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Now They’re Stuck Having To Peddle Them One By One

A report from Knowledge Wharton. “Susan Wachter, Wharton professor of real estate and finance, noted that at the top end, housing prices have moderated and are decreasing in major markets like New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and said that was ‘due to a supply response to price increases in the new home luxury market.’ As it happens, the pipeline of new housing supply is increasing in those markets despite a fall in demand, said Wachter. That, she said, is because of a rise in construction starts in those markets in response to prior price increases. ‘The demand and supply side factors continue to contribute to price declines in these markets, and 2020 is likely to see further downward price adjustments in the high-end markets in these cities,’ she added.”

From Nasdaq. “Growth indicators for Lennar in the final quarter of the fiscal year, such as deliveries and new orders, were up smartly at 16% and 23% respectively. While deliveries were up 16%, revenue rose by only 8%, which was a result of lower average sale prices. Average sales prices fell from $413,000 to $400,000.”

The Bucks County Courier Times in Pennsylvania. “The Middletown planning commission voted 6-0 Wednesday night to not recommend approval of 111 townhomes on Woodbourne Road. Lisa Bowman, who owns a rental property very close to the proposed townhomes, added she’s been unable to sell the property because of fears the townhomes might be coming and worsen traffic. ‘The reason she couldn’t sell the property is because it’s overpriced,’ responded Lennar attorney Allen Toadvine, a claim denied by Bowman.”

The Clarksville Leaf Chronicle in Tennessee. “Edsel Charles, one of the leading housing market analysts in the nation, has been high on Clarksville-Montgomery County and its economy for many years. Charles urged a continued healthy ratio of new construction to new, unoccupied home inventory. ‘In Montgomery County, if we get in a position of having more than 32% of all housing that we have going sitting finished and unoccupied, that’s really disturbing to me,’ Charles said.”

“That rate is currently 25%, which Charles considers to be within the desirable inventory range. ‘It’s not just about putting up houses. It’s about putting up houses and making money.’ There are 2,019 home lots in Montgomery County’s developed inventory, according to Charles. There are 501 homes under construction in the county, and 206 that are newly finished and unoccupied.”

From WFAA in Texas. “Homes now on the market at or about $750,000 come in a wide range of sizes, ages and conditions, says Ben Caballero, CEO of Dallas-based HomesUSA. Right now, there are 132 new and pre-owned homes for sale in North Texas counties priced between $740,000 and $760,000, Caballero said. In the past year, 108 homes sold in the $740,000 to $760,000 range in North Texas. The number of sales at the price point and the number of listings works out to a 14.7-month inventory of homes on the market, Caballero said. ‘It’s a buyer’s market,’ he said.”

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. “The median price paid for a single-family home in San Francisco fell to $1.45 million in December, down 10.4% from November and down 3.3% from December 2018. That was the worst showing of any Bay Area county. Prices in all of Alameda County fell 2.1% last year. Prices were also down in Marin, San Mateo and Sonoma counties. Of the nine Bay Area counties, Santa Clara had the biggest price drop, 5.6%. The median price in San Francisco hit a high in the second quarter of 2019, ‘probably driven by IPO hype,’ said Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst with Compass.”

“Jason Buttorf, a Compass agent in San Francisco, had a client who works for Slack. He and his wife had been renting in Golden Gate Heights and eyeing homes there for years. In July, shortly after Slack went public, their ‘dream home’ came on the market and they snapped it up for over $2.5 million. By the time fall rolled around, however, the market ‘was mysteriously quiet and uneventful,’ Buttorf said. Carlisle agreed. ‘The hype might have affected (the market) more than the reality,’ he said.”

From Forbes on New York. “Actress Jennifer Lawrence has lowered the asking price of her New York City penthouse for a second time in a move that reflects current conditions in the Manhattan luxury condo market. Many of New York’s unsold condos are the result of a boom since 2013 that has produced thousands of new units most city residents can’t afford, according to StreetEasy. Lawrence put her penthouse at The Laurel up for sale last July. Amid a downturn in the Upper East Side’s condo market, she has lowered the original price of $15.45 million to $14.25 million and now down to $12 million.”

