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The Business-As-Usual Idea Is: It’s A Hot Market, I’ll Just Replace You, Is That Going To Be True?

A report from the Commercial Observer on New York. “The Real Estate Board of New York, the powerful real estate lobbying firm, laid off staff and slashed executives’ salaries because of a decrease in membership dues caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the organization confirmed. REBNY cut about 10 percent of its staff, decreased the salaries of its executives by 10 percent and dropped President James Whelan’s pay by one-third, The Real Deal reported.”

“‘The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted profound damage on New York City, its people and its economy,’ a spokeswoman for REBNY said in a statement. ‘REBNY is not immune to or insulated from that impact. To manage our budget issues, we have focused on decreasing expenses including salary cuts, staff reductions and other measures.'”

“In a memo sent to members obtained by TRD, REBNY said it expects to have a $4 million revenue shortfall this year after payment of membership dues ‘slowed to a trickle’ while the group is unable to host fundraisers during the pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic essentially paused most real estate transactions in the city for three months, with a REBNY report finding that the city lost more than $160 million in tax revenue generated from investment and residential sales from March until May.”

The Real Deal on Florida. “Apartment rents have started to fall in some South Florida cities. In June, Coral Gables saw the biggest decline in asking rents for one-bedroom apartments, according to Zumper, falling 10.5 percent year-over-year to $1,700 a month. Miami Beach experienced the second largest drop at 5.9 percent, to $1,600 a month. Deerfield Beach and Hollywood rents fell by 5.9 percent, each, to $1,350 a month.”

“Property owners have been bracing for the financial impact of coronavirus, as millions of Americans have filed for unemployment – more than two million in Florida – since the pandemic began in March.”

The Epoch Times on California. “The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has resumed evictions that were in progress before California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The department’s Civil Process Services bureau, which handles the county’s evictions, began contacting tenants on May 26 to notify them that court-ordered evictions were proceeding on June 1.”

“David Levy, programs specialist at Fair Housing Council of Orange County, said landlords are facing problems of their own. ‘[If] you evict a bunch of people, you have a bunch of empty units,’ he said. ‘Before any of this started, we already had a huge tenant population that was rent-burdened.’ He said people were ‘struggling in the best of times’ to afford the county’s high rents. ‘Now, you go into the pandemic, where you’re going to potentially displace these people. … Are you going to be able to find a replacement customer? The business-as-usual idea is: you’re gone, it’s a hot housing market, I’ll just replace you. Well, is that going to be true? We don’t know,’ Levy said.”

“Victor Cao, vice president of public affairs for the California Apartment Association, told The Epoch Times that some landlords have been subsidizing rents for up to six months. ‘For 60 percent of our membership, they’re small mom-and-pop owners,’ he said. ‘They don’t have the financial wherewithal to go through that.'”

The Traverse Ticker in Michigan. “The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic shutdown certainly took a toll on the real estate industry in May, as every county served by the Traverse Area Association of Realtors was down significantly, in both the number of homes sold and the dollar volume. For the five-county area, the number of homes sold dipped from 309 in May 2019 to 116 last month, a 63 percent drop.”

“The slowdown was also evident in the downturn in average and median prices, though that change was not as universal. Overall, the average home sale price dropped from $299,974 in May 2019 to $278,816 in May 2020. The overall decrease in sales was even more notable given that the totals in May 2019 were the high-water mark for the month for the past decade. Last month’s totals were the lowest since the recovery began from the Great Recession. Year to date, the total 864 units sold are also the lowest dating back to 2012.”

The Chicago Tribune in Illinois. “After more than 10 years on the market, the six-bedroom 27,000-square-foot French Provincial-style mansion in Winnetka known as ‘Le Grand Reve’ finally sold on Friday for $8.75 million — a far cry from the $32 million that its sellers once had sought for the home. Shortly after Le Grand Reve was completed, the Jarols informally listed it in 2009 for a Chicago-area record asking price of $32 million. They then placed it publicly for sale in January 2010 for $28 million.”

“Further price cuts ensued. Its asking price was reduced to $23 million in 2011, $15.9 million in 2014 and $13.9 million in 2015. When that didn’t yield offers to the sellers’ liking, the price was reduced further to just below $13 million later on in 2015, then to $11.9 million in 2017 and then to just under $10 million later in 2017. The Jarols made their final price cut, to $9.5 million, in May 2019.”

