Betting Demand Would Keep Climbing To The Skies
A report from National Real Estate Investor. “Developers increased the number of new apartment starts every year since the recovery began. But now, the number of new apartments may have finally caught up with the number of new renters who need these units. The percentage of vacant apartments has begun to creep upwards, though it’s still well under 5.0 percent on average in the U.S., according to most apartment researchers. Lenders are also much less willing to provide capital for new development. In 2016, developers will start construction on 320,000 new apartment units, followed by 275,000 units annually during the next few years. In contrast, in 2015, they started work on 350,000 units, according to Ron Witten, founder of apartment research firm Witten Advisors, based in Dallas. ‘We believe 2015 was the peak for this cycle,’ says Witten.”
“In 2016, developers will start construction on 320,000 new apartment units, followed by 275,000 units annually during the next few years. In contrast, in 2015, they started work on 350,000 units, according to Witten. Developers are starting to build fewer apartments partly because banks are refusing to pay for it. As a flood of new apartment developments opens and the percentage of vacant apartments has started to rise, banks are refusing to lend to weak deals and are lending less on the stronger deals. ‘Some banks are declining to quote some deals altogether,’ says Mitchell Kiffe, senior managing director for debt and structured finance in the capital markets group of real estate services firm CBRE.”
From Dallas CultureMap in Texas. “As Dallas is considered one of the 10 hottest rental markets in the nation, it’s not much of a surprise to learn that we like our apartments fancy. How fancy? Of all the apartment projects completed in 2015, 93 percent of them were high-end. In San Antonio, 100 percent of all new apartments that went up last year were high-end. That’s right, 100 percent. In Austin, the number is 92 percent, just 1 percent behind Dallas. Eighty-nine percent of Houston’s new apartments were high-end, and Fort Worth slides in with 86 percent.”
“A handful of cities experienced ’spectacular’ growth in the luxury apartment area, including Midland-Odessa and its 800 percent increase. In 2012, there was just one high-end rental complex. As of 2015, there were nine. RentCafe points out the Texas domination, noting that ‘urban Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Midland, Fort Worth, and Spring saw a combined total of 103 new luxury rental properties in 2015 and only six non-luxury rental properties.’”
The Deseret News in Utah. “While nationwide and statewide trends reflect steadily increasing real estate prices, renters in the greater Salt Lake area are under particularly intense pressure as employment opportunities and the population are flourishing. Rental rates are skyrocketing due to high demand for apartment living and limited unit availability. Developers have reacted by building high-quality, high-price units, according to new research by James Wood, a senior fellow at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah.”
“In Salt Lake City specifically, Wood said there have been 2,500 class A — or high-end — apartments built in the past five years. ‘We are in the biggest apartment boom in Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City in 30 years,’ Wood said.”
The Citizen Times in North Carolina. “Many residents already have experienced it. Perhaps more have feared it. Now, a national report has added to worries the Asheville metro area’s housing market has reached unsustainable levels. Economists at Nationwide, the insurance and financial-planning company based in Ohio, have ranked the metro-area market as the nation’s sixth-unhealthiest. ‘House-price gains relative to income have become increasingly unaffordable,’ said David Berson, Nationwide chief economist who is the report’s primary author.”
“The county housing market set new records during the first quarter of this year for both average and median home-asking and median selling prices, said Don Davies, founder of Asheville-based Realsearch, a company that analyzes real estate trends. ‘Local people are priced out of the market,’ he said. ‘The average sales price requires more income than (people) can afford.’”
“Asheville home prices are not overly inflated, said Mike Figura, owner of Community Lifestyle Mosaic Realty in Asheville. Within the city of Asheville, the competition to buy the limited number of available houses has caused the price range that is a seller’s market to balloon, Figura said. ‘We’re not going to see a crash,’ he said. ‘Yes, (home prices) are out of reach for a lot of people, but true demand and low inventory are causing prices to be high. Last year, during the first quarter, it was a seller’s market for homes up to $450,000,’ he said. ‘This year, (during the first quarter), that’s shifted to $600,000. That’s unprecedented. You’re going to need a lot of money to buy that house.’”
“Today, ‘the fundamentals of our housing market are much stronger,’ Figura said. That’s because it’s cheaper today to own a house than to rent. ‘In 2007, you could rent a house cheaper than you could own it,’ Figura said.”
The Santa Cruz Sentinel in California. “The median price for single-family homes in Santa Cruz County set an all-time high — $798,000 — breaking the record of $789,500 from November 2005. Tom Brezsny of Sereno Group doesn’t consider this a spectacular year for high-end sales. In 2014, sales for more than $1 million were higher — 33 percent of the total in May and 28 percent in June. A 5,850-square-foot home on Prospect Avenue with five bedrooms and six bathrooms — fetching $6.5 million — was on the market for more than three years for a buyer attracted to its Frank Lloyd Wright look and feel, he pointed out.”
“The asking price was $7.995 million. ‘I would guess that the people who sold Prospect felt that they didn’t get their money back out of it,’ Brezsny said.”
The Wall Street Journal in New York. “The 1,004-foot Manhattan condominium tower known as One57 was the envy of the real-estate market as it was being constructed in recent years, garnering interest from so many wealthy buyers that it sparked a boom by developers betting demand for luxury apartments would keep climbing to the skies. It didn’t.”
“Instead, sales at One57 have slowed to a trickle, with about 20 of the original 94 condos still unsold. Builder Extell Development in March reduced its projected sellout value of the tower at 157 W. 57th St. to $2.56 billion, a markdown of $162 million from its 2013 projections, according to securities documents filed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.”
“Demand in Manhattan’s super-high-end condo market has dried up amid global economic jitters, just as the market has been flooded with unprecedented supply. ‘There’s a lot of stuff that is chasing what happened three years ago or four years ago when there was a boom,’ said Gary Barnett, Extell’s founder. ‘They’re late to the party and the party is ending.’”
‘Asheville home prices are not overly inflated, said Mike Figura…‘We’re not going to see a crash,’ he said. ‘Yes, (home prices) are out of reach for a lot of people, but true demand and low inventory are causing prices to be high. Last year, during the first quarter, it was a seller’s market for homes up to $450,000,’ he said. ‘This year, (during the first quarter), that’s shifted to $600,000. That’s unprecedented. You’re going to need a lot of money to buy that house.’
‘Today, ‘the fundamentals of our housing market are much stronger,’ Figura said. That’s because it’s cheaper today to own a house than to rent.’
‘In Salt Lake City specifically, Wood said there have been 2,500 class A — or high-end — apartments built in the past five years. ‘We are in the biggest apartment boom in Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City in 30 years’
It’s not just SLC, it’s the entire nation.
‘In San Antonio, 100 percent of all new apartments that went up last year were high-end. That’s right, 100 percent. In Austin, the number is 92 percent, just 1 percent behind Dallas. Eighty-nine percent of Houston’s new apartments were high-end, and Fort Worth slides in with 86 percent.’
‘A handful of cities experienced ’spectacular’ growth in the luxury apartment area, including Midland-Odessa and its 800 percent increase.’
‘In 2016, developers will start construction on 320,000 new apartment units, followed by 275,000 units annually during the next few years. In contrast, in 2015, they started work on 350,000 units…As a flood of new apartment developments opens and the percentage of vacant apartments has started to rise, banks are refusing to lend to weak deals and are lending less on the stronger deals’
We’re not going to see a crash because of high rents. Developers aren’t building anything but high rent apartments (don’t forget the activity to turn affordable apartments into unaffordable apartments is just as fevered). This is kinda like watching a train wreck. Look at the article in NC. Look at the incomes and what’s happening with prices there.
“We’re not going to see a crash…”
Whistling while walking past the graveyard…
The people on the airplane never do.
The whistling is a bad analogy.
Almost 100% wrong.
The whistling is worry of a bad thing happening, that never ever, in the history of the world, has happened.
Whistling is Irrational fear. Not the irrational positivity in the article.
Unless you totally misunderstand the words you read…
My free market micro economics class (Econ 1B) comes to mind. The supply and demand curve.
When nothing but 320,000 high end “luxury” apartments come online and the inevitable growth of houses for rent adds to the supply, the rent prices will get crushed and SFH prices will crator.
“…but this time is different?…,
What is “high end” Granite counters? It is still a noisy apt, with very few windows and no place for your bikes. People are odd.
“What is “high end” Granite counters?”
A High End Granite Counter is a real plus for those who are into saving electricity used for lighting and for keeping one’s food warm. A special glow accompanies each home purchase that is appointed with a High End Granite Counter.
Read on for some particulars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/garden/24granite.html
It’s never “different this time”.
But my focus is on the whole as well as the parts.
We are not building enough housing units (high end or otherwise) for our population growth, so I don’t expect there to be a broad based crash.
HOWEVER, the pendulum has swung very far in the rent direction, and inevitably, it will swing back somewhat toward ownership (the Feds are trying to loosen credit, etc.).
Given that it is expensive to build new housing (impact fees, labor costs, etc.), the likely buyers for homes are going to be exactly the same people who can afford a luxury apartment.
When the pendulum does begin to swing back, it is the luxury apartments that will suffer first and foremost.
(the Feds are trying to loosen credit, etc.)
