thehousingbubble@gmail.com
Blog

If You’re Not Slightly Embarrassed By Your Offer Then You’re Probably Not Going Low Enough

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “The Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU) has been posting fliers on the streets ‘urging residents not to pay rent and to demand a rent strike,’ one concerned property manager told The Epoch Times. On March 25, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that financial institutions will provide relief for the vast majority of Californians. But most property owners don’t qualify, because their properties are considered commercial, not residential. ‘Many will lose their properties to foreclosure,’ Dan Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Great Los Angeles said. ‘That freight train is bearing down on rental property owners right now.'”

“”More than 3.6 million homeowners nationwide were past due on their mortgages at the end of April, the most since January 2015, according to estimates by Black Knight. Statewide, 5.73% of homeowners were not current at the end of April, up from 2.16% at the end of March. However, that increase of 3.6 percentage points was the ninth highest of any state. The states with the largest increase were Nevada (5.2 percentage points) and New Jersey (5.1 points).”

“In the San Francisco metro area, non-current loans rose to 3.59% at the end of April, triple the 1.17% at the end of March. In San Jose, they jumped to 2.8% from 0.8%, according to Black Knight. Among the 100 largest metro areas, the cities with the biggest jumps were Miami (+7.2 points), Las Vegas (+6.2 points) and New York City (+5.4 points).”

“Sharif El-Gamal built a 667-foot condo tower in Tribeca. Now he’s threatening to rip the top of it down, his lender says. The developer is playing hardball, according to the lender, warning that if a foreclosure proceeds, he will make the project much less valuable. The project has suffered a series of setbacks, and its consortium of overseas lenders has cut off funding and is moving to foreclose.”

“As with many luxury condo projects across the city that missed the market’s peak in 2015, El-Gamal’s troubles at 45 Park Place have been building for some time. Records show only 11 of the tower’s 50 units have gone into contract since sales launched in 2017. With so many condo projects in distress and buyers coping with coronavirus fallout, 45 Park Place will not be the only one to face a reckoning. More foreclosures, note sales and projects changing hands are expected, said Stephen Kliegerman, president of Halstead Development Marketing.”

“In March, Justice Francis A. Kahn III appointed a temporary receiver to take control of the property, a move that attorneys for the developer tried to block. ‘All parties must agree that the prospect of a languishing, half-completed skyscraper in lower Manhattan for years to come is a scenario that should be avoided at all costs,’ a lawyer for one of the El-Gamal–affiliated entities wrote in a letter to the judge.”

“Luxury condos in Greater Downtown Miami sold for about $3.3 million on average in the first quarter, but the average price dropped in May to just over $2 million. The 36.3 percent price difference between the average closed price and the current listing price is a snapshot of pre-pandemic and current buyer and seller expectations in Greater Downtown Miami, according to Peter Zalewski, principal at Condo Vultures Realty and a bulk investor. The spread suggests that the luxury condo market is ‘dead in the water,’ Zalewski said.”

“The average asking price of condos as of May 11 was $772,050, but the average closing price in the first three months of 2020 was $524,375. There were 593 active listings of luxury condos priced at $1 million and up, and nearly 85 months of supply, or seven years, as of early May.”

“Now isn’t the time to buy real estate if someone is willing to wait for a better deal, according to a local analyst who predicts condo prices in the Vancouver area are set to decline for years. Eitel Insights founder Dane Eitel says it’s not the time to try to catch a falling knife, or rather the longer someone holds on to a property they can’t afford, the harder it will be to get rid of it.”

“The average price for a condo is more than $660,000, but he says that’s going to change. ‘For the condo market, January 2018 was the peak at $750,000. Currently, we’re down 12 per cent from that,’ Eitel explains. Within two years, he says that price should fall to $525,000 in a few yeas, and heavily-mortgaged owners may soon be forced to sell.’There are buildings that have been completed and they’re roughly 60 per cent available –30 per cent for sale, 30 per cent for rent– so, all these investors that purchased are going to be put in a tough place and you’ll see a continuation of increased inventory,’ Eitel says. He adds as of April, nearly 4000 condos are listed for sale across the Lower Mainland, but just under 508 sold.”

