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There’s A Real Theme Here Of People Losing A Lot Of Money

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “The median price for a single family home in the nine-county region fell nearly 3 percent to $805,600 from the previous October, according to Zillow. The median price of a home in Santa Clara County continued a 10-month retreat, falling 5.9 percent to $1.08 million. Price cuts have become more common in some cities. Zillow data shows that in San Jose and San Francisco, more sellers were willing to cut their prices this year than last.”

“Zillow senior economist Cheryl Young said some parts of the Bay Area have hit an ‘affordability ceiling,’ and that the declining prices could be seen as a small market correction after years of soaring values. ‘We’re starting to see things slow down,’ Young said, ‘but that doesn’t mean it’s less expensive in some of these areas.'”

“Fracking Bust: The Sequel. At least, that’s how Greater Houston Partnership’s lead economist Patrick Jankowski sees Houston right now. With an over-saturated real estate market, an overbuilt industrial market and a bleak outlook for oil and gas, history may not be repeating itself, but it looks pretty close, Jankowski wrote. Typically, Houston can absorb one apartment unit for every six new jobs. But as of early November, 23,000 apartment units were under construction and another 28,000 were in the planning stages. That means Houston would have to create more than 300,000 jobs, or, the number of jobs the region created in the last six years.”

“Jankowski said builders may be reading the market wrong. Monthly government employment statistics, based on a limited survey, notoriously overestimate job growth at the regional level during times of expansion. ‘If you’re basing your decisions on what (the government) is reporting, and they’re over-reporting,’ Jankowski said, ‘you’re going to make some bad business decisions.'”

“A recent report from Central 1 Credit Union suggests a rebound in Metro Vancouver’s housing market is coming. However, at the moment there are property owners losing hundreds-of-thousands of dollars on their investments. This solid, 1953 home in Burnaby would have seemed like a good pick in May 2016 when the owners forked out $1.9 million for their stake in Metro. Then the former B.C. Liberal government introduced its foreign owner’s tax and things started going downhill from there, leading to late November 2019 when that same home was sold for $1.495 million. A loss of $405,000, plus realtor and legal costs.”

“Assessed on July 1, 2019, at $2.371 million, this older (1967) home sits on a 10,881-sq.-ft. lot and was bought on April 26, 2016, for $3.11 million. There’s a real theme here of people who bought in early 2016 and are now losing a lot of money. In this case, the loss is a whopping $1 million, as it sold recently for $2.1 million.”

“Berkeley’s half-year profit has fallen by almost a third as the number of homes sold by the upmarket London-focused housebuilder tumbled. Revenue slumped 43.7 per cent to £930.9 million as the number of homes sold fell to 1,389 from 2,027 a year earlier. The average selling price was down 13 per cent to £644,000, which Berkeley said reflected the ‘mix of properties sold.'”

“As anyone who has travelled beyond Germany’s major and university cities knows, in many municipalities, there are thousands of apartments that have remained unoccupied for years. Reiner Braun, Member of Emprica’s Executive Board, attributes this difference not just to population growth in big cities, but also to the fact that, ‘despite existing vacancies, upmarket properties are still being built in shrinking regions.’ In many cities, therefore, there are far more new apartments than necessary.”

“Values of prime residential real estate in Nairobi fell by 4.5 per cent in the nine months to September this year. Property values have been on a sustained decline since 2016, with Knight Frank attributing the drop to oversupply and distressed liquidity during the period under review. ‘If the price softening is sustained into the last quarter of the year and going forward, it will be a pointer to a market correction that comes after a long streak of house prices increases,’ said KBA.”

“Aveng, the loss-making JSE listed construction firm, yesterday plummeted to 1 cent a share after losing 50 percent on the JSE yesterday. The fall is the latest blow for the company and signals that investors have lost hope of a revival of the ailing construction sector amid South Africa’s constrained economy. ‘The government is saying that we do not care about the construction sector. This is a sad outlook for the entire sector, because companies are falling over one by one,’ said economist Ian Cruickshanks, adding that non-payment by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were problematic.”