It can’t get much looser, RW—unless we go straight back to insane no-doc territory; heck, with the “claim your supposed roommates” loans, we’re essentially already back at completely insane. The only thing I’m not seen an analogue of yet is neg-am.
There are lots of programs announced, but fewer actual loans closed. Take a look at this:
http://www.corelogic.com/blog/authors/archana-pradhan/2016/03/credit-availability-trends.aspx#.VzPVK4QrIuU
CoreLogic compares credit availability across time.
Instead of questions of whether credit is looser or getting tighter, they have constructed an index to compare conditions today to those of years past.
Long story short, credit is still tight…despite headlines.
I hear this anecdotally all the time (people denied loans that is slowing home sales in new home subdivisions, etc.).
Better underwriting should result in fewer delinquencies, right? Right. 30-day delinquencies (new trouble, not old trouble) are at 15+ year lows (see page 4 of the Mortgage Monitor).
http://www.bkfs.com/Data/DataReports/BKFS_MM_Mar2016_Report.pdf
How about average FICO scores for Fannie loans (supposedly the easy credit)? How about overall delinquency rates of newer vintages?
http://www.fanniemae.com/resources/file/ir/pdf/quarterly-annual-results/2016/q12016_credit_summary.pdf
Page 8: Average FICO still above 740, and very few below 620.
Page 18 shows the delinquency rates by vintage. Recent vintages are tracking very low.
This next page is dated, but I haven’t been able to find more granular data for later vintages:
http://www.corelogic.com/blog/authors/molly-boesel/2014/12/whats-an-acceptable-level-of-mortgage-default.aspx#.VzPY2IQrIuU
What it shows is that the best performing mortgage vintages since the 90’s were in 2009-2013, with 2012 and 2013 being best of all.
What about 2014 and 2015? Well, according to the same firm (CoreLogic), credit is just as tight now as it was in 2012 and 2013 (from the HCI link above), so it would stand to reason that delinquencies are just as low…which shows up in the 30-day delinquency numbers for the Mortgage Monitor.
My read of all of this data is that credit is still relatively tight. Have you seen other data that shows the opposite? That credit is really loose and underwriting standards have fallen considerably?
Again, as many times before, I share the data that I see that leads to my read of the market…I’m happy to be shown data that makes be believe otherwise.
With foreclosure moratoriums in effect in all 50 states, did you expect something different?
Given the fact that 90% of all mortgages since 2008 require 3% down payment, are you sure?
Remember….. 3% down payment mortgages are sub-prime by definition.
“When the pendulum does begin to swing back, it is the luxury apartments that will suffer first and foremost.”
The luxury apartments that I’ve seen in the past in California were owned by a syndicate who was operating on a margin; nothing was paid for outright. When a recession arrives these syndicates can’t afford to lower their rents, and the gig folds. The complex goes back to the bank, many units sit empty for extended periods, and the complex is eventually resold at a lower price such that the new owners can make some money doing the same thing. FWIW, these luxury apartments remind me of Soylent Green. Hehe.
You don’t need incomes in Asheville. Asheville is fast replacing Charlottesville as a “best place” to retire. Even mildly successful boomers in major cities might have a paid-off house now worth $500K and a decent retirement income. There are probably enough of these folks, all looking for a toe-tag house to park their money without incurring taxes, to fill the existing housing stock and shut out any career Gen X who still has to work a real job.
The people who are going to suffer, as usual, are the lucky duckies who pour the high-end coffee and bake the artisan bread and ferment the craft beer and trim the cabernet vines and ring up the Biltmore gifties and, when the time comes, wipe the aged butts. They are the ones who will be forced to shack up in these high-end apartments, paying a premium for cheap “value-adds” luxury pools and workout rooms.
Workout rooms with 1 all-in-one machine, an elliptical, and 1 treadmill. Totally worth the extra $200/mo. Also community laundry, but hey, they accept Visa!
Seriously, the Boomers got to enjoy 5+% savers interest like clockwork, had the money to invest in the 2 big booms, and the money to capitalize on the 2 crashes and buy low.
Now they can cash out of moderate locales and swoop into anyplace USA and live it up (if they did it right).
5% savings was no match for my 11.25% interest rate on my ‘87 Celica and my 8.25% loan ownership rate on my ‘90 house.
Oh and in the early 80s we young boomers were competing against each other for jobs. High unemployment rate.
Fair enough. Like how my Honda Civic I paid $17,500 cost $8400 in 1987 dollars? Even with the higher interest, your dollar is still going a lot further in 1987.
Yeah and what was the purchase price of that Celica? Was the price of the house 10x+ your income?
The interest rates may have been high, but the assets were affordable. And thanks to high interest rates, smart young people could choose to make minor sacrifices (skipping meals out or travel) and be rewarded for it through a return on their savings, which was then applied to already low asset prices so you could pay off that loan more quickly.
Your generation had the opportunity to earn income from something other than your labor, though high-return savings and investment. And then 30 years of falling interest rates and you get huge capital gains on top of that. Please!
Never mind affordable rents in cities where the jobs were. What was an average studio renting for in SF back then? It wasn’t the equivalent of $3500 per month.
Never mind no student debt, and that a college or masters degree actually had value.
Never mind a lifetime of full-time employment with benefits, only to retire on Friday and go back to the same job on Monday as an independent contractor with full pension and a shiny new salary on top.
My parents first home in San Antonio cost $30,000 in 1988.
Thirty thousand dollars. Could you imagine finding even a camper for $30,000 in today’s day and age? But its ok, people are earning more, right?
“11.25% interest rate on my ‘87 Celica and my 8.25% loan ownership rate on my ‘90 house.”
I have to agree with the lurker here… except that people would simply use the meal money directly to pre-pay the 11.25% loan on the car instead of putting it in savings at 5%. And don’t forget that the mortgage interest deduction means A LOT more at 8.25% interest than it does at 4%. That tax return was easily enough to pay off the Celica.
The real value of the Boomer generation was in the job stability. Boomers who uprooted to a new metro area did it for a hefty promotion, and the company paid for the moving costs. But many Gen X-ers — including yours truly — have had to uproot every 3-5 years just to stay at the same level. It will be even worse for Millenials who are navigating the Gig and Piecework economy. That’s why they aren’t buying.
Now both parents work, so double income and some work two jobs or have 3 generations in one home. Supply and demand.
Fair enough. Like how my Honda Civic I paid $17,500 cost $8400 in 1987 dollars? Even with the higher interest, your dollar is still going a lot further in 1987.
Salaries for mechanical engineers were probably commensurately lower in 1987.
Irrelevant.
With one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel and negative net worth, boomers aren’t going anywhere.
Maybe you missed the recent post that showed Charlottesville luxury apartments offering two months rent free and still having a vacancy rate over 10%. From the Utah article:
‘The number of renters with housing cost burdens — those who spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs — has ballooned in the past 10 years. In 2005, 50 percent of Salt Lake County renters earning between $20,000 and $34,999 a year were cost burdened. In 2014, that number has increased to 80 percent, Wood wrote.’
‘Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams said cost-burdened households, especially those spending upward of 70 percent of their income on housing, are a “blip away from being evicted from their homes” — and that’s one reason he said affordable housing is at the root of some of Utah’s most challenging issues like homelessness.’
“When a family is a small crisis away from homelessness because two-thirds of their paycheck is going to housing, whether it’s for sickness or their car breaks down, they may have to choose between paying rent or fixing their car so they don’t lose their job,” he said.’
As I said before, I am qualifying renters these days. Do you know what the biggest expense for a landlord is? Vacancy. If someone can’t afford the rent, life will happen and you have to evict them. Time and money to evict, time and money to prepare it for the next tenant, time and money lost while I locate and qualify the next tenant. Now, given that returns have been bid so low, how much is a complex making if it’s 10% vacant? They are losing money.
You can’t get around this. Tenants have to have money to live on. If it comes down to eating or rent, forget about it. They will fix their car before they pay rent because without a job, nothing gets paid.
I once tried using a Transunion web page to qualify tenants. I quickly gave up and was horrified to set the range of income they gave me. Up to 50% of gross income - gross! Better not have kids, better not get sick, or have a car that breaks down. These apartment people have lost their minds, blind with greed. The Denver apartment woman said the other day, “the party’s over.” Yeah, one big party. Rich people with their “affordable housing” tax credits for old apartments that eat up 50% of pay. Loans backed by the government. One guy said “otherwise these deals wouldn’t get done.”
Look at Midland. 800% increase in luxury. The other day I posted an article showing rents down as much as 50% in Midland. Same in North Dakota, more expensive than San Jose in 2014. All it will take is a recession and we’re gonna see trillions wiped away in multi-family.
As I said before, I am qualifying renters these days. Do you know what the biggest expense for a landlord is? Vacancy. If someone can’t afford the rent, life will happen and you have to evict them. Time and money to evict, time and money to prepare it for the next tenant, time and money lost while I locate and qualify the next tenant. Now, given that returns have been bid so low, how much is a complex making if it’s 10% vacant? They are losing money.’
Section 8 is the future for these apartments , no problem too big that the government can’t solve with free money and social engineering.
Section 8 is small compared to the number of people who qualify for it.
More and more impoverished Americans, ever more luxury housing, including luxury apartments and condos…what’s wrong with this picture?