“Now is ‘one of the best times ever’ for city centre renters to move, according to Rob Bence, who hosts Britain’s most popular property investment podcast. ‘As someone who helps investors, I probably shouldn’t say this, but you can view properties that are currently out of your price range and put offers in,’ he says. ‘If you’re not slightly embarrassed by your offer then you’re probably not going low enough.'”

“When the pandemic shut down travel, a glut of properties in Kensington and Chelsea switched from Airbnb-style short lets to long lets, pushing the number of rental properties on TLC estate agency’s books from 23 to 71, says Samantha Hossack, its lettings director. ‘I took on four former Airbnbs [in] just [one] afternoon. As a tenant, you have three times the amount of choice.’ A further influx came from central London investors who had put buy-to-lets up for sale after Brexit in January, but reverted to letting once coronavirus hit.”

“The Mortgage Society of Finland (Hypo) has revealed it expects the coronavirus pandemic to temporarily dent house prices by up to five per cent. The pandemic has delivered a heavy blow especially to the short-term rental market build around platforms such as Airbnb. ‘Thousands of flats have been moved to the regular rental market at considerable discounts, and sales are being considered,’ it said. ‘Lay-offs and bankruptcies will compel people to even mull over selling their home if the crisis drags on late into the year. There may be fire sales also from cash-strapped housing funds and over-indebted new settlements.'”

“In its latest NZ Property Focus report, ANZ’s economists confirmed their earlier forecast that house prices would likely fall by 10% to 15% this year, compared to an 8% to 10% fall in GDP. ‘More supply coming on stream due to short term rentals sitting vacant will also see the supply-demand balance shift and put rents under downward pressure. This will become clear as new tenancies are entered into and in some cases where tenants negotiate down their rents to a level they can afford. Landlords in some regions may not have much negotiating power, given the increase in rentals available,’ the report said.”

“Tenants are in a better position to demand lower rents than they have been for years as the devastating impact of the coronavirus crisis leaves landlords desperate to fill vacant properties for ‘whatever they can get.’ Figures showed that rents for houses in Sydney have fallen to their lowest point since 2013 thanks to the Covid-19 triple whammy of economic standstill, lower migration and a flood of former Airbnb lettings left empty by the wipeout in the travel industry.”

“Jade Costello, co-founder of Melbourne Rental Search, said she was seeing something ‘we’ve never seen before’ with landlords willing to negotiate on the price upfront. ‘You might see somewhere for $500 but the landlord will be willing to drop it because they just don’t want places to be vacant,’ she said. ‘It’s a tenant’s market for sure. For the time we’re seeing tenants having the power of negotiation. They are going in with the rent they want to pay and landlords and agents, who used to have so many potential tenants to choose from, are saying whatever we can get we will take it.'”

“For the past two decades, Australia’s housing market has mostly been a one-way bet on rising prices. Now, with the effects of coronavirus shutdowns reverberating through the economy and the nation set for its worst recession in 90 years, the concept that owning property is a license to print money is under threat. Australia has one of the world’s highest levels of household debt, the nation’s banks are heavily exposed to mortgage lending, and many mom and pop investors rely on income from rental properties, which are also under pressure.”

“‘Australia’s had an obsession with residential property for a long time,’ said Richard Holden, professor of economics at the University of New South Wales. ‘A lot of people have a lot of their wealth tied up in residential property. I’m pretty worried.'”

“And while banks are going all out to support existing borrowers, they are tightening the screws on new customers. ‘Banks aren’t going to lend based on a ‘future return to normality,’ they will lend on the now,’ said Redom Syed, the founder of mortgage broker Confidence Finance. ‘A major shock to lending markets is coming.'”