“More than a year ago, future of the real estate market in India was believed to be promising. Real estate was believed to be a golden investment. Basically the real estate market is in a slump. The massive burden of heavily delayed and terminally stuck housing projects has hit the confidence of investors/ home buyers. Currently, under-construction properties are depreciating assets and prices are yet to sink to their ‘lowest best’. Further, price correction is almost inevitable.To conclude, let’s be straight way own the fact that real estate sector is in a vicious cycle of the overall slowdown.”

“You’ll build and they’ll come? Well, don’t bet on it. That’s what Singapore’s authorities seem to be telling property developers, who are flooding the market with new homes. The builders themselves are getting nervous about the glut. But everyone — the prospective homeowner, the seller and the government — is actually lucky. A minor bubble got pricked in time, with exorbitant duties now charged on most purchases to discourage speculation. These hit overseas buyers and foreign-born permanent residents, whom many Singaporeans feel were pricing them out of the market, especially hard.”

“As planners had feared, all those bulldozed older buildings are now making way for gleaming new condominiums. The catch is, there are few buyers. The oversupply of unsold new homes is thus an engineered solution. If the city hadn’t punctured the en-bloc mania in time, home prices would by now have started to run away.”

“According to the Australian Performance of Construction Index (PCI), construction activity fell for the 15th consecutive month in November. The rate of decline in house building and new house orders eased up slightly. But the downturn in new apartment orders accelerated, and engineering activity fell off a cliff. A whole suite of problems facing Australia’s off-the-plan sector that further delay the impact of rising property prices on construction activity – and on the economy more broadly.”

“Angie Zigomanis, director of research at Charter Keck Cramer, said demand from investors had dropped because of changes to foreign investment rules and issues of oversupply in some suburbs. And he said prospective buyers had been put off by the series of high-profile evacuations and building defect scares. ‘A lot of these things are conspiring to keep off-the-plan purchases out on market, and so the apartment industry won’t resolve itself as quickly as the house market will,’ Mr Zigomanis told The New Daily. ‘And because units are an investor-centric market, you’ll probably need the investor sentiment to turn around a lot more.'”

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This Post Has 115 Comments

  1. ‘the downturn in new apartment orders accelerated, and engineering activity fell off a cliff. A whole suite of problems facing Australia’s off-the-plan sector that further delay the impact of rising property prices on construction activity’

    Yeah, the REIC down there is falling over themselves trying to make a blip in prices up in a tiny number of hoods (which could just be manufactured by manipulating data) into a new bubble. Fine, but why do I keep finding stuff like this?

    ‘The cheapest weekend sale was in Blackett in Sydney’s west when $410,000 was paid for a redundant NSW Housing Department residence. The three-bedroom Franklin Cres home sold through LJ Hooker Mount Druitt agent Deniz Sagin to an investor renovator. The home sits on a 645 sqm block with granny flat potential.’

    ‘The suburb’s median price is $450,000, according to realestate.com.au, still well below its $545,000 boomtime 2017 median.’

    https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/finding/residential-investment/sales-and-auctions/107546-blackett-home-sells-for-sydney-s-cheapest-weekend-auction.html

    Hmmm, somebody is a lion! Down almost $100k Australian pesos from 2017. Where’s the boom?

      1. What the Australian media is doing shows all that compassion about the poor first time buyers was hog-wash. And note this is a conservative government pushing this, along with an about-face by their central bank. BTW Australia, these FB’s in India (above) were catching falling knives too.

        2. Politicians know that high real estate prices = high taxes. High taxes = euphoria for politicians, who spend like drunken sailors.

  2. ‘This solid, 1953 home in Burnaby would have seemed like a good pick in May 2016 when the owners forked out $1.9 million for their stake in Metro. Then the former B.C. Liberal government introduced its foreign owner’s tax and things started going downhill from there, leading to late November 2019 when that same home was sold for $1.495 million. A loss of $405,000, plus realtor and legal costs’

    ‘Assessed on July 1, 2019, at $2.371 million, this older (1967) home sits on a 10,881-sq.-ft. lot and was bought on April 26, 2016, for $3.11 million. There’s a real theme here of people who bought in early 2016 and are now losing a lot of money. In this case, the loss is a whopping $1 million, as it sold recently for $2.1 million’

    The a$$-poundings continue in Vancouver.