I probably did miss the Charlottesville post. Up and comer Millenials with $60K jobs in the DC burbs can afford grade A apts, but lucky duckies running the gift shop at Monticello can’t. Those folks will simply chase cheaper rent in older complexes which haven’t been upgraded yet.
Donk,
The median sale price in the US is $214k and falling. Not $500k. And well over half have crushing payments on them.
You don’t need incomes in Asheville.
Ummm, I’m pretty sure you still need an “income”. What you might not need, if you are retiring, is a “job”. Sure, you can think of retirees as BOYI (Bring Your Own Income) residents.
But I seriously doubt that a significantly higher fraction of the population in Asheville is retired as compared to anywhere else.
Yeah sorry, I guess I meant you don’t need a “career income.”
I understand what you’re saying that Asheville might not be a high % of retired couples. However, I do think that the pool of people who *want* to move to Asheville might be proportionally more boomer and retired, than young and career.
According to Zillow there are 600 houses for sale in the entire Asheville area. That’s not much existing housing stock. All you need is a feature story in one or two national retirement magazines and maybe a new golf course, and suddenly it’s not hard to imagine, say, 1200 retired couples competing for those 600 houses and driving the price up.
1200 retired couples competing for those 600 houses and driving the price up.
And when the stories about it being a great place to retire come to an end, the demand curve will shift dramatically—and those 600 “winners” of the house-bidding will find that they are actually the “losers” of the house-bidding.
I’m so sick of all these “amenities”. Just give me 4 walls and a roof and reasonable rent.
Pardon me while I go haul out my ladder so I can clean my windows. One of the ‘amenities’ of my apartment is ceilings so high I had to buy a ladder (not a step stool) to reach the upper halves of my windows, change light bulbs, clean the ceiling fan, etc.
Why do all these apartments now have 9-10ft ceilings? Who thinks this is a good idea?
“Why do all these apartments now have 9-10ft ceilings? Who thinks this is a good idea?”
Back in 2002/2003 when we were house shopping we were walking through an open ceiling place with walls that resembled partitions since they were about 7-ft tall. Anyway, one of our kids slipped and fell down crying-out… and we could hear that cry echo throughout the place. Scratch that idea.
I can answer the part on a S.F. studio in the ’80’s…IIRC I paid about $400/mo for a studio in a very cool 1920’s building (the front was used for a movie, etc…) in a decent neighborhood, very much affordable at the time on my middle income wages.
“…very much affordable at the time on my middle income wages.”
The more invested Uncle Sam gets in providing affordable housing, the less affordable housing becomes.
Go figure!
As a flood of new apartment developments opens and the percentage of vacant apartments has started to rise,”
Pension funds reach for yield is partly to blame is that what I read here on this blog ?
If yes what a mess low interest rates are causing.
The funny money must find any avenue for a return.
I finally watched “The Big Short”, wow, I knew the system was broken, but how they portrayed it in that movie was an eye opener.
“The funny money must find any avenue for a return.”
Two returns: One return for the owner of the money, another return for the handler of the money.
Yes and I posted an editorial recently which noted the amount of money pensions are looking to invest in commercial RE (includes apartments) is going way up. This is what’s driving this to a degree. The money is there, “oh we can only get a 5% return? I’ll take it.” Six months later, “I can only get 4%? I’ll take it” and so on.
This is absolutely true here is San Antonio. Check out just these few listings.
http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/apa/5581118136.html
http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/apa/5535711125.html
http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/apa/5581131956.html
The secret is out here about rents being underpriced to mortgages during the bubble. Developers seem to think they can slap some granite and stainless steel in an apartment and charge $1000+/mth for a unit that was $600 10 years ago.
And check this out:
http://www.yescommunities.com/community/windy-meadows
Want to rent a $50k trailer for $1k/mth? A FREAKING TRAILER!!
From your first link:
Deposit: $100
http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=first+month+free
1 to 100 of 347
http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=two+months+free+rent
1 to 100 of 581
Howya like them apples?
hmmmm….. 2500+ rentals with a median of $850 versus a median list price of $230k($3100/month PITI and depreciation) leads to the obvious conclusion;
Rent it it for 27% of the cost of buying it.
Ben, I’m nt impressed with one month free rent. The LLs more than make up for it when they hit you — HARD — with that first renewal.
I remember last year, HBB posted an article about a shiny new high-rise in Northern Virginia. In that article, one of the residents admitted straight up that she would likely have to move every single year because she could never afford that second-year rental hike.
Stewie, I looked at your third link, the Urbana. OMG OMG. Slap is right. The place looks like it used to be a former housing project (with some brothel mixed in), and wants to revert back any minute now.
I still think the supply and demand curve is the final say. Maybe a lot of people are not shopping around. Maybe all the reasonable rent places have lots of crime. I tend to think people are too lazy to shop around. When you rent, you have a lot of freedom. You can move to where you work. Maybe it is cheaper to live within a fifteen minute drive by having lower commuting costs compared to commuting over one hour each way. and the commute takes time away from exercise.
“Developers are starting to build fewer apartments partly because banks are refusing to pay for it.”
Bankers rule.
“As a flood of new apartment developments opens and the percentage of vacant apartments has started to rise, banks are refusing to lend to weak deals and are lending less on the stronger deals. ‘Some banks are declining to quote some deals altogether,’ says Mitchell Kiffe, senior managing director for debt and structured finance in the capital markets group of real estate services firm CBRE.”
These apartment development pukes will cover the entire planet with apartments if given the chance. Luckily for everyone we bankers have decided to draw the line.
You pukes out there in HBB Land should be grateful for the existence of us bankers but I know that you are not and this is what makes you pukes the pukes that you are.
I suppose the “North Shore” of Mass is no different. As you drive up Interstate 95 or Route 128 (key roadways to/from Boston), the only new development that is seen over the last 5 yrs is 6 story apartment complex monstrosities, renting for $1800-2500. Re-tah-ded
My apartment complex usually has no available places. It’s a very noisy place because of the busy nearby road. But it is otherwise nice, convenient location to my bike paths. Even the low income people know enough not to be trashy or bring in hoods. The maintenance guy is a nice family man and his family lives in the next building. They don’t know there is at least one millionaire here and I don’t drive like one or look like one. I don’t mind mixed income rental areas as long as everyone is civilized and there is no taxpayer subsidy. They probably have section 8 at my complex though.
WIN.
Well in four years 1,000,000 new apartment units will be available. At least 1,000,000 fewer people to buy a stucco box. More likely 1.5 million. The oldest boomers in four years will be 74. The millenials and the new younger bunch will be renting and not buying houses. But they may be renting houses of boomers in places like Santa Barbara,
One of my sisters used to rent a room in a house full of other renters, sharing kitchen and bathrooms in Santa Barbara in the 1980s as a 20-something, 30-something. It is how young people can survive.
Yeah I wish I could tolerate roommates. I would definitely save money, but I cant bring myself to see other’s people’s dishes piled in the sink, or destroyed bathrooms.
Agreed. My sister told me a year ago some illness was going around at where she rented, back in 1983. My mom uninvited her over that Christmas because of the grandkids, so my sister went to Europe for the holidays instead. I guess she did not catch it.
Selfish:
SB has not changed in decades - having been at college at UCSB there near 40 years ago I left for the very reason you cite. I was not willing to live with my 5 best buds after graduation with the prospect of sharing one bathroom and a small kitchen.
There is a reason SB is called “the town of the nearly weds and the nearly deads”!!
I rented one room to my best bud, its like they say, you don’t know someone until you live with them. If I couldn’t make it work with my good friend, I couldn’t even imagine a near stranger.
Back in ye olden days, I shared a house run by an alcoholic landlady, some pharmacy students from Maine and a Japanese post-doc researcher. We got along well, no major issues. Once the students had to drag the landlady out of the front doorway where she passed out one night. The landlady evicted me 2 weeks before I was going to move out of town anyway. $60 a month for a room with shared bath & kitchen privileges.
Aren’t we way behind on housing creation versus population?
At some point incomes will probably rise, that’s the solution to high debt loads no?
At some point incomes will probably rise, that’s the solution to high debt loads no?
What is magically going to make incomes rise to meet debt loads? Hasn’t been happening so far.
‘debt and structured finance’
He’s using “banks” in an inaccurate way. Banks don’t use their money for these deals. It’s pension funds, life insurance, etc. Mel Watt just upped the loan cap for guaranteeing multi-family! Pedal to the metal.
Here’s Charles Hugh Smith talking about “Why NIRP (Negative Interest Rates) Will Fail Miserably” (from Feb 11, 2016) …
“The last hurrah of central banks is the negative interest rate policy–NIRP. The basic idea of NIRP is to punish savers so severely that households and businesses will be compelled to go blow whatever money they have on something–what the money is squandered on is of no importance to central banks.
“All that matters is that people and enterprises are forced to spend whatever cash they have rather than “hoard” it, i.e. preserve and conserve their capital.
“That this is certifiably insane is self-evident. If an economy depends on bringing future spending into the present by destroying savings, that economy is doomed regardless of NIRP, for eventually the cash runs out and spending declines anyway.