“It had a $199,900 property tax bill in the 2018 tax year, but listing information states that a recent successful tax appeal brought its annual tax bill below $100,000.”

From West Hawaii Today. “Some short-term vacation rental owners are crying foul that they can’t offer their properties even for long-term rental to locals during the coronavirus pandemic. Owners and their representatives think the rules go too far. They note that hotels are allowed to continue to operate and other rental operations continue as normal.”

“‘Anytime you start making law without it actually going through the legal process sets a precedent that he can impose that he doesn’t have the authority to impose,’ said Gretchen Osgood, a Kailua-Kona real estate agent and rental property manager. ‘It’s a Catch-22. … You want them to turn into long-term rental for locals, yet you won’t let them rent to locals now. … We just want a level, fair playing field for everyone and it seems like hotels get an advantage,’ she said.”

“STVR owners say there’s nothing in the law or the application process that suggests the rental unit can be used only in one way or the other. They didn’t give up their right to rent long-term just because they applied for the STVR, they said. ‘Nothing said I had to choose between the two,’ said Cheryl Cook-Kallio, a former teacher and city councilwoman in the San Francisco Bay Area who owns a rental in Kona with her husband. ‘To prevent someone like us from using it as a long-term rental is taking away the use of our property.'”

“Cook-Kallio said she and her husband have been coming to Hawaii since 1981 and even spent three summers teaching at Hawaii Preparatory Academy. She said they rent out their property so they can afford to keep it to use when they visit two or three times a year.”

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This Post Has 105 Comments

    1. Now it’s gigging for Instacart or UberEats since William can forget about a job as a fluffer because Sildenafil so widely available and effective.

  2. ‘They note that hotels are allowed to continue to operate and other rental operations continue as normal’

    I don’t know why these people keep whining about the hotels. They’re empty!

  3. ‘Apartment rents have started to fall in some South Florida cities…Property owners have been bracing for the financial impact of coronavirus, as millions of Americans have filed for unemployment’

    This is probably the most overlooked aspect of what’s happening today. Rents in the major metros are melting.

    ‘some landlords have been subsidizing rents for up to six months. ‘For 60 percent of our membership, they’re small mom-and-pop owners…They don’t have the financial wherewithal to go through that’

    How are those 5% cap rates looking now?

    1. the financial impact of coronavirus…some landlords have been subsidizing rents for up to six months

      March April May are only three months. Liars can’t keep their story straight.

    2. “Rents in the major metros are melting.”

      Sooner or later house prices will follow. I’m thinking many sellers will hold out for 2019 prices until the first quarter of 2021. After that we’re in for a wild ride.

  4. ‘The overall decrease in sales was even more notable given that the totals in May 2019 were the high-water mark for the month for the past decade’

    I hope no one overpaid in such an environment.

    ‘Last month’s totals were the lowest since the recovery began from the Great Recession. Year to date, the total 864 units sold are also the lowest dating back to 2012’

    1. Meanwhile, Liam hit his high-water mark in his teens and is now a washed-up boy band castaway.

    2. That is a beautiful house, with excellent landscaping. Guest house, pool. I don’t know the house prices in that area, but if I had $10M (plus carrying costs, which I’m sure are high) lying around gathering dust, I could see myself in there.

        1. ten million is a lot of money

          With that money, I could have a winter home in the Southwest, and a summer home in the Rockies. Both modest, with plenty left over to pay the bills down the road. (Yes I’m dreaming, don’t wake me up!)

      2. It is, and out of curiosity, I found some more pics of it at: https://www.idealhome.co.uk/news/liam-paynes-house-la-cheryl-196271 It is indeed nice. The listing with “the Agency” seems to have disappeared, but I did find the MLS listing.

        There is one thing about most of these opulent homes that bothers me – and don’t get me wrong, I am moved by the idea of living in a home that architecturally stunning, like the Orum House, and that is that all these 8000+ sq ft homes are just too big for simply living in by a single family. The larger the dwelling, and the more rooms it have, the less time you are going to spend in each room, and the less you will interact with the home itself. (and I’m ignoring the fact that over a certain size you absolutely have to paying people to clean and maintain the house and land)

        In the case of Liam Payne’s home listed above look at the library or the gym – how much will those actually get used? My 4,500 sq ft albatross in Texas had 14 rooms, and with 4 people living in it, there were a couple rooms that I didn’t set foot in for even 30 seconds for weeks at a time.