    2. When the money wasn’t yours in the first place, but gathered P2P or printed and laundered, how did they lose?

  3. ‘said some parts of the Bay Area have hit an ‘affordability ceiling,’ and that the declining prices could be seen as a small market correction after years of soaring values’

    Eat yer crowz Thornberg!

  4. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-opec/saudi-russia-win-over-oil-producers-to-deeper-cuts-idUSKBN1YA0VU

    ‘Saudi Arabia and Russia spearheaded a deal on Friday in which OPEC and its allies committed to some of the deepest oil output cuts this decade aiming to avert oversupply and support prices.’

    ‘Saudi Arabia needs prices of at least $80 per barrel to balance its budget, much higher than most other producers, and also needs to support the share flotation of its national oil company Saudi Aramco. Shares in Aramco are expected to begin trading this month following pricing on Thursday that made it the world’s biggest IPO.’

    Yellen bucks going to money heaven.

    2. ‘Saudi Arabia needs prices of at least $80 per barrel to balance its budget, much higher than most other producers, and also needs to support the share flotation of its national oil company Saudi Aramco.’

      I’m calling bullsh!t on the $80 number. It was $70 just last year. They’re blind with greed is what they are.

      1. “…Saudi Arabia needs prices of at least $80 per barrel to balance its budget…”

        Must be some budget.

        Some Saudi Prince likely feeding the USA REIC complex.

        Maybe they bought a few air-boxes at ONE57 in NYC?

        But what’s a few hundred million among friends?

        Same Saudi Prince then blows into Las Vegas and drops millions at the casinos.

        Just a typical day. Nothing to see here. Move along.

        1. I went to school with quite a few Saudi children of royalty and oil money. Their parents wanted them to be educated in the west but tried to shield them from the perceived vices that they perceived accompanied a western education. So quite a handful arrived at BYU (e.g. Mormon school) where there was no drinking and abstinence before marriage was the norm. We ended up having some interesting discussions. The children always had obscene amounts of money and incredible cars.

      2. “‘Saudi Arabia needs prices of at least $80 per barrel”

        Doesn’t mean anything. It’s the same as saying a DebtDonkey needs to earn $6000 a month to make the monthly on the underwater shack. Should have thought about it before you spent someone elses money.

        Mid East producers are quite profitable at $6 a barrel. Domestic is at $8 a barrel.

        1. “Mid East producers are quite profitable at $6 a barrel. Domestic is at $8 a barrel.”
          Then why are so many shale oil companies in this country going out of business with oil price between $55 to 60 a barrel?

      3. Saudi Arabia needs prices of at least $80 per barrel to balance its budget

        That’s what happens when non of your people do any real work. Someone has to pay the bills. The Mexican federal government used to be very dependent on Pemex to fund its budget. When oil prices crashed in the 1980’s Mexico almost collapsed. The Peso went from about 20 to a dollar to 9000 to a dollar. I would also say that Mexico never fully recovered from that, as that was when crime exploded and they never got it back under control.

      2. I don’t see TPTB admitting we’re still suffering terrorist attacks on US soil, after 18 years of war.

        Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t nearly all the 9/11 hijackers from Saudi Arabia? According to Trump’s tweet, the Saudi’s love us, LOL. With friends like them, we don’t need enemies!

        1. BTW, I haven’t been following the news much the last several days. This attack at Pensacola is the third violent incident on a Navy base in less than a week!

          I’m looking for more info about the Saudi who carried out the Pensacola attack. I’ve read he’s an “aviation student.” Visions of him with an armed fighter jet, attacking the base or a city…

          1. In 1979, the Islamists overthrew the Shah and briefly took over an important mosque in Mecca. The Saudi king seeing that he would get no help from Jimmy Carter made a deal with the devil. He turned over the education system of Saudi Arabia to the Islamists and even funded radical Islamist religious schools throughout the world. In return the corrupt Royal family was allowed to stay in power. For forty years, generations of children have been taught to hate the west. One of the greatest accomplishments of Trump is that he has gotten MSB to take the schools back from the Islamists. However, it took forty years for the radicals to turn Islam to the hateful religion it has become and it will take decades to undo the damage. MSB is ruthless but no one but a ruthless person would survive a minute in Saudi Arabia in a sea of religious fanatics willing to kill without hesitation.

