A Sign The Boom Is Starting To Unwind
A report from the Financial Post in Canada. “Cross-border tax and legal advisors are in for a busy week as a retroactive closing of a tax loophole that allowed foreign home buyers to avoid paying capital gains taxes went into effect this week. Derek Holt, vice-president at Scotiabank Economics, points out that a lot of foreign investors just lost a big chunk of the gains they’ve made on their investments. ‘American, Asian and European clients are — or should be — suddenly sweating over losing up to a quarter of the value of past investments in Canadian real estate,’ he said in a note to clients.”
“The closing of the loophole went in to effect the day before the announcement. Holt notes it was a smart move, because there would have been a flood of for sale signs being erected if a future date had been set. But Holt also questions implementing the law at all, especially because it’s not quite clear how many foreign buyers only invested on the assumption that they could avoid paying capital gains taxes. The economist adds that another concerning part of the law is that it essentially means that the primary residence exemption, often cited by home buying advocates as a big reason to own a house in Canada, is no longer untouchable.”
“‘The first barrier to potentially one day taxing your principal residence has been removed by now requiring full disclosure of sales to the CRA in tax filings going forward,’ he said.”
From News.com.au in Australia. “As if saving up the deposit and getting a loan wasn’t hard enough, now buyers are facing a new challenge to break into the property market — savvy homeowners banking on an increase in property prices. Darren Davey, real estate agent on the Gold Coast, said homeowners are being particularly confident that prices still have plenty of room to rise. ‘I have one particular homeowner over the course of the last three years where they have said that they wanted a certain price and I’ve said it is probably $50,000 under the price they wanted to sell at. I’ve then come back six to nine months later to tell them I think I can achieve that price now, only for them to turn around and say they want another $50,000-$60,000 on top of that. That has happened to me three times now with the same owner,’ he told news.com.au.”
“After such strong growth it is hard to remember that property isn’t immune to normal market cycles — the fact is that what goes up must come down. LJ Hooker chief executive Grant Harrod said the number of properties being sold is considerably fewer than last year. ‘We have certainly seen some properties in the last couple of weeks that had been on the market for a while because vendor expectation around price was a little bit too high, and they have had to adjust and then the property was sold,’ Mr Harrod said.”
“Mr Davey cautioned that by continuing to hold off now, homeowners on the Gold Coast could actually see prices drop by the Commonwealth Games. ‘They seem quite savvy, but at the same time if enough people are doing it, it is going to have the reverse effect. It will turn into a bit of a glut of property on the marketplace,’ he said.”
The Korea Times. “Businesses and self-employed people borrowed more than 160 trillion won ($144 billion) from financial companies in the first half of this year, hitting a record-high level, the Bank of Korea said. As a result of the government’s policy to bolster the economy by heating the property market, real estate-related loans surged 56 trillion won over the past three years. There are voices expressing concerns about the concentration of real estate loans. The ‘abnormal boom’ of property market amid the overall economic slump of less than 2-percent growth could work as a time bomb if the economy fell further, experts said.”
“According to the Hyundai Research Institute, the domestic real estate market peaked in mid-2015 and has been in retreat since. Noting that the real estate market is booming only in Seoul and its vicinity, the think tank said that when supply exceeds demand in the future, there might be a massive increase in unsold apartments. Any abrupt cooling of the property market would lead to an enormous amount of bad debts, the experts warned.”
“‘It is a serious problem that loans are being concentrated in real estate and rental businesses while those for science, research and information service sectors are relatively sluggish,’ a member of the central bank’s Monetary Policy Board was quoted as saying. ‘If the real estate market sags, it might not only harm financial stability but also aggravate the slump of overall economy.’”
From Bloomberg on Japan. “Sales of new condominiums in Tokyo have fallen to the lowest since the nation’s 1990s property bubble collapse, a sign the real estate boom fueled by Bank of Japan easing is starting to unwind. New apartment sales in and around the country’s capital fell 32 percent to 13,303 units in the first eight months of the year, the least since 1992, data from the Real Estate Economic Institute Co. show.”
