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We’re All In Kind Of A Reset Right Now

A report from the Oregonian. “A condominium building under construction near the Lloyd District has switched to rental apartments weeks before its scheduled opening. The developer of the Twenty Twenty building chalked up the switch to a softer real-estate market that had emerged in the two years since construction began. It’s a move reminiscent of the end of Portland’s condo boom in the 2000s, when thousands of under-construction condo units switched to rentals after sales came to a stop.”

“The housing market generally slowed in 2018, with more homes for sale and less competition between buyers. That included an even bigger uptick in the number of existing high-end condominiums listed for sale by their owners. As a result, PHK Development founder Patrick Kessi said pre-sales at the building were slower than expected. ‘Now, in 2019, the buyers are a little skittish,’ said Kessi. ‘The market’s just not quite ready for new condos right now.'”

“Sean Becker, a real estate broker who specializes in condominiums and has his office in the South Waterfront, said Portland is entering a buyer’s market for condominiums. That’s particularly true in the middle-market price points where many of Twenty Twenty’s units fall. ‘We’re all in kind of a reset right now,’ Becker said. ‘I don’t know if there’s any one easy answer about it, but the condo market has definitely kind of flattened out.'”

“The rental market also has slowed, largely because of a raft of new buildings all opening their doors at the same time, many offering discounts and other incentives to lure renters and fill up vacant units faster. That slowdown has hit high-end apartment buildings the hardest.”

“The increasing competition from new apartment buildings might also be hitting condo sales, Becker said. ‘Ten years ago, if you wanted to live downtown or in the Pearl District, you had to buy a condominium,’ he said. ‘The consumer has more choices now than they ever had in urban living.'”

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  1. ‘It’s a move reminiscent of the end of Portland’s condo boom in the 2000s, when thousands of under-construction condo units switched to rentals after sales came to a stop’

    Click!

    Also in the article:

    ‘Kessi’s company had also targeted Asian investors as potential buyers, but the strategy didn’t pan out’

  2. ‘said Portland is entering a buyer’s market for condominiums. That’s particularly true in the middle-market price points where many of Twenty Twenty’s units fall. ‘We’re all in kind of a reset right now,’ Becker said. ‘I don’t know if there’s any one easy answer about it, but the condo market has definitely kind of flattened out’

    Foreclosure city, here we come.

  4. Marianne Williamson’s spirit guide channelled a message through her. It said, “Realtors are liars.”

  5. Anyone remember F**ked Company dot com, which during the implosion of Tech Bubble 1.0 hilariously kept a dead pool of doomed tech start-ups? Maybe we need something similar for Oligopoly media outlets that are circling the drain as subscribers, balking at paying for globalist propaganda and DNC talking points, desert them in droves.

    https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/07/the-l-a-times-disappointing-digital-numbers-show-the-games-not-just-about-drawing-in-subscribers-its-about-keeping-them/

    Digital subscriptions at the Los Angeles Times are way below expectations, and leadership, in a memo to staff, said the future of the paper could depend on solving the issue rapidly.

    Whether due to unrealistic expectations or editorial and business failures, the Times is nowhere close to meeting its digital subscription goal. The Times had hoped to double its digital subscriptions from just more than 150,000 to 300,000 this year — a number that would have to be doubled again, the memo said, to come close to covering editorial costs. But midway through the year, the Times is nowhere near that number, having netted only 13,000 digital subscriptions in 2019.

    1. Time to hand the editorial board pink slips and tell them to learn to code. They rubber stamped the corruption and the descent of the state into a third world sh!thole. When I used to live in San Diego I hated just driving through that city, too much is an ugly dump that’s only gotten worse over the decades.

    2. The Times had hoped to double its digital subscriptions from just more than 150,000 to 300,000 this year — a number that would have to be doubled again, the memo said, to come close to covering editorial costs. But midway through the year, the Times is nowhere near that number, having netted only 13,000 digital subscriptions in 2019.

      Talk about not even getting the ball past the 50 yard line…

      For most sites, people are not willing to subscribe, and the way most sties have implemented things, they are so annoying that they are must be losing people who actually would sign up just due to the friction created by their mechanisms.

      I said it before, that I think something like Apple News+, but where it works all the PC browsers transparently AND sites accepting it have to keep their sites clean and annoyance free would be the only way to make subscribing the norm – people pay like $100 a year to one source and can surf 100s of news sites, etc. But every site out there is going to stand firm that they are the exception.

      Print magazines are almost gone, and the online culling has not anywhere near its peak yet.

