay for the insane benefits and golden work 20 years retire at 55 with OT spiked pensions
The minute a public union employee retires, they move to a low tax and “right to work” state
As a condition of employment, employees must join public unions and have unions dues automatically deducted from your paycheck (closed shop)
Just to emphasize, that’s for state employees. Federal employees get benefits, but dues are voluntary.
One of my friends worked at a closed-shop grocery store. The union took 25% of his paycheck, AFTER taxes. And these are people making less than $12/hour. He quit and went to a different grocery. Good for him.
Unions prey on its membership. Owners prey on their workers.
Pick your poison.
Owners must respond to supply and demand and competition for workers. Ain’t the same thing.
But it’s easy to import cheap labor.
Not really because you have to live in a fascist s-hole like Illinois or Clownifornia to get that premium, a good portion of which gets sucked up by the cost of living. Nevermind the quality of life, which is abysmal even for state govvie workers. Granted its better than being a private sector puke that actually has to work for a living. Enjoy your gilded cage leftists! The best is hearing them try to convince themselves how wonderful it is to live close to a whole foods and that it never ever ever rains (where do you get your water? Oh, its someone elses wizz? Cool!).
Democrats pound Trump’s Fed nominee: ‘Why were you so wrong?’
by Joseph Lawler | Jan 23, 2018, 12:23 PM
Senate Democrats on Tuesday tried to embarrass President Trump’s nominee for Federal Reserve governor at a confirmation hearing by confronting him with comments he made during the recession about the possibility of higher inflation, after inflation has run below the Fed’s target for five years.
“Why were you so wrong so many times?” Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, at one point challenged the nominee, Carnegie Mellon professor Marvin Goodfriend.
To make the case against Goodfriend for a spot on the Fed’s Board of Governors with a vote on monetary policy, Democrats dug up comments that Goodfriend made during 2011 and 2012 as an academic and commentator that suggested that he would be in favor of the Fed withdrawing monetary stimulus in order to avoid uncontrolled inflation.
In particular, Democrats cited a 2011 interview with the Wall Street Journal in which he said that “higher trend inflation and inflation scares” could result if the Fed didn’t soon raise short-term interest rates, then set at zero. Several also mentioned a 2012 television interview in which he said that getting unemployment down to 7 percent would be a “Herculean” task for the Fed. Since then, unemployment has fallen to 4.1 percent.
“These wrong predictions are not outliers for you,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. She noted that the difference between the 8 percent unemployment rate of 2012 and the 4.1 percent rate of today is millions of workers, many of whom she argued might not have jobs today if the Fed had tightened money back in 2012.
“American families are very lucky you weren’t on the Fed board during the last several years,” Warren added.
Goodfriend, who struggled at points with the Democrats’ hostile questions, acknowledged to Warren that he was wrong about inflation in 2011.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/democrats-pound-trumps-fed-nominee-why-were-you-so-wrong/article/2646814
Pocohantuas questioning a nominee
About a failed prediction of inflation?
How about lying about your background to get a high paying job at a university
never happened
why do you call yourself ‘Tea Party Patriot’? trying to dishonor them?
“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”
― Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary
let me guess.. your next moniker will be ‘rush limbaugh’, correct?
You don’t seem to have any interest in the housing bubble. Strike two.
“You don’t seem to have any interest in the housing bubble. Strike two.”
Anxiously awaiting strike 3 for this political troll.
While the CPI has run below the Feds target for years, most of the inflation is wrapped up in the everything bubble (stocks, bonds, and real estate). We know this.
I’m no fan of the current Democratic party, but you’re making yourself look bad re Warren. It sounds as if you conducted years of oppo research and you were able to find only ONE flaw. Which implies that she’s perfect otherwise. Conservatives need to find some new material.
Which implies that she’s perfect otherwise.
it’s not like she lied about her age on her DL to make herself seem younger.
lying to get ahead in a political career or a university position, is a much more serious flaw in character.
Goodfriend was absolutely right - should have bailed on QE and we wouldnt have quite the “everything bubble” we have now in my estimation. Of course (((they))) need to debase the currency, like they do the culture and the rule of law so they’re coming after him any way they can.
