thehousingbubble@gmail.com
Blog

The Straightforward Way To Clear Out The Overhang Is To Reduce The Price

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “The St. George Metropolitan Area has ranked among the fastest-growing areas in the country for decades. But now, there are signs of a slowdown. Construction is down substantially from its peak in 2016 and 2017. But Vardell Curtis, CEO of the Washington County Board of Realtors, says that’s not necessarily a bad thing. ‘I think what we’re actually seeing is the market adjusting itself based on supply and demand,’ he said. ‘It’s more a tapping of the brakes than it is a crash.'”

“The leaders of a newly combined real estate company are bullish on the housing markets in Bloomington-Normal and Peoria, despite slowing sales and a dip in prices in 2019. ‘We’re in a bottleneck. I wouldn’t say the market is bad. But we’re just in a temporary stall,’ said Tammy Heard, executive vice president at Peoria-based Jim Maloof/Realtor. ‘We need to get it moving. In the absence of new construction, there’s not a lot of inventory out there that’s appealing at the moment.'”

“After years on the market, LUMINA recently announced another major price cut to its two remaining penthouses. High-rise high-rollers can now pick up the smaller of the two condos, which are still in an unfinished ‘shell’ stage, for a mere $7,495,000. The larger unit is asking just under $10 million. These two penthouses first came to market as one enormous full-floor unit in 2015 with an asking price of $49 million. This nearly 15,000-square-foot two-level unit would have been the biggest condo sale ever in San Francisco if it had sold anywhere near that price. But the glass-surrounded unit didn’t sell, even after several rounds of price cuts.”

“Manhattan residents have watched skinny condominium skyscrapers rise across the island. From 2011 to 2019, the average price of a newly listed condo in New York soared from $1.15 million to $3.77 million. But the bust is upon us. Today, nearly half of the Manhattan luxury-condo units that have come onto the market in the past five years are still unsold, according to The New York Times.”

“A Grosse Isle mansion that was under construction for more than a decade, and listed for $29 million in 2018, has sold for far $2.95 million, Sarah Rahal of The Detroit News reports. It was only 75-percent completed.”

“The Nashville, TN, mansion owned by former NFL star Jay Cutler and reality TV vet Kristin Cavallari had its price slashed yet again this week. The $800,000 reduction reignited interest in the property, propelling it to the top of this week’s most popular homes. In 2018, the couple listed the mansion for $7.9 million, and its asking price has been falling steadily ever since. It’s now available for $4.9 million, and the current price represents a 38% drop over two years.”

“The Baton Rouge metro area in 2019 saw the largest year-over-year uptick in foreclosure starts among the nation’s largest metros, according to a recent market report. Baton Rouge was included with five metros that have populations near 1 million residents that saw a double-digit percent increase in foreclosure starts from last year, reporting a 43% spike in lenders starting the foreclosure process. It was followed by Atlanta (25%); Salt Lake City, (17%); Orlando, Florida (16%); and Portland, Oregon (16%).”

“Louisiana was among 14 states seeing a year-over-year increase in foreclosure starts (11%), trailing Rhode Island (54%); Mississippi (39%); Georgia (24%); and Arkansas (14%). Experts say the continued decline in distressed properties points to a much-improved housing market, but note there is ‘some reason for concern about the potential for a change in the wrong direction,’ given that residential foreclosure starts increased in about one-third of the nation’s metro housing markets in 2019.”

“Luckily, the condo shortage may not last long. In Greater Vancouver, many apartment buildings currently under construction are expected to be completed in the next two years, noted Thomas Davidoff, professor of real estate finance at the University of British Columbia. ‘A lack of inventory in the condo market in Vancouver — I am not convinced that by the end of this year that will be the story,’ he said. In the Prairies and Newfoundland and Labrador, on the other hand, there are still lots of homes in search of buyers. Sellers are loath to take a big price cut, so the market has been adjusting slowly, added CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart.”

“The future of house raffles is in doubt after ticket sellers and punters alike labelled the prize draws ‘a nightmare.’ Lord Roger Hickman said: ‘It was hell. I’ve been harassed, chased in the street and I had to shut my Facebook page because I got so much abuse. I sold the property on the open market in the end. We ended up losing money but I was just glad to be rid of it. I can honestly say it’s one of the worst experiences of my life.'”

