thehousingbubble@gmail.com
Blog

All This Product Is There Because Of What The Demand Used To Be

A report from KHON. “An anonymous landlord in Hawaii that spoke with KHON2 says that his tenants have not lost employment since the pandemic started, but have avoided paying $25,000 in rent and utilities while leaning on the eviction moratorium to remain in the house. For now, the landlord is stuck trying to find ways to pay his mortgage and his tenant’s utilities. ‘We’re still trying to make it through each month ourselves and then to have this huge loss, it’s devastating on our part,’ said the landlord.”

From Local 10 in Florida. “Some critics believe Miami Dade County’s residential eviction COVID-19 moratorium is protecting squatters. Despite judge’s ordering people to be removed from homes, it is not happening. Miami-Dade County hasn’t been enforcing evictions and some homeowners, who continue paying their mortgages and taxes, are outraged and can’t believe the county is protecting criminals.”

“Anthony Stewart has taken over apartment 2D inside the building located at 915 Jefferson Avenue in Miami Beach. Kevin Harris said he spent $20,000 on legal fees to have Stewart removed through the courts and get the writ. ‘It makes my blood boil,’ he said. ‘I got a squatter living in my condo that has no right, no lease. I’m making the payments, and he refuses to leave, and no one will make him leave.'”

The Puget Sound Business Journal in Washington. “A glut of new supply has hit the in-city market, but the booming Eastside isn’t immune either, new data shows. Net demand for apartments in Seattle and Shoreline tumbled in 2020 by nearly 7,900 units, according to new data from Seattle appraiser Brian O’Connor, who said the downturn is not dissimilar to what occurred during the Great Recession, with one key difference.”

“Unlike a dozen years ago, when the recession tamped down the supply of new units, King and Snohomish counties have a total of 20,000 new units coming this year and next. These are units in lease up or under construction, not proposed.”

“‘That’s a bit of a problem,’ said O’Connor, principal of O’Connor Consulting Group and Commercial Analytics. O’Connor advises multifamily developers and expects it will take two years for the market to absorb the new construction. ‘All this product in the pipeline is there because of what the demand used to be,’ he said.”

“Year over year in September, rents declined 9.5% in Seattle and Shoreline. For landlords, it’s especially bleak in the the core of the city — downtown, Capitol Hill and Pioneer Square. ‘Rents are down by about 15% in the core, and then they’re offering two months’ free rent. That’s another 17%, so call it 30%. It’s brutal what’s going on,’ O’Connor said.”

From Queens News in New York. “As has been the trend for most of the past year, rents in northwest Queens continued to fall in January, according to a new report. The net effective median rent in the northwest part of the borough fell at its highest year-over-year rate in more than four years in January 2021, according to a report from real estate firm Douglas Elliman. The nearly 18 percent drop in the median rental price marks the ninth straight month Queens saw a decrease, the report said.”

“In January 2020, rental units were rented, on average, for nearly $3,000 in northwest Queens. Last month, units were rented for around $2,470, according to the report. The median price drop is accompanied by a rise in monthly rental concessions and a spike in units available on the market, compared to January 2020. Lease signings also saw a decline last month, dropping by 4.5 percent year over year. The decline, which began prior to the pandemic, marks the 17th year over year decline in the past 18 months.”

From College News on Australia. “Thousands of student apartments across Melbourne remain uninhabited due to the loss of international students. Use of Scape student accommodation provider fell to 15 per cent of its 5,500 bedrooms in Melbourne, a decrease from 50 per cent in 2020, and 95 per cent in 2019. ‘Occupancy has hit the cliff,’ Scapeco chairman Craig Carracher said, claiming that 20 per cent of occupants were international students amid a crisis, staying there for nothing or paying a symbolic amount for utilities.”

“The first-year student of journalism, Tiarna Condren told the Age that residents have spread out, and she was living with 150 persons in the building which has a total of 750 rooms. ‘I’ve only seen one person on my floor so far,’ Condren said.”

From Domain News in Australia. “Suburbs close to universities, including Balwyn and Carlton, saw median unit prices fall by 26.7 per cent and 20.5 per cent, respectively. ‘While the vacancy rates are so high they are just not holding any appeal for investors. There is no demand for them,’ says Angie Zigomanis, director, research and strategy at Charter Keck Cramer.”

“‘Many apartments that are currently rented to international students could be empty in three years’ time if new international students can’t come in and that will cause prices to plummet for those smaller one or two-bedroom apartments,’ said Melbourne-based demographer Simon Kuestenmacher.”