“This spring, as tens of thousands of renters saw their incomes diminish or disappear because of COVID-19 restrictions, the B.C. government stepped in with the unprecedented step of halting evictions and offering a $300-$500 rent supplement. But not even that assistance, combined with a $2,000 a month wage replacement benefit from the federal government, has been able to bridge the enormous gap between earnings and rent in Canada’s most expensive rental markets, Vancouver and Toronto.”

“‘I think that we’re at a moment now where our governments are experiencing what individuals have been feeling for long periods of time now in our urban settings: ‘Whoa, it’s really hard to manage these housing costs when we’re on the hook for the earnings to pay them,’ said Paul Kershaw, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health. ‘I think we’ve reached a moment where the provincial and federal governments say… we’re only going to get there if we no longer say home prices are ‘unhealthy’ when they’re not rising, they’re healthy when they’re closer to people’s incomes.'”

Related Posts

Buyers Are Pulling Out, FEAR and PANIC Set In

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGfWOJ_vluk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95SkoFI0f6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kseyt6sIh3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaRKfc3XygE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdMbExOb8ng

This Post Has 96 Comments

  1. ‘the prospect of a languishing, half-completed skyscraper in lower Manhattan for years to come is a scenario that should be avoided at all costs’

    They’ve been living with it in Miami and Los Angeles for years.

    1. the prospect of a languishing, half-completed skyscraper

      This made me think of The Drew (formerly the Fontainebleau) on the Strip in Vegas. The tallest building in the state. They stopped working on it in 2009, and it just sat there for about 10 years. Work had restarted, but stopped in March of this year. Methinks this may never open, LOL.

  2. ‘Many will lose their properties to foreclosure,’ Dan Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Great Los Angeles said. ‘That freight train is bearing down on rental property owners right now’

    ‘Statewide, 5.73% of homeowners were not current at the end of April, up from 2.16% at the end of March. In the San Francisco metro area, non-current loans rose to 3.59% at the end of April, triple the 1.17% at the end of March. In San Jose, they jumped to 2.8% from 0.8%’

    Eat yer crowz Thornberg.

  3. “In the San Francisco metro area, non-current loans rose to 3.59% at the end of April, triple the 1.17% at the end of March. In San Jose, they jumped to 2.8% from 0.8%, according to Black Knight. Among the 100 largest metro areas, the cities with the biggest jumps were Miami (+7.2 points), Las Vegas (+6.2 points) and New York City (+5.4 points).”

    —–
    so for NYC who gets screwed. The FHA (i.e. citizens across the country who couldnt even imagine spending that type of $s), or the banks, or the non-banking lenders.

  4. ‘There were 593 active listings of luxury condos priced at $1 million and up, and nearly 85 months of supply, or seven years,’

    Last I heard, over $3 million there’s a 20 year supply.

    1. Last I heard, over $3 million there’s a 20 year supply.

      That’s a lot of people who “don’t have to sell.”

      1. “…Last I heard, over $3 million there’s a 20 year supply….”

        Won’t be long before we start hearing about ’50 year supply’ or ‘100 year supply’. Do I hear ‘200 year supply’?

          1. “…they reach even 100 years….”

            100 years??? Now that’s optimism!

            South Orange County wins awards for poor construction quality and poor materials!

            The SoCal official insect is the termite!

          2. The SoCal official insect is the termite!

            Oh, how I miss seeing houses wrapped up in tarps before being fumigated.

            Though I disagree with the termite being the official SoCal insect. That honor belongs to the Argentine black ant. They are so pervasive in SoCal that people routinely have the perimeters of the houses sprayed to keep them out. That is one critter I do not miss from SoCal.

  5. “The Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU) has been posting fliers on the streets ‘urging residents not to pay rent and to demand a rent strike,’ one concerned property manager told The Epoch Times.

    It’s a short leap from left-wing agitators telling deadbeats not to pay their rent, to telling the n’er-do-wells who comprise the Democrat base that they’re entitled to kick-start the “redistribution of the wealth” by looting from the successful and productive. You can see why Democrats are so hell-bent on stripping the latter of their means of armed self-defense.