Huntington Beach, CA 92648 Housing Prices Crater 14% YOY As Speculators Dump Beach Houses
https://www.zillow.com/huntington-beach-ca-92648/home-values/
https://snag.gy/m5EzRB.jpg
https://www.movoto.com/huntington-beach-ca/market-trends/
Single family home $/sqft a year ago = $526… today $548
And Median List Price for all types went from $949k one year ago to $910k today
Fine Nutshot, but this assumes that all houses are the same size. Let’s say a small town had 2 sales yoy. In December 2016, a 2000sqft home sells for $500k. In December 2017, a 1000sqft home sells for $250k. So did prices really crater 50% yoy? Not at all. This is why $/sqft is needed to at least add context to the transaction history, not that it’s a perfect indicator.
Again.$/sq ft valuation is a poor performer as it excludes all items in the transaction except for the structure and the area of dirt directly under it.
Castle Rock, CO Housing Prices Crater 14% YOY
https://www.movoto.com/parker-co/market-trends/
Form a source you normally use:
https://www.movoto.com/huntington-beach-ca/market-trends/
Median $/Sqft for a single family home a year ago = $526…. today = $548
Debt Donkey
Alameda, CA Housing Prices Crater 9% YOY As Housing Correction Expands In Bay Area
https://www.movoto.com/alameda-ca/market-trends/
I wish that were true, my wife would move us there in a heartbeat. Cheapest 3 bedroom I can see on Zillow is $880k. If this market “cratered” it would be in the $600k range and I’d be picking one up.
DebtDonkey
Redmond, WA 98052 Housing Prices Crater 7% YOY
https://www.zillow.com/redmond-wa-98052/home-values/
https://snag.gy/m5EzRB.jpg
So Housing Analyst: what does Redmond, WA real estate have to do with Alameda, CA?
Are you even a real person, or just a bot that posts random links?
Hello my good friend….
Mountlake Terrace, WA Housing Prices Crater 7% YOY
https://www.movoto.com/mountlake-terrace-wa/market-trends/
“If this market “cratered” it would be in the $600k range and I’d be picking one up.”
Your stones are clearly larger than mine as I wouldn’t touch anything for $300k either.
Also try and find me a house that sold in the last 90 days in Alameda below asking. If that market was “cratering” you would think you would see this happening.
https://www.zillow.com/homes/recently_sold/Alameda-CA/house_type/16697_rid/3-_beds/2-_baths/0-900000_price/0-3431_mp/90_days/37.802121,-122.193289,37.713634,-122.363577_rect/12_zm/
What you see is very few houses moving below $900k and the ones that did have a price change still ended up selling back to the original asking price after these idiots got into bidding wars.
This market cannot crash soon enough, I’m tired of waiting for it to happen for the past two years…
‘I’m tired of waiting for it to happen’ Whining. Strike one.
Community organisations swamped with demand due to cost of living
By Felicity Caldwell
23 January 2018 — 1:14pm
One in four clients of specialist homeless services in Queensland missed out on getting access to suitable accommodation in 2016-17.
And domestic violence forced increasing numbers of Queenslanders to seek help from homelessness services, according to the Report on Government Services 2018, released by the Productivity Commission.
In 2016-17, 20.1 per cent of Queensland clients at specialist homelessness services received domestic violence services, up from 16.2 per cent in 2012-13.
And 43.5 per cent of low income private rental households were in rental stress in Queensland in 2015-16.
That meant they spent more than 30 per cent of gross household income on rent.
Queensland Council of Social Services chief executive Mark Henley said community services organisations were being swamped with demand, as many people struggled with the cost of living.
“[Cost of living] is driving people into poverty and spiralling debt issues is of most concern for a lot of people,” he said.
Mr Henley said many people were in housing stress and unable to afford the rising costs of rent, electricity and water bills and putting food on the table, as costs rose faster than wages.
“The minimum wage and casualisation of the workforce is also putting more and more pressure on families because of the amount of work available - there isn’t enough work for a lot of people to get an adequate level of income,” he said.
“….as costs rose faster than wages.”
Its a global phenomenon!
Interesting that this article cites the minimum wage as a reason for underemployment.
50 CENT MAKES MILLIONS FROM BITCOIN
by Sequoia Blodgett
January 24, 2018
While others are complaining about the fluctuating prices, 50 Cent is sitting pretty from his early bitcoin investments. According to TMZ, 50 Cent has made a staggering 7 million times his initial investment. In reference to the investment, he quotes on his Instagram, “Not Bad for a kid from South Side, I’m so proud of me.”
How did he have the wherewithal to make the investment? Well, he took a risk. Instead of only accepting cash for his album, Animal Ambition, he took payments in the form of bitcoin, which was then valued at around $662 per bitcoin. It currently fluctuates around the $10,000 mark per coin.