“Potential buyers, faced with almost stagnant wages, are turning down 35-year fixed-interest mortgages as low as 1.06 percent, near the record low of 0.9 percent in August, according to data from the state-run Japan Housing Finance Agency. ‘Stagnation in wages is why we are seeing a slowdown in sales of condominiums’ in Tokyo, said Takashi Ishizawa, a senior researcher at Mizuho Securities Co. ‘If you look at interest rates, historically speaking there has never been a better time to buy, but developers without really good properties are having trouble selling.’”
“The real estate market’s boom has been one of the few bright spots for the world’s third-largest economy, and its slump could deepen the nation’s deflationary mindset. The BOJ’s move to target the yield curve last month will probably trigger higher mortgage rates and weigh on apartment prices, according to a report by Credit Suisse Group AG. The central bank’s adoption of a negative-rates policy in January misfired as the yen strengthened against the dollar, hurting corporate profits and making Japanese companies even more cautious about raising wages, according to Natixis SA.”
“‘What I think is very dangerous is the presence of negative interest rates’ in Japan, said CME Group senior economist Erik Norland in a Bloomberg Television interview. ‘Negative interest rates are meant to ease monetary policy but they seem actually to have the perverse impact of unintentionally tightening monetary policy.’”
“In Japan’s housing market, there has always been one verity: Certain parts of Tokyo will always be popular and, therefore, profitable for developers. However, according to various media reports, that verity may have collapsed, at least when it comes to new condominiums.”
“In its Sept. 17 issue, the weekly magazine Shukan Gendai ran a long report on real estate in Setagaya, which is probably the most desirable of all the city’s 23 wards. According to the article, the common wisdom is that ‘whatever is built in Setagaya can be easily sold,’ and that in the past, new condominium complexes would sell out as soon as they went on sale, well before construction even started. Developers, in fact, count on selling out since it gives them a financial guarantee to proceed with construction.”
“But in the last year there have been a number of new condominium buildings that have not sold out immediately. Even worse, there are unsold units even after people had started moving in. Of the 35 condominium complexes in Setagaya that opened to owners in July, 23 still have unsold units.”
“One real estate journalist told the magazine that in his 30 years of covering the housing market, it is the first time this has ever happened. He estimated that about 10 percent of all the new units in these buildings remain vacant. Consequently, the developer is desperately trying to sell these units while keeping a low profile, since other homeowners in the building could become angry if they discover the apartments are being sold at prices lower than what they paid.”
“It isn’t just Setagaya. Apparently, the tower condominium boom on the Tokyo waterfront is also on the wane. At the end of August the land ministry released its trimonthly Report on Market Trends of Land Use in Key Cities, which revealed that sales of new condominiums in the Tsukuda-Tsukishima area has dropped significantly since last year. The ministry theorizes that ‘higher income families have stopped buying condominiums for the purpose of asset investment.’”
“But prices should be dropping in Tokyo, since they’ve been abnormally high for years, at least as far as middle-class families are concerned. The rule of thumb when buying a home is to spend no more than four times your annual household income, but in the area within the Yamanote Line the average price for housing is 15 times the average Japanese salary. In eastern Tokyo it’s 10 times the average salary.”
“An employee for Mizuho Securities Research told Gendai that the number of unsold new units in Tokyo is close to the number in 2009, when a real estate mini-bubble burst. Similarly, the rash of unsold units means the Tokyo condo bubble has probably ended. So while it was surprising, given the price-to-salary ratio, that the bubble occurred in the first place, it shouldn’t be surprising that it is over.”
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=9819
The Washington Post in Feb 2016:
“It’s finally happened. After years, if not decades, of warnings about Japan’s aging population and its low birth rate, the day is here. Japan’s official census shows that the country’s population has shrunk.
And not by an inconsiderable amount either: The 2010 census showed a population of 128,057,352, but the 2015 figure, released Friday, shows just 127,110,000. Japan’s population had shrunk by almost 1 million people in five years.”
Japan should have a condo demolition program and outlaw building anything! This is partly why a strong immigration program is so vital to a growing and diverse economy!
A couple of days ago an illegal got drunk and ran a red light in Phoenix hitting a truck loaded with kids. Killed one, others injured. Define strong.
