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Where The Supply And Demand Are Completely Out Of Whack With Each Other

A report from the Review Journal in Nevada. “Homebuilders’ sales totals dipped throughout Southern Nevada early this year. But according to a report this week, buyer activity fell particularly hard in a normally hot spot for house construction: Summerlin. Builders sold 302 homes in Las Vegas’ largest master-planned community in the first quarter, down 26 percent from the same period last year, Summerlin developer Howard Hughes Corp. disclosed.”

“Las Vegas homebuilder Tom McCormick doesn’t have any projects in Summerlin, nor does he know whether prices there were slowing sales. But in general, he said: ‘The higher the prices go, the harder it is to sell homes.'”

The Washington Post. “The sellers of a 7,500-square-foot house in the Washington area on a nearly one-acre lot insisted that their home be listed for sale at $5.5 million, even though their agent recommended $4.5 million based on comparable sales. The home was beautiful, but they were unrealistic, says Corey Burr, an associate broker with TTR Sotheby’s International Realty. Two years later, the house sold for $3.8 million.”

“‘Research shows that the longer a property is on the market, the lower the final sales price will be,’ says Koki Adasi, president of the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors. ‘The owners of a farm in Frederick turned down an offer of $1.1 million because they thought it was worth more. It took two years to sell and went for $575,000.'”

The Buffalo News in New York. “Sheila Banks recalls the shooting flames, orange and yellow, reflecting in her front window as the house next door – just a few feet away – was ablaze in the early morning hours of Oct. 2, 2015. The house at 1276 Seneca St. was yet another property flipped by AbdulAziz HouHou and associates – making it one of 17 that were demolished in Buffalo since the house-hunting spree began in 2013. Half of the 17, The News found, were damaged by fire before being torn down.”

“The Buffalo News reported last month that HouHou, a Kuwaiti real estate broker who is now in prison in Kuwait, and his companies bought or brokered at least 160 Buffalo properties from 2013 to 2016 that were sold to Kuwaiti investors.”

“The houses, according to a Kuwaiti court, turned out to be part of a $140 million to $240 million international Ponzi scheme, that also included houses in Rochester, Detroit and Cleveland and vacant lots in Florida and North Carolina.”

“In some instances, according to Ali Al-Attar, an attorney for the Kuwaiti investors, the HouHou organization – rather than the owner – was listed as insurance beneficiary on the flipped properties. And there were times, investors said, when insurance claims were filed and collected after fires, but the money was never given to the Kuwaitis investors who owned the burned-down houses.”

The Orange County Register in California. “Homebuying in inland South County — including Lake Forest, Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita and San Juan Capistrano — fell 31% in what was Orange County homebuying’s slowest start to a year since 2009.”

“Mission Viejo 92692: $670,000 median, down 6.6% over 12 months. Lake Forest 92630: $670,000 median, down 12.6% over 12 months. Trabuco Canyon-Coto de Caza-Portola Hills 92679: $925,000 median, down 6.6% over 12 months. San Juan Capistrano 92675: $732,500 median, down 17.9% over 12 months.”

The San Jose Spotlight in California. “As California’s housing crisis rages on, two San Jose housing commissioners are looking for ways to put residents back into the thousands of vacant homes sitting in the city’s housing stock.”

“Commissioners Alex Shoor and Huy Tran will propose that city officials consider a tax on vacant properties to penalize homeowners for keeping them empty. Data from the U.S. Census indicates that in 2017, San Jose had 11,952 vacant units – a rate that is one of the lowest in the country among large cities. In the San Jose, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara area, the data shows 28,846 homes are empty, and Shoor and Tran say their research suggests that at least 30 percent may be vacant by choice.”

“They said the number of vacant homes in San Jose has risen by 42 percent in the past five years. Shoor added that homeowners may be holding on to vacant properties for investment purposes, something he called ‘a travesty. ‘You just buy a property and you sit on it and you’ll make money,’ he said. ‘When we have the conditions that we do now where the supply and demand are completely out of whack with each other, it allows more bad actors to enter the game and to take advantage.'”