“According to the Knesset Research and Information Center, in 2017 there were some 163,000 empty apartments in Israel, of which around 73,000 had been unoccupied for long periods and were termed ‘ghost apartments. ‘It’s crazy,’ says Esther Fuerster, who lives in a new residential tower block on Jaffa Road, overlooking the shuk. ‘We live in this new building, and only a small number of the apartments are occupied. You have all these places, like Mamila (David’s Village) with no one living there. It’s not a nice feeling.'”

“In a first, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has decreased the rates of flats in Commonwealth Games (CWG) village by over 30%. When the CWG village came up about a decade ago, some luxury three-bedroom flats in the residential complex were sold for above Rs 7 crore, but there were no takers for them. Thus, the DDA is now trying to find buyers for unsold flats and has brought the prices down to Rs 4 crore. ‘It is a fact that the market rate has gone down. It is less than the price at which we had launched in 2010. Keeping in mind the market scenario, we have reduced the price for the first time and if needed, will do it again,’ another source told the news daily.”

“House prices should be lowered to effectively address the property overhang problem in the country and prices should be dictated by the market (buyers), said CBRE WTW managing director Foo Gee Jen. ‘The straightforward way to clear out the overhang situation is to reduce the price. It’s supply and demand,’ he said.”

“Given the subdued economic growth in 2019, Singapore saw the number of auction listings, including repeat listings, jump 23.9% year-on-year to 1,387 in 2019, revealed a Knight Frank report. The residential sector saw the number of listings under mortgagee sale increase for the third year in a row, rising 62.6% year-on-year to 356. ‘From 2014 to 2017, the surge in mortgage sale listings was due to higher retrenchments, hikes in interest rates, and drop in rental payments. However, from 2018 to 2019, the rise in listings seemed to correlate with more applications for bankruptcies and increased volatility within the equity markets. Slowing economic growth and the trade war between China and United States also led to an accumulation of bad debts and a fall in top-line growths, pressurising some owners to default on mortgage payments.'”

“The wheels are coming off the world’s biggest auto market after decades of blistering growth. In Tangshan, around five of the 30 dealerships in the Lunan Car Culture Industrial Park have closed in the past year, dealers said. Abandoned furniture sits in empty showrooms, while ‘For Rent’ signs appear behind shuttered glass doors. Similar scenes are unfolding across small and midsize cities like Tangshan that supercharged China’s auto-market expansion in recent years.”

“Pangda expanded rapidly, growing to more than 700 stores by late 2015. But as the company invested in land and the market slowed, debts mounted. Pangda said it has closed more than 300 stores. When Pangda listed, ‘the overall Chinese auto market was booming and growing rapidly,’ the company’s new president, Zhao Tieliu, said in an interview. ‘No one could see at that time the market was at a saturated stage and would quickly go down.'”

“Melbourne’s rental market has turned to become more favourable for tenants. Some houses were sitting on the market for a little longer than normal with renters spoilt for choice. ‘It is flooded for new houses,’ said Hodges Werribee director and property manager Melanie Simmonds.”

Related Posts

Someone Got Hosed

A report from the Globe and Mail. "It’s a troubling question that has been echoing…

This Post Has 108 Comments

  1. ‘When Pangda listed, ‘the overall Chinese auto market was booming and growing rapidly,’ the company’s new president, Zhao Tieliu, said in an interview. ‘No one could see at that time the market was at a saturated stage and would quickly go down.’

    Two words Zhao: flying cars.

    1. “…Zhao Tieliu, said in an interview. ‘No one could see at that time the market was at a saturated stage and would quickly go down….”

      Zhao Tieliu So as president, ‘experts’ are only ‘experts’ until the point ‘you couldn’t see it coming’? Is that why they pay you the big bucks?

      1. What will make this even more interesting is the trend of the PRC letting government owned enterprises fail without a bailout.

      1. So the realtors here are right. Tech money will keep RE prices to the moon regardless of needle tossing on your front lawn. My FOMO is threw the roof, not!

      2. I’m sure that the FAA is just fine with AI’s flying these “taxis”, or with unlicensed people flying them.

      3. ‘Rothenberg ran a successful self-promotion campaign that put him on the map very quickly. The 28-year old launched his fund in 2012, and from 2012 to 2016 the Nasdaq Composite nearly doubled, from a low of around 2,700 to more than 5,000. It was in 2016 that the index, a benchmark for high-tech industries, at least broke above its dotcom-bubble highs.’