Well, in the case you cite, I suggest Alcoholics Anonymous. On the point of immigration……
Fareed Zakaria has a lot of great analysis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qplmBnv7UAI
AA isn’t going to bring back that 7 year old. AA isn’t going to help these other young kids go through life with serious injuries. AA isn’t going to pay to lock this SOB up for years and under the current policy wouldn’t deport him when he gets out.
We have an immigration policy. It just isn’t being enforced. Instead we’ve got many thousands bum rushing the border patrol after the cartels make a fortune smuggling them up here. It’s bad for us, it’s bad for the countries south of the border, because they are exporting their unemployment and social unrest. If they couldn’t leave, they might just demand the governments down there get their act together.
We have an immigration policy. It just isn’t being enforced ??
The question is why not ? And,its not anything new… This has been going on for Decades…Why ?
It’s very simple; the globalists who dominate both parties want open borders. Here and in Europe. Of the 17 GOP candidates for president only two weren’t for full amnesty. The Democrats also. We’d have amnesty right now if the Tea Party people in congress along with the courts hadn’t blocked it.
The other question is, which candidate supports enforcing our immigration policy without going to extreme anti-immigrant measures?
without going to extreme anti-immigrant measures
What is exactly is “extreme”? Not granting blanket amnesties, perhaps?
PB: it is not extreme to keep people out who think that:
- killing and mutilating their own children is OK
- women are the property of men
- gays should be executed
I agree it gets tricky with religions that openly encourage their adherents to kill anyone who doesn’t join. Of course, internally dealing with such religious practices was part of American history long before the onset of the War on Terror.
PB: it is not extreme to keep people out who think that:
- killing and mutilating their own children is OK
- women are the property of men
- gays should be executed
Keeping such people would be difficult. They could deny that they hold those beliefs when asked about them. It’d be easier to just reduce the total number allowed in significantly for a few years.
This is partly why a strong immigration program is so vital to a growing and diverse economy!
There are a lot of drawbacks to a shrinking population. However, Japan has had vigorous economic growth in the past with close to zero immigration.
Cheap credit destroys reproduction rate.
-1,000,000 funny!
Plus automation is reducing the need for warm bodies, especially for menial tasks.
Japan’s population has been stagnant for 20 years and so has its economy. The correlations have other components, but this is a major one.
“There are a lot of drawbacks to a shrinking population. ”
The best thing that ever happened to a population was the Black Death killing off half of Europe in the 1340’s. The survivors had higher wages and more nutritious food, and a higher standard of living than they had had in a long time. In this case, the Japanese are dying off naturally, so it’s a kinder gentler population decrease, but a decrease just the same.
Da Vinci Code fan?
That’s an interesting point of view. A population benefited from the death of half of its members. You have to overlook the fact that an early death is generally considered to be a tragedy.
A long life and a short life are both but moments in eternity.
Nice try Mikey. I KNEW someone was going to lecture me about this. And so, in my original post, I *specifically* pointed that the Japanese were decreasing naturally, NOT undergoing early death like the victims of the Plague did.
Evidently in your rush to inject your usual snark-n-smarm, you didn’t read the whole thing?
What I am saying is that the remaining population does better no matter the cause of population decrease. There shouldn’t be a rush to replace or import the lost population.
Economists love to knee-jerk and run around like Chicken Little that we need “more workers” to support the elderly. News flash: machines have replaced millions of those workers. They aren’t needed anymore.
Economists love to knee-jerk and run around like Chicken Little that we need “more workers” to support the elderly. News flash: machines have replaced millions of those workers. They aren’t needed anymore.
I don’t think economists are saying we need their labor. I think economists are saying we need to be able to tax them to support the elderly.
The oligarch-owned MSM is shunning Trump - I can’t think of a better reason to vote for him (and extend a middle finger at the Narrative-crafters).
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-05/newspapers-shun-trump-not-single-endorsement-top-100
Here is a good reason you will like: because he will raise a SS agency to round up people he does not like and put them on trains to the gas chambers.
Got a link for that?
Crickets?
How exactly will he accomplish that? Will he put on his Sith robes and mutter “I’ll make it legal”?
