A Housing Bubble Can Lead To Buyer Remorse
News Channel 5 reports from Tennessee. “It’s no surprise that Nashville home sales are hot, but new numbers released this week have caused some to wonder if Middle Tennessee could be on the verge of a housing bubble. According to the Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, home sales increased more than 11 percent in April, compared to one year earlier. At the same time, the median sale price in Nashville has crossed over $250,000.”
“And perhaps the most significant statistic — the number of closings last month is now more than the record that Nashville set during the last housing bubble. For sellers, if the home is priced right, realtors say it’s common to have five or even 10 offers on a home. Realtors say it’s common for home buyers now to have only hours to make a decision on a home, before an offer is made by someone else. ‘That can lead to buyer remorse, which can lead to expectation management, of asking, ‘Did I make the right decision?’ said Christie Wilson of the Wilson Group.”
Boston.com on Massachusetts. “Home buyers may have their fair share of challenges in this market, but appraisal issues apparently aren’t one of them, a new survey finds. As buyers go all out in their pursuit of every available home, they are running into relatively few issues with appraisers, who peg the market value of the property for the bank writing the mortgage, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports. The vast majority of real estate brokers in the state – 60 percent – said they had no appraisal issues during the first three months of the year.”
“‘With a busy market and increasing prices, there is always a risk that the agreed upon sales price and appraisals could come into conflict,’ said 2016 MAR President Annie Blatz in a statement. ‘It’s good to see that this isn’t generally the case and that buyers and seller are coming together on realistic prices.’”
The Colorado Real Estate Journal. “The Apartment Association of Metro Denver’s report on apartment vacancy and rental rates shows an uptick in average rent to $1,315 for the first quarter of 2016. The newer apartment properties have predominately higher rental rates than older properties, so these new units are somewhat responsible for pulling the average up over $1,300. However, the increase was mitigated by discounts and concessions, which rose in the first quarter to 6.7 percent, according to the report.”
“‘Other published sources of rental data often include the rents of luxurious single family homes,’ explains Mark Williams, Executive VP of the Apartment Association, ‘for example the Zillow announcement released last month is extremely misleading when it reports median rents are $1,959.’ For an apartment renter, they should know the median apartment rent is $1,274.”
The Real Deal on California. “Rent is actually decreasing in Los Angeles, a new report claims. Rental rates at L.A. apartments decreased by 5 percent from April to May, according to Abodo, an apartment search platform. The company ranked L.A. at No. 6 in the entire U.S. on a list of the biggest rent drops during that period. San Antonio saw the biggest rent decrease, at 13 percent.”
“Meanwhile, apartment sales across the U.S. are on an upswing. Apartment sales grew 33 percent last year to reach $151.8 billion, and in the first quarter of this year, sales have already reached $38.6 billion, according to Real Capital Analytics data cited in the report. Nationally, developers are expected to complete 285,000 residential buildings this year, compared to last year’s 250,000, the report said. However, analysts at Marcus & Millichap said there may be a bigger gap between asking rates and prices that buyers are willing to pay.”
Crain’s New York Business. “A court-appointed monitor will hold on to some of the profits from Joseph Chetrit’s Flatotel condominium conversion project at 135 W. 52nd St., a judge ruled this week. The decision was part of a larger lawsuit over allegations that money stolen from Kazakhstan was used to fund the development. Last year, Almaty and BTA sued Chetrit, accusing him of being complicit in Ablyazov and Khrapunov’s alleged money-laundering scheme. But weeks later, the two sides settled the suit. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that Chetrit agreed to cooperate with the bank and city, and gave them an equity interest in the Flatotel conversion.”
“Chetrit has acknowledged that he would pay $21 million for the stake that the two investors owned in the Flatotel project. The question is who should get the proceeds. The investors claim the cash is theirs, but BTA and Almaty said the money was stolen from them and they are entitled to the entire $21 million. The $10.5 million in escrow is a part of that total, and a federal judge will ultimately determine who can claim the funds.”
From Shorebeat in New Jersey. “After word spread that an abandoned, bank-owned home on South Beverly Drive in the Herbertsville section would cost more than $100,000 to demolish, residents have begun asking the township to crack down on the banks that allow the properties to fall into disrepair. The single home on South Beverly would cost more than the township budgeted for an entire year’s worth of demolitions. ‘I have a lot of confidence in the business administrator, but something has to be done with these banks, we have to move this along,’ said George Scott, who served on the township’s property maintenance board, which ordered the property to be demolished more than a year ago.”
“After the vote to negotiate a price to raze the South Beverly property, residents of Queen Anne Road brought another two properties to the attention of the governing body. ‘There’s still mold and mildew inside this house,’ said Richard Morrill, who lives next door to the home. In the case of that home, a bulkhead, never repaired after Superstorm Sandy, is collapsing and threatening Morrill’s property. Like the South Beverly property, there is hole in the roof which is only partially covered by a tarp. ‘Just go after the banks and make them pay,’ said Morrill.”
“Reduced rates” in the heading of this one:
https://denver.craigslist.org/apa/5564103769.html
I like that the ad offers an optional upgrade to a garage or carport “for your personal enjoyment” whatever that means, LOLZ.
It’s DonkeySpeak.
Crater Taters feeling lots of emotions, anger, fear, disgust and all flavors of these sour lollipops:
http://atlasofemotions.com/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_campaign=34e4070f6b-Atlas_of_Emotions5_10_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7041df42ec-34e4070f6b-92325021&ct=t(Atlas_of_Emotions5_10_2016)&mc_cid=34e4070f6b&mc_eid=87de850399#states:anger
People with mortgages do not get to ski 14,000 foot mountains on a Thursday:
http://www.picpaste.com/20160512_110539.jpg
Region VIII
Instead they are stuck in traffic on I-25. Poor Donks.
People with mortgages can’t ski this:
http://www.picpaste.com/20160512_141016.jpg
People with mortgages can’t really do much of anything, really.
Apartment 401
Oh baloney. Depends on their home purchase year, income, mortgage payment amt, other debt, and if they have money left over after they “pay themselves”. Just because you have a mortgage, doesn’t mean your cash flow sucks.
btw, some of our friends have paid off their mortgage when they got parent death dough. Must be nice to inherit $. I’ll never know.
crushing.housing.losses.
Repetitive.pointless.gibberish.
‘It’s good to see that this isn’t generally the case and that buyers and seller are coming together on realistic prices.’”
Realistic? Damn there’s lots of humor here on the HBB.
“‘With a busy market and increasing prices, there is always a risk that the agreed upon sales price and appraisals could come into conflict,’ said 2016 MAR President Annie Blatz in a statement. ‘It’s good to see that this isn’t generally the case and that buyers and seller are coming together on realistic prices.’”
Appraisers. The last hope of any price-rise sanity lies with what restraint the appraisers are able/willing to apply - which apparently is none.
the bit on the “vast majority” of appraisers not having issues was pretty good too…60% is NOT a vast majority
The article has the detail. I think 10% did have problems more than once.
Rental rates at L.A. apartments decreased by 5 percent from April to May, according to Abodo,
At first I saw “Adobo” and I thought “why would somebody name an RE company after a latin food seasoning?” Then I thought “Wow, L.A. has really gone latin hasn’t it?”