        ‘But it was just around then, in the summer of 2016, that Rothenberg’s business began to come apart at the seams. TechCrunch first broke the news that multiple senior figures had abruptly left the company amid rumors of the SEC probe.’

        ‘Court documents revealed just how much outside investors are willing to pay for the dream of striking gold in Silicon Valley.’

        https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-former-silicon-valley-party-animal-gets-hit-with-a-31-million-hangover-2020-01-15

  2. ‘Baton Rouge was included with five metros that have populations near 1 million residents that saw a double-digit percent increase in foreclosure starts from last year, reporting a 43% spike in lenders starting the foreclosure process. It was followed by Atlanta (25%); Salt Lake City, (17%); Orlando, Florida (16%); and Portland, Oregon (16%). Louisiana was among 14 states seeing a year-over-year increase in foreclosure starts’

    1. ‘Jonaki Ray took a loan to buy an apartment in 2009 that has tied up her life savings for more than a decade. To pay for her mortgage, and an apartment she has rented in the meantime, she stopped splurging on things like vacations abroad and a new car. Ms. Ray has finally been given the keys to the unit, but still has no plans to move in. She has to finish the interiors on her own, and she is worried about safety as no one else on her floor has moved in. “There is this thing looming over me and I don’t know what is going to happen,” she said. “It’s always there at the back of my head.”

      ‘Stuck home buyers in the hundreds of “ghost towns” now dotting the outlying areas of New Delhi, Mumbai and other urban centers face a situation that some here liken to America’s much larger subprime crisis. Builders have run out of money and can’t get new loans. People who put down payments have waited through years of delays and court cases and still may not ever get their homes or refunds.’

      2. “There is this thing looming over me and I don’t know what is going to happen,” she said. “It’s always there at the back of my head.”

        Sorry, Ms. Ray, but as a content renter, I just can’t relate.

      2. I can’t answer that.

        What I can tell you is that Real Journalists are already scripting the narrative that this is Charlottesville 2.0, an example of which is the esteemed New York Times publishing an article titled “Virginia Capital on Edge as F.B.I. Arrests Suspected Neo-Nazis Before Gun Rally” (archive link provided because we don’t give clicks and ad revenue to Real Journalists):

        http://archive.is/tXLHh

        Grabbers gonna grab.

        Globalists gonna globe.

        Prepare accordingly…

  6. Falling prices reduce inventory, unless they cause would-be future sellers to rush to the market before things get worse.

    As in Baby Boomers selling suburban houses and stocks.

    1. I know some people who just started calling around for info on assisted living places. They were immediately bombarded with call backs slashing rates, fees, etc. One said, “these AL places are kinda desperate!”

      1. It’s as though they all made a huge bet on this massive surge of retiring boomers all flush with cash and dying to get out of their homes.

        There’s a market, but they way, way overshot supply.

        1. “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” – Charles MacKay

      3. Sunrise (it’s a chain) called me a few times after I first called them this summer. It was obviously a sales call, but they were cordial and professional. We decided for a small, privately owned AL home with only 8 residents instead.

        The only reason I called Sunrise is because a friend’s father moved there when his Parkinson’s deteriorated to the point that living on your own was no longer an option, and visiting there it looked clean and professional, and he said they took good care of him there.

        Private AL was $5,000 a month, private room, summer 2019 in the South Denver suburbs.

    2. “Falling prices reduce inventory”

      Just like how rising prices reduced demand? In bubblenomics normal rules of supply and demand are suspended.

        1. Yeah I learned here long ago how the rules of speculation are the opposite of the rules of of a normal market.

    1. That Oracle is moving it’s OpenWorld convention to Vegas speaks volumes of what is happening in the Bay Area. But city leadership won’t budge, the Narrative comes before billions in lost revenue. I hope they aren’t counting on a Sanders administration to bail them out.

      Used to be you’d leave your heart in San Francisco. These days people are leaving something else, on the sidewalks.

    2. (snip)

      “For San Franciscans, complaints about the city’s issues are nothing new — and the idea of wealthy business travelers complaining about street poverty has sparked ridicule.”