        So to me, I see beauty that will be mostly ignored and there to be seen but not used. If you have the wealth such that it’s no burden to keep and upkeep, then well.. who am I say anything. But I’ve lost the idea that it’s something to aspire to.

        Now I can understand that there can be other somewhat sensible reasons for having such a big house. Holding gatherings, events, fundraisers and like make sense for some particularly prominent people. But more often it seems to be about status/keeping up with the neighbors/showing off

        1. But more often it seems to be about status/keeping up with the neighbors/showing off

          It makes me think of people who own hundreds of cars (Jay Leno comes to mind). I couldn’t even fathom what I would do with so many cars

          1. Heh. Jay’s a special case though. He’s treating his collection like a museum/foundation.

            But I get what you are saying. If you’re never going to use them, why do you have them?

          2. I couldn’t even fathom what I would do with so many cars

            I take that one step further. I don’t like garage (or jackstand) queens. I had relatives that were car guys and the alpha had a dream car that got driven about once a year. As a kid that made me crazy and I decided that my daily driver should be my coolest/fastest car because I didn’t ever want to become that guy with the dream car that he never got to drive because he was too busy driving something else to work every day. Daily driving your best car also helps keep you from building something ridiculous that can’t run for a day or two at a time without major maintenance. Car guys easily slip into that…which is how you end up with a garage queen.

          3. I don’t like garage (or jackstand) queens.

            You would have liked John Carmack back in the 90s when iD was still in suite 666 in Mesquite, TX. He daily drove his Ferrari F40 and took it Jim Norwood’s shop in Dallas to experiment with increasing output. Drove the snobs at Ferrari of North America nuts because he dared to modify it – they banned him from buying (leasing actually) an F50 when released so he bought the first one available 3rd party. Had no issues settings stuff on top of it (the rear wing) when need to move stuff around the garage. Not afraid to scratch or get it dirty. Hell, I leaned on it a couple times.

            He’d see how fast he could get the F40 going on the i-635 service road before having to stop and turn into the parking lot. 140 or so I think was where it topped out. of course iD was making $50-100K donations to the police dept every year, and even inviting them events to ‘calibrate their radar guns’, and the building they leased next belonged to the mayor’s brother… (and that’s not the half of it)

        2. You would have liked John Carmack back in the 90s when iD was still in suite 666 in Mesquite, TX. He daily drove his Ferrari F40 and took it Jim Norwood’s shop in Dallas to experiment with increasing output.

          Nice :-). I’ve shared a track with an F40 on test day and stood next to it in the pits but never ridden in one or driven one. Modern stuff is a lot faster but that was a milestone car because nobody else was doing production turbo V8s back then. If I recall correctly it was the first 200mph production car?

          Speaking of which it would be kind of fun to take my car to Bonneville and see where the BMW brick tops out with 600hp but these days they are very picky and careful about making people slowly go faster for years and years and not letting them go really fast their first time there. Probably saves some lives, I’ve heard standard 335s get unhappy above about 175…not while you’re on the throttle but the moment you let off. So maybe it’s best I don’t, I have no desire to die or to build a streamliner. For reference the new M5s are supposed to go 190 so that’s probably about where I would top out too right before I let off and did an imitation of the Six Million Dollar Man landing.

          1. Never been in an F40 or F50, despite leaving hand and elbow prints on one. I can’t recall, but I’m sure that I must have mentioned here that I used to own an E34 M5 Touring. Even with software and cams, it was only putting out ~370 HP.. (guessing that figure – got 318hp at the wheels when I dyno tested it). Today, that’s family car Turbo V6 territory. We really are living in a Golden Age of horsepower.

            I would take it out to events at Motorsport Ranch (SW of Ft. Worth) and got it up to ~140 or so on the long straight, and it was shockingly stable there and through the tight turns, though it demanded you pay attention at those speeds. I also got to spend time in an E39 M5 at Willow Springs in CA (along with a bunch of laps in an S2000 – that was a really fun car).

            I’m with you about very high speeds – I’ve outgrown any need to do something crazy and am much more in touch with my mortality these days.

      1. “And maybe, now that the dust has finally settled on the home-sharing giant, it can finally think about going public.”

        Throw your base under the bus and pivot to IPO before Robinhood users learn via Hertz that they’re the ultimate bag holders.

    2. “As first reported by Bloomberg, Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk reportedly told the city’s hosts earlier today that it hopes its “willingness to be transparent” gives the city and state reassurance “that short-term rentals can be effectively regulated without blunt prohibitions.”