The I re-read the story…
L.A. and Spanish-speaking. We fair-skinned people are used to it. However there are a lot of fair skinned Latinos in the area too, and I know one young guy who speaks good English but “makes sure” to slip in an occasional accent, particularly when other Latinos are present. Hipster Latino.
I am familiar with a different phenomenon, which is the second or third-generation descendants of immigrants, with Spanish surnames, who speak no Spanish and never have lived in Latin America, but who leverage their heritage when beneficial.
Lots more apartments being put in operation in Irvine this year. I am thinking that will mean my rent will probably not go up in January 2017.
I’m currently considering both renting and buying in LA. I’m a desirable renter, so I’ve had a number of landlords offer me price reductions to move in. Still, at rates $2400 and above, I’m not motivated to rent. (I own a condo now that only costs me $1400/mo mortgage/HOA/tax.)
At the same time, the market for houses priced less than 600k and in livable areas has been tight. That seems to be changing–though I’m not sure if it’s a seasonal effect or if owners are sensing a peak. I survey the same areas using Redfin each day, and in each area the number of available homes has increased roughly 10% over the last month. Most of the availability is in the high end, but it’s slowly trickling down. (If you do a Redfin search you’ll see a preponderance of houses in the hills—but few in the modest flats. That picture keeps changing each day—the preponderance keeps spreading, filling in the gaps in everydayland.)
The “experts” now have the probability of a recession at 50/50. I think it may have already started in LA. The news is always behind reality. Each day I wait to buy puts me in a better position and I’m fortunate I don’t have to move (though it’d sure be nice).
The wild card for our housing is property tax. Even with a paid off house I’d still be paying rent to the Gov’t. FOREVER. You never can own a house.
True that. When my house is paid off in a few years, I’ll just be renting it from the county for a few hundred dollars a month (around $400 right now). But that will no doubt be increasing, especially if our clueless local voters approve the latest mass transit package this fall.
Motto of our local transit agency: “No dollar goes unwasted.” I think they have an office pool to see how high they can pay per mile of installed light rail. Which will take another 25+ years to fully build out (per their estimates, which means it will actually take almost twice as long at many multiples of the estimated cost).
Transit authorities always seem to need more funding and have huge budget shortfalls. The MBTA in Boston/Mass pays their train drivers big bucks, they just raised fares, and they had to cancel plans to extend a commuter line to another Boston suburb.
light rail =heavy tax burden
The data is very noisy on a month to month basis…I’m interested to see if there is seasonality in play.
https://www.abodo.com/blog/may-2016-national-apartment-report/
https://www.abodo.com/blog/april-2016-national-apartment-report/
May shows LA down 5%
April showed LA up 18%
Doesn’t look like they had a March report.
I don’t think most participants in the market would say that there are those kinds of swings in the market on a monthly basis…makes me wonder what they are measuring…are they correcting for apartment size/location/quality? Or simply averaging the listings that they see?
Got adult diapers?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/poultry-workers-in-diapers-as-bathroom-breaks-denied-oxfam-says
You wouldn’t want a human finger in your McNuggets because some distracted line worker needed the potty, now would you?
Our neoliberal overlords have to meximize profits and “shareholder value” by denying the serfs such basic amenities as bathroom breaks.
http://www.equaltimes.org/honduran-nappy-workers-speak-out-against-factory-exploitation?lang=en#.VzRtAWMVjHg
What caliber of rounds are in the gun chambers held to the heads of those workers?
I’m guessing that those poultry plant employees are mostly immigrants, both of the legal and (mostly) illegal variety. Of course, the plant managers will be quick to tell you that the illegals are just doing the work Americans won’t do.
The meatpackers are the people who started the rush of illegals back in the 1970s.
Back then, meatpacking was a union job that paid a “living wage”. But that was too much, according to the meatpackers.
They actively recruited illegals, then dared the unions to go on strike when they cut their pay to minimum wage, and eliminated all of their benefits. If they did strike, in came the hoard of illegal scabs.
That’s why there is no meatpackers union any more. At least one that matters.
This became the game plan for all kinds of businesses to screw/eliminate the unions.
That is exactly correct. I remember back in the 1970s where they used illegal immigrants (from south of the border) at the meat packing plant in the nearby town to where I grew up. It was well-known even then, and every so many years they would raid the place and haul a few dozen people out who were quickly replaced with new workers. Rinse, lather, repeat.
And of course back in Arktucky The Clintons directed law enforcement to look the other way so their Tyson buddies could benefit from the cheaper labor at the chicken plants.
Globalists gonna globe.
The irony.
Unions give nearly 100% of their money and support to the democrat party.
The democrat party wants more and more immigration, illegals and a “path to citizenship”
So, in essence, the union folks subsidized and encouraged their own replacements.
And they then complain about…
X-GSfixr said the problem started in the 1970s. I doubt that Democrats advocated a path to citizenship back then.
You got it. All those millions of dollars of union dues that were used to elect Clinton/Gore, which continued the globalist free-trade agenda as well as gave China most-favored nation trading status.
And the democrat voters fail to see that they got sold down the river (ouch, don’t think about the origin of that phrase either but it is fitting)!
If you can, you export the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. If you can’t, you import workers to whom the labor protection laws don’t apply. Win-win!
B….b….b….but Mr Banker is just yelling “GET TO WORK!!”
Huffington Post reports on record Arctic sea ice melt:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57342dd3e4b077d4d6f22b14
You can book a luxury cruise from Anchorage to New York across the Northwest Passage for $22,000 this year.
It’s and El Nino year.
An El Nino year.
It’ll be funny when all those people living on the east coast, in their beautiful ‘waterfront’ homes, all of the sudden have to get a FEMA flood insurance policy that costs $5000 annually.
Melted sea ice does not raise the ocean level. Think.
Glaciers are not immune.
“Glaciers are not immune.”
I can make a case that melted sea ice will increase the size of glaciers.
An abbreviated version:
Water evaporates, ice does not (it sublimes but at a much slower rate than evaporation).
Evaporation puts moisture into the air, this moisture will precipitate under the right conditions. If this precipitation occurs over a body of land and if the temperature is cold this precipitation will most likely be in the form of snow.
I suppose I should add more …
If the Arctic Ocean was covered in ice then little evaporation would take place and thus little moisture would be added to the air. Any precipitation that would take place under these conditions would depend on moist air entering the Arctic Ocean area as coming from somewhere else. As this moist air comes from somewhere else it will cool due to the cold Arctic environment and it will tend to precipitate over the frozen ocean before it makes it to land, hence the land will be starved of precipitation.
If the Arctic Ocean is free of ice then the air above it can be loaded up with moisture due to evaporation AND moist air coming from somewhere else will remain in the air instead of being precipitated out. This moisture from two sources will be made available to be precipitated out over the land because it will be there - the moisture will be there to be precipitated out.
Something similar happens in Antarctica. If there exists an ice belt surrounding the frozen continent then evaporation cannot easily occur and moisture-laden air coming from somewhere else will not make it to the land to precipitate.
The interior of Antarctica is mostly a desert - a desert as defined as very little precipitation, very little snowfall. It’s not that the temperatures are not cold enough, it’s because the moisture that is in the air never makes it to the interior; It gets precipitated out well before it gets there.