    3. This is unfortunate, because real news is expensive. This is how Fake News got so popular — it’s free.

  6. The reset button may be pushed, but needle ain’t back to the starting position. Wait patiently for the ride to fully stop and safety door to open before entering. Stay behind the red line until then.

    LA Times, like a bunch of others, cant readily put up a toll booth on the web. If they want to survive, they need for these publications to be entirely advertiser supported. Our local paper has tried same thing. Too easy to get news free elsewhere.

  7. “The rental market also has slowed, largely because of a raft of new buildings all opening their doors at the same time, many offering discounts and other incentives to lure renters and fill up vacant units faster. That slowdown has hit high-end apartment buildings the hardest.”

    I’m seeing this play out in the Salt Lake Valley area. Tons of new apartments all over the area, luxury of course, and lots of “$500 off if you sign this month!” and “your first month free if you sign today!” type of deals.

    Not to worry, my local newspapers all assure me prices will continue to rise this year, albeit at a slower rate. And next year it will definitely go up. Real estate won’t go down at all thanks to our hot economy. Wages going up at 2%, houses at 10%, there is no disconnect. After, Californians with their millions desperately want to live here.

    1. “Californians with their millions desperately want to live here.”

      Sure why not. Sell my crap shack to some knife catcher for a Mil+. Locust mode time! Long as you ain’t got none of them needle armed homeless that be poopen on our driveways, we be a moven to a town near you!

    1. Like George Carlin said about the U.S., “The real owners of the country put the politicians out there to give you the impression that you have freedom of choice…you don’t, you have no choice!”

      2. They do not have the Republican side wired but they sure are trying to wire the Democrat side. Biden over Sanders? Biden is a punch drunk boxer. He is only being held up by the PTB because he is malleable to their will. Sanders like Trump is a loose cannon to them. It is amazing how CNN really is an appendage of the Democrat party which is just one part of the uniparty run by the Globalists. I cannot figure out why it is not blatantly obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temperature.

    2. “… you c*m bucket…” “…worthless sh!t weasels…”

      HAHAHAHA!!! This guy is going off!

      1. “…because Rory the “Soy Boy” Stewart said so. F**k what that cracked out gremlin-looking f**k pig said…”

        Hahahahaha!! This guy is hilarious.

  11. Meh, everyone in Portland still thinks they have a $750K house. Rate change via the swamp today will probably just reinforce that idea. Tick-tock.

    1. Rate change was baked in to the mortgage market. If anything, the fed’s shift away from MBS on the balance sheet might hurt mortgage rates.

  12. Other shenanigans in Portland.

    The irony of a rental services bureau, ostensibly created to make renting more affordable, assessing a per unit fee of $60 per year, that landlords will pass along to tenants, increasing rents.

    The other irony here: thinking this will punish big landlords. Instead, they’ll get bigger when they buy up the displaced small landlords.

    Chloe Eudaly is a disaster. RIP, Portland.

    https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2019/07/portland-city-council-to-vote-on-60-per-unit-landlord-fee.html?outputType=amp

    1. Liberals are a laugh riot. They think that the laws of nature, physics, human behavior and supply and demand don’t apply to them, and they can just will “solutions” for everything with their enlightened selves.

    1. Apparently not all rate cuts trigger stock market rallies.

      The Financial Times
      Capital markets
      Jay Powell fails to bend yield curve to his will
      Recession indicator flashes red after Federal Reserve cuts rates by quarter point
      Markets had priced in almost 100bp of cuts in the next year before the Fed acted on Wednesday © Getty
      Colby Smith in New York yesterday

      The Federal Reserve’s quarter-point interest rate cut on Wednesday failed to have the desired effect on a widely followed bond market indicator of recession.

      The yield curve — reflecting the difference between the yields on three-month and 10-year US Treasury bonds — dropped further into negative territory, settling at minus 5.5 basis points.

      The measure has turned negative or “inverted” before every US recession of the past 50 years, and analysts said the development indicated that investors doubted the central bank had acted decisively enough to shore up the US economy.

      Analysts also noted that another closely watched portion of the yield curve — the difference between two-year and 10-year Treasury yields — collapsed to its narrowest gap in four months, while the US dollar rose as much as 0.6 per cent versus its peer currencies.

      “The clear signal coming from the strengthening of the dollar and the flattening of the yield curve is that the market is crying out for more accommodation,” said Subadra Rajappa, head of US rates strategy at Société Générale.

      She said investors were worried that the Fed would not deliver as many cuts as they had anticipated. Fed chairman Jay Powell called the 25bp cut a “mid-cycle adjustment to policy” that was “not the beginning of a long series of rate cuts”.
      …

      2. As long as part of the curve is negative it is going to support those who want an additional cut. Personally I do not find it significant enough to support another cut. However I think many experts think otherwise.

