The American Dream Continues To Fizzle
The Real Deal reports on New York. “There are at least 99 single-residence listings priced at $30 million or more in Manhattan, according to New York real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller, a staggeringly high number by historical standards. And how many potential buyers for these pads are out there? The data seems to indicate that developers would be better served building apartments at the lower end of the ultra-luxury market. ‘Two million square feet, potentially, in the next few years is a little daunting,’ HFZ Capital Group’s Ziel Feldman said.”
“‘I don’t think I have ever in my career seen such a disconnect between what is desperately needed built and what is being built,’ Miller said. He argued that while demand for the most expensive units is strong, developers are ‘over-enthusiastically’ building too many of them. Meanwhile, lower price points are being neglected, in part because the high cost of land often makes them unfeasible. The oversupply in the super-luxury market is ‘probably the world’s worst kept secret,’ Miller added.”
Chicago Business in Illinois. “A lakefront mansion in Wilmette came on the market yesterday with an asking price of $10.9 million, bringing the number of Chicago-area homes priced at $10 million-plus to 21, the highest it has ever been. The last high-water mark for homes like this was during the last years of the housing boom, when 11 homes were on the market at $10 million or more; their prices were mostly at $12.5 million or lower, while this latest round includes six at $15 million or more.”
“Up at the tip of the pyramid, buyers may have unusual demands for a property. Jessica Price, one of two agents selling a 22,000-square-foot home in Barrington Hills that’s priced at $14.9 million, said one potential buyer who was looking at being transferred from Switzerland to Chicago needed a home where a helicopter could take off and land. The client didn’t end up moving to Chicago, she said. When the property first came on the market in 2007, for $17 million, the agent who had the listing then ‘was going after the sports stars, but that’s gone,’ Price said. ‘The athletes aren’t buying the big houses anymore.’”
“When Chicago home prices were climbing fast, before the housing bust, an athlete who was in town for only a few years could re-sell his home at a profit. Sliding prices have changed that, and the example of Michael Jordan’s palatial Highland Park house, which has sat untouched for three years and is now priced at about half the original list price of $29 million, may give them caution.”
The Houston Chronicle in Texas. “A few years ago, ‘overvalued’ would never have been a word that described Houston real estate. ‘Cheap,’ ‘abundant’ or ’suburban’ might have been more apropos. But local home prices got so high in such a short period that national ratings agency Fitch released a report at the end of March pronouncing Houston as the second-most overvalued housing market in the country. Hammered by low oil prices, Houston-area employers are expected to generate just a third as many jobs as were predicted earlier this year.”
“Don’t expect buyers to continue to line up to make offers on homes they saw for 10 minutes or even from a Skype call with their real estate agents. And as builders continue to put stakes in the ground, especially in new subdivisions around the Grand Parkway, prices could soften as sellers of older homes compete with builders. The earlier Fitch report said Houston home prices spiked a staggering 43 percent between 2011 and the end of 2014. Stefan Hilts, a director in Fitch’s U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities group, said last week that the growth rate here has already started to slow in recent months.”
“‘In the last quarter or two, we’ve seen that disappear,’ Hilts said about Houston’s red-hot price appreciation.”
From Fauquier Now in Virginia. “Imagine a Fauquier County with thousands of suburban homes that relatively few want to buy, businesses that can’t find workers and an aging citizenry resembling that of Florida. Demographics and development patterns pose significant challenges to Fauquier’s future, a pair of experts told an audience of 300 people in Warrenton. ‘It used to be we were optimistic,’ Matt Thornhill, president of The Boomer Project said to the audience. ‘Now we’re not so sure. The only thing we’re certain of is that things are gonna change.’”
“In Fauquier — as in much of the nation — that change includes a rapidly-aging citizenry. Baby diaper sales nationwide have fallen 8 percent, while adult diaper sales have increased 20 percent, Mr. Thornhill noted. By 2025, Fauquier’s senior citizens will outnumber school-age children for the first time in county history. The number of those older than 65 will increase 90 percent between 2010 and 2030. ‘We have an oversupply of large-lot, single-family housing and we have a shortage of almost everything else,’ said Ed McMahon, the senior fellow for sustainable development at the Urban Land Institute in Washington.”