      Hmmmm … let’s read on and possibly learn about biting the hands that feed them …

      “’My dream would be that they’d see this as an opportunity to reflect on the humanity of others,’ said Kelley Cutler, human rights organizer at the Coalition On Homelessness. ‘I feel like it’s a missed opportunity when people are just seeing the homeless as a nuisance and trash and seeing the solution as just sweeping them away.’”

      1. Opportunity to do… what? Build apartments for the homeless at $750K per door, while everyone has to pay their hard-earned money for same? Why do the homeless need to be housed in the city? It’s not as if they need to be near a job.

        1. Nobody in charge is asking the right questions or addressing the cause of the problem. If you don’t address the cause, you can’t affect change. It’s like having a leaking roof but repairing the ceiling drywall every month. It’s an exercise in futility. Until you fix the roof leak, you cannot address the drywall and mold issue.

          The main factor in the explosion in homelessness is the hyperinflation in rents. That is a result of the biggest real estate bubble in history. Politicians should be doing everything they can to get the government out of the loan guarantee business in order to take the steam out of the bubble. They won’t. So, we will never see an end to this homelessness problem until the market corrects on its own, despite all of their efforts to the contrary.

          1. wouldn’t the homeless problem be 10x worse after a crash, because so many people left their homes last time, after they got a notice of default, and still had years before a judge would evict them? Or are people going to stay put this time and say I aint movin till i see that signed warrant in your hands sheriff. aka no more jingle mail.

      2. My dream would be that they’d see this as an opportunity to reflect on the humanity of others,’ said Kelley Cutler, human rights organizer at the Coalition On Homelessness.

        They’re more likely to reflect on the fact that San Francisco has gone off the rails and is a place best avoided.

  8. OT:

    Would you like to own your own Boeing Dreamliner? Mexico is considering a raffle to unload Presidential plane:

    https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/amlo-podrian-rifar-avion-presidencial-boleto-costaria-500-pesos

    Link is in Spanish, but Chrome should be able to translate it

    The 787 was delivered to the previous Mexican administration, and is configured as a private jet and not as an airliner. Mexico’s current president, AMLO, promised during his campaign that he would sell it and use the proceeds for social programs. During his first months in office he would fly on scheduled commercial airliners (in coach!), until his staff told him it was too dangerous (I think it was a stunt). He now travels on smaller executive jets.

    So, the airplane has been on the market for about a year, and there have been no takers at the current asking price: $130 million USD. If it were to be reconfigured for commercial service its interior would have to be gutted and replaced with the usual cattle car arrangement, which costs $$$. Rather than lower the price and get rid of it, AMLO is proposing a raffle where a ticket costs $500 pesos (~25 USD). Six million tickets would, in theory, be sold (good luck with that). I guess he decided that he “isn’t going to give it away”.

    Anyway, these are the kind of goofy things AMLO does. There were rumors that he approached Trump as a buyer, but I guess he doesn’t need a private plane now. Does he still have that 757? The previous Mexican Presidential plane was a 757.

    1. ” sell it and use the proceeds for social programs.”

      Talk about killing the goose. Why not rent it out and create an income stream for said social programs?

      1. AMLO has gone crazy selling stuff. The Dreamliner isn’t the only airplane they’re trying to unload, it just stands out because it’s brand new. He already auctioned off armored limos and Suburbans that the previous administration used.

        As to why sell it instead of leasing it out (say like a charter jet), simple: He’s virtue signalling. He made a big deal about how the sale of the aircraft (and everything he’s been auctioning off) is going to help the country’s poorest people. In the big picture it’s peanuts, and he’s running out of stuff to sell.

        Meanwhile the business community, both Mexican and International, think he’s a crackpot, and investment, especially foreign investment, has ground to a halt.

        Mexico is going to be in a world of hurt soon. Expect the Mexodus to return.

  9. Firms are still buying up apartments.

    “What’s being hailed as one of the largest U.S. apartment sales ever includes nine North Texas rental communities.

    Virginia-based Harbor Group International paid $1.85 billion for the more than 13,000 apartments in markets including Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Houston, San Antonio, Atlanta, Orlando, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo.

    The transaction is the largest such apartment sale since 2016 and the fifth-largest ever in the U.S.”