Related Posts
This Post Has 115 Comments

  1. ‘For landlords, it’s especially bleak in the the core of the city — downtown, Capitol Hill and Pioneer Square. ‘Rents are down by about 15% in the core, and then they’re offering two months’ free rent. That’s another 17%, so call it 30%. It’s brutal what’s going on’

    You have to add in concessions and vacancy to see the real pain. How do those 5% cap rates look now?

    1. When you got Jerome and Janet handing out never-ending Mastercards, you don’t need no stinkin’ cap rates.

        1. ‘How do you add $200,000 or more in value overnight on your investment property? Easy! Just sprinkle on some magic fairy dust! But if you are like me and used up the last of your fairy dust on your last flight to never-never land with Peter, you are in luck. You can still add incredible amounts of equity on your property, without magic, by using cap rates.’

          ‘Let’s look back at our example of Farmer Fred. Fred looks at the property he just bought and notices several things. He is currently paying $15,000 per year for property management. He knows that an on-sight resident manager can do the job in exchange for free rent, saving him $8,000 per year. He also decides that his rents are a little below average for the area, so he increases his rent by just $25 per month per unit, bringing in an extra $300 per unit, per year or $7,200 in extra income per year total.’

          ‘Doing just those two small acts, Farmer Fred immediately begins keeping an extra $15,200 per year. To Farmer Fred’s wallet, this is awesome; but even better, in investment lingo, his net operating income just increased by $15,200. His old NOI was $74,500, but now is $89,700. Now, keeping the same cap rate from before and using the new NOI value, Equation B (NOI/Cap Rate = Market Value) now shows: $89,700/.0667 = 1,344,827.59. Farmer Fred has increased the value of his property from $1,116,941.53 to $1,344,827.59, a total change of over $200,000.’

          https://realestateinyourtwenties.com/cap-rates-the-magic-fairy-dust-of-the-investing-world/

          So whack yer rents 30% and you get a magic fairy dust a$$ pounding.

        2. Yes, liquidity isn’t accounting solvency, but what about endless liquidity? At least it seems like the liquidity is endless. Kick the can until you die.

          1. sol·ven·cy
            /ˈsälv(ə)nsē/

            noun: solvency

            -the possession of assets in excess of liabilities; ability to pay one’s debts.

            Being cash flow negative isn’t an accounting thing. Note what cash flows that cap rates exclude. These guys were losing money before the CCP virus. You have to understand where we came from and where we are now to see it’s bad and on a far larger scale than last decade. Apartments, retail, hotels, restaurants, it’s all going down. There isn’t an easy solution: opening the economy alone won’t fix it. People are snake bit. The multiplier of spending is probably as low as it’s been in modern history.

  2. ‘Lease signings also saw a decline last month, dropping by 4.5 percent year over year. The decline, which began prior to the pandemic, marks the 17th year over year decline in the past 18 months’

    The REIC is trying to gin up a rebound story for the NYC crater. You can see that’s hogwash.

  3. ‘Suburbs close to universities, including Balwyn and Carlton, saw median unit prices fall by 26.7 per cent and 20.5 per cent, respectively. ‘While the vacancy rates are so high they are just not holding any appeal for investors. There is no demand for them’

    If you listen to the UHS, they’ll tell you it’s red-hotcakes. Good thing everybody put 20% down.

    1. Actually what should be more newsworthy is seeing and hearing the real journalist admit she wasn’t wearing a mask and the cameras panning to her and catching another unmasked camera person well within 6 feet right in the middle of this made for tevee slobberfest.

    2. Couple that with the sudden MSM fawning and love fest for Joe and Jill. Evidently Joe likes to put a log on the fireplace in the Oval Office and go to bed early. Meanwhile people are freezing in the dark in Houston and everyone else is waiting for a stimulus check. I hope the media keeps it up. The sheep will come to the their senses one by one. I don’t expect them to switch, but at least they’ll start thinking again.

      1. “…likes to put a log on the fireplace…”

        Am I correct to assume no carbon footprint is generated by the burning of these logs?

        2. “When burned, trees generate more CO2 emissions per unit of energy generated than fossil fuels. … In terms of electricity generation, smokestack emissions from combusting wood can be more than three times higher than those of natural gas, and 1.5 times those of coal per MWh.”

          Oops. Joe is killing the planet.

  6. Evidently this is an example of what happens when well-intentioned Democratic governors override private contracts:

    “…his tenants have not lost employment since the pandemic started, but have avoided paying $25,000 in rent and utilities while leaning on the eviction moratorium to remain in the house.”