“But NIRP will fail completely and totally due to another dynamic– one I addressed last month in Another Reason Why the Middle Class and the Velocity of Money Are in Terminal Decline. As correspondent Mike Fasano noted, negative interest rates force us to save even more, not less:
“‘People like me who have saved all their lives realize that they their savings (no matter how much) will never throw off enough money to allow retirement, unless I live off principal. This is especially so since one can reasonably expect social security to phased out, indexed out or dropped altogether. Accordingly, I realize that when I get to the point when I can no longer work, I’ll be living off capital and not interest. This is an incentive to keep working and not to spend.’
“If banks start charging savers interest on their cash, savers will have to save even more income to offset the additional costs imposed by central banks on their savings.
“A third dynamic dooms the insane negative interest rate policy: what does it say about the stability and health of the status quo if central banks are saying the only way to save the status quo is to force everyone to empty their piggy banks and spend every last dime of cash?
“What exactly are we saving by destroying savings and capital? Isn’t capital the foundation of capitalism? The answer is we are saving nothng but a rotten-to-the-core, parasitic, predatory banking system, coddled and enabled by corrupt central banks and states.
“What NIRP says about central banks is that they have run out of options and are now in their own end zone, heaving the final desperate Hail Mary pass that has no hope of saving them from complete and total defeat.
“NIRP also says the economy that needs NIRP is sick unto death and doomed to an implosion of impaired debt, over-leveraged risk-on bets and asset bubbles generated by stock buybacks and central bank purchases of risky assets.
“The central bankers are delusional if they think NIRP will inspire confidence in investors, punters, households and enterprises. Rather, NIRP signals the failure of central bank policies and the end-game of credit expansion as the solution for all economic ills.
“What NIRP communicates is: this sucker’s going down, so sell everything and hoard your cash and precious metals. If that’s what the central banks want households and enterprises to do, NIRP will be a rip-roaring success.”
Link to follow.
Under zirp nirp only gov workers will retire
Why? I thought the non-gov private sector “masters of the universe” have been spending the last 30 years growing their 401Ks to nest egg so large that they don’t need any IRP.
I resemble that remark.
Don’t harsh on taxpayer’s hard-baked world view!
no, gov workers get paid no matter what
privsec get 201Ks maybe 101Ks
The rich people I work with don’t even have 401k accounts.
I found this out when asking are then startup founders about these high expenses on a 401K plan and they admited they don’t bother with them. These guys have millions so whats a 401K going to do ? stuff it with 18K a year uh huh…
401k accounts are for workers like piggy banks are for little kids.
And in the right political climate, they are ripe for the taking (nationalization of retirements)
Dan…
this….
Being an economist isn’t often a path to fame, but Teresa Ghilarducci found her 15 minutes — and so much more — about seven years ago, when she went to testify before Congress on the intricacies of retirement savings. Overnight, she became a star. That is, if being branded “the most dangerous woman in America” or landing in the sight lines of a chorus of talk-radio characters counts as stardom.
Linky:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/03/16/ozy-teresa-ghilarducci-revamp-retirement-savings/24842705/
That’s terrifying. No surprise she’s in the ear of Presidential candidates. The fact she wants the Govt to manage a retirement pool, like Social Security, is insane. I would love to not pay anything into SS and just invest in my own index funds. Even future President Reagan, who leaned more libertarian prior to his POTUS campaigns, stated that SS was merely a tax. Americans would be better off in private investments than the Ponzi scheme of SS.
“Ghilarducci’s take on government is different, colored by her childhood in Roseville, a town in the California foothills just up Highway 80 from Sacramento. Food stamps, welfare and government grants helped her through — all the way to a Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley.”
Okay, spend a moment or two to digest this. Now read on …
“‘I find out after I take graduate classes that I happen to be a child of the peak of the welfare state,’ she exclaims.”
She finds out after taking graduate classes that she happens to be a child of the peak of the welfare state. This is what she says. Her perception is amazing.
More …
“That realization helped shape her policy beliefs and, according to some, gave her practice of the ‘dismal science’ a very human touch. She has an ‘equally deep understanding of the impact of economic policy’ on people, says Sandra Davis, a spokesperson for the UAW healthcare trust.”
We’ll see.
I would love to not pay anything into SS and just invest in my own index funds…. Americans would be better off in private investments than the Ponzi scheme of SS.
No they would not. And I say this to everyone who expresses a desire to opt-out of SS.
If SS money was not automatically taken out of your paycheck, then your paycheck would see a very nice bump. And every retailer within 25,000 miles would see that paycheck bump and instantly raise prices to what the market will bear, swiftly absorbing that paycheck bump.
Everyone will be affected, not just the spendthrifts with the Sbux and the iPhones. Even disciplined people who “want” to save aren’t going to be able to save. That paycheck bump will be absorbed by necessities like college costs, groceries, gas, car repairs. Not to mention housing. If you are willing to pay $1500/month rent or mortgage so that you can invest $500 in your index, but someone else forgoes the index and offers $2000, who’s going to get the house or apartment?
So people might be able to save that extra money for a year or so, but then expenses would rise, and they would say, “well, I can’t contribute to my Index this month, maybe next month.” And maybe the next month. And maybe the month after that, until they are 65 and have NOTHING.
Sure, I might sound like a lib on SS, but we already KNOW that Opting-Out doesn’t work because we already tried it, recently. In 2010, Pres Obama set a two-year holiday on SS withholding to stimulate the economy. So, for two years, people didn’t pay into Social Security and got a nice paycheck bump. Hello, isn’t that the opt-out you were wishing for? So, did people put that windfall into an index fund like the theory said? Of course not. Sure, a few disciplined people did save the extra money, but most spent it like drunken sailors. Then, expenses crept up until that extra money went to necessities, until even the disciplined people couldn’t save anymore.
Then, in the beginning of 2012(?) the holiday ended. Companies began paying into SS again, take home pay went down, life still happened. And I’m sure you heard the howls. It’s a pay “cut.” Can’t make ends meet. Obama is “raising taxes.” Government is the devil. Etc.
Be careful when you wish for an SS opt-out.
“Americans would be better off in private investments than the Ponzi scheme of SS.”
Dubya’s blue-eye’d benefactors can manage SS better.
That stuff about Professor Ghilarducci is false, yet it continues to bounce around the web. The reference to the fact that she was once a food stamp recipient is bizarre.
What has been discussed is changing 401(k) and Individual Retirement Accounts in the future by limiting the deductibility of donations, and offering as an alternative a $600 tax credit and a new type of account with an annual return guaranteed by the government. That’s a controversial idea to be sure, but it’s a far cry from proposing that the government seize retirement assets that investors have already salted away in 401(k)s or IRAs. Nobody we know of is proposing anything like that.
The Carolina Journal report claims that Democrats on the House Education and Labor Committee held hearings Oct. 7 on “proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts.” The report describes in particular the testimony of Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City. We’ve reviewed Ghilarducci’s written testimony and a video recording of the entire hearing, both of which are posted on the committee’s official Web site and are available to anybody who cares to read or listen. Contrary to the Carolina Journal report, nobody at the hearing talked about confiscating or seizing accounts. We also contacted Ghilarducci independently and asked if she’s expressed support for confiscation. She told us in an e-mail message that she hasn’t:
Teresa Ghilarducci, Nov. 18: It is utterly ridiculous [to suppose] that I advocate seizing 401k assets.
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/11/iras-401ks-and-you/
Dandroidz: Americans would be better off in private investments than the Ponzi scheme of SS.
The stock market goes up for one reason: more money is going in than coming out.
Good to remember when considering retirement schemes.
Link …
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb16/NIRP2-16.html
“Demand in Manhattan’s super-high-end condo market has dried up amid global economic jitters, just as the market has been flooded with unprecedented supply. ‘There’s a lot of stuff that is chasing what happened three years ago or four years ago when there was a boom,’ said Gary Barnett, Extell’s founder. ‘They’re late to the party and the party is ending.’”
The Chinese money fountain is also ending. I think that has a lot to do with it. My old neighborhood in Queens doesn’t have any signage left in English unless it’s for a public conveyance. We always had Chinese immigrants along Broadway in Elmhurst but it is now officially out of control and less of them speak English than years gone by.
The Chinese money fountain is also ending ??
Maybe not….Just changing type of assets;
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwj2t_7anNLMAhUPyGMKHZTgD5kQqQIIKjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloomberg.com%2Fnews%2Farticles%2F2016-05-11%2Fasian-buyers-boost-christie-s-as-basquiat-soars-to-57-million&usg=AFQjCNGMUPaRxDEUc28nDDPpOgXIK8Taiw&bvm=bv.121658157,d.cGc
When I read “neighborhood in Queens doesn’t have any signage left in English” I immediately thought Elmhurst (I’m from NYC.) In Wikipedia it says there are large Asian populations in Flushing, Little Neck, Bayside, Fresh Meadows, Jamaica Estates, Elmhurst, Woodside, Richmond Hill, and Ozone Park.
Jamaica Estates? Did all the rich black people move out? I’ve only been back to NYC once in ten years.
Elmhurst. You are correct
It’ll be interesting to see the dip in Boston’s luxury apartment market in the coming quarters/years. I could not really find any listings on Zillow for the new residential towers popping up over the newly gentrified Seaport district (at least 3 huge towers) and some newly renovated old factory buildings. All the listings seem to be on real estate firm sites.
Just an idea, a “loft” apartment,. 525 sq feet was listed for $575,000, and similar units in the building, went as high as $625,000.