From The Wall Street Journal on Florida. “One Thousand Museum, the futuristic, ultra luxury condo tower, isn’t sold out after nearly seven years on the market. Expensive and complicated to build, the 62-story tower has large units asking two to four times the average price a square foot for downtown Miami condos over $1 million. Many affluent buyers prefer beachfront homes, brokers said, and a pullback of international buyers has led to a slowdown in Miami’s condo market amid a glut of inventory.”

“Miami developers typically aim to presell 85-90% of their units before closings begin, said Peter Zalewski of Condo Vultures. ‘Now they’re stuck having to peddle them one by one. When you get into a situation like that, the only way to differentiate one unit from another is to cut the price or offer incentives.’ A challenge for One Thousand Museum is keeping prices up. There is a 5-year inventory of $1 million-plus condos in downtown Miami, said Mr. Zalewski.”

“One Thousand Museum is now moving into a crucial phase. The developers must sell the remaining units to pay the outstanding balance on their $256 million in construction loans, and they must do so in a soft market. Louis Birdman, one of the project’s developers, said prices, which range from just under $5 million to $25 million, are negotiable. Each floor has only one or two units, ranging in size from about 4,600 square feet to 10,400 square feet and each has at least four bedrooms. ‘Given what’s going on in the market now, I think all of us developers are competing for a similar buyer, so there’s obviously flexibility on price,’ he said.”

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  2. ‘A challenge for One Thousand Museum is keeping prices up. There is a 5-year inventory of $1 million-plus condos in downtown Miami, said Mr. Zalewski’

    There’s just one problem here WSJ:

    ‘prices, which range from just under $5 million to $25 million, are negotiable’

    There’s over a 20 year supply of airboxes over $3M down there. These guys are fooked.

    1. “One Thousand Museum is now moving into a crucial phase. The developers must sell the remaining units to pay the outstanding balance on their $256 million in construction loans, and they must do so in a soft market. Louis Birdman, one of the project’s developers, said prices, which range from just under $5 million to $25 million, are negotiable. Each floor has only one or two units, ranging in size from about 4,600 square feet to 10,400 square feet and each has at least four bedrooms. ‘Given what’s going on in the market now, I think all of us developers are competing for a similar buyer, so there’s obviously flexibility on price,’ he said.”

      Welp, Louis, looks like you built LUGGSURY when the market wanted affordable. Sucks to be you. Unless you can go back and chop those up into smaller, more affordable units, I see this whole thing going back to the lender.

  3. I’ve got so many crater articles I could have made 3 posts this morning.

    ‘The median price paid for a single-family home in San Francisco fell to $1.45 million in December, down 10.4% from November and down 3.3% from December 2018. That was the worst showing of any Bay Area county. Prices in all of Alameda County fell 2.1% last year. Prices were also down in Marin, San Mateo and Sonoma counties. Of the nine Bay Area counties, Santa Clara had the biggest price drop, 5.6%.’

    Worser. The SFC started off by saying it was the first drop in years. Bzzz, wrong.The bay aryan market has been sinking like a turd in a well for a year and a half at least.

    ‘The median price in San Francisco hit a high in the second quarter of 2019, ‘probably driven by IPO hype,’ said Patrick Carlisle’

    Of course, you didn’t have anything to do with that hype, right Pat?

        1. Mafia Blocks/Mortgage Watch has too much time on his/her hands and likes to mess with newbies… data view seems to be anchored in the 1980’s.

        2. He pulls all of those numbers out of his ass. You can pretty much cherry pick any data point you want from those sites, regardless of how much or how little they reflect reality.

        3. james jim

          I suggest you install drumminj’s Joshua Tree plug in into your browser. Once installed you can filter out those attention hungry posters who share nothing of value on this blog.

    2. lots of crater on the coasts for sure. Lack of foreign buyers, lack of IPO buyers, lack of “affordable” homes. MSM shills like Olick have focused in on the locust markets to keep the positive tone and its just a matter of time before the ebola spreads in those areas. Is this anything different than the last down cycles?