    1. It seems there is no one to stop this illegal and unconstitional taking of private party by a nonjudicial politician. It accelerated (if not beginning) with the way contracts were thrown away with the Federal governments abrogating contracts in the “saving GM” era. Constitution ignored for political expediency and no one stopped it. Atlas Shrugged.

      1. “illegal and unconstitutional taking of private party by a nonjudicial politician”

        I don’t see why anyone would chose to be a landlord. I don’t imagine landlord rights are going to be anymore of a priority in the future then they are now. I see near zero upside on being a landlord. But hey, I totally missed out on Bit Coin so what do I know.

          1. the (preventable) power outage

            A few years back, my mother’s town of Amherst NY was hit with a thick, heavy wet October snowfall. Thing was, all the trees still had their leaves. The branches were shredded off all the trees, bringing power lines down on every street.

            I got there in a few hours and eventually was able to chainsaw a path to her driveway. Hundreds of tree service crews showed up from all over the country and it took them maybe weeks to clean everything up. Mom was without power for a week. She had gas and water, so we could cook and wash, and a fireplace. It’s not that cold in October.

            Once in a century weather disasters are “preventable”? I’m sorry for their troubles in Texas, but their plan B failed and plan C was shut down for the winter. There’s plenty of gas pressure in the pipeline, you should have knockout traps for condensed water in case of freeze. It takes a while to startup a coal plant.

  8. This is for our resident DJ who wants to repo degrees, in exchanged for loan forgiveness. from hired dot coms annual tech job report:

    Software engineers are increasingly self-taught and traditional university degrees are becoming less relevant compared to the previous year.

    Sheepskins are becoming irrelevant. Bill Gates never got one. Elon Musk says they’re irrelevant when he’s hiring.

    1. “…Sheepskins are becoming irrelevant…”

      1/2 life of knowledge in software engineering is about 6 months.

      Going to college made sense 50 years ago when the rate of change was minimal for most technology.

      1. 1/2 life of knowledge in software engineering is about 6 months.

        For the “hot stuff” that gets you quick job offers with top pay, yes. Once it’s over a year old it starts to become “legacy technology” and the field quickly becomes crowded and there is competition for jobs.

      2. The kids we hire that have comp-sci degrees pickup the work faster but over time skills even out with drive and conscientiousness becoming determining factors.

        Re: the degrees anybody with drive can pickup an Data Structures and Algorithms book (in multiple brogramming languages) and learn. The college loans need to be dischargeable and bankruptcy and not backed by uncle sugar / .gov to bring their prices down while strangling the ridiculous PC majors. Colleges are no the harbingers of the destruction of Western Civilization.

    2. Software engineers are increasingly self-taught and traditional university degrees are becoming less relevant compared to the previous year. ”

      Just send it over seas so what if its crappy everything else is .

    3. true, but you still have unions, civil service, legal, education system, etc who still require you to have a valid degree to even get an interview. So my idea would apply to people willing to throw in the towel, i give up, my degree is usless, and just move on with their lives., until we end the “must have a degree” requirements.

      1. until we end the “must have a degree” requirements

        Except for those corner cases you mentioned, we already have. Most job descriptions already say that stuff like “or comparable experience”. The stuff headhunters send my way rarely have formal education requirements in them, they are instead laundry list of skills.

        Colleges are already beginning to fold due to lack of demand. It’s only going to increase. Forgiving loans will only keep them on life support longer. Instead, we need to get rid of loans altogether. Then higher ed will be affordable again.

        1. After a year of Study from Home, it should be entirely possible to get a college education for a few thousand dollars. When I went tuition was in the range of what could be saved from a summer job. My daughter just took a proctored test to finish a difficult technical class. Sure she had to go to campus that day for the test, but the teacher didn’t even have to grade it. My daughter saw her (passing) score on the computer at the end of the test. A proctored test could easily be done at your hometown HS, without the Professor.

        2. I’ve been out of the job market for a while, but AFAIK traditional engineering and sciences still need BS and BE. You don’t get that in high school and it’s not so easy to self-learn. Last I remember, you couldn’t even sit the FE/EIT/PE exams without a degree, likely because the engineering societies know that you learn a lot more with a degree than you do with a prep book.

          1. I didn’t mean the test would be made up by a HS. I meant that taking a proctored test could be sub contracted to a remote location quite easily. Proctors don’t need to be professors. The object of proctoring is just to make sure you aren’t doing research during the test.