From Mansion Global on California. “The picturesque Spanish Colonial mansion known as Richard Nixon’s ‘Western White House’ in San Clemente, California, has gotten a $6 million price cut.”

“The sprawling oceanfront estate first hit the market nearly four years ago asking $75 million. It has since had several rounds of price changes, including the latest discount. It’s now asking $57.5 million, according to a listing from agent Linda May of Hilton & Hyland.”

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This Post Has 68 Comments

  1. ‘The owners of a farm in Frederick turned down an offer of $1.1 million because they thought it was worth more. It took two years to sell and went for $575,000′

    Didn’t one poster say 50% off is unrealistic?

    1. He’s looooooong gone. He was just another butthurt loanowner who thought posting here could somehow change the course of the bust.

    3. ” It took two years to sell and went for $575,000′”

      I knew a guy who did something like that.

      Listed a house in 2006 or 2007 for $400k turned down $380k and sold a couple of years later for $190k

  2. ‘in 2017, San Jose had 11,952 vacant units – a rate that is one of the lowest in the country among large cities. In the San Jose, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara area, the data shows 28,846 homes are empty, and Shoor and Tran say their research suggests that at least 30 percent may be vacant by choice’

    ‘They said the number of vacant homes in San Jose has risen by 42 percent in the past five years’

    That’s some shortage bay aryans.

    2. Ben: That’s some shortage bay aryans.
      Bay Aryans, nothing. This entire area is now mostly Chinese and Indian. A decade ago Cupertino and Sunnyvale were over 50% Chindian. I’m in Fremont now — under 25% caucasian now.

      ‘You just buy a property and you sit on it and you’ll make money,’ he said.
      This is part of the problem right here, but watch out when that virtuous cycle turn vicious and all these homes being held off-market for wished-for gains suddenly flood the market. All that inventory is going to hammer prices.

      1. ‘You just buy a property and you sit on it and you’ll make money,’ he said.

        How does that actually even work??? Not even renting it out?

    3. These situations could easily be rooted out by laws which punish speculators and protect citizens, but there is no political will. We don’t have leaders, we have perpetrators.

        1. That it was ever even allowed is deeply disturbing. The globalists have completely destroyed everything that was once good about the US, all through shady backdoor deals.

          You can pretty much choose ANY billionaire on this planet and they are accountable. From Bill Gates, Jeff Bozo and “kindly ol'” Warren Buffet, to George Soros, Larry Ellison and the Koch Brothers. They’re all part of the disease.

  3. “The houses, according to a Kuwaiti court, turned out to be part of a $140 million to $240 million international Ponzi scheme, that also included houses in Rochester, Detroit and Cleveland and vacant lots in Florida and North Carolina.”

    Where were our worthless regulators, enforcers, and policymakers while this was going on? Licking the boots of their REIC puppet-masters? I thought Senator Running Deer was going to put a stop to such endemic fraud in the financial sector.

    1. One would think a hundred million dollar Ponzi scheme might draw the interest of media outside of Buffalo too.

      1. The MSM seems remarkably incurious about such REIC financial malfeasance. Must be an oversight on Real Journalists’ part. Following the money might expose corruption, and the MSM and its corporate owners probably aren’t too keen to turn over certain stones.

    2. She created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was pretty much ended by the current administration.

      2. CFPB, though not perfect, has served good purposes. It has helped reign in payday loans and it is doubtful Wells Fargo would have been held to account for their fake account schemes in which they bilked many Americans of money by fraudulently opening up accounts with bogus financial services unbeknownst to them.

  5. ‘They said the number of vacant homes in San Jose has risen by 42 percent in the past five years’

    We’re going to have a weekend topic on money laundering later today.

    2. “They said the number of vacant homes in San Jose has risen by 42 percent in the past five years”

      A friend of mine in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood has three empty homes on his street, all owned by wealthy Chinese families. Gardeners keep the yards trimmed and watered, swimming pool guys keep the pools clean, etc., in these $1.4M average priced homes.