Here is a good reason you will like: because he will raise a SS agency to round up people he does not like and put them on trains to the gas chambers.
So we can add “paranoid delusional” to Aspergers for Bill’s list of “issues.” Oh, and remind me again how those of us who are forced to vote for Trump because the alternative is far worse are “Trump worshippers.”
Trump isn’t Hitler, Hillary’s the Hitler, she’s the one who wants to take away our guns.
I read that Hitler is dead.
Apparently Fear is alive. Change is coming.
People fear liberty and freedom. They want a big brother (or in the case of Hillary, a “big sister”) to take care of everything for them. Demik Rats have always been, and will always be, the “Mommy Party.”
Apparently the utterances that uncontrollably blurt out of Trump’s mouth remind some of us of terrible dictators from recent history. Those of you who think it can’t happen here, because this is America, are delusional.
Those of you who think it can’t happen here, because this is America, are delusional.
I think that it’s far more likely to happen with Hillary in the oval office.
If the Dems are oh so worried about a 4th Reich in the US happening, then maybe they need to reach out to the “deplorables” instead of treating them like vermin.
Are they hiring?
Shunning Gary too. Vote for Gary!
Sure, we need another retard at the helm. Didn’t Bush teach you anything?
+2 (one for each Bush)
See Trump, he is shunned (reason to vote for him)
and extend a middle finger at the Narrative-crafters ??
Burn It Down Mentality…
Have you seen the new Deepwater Horizon movie? The scenes are reminiscent of some of the calmer Trump campaign rallies — the ones where he remembered to use his teleprompter.
What in hades are you talking about? I saw the movie last weekend. It is intense but I would recommend it.
You anti-trump rage is causing you to go off the rails, PB.
If you want to see rage, watch a YouTube video of a Trump rally.
‘New apartment sales in and around the country’s capital fell 32 percent to 13,303 units in the first eight months of the year, the least since 1992′
92 was a bad year in Japan. They haven’t learned a darned thing.
Just saw a banner ad for that NV in Portland, offering first month free.
Banner ads are getting cheaper now that bubble is busting too.
I’ve been seeing more sign-spinners on corners lately as well.
I saw some too. Some of those guys are so good at it that you can’t even read the sign.
Payment of a capital gains tax on the sale of real estate in Canada by a foreigner is overdue. They have been getting their friends to buy them, sell them, giving them a small fee,
and having their gains stored for them.
All the while not reporting any sale because they claimed principal residence status.
I don’t see how they can even claim CGT status - it is income and should be fully taxed.
Now that the federal government finally moved (every Canadian lawyer has to report any sale to Canada Revenue Agency, as well as at the registry office when recording the property transfer). Both actions can be done within the lawyer’s offices on separate electronic systems.
At least 25% of their gains have instantly disappeared and rightly so.
We aren’t even allowed to purchase real estate in most of these foreigners countries - why should we allow them to use our systems for their gain without even paying their fair share of tax ?
I don’t know if this will cause the bubble to break because most people will think they can game the system. They cannot, and when their “friends” (their agents) have CRA come knocking these friends will gladly give up their accomplices. Trouble is, they will be the ones holding the bag - probably not their bosses.
So they give up that stored money.
Trouble is - it doesn’t address the multiple sale of the same paper and the interim profits.
‘most people will think they can game the system’
Most buyers are local. Here’s how I see it. Locals get involved because in the back of their minds they think, “I can always sell to so and so.” It was the same with all the equity locust stories. If that is dispelled, these local speculators will disappear almost immediately.
I agree that most buyers are local, but many are acting on behalf of family or friends in foreign countries who have gotten money to their “locals” to purchase a property for them with the desire to resell at a profit.
This law will catch the “local” who will give up his foreign speculator and because CRA assess interest and penalties they will secure the “stored” funds from the “local” which will probably not be enough to pay all the taxes, interest, and penalties !!
I have to admit to Prof Bear that I was wrong. The Prof was saying that the Chinese buyers would run for the exits when their Vancouver house investments turned bad. I was saying that no, these Chinese are legit millionaires who made money making the crap that went to Wal-Mart. They then bought a safe-house cash to house the kiddie at UBC, and to flee to when China’s gov came after them, or when the atmosphere in Beijing starts killing people outright. I thought that investment gains were just gravy, not necessary.