    1. Joe Biden said today “you’re not black” if you vote for Trump.

      The Trump economy created the most jobs and the lowest black unemployment in recorded history. The Democrat Party want people put back in chains, the chains of welfare and food banks and Obamaphones and other assorted gibs.

      Forward

  6. On March 25, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that financial institutions will provide relief for the vast majority of Californians.

    Hey Mr. Banker, when did you become a philanthropist?

    1. Bahahahahaha … what the governor terms “relief” will end up with a wee bit different interpretation for those who are destined to experience this relief.

      Stay tuned.

      2. So what I’m hearing is that the bankers are going to relieve themselves on the debt donkeys.

        1. “So what I’m hearing is that the bankers are going to relieve themselves on the debt donkeys.”

          And taxpayers.

        1. It seems like there’s an increased risk of admissions based on racial discrimination, now that objective scholastic aptitude tests have been removed as an admissions criterion.

          1. And Bear they will get their racial repatriations in the form of $100K of free tuition, books and a dorm room……..oh and a free luxury meal card!

          2. In California, it’s the Asian students who stand to lose the most, as their community is heavily invested in maxing out SAT and ACT scores.

          3. In California, it’s the Asian students who stand to lose the most

            I wonder if that is what is driving this change? Push them aside to make room for more “deserving” students?

            Will UC be able to maintain its prestige if they start packing the classrooms with “protected class” students? Will a Berkeley or UCSD STEM degree still have the cachet it has now, or will it “devalue” to a Cal State level?

  7. There are buildings that have been completed and they’re roughly 60 per cent available –30 per cent for sale, 30 per cent for rent– so, all these investors that purchased are going to be put in a tough place and you’ll see a continuation of increased inventory,’ Eitel says.

    Die, speculator scum.

  8. ‘As someone who helps investors, I probably shouldn’t say this, but you can view properties that are currently out of your price range and put offers in,’ he says.

    No thanks. I’d rather sit out the coming financial carnage when the Everything Bubble bursts.

  9. Australia has one of the world’s highest levels of household debt, the nation’s banks are heavily exposed to mortgage lending, and many mom and pop investors rely on income from rental properties, which are also under pressure.”

    Aussies are going to pay a terrible price for handing their nation over to globalist quislings. They purely and simply deserve everything that’s going to happen to them.

    1. The thing with RVs is that they are fun but most people don’t use one very often. Totally makes sense to rent. But during/after a pandemic nobody wants to rent anything from anybody. Too risky. So I can see how there could be a slice of people with money who used to rent (RVs or hotels) and now would rather ante up for their own portable living space. But it won’t take long to satisfy a group that small. And after that is the abyss for RVs…nobody else has money or wants to spend it that way I don’t think.

      1. A 170% increase in sales year over year, with 50 million newly unemployed, makes absolutely zero sense to me. But hey, this whole credit bubble makes no sense.

        1. I’m going to say that some who previously flew or took cruises might do the RV thing.

          An observation I had when out on the road last year in my van conversion (channeling Matt Foley, motivational speaker!) is that quite a few people LIVE in RV parks. Whether by choice or fate, you have everything you need and if you don’t like the neighborhood, pull up stakes and go somewhere else. Monthly cost is probably about the same as a studio or 1bedroom in an average city, plus you have utilities and laundry, maybe some pool tables, a pool and pickle ball court. I could see some people going the jingle mail route after trying to be Airbnb kingpins.

          I also saw some young’uns who can do work remotely and just want to get out, and with this beer flu more will be able to do that. Who doesn’t want their office to be in the middle of a redwood forest or by an alpine lake? I’ve seen people doing it. Hell, I might join them at some point.

      2. An RV might be ideal for a couple that likes to take vacations, but no longer wants to take a plane, or a cruise ship or stay in a hotel.