          2. Appreciate the condensed historical perspective, ABQDan. I’m reluctant to attribute the actions of a group to the whole. When Trump says the Saudis love us, I take that to mean MBS.

        3. “With friends like them, we don’t need enemies!”

          With phuc’n rich friends like them, we don’t need enemies!

        4. And I was under the impression that we were “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”

    4. Yellen bucks going to money heaven.

      Wouldn’t “money hell” be a more apt name? By definition, anything that gets to Heaven has been saved and is washed free of any taint.

        1. I do plan to listen to that podcast eventually. I assume you’re joking about scary? But I’ve noticed my left leaning relatives really do think she is scary and I can’t understand why. They seem to think she is Trump-lite. Makes no sense to me.

          1. Obama invaded countries without a declaration of war that the constitution requires. He spied on all Americans without probable cause and even murdered two American citizens by drone without due process. He shredded the fourth amendment. Someone like Gabbard who Actually thinks you should follow the constitution is scary to many including the MEC.

          3. Makes no sense to me.

            It is strange, as she has tick marks in all the leftist check boxes:

            open borders: check
            free healthcare and other gibs for illegals: check
            nationalize healthcare: check
            pro lgbqt…: check

            The only place she breaks rank is with the military industrial complex

          4. The only place she breaks rank is with the military industrial complex

            Which somehow makes her Trump-lite. Hmmm.

        2. didn’t realize she is a vet

          Wow, that’s surprising. Almost every time I see her, she says “my sisters and brothers in uniform.”

        3. Tulsi Gabbard isn’t a veteran; she’s a Major in the U.S. Army Reserve. Unlike the children of the neocons pushing their “regime change” fiascos, who won’t be found within seven thousand miles of a combat zone, she’s actually deployed to Iraq.

          1. Gabbard on Thursday spoke about her stance on ending interventionist wars. A National Guard major who served in Iraq, she said U.S. leadership “lied” to service members about the necessity of the Iraq war. She also talked about fixing the nation’s “broken” criminal justice system she said is “tearing families apart,” as well as reforming the nation’s immigration system and her support for lifting the federal prohibition on marijuana.

            https://www.fosters.com/news/20191206/tulsi-gabbard-calls-for-new-democratic-party-by-and-for-people

          2. “A National Guard major who served in Iraq, she said U.S. leadership “lied” to service members about the necessity of the Iraq war.”

            Helping gawd’s children used to mean an ample supply of latest generation military hardware. Now it’s boots on the ground too.

  6. And he said prospective buyers had been put off by the series of high-profile evacuations and building defect scares. ‘A lot of these things are conspiring to keep off-the-plan purchases out on market, and so the apartment industry won’t resolve itself as quickly as the house market will,’ Mr Zigomanis told The New Daily.

    It’s not just the known structural defects, it’s the systemic corruption, corner-cutting and malfeasance among builders, inspectors, and regulators. As more and more building defects come to light and skybox bagholders have no recourse, their tales of woe are going to fill the media, further frightening off prospective knife-catchers. Oh dear….

    1. I would never buy attached product, no matter how much money I had. If I were super wealthy, I’d just rent a new place every year or so, after I got bored.

  7. Oh DEAR

    https://www.marcandken.com/apartment-rents-in-downtown-los-angeles-fall-for-first-time-since-recession/

    “The downtown area is in the midst of a years-long construction boom. The number of apartments downtown more than doubled since the last time rents fell, from about 14,250 market-rate units at mid-year 2011 to nearly 33,000 today. Very few areas in the country expanded their multifamily inventory as rapidly as downtown Los Angeles did this past decade.

    The latest wave of deliveries was massive, causing vacancies to spike and pushing rent growth into negative territory, at least temporarily. Nearly 4,300 units opened their doors downtown between mid-year 2018 and mid-year 2019. The arrival of so much new inventory in such a short window had a predictable effect on the vacancy rate, as it spiked from 6.5% in the second quarter of 2018 to more than 14% in the first quarter of this year.

    Demand for these new units is strong, and downtown Los Angeles’ vacancies have already compressed to about 12%.”