Turns out the good Prof was right. These aren’t financial cushies looking for a safe house. They’re pretend riché hacks who borrowed and/or laundered their way into a tax loophole. Good riddance.
Oxide
I think we all bought into that painted scenario about only the rich buying. These people are outright gamblers, willing to take extreme all or nothing risks - rich or otherwise.
They have been flipping - most of those vacant properties stood only because their inflated prices were not yet met. We heard about the mansions and the occasional UBC student, but not the everyday flips.
Ben is right, these local “friends” should be seriously frightened with the 15% and now the capital gains tax (if they even realize what they face).
Trouble is, this new system encompasses every sale that occurs, both the flippers and the tax free principal residence transaction. It has to be this way so that the flippers cannot hide their multiple transactions amongst family members. This will also catch the individuals who move five or more times in four years.
Did you know that a lot of these million dollar flips were being done with only $1,000 deposits ?
September 27, 2016
‘Researchers for NDP housing critic David Eby have turned up property documents that show a homebuyer, listed as a student, bought a Point Grey property and within a year flipped it for a $1.16 million profit. In other cases, Eby said, buyers listed as students secured mortgages on $40 million worth of real estate purchases in the expensive west-side neighbourhood with no indication of whether they reported income to support those loans.’
‘In conjunction with an investigation by the Globe and Mail published Wednesday that uncovered internal documents showing where banks allowed foreign clients to take out mortgages without having to verify income, Eby said the information raises questions about how offshore buyers are influencing metro Vancouver real estate markets.’
“Is Canadian banking policy enabling foreign students to flip houses in Point Grey?,” Eby said. “I think this issue of bank lending is a huge part of the problem in terms of rapidly inflating house prices.”
‘Eby said the research on property titles was an extension of work the NDP caucus had done last fall in conjunction with urban planner Andy Yan, which showed that in a snapshot of purchases made in 2015, 38 per cent listed the buyers as being homemakers, house wives or students.’
‘And checking those titles again in 2016, Eby said, revealed nine buyers listed as students who bought properties worth a total of $57 million, including one student purchaser who flipped a house on West 8th Avenue in Point Grey for a substantial profit.’
‘There is no indication that the buyer, listed in property documents as Xuan Kai Huang, used a mortgage in that transaction, he added, but documents show that Huang bought the property for $7.19 million in April, 2015 and sold it last May for $8.35 million. “It certainly does raise a serious question about whether the title ‘student’ is appropriate for somebody who’s flipping real estate and doing it on the west side of Vancouver,” Eby said.’
‘Of the other nine purchasers, documents in four of the transactions totalling $40 million, show that the buyers obtained mortgages for at least part of the amounts. That, Eby said, suggests a broader investigation is warranted into whether Canadian banks are enabling speculation elsewhere in Metro Vancouver if banks are allowing foreign clients to make purchases with just a down payment and without verifying income.’
“The provincial government has to immediately review land transactions over the last two years in Metro Vancouver to identify how widespread the issue is of banks issuing mortgages to people with no apparent source of income,” Eby said.’
‘That, he said, is important to maintain its obligations to prevent money laundering and make sure speculators aren’t abusing the capital-gains-tax exemption on principal residences to avoid taxes.’
Canadian banks’ mortgage guidelines favour foreign home buyers
Kathy Tomlinson/Sep 14, 2016
‘Canadian banks allow foreign clients with no credit history, including students, to qualify for uninsured mortgages without proving the sources of their income – a practice that exempts non-Canadians who have money in the bank from the scrutiny domestic borrowers face when buying a home or an investment property.’
“It’s very lenient,” a loans officer from one of the major banks told The Globe. “The foreigners can just get a wire transfer to cover the year’s payments [to qualify] or even borrow money from a friend or a relative to put money in the account temporarily.”
‘The bank employee – himself an immigrant from China – fears he will be fired if he is named. He said lenders require all domestic mortgage applicants to produce one to two year’s worth of Canadian income tax records and pay stubs. Because that is impossible for foreigners and newcomers, he said, his bank made the changes to attract those clients.’