        1. Today’s HCQ fake news:

          “Big study casts more doubt on malaria drugs for coronavirus” (Associated Press)

          “Malaria drugs pushed by President Donald Trump as treatments for the coronavirus did not help and were tied to a greater risk of death and heart rhythm problems in a new study of nearly 100,000 patients around the world. Friday’s report in the journal Lancet is not a rigorous test of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, but it is by far the largest look at their use in real world settings, spanning 671 hospitals on six continents.”

          Emphasis mine. The bold text is yellow fake news: The author says that the drug was “pushed” by Donald Trump, as if he were a drug dealer. The medical journal Lancet has published editorials against Trump, which is unheard of for any scientific journal. And the moment they said “hospital,” it’s game over. HCQ doesn’t work in hospitals. It has to be given, preferably with zinc, before symptoms are bad enough for hospitalization. And of course the ones in the hospital who got HCQ were already at death’s door. Pulminary problems? No sh!t. Their lungs were all clogged up. That’s how a lot of the intubated died, from heart issues.

          This is another hit piece.

        2. Sure, but a 170% increase in sales year over year in the face of the largest jobs losses in history? Does not add up in my book. But hey, not much does anymore.

          Back in 2008 I watched everything melt down and I have to say things look totally different this time around. Seems to still be waaaayyyy too much money sloshing around. Again, something’s not adding up.

          2. Yes, the difference IS the amount of money sloshing around! Lots of $$$ have been created out of thin air since 2008

          3. Yes, the difference IS the amount of money sloshing around!

            I think so. There have been reports for years of auto dealerships not even verifying income. Just sign on the dotted line and the car is yours. Santander is one of the biggest subprime outfits there is, and they did not verify income on over 90% of their loans.

            I have a sneaking suspicion the same thing is going on in the RV market. We have fog-a-mirror financing for everything, and that’s why and how prices have skyrocketed. Somebody, somewhere is getting burned on these bad loans. Until this nonsense stops, we cannot return to sanity.

          5. Credit Challenged RV Programs Since 2002

            Great RV Loan offers a variety of financing options, including programs for those with less than perfect credit history.

            Program Highlights Include:

            New or Used-Ok
            Private Party or Dealer Purchase-OK
            Out of State Transactions-OK
            No Prepayment Penalties
            Long Term Financing (Up to 144 Months)

            https://greatrvloan.com/bad-credit-rv-loans/

          6. Hasn’t the total supply of dollars in circulation risen by something like 13% in the last 3 months?

      3. There is quite a large variety of “RV”s out there. Class A, Class B and B+, Class C, Travel Trailers, Toy Haulers, 5th Wheels, etc.

        Many are not designed for the wear and tear of extended use, or for cold climates. Some are.

        The way and numbers they are all produce however is NOT at all like how we make automobiles, where a single plant can and does produce thousands of vehicles a week. We’re talking more like a few a day for some of the bigger units. And they are more vulnerable to issues with their supplies. For example, Leisure Travel Vans (makes of some really nice class B+ models) was already having a shitty 2020 because of major supply problems with the new Mercedes Sprinter 3500 HD chassis (just refreshed after 7-8 years of the previous gen).

        The 170% is a short term spike of sales from dealer inventory, which is getting drained far faster than it can be refilled. The people buying the RVs are largely the group not thrown out of work, for various reasons including new ones like having a place for medical workers to isolate from the rest of their family.

        tl;dr – the sales won’t last because inventories will be drained of the models people want and resupply will be slower than was before the covid-mess.

      4. they are fun but most people don’t use one very often. The closest I ever got to owning an RV was a slide-on truck camper over a newly available F250 diesel pickup, back in 1983. Drove it all over Ohio working in various ERs. Used it to sleep off night shifts in hospital parking lots. It sure beat falling asleep at the wheel trying to get back home — that actually happened to 2 of my colleagues in the late 1970s. Was able to deduct a large chunk of related expenses since they were due to overnight travel to work & back. Off duty I drove my truck camper all over the country to visit scenic areas & relatives. The camper developed the usual long long list of failed subunits, many of which I didn’t repair. In 2014 it was stored on jacks at a storage lot & died a miserable death after it tipped over in high winds. I sawed the wreckage into manageable chunks and dumped most of the pieces. The F250 developed a long list of expensive defects (mostly expensive tires that rotted away with good tread on them). I sold the F250 for scrap in 2014, even though its engine could have run for at least a million miles more. It was a good balance between usefulness and recreation.