      Under New York State law, everyone is allowed to take in borders. So what AirBNB said it was doing — helping people earn a few bucks by renting out spare rooms — was always legal.

      What is iffier is renting out entire “second home” apartments in Manhattan some of the time.

      What is flat illegal is buying or renting apartments next door to someone else’s home and turning them into perpetual crash pads.

    3. Pass the popcorn, this should be FUN.

      So many people got into the illegal-hotel game because they saw the arbitrage compared to regulated hotels and the demand. Now the demand has been decimated by the virus, and AirBnN is reeling. I suspect they decided it wasn’t worth it anymore to keep spending millions on lawyers to keep these lawsuits at bay, and now it’s time to throw their ‘hosts’ under the bus…

      Been hoping this would happen for a long time.

  8. former teacher and city councilwoman in the San Francisco Bay Area who owns a rental in Kona with her husband. ‘To prevent someone like us from using it as a long-term rental is taking away the use of our property

    I’m always fascinated to listen to lefties get hardcore about property rights. I would bet money that she’s voted to screw other people out of their property rights before.

      1. Seeing reports that a long establish small auto repair shop, that happened to be in the CRUD zone was robbed, and despite a group of people detaining the robber, he got away because the police aren’t going to respond to anything in the zone short of a ‘mass casualty event’.

        Looks like they are getting exactly what they wanted.

    2. What she’s really saying is that she isn’t “little people” and should be exempt from the rules she supports.

      1. “What she’s really saying is that she isn’t “little people” and should be exempt from the rules she supports.”

        Exactly.

    3. The financial stress must be giving this former schoolteacher & council woman heartburn. The article doesn’t say when they bought the house in Kona. Must have been cheaper than renting. I bet they never went to Hawaii 3 times a year consisently year in year out since 1981.

      1. The article doesn’t say when they bought the house in Kona.

        Even if they bought it when it was cheaper, it wouldn’t be surprising if they cashed out some sweet equity. As long as STVR generated enough cash to pay the mortgage, it’s all good, right? His and hers Teslas!

  9. ‘In a memo sent to members obtained by TRD, REBNY said it expects to have a $4 million revenue shortfall this year after payment of membership dues ‘slowed to a trickle’ while the group is unable to host fundraisers during the pandemic’

    Fundraisers?

    ‘The coronavirus pandemic essentially paused most real estate transactions in the city for three months, with a REBNY report finding that the city lost more than $160 million in tax revenue generated from investment and residential sales from March until May’

    This city looks more like a goner every day.

    1. I’ll add I’m not happy about it. I’m sure there are plenty of good people in NYC. But they took the high tax route and the REIC certainly embraced the mania, so they have to take the fall-out.

      1. ‘From February to April, the number of active black business owners fell 41%, according to an analysis last week from the National Bureau of Economic Research.’

        “This study provides the first estimates of the early-stage effects of COVID-19 on small business owners,” writes Robert Fairlie, an economist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Overall, he finds, “the number of working business owners plummeted from 15.0 million in February 2020 to 11.7 million in April 2020.” That’s a drop of 3.3 million, or 22%.’

        “No other one-, two- or even 12-month window of time has ever shown such a large change in business activity,” Mr. Fairlie says. “For comparison, from the start to end of the Great Recession the number of business owners decreased by 730,000 representing only a 5 percent reduction.” Judging by the number of active small businesses, the Covid lockdown was the equivalent, in only weeks, of four Great Recessions.’

        https://www.wsj.com/articles/lockdowns-hit-minority-businesses-11592167529

  11. I was wondering when the Plunge Protection Team would show up to get the stock market rally back on track.

      1. The stock market’s got speed wobbles, which usually herald a violent episode.

  12. It’s a Threatin market.

    The Great Heavy Metal Hoax
    How a down-on-his-luck headbanger fabricated a persona, faked a tour, and promoted himself as a hard-rock savior.
    Rolling Stone
    David Kushner
    Threatin, 2018. LeAnn Mueller for Rolling Stone.

    A few days before Thanksgiving 2018, Jered “Threatin” Eames, a waifish, black-clad 29-year-old with a whip of Ariana-length hair, sinks into his hotel-suite chair in West Hollywood. He looks pale and sickly, recovering from a 13-hour Frankfurt red-eye and the craziest week of his life — when he tried living out his rock-star fantasy but was exposed as an enigmatic trickster. “There was no way that I was going to get enough attention being a rock artist in 2018,” he says, “unless I did something to get people to pay attention.”