Some listings for 1000+ sq ft condos in the new towers are listed anywhere from $1.2-$2 million.
Right in front of the TD Garden (former Boston Garden), home of Celtics/Bruins, they are planning a “supermarket of stores/restaurants” and new residential towers. There is already one completed tower next door to the Garden arena.
I wonder if development will cease or plans will be reduced if the luxury market keeps dipping? Maybe shave some floors off these towers littered with $1-3 million lofts…
It’s no accident that the IKEA showrooms have a ~530 sq ft apartment displayed right in the store.
Pretty soon they’ll have a tiny house trailer or shipping container on the showroom floor.
Why buy a Conex box when you can rent it for $30 a month?
http://www.eagleleasing.com/home
Or in the parking lot.
If you put your showrooms in the parking lot then you are in effect expanding your store without actually doing so.
If you stage these parking-lot showrooms with products that the store sells then you get two shots at selling these products to the customer: One shot while the customer is in the store, another shot when the customer is in the parking-lot showrooms.
If one was to expand his thinking about this matter he just might hit on the idea that not only do these products stage the showroom but the showroom also stages the products.
Donkey Conex Box
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/49/aa/f1/49aaf1b0a1fccc16edb33795e25745f7.jpg
We only let Donkey’s out during the day to work their debt off.
a used travel trailer is 10K tops
tiny hose =suicide
a used travel trailer is 10K tops
And where does the zoning allow one to live in it? I wasn’t allowed to even park my own RV in my own driveway, much less have anyone stay overnight in it.
If living in a used travel trailer were allowed in areas where people wanted to live / wanted to be employed, I expect we would very quickly see an explosion of used trailers in yards and parking lots. Then there would be the tents.
Good point about the zoning.
I haven’t seen any areas which disallow residential RV parking, but I’m sure they’re out there.
In fact, the original Tiny Houses, Tumbleweed Homes, were set on trailer wheels precisely to circumvent the zoning regulations. The founder of Tumbleweed himself lived in a friend’s apple orchard, and dedicates a portion of his Tiny Home lectures to zoning laws, in addition to talking about the houses.
Tiny Houses are stupid, btw.
Bravo htv has hours of tiny house shows 40-60k
Sarasota, FL Housing Affordability Escalates As Prices Plummet 16% YoY
http://www.movoto.com/sarasota-fl/market-trends/
The Fed must bilk the 99% out of interest income by any means necessary, including NIRP.
http://www.businessinsider.com/moodys-report-normal-interest-rates-may-never-come-back-2016-5
With 10,000 baby-boomers retiring every single day until 2029 and Wall street having looted everything in sight leaving behind liabilities aka empty promises, I’m not counting on a Greatest Generation lifestyle when my retirement arrives. I’m debt free, prescription drug free and in better shape physically than most, so I’m ahead of the pack. Fingers crossed!
“From bull to bear market: China commodities shakeout hits investors, threatens mills
“* Rebar, iron ore prices down 23 pct from April peaks”
Let’s see, April was one month away and rebar and iron ore prices are down - what? - 23 percent? Now that there is very a big ouch.
“* Steel inventories have risen after 8-week drop
“* Some retail investors shifting back to stocks”
Hey, chasing prices is where it’s at.
“By Manolo Serapio Jr and David Stanway
“MANILA/BEIJING, May 11 (Reuters) - Only a month ago, Chinese commodities prices were skyrocketing, led by a stampede of speculative investors betting on early signs of recovery in the world’s second-biggest economy.”
Price chasers.
“Now, not only has the bubble been popped but a dive has left steel and iron futures 23 percent off their April peaks and in bear market territory. This in turn threatens to put the brakes on the restart of steel plants that became profitable as prices rose, as well as drive investors to other markets.”
Price chasers who, as lemmings, have decided to chase other prices.
“When prices shot up in April, Chinese commodities exchanges moved quickly to raise trading fees and push speculators to dial down trading positions, anxious to ensure there was no repeat of the boom and bust Chinese stocks suffered last year.
“With steel prices falling sharply, the risk now is producers that reopened - dubbed “zombie” steel mills after being idled when prices slumped in recent years - will have to rethink.”
“Will have to rethink”. Do not it be said that these people do not have a sense of humor. Moving on …
“This month, some good mills are making money but their profits are dropping day by day. The half-dead steel mills that reopened will make big losses - they are uneconomic,” said Xu Zhongbo, head of Beijing Metal Consulting which advises Chinese steel mills.
“Weighing on steel prices, inventories held by Chinese traders rose 1.2 percent last week to 9.2 million tonnes, after falling for the past eight weeks, said Kevin Bai of CRU consultancy in Beijing.
“‘There have been a lot of reopened plants but demand has hardly improved,’ said Bai. ‘We think steel prices may still have some more downward pressure because of the supply response.’
“Rebar, a reinforced steel used in construction, fell to as low as 2,085 yuan ($320.40) a tonne on the Shanghai Futures Exchange on Tuesday, before recovering some ground to close at 2,146 yuan on Wednesday, down 23 percent from its April peak.
“On the Dalian Commodity Exchange, steelmaking raw material iron ore traded at 385 yuan a tonne on Wednesday, also 23 percent below its peak hit just two weeks ago.
So much for steel, what else is there to talk about? Oh, there’s this …
“There remains a significant inventory of unsold houses in some of the smaller, more provincial tier 3 and 4 Chinese cities that developers will focus first on selling before constructing new properties, said Standard & Poor’s analyst May Zhong.
“Until we see meaningful destocking in the tier 3 and 4 cities, then we can’t expect construction activity to pick up,” said Zhong.”
“INVESTORS MOVE ON”
(and take their money with them)
“The aggressive measures taken by commodity exchanges in Dalian, Shanghai and Zhengzhou to rein in speculation, from increasing trading fees and margins to widening daily movement limits, have helped encourage investors to look at other markets to put their money in.
“I am taking a break from commodities futures,” said 42-year-old Ji Xiaoxu from China’s Henan province, who has been investing in futures markets since 2009.
“I am doing some U.S. stocks at the moment as there is no leverage and is safer.”
See? There is no end to the humor.
“On Wednesday, the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange said it would effectively raise trading fees for some institutional investors for rapeseed meal futures contracts from May 13 after a recent jump in prices.
“Such was April’s surge in China’s commodity futures trading that daily turnover in 18 contracts averaged $376 billion over the last two weeks, Morgan Stanley said in a report last week.
“But the short-term nature of the trading was also evident.”
Yeah? In what way?
“The average holding period in the past weeks for rebar and iron ore futures traded in China was only 2.0 and 2.4 hours, respectively, versus 25.8 hours for Brent crude on ICE Futures, Morgan Stanley said.
Hours, the average holding periods were 2.0 and 2.4 hours. And the term “investors” was the one chosen to describe these guys.
“In China, there is so much cash and people just follow the crowd,” said Xu of Beijing Metal Consulting. ($1 = 6.5077 Chinese yuan)
“So much cash.” Yeah, I’ll bet.
Link to follow.
Link …
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bull-bear-market-china-commodities-095134768.html
“* Rebar, iron ore prices down 23 pct from April peaks”
Maybe I am losing it, but I am almost certain that only yesterday I was reading about how China was having an unprecedented commodities boom in 2016.
Fyi
Rapeseed is canola.
Canadian oil association, or some such, is where the name canola comes from.
Silly name was changed partially due to silly name and mostly due to health concerns of Rapeseed oil.
Sounds like a suitable beverage for realtors to serve at open houses. Shots of rapeseed oil.
Financial Times
Oil
Oil catapulted high as US stockpiles surprise
A surprise drop in US oil inventories and supply disruption in Nigeria keep upward pressure
Nigeria raises price cap on imported fuel
an hour ago
by: Neil Hume and Gregory Meyer
Oil prices jumped on Wednesday lifted by a surprise decline in US crude stocks and news of another supply outage in Nigeria, an Opec member.
Brent, the international oil marker, and West Texas Intermediate, the US oil benchmark, were both trading lower ahead of government data that was expected to show an increase in commercial US oil inventories to a record high.
Rather than increasing, the report from the US Energy Information Administration showed stocks had fallen for the time since March. Gasoline and distillate inventories also declined.
Ice July Brent rose by more than 3.5 per cent to $47.12 a barrel while Nymex June WTI added 3 per cent to $46.01 a barrel, erasing earlier losses.
“The trend is pretty clear that gasoline demand is headed for an all-time record in 2016 — and the market is reflecting that,” said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, a consultancy in Houston.
…
“So much cash.” Yeah, I’ll bet.
“So much
cashartificial, printed claims on a limited supply of productive assets.”Photos of the $6.5M house with the “Frank Lloyd Wright feel” are still up on Zillow.
http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/16130591_zpid/6000000-7000000_price/21324-24878_mp/any_days/1_pnd/globalrelevanceex_sort/36.97782,-121.94541,36.965357,-121.965559_rect/15_zm/0_mmm/1_rs/
The interior is more Frank Lloyd Wright than the exterior.
Hey donk.
Hi sweetie. Do you think you could build that for $50/sq ft?
What color of cardboard would you like it in?
How many more toilets would you like to buy at $5k each?