        1. “The locusts markets have the more affordable rents…”

          Totally disagree. The locust markets are even more overpriced than the city centers when you factor in local incomes.

    3. ‘The median price paid for a single-family home in San Francisco fell to $1.45 million in December, down 10.4% from November…’

      That’s an annualized rate of decline of
      ((1-0.104)^12-1)×100% = -73%. Ouch! Maybe not everyone wants to live where people use the sidewalks as latrines?

      And didn’t Christopher “Crow Breath” Thornberg say Bayaryan housing prices would never go down? Please post any recent quotes from him on this topic.

        1. Smoking cigarettes is no longer a cheap habit, but these homeless peeps seem to fit it into their budget.

          1. Around here they often ask for those and spare change. A couple gas stations i frequent are broken into often and they state cigarettes and lottery tickets are what get stolen

    4. Well, that phoney baloney money has to find somewhere to go…

      https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/markets/e2-80-98massive-amounts-of-money-e2-80-99-are-pouring-into-nordic-real-estate/ar-BBZ9V0n

      After years of negative interest rates across most of the Nordic region, real estate has emerged as the ultimate target for institutional investors desperately chasing returns. Last year saw a record for transactions — 44 billion euros ($49 billion) — across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, according to Pangea Property Partners. Shares in Nordic property firms are outperforming their European peers, and even their riskiest debt is coveted among investors.

      Alexander Stiris runs Citigroup Inc.’s Nordic corporate banking operations as head of the regional cluster. He says the real estate industry’s offerings of so-called hybrid bonds, which can be converted into equity, almost quadrupled in 2019. He also says investors are drawn to Scandinavia’s transparency and the relative ease with which assets can be traded.

      1. I thought about negative interest mortgages coming to the USA, hadn’t thought about trying to use them to invest in northern Europe. So is any of that sweet sweet negative interest money there available to foreign investors for buying houses that can only go up?

  6. “It’s not just about putting up houses. It’s about putting up houses and making money.”

    Supply and demand Charles. Easy fix to your balance sheet / profit margins is take the gains you have made over the last 8 years, stop building homes in a saturated market and sell the ones you have for what you can get. Like a car dealership with cars over flowing into the street, there is one proven method to unload your inventory, slash those prices!

  7. I heard actress Jennifer Lawrence quoted as saying she gravitated acting because in school she was good at it, and bad at everything else.

    Who the hell advised her to buy a condo? She is single, in a very uncertain career that requires her to be in different places at different times. There is no way to be sure which way her family life or career will go, and if she will want to be based in New York, Los Angeles, her native Kentucky, or somewhere else.

    This is exactly where the excess homeownership has been in this country. You shouldn’t buy unless and until your personal circumstances have settled, you are are reasonably certain you will want to be in a particular place for a long, long time, and will be able to be there.

    We bought a row house eight years after we were married, and have been here for 26 years. The next step is to downsize.

    1. ‘Taking a loss on the property might not faze one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood’

      It doesn’t say when she bought it (that I could find) but I’d bet it was during the mentioned boom. She was speculating. It takes many forms: too much house, one rarely used and a hotel would be better/cheaper, etc.

      1. “Taking a loss on the property might not faze one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood.”

        This is how the high paid actresses and athletes end up broke. Real estate.

    2. “Who the hell advised her to buy a condo?”

      You never actually own a Manhattan Penthouse. You merely look after it for the next generation.

      1. Yes they are peddling that one to the non-family values generation, with luxury goods. Total garbage.

        There are two kinds of people. Those who already have things from their grandparents to pass down.

        And those whose kids aren’t going to want their parents’ crap.

      2. You never actually own any real estate anymore, since the advent of “real estate taxes.” Try not paying them – they take your property. That’s what’s such a joke about this bubble – people competing with each other to overpay for the opportunity to continue funding the government coffers, not to mention the outrageous purchase price, maintenance and repair.