The Press of Atlantic City in New Jersey. “The Villages at Farmington, Farmington Cove and Green Spring North and South all sound like the perfect places for families to build their dream homes. Small problem: The developments were never built. There are many developments in southern New Jersey that were planned but never built, said Rick Van Osten, a spokesman for the Builders League of South Jersey. ‘Honestly, I think a lot of these projects are never going to be built,’ Van Osten said. ‘The recession played a huge part in this. The recession started in 2006, but developers and builders really didn’t feel it until late 2007 and late 2008.’”
“The largest development planned, according to the list, is the more than 600-home Villages at Farmington, proposed by Pennsylvania-based Pulte Group. Pulte appeared before the Planning Board in January 2007 and was granted preliminary approval for the project, but never sought final approval, officials said. During the hearing, a township planner hailed the project as a turning point for the municipality. ‘If I had any doubts that our community has turned into a major city, I don’t have those doubts anymore,’ then-Chairman Robert Levy said during the hearing. The site is still vacant.”
The Sun Sentinel in Florida. “It’s hard to stand out when it comes to crime in South Florida, but the attempted bowling ball bombing of a foreclosed home does the trick. There is little worse than losing your home to foreclosure. Tyler Butler, 21, of Loxahatchee didn’t want to part with his own; he wanted to blow his old home into tiny parts. First Butler tried to use a cigarette lighter to burn his home down. And then he got the bright idea to fill a bowling ball with gun powder and add a wick. By the time authorities responded to the fire, the found the ticking … or lit … bowling ball bomb.”
“Housing prices are up. And the foreclosure stock is shrinking. But Mr. Butler reminds us that a lot of people are still facing hard times. Hopefully, Mr. Butler bit the bullet for all of us. He made crime history with a bowling bomb plot that fizzled … just like the American dream continues to fizzle for so many people.”
New York, NY Housing Prices Fall 13%
http://www.zillow.com/new-york-ny-10014/home-values/
Even the brokers on the flip show ny mention a weak hi end
I heard a well known radio “journalist” named Tom on a well known radio station lie through his dirty teeth about it.
And you heard it too.
“And then he got the bright idea to fill a bowling ball with gun powder and add a wick. By the time authorities responded to the fire, the found the ticking … or lit … bowling ball bomb.”
I think it’s outstanding that young home owners in the US are using Looney Tunes cartoons as guides for clearing up their foreclosure problems.
Those schemes never end well for that coyote.
Young homeowners? Where are they?
Economists, Wall Street Upset About Stingy Millennials
‘I hate the generational meme, since it’s an age cohort invented by marketers, and is therefore stereotyped as feeling and acting in certain ways, just as, say, women and Hispanics are also targeted demographically for products.’
‘So if you can put aside the frequent (mis)use of the millennial label, young people have a terribly insecure financial future, unless they managed to get on an elite career path (and even those are uncertain and the fall is far if you slip off it). This article describes how millennials are making perfectly logical decisions in light of the conditions they see. This post doesn’t weigh heavily on the lousy job market, but even those who manage to find decently-paid work still are subject to short job tenures, making it well nigh impossible to save, much the less invest. Their behavior is a part of the New Normal that the officialdom would like to ignore.’
This is what I’m pointing out; “Line up you cogs!” Well, uh, $300,000 is a lot Mr Wizard. And I’ve got a student loan and no post-student job.
I just got this email:
‘In the 20th century, discriminatory lending practices made it difficult for racial and ethnic minorities to obtain home loans in many U.S. cities, and a new study shows the diversity gap in city housing markets is still alive today. The study, completed by SmartAsset, calculated the over- or underrepresentation of racial and ethnic groups, including Black or African Americans, Hispanics or Latinos, Asian Americans, and White Americans.’
‘For example, in a city where 25% of the adult population is of a particular race or ethnic group and 20% of the homeowners are of that same race or ethnic group, that is an underrepresentation by 5%. Key findings from the analysis include:
-White Americans are overrepresented in the housing market by at least 15% in 78 of America’s 300 largest cities.