  6. Sh!tcoin goes parabolic – AGAIN. What could go wrong? Hurry up and buy before you miss out…

    “Well, it looks like it’s officially time to regret not consolidating more when we had the chance. Bitcoin price didn’t take a break. Instead, it went a bit parabolic to nearly $7,000 or 100% gains since the December 2018 lows.”

    https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-price-parabolic-7000-2019-high/

    1. I can’t help but feel like this is related to the US-China trade talks breaking down. Probably a bunch of Chinese money is trying to rush out of the country via Bitcoin.

      2. It’s always trying to rush out of the country? I don’t see how trade talks would make it moreso.

      3. You nailed it. I have a friend that works for Robinhood (the company…). Last week over lunch he said the company was gearing up to get a ton of crypto exchanging from foreign accounts due to trade war concerns. Even with that insight I still wouldn’t buy into sh!tcoin.

        1. Money laundering, and Robinhood is partaking. How many American companies are in on this scam?

  7. Proposed Rule Could Evict 55,000 Children From Subsidized Housing
    5/10/2019
    Pam Fessler
    NPR

    “The rule is intended to prevent people who are in the country illegally from receiving federal housing aid, which the administration argues should go to help only legal residents or citizens.”

    When the stock of public housing is limited and the demand exceeds supply, it’s hard to argue that illegal immigrants household should receive benefits before legal families. This is pitched by the news as ruthless, but it seems sensible to me.

    1. Illegal immigrants should NEVER QUALIFY for benefits. That’s what’s encouraging them to come here.

        1. Jeebus, you need to get out more. Going back 25 years ago, I’ve read about people getting busted with hundreds of thousands of SS cards on them. And they sell the to illegals. The numbers are duplicates, from dead people, just made up, it all works.

          1. Fake soc sec cards do work, they shouldn’t as we know how to stop it, but dont. Dont like illegals, dont support biz’s that hire them.

          2. Yup. I remember interviewing a couple of people one day for a job I had advertised. When I went through the applications later, two guys had the same name and social security number.

          3. two guys
            BTW, this was in the mid to late 80’s as I recall, so it’s been going on forever.

        2. “Christian Rivera, 24, used another person’s out-of-state ID card and Social Security number to obtain the job at Yarrabee Farms in Poweshiek County, his boss said.”

          “Rivera was checked out via the Social Security Administration’s verification service, which can be easily beaten with another person’s state ID and Social Security card.”

          ““There is rampant fraud,” said Bill Riley, a former US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who now works at the consulting firm Guidepost Solutions.”

          https://nypost.com/2018/08/22/mollie-tibbetts-murder-suspect-worked-under-false-name-employer/

    2. What is incredible is for years the Real News Media repeated that zero, absolutely ZERO, undocumented folks received any public benefits. It’s simply against the law, and illegal immigrants are the most law-abiding folks on the earth. So the narrative said.

      To fit with this propaganda that illegals are a huge net benefit and supremely better than American people, see here from a Housingwire article on this topic:

      “But according to HUD’s own analysis of the proposed rule changes, the move could actually lead to less public housing aid being available because the “American” households replacing the “mixed” households make less money than the families they’d be replacing and would, therefore, require more housing assistance.”

      Oh the horror, giving benefits to American citizens! It’s better to have pliable, cheap, easily exploited illegal foreigner labor doubling, tripling, or quadrupling up on bedrooms while all earning money and driving down wages for unskilled and low skilled workers.

      Disgusting.

      1. This is a good point. The Left swore up and down for a long time that illegal aliens weren’t collecting public assistance, “because it’s illegal”. I’m glad you brought this up since it can be hard to see how much the goalposts have shifted over time.

        It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the fact that blue states encourage illegal immigration to boost the welfare roles to soak up more federal money enters the public consciousness.

        1. Well, a lot of the root cause of the problem can be linked to birthright citizenship. End birthright citizenship and a lot of this goes away.

          As an aside, I’m noticing quite an influx of foreigners coming in to the US not from the US to have their baby where I work. Lately we’ve had Italians, Chinese, and French couples seemingly looking for a temporary place to stay on what appears to be a form of birth tourism.