The site reported that Animal Ambition pulled in about 700 bitcoin in sales … over $400K. He never touched it and the value kept going up. Based on today’s value, it is believed that 50 is holding approximately $7 million and $8.5 million in value.
http://www.blackenterprise.com/50-cent-millions-bitcoin/?utm_content=buffer37e3f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
He made about $60 mil to $100 mil on the vitamin water deal. At the time he had about half a billion, but then declared chapter 11 in 2015, so obviously he isn’t managing his money well.
Ben posted this yesterday, but I think it’s worthy of a re-post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCXpZ57P2HI
Gold and oil are spiking upwards. Is this a signal of growing inflationary pressures, a weakening dollar, a lack of conviction that the Fed will take away the punchbowl as announced, or all of the above?
Because another ginormous commodities bubble is what they want.
Being heavily invested in gold and silver, I’ll take this. It seems unfair that just about everything else is in a bubble and not commodities. So if that’s what “they” want, I’m all for it.
Commodities are still in a bubble.
Ponte Vedra Beach, FL Housing Prices Plunge 7% YOY On Cratering Housing Demand
https://www.movoto.com/ponte-vedra-beach-fl/market-trends/
Is 7% a plunge? That’s only a wee bit more than three standard deviations to the left.
Florida, unfortunately, has a longgggggg way to go before a real decline shows up. Rolling back from a 4X rise to a 3X rise is still an impressive “profit” for the high end.
Condos in Miami are things people built to launder money from “snow.”
Why do they come to Florida? To escape.
Prices are falling. And remember…. Nothing accelerates the economy and creates jobs like falling prices to dramatically lower and more affordable levels. Nothing.
Denver(Hale), CO Housing Prices Crater 13% YOY
https://www.zillow.com/hale-denver-co/home-values/
hello trumpling. u have been wrong 10 years and counting.
DebtDonkey
Bethesda, MD Housing Prices Crater 12%YOY
https://www.movoto.com/bethesda-md/market-trends/
how is hannity tonight trumpling?
DebtDonkey
Kenmore, WA Housing Prices Crater 21% YOY
https://www.movoto.com/kenmore-wa/market-trends/
Some lite reading from from Taleb Nassim, (The Black Swan guy)
He’s implying that the dollar is important for what it is, not, for what it buys. Nearly sixty years after it was said: The “medium is the message.”
“Let us follow the logic of things from the beginning. Or, rather, from the end: modern times. We are…witnessing a complete riot against some class of experts, in domains that are too difficult for us to understand, such as macroeconomic reality, and in which not only the expert is not an expert, but he doesn’t know it. That previous Federal Reserve bosses, Greenspan and Bernanke, had little grasp of empirical reality is something we only discovered a bit too late: one can macroBS longer than microBS, which is why we need to be careful on who to endow with centralized macro decisions.
What makes it worse is that all central banks operated under the same model, making it a perfect monoculture.
In the complex domain, expertise doesn’t concentrate: under organic reality, things work in a distributed way, as Hayek has convincingly demonstrated. But Hayek used the notion of distributed knowledge. Well, it looks like we do not even need that thing called knowledge for things to work well. Nor do we need individual rationality. All we need is structure.
It doesn’t mean all participants have a democratic sharing of decisions. One motivated participant can disproportionately move the needle (what I have studied as the asymmetry of the minority rule). But every participant has the option to be that player.
Somehow, under scale transformation, emerges a miraculous effect: rational markets do not require any individual trader to be rational. In fact they work well under zero-intelligence –a zero intelligence crowd, under the right design, works better than a Soviet-style management composed to maximally intelligent humans.
Which is why Bitcoin is an excellent idea. It fulfills the needs of the complex system, not because it is a cryptocurrency, but precisely because it has no owner, no authority that can decide on its fate. It is owned by the crowd, its users. And it has now a track record of several years, enough for it to be an animal in its own right.
For other cryptocurrencies to compete, they need to have such a Hayekian property.
Bitcoin is a currency without a government. But, one may ask, didn’t we have gold, silver and other metals, another class of currencies without a government? Not quite. When you trade gold, you trade “loco” Hong Kong and end up receiving a claim on a stock there, which you might need to move to New Jersey. Banks control the custodian game and governments control banks (or, rather, bankers and government officials are, to be polite, tight together). So Bitcoin has a huge advantage over gold in transactions: clearance does not require a specific custodian. No government can control what code you have in your head.