    1. wonder if the typhus, hepatitis, shigellosis, trench fever, Bubonic plague, or the feces have anything to do with this sudden decline?!

  8. 266,000 new jobs created in November.

    Remember when Bill Maher said he wished there was a recession because it would drive Drumpf out of office?

    2. His comment was a perfect example of how DemocRATS don’t care about people, they only care about their party and their personal agendas and feelings. Bill Maher has so much money that a recession/depression wouldn’t even phase him. He is actively hoping for the financial ruination of tens of millions of people to satiate his overinflated ego and soothe his Trump Derangement Syndrome.

  9. A popular misconception is that Japanese soldiers launching human-wave attacks on U.S. Marines in the island fighting in the South Pacific shouted “Bonzai!” In fact, this is a mistranslation, as Japanese war veterans have confirmed they were really shouting, “Realtors lie!”

    1. It is a known fact that wars dating back to BC were the result of realtors lies. Realtors have been destroying lives since the 1st mud and straw shacks have been built. Satanic realtor ritual circles have also been discovered, unavailing the ancient bones of the sacrificed unwilling to purchase FBs.

      1. “A Message to Garcia” is a widely distributed essay written by Elbert Hubbard in 1899, expressing the value of individual initiative and conscientiousness in work. As its primary example, the essay uses a dramatized version of a daring escapade performed by an American soldier, 1st Lt. Andrew S. Rowan, just prior to the Spanish–American War. The essay describes Rowan carrying a message from President William McKinley to “Gen. Calixto García, a leader of the Cuban insurgents somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba—no one knew where.”

        The contents of the message have never been disclosed – until now. Learning that Garcia had received marketing materials for a condo development in Miami, President McKinley felt compelled to send Garcia an urgent warning: “Realtors are liars.” As Paul Harvey would say, and now you know the rest of the story.

        1. “When Satan purchases a soul, realtors earn a 6 percent commission.”

          Realtors are genuine ignorant pukes. They bust their stupid asses to earn one time commissions from stupid marks and then have to work their stupid asses off in order to somehow hustle up another one.

          The real money is made by the lenders; The lenders not only receive an origination fee for making the loans they also receive money from the stupid marks each and every month that the loan is in existence, which, if things are properly arranged, will endure for the entire miserable mark’s time on this planet. And, please note: The lenders do little work in this regard; The realtors do most of the work on the mark and then these realtors lead the mark to the lender for the finishing touch.

          Satan has to wait in line for his cut beginning at some sort of afterlife while the lender begins to enjoy his cut the moment the ink becomes dry.

    1. Is there any way individual investors can tap into the opportunity to lend short term at 3.95%

      The Financial Times
      Repo market
      Year-end repo rates surge despite Fed’s efforts to ease the strain
      After tumultuous few months, investors brace for more volatility in final weeks of 2019
      Joe Rennison in London and Colby Smith in New York 4 hours ago

      The cost of borrowing cash overnight on the last day of the year has surged despite the Federal Reserve’s injection of billions of dollars into markets in an attempt to ease strains, raising concerns that investors may be in for a volatile final few weeks of 2019.

      The so-called repo rate paid by investors to borrow cash overnight in exchange for Treasuries and other high-quality collateral rose to 3.95 per cent on Thursday, for pre-agreed contracts kicking in on December 31.

      That is up from just over 3 per cent a month ago, according to data provided by Curvature Securities, and well in excess of the current overnight repo rate of around 1.6 per cent.
      …

      1. Yes, sort of. Look into ticker FRA. I don’t use it personally, but I know someone who parks his cash there.

    2. The only reasons our Ponzi markets are going up is that the Fed and all of the other central bankers are increasing their balance sheets. Look for repo operations to go parabolic in early 2020 as banks refuse to accept toxic-waste crap, i.e. rapidly depreciating senior housing developments, as collateral for inter-bank lending, threatening a 2008-style lock-up of the financial system.

      https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-adds-72-8-billion-to-markets-balance-sheet-moves-to-4-07-trillion-11575642409

      1. The FED has found a way to park asset prices at a permanently high plateau, then bigger them from there.

        1. “The FED has found a way to park asset prices at a permanently high plateau, then bigger them from there.”