-Hispanics or Latinos are underrepresented by at least 5% in 93 cities (including Los Angeles and New York among others).
-Black or African Americans are underrepresented by a least 5% in 59 cities (including Elizabeth, NJ; Yonkers, NY; Long Beach,CA; Columbia, SC; and Minneapolis, MN).’
So not only are the age groups dragging us down, it’s the minorities! No down-payment Mel has a solution for that.
“So not only are the age groups dragging us down, it’s the minorities!
No down-paymentMortgage Meltdown Mel has a solution for that.”And the enlarging and ready to burst mortgage meltdown will make the 2007-2010 saga seem like a vacation.
It is a possibility. In the past we’ve discussed how bad it might get. I’ve thought the percentage of “owners” has been going down, maybe not so bad. But if the government succeeds in shoehorning a bunch of young people into house loans, anything could happen.
The un-reckoned tsunami of bad loans from 1999-2008 are still sitting there. Stack on it all the subprime loans from 2009-current and we’ve got a bonafide disaster looming.
Not in my neighborhood. Those underwater homes and zero-down two-mortgage refi-and-take-the-cash-and-stop-paying homes all went through foreclosure about 5-6 years ago (three out of four houses, in a cul-de-sac just down the street from me).
And judging from the number of Berkshire-Hathaway real estate signs I have seen in the past 6 months, I’d say that the banks are cleaning out the remaining foreclosure inventory right now.
In your neighborhood too my friend. How many excess, empty and defaulted houses are there now in WA? 1 million? 2 million?
Seattle, WA Housing Prices Fall 5%
http://www.zillow.com/seattle-wa-98105/home-values/
Next thing you know, somebody’s going to drop a piano on someone.
“‘I don’t think I have ever in my career seen such a disconnect between what is desperately needed built and what is being built,’ Miller said. He argued that while demand for the most expensive units is strong, developers are ‘over-enthusiastically’ building too many of them. Meanwhile, lower price points are being neglected, in part because the high cost of land often makes them unfeasible. The oversupply in the super-luxury market is ‘probably the world’s worst kept secret,’ Miller added.”
Don’t these super-luxury units serve the useful purpose of offering a non-cash alternative for oligarchs to hoard their internationally diversified wealth portfolios?
Use as domiciles has nothing whatsoever to do with their purpose.
“When Chicago home prices were climbing fast, before the housing bust, an athlete who was in town for only a few years could re-sell his home at a profit. Sliding prices have changed that, and the example of Michael Jordan’s palatial Highland Park house, which has sat untouched for three years and is now priced at about half the original list price of $29 million, may give them caution.”
Dutch auctions are back into vogue!
‘We have an oversupply of large-lot, single-family housing and we have a shortage of almost everything else,’
And it is the mass transfer of oversupplied large-lot, single-family housing from strong-handed owners to weak-handed owners that Affordable Housing is all about.
I know someone with property in Faquier county VA. It’s an hour commute from the job centers at least.
High speed train line from multiple stops out there into the city, now that would shake things up.
But high speed and multiple stops can be mutually exclusive.
Minimal stops makes the average speed increase greatly.
They can’t even get a high speed train from DC to New York, and you want a train to Fauquier???? Look at google maps for heaven’s sake. The towns are tiny and not even in a straight line and there probably aren’t more than a few thousand people in each town. No offices, no shopping… No WAY is a train justified. You’ll be lucky to get a commuter bus or two.
“In Fauquier — as in much of the nation — that change includes a rapidly-aging citizenry. Baby diaper sales nationwide have fallen 8 percent, while adult diaper sales have increased 20 percent, Mr. Thornhill noted. By 2025, Fauquier’s senior citizens will outnumber school-age children for the first time in county history. The number of those older than 65 will increase 90 percent between 2010 and 2030.”
By 2025, the folly of those who recently signed a mortgage contract to plow their life’s savings into a traditional family-sized home will become apparent, due to a persistent glut of used homes in bedroom community suburbia.