So, where does this moisture get precipitated out? It gets precipitated out over the ice belt, the ice shelf. The ice shelf is there because the conditions of temperature allow it to be there. The same conditions of temperature (aka coldness) that allow the ice shelf to be there are the same conditions that precipitate out the moisture from the air well before the air is able to make it to the land.
What I said above is a general statement and it has to remain a general statement because there are so many variables involved with the climate that only general statements will suffice.
But having said that give what I am about to say next some thought:
If temperatures are to rise then if follows that evaporation will increase, humidity will rise, and polar ice will melt.
Increase evaporation, increased humidity, and less polar ice will allow more - MORE - precipitation to take place over the lands located in the polar zones.
More precipitation over land that remains there in the form of glaciers means the there will be less - LESS - water in the oceans, not more water but less water. Less water in the oceans tends to cause the ocean levels to fall, not rise.
… Or you could just accept that land ice that melts and runs into the sea means there will be more water in the sea.
…and look at the satellite imagery that shows the glaciers getting smaller every year.
“…and look at the satellite imagery that shows the glaciers getting smaller every year.”
Yet as of yesterday the Atlantic Ocean is right where it was 35 years ago when I moved to Region IV and Long Island Sound is right where it was in 1965 when I first went to the beach in my hometown in Connecticut as a kid.
And it snows in the winter!
“And it snows in the winter!”
Not for long …
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/12/20/children-snow/
“Melted sea ice does not raise the ocean level. Think.”
I am still waiting on my $50,000.00 grant to fill a glass with ice and water, let the ice melt and show the water level didn’t change.
Although for a $500,000.00 grant I too would probably come up with a study that shows sea level rise hiding under foreclosed houses throughout the Earth’s continents.
Parched Earth soaks up water, slowing sea level rise: study
February 11, 2016
As glaciers melt due to climate change, the increasingly hot and parched Earth is absorbing some of that water inland, slowing sea level rise, NASA experts said Thursday.
Satellite measurements over the past decade show for the first time that the Earth’s continents have soaked up and stored an extra 3.2 trillion tons of water in soils, lakes and underground aquifers, the experts said in a study in the journal Science.
This has temporarily slowed the rate of sea level rise by about 20 percent, it said.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-02-parched-earth-sea.html#jCp
Now, if they were willing to pay $1.5 million from government climate grants for part-time work to me and Mrs. scandals I would probably be willing to do a study that would show Global Warming was hiding under the Indian and Pacific Oceans forcing the sea level rise under the foreclosed houses throughout the Earth’s continents.
NASA Study Finds Indian, Pacific Oceans Temporarily Hide Global Warming
July 9, 2015
RELEASE 15-147
A new NASA study of ocean temperature measurements shows in recent years extra heat from greenhouse gases has been trapped in the waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans. Researchers say this shifting pattern of ocean heat accounts for the slowdown in the global surface temperature trend observed during the past decade.
Researchers Veronica Nieves, Josh Willis and Bill Patzert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California, found a specific layer of the Indian and Pacific oceans between 300 and 1,000 feet (100 and 300 meters) below the surface has been accumulating more heat than previously recognized. They also found the movement of warm water has affected surface temperatures. The result was published Thursday in the journal Science.
http://www.nasa.gov/…sa-study-finds-indian-pacific-oceans-temporarily-hide-global-warming - 263k -
by James Delingpole22 Sep 2015772
When twenty alarmist climate scientists wrote to President Obama last week demanding that he use RICO laws to crush dissenting climate skeptics, the world of honest science – it still exists, just about – was rightly and properly appalled.
The hypocrisy and dishonesty of signatory Kevin ‘Travesty’ Trenberth, which we reported here last week, was bad enough.
But just wait till you hear the sorry tale of the letter’s lead signatory, Jagadish Shukla. It’s so murky you’ll wonder what on earth possessed him to stick his head above parapet. And you may well conclude that if anyone in this ugly business is worthy of investigation, it’s certainly not anyone on the skeptical side of the argument…
IGES is an organization which gets almost all its income from US taxpayers – last year a whopping $3.8 million – via institutions including the National Science Foundation, NOAA and NASA. The organization’s declared aim is to “improve understanding and prediction of the variations of the Earth’s climate through scientific research on climate variability and climate predictability, and to share both the fruits of this research and the tools necessary to carry out this research with society as a whole.”
A tough job, clearly, but someone’s got to do it. Which is why Shukla generously rewards its president – himself – with a salary of $330,000 for a 28 hour week and his wife (who works full time) another $166,000.
George Mason University Professor Jagadish Shukla is a lead author with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and winner of numerous awards including the International Meteorological Organization Prize, the Rossby Medal of the American Meteorological Society, and the Padma Shri National Award from the President of India. He is currently president of the Institute of Global Environment and Society and a professor of Climate Dynamics.
For his expertise, Shukla is amply rewarded by George Mason University with a salary over $250,000 a year.
Apparently, though, this isn’t a full time job. It can’t be – because on top of this salary, from 2012 to 2014, Shukla appears to have paid himself and his wife $1.5 million from government climate grants for his part-time work via his non-profit Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES).
wall street journal
According to Chairman Smith’s letter, the audit “appears to reveal that Dr. Shukla engaged in what is referred to as ‘double dipping.’ In other words, he received his full salary at GMU, while working full time at IGES and receiving a full salary there.”
Mr. Smith cites a memo from the school’s internal auditor in claiming that Mr. Shukla appeared to violate the university’s policy on outside employment and paid consulting. The professor received $511,410 in combined compensation from the school and IGES in 2014, according to Mr. Smith, “without ever receiving the appropriate permission from GMU officials.”
We reached Mr. Shukla by phone and asked if George Mason had audited him. He replied, “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk to you. I’m in a meeting.” Then he hung up. A spokesman for the school confirmed there was an audit and said that Mr. Shukla’s outside work didn’t interfere with his faculty job but declined to say whether Mr. Shukla had violated university rules.
“Shukla appears to have paid himself and his wife $1.5 million from government climate grants for his part-time work via his non-profit Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES)”
That is damn near as nice a gig as Chelsea Clinton’s $600,000 a year fake job at NBC
Chelsea Clinton Leaving Her Unbelievably Cushy Fake Job at NBC
By Joe Coscarelli
Kicking off the annual Labor Day Friday News Dump, Chelsea Clinton has announced, via People, that she will no longer pretend to be a reporter. The once (and future?) First Daughter has been a “special correspondent” for NBC News since 2011, when she was dubbed, following her debut, “one of the most boring people of her era.” For the occasional feel-good segment or interview with the CGI Geico gecko, Clinton earned a reported annual salary of $600,000, or approximately $26,724 for every minute she was on-air.
She switched to a month-by-month contract earlier this year, allegedly because of her pregnancy and her mother’s impending run for president, not because she was being paid an insane amount of money to do almost nothing.
It’ll be interesting to see my landlord’s justification to increase my rent in 2017 when I renew. Hmmm MoM and YoY housing value decrease you say?
Justification: “If you don’t want to pay the rent I want to charge, say X, you can move.”
Your threat point is to tell the landlord that you are only willing to pay
Y < X, or else you will move. If the landlord doesn’t believe they will be able to find another tenant who is willing to pay over Y, and doesn’t want to sell at prices the market will bear, then your offer will probably seem their best choice, though they may still threaten to reject it if they believe you don’t want to move.