          I think it should read: The FED has found a way to park asset prices at a permanently high plateau, then bugger homebuyers from there.

        2. At what cost? Housing demand of course.

          US Housing Demand Craters To 1998 Level As 25 Million Excess Empty And Defaulted Houses Sit

          https://bit.ly/2kpWDGR

          God Bless President Donald J. Trump and God Bless America

      2. From the WSJ article (wish I could read the whole thing):

        “Fed repo interventions take in Treasury and mortgage securities [emphasis mine] from eligible banks…”

        What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!

      3. “The Fed is also taking stock of whether post-financial-crisis banking regulations may be causing issues in the markets by driving banks to hold reserves over other highly liquid securities. It is also weighing whether it might expand its tool kit with a facility that would allow eligible financial firms that hold high-quality securities to exchange them for reserves quickly at the Fed.” —wsj

        1. I’ve got some high-quality securities I’d like to exchange at the Fed’s discount window, they are called Shrute Bucks.

  11. “was bought on April 26, 2016, for $3.11 million…sold recently for $2.1 million.”

    The real question is, why are so many homes being traded on such a short term basis?

    1. I asked the same rhetorical question a while back. We know the answer – they’re all speculators rushing for the exits.

    1. 2007 QE l = $eason 1, episode:1

      Mega.Wanker.Banker$ $uper $trong!, … mini.wanker.NON banker$ awaiting the $laughter of their $helter.$hack loan$.

  18. Oh dear…what if this becomes a thing?

    “Low income” mothers and their feral spawn have taken over vacant, investor-owned housing in Oakland and are refusing to leave. The entitlement mentality among this particular demographic and voting bloc, along with the supreme progressive virtues of parasitism, dependency, and lack of regard for property rights, were on full display.

    “We’re not leaving,” Walker, mom to a 1-year-old and 4-year-old she brought to the Oakland property, said during a press conference Thursday. “We’re not leaving without a fight. This is our home.”

    The Oakland home is owned by Wedgewood, a company that flips distressed properties for a profit, which Walker called a “displacement machine.” The four mothers occupying the home — who call themselves Moms 4 Housing— are furious about an area investor habit of buying properties and holding them vacant until they’re ready to sell, a practice that’s led to nearly five vacant properties for every homeless person in San Francisco.

    Gimme dats vs. vulture investors – got popcorn?

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvggxd/the-homeless-moms-who-took-over-a-vacant-oakland-home-say-they-arent-going-anywhere

    1. Gimme dats vs. vulture investors

      No “good guys” in this fight. It’s a race to the bottom!

    2. A vacancy tax would work here.

      And I’m still in favor of a housing subsidy, IF the resident provides proof of employment within a certain distance, quarterly.

    1. “Speaking from the Madrid climate conference, after arriving via train from Lisbon…”

      How the heck did she get back to Europe?

      3. after arriving via train from Lisbon

        I wonder how much diesel was burned on that train?

        Shouldn’t she have ridden a donkey from Lisbon to Madrid? That would have been more “green”.

    2. “In October, Thunberg received criticism from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said “Go and explain to developing countries why they should continue living in poverty and not be like Sweden.””

      Indeed.

      I also like the tweet pointing out that “There is no one more privileged than the white girl refusing to go to school until literally everyone on earth changes the weather for her.”

      1. Biden clearly has an anger management issue. The way he was talking there was scaring the women and children. The rage was percolating very near the surface. I think he was just about to uncork a “fata$$” but caught himself.

        1. “I think he was just about to uncork a “fata$$” but caught himself.”

          That’s the fact Jack! 🙂

      2. And challenged him to a contest of pushups. I think a contest of throwing hay bales into the loft would have been more appropriate.

  22. Beijing shifts from EV subsidies to setting quotas for automakers
    Electrek
    Bradley Berman
    Dec. 6th 2019

    “China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Tuesday released its 15-year EV plan. The “draft development” plan sets a target for EVs to account for 25% of annual new light-vehicle sales by 2025 ­— with no targets specified beyond that year. That’s up from the 20% goal it set two years ago. But Beijing plans to continue phasing out consumer incentives. Instead, it will create EV quotas for carmakers to meet.”

    “In other words, foreign automakers making gas cars will subsidize indigenous China EV makers.”