    That November, managers of rock clubs across the United Kingdom began sharing the same weird tale. A pop-metal performer, Threatin, had rented their clubs for his 10-city European tour. Club owners had never heard of the act when a booking agent approached them promising packed houses. Threatin had fervent followers, effusive likes, rows of adoring comments under his YouTube concert videos, which showed him windmilling before a sea of fans. Websites for the record label, managers and a public-relations company who represented Threatin added to his legitimacy. Threatin’s Facebook page teemed with hundreds of fans who had RSVP’d for his European jaunt, which was supporting his album, Breaking the World.

    But despite all the hype, almost no one came to the shows.
    …

    1. Fake it until you make it.

      Anyway, couldn’t the Euro venues have checked with Ticketmaster or other ticket vendors to see if his claims of packed houses were true?

    2. With the support of their parents (who declined to be interviewed for this story), the brothers practiced obsessively, churning out satanic riffs such as “Mass Graves of Decapitated Christians,” and gigging before a homemade backdrop of inverted crosses and blood-red pentagrams.

      Luuuuuuuzzzzzzeeeeerrrrrr……

    1. Dad? It’s me … Roger … your son … yes, I remember what I called you when I left home the other day … anyway, my credit cards are being rejected, even the AMEX … you did what!? … But Dad, how can I buy stuff if they’re cancelled, I’ve got nothing to eat … get a job? … Look, I’m too busy fighting to usher in a communist utopia to work a job … Dad? … are you still there? Dad?

      1. Roger was laid off from the job that paid 25 percent less than the job his Dad had at the same age, even though his Dad was a high school dropout and he has a graduate degree.

        What we have is a socialism for the rich and connected dystopia.

        1. I think a lot of those protesters are trustafarians who have never worked an honest day’s work in their lives.

          Whose fault is it that they majored in victims studies?

          1. Whose fault is it that they majored in victims studies?

            The parents who said “I don’t care what you major in but I want you to finish your degree”?

          2. The ironic thing is that these trustafarians are the very “inherited wealth” that BLM and others want reparations for.

          3. The ironic thing is that these trustafarians are the very “inherited wealth” that BLM and others want reparations for.

            If I were BLM I would hate Antifa for that reason. But maybe they figure the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

          4. “The FBI alleged that beginning in 2011, 33 parents of high school students conspired with other people to use bribery and other forms of fraud to illegally arrange to have their children admitted to top colleges and universities.” —wiki

            Like these folks?

        2. What about ability? If you have ability, in this country you can really get and keep a keep a stable job. No layoffs for you. Just ask the people that never get laid off.

          1. Just ask the people that never get laid off.

            I know a lot of people who are great at what they do and still got their walking papers. Sometimes all it takes is a new manager who will protect his cronies and throw you under the bus.

          2. Or if Mr. Eisner and his board decides the entire product line producing $1BN+ in revenue a year isn’t enough, and cancels it and anything that looks related to it.

            Ask me how I know….

          1. The “END WORK” graffiti in the first link is cute

            Probably tagged by someone who’s never worked a day in his life.

          2. Probably tagged by someone who’s never worked a day in his life.

            I’ve noticed that fear of the unknown seems to generate the greatest opposition to work.

          3. I’ve noticed that fear of the unknown seems to generate the greatest opposition to work.

            That and some good old fashioned sloth.

        3. Sad. I visited the Emerald City last fall. There was no hint in the air at the time of the pandemic or race riots to come.

          1. It was an armpit last fall. SODO was full of homeless and tents/tarps everywhere, with needles and feces all over. The place is an absolute dump now.

          2. It was an armpit last fall. SODO was full of homeless and tents/tarps everywhere, with needles and feces all over. The place is an absolute dump now.

            It’s unfortunate what it has become for sure. The ideological war being fought to make it a socialist hell-ho.. er utopia doesn’t give a sh*t about the vast majority of people.

            I’ll happily take all the ribbing and stereotyping for choosing to live on Mercer Island in exchange for the fact the community doesn’t tolerate the illegal homeless. Unfortunately the current city counsel seems hell-bent on selling out the town’s residents in the name of density and letting WSDOT bring in a host of problems relating to the train station like having 60 buses an hour go through the tiny donwtown and letting commuters park their cars illegally in residential neighborhoods.