        That’s the main reason why I see this as a mania. Anybody who has ever owned a house knows what a hassle and money pit they are. Most people defer maintenance, too. They know their rotting shack has major issues, but they buy another bottle of whiskey and get blind drunk. Stupid motherfawkers.

        1. LOL if I wanted to leave my apartment tomorrow I could write a check to cover the rest of my lease, walk away, and rent somewhere else.

          Most loanowners are one missed paycheck away from loosing everything.

    3. “Who the hell advised her to buy a condo?”

      Don’t know about who advised her, but I am pretty sure about what the advice was:

      ‘You can’t go wrong in California buying real estate. California real estate always goes up.’

  9. “shortly after Slack went public, their ‘dream home’ came on the market and they snapped it up for over $2.5 million.

    Slack Technologies (WORK) has dropped from $37.22 to $22.46 since that IPO. I wonder if they sold their stock (options?) to buy the house, and I wonder which asset is losing value faster: the property or the stock.

      1. Don’t ask me why, but where I work we dumped IRC and switched to Slack; which surprised me as we use Open Office instead of MS Office, because it’s free.

        2. With Slack it’s really easy to bring multiple agency’s people together in a secure workspace, and the managers are able to figure out how to use it (yay!). The real benefit is being able to bring new people onboard, and get them up to speed.

          1. Couldn’t they have come up with a better name than Slack?! I admittedly know nothing about the company.

          2. Yeah, the name “slack” doesn’t inspire does it?

            Most of the projects I’ve been around couldn’t time the funding (cost authorities) with the optimal time of year to produce a good outcome. And when the funding is coming from multiply sources…think cluster f*. With Slack it really easy to keep everyone on the same page.

          3. I agree rms, its a game changer in the collaboration environment. At work we use webex/teams and ive used microsoft teams at another company. Slack provides ease of use and much less learning curve. “Slack me” actually sounds better than “teams me” IMO.

          4. “Slack me” actually sounds better than “teams me” IMO.

            Having used neither, my virgin ears hear euphemisms for BDSM and gang-rape.

  12. Read this article and think long and hard before deciding whether to vote for a socialist presidential candidate.

    Blankets, canned tuna and faith in God — how fleeing Venezuelans survive
    Words by Andrea Castillo
    Photography by Marcus Yam
    Jan. 16, 2020
    ON THE ROAD TO BUCARAMANGA, Colombia

    The rich were the first to leave. They wired their savings abroad and hopped on international flights.

    The middle class departed next. They went on buses, sometimes riding for days across several countries.

    The poor remained.
    …

    1. What’s the difference between that and the road we’re on, where the oligarchs will soon own ever asset that matters and the cost of living is not supported by wages?

      1. The US dollar is still the freshest vegetable on the compost heap. We can probably keep things going a lot longer and have more warning. Maybe.

        1. I agree Oxide. I think that we have one free crisis. What I mean by that, we can run up debt to the moon until we can no longer borrow in dollars. Hard to go broke when you have your own printing press. Once the world insists on another currency or gold then we have to live within our means. All the countries that go broke have the problem that the world either never did or stopped accepting their currency for goods.

  13. New mantra in the California housing market expert echo chamber:

    ‘Home price growth is slowing, but don’t expect a dramatic crash.’

    Now why would anyone expect a dramatic crash following year after year of insane double-digit home price appreciation?

    1. Whistling while strolling past the graveyard does not reduce your risk of dying.

      Pessimism seeping into Bay Area home market for 2020
      Slower growth than U.S. market expected
      PALO ALTO, CA – SEPTEMBER 12: People walk around a Victorian home during an open house for DeLeon Realty at 1023 Forest Ave in Palo Alto, Calif., on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2019. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
      By Louis Hansen | lhansen@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
      PUBLISHED: January 4, 2020 at 6:00 am | UPDATED: January 6, 2020 at 7:25 am

      Housing economists and real estate professionals are pessimistic about the Bay Area in 2020 — but don’t expect a crash to bring saner prices or slower sales.

      A survey of more than 100 economists and industry insiders by Zillow found that the majority think Bay Area median home values will rise more slowly than the national average. After years of soaring prices, gains of less than three percent could be the norm in 2020.