    1. The “draft development” plan sets a target for EVs to account for 25% of annual new light-vehicle sales by 2025

      How many coal fired power plants will the Chinese have to build to charge all those cars?

  23. Sacramento, CA Housing Prices Crater 19% YOY On Rampant Mortgage And Appraisal Fraud

    https://www.zillow.com/sacramento-ca-95825/home-values/

    *Select price from dropdown menu on first chart

    As a noted economist said so eloquently, “A house is a rapidly depreciating asset that empties your wallet every day you own it. Rent a house for half the monthly cost of buying it.”

  24. When this current everything bubble is finally relegated to the dustbin of history, I believe “crypto” will be looked back upon with scorn and ridicule.

  26. ‘Uber, as part of a long-anticipated safety report, revealed that more than 3,000 sexual assaults were reported during its U.S. rides in 2018. That figure includes 235 rapes across the company’s 1.3 billion rides last year. The ride-hailing company noted that drivers and riders were both attacked and that some assaults occurred between riders.’

    ‘In 2017, the company counted 2,936 reported sexual assaults – including 229 rapes – during 1 billion U.S. trips. Uber bases its numbers on reports from riders and drivers, meaning the actual numbers could be much higher. Sexual assaults commonly go unreported.’

    “I suspect many people will be surprised at how rare these incidents are; others will understandably think they’re still too common,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi tweeted about the report. “Some people will appreciate how much we’ve done on safety; others will say we have more work to do. They will all be right.”

    ‘Mike Bomberger, a lawyer representing more than 100 victims of sexual assault in lawsuits against Uber and Lyft, applauded Uber for releasing the numbers. “One of the problems with both of these companies is that they have hidden and have tried to conceal the number of sexual assaults that occur in their vehicles,” he said.’

    ‘In response, an Uber spokesperson pointed to the just-released report. Lyft called Bomberger’s charge “baseless.”

    https://www.theitem.com/stories/uber-reports-more-than-3000-sexual-assaults-on-2018-us-rides,337646

    1. As the U.S. stock market explores record territory, a race to the Brexit is underway in U.K. property funds.

      1. FTfm
        Property funds
        UK property investors pull cash at fastest rate this year
        Redemptions follow M&G’s decision to suspend trading in £2.5bn fund
        Some funds, including a large product from Standard Life Aberdeen, held more than 10 per cent in cash at the end of November © EPA
        Attracta Mooney an hour ago

        Investors fled UK property funds at the tail-end of the week faster than at any point this year as concerns brew over a repeat of the crisis that engulfed the sector following the EU referendum.

        Almost £57m was pulled from property funds on Thursday, the worst day all year for real estate fund outflows, according to Calastone, a global funds transaction network. The redemptions came after M&G, the UK asset manager, announced it was halting trading in its £2.5bn real estate product.

        The large-scale redemptions on Thursday are the clearest sign yet that rival property funds are suffering in the wake of M&G’s decision to gate its fund on Wednesday. The outflows echo 2016 when investors, anxious about the outcome of the Brexit vote, quickly pulled cash over fears they could be locked in their investments, spurring a domino effect of property fund suspensions.

        Edward Glyn, head of global markets at Calastone, said that “fears of further fund suspensions have spooked investors in property funds” this week.

        “Investor reaction is understandable though counterproductive as it may result in a self-fulfilling prophecy [of funds being forced to close].”

        He added: “Investors should be mindful that property is a long-term investment, and buildings are not ATMs dispensing cash. If you think you need rapid access to your savings, there may be other, more suitable savings products you should consider first.”
        …

    1. Three years of telling viewers that the economy is close to collapse and that the Russian/Trump connection would be imminently proven. After a while even a moron starts to figure out that he, she or zi is being lied to daily.

  29. Bonita Springs, FL Housing Prices Crater 10% YOY As Gulf Coast Housing Market Turns Toxic On Rampant Mortgage Fraud

    https://www.zillow.com/bonita-springs-fl-34134/home-values/

    *Select price from dropdown menu on first chart

    As a noted economist said so eloquently, “A house is a rapidly depreciating asset that empties your wallet every day you own it. Rent a house for half the monthly cost of buying it.”

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