The Fauquier article was pretty interesting on several levels. I enjoyed listening to the old guy speaking with other old folks on “what the young folks want”. It’s amazing how many companies and groups try to define the Millenials and basically break their backs trying to get their money, or in this case make them move to a place like Fauquier County.
I’ll give a hint to everyone: Millenials don’t have money, therefore they don’t buy your McMansion in FC or buy a car to go to FC. It’s not about shared space to unwanted home ownership, they just don’t have the buying power that the Baby Boomers have enjoyed. I’ve been saying this for years and I’ll say it again, the Millenials grew up in the Bubble of the mid 2000s and have personally seen from family and friends the damage of being an unintelligent loan owner. Why would they repeat these mistakes? For that, I applaud the Milenials.
Plus, for the last ten years, almost all new housing has been of the McMansion variety, creating a two-tiered housing inventory; older, and aging, affordable housing, and the new and vastly overpriced McMansions that ring so many cities. How many younger people will be able to afford the jump from one to the other, when they can’t even afford to buy a cheap fixer upper?
Have a roommate in a tiny condo for 30 years?
We predicted this on HBB. The far-flung McMansion exurbs would be the ones to suffer the most from sequestration or budget cuts or the burst in the housing bubble.
I looked up the zillow for Warrenton, which is the only sizeable town. The cheapest SFHs are cold-war and $250K+. The McMansions are $500K+.
They aren’t going to attract city-minded Millenials no matter what they do. But it might be worth living in FC buy a $190K townhome (there are a few) and commute to a $70K cube in the office sprawl in nearby Manasses or Centreville.
‘it might be worth living in FC buy a $190K townhome (there are a few) and commute to a $70K cube’
How about $35k for that TH?
There is less than that in it in terms of lot, labor, materials and profit.
“Millenials don’t have money, therefore they don’t buy your McMansion in FC or buy a car to go to FC. It’s not about shared space to unwanted home ownership, they just don’t have the buying power that the Baby Boomers have enjoyed.”
Can’t this problem be resolved through low down payment requirements and government-guaranteed and -securitized lending?
No. Like Dman said they are building the houses that people don’t want. Much like the complaint about Detroit and cars several years ago, people want certain things and they change over time, and it’s difficult to stop on a dime and turn around your whole production team and assembly line.
Boomers have always wanted the high lifestyle of big McMansions. That has fallen way out of flavor. Gen Xers and Millenials want something smaller and more manageable. We don’t care about high end furniture or art work, or have multiple classic cars in our garages. Functionality over sophistication. Solar panels over granite counter tops. What a place like Fauquier County should do is develop a neighborhood consisting of houses no more than 2,000-2,400 sq ft. 3 or 4 bedrooms, 2 car garage, with a nice elementary school as the center point of the neighborhood and a small park. Forget the huge 4 or 5,000 sq ft house. The smaller houses would sell out quick, boosting their tax base and allowing people to spend money at businesses around the community.
“consisting of houses no more than 2,000-2,400 sq ft.”
Doesn’t matter. It’s price. And the price is $55/sq ft for new construction so why would anyone pay multiples of that for a 20 year old run down house?
It’s the American dream!
I posted an aticle a while back that had these smaller houses being torn down to build mcmansions. For a cool million or more.
‘Gen Xers and Millenials want…’
Like you said, they don’t have any money so what does it matter what they want? There are towns in Texas that have become obsolete. No one is putting in solar panels. The houses are just empty.
This all reminds me of the Wizard of Oz thinking we see all the time. “How do we get group X to step in for group Y?” We are all just widgets, to be motivated by (not-so) easy money to do what the Wizard needs to keep Oz running. I remember that California Anderson school bunch back in 2005 or so, saying “government projects will pick up the slack from house building.” It didn’t happen. The widgets just wouldn’t get in line.
It all flows from this idea that the economy can be centrally managed. That Yellen knows what houses should cost, everywhere. If you print up a few trillion bucks, the builders will construct exactly what people need and want. The economy is like an ecosystem. It has to develop naturally, with participants guiding the process by voting with their naturally earned dollars. Start “intervening” and the whole thing gets out of balance. We’ve got nothing but intervention in the economy, so who know what mess we’ll end up with?