‘In Vancouver, speculators exploited that, he said, to buy properties they had no intention of living in, hold on to them as demand increased and prices rose and then flip them for a profit.’
“I have seen many people doing this, many times. I have customers brag about it in my office – about how small money they put in and how much profit they got,” he said. “I can say it is a very big share of the mortgage market … it’s out of control.”
It was probably the Globe and Mail reporting that forced the government to act. It’s all just a crooked, illegal mess. I’ll point out that I posted an anonymous Business in Vancouver interview with a Vancouver broker who said just that about a year and a half ago. He also said everyone involved knew it including the politicians and chose to take the money.
“I think we all bought into that painted scenario about only the rich buying.”
Speak for yourself.
PB
But nobody could have thought of such a difficult scheme. They must be paid a lot to be that smart. Only a few people exist with that kind of expertise.
ie professors, investors, marketors, flippors, and waitresses.
I think it’s a bit of both: some genuine richies getting their money out of China as well as a bunch of wannabes who have to borrow money.
No worries. I have occasionally been right, especially when I have seen the movie before.
Hope n’ change comes to the military.
http://usdefensewatch.com/2016/10/situation-normal-in-ash-carters-pentagon-completely-totally-irrevocably-absolutely-fouled-up/
Thanks for posting this. End stage empire, as illustrated by Fellini’s Satyricon.
More “extend and pretend” in Spain, which is too big to be bailed out.
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/10/05/spain-construction-projects-corruption-sacyr-ferrovial-fcc-acciona-abertis-ohl/
San Francisco’s office leasing plunges in third quarter with only one big deal
zero cost money is good for the economy! Rack up some more debt!
zero cost money is good ??
I would borrow Billions if I could…
Really, you are worried about the SF office market? 78,000,000 SF with a 7% vacancy. It is one of the strongest in the nation.
The trend is NOT your friend.
San Francisco’s office leasing plunges in third quarter with only one …
San Francisco Business Times (blog)-18 hours ago
“There’s definitely been a slowdown in leasing activity,” said Amber Schiada, … but there are multiple signs of softening, in parallel to the housing market.
Welcome to our jobless Obama-Fed-Goldman Sachs “recovery.”
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/06/us-layoffs-increase-in-september-by-38-percent-from-august-according-to-challenger.html
How much more debt will clinton rack up if elected?
Sure seems a lot of people are on this money printing gravy train.
Woo, woo. The train is leaving. Are you on board or left in the station?
Trump is a role model for children. Absolutely.
Trump is a role model for parents who want their children to grow up into middle school bullies with middle school world views.
It’s going to get a lot worse. The Baby Boomers are retiring, but many aren’t taking SS yet, and most haven’t gotten truly sick yet. That’s gonna leave a mark on the budget.
I want to share my solar installation experience with the HBB readers. Two years ago in September we installed solar panels on our house. It cost $11,750 for a 5kWh system, for which we received a 30% federal tax credit, so a net cost of about $8,200.
My electrical bill the year prior to the solar installation was $1,535 (yes, we are very miserly.) My bill for the next two years has been $19 and $212 respectively and we have a much more comfortable home (as we use the air conditioner more).
We live in Northern California where we get 300 days of sunshine each year and our solar index is 3.1. We are enjoying a 15.74% ROI for the next 25 years. I heartily recommend people seriously consider solar. My experience has been wonderful.
pimping solar now?
I am just sharing my experiences and observations for the benefit of other readers here. I have no financial interest in what you do and my only agenda is to help people make intelligent decisions.
If i owned a house I would diy. Panels can be had cheap.
my solar installation experience with the HBB readers ??
Thanks for the info Jingle…I am on the fence if I should do it…
Without the government subsidy, what is the total return (including payment of the whole system, repairs, cleaning, etc.)?
I’ve read that annual inspection/cleaning would run into the few hundred dollars per year range…more if you have a larger system. Let’s pick $350 per year for cleaning and inspection.
So, assuming there are no repairs, your savings is approximately $1,100 per year…maybe more, since you are actually using more electricity.