Suppose your landlord believes that R is the highest rent they can expect a new tenant to pay, and they will lose L in foregone rents, rehabbing and advertising costs to find a new tenant. So long as Y is no lower than R - L, they are better off accepting your offer than seeking a new tenant to replace you.
If it would cost you M to relocate to a place renting for Z < X, including your subjective cost of discomfort, your landlord can potentially charge you up to Z + M before moving is your best choice.
In case your landlord believes Y < Z + M, they can call your bluff and try to negotiate a rent up to Z + M, even even if that is “above market”; a high cost of relocating leaves the tenant exposed! Similarly, you can try pushing your landlord down towards their minimum rent before they are better off relisting, R - L. So long as R - L is below Z + M, you and your landlord should be able to agree on a rent which leaves you both no worse off than if you move.
Definitely. Right before I moved in, they had advertised at a higher rent (no takers), so the price I got was the 2015 monthly rent. They could not find a renter then, and I doubt they can find a renter in a decreasing market in 2017.
The only leverage they have is my lack of desire of moving my $h!t out of their 3rd story. It’s their house with a converted 3rd floor private apartment, so they definitely need a tenant to help cover property tax.
‘The only leverage they have is my lack of desire of moving my $h!t out of their 3rd story. ‘
You are a young person I assume. Take my advice, do not acquire too many big things for your cribs over the years. If you get bulky stuff like a couch, dressers, bed, etc., be willing to sell them cheap or give them away. The one major thing that keeps me from pulling up stakes and moving to another venue, whether a city or state, is the major hassle of boxing up and moving all the crap I own now. When I was in my college years, everything I owned could fit in a hatchback VW. Now I have a decent size U-Haul worth of stuff I overpaid for.
Heed my advice. Buy stuff you can give away without remorse.
That’s good advice. I’m middle-aged and have owned a house for 18 years now, and I STILL have never purchased any new furniture (other than baby furniture: crib, glider chair, high chair, changing table, etc) to this day.
We had one hand-me-down couch (now in a landfill) and now am using a living room set given to me from the well-to-do millennial techies next door that upgraded.
Thanks, I have been trying to minimize my crap. I actually just eBay’d and Craigslist’d old electronics and such laying around, subwoofers, etc. Unfortunately I do have a bedroom set, kitchen stuff, futon, and computer desk (easily disassembled). I downsized my furniture a little when I left my old apt, I gave away my couch love seat combo my parents gave to me.
I’ve jokingly said if I needed to avoid lugging down my dresser, I would sledge hammer it into pieces or throw it off the 3rd floor stairs.
The one major thing that keeps me from pulling up stakes and moving to another venue, whether a city or state, is the major hassle of boxing up and moving all the crap I own now.
As I mentioned the other day, moving yourself once you accumulate a non trivial amount of stuff can be a monumental chore. And having it down professionally? We moved from SoCal to Colorado 20 years ago, and HP paid for our move. The professional movers cost almost $10,000 back then, I can only imagine what that would cost today. Also, I was underwhelmed with the caliber of the people who unloaded the moving van. They were basically a bunch of bums the driver picked up from who knows where who did a half azzed job of unloading and just dumping things in the garage because it was getting late.
These days, unless you have some really high-quality (eastern old-growth hardwoods) and/or antique furniture, it really doesn’t even pay to move it. You’re almost better off selling or donating the big stuff and buying new when you get to the new place. Especially if that new place is in Hawaii!
“The one major thing that keeps me from pulling up stakes and moving to another venue, whether a city or state, is the major hassle of boxing up and moving all the crap I own now.”
George Carlin Talks About “Stuff”
A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.
While love the analysis, it assumes that both parties are rational—which is a stretch when it comes to an emotionally laden decision like housing. I get caught up in it myself.
Longer explanation to follow, but falling home prices put tenants in a stronger bargaining position to negotiate rent decreases.
P-bear, your strategy could work if you’re renting a private house (or part of a house) from a private LL. But it probably won’t work if you’re in a commercial complex.
I can’t agree that falling house prices will justify lowering rent — at least not in commercial complexes. If you’re using low house prices as your argument, then the landlord will simply shift from “Pay or Move” to “Pay or Buy.” That’s the choice I was given in 2012. I was in a position to call their bluff and buy, but few renters can do that.
Renters are in a better position now, with all the new rental inventory coming online. It’s a lot easier to Move when there are more places to move to.
“But it probably won’t work if you’re in a commercial complex.”
You’re right. In that case, trying to negotiate rent might be about as useful as trying to negotiate the price of Cheetos at Wal-Mart.
We are in the case where you mention the strategy could work, except for one detail: After raising our four lovely children, we have TOO MUCH STUFF.
I may nudge my wife towards working with me this summer to lighten our load. Thanks to the insights learned from my early morning brainstorm, I realize that a key reason we have zero bargaining power in rent negotiations is that our landlord is bright enough to know damn well that we would rather prefer to stay put than to deal with the hassle of moving all our accumulated junk elsewhere.
“I can’t agree that falling house prices will justify lowering rent — at least not in commercial complexes.”
It really depends upon substitutability (or not) between housing of comparable quality. For example, suppose a large commercial complex is located near a community of comparably-priced houses which often become starter homes for residents of the complex who have reached the point where they can afford to move out. If home prices fall and the manager doesn’t respond with lower rents, a number of tenants in the large commercial complex may decide it is now time to buy, leaving behind vacant units. It is not hard to envision a scenario where the landlord does better by reducing the rent to attract new tenants rather than living with vacant units due to holding rents at a level where it is cheaper to buy nearby housing than to rent an apartment.
“I was in a position to call their bluff and buy, but few renters can do that.”
Long explanation to follow, but in short, it is not necessary for the renters to have bargaining power for the landlord to do better by dropping rents.
Since when do they ever bother justifying that? I think that the only organizations who justify raising prices are regulated public utilities, and that’s only because they are required to do so.
You could always double+ your monthly costs and sign up for a massive mortgage on a depreciating shack at a grossly inflated price.
“would cost more than $100,000 to demolish, residents have begun asking the township to crack down on the banks that allow the properties to fall into disrepair”
With 25 million in sitting zombie or foreclosed houses, I think I should get in the demo business. I wonder if I can get a wrecking ball and bulldozer on the cheap. Caterpillar has been hurting, so maybe a fire sale on some industrial equipment?
“I wonder if I can get a wrecking ball and bulldozer on the cheap.”
Be sure to double check your maps …
http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/24/texas-wrong-house-torn-down-google-maps/
Article discusses corruption and money laundering in the UK but fails to mention its direct impact in creating the London housing bubble:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/world/europe/britain-cameron-corruption.html
No “pent-up demand” for $500,000 starter homes happening here:
“The great shrinking of the middle class that has captured the attention of the nation is not only playing out in troubled regions like the Rust Belt, Appalachia and the Deep South, but in just about every metropolitan area in America, according to a major new analysis by the Pew Research Center.