Start “intervening” and the whole thing gets out of balance.’
yep that’s exactly right and yet that’s what governments can’t resist doing.
“smaller houses being torn down to build mcmansions.”
Ben, that was Pimmit Hills. Please look up Pimmit Hills on Google Maps. It has major roadways on three sides, it’s a ten minute walk from two metro stations, and it’s within walking distance of Tyson’s Corner mall and a TON of high-dollar office jobs. PRIME location. It’s like being allowed to develop Central Park. The only surprise is that the little enclave is being attacked only now instead of 20 years ago.
Fauquier County is just a hick bunch of land too far away.
How am I supposed to keep all these far-east, mosquito infested burgs straight?
Ooooph…
Vienna, VA Housing Prices Fall 16%
http://www.movoto.com/vienna-va/market-trends/
Boomers have always wanted the high lifestyle of big McMansions ?
Maybe a big house for big families…You use McMansion as a metaphor for all homes ?? I have a big home…I don’t think any common sense person would consider it a McMansion…
That has fallen way out of flavor. Gen Xers and Millenials want something smaller and more manageable ??
Maybe because they are not married or they are childless and want to remain so for the foreseeable future…You think that could be a reason also ??
I guess I’m an oddity because I’d like smaller living quarters but large rooms as lab space for hobbys/projects. Really a full walkout basement for arcade games and 2-4 car garage for building stuff would be ideal to me. Smaller living quarters would be fine.
That isn’t a normal balance though.
What you’re describing may not be a normal balance for any kind of town or city life, but for rural areas, it’s SOP. Look for a ranch house with a shop in a hilly area.
Or just plug “walk-out basement” into Zillow and they’ll find one for you, like…
Hey look Ben, here’s your $35K house, right in Oil City! (nice woodwork, good street name, but wtf is holding up the garage?)
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/419-Colbert-Ave-Oil-City-PA-16301/78771069_zpid/
Last sold: Apr 1961 for $6,900
Parking: Garage - Attached
The house is holding up the garage.
“Hey look Ben, here’s your $35K house”
And coming to your town.
If that house was in NoVa it would be $700,000 easy!
Whatever happened to that guy from way back in 2006? I can’t remember his handle but I do wonder if he ever moved to Erie/Oil City…
Today’s supersized McMansion is tomorrow’s duplex. Problem solved.
PS We live in one of these.
Like I posted yesterday, I hear stories about people closing down half their house because their heating bill can be as much as a rent payment for an apartment. It’s called buying more house than you need.
Parking might be a problem.
Last winter my worst heating bill was about $120. Where do those people live that it costs so much?
“Last winter my worst heating bill was about $120. Where do those people live that it costs so much?”
Michigan. The last couple of winters have been pretty cold.
Michigan. The last couple of winters have been pretty cold.
A few years ago we had a humdinger of a winter. IIRC my worst nat gas bill that year was $180, though the winter average was a bit lower.
That said, I know people in SoCal who spend more to heat their shanties than I do. Of course, they pay a lot more per BTU than I do, and I suspect that my house is MUCH better insulated.
“2,000-2,400 sq ft. 3 or 4 bedrooms, 2 car garage,”
That IS a McMansion! Fauquier should re-hab the houses in the older neighborhoods and offer landscaping services to take care of the yards. Schools and shopping are already there.
Gauthier as in the county?
You governentrian ,you
Good points, Sean. Just look at Google Maps. There’s just too much distance, and the towns are just too scattered, even for the suburban-minded Millenials with money.
I also think it’s pretty funny, the number of people who talk about living without a car. Have any of these fine folk actually tried living without a car?
They’ll call uber every time they need groceries.
I don’t know who they think are going to buy these houses in Arizona. It’s a grey hair safari here. In places like Sedona, that’s almost all you see.
It’s a grey hair safari here ??