    1. They timed the announcement for a day when the futures market showed stocks set to crater.

      1. It’s Money Monday in Casa 401. Been on the phone with TransAmerica and Fidelity trying to get a Roth fully funded by the 7/15 deadline for tax year 2019.

        TransAmerica is garbage, 30 minutes on hold and $85 to $100 fees for rolling money over.

        The stock market is a joke, I won’t be buying any of that any time soon.

        1. “The stock market is a joke,…”

          – No stock market bubble to see here. Move along. This is completely normal.

          http://housingbubble.blog/?p=3522
          A Question That Haunts Every Speculative Episode
          June 14, 2020 | Ben Jones

          From Bloomberg.
          https://finance.yahoo.com/news/robinhood-market-made-bursting-bubbles-110000020.html
          Robinhood Market Made Bursting Bubbles Wall Street’s Obsession
          [Bloomberg]
          Sarah Ponczek and Vildana Hajric
          June 13, 2020

          “Tuesday afternoon, a smallish Chinese real-estate firm, ticker symbol DUO, went crazy on the Nasdaq. Out of the blue, in a vacuum of news, depositary receipts of the Shenzhen-based outfit shot up 13-fold, taking its market capitalization to $4 billion. Nobody had a definitive reason why. But people could guess. Its name: Fangdd Network Group Ltd., sounds like the acronym for that amalgamation of American megacaps, the ‘Faangs.’”

          “A lot of the stock market has this tinge of late. Get people to believe that other people will believe that a stock will go up, and fear-of-missing-out will take over. More than 15,000 retail clients of the Robinhood investing app added DUO to their account last week, a phalanx of day traders marching to war.”

          “Asked if the Fed was inflating markets on Wednesday, Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank’s focus is the economy, the labor market and inflation, rather than the movement of asset prices in any direction.“

          “The Fed doesn’t believe, and shouldn’t believe, that it can forecast the stock market, and therefore recognize a bubble in real time,” said Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman, in a Bloomberg Television interview. “They’re pretty easy to recognize after the fact, after they burst. But, in real time, in a predictive way, pretty much impossible.”

          “It is definitely a sign of a bubble,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak. “That’s another sign of froth — people deciding, ‘I just need to bet, therefore I’ll bet on anything.’ And even though they don’t know anything about the stock market, they’re betting on it now. You’ve also seen that pick up in the options market, which is obviously a lot more speculative than the regular market.”

          “Back in the dot-com days, there was a belief that no matter a company’s profits or sales, someone would come along to scoop up shares at an ever higher price — a “greater fool.” Online grocer Webvan Group Inc. spiked 66% in its first day of trading. When Drkoop.com Inc., an online consumer health-care network, went public, shares jumped 62% that first day. By 2001, both companies had failed.”

          “To Jim Bianco, president and founder of Bianco Research LLC, it all comes down to the Fed structuring the market so that everyone always wins.“

          “That’s why we’re seeing a giant rush of small retail investors and everybody else into the market,” Bianco told Bloomberg Television Wednesday. “When you go into the market, you go to the riskiest end of the market, so you buy bankrupt companies, you buy beaten down airlines, you buy cruise ships, you buy retailers because they will benefit the most from a support system where everything is targeted, and the markets will always go up.”

          ——–|

          https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-14/aussie-slips-as-china-virus-outbreak-monitored-markets-wrap?srnd=premium
          Markets
          Stocks Rally After Fed Triggers Risk-On Sentiment: Markets Wrap
          By Katherine Greifeld and Vildana Hajric
          June 14, 2020, 3:08 PM MDT Updated on June 15, 2020, 12:40 PM MDT

          “A rebound from overnight losses turned into a full-blown risk-on surge after the Federal Reserve said it would broaden its purchase of corporate bonds under an emergency lending program. The S&P 500 jumped…”

          “The initial reaction seems to be that the Fed still has the market’s back even though they expect the economy to be weak for a longer time frame,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak + Co.

          – Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. Watch what the Fed does.
          – The Fed’s dual mandate: 1) maximum employment, 2) stable prices. Neither of these have been achieved. Add another: maintain high housing and stock market index prices.
          – The entire “market” has been nationalized. They will soon announce the buying of stock shares and ETFs directly. They’re saving that one for the next 10+% market drop.

          2. a phalanx of day traders marching to war

            More like a flock of sheep being marched to the slaughterhouse.

  15. “Victor Cao, vice president of public affairs for the California Apartment Association, told The Epoch Times that some landlords have been subsidizing rents for up to six months.