Pew reported in December that a clear majority of American adults no longer live in the middle class, a demographic reality shaped by decades of widening inequality, declining industry and the erosion of financial stability and family-wage jobs. But while much of the attention has focused on communities hardest hit by economic declines, the new Pew data, based on metro-level income data since 2000, show that middle-class stagnation is a far broader phenomenon.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/11/the-middle-class-is-shrinking-just-about-everywhere-in-america/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_wonk-middleclass610p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Increasing costs in every life expense, ever decreasing dollar purchasing power, stagnant wages…but hey the SP500 and NASDAQ are still lofty. Of course that means middle class can afford 2005 level housing prices, right?
Are you sure?
Update: Crude Oil Craters 30% YoY As Global Demand Plummets
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/future/crude%20oil%20-%20electronic
VA and Oregon released their 2017 “Obamacare” marketplace health insurance increases, most on average of 25-30%. This will happen across most states participating.
Despite “cratering” oil demand and supply glut, oil has fraudulently risen to $45/bbl. Gasoline went from $1.75 in Feb-Mar to $2.20 in my area of Mass. So yes, fuel is increasing despite “cratering” demand.
Property taxes and sales taxes are never going down.
I’ll assist you and close the narrative…..
End result: collapsing demand, rising defaults and continued chronic and persistent unemployment at record levels……. All resulting in falling prices.
One option is to self insure. When you run out of “self insurance” declare BK. It’s pretty simple, really.
Medi share type of co-op is another option and waaaaaaaaay cheaper than Obumer Care.
In an era of reckless money creation, central bankers gaming asset prices through competing currencies in a global market with few restrictions, and interest rates indefinitely pinned to the zero bound, where are the bubbles? In stocks? Bonds? Commodities? Real estate? Particular currencies?
I’m not sure anyone can say without the benefit of hindsight. What seems clear is that underdiversification in such a risky valuation environment could leave one holding the bag on a hoard of worthless investments in whatever unfortunate asset class you choose to concentrate your wealth holdings.
P.S. By concentrating the lion’s share of a typical household’s wealth portfolio in one highly-leveraged, illiquid, undiversified, lumpy asset, buying a house is a great example of poor diversification.
But but but it appreciates 3-5% a year!!! Hahaha, my coworker was just explaining to me how much there house has gained in the last yr.
Plus real estate always goes up, as any Californian can tell you.
Yeah, its interesting to see the price history in SF, their prices slid all the way into 2012 from 2008-2009. I suppose it had a long way to fall, similar to what will soon happen from these highs in 2014-2015.
So many crappy neighborhoods in SF, no parking, crazed meth’d out hobos throughout the whole city….
You have to wonder about sanitation and disease risk with so many homeless people living in the streets and defecating or urinating wherever they happen to be when nature calls.
Someone made an app that mapped out all the feces in SF. It’s pretty funny. Hint hint: It’s everywhere, especially along Market St.
Market around city hall, and south along the Caltrain tracks is hobo central. Oddly enough, this is where all the tourists end up. It’s like they can’t afford to go to the good parts of the city on their Flyoverlander income.
Yeah its pretty awful that everyone flocks to Market St where all the BART/MUNI stops are central to other sections of the city. As soon as you come off the train there is no less than 2 or 3 homeless to greet you, then on the stairwells, then outside the station entrance, then all up and down the sidewalk harassing passerbys.
Even more sad is people pay extra premiums to live near that.
Obligatory SF ridiculously priced crib:
http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/San-Francisco-CA/house_type/119684793_zpid/20330_rid/any_days/pricea_sort/37.943656,-122.225991,37.692514,-122.665444_rect/10_zm/2_p/?3col=true
Think about it. You wanna spend half a million dollars for a place like this? Your job must be paying huge bucks to make this worthwhile.
That could be a Murphy Bed given that recess behind the head.
Sheez $500k and $280/mo in HoA fees, for a ground unit on a street rampant with shady people lingering around. I had a friend renting near that exact intersection in a loft apartment for $4000/mo. My walk back to the MUNI station had me looking over my shoulder.
It says Murphy bed in the text of the listing.
It says Murphy bed in the text of the listing.
I actually saw one of those beds for real in an old studio apt., San Jose, CA.
Zillow says my Miracle House increased by $5,947 over the past thirty days however (the horror!) my imputed rent DECREASED by $50 over the same time period.
DECREASED! My imputed rent decreased!
So, prices are going in one direction and rents are now starting to go in another. Interesting.
Zestimates zuck.
I checked some mutual funds yesterday- balanced funds.
VWELX and PRCWX Almost zero government bonds and lots of BBB and BB bonds.
Bubbles ? if these funds are right its government debt and they are not buying.
But now, eight years later, the law is having a side effect of allowing homes to become abandoned with no clear path toward holding any party responsible, officials said.
Kinda what happened to my auto mechanics shop somebody offered some pie in the sky price and he took it after 38 years in that location, fence went up demolished the shop and its sat empty for now almost 2 years,
They didn’t want to transform it into a hip/chic industrial brewhouse? Throw some picnic tables out front, Trivia Night Thursdays, and charge $8/beer?
Set up your DonkeyCart and hoof it out to the brewhouse, thinly slice up some CraterTaters and deep fry them in RealtorRapeseedOil. Make lemonade out of lemons. A perfect business opportunity.
Brewhouse…heh.
Depends on how big the auto shop was. A bigger shop (six bays, maybe?) with a sizeable parking lot is enough land to build a mixed-use condo complex. But to make you feel better, I’m sure they will install the brewhouse as street-level retail and use the hip-chic as an excuse to hike the price/rent.
I can see your cart set up out front. Donks Crater Chips.
http://scene7.targetimg1.com/is/image/Target/17436083?wid=480&hei=480
holy @#$ I’m dying laughing here.
LMFAO!!!
Have the rules for home ownership in the U.S. been rewritten as part of the Democratic Party platform?
Old rules: Qualify for a mortgage if you can find a bank or private lender to loan you the money; keep making payments or get foreclosed and lose the home.
New rules: Everyone qualifies for a low-downpayment federally-guaranteed subprime loan at a high debt-to-income ratio. If you lose the ability to make good on payments, which is a likely prospect, given how much you overpaid, the government has various rules in place to enable you to hang on to your home indefinitely. Though the interest rate on your loan is low, that is fully offset by the high purchase price you paid. Much of your income goes to paying property tax, which is a percentage of the purchase price.
Does this seem about right?
Is this just Democrat policy?
“could be on the verge of a housing bubble… the median sale price in Nashville has crossed over $250,000.”
House prices 5 X income. House prices going up while income is going down.
“The current median household income for Nashville is $52,640. Real median household income peaked in 2007 at $57,959 and is now $5,319 (9.18%) lower…”
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/tennessee/nashville/
‘home sales increased more than 11 percent in April, compared to one year earlier. At the same time, the median sale price in Nashville has crossed over $250,000.’
‘And perhaps the most significant statistic — the number of closings last month is now more than the record that Nashville set during the last housing bubble. For sellers, if the home is priced right, realtors say it’s common to have five or even 10 offers on a home’
Everybody is a supply and demand expert. So experts, when prices go up there should be less demand. Is there something other than supply and demand at work in Nashville? And the same thing has been happening in lots of places.
” So experts, when prices go up there should be less demand. Is there something other than supply and demand at work in Nashville? ”
Yes, and I commented on this some weeks ago. For assets that are expected to be kept or consumed, people buy on perceived present value. For durable goods that are expected to be sold later, people buy based on perceived future value. So it’s still supply and demand, but it’s supply and demand as it occurs along an entire timeline, not at a single point.