Your likely correct Ben…There are not enough people in the pipeline behind them that will pick up that inventory…At least not at the price point they are at…
A friend’s father has a condo in Sedona he’s asking 330k for. In 2012 he bought it for 200k, but he did “extensive renovations.” The complex has a nicely manicured lawn to create that Midwest feel in the middle of the dessert, which probably jacks up the HOA fee a bit.
Which is why I haven’t been to Sedona in about 20 years. Too much of an old-age town for my taste.
But I thought Sedona was all “new age??”
It’s Old Fruit-Loop. You have to bite your tongue as everybody talks about the UFO they saw last night.
If FC were smart, they would encourage folks with the ability to telework to live there and expand the VRE service or have a bus service back and forth.
A friend of a friend teleworks, and she is required to be in the office only a few days a month. She decided to buy towards Annapolis, works from home and packs a suitcase when she needs to go into the office. She’ll put in a 10-12 hour day, get a hotel, spend the night, work another 10-12 hours and then go home to a cheaper house in a quieter area, away from all the BS. It may not be for everyone nor does everyone have the ability to do this at their job, but for those who do the payoff is much larger in the end.
What about Gen X in between?
We get nothing. Just keep drinking your Gin and Juice and enjoy the ride.
We’re totally hosed. And we have a bad attitude.
+1, born in 1965, right on the borderline
I’ll say it again, the Millenials grew up in the Bubble of the mid 2000s and have personally seen from family and friends the damage of being an unintelligent loan owner ??
I agree…I have Millenial children…I will disagree on this note Sean…
Why would they repeat these mistakes ??
I believe they are reacting to fear not necessarily that buying a home and getting a loan is a “mistake”….They want to buy a home…They just want to make sure they are well prepared to do so…
Let’s address the root of the problem: opportunity. Why aren’t there new job options for these young people? Example; oh I’ve always wanted to be a taxi cab driver! I live for cleaning toilets for strangers who sleep in my bed twice a week. This shared economy stuff is just a symptom of broke-assedness that has replace a functioning economy.
Other countries have policies that give their manufacturers protected markets and a weak currency, we have policies that funnel more and more money into Wall Street. He who gives the most money to politicians benefits most.
I’ve heard the sharing economy referred to as the shafting economy.
Agree. The sharing economy is a mix of moonlighting and prostituting. What kind of money is there in Ubering, anyway? Does it pay better than, say, delivering pizza?
I took an Uber from LAX to Santa Monica once and struck up a conversation with the driver.
He quit his job working at a local branch of Wells Fargo to drive full time.
I don’t know if he had done the whole of the math relating to car wear and tear, self-employment tax (if he’s following the rules), etc.
But he sure seemed happy.
I know another driver who has a traditional black towncar service. He uses Uber to fill in the dead spots in his schedule, and likes it. I still call him when I need a ride from home to the airport.
I think Uber would be much harder in more sparsely populated areas.
I have Millenial neighbors who buy and fix up old cars.
Although the income in that household is close to six figures, the wife told me why they prefer the oldies: They can’t afford new cars.
I think they may be dealing with student loan debt, but they’ve never mentioned any.
Poor Dan:
‘A bubble in Chinese stocks is bursting and the market is likely to halve in value from current levels, one strategist told CNBC on Thursday. The benchmark Shanghai stock index slid more than 3 percent on Thursday to 4,528, highlighting the frail state of a stock market that plunged 13 percent last week.’
“We’re cautious on Chinese equities, which we think is a bubble which is bursting real-time here,” Stewart Richardson, chief investment officer at RMG Wealth Management, said. “We’re beginning to see some price action—we’re down 13 percent on the major indices last week. We’ve seen a bit of a bounce, then more selling coming in. Chinese stocks could pretty much halve from where they are today.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102787311
If that happens, we won’t be hearing from Albuquerque
Dan anymore, but there will be a suspiciously large number of posts from a guy named NewMexicoBob saying how he predicted that crash all along.
It is happening. This Chinese stock bubble is the stupidest of all the bubbles. Economy cratering, money leaving by the bushel; of course, stocks no one has ever heard of go to the moon!