Finally, Bitcoin will go through hick-ups (hiccups). It may fail; but then it will be easily reinvented as we now know how it works. In its present state, it may not be convenient for transactions, not good enough to buy your decaffeinated expresso macchiato at your local virtue-signaling coffee chain. It may be too volatile to be a currency, for now. But it is the first organic currency.
But its mere existence is an insurance policy that will remind governments that the last object establishment could control, namely, the currency, is no longer their monopoly. This gives us, the crowd, an insurance policy against an Orwellian future.”
Since we don’t know who started any of these cryptocurrencies, isn’t it naive to see them as a blow against the establishment?
Watch “Banking on Bitcoin” on Netflix.
Watch “Banking on Bitcoin” on Netflix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymtxlI65B3s
They will be taken over by the establishment, at the proper time. They are in beta testing right now. Gads, when I hear people at work talking about ‘investing’ in Bitcoin, I weep for our future.
Beijing’s population drops for first time since 2000 as migrants are driven out
Statistics bureau says megacities are ‘less attractive’ for migrant workers
Beijing’s population has dropped for the first time since 2000 as migrant workers are driven out amid a campaign to ease the strain on the sprawling, overcrowded capital city.
Its population fell by 22,000 people to 21.707 million last year, the first decline recorded in 17 years, the municipal statistics bureau said. Figures on the number of migrants living in the capital were not released, but the statistics bureau said megacities such as Beijing had become “less attractive” for them.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2129877/beijings-population-drops-first-time-2000-migrants-are
Seems to me that since the official goal right now is to clean up the cities and drive certain populations back to the countryside, you have to take official numbers that state that goals are being met with a grain of salt. If you’re being judged on a number you are highly motivated to hit the number.
But I have no idea how independent the people counters are from the people removers. If there’s enough independence maybe it’s legit. Maybe.
The only thing I believe for sure is that the official population number is “officially” lower now. Keep in mind the estimate for the uncounted is around 5 million.
OT warning:
A close family friend is a naturalized American Citizen from Africa.
Her friends back home aren’t offended at all by Trump’s comments about sh*thole countries in Africa, but rather comment that he’s speaking the truth, and believe it to be a message directly to their leaders (who have been squandering resources for generations).
Our friend is not a Trump supporter, and may even think he is racist, but she was very clear that lots of folks in Africa completely understand that they are living in a sh*thole…and if they could, they would come to the US.
she was very clear that lots of folks in Africa completely understand…
I still smile about on African immigrant I used to know - a US Army MD officer, yet - who shipped his Mercedes to Lagos ahead of a trip he was planning, visit his folks back in the old country. His fine car disappeared as soon as it was taken off the ship and of course, was never heard from again. He expressed surprise at this!
“Her friends back home aren’t offended at all by Trump’s comments about sh*thole countries in Africa, but rather comment that he’s speaking the truth, and believe it to be a message directly to their leaders (who have been squandering resources for generations).”
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/1cd10122-65cc-4a04-bd96-98277f3e24a2
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/24/africa/uganda-museveni-comments-trump-trnd/index.html
Manhattan Financial District Housing Prices Dive 13% YOY As Housing Correction Expands Across Northeast
https://www.zillow.com/financial-district-new-york-ny/home-values/
*Select price from dropdown menu on first chart
I saw another ’sky is falling because of low inventory’ headline from the NAR’s PR arm. But existing home sales are at levels they were near the peak of the last bubble. And they claim inventory is low but it’s higher than it was from 1995 to 2005.
So: reasonable (”normal”) inventory, high sales volume, very high prices. Price x quantity = profit. I find it odd they’re pushing this “low inventory” narrative so hard. I know they’re trying to influence sellers and buyers, and the narrative of low inventory could entice sellers to put their house on the market. It probably puts buyers off buying if they think there’s little to choose from, in a high price environment.
They’re paid to come up with some narrative I guess.
References:
US housing inventory: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSACSR
Existing home sales:(click on ‘max’ above the chart): https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/existing-home-sales
New home sales: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HSN1F
House price chart (Case Shiller via FRED): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA
“Isn’t it naive to see them as a blow against the establishment?”
Sorry, bankers are telling you that is the motive. It’s not.
The essay says it best: “It is owned by the crowd, its users.” And banks can not allow that because they want to control every financial transaction in the world. The operative word is CONTROL. George Carlin saw that at the end of his life.
People on this blog hate bitcoin buyers. They don’t hate Jamie Dimon who speculated in silver.
Banks make money on fees and bitcoins are supposedly diverting investment money from them. You think they give a fck about its ethics ? They’re in there now offering FUTURES to get a taste.