So, if you assume a 30-year life, that $1,100 savings per year on a $11,750, I get a total return of 8.6% per annum.
This excludes the cost to take the system down at the end of life, but also excludes things like using A/C more, and the fact that the 8.6% return is effectively tax free (all after-tax dollars you are spending).
My question is this…if that truly is the return, why do we have government subsidies for this?
“My experience has been wonderful”
That’s great!
Electricity out your way >25c/kWh. Amazing.
Here it is 5c/kWh.
PG&E has tiered pricing. At the highest tier, the cost approaches $0.40/kWh. I believe the lowest tier is in the $0.11 range.
So, if you are a heavy user, it absolutely makes sense to put in solar.
If you don’t use much, it doesn’t really make much sense.
You must be getting that cheap stuff form Niagara Falls.
Average person owns home for… We’ll say five years.
Average return on solar, just to break even, not save any, is 12 years.
Congratulations on your stagnation.
Your specific in no way negates the general truth.
With those kind of returns (~$1400/yr in savings, assuming no rate increases), and that initial cost (before credit), the payback period should only be about 8.4yrs (assuming continuing ZIRP, so not bothering to discount returns using any discount rate) on the un-subsidized installation cost.
Give that, explain to me why people who can’t install solar (e.g. us lowly renters) should be subsidizing your installation?
Yes, perhaps I am a little bitter—as I know several ridiculously-rich folks who are harvesting this subsidy, paid for by their less-rich neighbors. It’s terrible policy.
It’s terrible policy.
To be more specific: it’s a reverse Robin Hood policy.
Drudge link chock full of LOLZ:
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2016/10/05/homeless-couple-having-sex-in-public-last-straw-denver-residents-moving-out/
Denver is a toilet, literally. Feces, needles, used condoms in your yard, this piece of paradise can be all yours for only $400 a square foot. Better waive the inspection and include an escalation clause or you’ll be priced out forever!
There’s a reason people fled to the suburbs in the past.
I live a few miles south of downtown and we don’t have problems to the extent as described in the article.
Change the name of the city from Denver to Seattle and this article remains the same.
Both cities have legalized pot and a vibrant, vagabond culture! I say that these two cities are kindred spirits. SFO can join the club when CA legalizes pot this fall.
If California legalizes, the vibrant, vagabond population should head to LA and San Diego for the mild climate.
Why not head there now? It’s not like the stuff is unavailable there.
“It was obnoxious and went on for quite awhile,” said the woman.”
She’s just jealous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpQuNY3XFI0 - 408k -
Saw a business card for a Chinese realtor stuck on the cork board community local ad thing in a supermarket entrance the other day. Part of the card was in Chinese characters. Up here in Maine.
Getin’ breezy in SE Region IV
100 dead in Haiti
Don’t tell the Clintons.
REPORT: The Clinton Foundation Enriched Itself By Ripping Off Haiti After 2010 Earthquake
Aleister Jul 18th, 2016 11:04 am
How the Clinton Foundation Got Rich off Poor Haitians
In January 2015 a group of Haitians surrounded the New York offices of the Clinton Foundation. They chanted slogans, accusing Bill and Hillary Clinton of having robbed them of “billions of dollars.” Two months later, the Haitians were at it again, accusing the Clintons of duplicity, malfeasance, and theft. And in May 2015, they were back, this time outside New York’s Cipriani, where Bill Clinton received an award and collected a $500,000 check for his foundation. “Clinton, where’s the money?” the Haitian signs read. “In whose pockets?” Said Dhoud Andre of the Commission Against Dictatorship, “We are telling the world of the crimes that Bill and Hillary Clinton are responsible for in Haiti.”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/report-clinton-foundation-enriched-ripping-off-haiti-2010-earthquake/ - 248k -zy in SE Region IV
Be safe!
All my peeps are over in St Pete except for one up in Cocoa Beach.
Thanks Goon
We cool
Shuttered up, food and water for a week + generator and gas.
It is a pain in the @ss but it has some bright points, you get to know your neighbors better, those who can help those who can’t and everyone checks on the old people in the hood.