      CLICK!

      “Pessimism is one way to put it,” said Zillow senior economist Cheryl Young, noting that local home prices have been flat or dropping for about 18 months. The nearly decade-long, record-breaking escalation in prices, she said, “really wasn’t sustainable any more.”

      The Bay Area saw hints of buyer fatigue in 2019, with falling sales and prices in core Silicon Valley counties. In 2020, the soft market could be influenced up or down by several forces, including low interest and unemployment rates and what’s likely to be a destabilizing presidential election, economists say.

      The Zillow survey of economists and real estate professionals found about 6 in 10 expected Bay Area home values to grow slower than the anticipated 2.8 percent national rate. Just 1 in 4 felt more bullish about the region than the U.S. market as a whole.

      In fact, the housing economists are sour on the state, with low expectations for the Sacramento, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego metro areas.

      Housing market watchers are bearish on California because high prices have pushed home buying out of reach for many residents, Young said. But low-interest rates and strong employment in the Bay Area stokes demand, and Young sees little chance the market will drop dramatically.
      …

      1. Same talking points from the 2005-2006 turning point. “Returning to normal market with slower price growth.” But the problem is that the math becomes impossible because a normal market doesn’t support flippers and speculators and, once they leave the market, all the speculative froth evaporates and a “normal market” doesn’t have the buoyancy to offset the lost demand.

        2. Plus I think a real “normal market” can’t support bubble prices and the bubble pops/souffle falls/plateau crumbles.

  14. https://twitter.com/DiMartinoBooth/status/1219322136860528640
    Danielle DiMartino Booth | @DiMartinoBooth

    Why Luxury Units in Manhattan Are Vacant “Single-family sales stuck at 96 levels, even though US has added 60M people—or 2 Texases—since mid-’90s.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/american-housing-has-gone-insane/605005/
    Ideas | Why Manhattan’s Skyscrapers Are Empty
    Approximately half of the luxury-condo units that have come onto the market in the past five years are still unsold.
    January 16, 2020 | Derek Thompson | Staff writer at The Atlantic

    Why do none of these reporters cite Fed making housing more expensive than ever?
    ht ⁦@biancoresearch⁩

    10:13 AM – 20 Jan 2020

    From the Atlantic article:

    “New York’s example is extreme—the squeezed middle class, shrink-wrapped into tiny bedrooms, beneath a canopy of empty sky palaces. But Manhattan reflects America’s national housing market, in at least three ways.”

    “First, the typical new American single-family home has become surprisingly luxurious, if not quite so swank as Manhattan’s glassy spires. Newly built houses in the U.S. are among the largest in the world, and their size-per-resident has nearly doubled in the past 50 years.”

    “Second, as the new houses have become more luxurious, homeownership itself has become a luxury. Young adults today are one-third less likely to own a home at this point in their lives than previous generations. Among young black Americans, homeownership has fallen to its lowest rate in more than 60 years.”

    “Third, and most important, the most expensive housing markets, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, haven’t built nearly enough homes for the middle class.”

    “Across the country, the supply of housing hasn’t kept up with population growth. Single-family-home sales are stuck at 1996 levels, even though the United States has added 60 million people—or two Texases—since the mid-’90s.”

    “In 2010, one might have thought that the defining housing story of the century would be the real-estate bubble that plunged the U.S. economy into a recession. But the past decade has been defined by the juxtaposition of rampant luxury-home building with the cratering of middle-class-home construction.”

    – Just another on-narrative piece about the “shortage” of SFH housing. Totally misses actual cause. NO MENTION of the effects of:
    1) Ultra-low interest rates, including a sharp drop in mortgage rates in 2019 due to the Fed pivot in January, 2019,
    2) Targeting lower quality buyers (i.e. subprime) by the various alphabet soup government housing agencies and GSE’s.

    – Why the focus on luxury MFH? Because of Fed-targeted asset inflation in the housing markets, MFH targeted vs. SFH, and with MFH at least 80% luxury, so that it can “pencil out” for developers. Apparently, no one needs to develop a rational business plan anymore. Gross misallocation of capital and malinvestment. Check!