Takoma Park, MD Housing Prices Crater 10% YoY
http://www.movoto.com/takoma-park-md/market-trends/
I snuc into falling waters w girlfriend in the 80s
No security at all
“The interior is more Frank Lloyd Wright than the exterior.”
That’s probably a summer cabin too. Very nice.
Alexandria County, VA Housing Affordability Skyrockets As Prices Crater 14% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/alexandria-city-county-va/home-values/
‘The median price for single-family homes in Santa Cruz County set an all-time high — $798,000 — breaking the record of $789,500 from November 2005. ‘I would guess that the people who sold Prospect felt that they didn’t get their money back out of it’
Note that the median price in Midland and Houston is still going up. Ask anyone in those cities if house prices are going up.
I’d like to point out this is really cherry picking! I mean, one little cherry of a house. We can’t learn anything from one house can we? Here’s another one little cherry:
‘Their season may be over, but the Lakers’ losses keep piling up. Free agent-to-be Roy Hibbert has sold his mansion estate in Carmel, Ind., for $2.65 million — $150,000 less than what he paid for the 11,200-square-foot home four years ago.’
Cherry picking! Wave it off, it’s only one house, it’s only $150,000. Nothing to see here.
‘I would guess that the people who sold Prospect felt that they didn’t get their money back out of it’
The suffering high end is not a cherry pick, it’s the trend.
A real cherry pick is finding $150K normal house — i.e. not in a hood, not a storage shed, not falling down, and not in Bodie — that’s dropping in price.
Narratives are unacceptable Donk. Ask and you shall receive.
Meriden, CT Housing Prices Plunge 8% YoY; Median Price Falls To $134k
http://www.zillow.com/meriden-ct/home-values/
Taunton, MA Housing Affordability Surges As Prices Dive 9% YoY
http://www.movoto.com/taunton-ma/market-trends/
‘There was no such animal as a credit score until about 1995. Well, it’s back to the future. Good going Fannie Mae. On June 25, Fannie Mae will be rolling out the automation of a manual process for mortgage applicants without credit scores, according to Mindy Armstrong, senior product manager at Fannie Mae.’
‘Here’s how it will work: A loan officer takes your application and runs your credit, but the credit bureaus Equifax, Transunion and Experian have no credit scores for you. This usually happens because you don’t have any or don’t have enough traditional credit (credit cards or auto financing, for example).’
‘In the past, that meant that we loan officers were unable to qualify you for a loan backed by Fannie Mae. But in seven weeks, you will qualify, opening up a vast new array of borrowing options.’
‘You are eligible for purchase as well for a no cash-out refinance loan if the lender can gather at least two pieces of credit information that covers the last 12 months. One must be a verification of rent. The other can be anything from a utility bill to on-time payments to your local gym.’
Drip, drip…
on-time payments to your local gym
I always return my Redbox DVDs on time, that alone should qualify me to borrow half a million, right?
Good God. The taxpayer is going to back a $417,000 mortgage loan based on that kind of “credit information”?
Don’t forget they qualified for student loans too, there is some history on them. Hahaha
Eh, these are the people not in debt?
a Zero credit score is the BEST credit score. It means you’ve never paid a dime of interest to the bank or you’ve BK’d your life into the ground. Either way JUST PAY CASH.
My wife has student loans which over the years we have halved. As a result of this payment history, her credit score is higher than mine. Every time we pay off one of the loans we get a half-dozen credit card solicitations in the mail
“There was no such animal as a credit score until about 1995.”
I think there were … there is a reference to damaging your parent’s credit rating on Zappa’s “Joe’s Garage” in 1979.
Near as I can tell, credit rating is half “did you pay it” and half “did you pay a buttload of interest.”
Exactly, a high credit score is nothing to brag about.
Progressive Insurance uses credit score in determining auto rates. Despite not having a late payment in over a decade, I am specifically dinged for the lack of a mortgage on mine.
” I am specifically dinged for the lack of a mortgage on mine.”
Me too. Also just paid off my car and score dropped 14 pts. The systems rewards debt donkeys. Shocker.
“Fannie Mae to offer no-credit-score mortgages”
This time it’s different.
Newcastle, CA Housing Affordability Balloons As Prices Plunge 8% YoY
http://www.movoto.com/newcastle-ca/market-trends/
Clinton Son-In-Law’s Hedge Fund Shuts Down Greek Fund After 90% Loss
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/10/2016 21:51 -0400
Despite having Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as an investor and being Bill and Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky (and two former colleagues from Goldman Sachs who manage Eaglevale Partners hedge fund) told investors in a letter last February they had been “incorrect” on Greece, generating staggering losses for the firm’s main Eaglevale Hellenic Opportunity, a/k/a the “Greek recovery” fund during most of its life. By ‘incorrect’ the Clinton heir apparent meant the $25 million Eaglevale Greek fund had lost a stunning 48% in 2014.
As a reminder, 2013, Institutional Investor proclaimed Mezvinsky “a hedge fund rising star”…
In late 2011, Marc Mezvinsky co-founded New York-based, macro-focused hedge fund firm Eaglevale Partners with Bennett Grau and Mark Mallon, two Goldman Sachs Group proprietary traders whom he’d gotten to know when they all worked at the bank. Best known as the husband of Chelsea Clinton, Mezvinsky, 35, who has a BA in religious studies and philosophy from Stanford University and an MA in politics, philosophy and economics from the University of Oxford, has been quietly building his finance career. Before launching his own firm, the longtime Clinton family friend was a partner and global macro portfolio manager at New York- and Rio de Janeiro-based investment house 3G Capital. Eaglevale manages more than $400 million.
Alas, he was anything but, and instead of having a real grasp of macroeconomic events, or how to - you know - hedge, he decided to dump millions in Greece just before the country entered a death spiral that culminated with its third bailout, capital controls, insolvent banks and a terminally crippled economy.
Meanwhile, things went from terrible to abysmal for both the clueless hedge fund manager and his LPs, and as the NYT reports, Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law is finally shutting down the Greece-focused fund, after losing nearly 90% of its value. Investors were told last month that Eaglevale Hellenic Opportunity would finally be put out of its misery and would shutter.
Excellent post. Could the Clintons be any more closely tied to the financial services industry? I bet Eaglevale’s investors, including “I’m doing God’s work” Lloyd Blankfein, thought the fund couldn’t possibly lose even an idiotic bet like this, given the political and financial connections of its principal.
Lloyd Blankfein has to hire idiot son-in-laws of the powerful so when hilarious is president he can’t lose no matter what he invests in.
they have each others backs
“Best known as the husband of Chelsea Clinton, Mezvinsky, 35, who has a BA in religious studies and philosophy from Stanford University and an MA in politics, philosophy and economics from the University of Oxford, has been quietly building his finance career.”
LOL.
Looks like Macy’s took it on the chin. M is down 11% today. Its book value per share is in the teens so I set up a limit buy for $15. Toyota is tanking. Great car company but the strong Yen has TM advising that it will eat at profits this year. I have a limit at $57 and they went below $100 today.
Linked from Drudge, Tinder blamed for increases in chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis:
http://foxbaltimore.com/news/nation-world/stds-on-the-rise-swiping-right-online-dating-could-be-to-blame
“Tinder blamed for increases in chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis.”
Good. That toilet seat excuse I’ve been using all these years has been wearing a bit thin lately.
Tinder, from now I’ll become a Tinder victim.
This album is eerily relevant today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npgYS74mLw8
Are these online daters somehow prohibited from using raincoats?
It’s not the same. You know that.
I’m surprised that no one’s blaming Obamacare.
Guys and gals:
I have to apologize for waking Ray K up from his slumber yesterday - Yikes the flurry of posts just hit like a storm after the Maersk article I placed on HBB!! My apologies!!!
“he intends to reduce subsidies for those who choose to stay in housing in poor urban areas, such as Brooklyn. So Section 8 tenants won’t just be pulled to the suburbs, they’ll be pushed there.”
Obama’s last act is to force suburbs to be less white and less wealthy
By Paul Sperry
May 8, 2016 | 7:30am
Hillary’s rumored running mate, Housing Secretary Julian Castro, is cooking up a scheme to reallocate funding for Section 8 housing to punish suburbs for being too white and too wealthy.
The scheme involves super-sizing vouchers to help urban poor afford higher rents in pricey areas, such as Westchester County, while assigning them government real estate agents called “mobility counselors” to secure housing in the exurbs.
Castro plans to launch the Section 8 reboot this fall, even though a similar program tested a few years ago in Dallas has been blamed for shifting violent crime to affluent neighborhoods.
It’s all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs.
Anticipating NIMBY resistance, Castro last month threatened to sue suburban landlords for discrimination if they refuse even Section 8 tenants with criminal records. And last year, he implemented a powerful new regulation — “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” — that pressures all suburban counties taking federal grant money to change local zoning laws to build more low-income housing (landlords of such properties are required to accept Section 8 vouchers).
Castro is expected to finalize the new regulation, known as “Small-Area Fair Market Rents” (SAFMR), this October, in the last days of the Obama presidency.
It will set voucher rent limits by ZIP code rather than metro area, the current formula, which makes payments relatively small. For example, the fair market rent for a one-bedroom in New York City is about $1,250, which wouldn’t cover rentals in leafy areas of Westchester County, such as Mamaroneck, where Castro and his social engineers seek to aggressively resettle Section 8 tenants.