And housing is a special case. People aren’t just basing the decision on current or future price alone, they are comparing that cost to the cost of renting, which can lead to decisions which seem counterintuitive but are not. For example, a family could be paying very high rent. Even if rent is trending down and house prices are trending up, that family might still buy. Their reasoning would be that the increasing resale value of the house will offset the immediate advantage of the small decrease in rent.
Problem is their reason is flawed considering they haven’t included their losses to depreciation.
Remember;
Robert Shiller: “Houses Are Depreciating Assets”
http://www.pragcap.com/robert-shiller-dont-invest-in-housing/
Their reasoning would be that the increasing resale value of the house will offset
Translation: they are speculators.
DC has the 5th most mansions in the country:
https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-metro-areas-with-the-most-mansions
Slideshow of some DC mansions:
http://wtop.com/real-estate/2016/05/expensive-homes-dc-area-ranked-top-mansion-city/slide/1/
Mansions should have at least 15 rooms, 5 of which are bedrooms.
[”Room” does not include hallways, staircases, bathrooms, closets, or kitchenettes. Not sure about breakfast nooks, but those are probably included in the full kitchen.(?) So if I count correctly, a 3/2 ranch has 6 rooms. A typical 4-bed McMansion has 9-10 rooms.)
Hey donk.
Hey Oxide, it’s because being at the Pig trough is very lucrative. I was once one of those. And thank you for voting all those years for war mongers, such as Obama and Bill Clinton. You added a lot of gold to my collection. I know, Bush and Cheney helped me get a lot of gold too, but you keep Bitchin about the money I made though you voted for that to happen.
I know taxpayers likes to rag on federal employees, but rank and file federal employees aren’t the ones living in these mansions. These are defense contractor CEO’s, big-bonus suits at the big banks (it’s not all in NY), lobbyists, and media execs. When I was househunting, the realtor drove me by the former mansion of lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Also, as someone who grew up military and around lots of DoD employees, not everyone is rich. Most are smack dab in the “middle class” in the $60-100k range. Yes they have had job stability over their careers, but I know plenty of hard working engineers that live regular lives; house, car, family, and yes some of them can afford their kids college.
Utah is the top 3 for mansions. What’s up with that?
Bigger families need bigger houses; I worked for a Mormon for a while—he had a dozen kiddos, and a pretty large house to hold them all.
Lots of them are docs, lawyers and business owners, as it costs lots of money to raise all those kids plus you need a big home to house them and the church gladly accepts 10% off the top of your income.
Mormons gotta morm.
In the Morridor (I15 corridor), living behind the Zion Curtain. They are known as The Morg.
Blink and you’ll miss it: China’s two-month commodities bubble
By Vanessa Desloires
Chinese investors are known for their ability to drive markets to eye-popping extremes, resulting in some of the most spectacular booms and busts of recent times.
The latest frenzy has been a bet on China’s economic recovery expressed through trading the commodities futures market, but how does it compare with history’s most famous bubbles?
If the charts are anything to go by, the latest rage in trading commodities futures could already be over, after just two months that saw futures pricing in everything from iron ore to eggs and cotton rise as much as 50 per cent.
…
“But the speculation has its roots firmly in the fundamentals. Behind the buying was the bet that conditions are stabilising in the world’s second-biggest economy, and fears of a hard landing had turned into optimism that growth was back on track, and propped up by stimulus from policymakers that has driven a surge in credit.”
Time will tell how sound and persistent these ‘fundamentals’ turn out to be. I personally hold that government rigging of markets doesn’t fit the description of ‘fundamentals’.
a href=”https://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_Pres16_WTA.cfm”>Big convergence move on IEM futures noted.
Any theories about why?
Big convergence move on IEM futures noted.
Sorry about that link!
https://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_Pres16_WTA.cfm
Political thunderclap?
Perhaps the drop from about 75/25 to 60/40 is reflective of the increasing number of polls showing a dead heat?
Hard to say. The IEM operates much differently than polls, as people are presumably putting their own money at stake on what the outcome of the election will be, while polls simply express for whom individuals say they will vote. There are historic instances of large gaps between poll numbers and election results.
Oil prices rise after IEA sees ‘dramatic’ fall in supply glut
By Jenny W. Hsu and Georgi Kantchev
Published: May 12, 2016 5:57 a.m. ET
Oil prices edged up Thursday after a top energy monitor said that the global market is near balance.
The International Energy Agency said that global oil stocks will experience a “dramatic reduction” in the second half of the year on the back of strong demand and falling supply by some major producers. A series of production outages around the globe have also taken barrels out of the market in recent weeks, providing support to prices.
…
Here’s a good reason NOT to own a home, especially if you’re elderly, have some money and live alone:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/11/illegal-aliens-sentenced-beating-elderly-minnesota-farmer-death/
You’ll never have to hire one of those guys to paint your house!
It’s a tragedy, but he did hire them, so………..
His consolation was that they were cheaper than Americans. Everyone loves a bargain. after all.
The article doesn’t state that.
Try again.
“His consolation was that they were cheaper than Americans. Everyone loves a bargain. after all.”
Unfortunately, the desire for “cheap” is a large part of what has driven this country into the ground. “Cheap” doesn’t mean good, and greed gets the best of otherwise smart people.
I thought the story was interesting, also because the guy was a farmer. In light of the fact that the ag industry, including so-called “family farms”, has been responsible for hiring illegal immigrants for cheap labor, it’s a tragic example of what goes around, comes around. I’ve seen the attitude around here from some retirees who think they’re getting a leg over the local labor market by hiring illegal immigrants to do lawn work, roofing, painting, etc. on the cheap, and then they wonder why a break-in happens when they’re not home. No home invasions as yet, but it’s coming.
Yesterday a colleague told me about a murder in Newport Beach ten years ago. An old couple had a yacht up for sale. A young couple approached them. The youn woman was pregnant. It is a long story but to be brief, over a few weeks the young couple won the trust (the part about a pregnant woman helped with that trust buildup). The young couple murdered the old couple.
Of course the murderers were caught. People who violate the rights of others are very very stupid. On the other hand if there is no victim, there is no one to report a crime except the one doing the victimless crime.
I heard about that one a while back. Trust, but verify.
Wikipedia: “The Murder Of Thomas And Jackie Hawkes”
“Thomas Hawks was a retired probation officer and bodybuilder. He and his second wife Jackie (formerly of Mentor-on-the-Lake, Ohio), owned a 55-foot yacht, the Well Deserved, which they treated as their permanent home and on which they sailed for two years around the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California. In 2004, they decided to sell their yacht and set up home in Newport Harbor, to be closer to the child of Mr. Hawks’ son from his first marriage to Dixie Hendry. Jackie (née O’Neill) had helped raise the boys since their early teens, and considered the new baby her grandson.
“Their advertisement of the sale of the yacht was answered in November by Skylar Deleon. The couple was initially cautious of Deleon, but they became more receptive when he brought his then-pregnant wife Jennifer and their other child to a meeting. The Hawkses were last seen alive on the morning of November 15, 2004, heading out of the harbor. The yacht returned, but they did not. Their bodies have not been found.”
Wiki for more.