          1. “End birthright citizenship and a lot of this goes away.”

            Where will we get our astronauts and physicists from?

          2. birth tourism

            Are SoCal and Florida so busy now that people need to go to Salt Lake City? IIRC, someone here had a relative in Orange County with a house around the corner used for this purpose.

          3. There is no clear law on birthright citizenship but the courts have set precedent on it. Trump could issue an executive order ending it tomorrow if he chose to. Giving an anchor baby the same privileges as someone whose ancestors fought as patriots in the Revolution is just crazy.

      2. “But according to HUD’s own analysis of the proposed rule changes, the move could actually lead to less public housing aid being available because the “American” households replacing the “mixed” households make less money than the families they’d be replacing and would, therefore, require more housing assistance.”

        The future is the Flintstones, not the Jetsons.

        1. The truth is that we probably don’t need to build a wall. We do, however, need to build a wall around the welfare state. Build a wall around housing benefits, food stamps, CHIP, health care, etc. and the demand pull of illegal immigration shrinks considerably.

      4. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/census-confirms-63-percent-of-non-citizens-on-welfare-4-6-million-households

        Census confirms: 63 percent of ‘non-citizens’ on welfare, 4.6 million households
        by Paul Bedard | December 03, 2018 08:15 AM

        “In a new analysis of the latest numbers, from 2014, 63 percent of non-citizens are using a welfare program, and it grows to 70 percent for those here 10 years or more, confirming another concern that once immigrants tap into welfare, they don’t get off it.”
        -This is a feature; as intended and not a bug. Left wants to add to the free-sh*t army of compliant, poorly educated Dem. voters. This is taxpayer funded.

        “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” – Alexis de Tocqueville

        That’s pretty well known now. This is the road to Socialism. An elite few in dictatorship ruling over the poor masses. Socialism=neo-feudalism. Just look at most any major city now. Last Republican Mayor was generally back in the 1960.s. CA is well on its way. Venezuela is late-stage Socialism. Sad.

        1. Posted this article earlier in the week when someone claimed illegal immigrants didn’t get welfare, Section 8 housing or mortgage loans.

  8. Dumb idea of the day: So long as America is reverting to tariffs as a taxation policy, how about reverting to the good old days, eliminating the income tax in favor of a fully tariff-based tax system? Why tax American workers when you can raise all the taxes necessary on foreign products?

    1. …
      The tariff of 1789 was designed to raise money for the new federal government, slash Revolutionary War debt and protect early-stage American industries from foreign competition.

      Then, as now, some industries sought protection in Congress from a flood of imports. Most goods entering the U.S. were subjected to a 5% tariff, though in a few cases the rates ranged as high as 50%.

      It was the first of many tariffs that Congress passed over a century and a half. They generated the vast majority of federal revenue until the U.S. adopted an income tax in 1913. In some years tariffs funded as much as 95% of the government’s annual budget.
      …

  10. Remember back in 2007 or so, people used to set their upside down cars on fire? We talked about it here. I can’t remember what you all called it but it was funny.

    1. Someone filmed a guy in Texas driving his truck [into] the water during a flood. They’re $1,000/mo for payments and insurance on a diesel 350 series!

  11. Went to an open house in 92630 this afternoon. Not a soul in site. Along Portola there were open house signs EVERYWHERE

  12. Fine people $1000 a day who hire illegals or rent to them. Give whistleblowers half as a reward. Problem solved overnight. Cheap and fast. But…. .politicains dont want to end illegal labor.

    2. rent to them

      In California, a landlord cannot ask about immigration status or citizenship.

      1. In our hunt for a rental place in Folsom the last few months I noticed that a bunch of the rentals are managed through corporations and it was obvious that other than having a good income and credit report our application was nothing special to them. Just one in a stack of hundreds. But I noticed that as soon as a local posted one up for rent who was managing their own, my application seemed to fly to the top. They gushed about the income and credit rating, but nobody else did. I wonder if the Welsh name and native accent helped in that case but not in the others?

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