A report from the Wall Street Journal on New York. "Property investors have spent billions of dollars on apartment buildings for what has been one of the most reliably profitable bets in New York City real estate: converting rent-regulated apartments to market-rate units. But New York’s new rent law may be putting an end to that business, causing financial stress for the companies that own these buildings."

"The new laws could cause the values of rent-stabilized apartment buildings to drop 20% to 45%, depending on their current rent rolls, several brokers and investors said. That would leave many properties worth less than their mortgages and put building owners at risk of default."

"'It’s all over,' said Lazer Sternhell, a real-estate investor and broker of rent-regulated properties in New York. 'You can’t raise the rents. You can’t deregulate.'"

"Asking prices for the sale of regulated buildings are already falling. In one example, a brokerage had previously pitched a partially vacant, 22-unit building in the East Village on the premise that a buyer could eventually double the monthly income from $26,300 to $52,600."

"After the rent law passed, the company notified potential investors that they were lowering income expectations and cutting the asking price by 17%, the first of what could be many cuts. 'Every spreadsheet in New York just changed,' said Steven Vegh, a real-estate broker who sells buildings to investors."

The Tennessean. "It’s no surprise to anyone who’s walked the streets of Nashville for any length of time that new apartment complexes and row homes are seemingly everywhere. In the first quarter of 2019, construction permits for new duplexes, town homes, condominiums, apartments and triplexes jumped 71.9% over that period last year, from 1,067 to 1,834."

"Meanwhile, the number of unsold single-family homes sitting on the market ballooned and prices dipped as demand shifted. The slowed demand for homes caused inventory to balloon 7.2% in the first quarter in Nashville over the previous quarter. Year over year, Nashville's unsold housing inventory jumped 31.4%. The resulting price decreases, and another anticipated mortgage rate decrease, could help turn the tide back to favor single-family homes."

From NBC Miami in Florida. "Residents at a Fort Lauderdale apartment complex said they aren't feeling safe after several cars in the community were vandalized. Now residents of this apartment complex are frustrated because they say they were promised luxury -- instead they complain there aren't any surveillance cameras and not enough security."

"'It's scary. It's time for corporate to do something for us,' said resident Liz Havens-Cook. 'We are paying to live in this very nice place and it isn't safe.'"

From City Watch LA in California. "Let’s hear no more of this foolishness that housing prices are high because the supply of housing is low. The concept of Supply and Demand, as used by the Garcettites of this world, is a fraud."

"Supply and Demand set the price between a WILLING buyer and a WILLING seller. Fraud vitiates willingness. In other words, when the price is set by fraud, either the buyer or the seller is deceived. That is true for buying a house and for renting an apartment. Massive frauds have grossly inflated the cost of housing."

"Thus, one cannot see high prices and conclude that supply must be low. Garcetti feeds us this economic foolishness because he has one point to push: build more to make his buddies wealthier. It does not matter to Garcetti that we already have 110,000 empty apartments. We the People ignore the fact that if we had a genuine housing shortage, then Garcetti would not continue destroying rent-controlled apartments."

"Garcetti is no bumbling fool; he knows what he is doing. Don’t tell me that someone who went to Columbia University and who was a Rhodes scholar is too dumb to grasp the results of destroying tens of thousands of rent-controlled units. He targeted RSO units so that his developer buddies could make more money."

"When a city has an excessive supply of high-end condos, apartment houses and small lot subdivisions, this suggests too many purchasers are merely parking their cash. A major reason to 'park cash' is money laundering. Toronto recently discovered that it has in its housing market. If honest Canada has a problem, can you imagine what criminogenic LA has?"

"This one has turned Hollywood into Fraudywood and now into Crappywood. It’s the criminal vote trading system at LA City Council where every councilmember must vote Yes for each project no matter how terrible it is. Since this criminal vote trading agreement guarantees that each Councilmember can deliver on whatever he promises, the bribery-extortion racket is the only thing that functions smoothly in Los Angeles."

"Each spot zoned project is another example of the criminal vote trading system, which His Holiness Judge Fruin blessed. Let’s be clear. Spot Zoning is criminal fraud which is prevalent due to the criminal vote trading system. We know that there is vote trading since each project is unanimously approved. The chances of 10,000 consecutive projects getting unanimous approval without criminal vote trading is less than 1 in Infinity."

"Unless they knew in advance that bribing one councilmember would guarantee approval, they would not even try spot zoning. Without the guarantee of the vote trading pact, the developers could not have bid up the costs of homes."

"As we know, each sale enters the 'Comps' for comparable home sales and the next seller wants the high developer value for his house no matter who buys it. That forces family home buyers to pay exorbitant prices and the fraudulently hyped developer prices become the standard. City Council’s criminal vote trading is the main cause of inflated prices for single-family homes."

"Basically, all of Los Angeles’ woes stem from corruption. Garcetti sits in the center of it and he is not alone. He has a whole city council, the large downtown law firms, the Board of Supervisors, METRO, most state judges and a gazillion other hangers-on to support him in facilitating the demise of Los Angeles."

"Signing Alexandra Datig’s Recall Garcetti Petition is a big step in the right direction, but it is the first step in a thousand-mile journey. Sign here."