Here …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Thomas_and_Jackie_Hawks
“Alien criminals ”
He should have kept his laser pistol handy….
Maybe a Phaser?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dzmb4O67o8 - 263k -
Airplane Movie Counter Point clip
Local news stories simply identify the two illegal alien criminals as “men.”
Yellow journalism alive and well in Minnesota.
Whoo boy, I’m tellin’ ya. The media is soooo dishonest about this sort of thing. Yeah. I like the “Springfield Man” who turns out to be from Matamoros.
The whole “Undocumented Immigrant” thing is just too much. Makes it sound like they just misplaced their ID…
North Dallas, TX Housing Affordability Surges As Prices Plunge 6% YoY; Housing Demand Craters
http://www.zillow.com/north-dallas-dallas-tx/home-values/
Boeing, the never ending source of examples on how NOT to run your business…….
After having their way with the Machinists in 2014 (without using lube, or giving a reach around, or even promising to keep “X” jobs in Seattle), it’s time to let bygones be bygones, and pull together to make the team more competitive vs. Airbus.
http://tinyurl.com/jst3668
(Of course, a cynic might point out that they are supposedly uncompetitive, even though Airbus unions are a lot stronger, are based and taxed in a Socialist’s Paradise, and they are suffering under the burden of government run health insurance…….but I digress.)
Read as “The layoffs will continue until morale improves”.
In the meantime, a chicken generated by the 2014 contract is coming home to roost. Seems that a Machinist cannot accrue any more pension benefits after October, so the guys with all of the “tribal knowledge” are heading en masse for the door.
http://tinyurl.com/ho6csqz
Check back with Boeing in two years, and find out how the plan to OJT train new hires using guys with two years of seniority/experience is working out for them.
I’ll bet the payroll tax Airbus pays for its employees healthcare is a lot less than what Boeing pays to insure its workers in the US.
Hmmmm….
Forbes…
In reality, the Europeans have continued a forty-year pattern of conveying massive illegal aid to Airbus aimed at destroying Boeing and dislodging America from its global leadership in the aerospace business. The financing Airbus gets is much more liberal than what could be obtained from commercial sources, and doesn’t need to be repaid at all unless new jetliners are commercial successes. Boeing finances development of its own airliners through the marketplace, and thus is placed at a considerable disadvantage in terms of risks and returns.
A lot is left out in that summary. The Dept. of Defense funded a bunch of aerospace research for many decades. The fruits of that R & D were handed over to Boeing, Lockheed, etc. for free. My father spoke to a Boeing economist once around 20 years ago who told him that the return on investment of the commercial side of Boeing’s business was about the same as the interest rate on municipal bonds. It was the defense side of the business that provided the big profits.
The state of WA really got hosed with the big tax-cut deal they made with Boeing awhile back - nobody told the state that it is standard practice to include language that requires a certain number of jobs to be kept in the state - oopsie!
And once again, facts are cherry picked to assert that the atomic bombs were not neccessary.
http://tinyurl.com/jy9jw9a
Suggested reading: “Downfall” by Richard B. Frank.
http://tinyurl.com/23f8oeh
To briefly summarize:
-Asking Army and Navy generals and admirals if the bombs were necessary two weeks after the fact is just their opinion. They had no idea what the Japanese leadership was thinking.
-As illustrated in the book, the Japanese were sending out “peace-feelers”. What the current day revisionists won’t tell you:
-Many of these were put forth by various ambassadors and military attaches (who had no Imperial sanction, and which was recognized, thanks to what we were reading in broken Japanese diplomatic codes). The only peace feeler with Imperial sanction was the one attempted by the Japanese ambassador to the Soviet Union.
-As far as negotiating a “settlement” (not a “surrender”) is concerned, the Japanese insisted on (among other terms):
- Retaining Manchuria and most of occupied China.
- War criminals to be prosecuted by the Japanese government
- The existing government structure (with the Army and Navy retaining control) be retained.
They didn’t think the war was winnable by 1945. Their whole strategy was to inflict the maximum number of casualties possible, hoping a negotiated settlement would grant Japan better terms than “unconditional surrender”.
The Japanese still believed that an invasion would/had to happen and were continuing to prepare for it. US military leaders during the summer of 1945 were coming to the conclusion that an invasion of the home islands would create massive US casualties, and were just beginning an air campaign that would have resulted in the destruction of what remained of Japanese merchant shipping, and of Japan’s railroads. This would have led to millions more starvation casualties than created by the atomic bombs.
(The last tanker to get thru to Japan from Borneo/Indonesia arrived in March 1945. On July 14, US Navy aircraft attacked the “train ferries” carrying railroad cars loaded with coal from Hokkaido to Honshu. Coal shipments arriving in Honshu dropped 80% overnight)
By the summer of 1945, many of people in the US wouldn’t have cared too much how many Japanese civilians were killed/starved in one fashion or another. By then, POWs from the Bataan Death March, “Death Railway”, and “Hell Ships” had been rescued or liberated, and even more cases of barbarity had been witnessed personally by most members of the US military, or had been uncovered in liberated areas, or by codebreaking.
The only thing that saved Japan from this was the atomic bombs. Only when they were dropped (and a eyewitness report given to the “Big 6″ by a Japanese general who was in Hiroshima) did the Japanese leadership realize that they could be defeated WITHOUT and invasion occuring.
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation.
They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind”
Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, RAF Bomber Command.
X GS - there is also a very good synopsis of this history in Antony Beevor’s tome “World War II” toward the end. His research and writing explains the close of WW II really well and remember the Japanese were still causing alot of chaos in China and Southeast Asia at the time.
All wars are bankers’ wars. ALL!
WW2 a big waste for the US, as always. All Europe did was trade one set of Nazis for another set, decades later. Except this time, they invited them in. Europe is done.
There must be plenty of wars that aren’t bankers’ wars. For example, when the barbarian tribes attacked the Roman Empire, they probably didn’t even have banks.
Miami, FL Housing Affordability Grows As Prices Plummet 6% YoY; Buyer Interest Evaporates
http://www.zillow.com/miami-fl/home-values/
Texit! I wish them luck and if they succeed, please take Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida with them. I’d love to see some of the folks from up Nawth leeching off Florida have a pants-filling moment. Choose! Stay or go, we don’t care.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-12/texas-secession-looms-independence-resolution-nears-vote
Florida would be even poorer than it is now if it weren’t for Northerners, both tourists and retirees.
Southbury, CT Housing Affordability Improves; Prices Crater 14% YoY As Housing Inventory Skyrockets Nationwide
http://www.movoto.com/southbury-ct/market-trends/
Now this is rich…
Right on the heels of Otrauma’s Howard U. (you weren’t lucky) speech.
Guess these folks aren’t so lucky after all.
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/restructuring-spurs-110-layoffs-at-howard-university-hospital.html
And lest we all forget - there is still a SCOTUS vacancy -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-merrick-garland-commencement-speaker-met-20160512-story.html
Poor Wages Send A Third Of US Manufacturing Workers To Welfare Lines In Order To Pay For Food, Healthcare, Data Show
BY ANGELO YOUNG @ANGELOYOUNG_ ON 05/10/16 AT 10:21 PM
U.S. manufacturing jobs used to be a path to the middle class for Americans who couldn’t or didn’t dive into the comfort provided by higher education degrees. But now many skilled, working Americans need some form of public assistance because their wages don’t pay for basic living expenses.