In expensive ZIP codes, Castro’s plan — which requires no congressional approval — would more than double the standard subsidy, while also covering utilities. At the same time, he intends to reduce subsidies for those who choose to stay in housing in poor urban areas, such as Brooklyn. So Section 8 tenants won’t just be pulled to the suburbs, they’ll be pushed there.
“We want to use our housing-choice vouchers to ensure that we don’t have a concentration of poverty and the aggregation of racial minorities in one part of town, the poor part of town,” the HUD chief said recently, adding that he’s trying to undo the “result of discriminatory policies and practices in the past, and sometimes even now.”
A draft of the new HUD rule anticipates more than 350,000 Section 8 voucher holders will initially be resettled under the SAFMR program. Under Obama, the total number of voucher households has grown to more than 2.2 million.
The document argues that larger vouchers will allow poor urban families to “move into areas that potentially have better access to jobs, transportation, services and educational opportunities.” In other words, offering them more money to move to more expensive neighborhoods will improve their situation.
But HUD’s own studies show the theory doesn’t match reality.
President Bill Clinton started a similar program in 1994 called “Moving to Opportunity Initiative,” which moved thousands of mostly African-American families from government projects to higher-quality homes in safer and less racially segregated neighborhoods in several counties across the country.
The 15-year experiment bombed.
A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare. In fact, more went on food stamps. And their children did not do better in their new schools.
Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents.
“Males … were arrested more often than those in the control group, primarily for property crimes,” the study found.
Dubuque, Iowa, for example, received an influx of voucher holders from projects in Chicago — and it’s had a problem with crime ever since. A recent study linked Dubuque’s crime wave directly to Section 8 housing.
Of course, even when reality mugs leftists, they never scrap their social theories. They just double down.
The problem, they rationalized, was that the relocation wasn’t aggressive enough. They concluded they could get the desired results if they placed urban poor in even more affluent areas.
HUD recently tested this new theory in Dallas with disastrous results.
Starting in 2012, the agency sweetened Section 8 voucher payments, and pointed inner-city recipients to the far-flung counties surrounding Dallas. As government-subsidized rentals spread in all areas of the Metroplex (163 ZIP codes vs. 129 ZIP codes), so did crime.
Now Dallas has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, and recently had to call in state troopers to help police control it. For the first time, violent crime has shifted to the tony bedroom communities north of the city. Three suburbs that have seen the most Section 8 transfers — Frisco, Plano and McKinney — have suffered unprecedented spikes in rapes, assaults and break-ins, including home invasions.
Although HUD’s “demonstration project” may have improved the lives of some who moved, it’s ended up harming the lives of many of their new neighbors. And now Castro wants to roll it out nationwide. Soon he will give Section 8 recipients money to afford rent wherever they choose — and if they don’t want to move, he’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse.
Ironically, Hillary’s own hometown of Chappaqua is fighting Section 8 housing because of links to drugs and crime and other problems.
This is a big policy shift that will have broad implications, affecting everything from crime to property values. And it could even impact the presidential election, especially if Castro joins Hillary on the Democratic ticket.
Reverse Gentrification!
Wiki says this about gentrification:
“In a community undergoing gentrification, the average income increases. Poorer pre-gentrification residents who are unable to pay increased rents or property taxes may find it necessary to relocate.”
Relocate to where? To more affluent areas, that’s where.
Jokes that write themselves.
Haha, yeah gentrification leads to high paying craft beer bar jobs and awesome food truck patios. I can see the wealth trickling in. Don’t forget the renovated lofts that often come out of old factories and mills, and miraculously sell for $500,000 or rent for $2,000/mo.
Renting it at $2k/month is half the cost of financing $500k of rapidly depreciating asset.
Here in Southern California you can even gentrify a water tower …
http://www.yelp.com/biz/sunset-beach-water-tower-sunset-beach
A snippet:
“This unique home was listed for sale in 1995 …”
Now get this …
“… for $5,000,000. Because of the complicated mechanical system …”
Aka, an elevator …
“… it costs $75,000 a year upkeep. Or, you could surprise your significant other and rent it for a week, only $4,000.”
Better hurry, lines are forming.
I saw an article about a girl who converted an old windmill on someone’s farm into a tiny house. The man let her live there for a small fee, and she was on the hook for all the “reno” costs. It’s illegal first of all, but she needed a crazy 20 foot ladder to enter it.
I wonder if one could market and sell, as condos, prison cells.
I’ve seen grain silos, caves, water towers, etc marketed as excellent places to live so why not prison cells?
Empty ones, natch; Empty as in the cells are not filled up with prisoners.
I’ll bet somebody such as P.T. Barnum could make it work.
When will vacant malls be converted? Those are all across America. All they need are some cheap wall/dividers and some windows. If they’ve converted old dingy factories and mills into luxury lofts, they should easily work with malls.
One of the anchor stores of the former Cinderella City Mall is now the Englewood municipal building:
http://www.mallhistory.com/malls/cinderella-city-mall-englewood-co
Here in Tampa, I’ve seen several empty supermarkets and big-box stores converted to megachurches. The former Albertson’s on North Dale Mabry Highway is now the CityLife Church. In a similar vein, an old bank building became Tampa Police headquarters.
“Relocate to where?”
Questions like this and others will be answered by your federal “mobility counselors”.
I think someone posted this here last year, as I recall:
Obama Unveils Stricter Rules Against Segregation in Housing
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and BINYAMIN APPELBAUMJULY 8, 2015
Map of major cities
Another tick in the no column on pro/cons of buying.
Careful - I got the beat down last year when this popped up via Julian Castro - I posted some stuff by Stanley Kurtz and man the blow back - yikes.
Are you talkin’ to me?
The focus on the luxury segment is due to Affordable Housing Taxes. These make building anything other than ultra luxury apartments uneconomical.
“Many upper-end renters are now actually seeing price cuts. But some housing experts believe the market could be arriving at a turning point where these discounts begin filtering down to the masses. It’s already beginning to happen in some of the nation’s hottest housing markets, where yesterday’s top-of-the-line buildings are dropping their prices to compete with the fresh, young properties hitting the market, creating a trickle-down effect. Rents have already begun falling in New York City’s Manhattan borough as a slew of newly constructed residential towers have shot up, dotting the skyline. Rents for the cheapest 30% of units fell 2.2% year over year to $2,258 a month, according to the Elliman report.”
“In wildly expensive San Francisco, rents also appear to be plateauing: The average asking prices have stayed steady over the past three quarters, reaching $3,620 in the first three months of 2016, according to Paragon Commercial Brokerage data. In Nashville, TN, renters haven’t been used to the kind of amenities now coming onto the market. The country music capital had about 24,000 new rental units in the pipeline as of the last quarter of 2015, according to the Greater Nashville Apartment Association. The group counted only complexes with 50 or more apartments. The monthly rents on two-bedroom, two-bathroom units above $1,500 fell nearly 3% to an average of $2,311 over the past six months compared with a year earlier, according to the numbers local real estate agent Michelle Maldonado pulled from the local multiple listing service as of April 17.”
“Builders’ rush to respond to Denver’s population boom has resulted in a glut of new buildings in the Colorado city’s downtown competing with one another as well older buildings for tenants. To lure residents, some of these new buildings are also offering incentives ranging from a month or two in free rent to $1,000 gift cards. ‘We’re building apartments faster than people are moving into them,’ says Cary Bruteig, owner of Apartment Insights. ‘The party is over,’ says Nancy Burke, vice president of government and community affairs at the Colorado Apartment Association. ‘There is oversupply.’”
“New residential high-rises in Boston are also offering sweeteners to fill their floors, say local real estate professionals. And they’re poaching tenants from the city’s stately brownstones, the area’s traditional luxury rentals, by offering doormen, elevators, and parking spaces. As a result, some of the older brownstone units are ‘taking a little longer to rent and we’re having to lower the prices a little bit,’ says Amy Goldberg, a Compass real estate agent in Boston.”
“In Houston, some newly constructed buildings have had the bad luck to be opening just as the local energy industry is suffering from lower prices at the pump, leading many residents to leave, says local real estate agent Greg Nino of Re/Max Compass. Rents are falling as homeowners rent out their properties—rather than sell at a discount. Nino says he’s seeing suburban prices start to fall 10% to 15%, depending on the neighborhood. ‘We’re saturated with so many properties for rent,’ he says.”
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=9627
A friend on LinkedIn, a realtor, just posted some garbage from Trulia’s annual “Buy vs Rent” report, explaining how you save 36% when you buy instead of renting! I almost lost my morning coffee. Of course buying could be a bit more affordable if these realtors weren’t siphoning off 6% commissions for showing you the places you can find on the internet….
Yeah hard to believe you can save 30+% in a market that’s as inflated as 2005 levels.
If you completely buy* instead of rent then you get to enjoy all the benefits that imputed rental income will bestow upon you which boils down to … to pretty much nuthin’.
Although it is indeed true that this nuthin’ is seperated from the miracles this imputed rental income performs on the computation of our fine nation’s GDP.
*completely buy = actually buying instead of just contracting to buying.
Was listening to an ad by a local mortgage generator on the radio on the drive in this am.
Rates (as usual) “have never been lower” because May “is not the prime buying season…….”. Huh??