      1. Con$umers $loth along with H.P.F (High.price.Fatigue)

        The non.$uffering plastic straw stirrers are sitting on the summer sands awaiting their ma$$aged $tocks to yield their beneficial bonu$ return$.

        Dow 9.19.18 = 26,743.51

        $tock buyback$ are reaching dangerou$ level$

        By Matt Egan, CNN Business | Tue July 30, 2019

        New York (CNN Business)The US-China trade war might be having a chilling effect on business investment, but it’s not derailing the $plurge in share buybacks.

        S&P 500 companies are on track to buy back another $940 billion$ of stock in 2019, according to Goldman Sachs. That would easily surpa$$ the record buyback boom set off last year by President Donald Trump’s corporate tax cut.
        But Corporate America’s rush to pay out shareholders could be getting out of hand.
        “Payout ratios are elevated, cash balances have declined and leverage has risen to a new all-time high,” David Kostin, chief US equity strategist at Goldman Sachs

  15. This is a subscription site, but there’s an entry:

    The end may be here (but don’t panic)

    “At this time last year, our market was experiencing all-time highs for average home prices and all-time lows for housing inventory. Many of the market indicators we track were pointing to continued strong demand and price appreciation, especially with the continued influx of people into Boulder and Broomfield counties. And yet, with home price appreciation outstripping wage gains for the better part of a decade, in the back of everyone’s minds was the question: “How long can this go on?” We may now be starting to get our answer.”

    https://bizwest.com/2019/08/01/the-end-may-be-here-but-dont-panic/

    1. Many of the market indicators we track were pointing to continued strong demand and price appreciation, especially with the continued influx of people into Boulder and Broomfield counties.

      From what I can tell, most of the newcomers are not in the socioeconomic bracket to be buying ridiculously overpriced shacks or living in luxury apartments. A high percentage appear to be recent arrivals from south of the border or some UN refugee camp in the Middle East or Africa.

    2. It’s interesting how these media try the “surprise surprise” thing. Like the Curbed report with Corelogic Andy saying, “what’s gone unnoticed til now is that Sonoma and Santa Clara County prices are down 5 straight months YOY”. What that means is prices fell for a year and 5 months. Surprise! And here at the HBB we knew it was shaky (like in Portland) loooong before the statistics showed it from anecdotal REIC whining and talk of price reductions. Plus price reduction counts have entered the money losing RE statistic business big time as they look for ways to stand out in shoveling money into the fireplace.

      Funny that the UHS never thought of tracking price reductions, huh?

      1. The two stats they’ll never willingly give — price reductions, and price at closing versus initial listing. And even then, they muck the data up by dropping previous listings when homes don’t sell, such that mining the MLS won’t show all of the bad news they’ve buried.

      2. “What that means is prices fell for a year and 5 months. Surprise!”

        The first year-on-year drop may have reflected something like five months up followed by seven months down, assuming no changes in direction of price movement except for the reversal at the peak.

        A fifth consecutive year-on-year drop would then be consistent with eleven months down.

  16. Construction spending in the U.S. falls 1.3% in June
    By Jeffry Bartash
    Published: Aug 1, 2019 10:03 a.m. ET

    WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – Construction spending in the U.S. dropped 1.3% in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.29 trillion, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast a 0.1% drop. Builders have slowed construction since last year and there’s little sign it’s about to increase rapidly despite lower mortgage rates.
    …

    1. Rear view mirror. Atlanta Fed is predicting a 2.2 percent growth rate this quarter. It missed last time by a lot but it underestimated the GDP growth. People have new credit cards with unused available credit. They are going to spend spend spend to daddy (Powell) takes the Visa away.

    2. “Builders have slowed construction since last year and there’s little sign it’s about to increase rapidly despite lower mortgage rates.”

      “Builders”?

      Interesting how they mischaracterize and conflate construction with housing when the dollar volume of housing is a tiny fraction of overall construction dollars spent.

      Why is that?

  17. The Uber and Lyft Drivers Who Call Their Cars Home

    “Outside a 24 Hour Fitness in San Mateo, side-saddling a commercial office space and a tiered parking structure, a swath of strategically tinted cars sit parked, veiled by thin layers of condensation coating their windshields. It’s obvious that people have spent the night inside them, presumably cocooned somewhere either in the back seat or the spacious hatch. Many attempt privacy measures — some using towels or sheets or other fabrics stuffed under the windows to block out wandering eyes.”