    – I honestly don’t think I could create a more lopsided, unbalanced, FUBAR housing market if I tried. This is exactly what happens in a centrally-planned, command and control economy; a direct result of government and central bank interventions for picking winners and losers. How’d that work out for the (former) USSR? Just one example.

    “Everything a government touches, turns to crap.” – Ringo Star

    “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.” – Groucho Marx

    “The enduring lesson of the 20th century is that socialism is a failure, and free markets are a success. But the politicians keep advocating just a little more socialism.” – Milton Friedman

    “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” – Milton Friedman

    “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand” – Milton Friedman

    “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ”- Ronald Reagan – 40th president of US (1911 – 2004)  

    “the speculative episode always ends not with a whimper but with a bang.” – John Kenneth Galbraith, A Short History of Financial Euphoria

    1. “the speculative episode always ends not with a whimper but with a bang.”

      Dod Galbraith mention all the bullshit the porcine beauticians spew out in attempts to forestall this eventuality?

      Up next: “Noone could have seen it coming!”

      1. Up next: “Noone could have seen it coming!”

        Well, readers of the HBB have “seen it coming” way before the MSM even dared to mention, sometimes years ahead.

        What I find astounding is that individuals commit to a massive (sometimes millions $$) purchase and don’t even do basic research.

        Another “Suzanne said we could do this” moment.

      2. “D[i]d Galbraith mention all the bullshit the porcine beauticians spew out in attempts to forestall this eventuality?”

        – One may extend the cycle, but not prevent it. Sooner or later, the bubble runs out of runway and “kicking the can” hits a wall. 2019 was a stick save via lower rates, but now what? The focus on “Not Subprime” subprime buyers shows that the end is near. No exotic shade of lipstick on said pig is going to change that outcome. A pig is still a pig.

        – The “duck test”: “if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it is a duck.” One may substitute “pig” for “duck” and not change the meaning. 🙂

  15. What happens to new car and truck prices when this everything bubble crashes? With a real estate crash and repricing, new houses come onto the market with a much cheaper price. But, has there ever been a time where an auto manufacturer drops the price of their new trucks by $30,000? Because, that’s what needs to happen.

    I found the old window sticker for a truck I used to own, purchased new in 1992. It was a loaded 4×4 diesel. The msrp was $25,xxx. I punched that into the inflation calculator and came up with $46,500 in today’s dollars. Unfortunately, a loaded 4×4 diesel is pushing $90,000. This is not only laughable, it seems completely unsustainable. In fact, I don’t even understand how these trucks are selling.

    2. “…In fact, I don’t even understand how these trucks are selling…”

      Ahh, the magic of HELOC’s. Newly created “wealth” falling from the sky to allow purchase of any and all overpriced consumer what-have-you’s.

      Remember, all of your neighbors are in debt up to their eyeballs, so don’t be a smuck and join the party!

    3. In fact, I don’t even understand how these trucks are selling.

      Seven year loans and a people who have few qualms about going into debt.

      1. I took a looksie at cars.com to see what is available in the Denver metro area. The cheapest Silverado 2500 quad cab I saw was 40K (which should out of reach for most people) and it didn’t have a diesel engine, just a gasoline engine. And there were 50+ listed that were over 70K

        I see the diesel behemoths everywhere. It has to be done with HELOCs.

        1. They still have to service all that debt. I don’t get it. If somebody gave me something super expensive but told me I had to carry all of those debts, I’d run. How is the money there to even service this stuff? I’m missing something. It’s not adding up.

    4. “In fact, I don’t even understand how these trucks are selling.”

      It seems like every other blue-collar grunt in fly-over land is driving one too. However, every “Park-n-Ride” along the freeway has at least one or more trucks with a FOR SALE sign in the window that pleads , “Take over payments.”

  16. Illegals tend to have low income jobs no matter where they live. While some of those jobs like hospitality do exist in the big cities a lot of them exist where everything is cheaper. My comment is not about which areas are overpriced but where the waves of illegals are most likely to hit. It is sanctuary areas with lots of low skilled jobs.