Did you smack him down? I love going trolling/posting reality on Trulia!
Show us some of your posts.
A realtor is not going to highlight the actual TCO (total cost of ownership) of a house.
Bridgewater, NJ Housing Affordability Surges As Prices Crater 19% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/bridgewater-nj/home-values/
Why “seperation of Church and State” never works in Texas. Especially when the church/cult involved worships “pigskin”
http://tinyurl.com/zjrp5gl
Football propagandists would like you to believe that football shows “what is good in America”.
I’d say it’s Exhibit “A” for how bad things are screwed up in America.
Disclaimer: My nephew was a former high school football player in Allen. That is, until the football coaches started pressuring him to skip classes to attend practice/weighlifting. At which point, mom (not being from Texas) stepped in, and he is now a “former” high school football player.
I’ve seen it argued that America’s shift from a baseball country to a football country has parallels in many areas of our culture.
The Boulder Flatirons:
http://www.picpaste.com/20160511_120057.jpg
We call our friend K who lives here “Bubble Boy.”
boulder is like santa barbara - more demand then supply. high quality if life. good people to play with
“…more demand then supply.”
…more demand than supply? Calpoly, SLO alumni… nope.
SB says, no water, no building.
US Housing Demand Plummets To 20 Year Low
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yX5B5Hn95bQ/VYC3Wr6ihBI/AAAAAAAAj7I/alOslZa-cK8/s1600/MBAJune172015.PNG
PIC, yesterday, you posted:
“(if not more to make up for the atrocious levels of building over the past SEVEN years).
RW, did you try to account for changes in household formation due to the GFC in your calculations? If so, I missed it. It doesn’t seem right to just extrapolate population growth relative to average household size, when household formation has been on pause for an entire generation for almost a decade now…”
Household formation is critically important to housing demand, but I think the variables are not entirely independent.
In other words, household formation is in part measured by how many vacant homes are occupied by residents, which is effected by availability of such residences, as well as their prices.
Said another way, there are people who are living at home with mom and dad because they can’t afford a place of their own–but man, they would like to move out.
Household formation has not been on pause for an entire decade. Take a look at Table #13 on this page:
http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtabs.html
Other than significant dips from the financial crisis, we have generally been adding approximately 1MM new households per year since the late 80’s. When you add in the replacement of obsolete structures (we have more than 100MM housing units that are not getting any younger), you need to build several hundred thousand MORE housing units per year additionally just to keep housing stock constant (I’ve read estimates as high as 400k-500k). This makes sense, to keep constant 100MM structures by replacing 500k per year implies that homes last 200 years on average…we know this to be false, so 500k will likely prove light over time.
My view is simply that “it’s not different this time”, and that people eventually start families, and that in “normal” times (there is not a depression/recession going on) break off to form a new “household”. The number of potential households (notice the word potential) is closely correlated to population.
With 1MM +/- new households per year, PLUS replacement of obsolete structures, the estimates are that we need to build about 1.5-1.6MM housing units per year in a steady state.
There is a simple test for my hypothesis that we are under-building housing relative to population growth and household formation–look at the vacancy data nationally:
http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf
If we were building enough for the growing population and household formation, vacancy rates would be holding steady, and rents would be moving with inflation.
I read the graph on this page to mean that we had too much housing built during the bubble, but are now at an underbuilt state–and building 1MM or so housing units per year has not been sufficient to keep rents from rising faster than inflation, or keeping vacancy rates from falling.
“Household Formation Is Cratering”
http://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/08/21/2013/household-formation-cratering
There is little demand for housing which explains the massive excess supply of housing units in the US.
Nice post of old data from almost 3 years ago.
Change in Households per the Census:
March 2012 - March 2013: 490k
3/13-3/14: 197k
3/14-3/15: 1.49MM
3/15-3/16 (most current data): 1.285MM
http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtabs.html
Table 13.
Don’t like the data? Blame the source.
Here are some more data for you that all point in the same direction.
Household Formation Falls To 30 Year Low
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2014/12/HHFGS.png
I didn’t say the source was bad. I said it was old.
Here are some new data for you that all point in the same direction.
Household Formation Falls To 30 Year Low
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2014/12/HHFGS.png
1.5 years old is “new”?
I posted data from the census as of the end of March 2016.
You posted a link that has no HH formation data in it. Try again.
In the meantime.
Update: Housing Formation Falls To Record Low In 2015
https://lawschooltuitionbubble.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/yoy-change-in-household-formation-by-month.png?w=620
The data I gave is total households. Household formation is simply the change in the total number of households.
Table 13.
https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_household_formation
Big picture my friend. Big picture.
https://lawschooltuitionbubble.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/yoy-change-in-household-formation-by-month.png?w=620
try slot machines next time:
The son-in-law of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is reportedly closing a hedge fund he started that bet on a Greek economic revival but lost around 90% of its value.
I saw this a lot among wealthy clients when I was doing the consultant thing… the runt of the litter that wasn’t good at anything would go into “capital management” and promptly lose his ass.
“Asheville home prices are not overly inflated, said Mike Figura, owner of Community Lifestyle Mosaic Realty in Asheville.”
Asheville, NC Real Estate and Homes for Sale-4,385 Homes
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Asheville_NC/radius-10
Asheville, NC Price Reduced Homes for Sale-981
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Asheville_NC/shw-pr/radius-10
22% of all Asheville sellers reduced their price at least once
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3056129/this-house-costs-just-20000-but-its-nicer-than-yours/1
“Originally, the project aimed for a house that would cost $20,000 in total, including construction, though they now believe that more money may be needed to provide a living wage for builders.”
Just get those iPhone workers to slap em together and your good to go.
Eerie, deserted dorms where Apple iPhone workers lived eight to a room, showered in groups of 20
dailymail. ^ | 11 May 2016 | George Knowles
Sprawling dormitory complex outside Shanghai housed workers who spend 12 hours a day making Apple products Eerie images show austere eight and 12-bed rooms and filthy ‘bathrooms’ where workers used communal showers Workers operated water taps by pedalling and squatting toilet cubicles positioned over open sewerage drains
Dorms can house 6,000 workers at a time but were abandoned hurriedly, with mementos left behind Impoverished men and women from countryside work 12-hour shifts for £250 a month and pay £16 to live in dorms
Mold and mildew crawl up the walls of the communal bathrooms and the tiny, austere rooms are crammed full of bare bunkbeds.
The grim dormitory complex
Four blocks, which housed migrant workers employed by Apple contractor Pegatron until they were hurriedly abandoned eight weeks ago.
Six thousand employees lived in the dormitories at the peak of iPhone 6 production but many of the roughly 1,000 left were told not to come back while others were transferred to dorms in the main factory complex.
A rare and fascinating insight into the austere living conditions for staff at Taiwanese electronics giant Pegatron who work exhausting 12-hour shifts and are reckoned to make up to one half of the world’s iPhone 6s.
Apple and Pegatron recently allowed cameras into the iPhone factory in Shanghai in response to years of accusations that their staff were having to work gruelling hours on low pay. Paid basic salaries of just under £250 a month for gruelling six-day weeks which they can increase by about £200 by working daily overtime.
MailOnline visited the huge Kangqiao Road East dormitories on the outskirts of Shanghai where Pegatron workers lived, and which were in use until February. Four blocks, named Huei Yang, have been mothballed while a separate dormitory is still in use.
ft.com > World > US >
US Election 2016
May 11, 2016 10:00 pm
Middle class takes financial hit in most US cities this century
Sam Fleming and Shawn Donnan in Washington
More than four-fifths of America’s metropolitan areas have seen household incomes decline this century, according to new research that exposes the politically charged reality of middle-class decline at the heart of this year’s presidential election.
The research on urban centres that are home to three-quarters of the US population shows that median household incomes, adjusted for the cost of living in the area, grew in just 39 out of 229 metro areas between 1999 and 2014.
The figures, prepared by the non-partisan Pew Research Center and shared with the Financial Times, cast light on the drivers of the economic discontent that have fuelled the rise of Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, and Bernie Sanders, the challenger to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Both men’s campaigns have tapped into deep-seated concerns among middle class voters on the right and the left. Pew’s research illuminates one source of that anxiety and raises questions about even some of America’s most celebrated economic success stories.
They reveal a steady erosion of the middle class across the map of America, with 203 out of the 229 metro areas experiencing a decline in the share of their populations that are middle income. At the same time, 172 metro areas saw increases in the share of their population that is upper-income, and 160 saw a rising lower-income share.
“We find the shrinking of the American middle class was a pervasive local phenomenon from 2000 to 2014,” said Rakesh Kochhar at Pew. “In that sense American communities share common ground — they are reflecting the national trend.”
Middle-income Americans are defined by Pew as adults who earn two-thirds to double the national median, adjusted for household size.
The drivers of the middle-class squeeze vary from city to city, but some of the steepest income declines were seen in cities hit by industrial job losses in recent decades. Springfield, Ohio, saw incomes fall 27 per cent over the period, while the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn area of Michigan recorded an 18 per cent drop in incomes. Nationwide the number of manufacturing jobs shrank 29 per cent during the current century.
…
Wildland Fire: History Timeline | U.S. National Park Service
http://www.nps.gov/…/wildland-fire/learning-center/fireside-chats/history-timeline.cfm - 65k -