    Sounds like a flawed business model, Victor.

  16. For the five-county area, the number of homes sold dipped from 309 in May 2019 to 116 last month, a 63 percent drop.”

    Is that a lot?

  17. “After more than 10 years on the market, the six-bedroom 27,000-square-foot French Provincial-style mansion in Winnetka known as ‘Le Grand Reve’ finally sold on Friday for $8.75 million — a far cry from the $32 million that its sellers once had sought for the home.

    ‘Le Grande Schlonging’ might’ve been problematic from a marketing standpoint.

    1. “‘Le Grande Schlonging’ might’ve been problematic from a marketing standpoint.”

      Maybe, but given the property tax bill on that place, it would be very accurate!

  18. ‘Anytime you start making law without it actually going through the legal process sets a precedent that he can impose that he doesn’t have the authority to impose,’ said Gretchen Osgood, a Kailua-Kona real estate agent and rental property manager.

    Odd, most of these STR speculators weren’t overly concerned about abiding by zoning laws and restrictions that expressly banned them from many residential areas.

  19. “It had a $199,900 property tax bill in the 2018 tax year, but listing information states that a recent successful tax appeal brought its annual tax bill below $100,000.”

    You’d have to be clinically insane to buy a property like that in a corrupt Democrat-maladministered cesspool like Chicago, where the taxman is going to be going after any and all illiquid assets, and that’ll be a prime Purge Night target for Gimme Dats seeking the reparations and redistribution of the wealth that they’re owed.

    1. From Townhall, #ClownWorld eats itself:

      “The principal of a well-known Chicago high school is under pressure to resign because, among other ‘problematic’ acts, she’s urged students to “not participate in violence or looting.” She, a black woman, is thus far refusing…

      Now, after 25 years at the helm of Whitney Young, she finds herself the target of an online petition, posted by unnamed “disappointed alumni,” calling for her to resign, claiming she has “silenced student activists speaking against all forms of injustice. Her silence and her enabling of the systematic oppression that her black and low-income students face should be condemned.” So far it’s gained more than 800 signatures”

        2. For those who didn’t click on this YouTube link, that is an exact quote from the young man who picked up a box of new sneakers or shoes that fell to the sidewalk when the Looter who stole them tripped while running out the door and dropped the three boxes he was stealing.

  20. ‘To prevent someone like us from using it as a long-term rental is taking away the use of our property.’”

    Say, Sheryl, don’t you belong to a party that has been trampling on property rights for the last 40 years at least? If the State can tell me who I can and can’t rent to, then it isn’t my property anymore.

    1. ‘To prevent someone like us from using it as a long-term rental is taking away the use of our property.’

      – There are good reasons for zoning laws. However, too many greased palms and brown envelopes have bypassed the restrictions. A day of reckoning is now upon us.
      – I think STRs were being challenged and eliminated in many locations due to push-back from actual residential homeowners tired of the neighborhood disruptions well before the pandemic.
      – STRs are just another example of global financialization, thanks to extreme influence and power by the FIRE sector + corruption of local governments. Populism and nationalism are now growing, while globalism is diminishing. The trend is your friend.

  23. Same person?

    MFJM
    June 14, 2020 at 2:46 pm
    No, but the remedy is arrest not execution.

    fjm
    June 15, 2020 at 12:07 pm
    If that’s true its probable cause for an arrest. It doesn’t justify a summary execution.

    3. Looks like it.
      Ever wonder commonsense is not so common and logic is absent in a majority of people with advanced degrees?

  24. The Epoch Times on California. “The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has resumed evictions that were in progress before California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The department’s Civil Process Services bureau, which handles the county’s evictions, began contacting tenants on May 26 to notify them that court-ordered evictions were proceeding on June 1.”

    “David Levy, programs specialist at Fair Housing Council of Orange County, said landlords are facing problems of their own. ‘[If] you evict a bunch of people, you have a bunch of empty units,’ he said. ‘Before any of this started, we already had a huge tenant population that was rent-burdened.’ He said people were ‘struggling in the best of times’ to afford the county’s high rents. ‘Now, you go into the pandemic, where you’re going to potentially displace these people. … Are you going to be able to find a replacement customer? The business-as-usual idea is: you’re gone, it’s a hot housing market, I’ll just replace you. Well, is that going to be true? We don’t know,’ Levy said.”

    ———-|

    – I’m not a fan of buzzfeed, but this article addresses some of what’s coming later this year. A lot changes at the end of July and forward from there in terms of ending of emergency measures.