Just over 2 million supervised manufacturing workers, or about a third of the total, need food stamps, Medicaid, tax credits for the poor or other forms of publicly subsided assistance while they work on goods that can carry the tag “Made in the U.S.A.,” according to research of official government wage and welfare data relased Tuesday by the University of California, Berkeley.
The cost of these benefits to the U.S. taxpayer? From 2009 to 2013, federal and state governments subsidized the low manufacturing wages paid by the private sector to the tune of $10.2 million per year.
Oregon led the nation on the number of manufacturing workers – 1 in 4 – that needed food stamps during that period of time, while 1 in 5 factory workers in Mississippi and Illinois needed healthcare assistance for both adults (Medicaid) and children (CHIP). Taking into account all major social welfare, including the earned income tax credit and temporary assistance to needy families (TANF), Mississippi topped the list, followed by Georgia, California and Texas.
http://www.ibtimes.com/poor-wages-send-third-us-manufacturing-workers-welfare-lines-order-pay-food-2367216
Irrelevant.
Labor Force Participation Rate Falls To 38 Year Low; Joblessness At Record High
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
The graph shows that the rate has risen above the 38 year low. Though the really relevant thing is that you probably still don’t know what the Labor Force Participation Rate is, even though it’s your favorite statistic.
Still waiting for trickle down - eh?
What is Apple’s cash pile up to?
I don’t know but Apples stock hit a 52 week low today.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=aapl
Remember my friends…. Nothing accelerates the economy like falling prices to dramatically lower and more affordable levels. Nothing.
Port Angeles, WA Housing Prices Crater 17% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/port-angeles-wa/home-values/
a little on the lighter side…say 400 lbs lighter
https://twitter.com/amberrachdi
Halfway done on my creation of open source “Swiss Bank Account” (Obama’s term) on your own tablet / PC for crypto currency. The catch is it requires special hardware - you have to have the type of tablet or computer that has the $16 chip. A $300 tablet.
The Droids and iPhones do not have that ability of trust yet. But that’s being worked on. They don’t have that hardware chip either. That’s a big problem and it would make them more secure. Oh well.
This stuff will be open source - I won’t make any money on it but I will have notoriety in my cryptography world.
Sounds good, send a github link or some such when done!
This stuff will be open source - I won’t make any money on it but I will have notoriety in my cryptography world.
Chicks dig that, I hear.
Rancho Bernardo, CA Housing Affordability Surges As Prices Plummet 10% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/rancho-bernardo-san-diego-ca/home-values/
If that 10% figure applies to our place, then my landlords just lost two years’ worth of rental payments on their investment.
Yellen the Felon “doesn’t rule out negative interest rates.” Translation: bend over, savers and retirees.
http://www.businessinsider.com/janet-yellen-doesnt-rule-out-negative-interest-rates-2016-5
Man, I hate craigslist sometimes. I posted an item for sale, brand new, that goes for $120 new, for $70. I checked Ebay to see price ranges and mine is fair. I get one e-mail reply so far and the guy wants to offer me $20. What a joke. I’d go with Ebay to sell stuff but I am worried about scamming buyers that file fraudulent claims. I may actually have to post on Ebay after all, but only for local pick-up.
Whatever you’re selling is only “worth” what someone is willing to pay for it.
get used to it… everybody thinks you are a crack addict and probably stole it so $20 is a few good bong hits….
its a relatively new trend the last few years in NY…
Are you one of the vegetables who voted for one of the Oligopoly’s Wall Street water carriers? Then read about what they really think of you and their “public service.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3586858/Screw-generation-Anonymous-congressman-writes-tell-slams-nation-naive-self-absorbed-sheep-admits-never-reads-bills-votes-on.html
“Most of my colleagues are dishonest career politicians who revel in the power and special-interest money that’s lavished upon them,’ Atkinson recorded his mystery collaborator saying.
‘My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes precedence over everything.’
‘Fundraising is so time consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on. Like many of my colleagues, I don’t know how the legislation will be implemented, or what it’ll cost.’
The book also takes shots at voters as disconnected idiots who let Congress abuse its power through sheer incompetence.
‘Voters are incredibly ignorant and know little about our form of government and how it works,’ the anonymous writer claims.
‘It’s far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification.’
And the take-away message is one of resigned depression about how Congress sacrifices America’s future on the altar of its collective ego.
‘We spend money we don’t have and blithely mortgage the future with a wink and a nod. Screw the next generation,’ the author writes.
‘Nobody here gives a rat’s a** about the future and who’s going to pay for all this stuff we vote for. That’s the next generation’s problem. It’s all about immediate publicity, getting credit now, lookin’ good for the upcoming election.’
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-36275203?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook
“Are We Heading for Another Housing Crisis?”
Should we be worried about rising home prices and easy access to mortgages?
“Ten years ago, a storm was brewing in the housing market.”
“Lenders were handing out mortgages seemingly to anyone who applied, and in many cases, borrowers weren’t asked for documentation to prove income. Some institutions rolled out adjustable-rate mortgages that featured teaser rates and were marketed to consumers as loans that could be easily refinanced before the interest rate was scheduled to reset and send payments into the stratosphere.”
Here’s the URL:
http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2016-05-12/are-we-heading-for-another-housing-crisis
Boomerang-awang-awang-awang-awang-awang-awang-awang-awang-…
Bulk shipping falters as commodities stumble
in Dry Bulk Market, International Shipping News
13/05/2016
The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) has been notoriously volatile this year. After touching an all-time low of 290 points on 10 February, the index shot up to 715 on 27 April. But, since then, it has declined 17% till 10 May (see chart).
What gives? For one, the drop to the lowest level in the index, which tracks transport costs on international trade routes for dry bulk commodities such as coal and iron ore, was overdone. Two, the Chinese stimulus held out hopes of higher demand for commodities, especially steel and iron ore. But higher iron ore inventories at Chinese ports could well weigh on demand in the coming days and reflect in the index performance. In any case, there were doubts on the sustainability of either the commodity rally or BDI’s increase to begin with. Also, it’s important to note that despite the rise from the pits, the rates are not profitable.
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Financial Times
ft.com/markets
May 13, 2016 3:18 am
Equity outflows hit nearly $90bn in 2016
Eric Platt in New York
Outflows from equities have hit nearly $90bn this year, after investors pulled $7.4bn from global funds in the fifth consecutive week of redemptions as they retreated into haven assets.
The withdrawals have put equities “firmly” on track for their biggest year of redemptions since 2011, according to data provider EPFR. Fears over growth in Japan and the eurozone, as well as concerns over US corporate profits, are being blamed.
Market confidence has been lacking as companies have reported disappointing earnings underscoring slow global growth. Economic data in the US have also proved disheartening, with monthly job growth falling short of expectations, while industrial production figures from Europe on Thursday were weak.
“Driving this latest shift are doubts about the effectiveness of the policies pursued by Japan and the eurozone to kick-start economic growth, the erosion of corporate profit margins in the US and China and the structural issues dogging many of the major emerging markets,” said Cameron Brandt, director of research at EPFR.
Negative interest rate policy from the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan has been met with increasing incredulity by investors.
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