    That’s $142k per door if my math is correct….seems kinda high to me!

    https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2020/01/16/more-than-3000-d-fw-apartments-sell-as-part-of-185-billion-deal/

    1. The biggest everything bubble in the history of the world isn’t going to die easily. It’s proving to be extremely persistent.

  10. Area has ranked among the fastest-growing areas in the country for decades. But now, there are signs of a slowdown.

    A community with no real economy, dependent on well to do retirees and people driving through, stopping to fill up the tank and grab a burger before hitting the road again.

    No on could have seen it coming.

    1. I suppose the job growth was mostly in the construction sector? I don’t really understand how these tumbleweed towns even boom.

  11. “The Nashville, TN, mansion owned by former NFL star Jay Cutler and reality TV vet Kristin Cavallari had its price slashed yet again this week.”

    I wonder how long it will be before former NFL star Antonio Brown is slashing the price on his home?

    Antonio Brown films disturbing profanity-laced tirade against police, mother of his children

    WRITTEN BY
    SARA JANE HARRIS
    5 hours ago

    Editor’s note: The contents within this article are disturbing and contain offensive language.

    WARNING: Video contains offensive language.

    https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/antonio-brown-films-disturbing-profanity-laced-tirade-against-police-mother-of-his-children/kimowqlx5i4g1os4iwuy44xjt

    2. The Cutler mansion itself has what I would consider dangerous flooring in the kitchen. It’s rough brick that’s a little uneven. Massive trip hazard, even for the young and healthy. Don’t even thing of asking Grandma to visit.

      1. Brick flooring? That seems really stupid. Function over form for me. I can’t even imagine how uncomfortable it would be to walk on bricks every day.

          1. I don’t think those floor tiles are set improperly. They have a convex curve to give a basket weave appearance to the whole floor. Not that I like it.

  12. This year so far reminds me of 2000. Crazy stock market advances continue into the new decade. I think it all blew up in March 2000 ?

    1. I think it all blew up in March 2000 ?

      I’ve been thinking about that too. I’m always thinking there will be a 1929 crash someday but with unlimited printing maybe that’s impossible. So spring of 2000 may be a better comparison…except with a housing bubble on top of it.

      1. unlimited printing

        Here’s the catch. It’s unlimited lending. Greed without insight borrows. Fear doesn’t so much.

        It’s mania. You can enable a mania, but you cannot prevent the eventual crash and burn. As in individual dealings, when you enable a mania you are not helping, you are adding to the severity of the destruction.

    2. That’s what I was telling a friend. I expect a 2000-style crash, not a 2008 crash. But even now I’m not sure.

      Only now am I learning that big business and governments execute daily operations by borrowing, spending, and then using the meager revenue to pay minimum payments on what is effectively an I/O, or even negative amortization loan. Absolutely NOBODY in the finance industry expects any principle to be paid back, much less in full. Liquidity my butt. This is all one blob of insolvency.

      However, little guy retiree needs these bonds to be paid back, because he can’t just live off interest. He’ll need to sell. It’s at that point we’ll find out that bonds aren’t worth much. One very possible outcome isn’t a 2000-crash — more like an Argentine or Venezuela type hyperinflation. Oh, we’ll get our dollars back. But what will those dollars buy? A few hours of Wiemar-like fuel for the furnace?

      1. “I expect a 2000-style crash…”

        That was an expensive crash. Greenspan figured that the consumer economy could be goosed surreptitiously with easy access to home equity, and here we are today with corporations, governments and many individuals up to their proverbial eye-teeth in debt.

  14. Competition for hugest price cut is heating up. We should have prizes.

    “full-floor unit in 2015 with an asking price of $49 million”

    $49 million down to $17.5 million. That’s -64% and neither has sold yet. $31.5 million theoretical dollars – poof.

    “listed for $29 million in 2018, has sold for far $2.95 million”

    -90% in 2 years. And they still overpaid. This is probably the winner for biggest theoretical dollars vanished in the shortest amount of time.

  15. Sellers are loath to take a big price cut, so the market has been adjusting slowly, added CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart.”

    Buyers are even more loath to buy into a bursting housing bubble. I can tell you who is going to blink first in this stand-off, Shaun. Hint: Fear has replaced greed.