        1. I sold the F250 for scrap in 2014, even though its engine could have run for at least a million miles more.

          Oh yeah, the Ford F250 w/International 6.9L V8. They were spendy; did you pay around $22k for it?

          1. did you pay around $22k for it? Only $11K, sticker price. It was the very first model of that type, May 1983.

  11. Housing prices and housing demand were cratering long before CoronaScam.

    Los Angeles, CA Housing Prices Crater 14% YOY As Mortgage Defaults Accelerate,/strong>

    https://www.zillow.com/los-angeles-ca-90015/home-values/

    *Select price from dropdown menu on first chart

    As a noted economist stated so eloquently, “A house is a rapidly depreciating asset that empties your wallet it every day you own it.”

    1. 9 percent of mortgages are in forbearance

      So the questions is, when the time is up:

      a) will forbearance be extended?
      b) will the missed payments be rolled back into the loan?
      c) will the missed payments be forgiven?
      d) will those who can’t catch up (almost everyone) be foreclosed?
      e) will the PTB come up with some other crazy idea to not foreclose?

      1. RV sales have been tanking as long as housing prices.

        South Lake Tahoe, CA Housing Prices Crater 10% YOY As Foreclosures Rot Southern California Housing Market

        https://www.zillow.com/south-lake-tahoe-ca/home-values/

        *Select price from dropdown menu on first chart

        As one Los Angeles broker conceded, “If you’re a buyer, the broker is lying to you. I know a liar when I hear one. I’ve been lying my entire life.”

        1. RV sales have been tanking as long as housing prices.

          170% YOY increase isn’t “tanking.”

          3. 170% YOY increase isn’t “tanking.”

            Dude, if you haven’t already done so, install the Joshua Tree extension on your browser. Once that is done you can hide responses from anyone who spews nonsense and not waste time reading them.

          4. RV shipments in March? The article is talking about May, and it says they’re having their best month in history. Try to keep up.

          5. The RV industry hasn’t reported April or May numbers.

            It is what it is my good friend… it is what it is.

            Centreville, VA Housing Prices Crater 29% YOY As One Fairfax County Housing Demand Tanks As Rental Rates Plunge
            https://www.movoto.com/centreville-va/market-trends/

            As a distinguished economist questioned, “Why buy a house when you can rent one for half the monthly cost… Buy it later after prices crater for 70% less.”

  15. Have stocks become too risky to HODL? Ironically, the better they perform against a steady drumbeat of terrible economic news, the more skeptical long-time veteran investors become that they represent good value.

    1. GMO’s Ben Inker on Why Stocks Are Too Risky, and What to Buy Instead
      By Jack Otter
      Updated May 22, 2020 9:06 pm ET / Original May 22, 2020 8:00 pm ET
      Ben Inker, head of GMO’s asset allocation team, outside of his home in Brookline, Mass.
      Photograph by Cody O’Loughlin

      On March 10, 2009, Jeremy Grantham published a memo titled “Reinvesting When Terrified,” arguing that stocks were substantially undervalued and that investors should get in the market, despite the pain of doing so. “Remember that you will never catch the low,” wrote the co-founder of GMO, a Boston-based investment management company.

      Of course, he had caught the low; it would turn out that March 9 was the nadir of the financial crisis and the beginning of the great bull market of the past decade. Pointing out that, in 2002, Grantham had predicted that the S&P 500 index would bottom at 670 in seven years makes GMO sound more like a Las Vegas act than a financial firm, but it is no less true.