  17. This is just my humble opinion, but I think we’ll know the end is nigh for this everything bubble when we see all crypto crash into oblivion, with most approaching the price of zero. To me, crypto exemplifies the speculative nonsense going on right now.

    1. I was thinking that people value crypto because is it insurance against hyperinflation of government fiats. That’s why it is often compared to gold. So if governments stabilize and the currencies strengthen, crypto would fall because there’s no reason to want it. So a $0 btc would be an indicator of a strong economy, not a weak one. Theoretically.

      1. I think crypto is just another example of a get rich mentality. People do not mind ponzi schemes, they just want to be at the front of the line. Value stocks and slowly but safely growing your wealth is out of fashion.

  20. “Founded in 1985, Wedgewood has grown into a diversified, vertically integrated company, expanding its business footprint to include residential rehabilitation, non-performing loans, property management, private lending, brokerage, escrow, and more.

    The flip business is the backbone of Wedgewood. Our residential improvement business includes the purchase, rehabilitation and resale of single-family residences throughout the Western U.S. and Florida.”

    This is the company behind the vacant house in Oakland that the women were squatting in. A “flip business” should never even exist in a stable housing market. This is the rot that has to be expunged in order to move forward. Families and individuals who just want to buy shelter should never be displaced by greedy fawks like these.

    https://www.wedgewood-inc.com/about/

    1. ” A “flip business” should never even exist in a stable housing market. ”

      I dunno, almost all the flips I see are rehab and renovation of nearly unlivable houses. The renovators are providing a valuable service and I don’t begrudge them a *fair* profit.

      1. Rehabbing places to bring them back to livable condition, then selling them for a price that covers rehabbing costs, including the value of the rehabber’s services rendered, is much different than buying and HODLing while prices escalate to capture bubble appreciation.

        I’m pretty sure that it is the latter type of operation that was described as “a flip business” in the post above.

      2. Well you should definitely venture out west to see what’s happening, because they’re taking perfectly good houses and throwing some lipstick on a pig, then relisting them for hundreds of thousands of dollars more. And, if you think they’re actually addressing the structural problems, etc., I have a bridge to sell you.

        1. Saw that in the condo we used to own in the Bayarya. It looked as though it had sustained earthquake damage, and probably did so in the Loma Prieta quake (1989?). There were unaddressed underslab plumbing issues that probably dated back to original construction (1984?), which eventually spilled over bigly into the HOA fees. And it must not have been 100% sealed off to the outdoors, based on the mice that infested our kitchen pantry.

          But it appeared to have recently had a coating of paint slapped hastily onto the walls shortly before we bought it.

  21. Can I come out from under my bed now? VA Guv’ner Northam declared a State of Emergency cuz he had “credible intelligence” that thousands of militiamen planned to storm the state capital at today’s rally. Must’ve got it from the same “credible sources” that said we had to invade Iraq cuz they had WMDs. I hear that 22,000 participants attended and the only arrest was for a woman wearing a mask in public. Gosh, makes me wonder about The Narrative that claimed all those white supremacist boogeymen were converging on the event.

      1. “Protester Brandon Lewis, who traveled from Buffalo, New York, proudly carrying a Barrett M82 rifle which can be used by the military to shoot down planes at Monday’s rally. The recoil-operated, semi-automatic anti-materiel sniper system is used in the military and was also a favorite weapon of the IRA. He said he brought such a large weapon ‘because he can’

        Honey! Did you pack the .50 cal ? 🙂

        1. It’s always a bit amusing to watch some less common weapon get “discovered” by media types and then publicized as some crazy thing that nobody should have. .50s are handy for shooting through cinder block walls and shooting elk a mile away. Otherwise they’re just way too heavy way too expensive hunting rifles. On the other hand the media totally underestimates the lethality of the average hunting rifle. Just as well, I guess.

    2. This will be swept down the memory hole soon.

      Know that most grabber narratives are pre-scripted. Real journalists just wait for violent incidents involving the correct demographics of perpetrator and victim to apply the narrative.