  16. I was zillowing around and for some reason checked out Cheyenne, WY. I was stunned to see that even the smaller homes on small lots were around $200K. There can’t be much industry in Cheyenne. It must be equity locusts from CA. Or supercommuters driving 45+ miles to Loveland and Fort Collins.

    (meanwhile, the same type houses go for $125K outside Cincinnati.)

    Darnit, and I figured that if all else failed, I could retire in WY and escape the identity politics. But it looks like even WY will be infected.

      1. Cheyenne is a small town, and the nearest bigger city is Fort Collins, 1 hr away. Denver is 2 hours away.

        If you like small and quiet, and don’t mind cold windy winters, Cheyenne could be nice. I see a lot of license plates with the cowboy on the bucking horse in Fort Collins on weekends.

    2. “…and escape the identity politics.”

      LOL…there was even chatter about making 007 a woman, but it looks like a wiser woman shutdown that idea.

    3. There can’t be much industry in Cheyenne.

      There is military and state government and a bit of old school railroad and agriculture. I was a candidate for command of the national guard band there in another life.

      The problem is that the trends and national events affect Wyoming later than other states. This means that prices there hadn’t even started to fall yet in 2010ish before the runway foam started to arrive. We as a nation learned a bit from the last bubble pop but were saved from the big lessons. They learned nothing.

    4. Cheyenne is the state capital, so that’s a factor, there are .gov jobs. Some oil and mining firms have offices there. That said, it’s small, about 60,000 people. I don’t think there are too many commuters from Cheyenne to Fort Collins as the commute can be hard in the winter and I-25 is closed sporadically when winter storms hit.

      Wyoming has no state income tax and property taxes are low. But it hasn’t seen the population growth that Larimer and Weld counties have had.

    5. “I could retire in WY and escape the identity politics.”

      I think they show the Golden Globes in Wyoming.

      “We were going to do an ‘In Memoriam’ (segment) this year, but when I saw the list of people that had died, it wasn’t diverse enough. It was mostly white people. I thought, ‘Not on my watch.'”

      Ricky Gervais

  18. Ya gotta love this Elon Musk guy …

    Elon Musk says he plans to send 1 million people to Mars by 2050 by launching 3 Starship rockets every day and creating ‘a lot of jobs’ on the red planet
    https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-says-plans-send-221200960.html

    (snip)

    Musk said he hopes to build 1,000 Starships — the towering and ostensibly fully reusable spaceship that SpaceX is developing in South Texas — over 10 years. That’s 100 new Starships per year.

    Eventually, Musk added, the goal is to launch an average of three Starships per day and make the trip to Mars available to anybody.

    “Needs to be such that anyone can go if they want, with loans available for those who don’t have money,” Musk wrote.

    Not enough to convince you to leave Earth behind?

    “There will be a lot of jobs on Mars!” he added.

    😁

      1. what exactly we are going to produce

        Guys like us just lack “vision”.

        Anyway, I suggest that it’s not about producing anything in particular, it’s about the stock price.

    2. Has anybody asked him about the environmental damage from all of those rockets? These libtards are the worst.

    3. “There will be a lot of jobs on Mars!” he added.

      They will need to be self sufficient to succeed, I just have no idea of how they will do that. Mars has virtually no atmosphere, no surface water, it’s Antarctic cold and has no magnetic field to protect it from solar radiation.

      We are told that if Earth temperatures go up 2C that it’s the end of the world and we’re all gonna die. And in the same breath they tell us that Mars colonization is viable.

      1. Exactly Colorado. During the last interglacial period it was 2 degrees warmer and our ancestors did fine. Are they saying we are dumber than we were 100,000 years ago? OK maybe I have to give them that one.

      2. We are told that if Earth temperatures go up 2C that it’s the end of the world and we’re all gonna die. And in the same breath they tell us that Mars colonization is viable.

        Good point. I think it’s viable in the same sense that it was viable to send me to China for months at a time on a Silicon Valley salary, staying in $300/night hotels, and eating similarly priced food with a driver taking me to work every day. It was only viable because I was being supported from below by a firehose of spewing money straight up in order to keep me suspended in mid-air for as long as necessary to make or break the big millions-of-dollars deal that I was there to help make happen. Firehose of money…that kind of viable.

    2. Tons of New Apartments Are Being Built That Almost No One Can Afford

      If the market is allowed to work they will become affordable.