      GMO has made many other prescient calls, so it’s worth noting that the $60 billion firm drastically reduced its equity exposure this past week, taking its go-anywhere institutional fund’s stock sleeve down to 25% from 58%. Ben Inker, who has been head of asset allocation at GMO for 22 years, shared his analysis exclusively with Barron’s. After announcing in mid-March that it was time to buy, Inker now says that the recent furious rally in U.S. stocks has more-than fully priced in an optimistic resolution to the coronavirus crisis, while leaving investors in a dangerous position if something goes wrong.
      …

    2. Market Snapshot
      Are stock investors too complacent about a full-scale blowup between China and the U.S.? Here’s what Wall Street experts say
      Published: May 23, 2020 at 8:01 a.m. ET
      By Mark DeCambre
      The Dow ended the week up 3.3%, the S&P 500 surged 3.2% and the Nasdaq put in a weekly gain of 3.4%
      MarketWatch photo illustration/iStockphoto

      China and the U.S. are back in the headlines — but are investors paying sufficient attention to the risks of a geopolitical clash?

      Indeed, caustic rhetoric between the No. 1 and 2 economies in the world is intensifying — again. It may feel as if the animus between the global superpowers couldn’t come at a more inopportune time: in the middle of a pandemic, which notably was first identified in Wuhan, China in December, and has infected more than 5 million people around the world, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

      As MarketWatch’s sister publication Barron’s writes, the Sino-American issues are many and include actions taken by the U.S. to censure China’s new security rules that threaten Hong Kong’s semiautonomous status, restrictions against Huawei Technologies, a push to increase scrutiny of Chinese companies listed in the U.S., funding for the World Health Organization and accountability for the handling of the viral outbreak that has likely ushered in one of the most severe global recessions in recent memory.

      “The list is long as my arm,” said Ian Bremmer, Eurasia Group’s founder and president, of the Sino-American tensions, during a Friday interview on CNBC.

      “It’s never a good thing that the two largest economies in the world are battling,” Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Advisory Group, told MarketWatch in an emailed exchange on Friday.
      …

  16. I’m under extreme pressure from everyone in the family to buy asap (Sacramento-Roseville area). Been renting for 2 years now, so they are justifiably fed up living in a smaller place and paying for storage units…

    To make things difficult, a house that we were considering, went to “pending” state earlier this week while I dithered. Am getting a lot of “told you so” ‘s lately!

    Any advice?

    –Beleaguered 🙁

    1. why do you NEED so much “stuff” sell sell sell downsize then you can fit into a small place just fine. ……….

      1. Do you live with hoarders?

        If you do, no house will ever be big enough. I’ve met people who live in huge houses where there was no free space and they had junk piled up everywhere.

          1. You dont live in NYC Those are small apartments. So tell us what is so valuable you have to pay storage? is is $20,000 worth of Broyhill, Ethan Allan Heirloom furniture? Or is it like we see on storage wars Hoarders and its Ikea or worse?

          2. I suppose that if you moved to California, where houses are small and don’t have basements, from a spacious house from out of state, that you could find yourself in this situation.

            When I lived in SoCal it was easy to tell which neighbors had moved from out of state: they were the ones with the garages packed to the rafters with junk (no basement) and their pricey new cars sitting in the driveway.

    3. Simple:

      Do you believe that prices will continue their “to the moon” trajectory? If yes, then get out there and buy yourself a shack that you probably can’t afford in a state whose sole purpose is to tax you to death.

      If you think that prices are unsustainable, then wait, and ignore the “I told you so’s”

      Or you could just leave California for greener pastures, unless perhaps you work for the state government.

      1. Anyone in their right mind would not purchase real estate under the current conditions. You would need a 50% discount to offset the current risks.

        I don’t know of more risk than right now.

    4. everyone in the family

      It’s not easy being the Captain. Always explain “safety” to the crew. Critics who aren’t dependents or financial supporters simply need to keep their hands off.

      To anyone who gave me the “I told you so” when I’m trying to take care of my family and future, I’d say “Get the heII away from me!”

      Very risky time to be wearing concrete overshoes. Good Luck!