Lemme run this by you. In Nov 2011 Goldman set up ’shorting” mechanisms for the China stock market. Up until then you could NOT make money on falling stocks there. Then suddenly they had dramatic daily swings. Why?
Now you have FUTURES on BTC. Who created the FUTURES? (Goldman will fck the public every way they can.)
Do YOU understand that the coin you are looking at now disappeared with the appearance of FUTURES ?
One needs to ask why it’s pissing-off bankers and regulators. Don’t play the morality card or tell me they want to protect me. I didn’t see it with housing, did you?
It’s a great show to watch, ain’t it?
alphonso bedoya: People on this blog hate bitcoin buyers.
I don’t have any strong feelings about bitcoin buyers one way or another. I don’t think the technology can scale. If you have a hundred million users, and one user makes a transaction, it has to update on a hundred million computers.
Having unique electronic tokens - great. I say have fun with them. Big picture guys may see into the future and see uses for them, and I’m sure there are, either for the token or the distributed ledger concept.
Bitcoin and other crypto currencies - I say have fun with them. A bubble in that is something that has virtually no impact on my day to day life. The best kind of bubble (if it is a bubble, to be fair - which also to be fair, I’m certain it is). If people are having fun, and a few are getting rich, good for them.
Things move to excess and then they revert.
So be it.
I don’t hate bitcoin buyers. I still feel remorseful about giving Bill in LA a raft of guff over it.
Seeing is believing. My buddy made a few shekels on it and I say good for him.
“People on this blog hate bitcoin buyers.”
I’ve been grinding away at my teeth for the past three months! 😣
Seething hatred, that’s what it is! Seething hatred!
‘People on this blog hate bitcoin buyers’
Yeah, and they’re bitter renters too. To me it’s more like watching someone stick their head in a buzz saw. Some enjoy it, others are just fascinated.
I don’t hate bitcoin. I think it has problems as a currency (too volatile, transactions costs too high, too energy intensive), but it seems that people are working on changing the cost to “proof of stake” instead of “proof of work”. Maybe this kind of transition can help it progress. To your point, NYT did a good piece yesterday on why the IRS doesn’t like BitCoin:
Why The IRS Fears BitCoin
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/bitcoin/161256f427700b70
If cryptocurrencies were to replace cash as the preferred anonymous medium of exchange, they could significantly expand the underground economy because they are so much more convenient than cash. There is no need to visit an A.T.M., and you can securely pay people regardless of their location. No wonder Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns recently that Bitcoin could become “the next Swiss bank account.”
Or consider this boondoggle:
Blockchain technologies can also make it difficult for the I.R.S. to tax cryptocurrency trading profits. Here is a simple tax dodge that would be hard for the I.R.S. to prove: Suppose A, B and C are electronic addresses you own. You let the I.R.S. know you own A, but not B and C. You buy one Bitcoin at $15,000 and park it at A, expecting the price to go up. Just a few hours later, when a Bitcoin is worth $15,500, you send that Bitcoin to B and then to C.
A few months later, when your Bitcoin is now worth $25,000, you send it from C to A and tell the I.R.S., “I sold a Bitcoin to an anonymous counterparty at B back at $15,500 and just now bought a Bitcoin from another anonymous counterparty at C for $25,000.” As a result, you owe taxes on capital gains of just $500 rather than $10,000.
With the hardware back doors into every Intel-equipped computer, do you seriously think that the NSA doesn’t already have copies of your private wallets?
The thing I have to laugh about crypto is that it is the complete opposite of what people think it is - every transaction is recorded, which is exactly what the deep state wants - complete knowledge and eventually control over every financial transaction.
Those who naively think that they are doing all this in secret will be in for a huge surprise someday.
“Secrecy” is being used as the reason bcoin needs to fall. Do you think the prime motivation for owning it is to hide money? The people I know who bought bcoin, did so to make money, not to hide money.
every transaction is recorded, which is exactly what the deep state wants - complete knowledge and eventually control over every financial transaction.
That’s why I find it so funny that people are asking for ransom in BTC. So, you get the BTC. Now, everyone knows which wallet is owned by the thief.
What are you going to do now? When you try to turn that BTC into something of value, everyone knows who you are.
Emeryville, CA Housing Prices Crater 16% YOY As Bay Area Housing Bust Rolls Out
https://www.movoto.com/emeryville-ca/market-trends/
the great recovery is gonna happen some day. u need to just hold your nose and buy risk assets such as stocks and homes. Dont fight the global central banks!