    1. Perhaps when those children are older, they’ll learn how democratic government works. The adults using them as pawns are not setting a good example.

  22. Waiting for the break of day
    Searching for something to say
    Flashing lights against the sky
    Giving up I close my eyes
    Sitting cross-legged on the floor
    25 or 6 to 4

    25 Or 6 To 4
    by Chicago

    This was written by Robert Lamm, who is a keyboard player and singer for Chicago. It’s about trying to write a song, with the title referring to the time of day: either 3:35 a.m. (25 to 4) or 3:34 a.m. (26 to 4). Lamm explained on The Chris Isaak Hour: “I was living with a bunch of hippies up above Sunset Strip. One of the advantages of this particular house was that it was in the Hollywood Hills and I could look out over the city late at night. I wanted to try to describe the process of writing the song that I was writing. So, ‘waiting for the break of day, searching for something to say, flashing lights against the sky’ – there was a neon sign across the city. That song came from the fact that it was 25 or 6 to 4 a.m. in the morning when I looked at my watch – I was looking for a line to finish the chorus.

    There are a lot of unsubstantiated rumors regarding the meaning behind this song’s lyrics. A popular rumor is that “6 to 4” was a nickname for LSD, because if you dropped acid at 6 p.m., the effects of the drug would wear off by 4 a.m., 10 hours later.

    Peter Cetera sang lead on this track – despite his jaw being wired shut. A few months before the recording session, the band went to a baseball game at Dodger Stadium, where their hometown team, the Chicago Cubs, beat the Dodgers, leaving four marines angry and ready to take their aggression out on someone. That someone was Cetera, who was singled out by his long hair as much as his team loyalty. The ensuing brawl sent him to intensive care with a jaw broken in three places. When it came time to record the song, his jaw was still wired shut.

    “He had to learn to sing differently,” producer James Guercio told Mix magazine. “I told him, ‘I can’t wait, we’re gonna do this.'”

    Cetera did his vocal through clenched teeth, which he adopted as a trademark singing style. After he left the band in 1985, his replacement, Jason Scheff, took over vocal duties on this song.

    https://www.songfacts.com/facts/chicago/25-or-6-to-4

    Chicago – 25 Or 6 To 4 (HD)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUAYeN3Rp2E

    1. I went back to listen to the song on youtube just now, when I did I hit the “show more” in the description which dropped the lyrics down so I could read them as the song played. I had known what 25 or 6 to 4 a.m meant in the song, but in the 50 years of hearing this song (although not in a long time) I never knew about Peter Cetera’s jaw being broken and wired shut.

      Besides having a much greater appreciation for the guitar solo, after listening to the song while reading the lyrics the “sh” sound of “Flashing lights against the sky” and “Getting up to splash my face” definitely sounds like it came from a dude with a wired jaw. He had trouble with the ch words too.

  23. Why I don’t want to live in Anchorage Alaska.

    Reason # 27

    Camera records moose trapping Alaska man in shed

    By DAN JOLING Associated Press
    Posted on Jan 17, 2020

    ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska man carrying garbage to his shed had to take cover inside when a curious bull moose decided to join him.

    “He’s like, let me know when I can get out of the shed,” she said Friday. “I’m stuck in the shed.”

    https://www.wfsb.com/watch-camera-records-moose-trapping-alaska-man-in-shed/article_994154e1-952c-5083-9bd9-6fc8d80f203d.html

    1. Love the way the moose looks straight at the camera. “What?”

      Jeez, that’s an disturbing collection of articles/videos in the right column. Mother who wanted “me time” and lets her kid drown in the bathtub, old guy pushed backwards down stairs and killed, father threatening and head butting (!) his younger daughter and abusing her dogs and finally something about Snoop Dogg, already forgot what it showed but never forget he was a pimp at one time. Someone at the station has a real eye for content. Sick.

      1. “Jeez, that’s an disturbing collection of articles/videos in the right column.’

        You’re right.

        I hadn’t even noticed, I was all taken up with the moose.

        1. Well, the moose was awesome.
          Re: baby in bathtub article
          I had a neighbor (btw, RE agent) in NY who often mentioned “me time” and I always wanted to punch her in the face. She had a miserable little girl (I wonder why) who was rotten to my kid. That didn’t help.

Comments are closed.