    5. I’m in the same boat, whirlaway, just east of you —minus the storage unit. Been under pressure for a few years now as we rent a small place. My thoughts are to hold on at least until fall or winter to let some of the carnage play out for those who have entered forebearance arrangements, more layoffs, and those on government handouts. Hoping by then to see some movement in prices. One wildcard is if the Bay Area creeps come up this way now that they can WFH. But it seems like something’s gotta give by end of this year.

      I have noticed definite increase in inventory, sales falling out, and longer time to contract.

      1. hold on at least until fall

        Hard to imagine how things could play out in just a few months. We’re still in the damage being done stage.

        Guess my Hertz Gold Membership won’t be useful going forward

        1. Are they liquidating or reorganizing?

          If I was a first time buyer I would wait at least a year, probably longer. If you buy now, you’ll probably catch a falling knife.

    6. The only thing you can do is practice patience. The FED’s deranged money printing is having an effect. When you pump trillions into the market, it runs to assets. That in conjunction with their zero rate nonsense is pushing prices on everything up right now.

  18. Snippet from Mauldin’s Virtual SIC 2020: “In their fireside chat on the housing market, real estate specialists Barry Habib and Ivy Zelman brought a lot of excellent data to the table. Both are extremely bullish on the residential housing market. Ivy pointed out that most of the current first-time home buyers are 20- to 29-year-old Millennials—the very generation that, only a few years ago, demographers feared would never leave their parents’ basements.”

    Yup, those 20- to 29-year-old Millennials have plenty of life ahead of them, and these predators can’t wait to leverage them up to their proverbial eyeteeth.

    1. “Both are extremely bullish on the residential housing market.”

      Yeah, we wouldn’t want the people living in the residence to develop equity; phuc no, that would be un-American!

      1. It makes me sick how great fools go around trying to find a greater fool. It’s like people who try to dress up a bad car with a bad engine to sell it.

        I’m not going to give away this overpriced monkey I got on my back because that might destroy my dream of easy money, is what they think. Set yourself free , you screwed up and you live in a Society that suckered you in.

    2. Barry Habib and Ivy Zelman brought a lot of excellent data to the table. Both are extremely bullish on the residential housing market.

      Wasn’t Ivy a housing bear last bubble? Geez, they’re all turning into housing pimps and whores.

      1. I liked this Society many years ago when getting rich quick or easy money wasn’t the mindset of most people.

        Long term investment was usually the idea. People would buy a house for a tax write off and a idea that after 30years they could retire without a mortgage payment.

        You would get some people who would get lucky by buying a stock cheap that skyrocketed for some reason, but most people thought in terms of long term investment.

        And savers were rewarded by long term savings. But the mainstay was wealth creation by a long term good job.

        So, people were content in long range plans for financial security. So, this idea that a person only wins by another losing in these Ponzi Scheme artificial markets is unfortunate.

        How industries can feel good about being so greedy while they are so cheap with workers is easy money off the backs of people. There is no reason why that Amazon guy should be taking as much as he does.
        The Control Freaks look at people like they are cattle to control and give as little to as possible. That just was not the attitude from 1945 to about 1980 coming from industries. Sure, they made less profit in those days because they gave more to the employees. Than they went Global and they aren’t loyal to anything. If they could replace all the workers with AL robots they would.

        There should be some kind of weird karma for these entities that have detached from humans like the Robots end up eating them or something.

        1. I liked this Society many years ago when getting rich quick or easy money wasn’t the mindset of most people.

          Me too. But it was a window in time after WWII when people could still remember the depression. I hear there was a lot of speculating before that, too.

    1. According to Yahoo Finance, Facebook has 48,268 full-time employees. For what exactly?! It’s a conglomerate of utterly unnecessary and vile social media platforms.

      1. For what exactly?!

        They have 15,000 “content moderators”, but they are 3rd party contractors.

        I’m guessing that the bulk of the 50K are coders, most of whom work on projects that get cancelled.

Comments are closed.