    “Most display a shared vocational decal: Lyft or Uber.”

    https://thebolditalic.com/the-uber-and-lyft-drivers-who-call-their-cars-home-b32cefcac513

    And Amazon drivers take a dump in your yard cuz they can’t get a bathroom break.

    Dick·en·si·an
    /dəˈkenzēən/

    adjective: Dickensian

    -of or reminiscent of the novels of Charles Dickens, especially in suggesting the poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters that they portray.

    “the back streets of Dickensian London”

      1. well he kinda failed ….its the same in NYC you can take over a rent controlled lease from your parents but everything in your name has to be at that address not a po box. plus he should have had $$$ saved up for a lawyer since he should have known this was going to happen. Can’t blame the landlord on this one.

        2. I had a friend who let their father’s biannual term-life lapse while he was dying in the hospital; oops, there goes $144k! Rather than a pragmatic approach to life’s responsibilities she caught-up in the end-of-life drama. I’m not sure if she was really that engaged with reality anyway with her piercings and tattoos, numerous potted plants, artwork on every wall and hanging beaded stuff dangling everywhere. Losing-out on that money was a “flake” wake-up call that she saw as a conspiracy.

      3. The bare necessities in life have become so crushingly expensive that the only option for many is a life of squalor – even if they’re working one of these usurious “jobs.” But we’re told there’s no inflation. Uh-huh…yeah…

        And we’re supposed to believe it’s normal and just fine for people to live in a car – a contraption only designed to transport people from point A to point B, something that is so small that a human being can’t even kneel in it. And then people are surprised that there’s human feces all over the place. Who hasn’t at one time or another woken up in the middle of the night and run to the bathroom because the dinner they ate didn’t agree with their system?

        A car is not a habitable shelter, no matter what Tesla boy says. Shelter needs to afford a human being the ability to stand up straight, use the restroom, lay down on a large enough surface to accommodate their body, etc. This means 8 foot ceilings, running water, a bed, etc. What we are now seeing is shameful.

    2. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

      2. Lots of befores and lots of afters.

        The befores describe my customers before applying their signatures to the bottom lines.

        The afters? Bahahahahahaha … come visit me at my bank and I will give you a live demonstration of what the afters entail.

    3. these are the human faces, the collateral damage of the unbridled arrogance of the Fed.
      Reading the comments, I understand the frustration with realtors, with greedy developers, with entitled property owners. Still, I believe that they are just carriers of the plague.
      The person who started this Bubonic plague was Greenspan, who upon bursting a bubble of his own making, shoved it off onto Bernanke.
      Bubbles are binary, either keep blowing bigger or suffer a collapse. So Bernanke, Yellen and Powell were boxed in, left with 2 ugly choices.

      The monster, the Frankenstein who started all this was Greenspan…
      And one day, history will see him for the grandiose, self important fool that he is

      2. The person who started this Bubonic plague was Greenspan

        Anyone that bought stuff they couldn’t pay for without a loan for months, years or decades is an equal partner.

    4. “It’s obvious that people have spent the night inside them, presumably cocooned somewhere either in the back seat or the spacious hatch.”

      Nothing is more inviting than that ‘just slept in’ smell when you hop into a rideshare cab.

  19. We have had a rigged economy for decades that favored big industry/Wall Street/Globalists/price fixing monopolies. This just gutted the majority population of middle class workers.

    Instead of addressing the real problems the Politicans want to take over industries like the health industry, and give trillions in give-a-ways to the winners , while the losers get scalped again.

    This was never suppose to be the function of government. Actually what they propose will make the rich richer.

    Go back to free market capitalism in every industry.

    It gets scary when the government wants to use the IRS to tax to pay for a price fixing monopoly industry like pharma and medical.

    The price fixing education system that is gouging will only get propped up more by government paying student debt.

    Government paying for people’s day care isn’t a function of government.

    Employers use to pay for employees health insurance for decades. This fact alone is what made the medical industry become a big fat price fixing monopoly.

    Obamacare was a commie plan that made one set of people pay for another set of people, while the prices went up and the health industry got richer by forced compliance by tax penalty. They made you buy a bunch of coverage you might not even want.

    The government should stop trying to prop up overpriced price fixing monopolies.

    It’s all a big fat joke to me that these politicans in the debates last night will do anything that really needs to be done regarding the rigged economy.

  20. Also, I think in general people don’t mind paying tax funds for the disabled.

    I think people in general don’t want to pay for able bodied people who don’t want to work. I don’t think tax payers want to pay for the health care of illegal immigrants.

    I think in general people don’t want to pay for any debt that another party has run up.

    In the liberal dream world, nobody is responsible for their own actions.

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