    – I do think that these measures will be extended UNTIL AFTER THE NOVEMBER ELECTION, for “political” reasons. However, even if extended until the end of 2020, the economy won’t likely be back up to escape velocity by then. Can-kicking aside, there’s a day of reckoning coming in either Q3-Q4, ’20, or Q1, ’21, IMHO.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomgara/economy-recession-coronavirus
    The Real Economic Catastrophe Hasn’t Hit Yet. Just Wait For August.

    After a terrifying spring spent in lockdown and a summer of protests in the streets, things are going to get a lot worse in the fall.

    Tom Gara BuzzFeed News Opinion Editor
    Posted on June 10, 2020, at 11:32 a.m. ET

    “More than 40 million people lost their jobs in the last few months, in the fastest and deepest economic slowdown ever recorded. More than half of all households with low incomes in the United States have experienced a loss of earnings, as have a quarter of all adults. The numbers are grim — but as bad as things look today, they’re on track to get much, much worse.
”

    “The US economy right now is like a jumbo jet that’s in a steady glide after both its engines flamed out. In about six weeks, it will likely crash into the side of a mountain.“

    “What’s kept us in the air so far is an extraordinary government relief effort. In most states, evictions have been temporarily banned, preventing a mass homelessness crisis. Most federal student loan payments have been put on hold, removing one of the largest recurring monthly expenses that millions of people face. Banks were ordered to give their customers a six-month break on mortgage payments if requested.”

    “Most importantly, and counterintuitively, household income sharply increased in April as hundreds of billions of dollars in lost wages were replaced by trillions in government spending. The government sent out more than 159 million stimulus payments of up to $1,200 per adult (more if you have kids), and more than 20 million unemployed people became eligible for an extra $600 a week in federal unemployment benefits. The result, according to Bloomberg, was the largest monthly increase in household income ever recorded.”

    “This happened in April, when there were far fewer things to spend your money on; shops and restaurants were closed, nobody went to the ball game or took the kids to a theme park, and a shaggy nation longed for a haircut. Meanwhile, the prospect of a massive economic crash meant that Americans who were still on the job were more likely to tuck money away that they might otherwise have spent. So the national savings rate — the share of people’s income that is saved rather than spent — hit 33%, according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, also the highest level ever recorded. In the same month that we reached the worst mass unemployment in living memory, Americans saved a total of $6.15 trillion — up by $4 trillion from the month prior.”

    “The massive interventions that made all this possible will soon come to an end — but the unemployment won’t.”

    “On July 31, the $600 federal unemployment payments going to unemployed people every week will end, and there’s no sign they’ll be replaced with anything nearly as generous. In fact, many Republicans want to replace them with nothing at all — and there’s also little sign that another round of one-time stimulus checks will get mailed out. So income for tens of millions of households is likely to nose-dive in August.”

    “That will coincide with evictions returning after being put on hold for months. This month, about one-third of renters were unable to pay their rent in full or at all, despite all the stimulus money. A federal law that bans evictions in any properties financed by federally backed mortgages — more than a quarter of all households, according to one estimate — expires on July 25, just a week before millions of people’s main economic lifeline is pulled away. Unless they are extended, statewide orders banning all evictions in places that have been hardest hit by the unemployment crisis will also expire around then: Florida’s on July 1, California’s on July 28, and New York’s on Aug. 20.”

    “As millions of people experience a sudden collapse of their income at the very moment their landlords are allowed to start kicking them out, other bills will also come due. Payments on millions of paused student loans will begin again at the beginning of October; the more than 4 million homeowners who received a six-month pause on their mortgage after April’s mass layoffs will need to start making payments again at the end of October.”

        1. Perhaps ‘tangible asset’ would be more apt.

          In either case, consider that perhaps that some people with large quantities of fiat currency are implying that turning it into real estate when they could just rent would be perhaps safer than leaving it as is, or putting it into equities / financial instruments. Diversification and/or lack of confidence in the markets, etc.

      2. “before those dollars aren’t worth anything…”

        And when is this supposed to happen?

          1. Just as we spend our time discussing, debating and speculating about when, not if, and how much the housing market will crash, there are plenty of people looking at how much helicopter money is being printed right now and concerning themselves with the dollar crashing.

            Whether it will come to pass or not, I don’t know, but there are many convinced it will.

          2. Ya gotta love King Dollar. It seems everyone is desperate to get their hands on them.

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