      When the demographics don’t support the narrative, the event vanishes from the news cycle instantly.

  22. Moms 4 Housing are turning into cause célèbres with the Left, who are now backing the demand that vulture fund Wedgewood sells them the vacant investor-owned Oakland shack they squatted in for a “fair price.” Oh dear. I suspect there’s quite a delta between Wedgewood’s idea of a fair price, and any offer they’re going to get from Gimme Dat squatters.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdbgb/the-homeless-moms-who-were-evicted-from-a-vacant-oakland-house-in-oakland-might-get-the-chance-to-buy-it

    2. I am predicting In a year or two after they do get these shacks at whatever “fair market” value is, they will start a “moms 4 not paying greedy bank mortgages / das mines, im not paying dem back yall” rally. Whats even more sickening about all this is the public figures backing up this behavior. FREE!!!

    1. I don’t think you’re paying attention to how sold out the Democratic base is to the globalists. Bernie Bros will have no problem with this.

      1. An open border, mass illegal immigration policy hurts the uneducated and the poor much more than it does the educated and wealthy. It’s the poor peoples’ jobs that are being lost. These aren’t tech workers coming over, they’re working in construction, factories, farms and anywhere else you “learn on the job.” In essence, the Democrats’ open borders policy is selling out the very people they pretend to champion. That’s how fawking twisted Bernie and his ilk are.

        1. Why does the choice have to be open borders versus an unaffordable trophy wall? Neither is a good policy.

          Where are the candidates who represent sound governance instead of political extremism?

          1. Why does the choice have to be open borders versus an unaffordable trophy wall?

            Walls inherently limit/deter/slow illegal immigration as well as trafficking of humans, drugs and weapons. Why exactly is that bad, unaffordable and/or self-serving? Why are other countries’ stricter immigration laws acceptable but ours so controversial?

          2. “Why are other countries’ stricter immigration laws acceptable but ours so controversial?”

            Beacause Replacement Theory is real.

            The Southern Poverty Law Center is not a civil rights organization. It is a subversive, criminal cartel, that real journalists love to harvest quotes from, always scripted in a “right side of history” style narrative.

  26. Never seen so many mainland Chinese bursting at the seams, and ready to buy all cash OC real estate. Seems to be no slowdown here. Was at the local park in OC and there was a group of 7-9 CCP females just waiting for their water to break.

    Are you guys’ ready to welcome your new CCP patriots?

    1. It really appears to me that the Dems party represents the Rich and the Poor. The productive sector , which is the middle working class , has been sold out for a long time.

      It will be death to America if the Rich/Poor get their way.
      The policies screw the working class in every way to the point that they are destroyed.

      I don’t know how this Country got so nuts , but it was done slowly inch by inch .
      When you have Politicians talking about the rights of ilegals and how Citizens should pay for their needs you know we are off the rails with Insanity.

      This is a important point in history as to which way this Country is going to go.

      1. “I don’t know how this Country got so nuts…”

        Inheriting the the post WWII crumbling British Empire was a good “beginning of the end” start. However, ameliorating the Jooz misery around the globe will exhaust our prosperity and standard of living.

        1. It was up to every Country to advance their interest. Blowing out the USA working class in the name of advancing other Nations was just the 1% dream of greater profits by a global work force.

          Every Country could of advanced on their own without the wealth and jobs being robbed from the USA.

          1. There was short-term prosperity for our blue-collar workers as post WWII countries were in a shambles while our manufacturing base was at its zenith. Victorious servicemen and women returned to buy plentiful real estate and had good jobs to choose from, but a short twenty years later those good times were over.

  29. The good times did not need to be over. The Politicians sold out the American worker and manufacturing base.

    What Country in their right mind would do what they did to gut the majority worker , it’s a outrage. It can be undone

    1. It can be undone

      Yes, but not without short-term pain, and people these days are unwilling to sacrifice now for a better future. Instead it’s about avoiding any pain/inconvenience/payment, no matter the long-term implications.

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