Meanwhile, their central bank is removing loan reserve requirements in an attempt to juice things up.
I have kept my name on this blog longer than 99% of the people that post and I do not see anything that is going to change that. China Daily actually has been posting articles about insider selling of shares. In some ways, its stock market has better transparency than the U.S. market. A correction, yes as I said this weekend. A collapse, no because the economy will continue to grow at a rate far above this country for decades.
BTW, I find this article from oil country interesting:
http://eaglefordtexas.com/news/id/153664/expanding-the-bakken-realty-market-in-a-drilling-downturn/
I had lunch with NewMexicoBob.
He is not at all surprised by the multiple implosions coming in China.
‘Diamonds aren’t necessarily forever. At least not in Japan, where jewelry owners are unloading unwanted jewels for cash at a record pace and shipping them off to buyers in China and India.’
‘The appeal of gem-encrusted rings and earrings that were part of the luxury fashions of the 1980s and 1990s has faded as the population ages and the economy languishes. In a country that doesn’t have any diamond mines and was the second-largest buyer of the stone less than a decade ago, exports of used diamonds are up 77 percent this year, Finance Ministry data show.’
“I want to spend the money for traveling or dinner rather than just holding the diamond in my closet,” a 64-year-old housewife, who asked to be identified by her first name, Mitsuko, said after selling her two-carat diamond ring at a Komehyo Co. store in Tokyo’s bustling Shinjuku district. She declined to say how much she got, except to say that it was less than what she paid 30 years ago.’
‘As the population shrinks and the number of retirees grows, Japan is seeing the market for second-hand goods expand as people unload luxury items acquired during the boom years. Swapping gems for yen also dovetails with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan to encourage more shopping and less saving, as the government tries to revive an economy still recovering from the implosion of the bubble economy in the early 1990s.’
‘About 25 percent of the population in 2013 was older than 65, up from 12 percent in 1990, according to the Statistics Bureau.’
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/06/25/business/diamonds-forever-japanese-offload-jewels-cash/#.VYv9EUa7ZL9
I’m back also!
So happy to see Ben and others are still around,
I have been super busy since hurricane Ike in 08
Still living in the same house south of Houston.
Thanks Ben for excellent work.
Well, howdy-doo and welcome back!
Dallas, TX Housing Inventory Skyrockets 55%; Prices Fall
http://www.movoto.com/dallas-tx/market-trends/
“And the foreclosure stock is shrinking.”
Only 23 million excess empty and defaulted houses left to process.
There are two empty houses in the nabe where I grew up. One’s actually in foreclosure — and the roof is falling in — and the other’s a zombie foreclosure with an algae-filled pool.
When the algae pool place was originally built, it was a custom dream house for the richest man in the neighborhood. The subsequent owners abandoned it in the midst of a divorce.
“When the algae pool place was originally built, it was a custom dream house for the richest man in the neighborhood. ”
“The richest man in the neighborhood” with all the nice things is usually just the guy with the most debt.
Not in this case. He and his business partner built a very successful company. AFAIK, he wasn’t a debt-head.
The subsequent owners? Seems to me that things were humming right along until the marriage broke up, the wife got the house and couldn’t keep it up.
‘Johnson & Weaver, LLP, a shareholder rights law firm, is investigating potential claims on behalf of investors of World Acceptance Corp. (WRLD). World Acceptance engages in small-loan consumer finance business. The Company offers short-term small and medium-term larger installment loans, related credit insurance and ancillary products and services to individuals. The firm’s investigation seeks to determine whether certain officers or directors of World Acceptance violated state or federal laws.’
‘Last year a class action complaint was filed against World Acceptance. The complaint alleged that throughout the Class Period defendants issued false and misleading statements or failed to disclose that the Company’s loan practices did not abide by the Consumer Financial Protection Act and/or the Truth in Lending Act and the Company’s financial statements concerning its business, operations and prospects were false and misleading. The case is now proceeding to trial as a federal judge denied the Company’s motion to dismiss.’
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/world-acceptance-shareholder-alert-johnson-142800344.html
65.84-16.98(20.50%)