  9. Situations like this seem like a natural consequence of the Fed’s decision to turn residential housing into a magic money machine. Owners who think they are due double digit appreciation indefinitely may prefer to keep their places empty rather than dropping rent to market value to keep them occupied. And people of limited means may be tempted to squat if no rentals are available that they can afford…especially if the government makes squatting legal.

    ‘It makes my blood boil,’ he said. ‘I got a squatter living in my condo that has no right, no lease. I’m making the payments, and he refuses to leave, and no one will make him leave.’

    1. perfect example of homeowner in California right here who is NOT putting a vacant inherited house up for rental.

      you’d have to be outta yo’ mind to rent a house to anyone these days with all the laws favoring renters, not to mention the endless moratorium on evictions.

      1. What these Bolshevik-Democrats fail to understand is that as landlords vacate the business en masse, property values along with property taxes are likely to fall. Your patronage and graft rackets aren’t self-funding, comrades.

      1. fake beef is some new area Bill Gates wants to make a bunch of money off of.

        Would certainly explain his interest in farmland.

    3. Bill gates wont be eating synthetic beef but doesn’t stop him from making rules for everyone else.

      Newsom knows this eating at the French laundry restaurant at 500 dollars a plate while locking down the serfs in CA.

      Just because you’re super rich doesn’t mean you’re not an idiot .

      1. He’s the same shitbag seen on every network curled up in ball crying for mommy when his company was gonna get busted up into smithereenies back in the 90s.

        Remember that Bile Gates?

  11. Do y’all expect the stock market to crater when the Bitcoin bubble collapses?

    Or is Bitcoin decoupled now?

    2. There is so much money sloshing around right now that I don’t expect either to crater anytime soon. With another $2 Trillion on the way, I expect things to go full video game, if they haven’t already.

        1. $100,000 doesn’t even entice me. The money’s already been made. I’d want a 100x possibility in crypto to even dip my toe, and I still wouldn’t. Because it’s nothing but gambling on greater fools to buy at higher prices. Last I checked, a “currency” was supposed to be a store of value. Sh!tcon and all crypto fails miserably.

          People like to say “don’t you wish you would have bought Bitcoin?” No, I don’t. I mean, sure, winning the lottery is fun, but I don’t regret not buying a ticket. If you put me back to the time when BTC was $1,000, without the knowledge it would go to $50k and beyond, I would have still NOT BOUGHT IT. I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe in any crypto. It’s all a scam – a get rich quick Ponzi. I’ve never been taken by Ponzis.

          Which brings me to my next point. This sh!t is rotten to the core, and it points right back at the FED and their deranged money printing and bubbles. I just saw a headline today that said something to the effect of “the entire system was on the verge of collapse with Gamestop.” Oh, really? If that’s the kind of system they’re running, it doesn’t sound particularly sound or responsible.

          Yet, there’s Jerome Foul and Janet Felon, ready to cue up more QE. Heavens to Betsy, let’s keep doing the same fawkin’ thing that’s destroying everything. They are putting the entire system in peril, and their idea is to triple and quadruple down on that which endangers us. These people should be arrested.

          1. Something stinks about winning the lottery on a fake currency like Bitcoin, just before the last sucker to buy before the return to Craterton loses his shirt due to the luck of bad timing. If you are a pretend enviro like Elon Musk making bank off the vast waste of fossil-fuel generated electricity involved, it becomes all the more despicable.

  13. The most existential threat the populations have today is corrupted Government, fraudulent false narratives by Monopoly owned news, criminal monopoly rule by a collusion of Globalist Monopoly Corporations wanting to dictate policy, fake Climate Change, fake Pandemics, fake racism, fake everything.
    These Entities want to take freedom, choice, Constitutional protections, control resources, jab you with vaccines, even tell you what you can eat. The small people should eat bugs, and Bill Gates thinks people should only have fake beef, as he buys up farmland in the USA.
    And when you think about how it was the populations that made these Entries rich to begin with it amazing how they think they are better than the people.
    The Founders set up such a great concept of Government by the People, where the individual gets pursuit of happiness, not Bill Gates telling you what you get to eat.
    I’m all for population control by convincing people to limit their offspring on a voluntarily basis. This idea of killing people who are already alive to reduce population is murder.,
    Or the potential for these control freaks to deem who is worthy or not worthy of life. Hitler deemed the Jews, the disabled, the gypsies, etc weren’t worthy of life. Mao took out what 20 to 40 million of his own people.

    I’m just saying these Entities are dangerous, they have no moral compass, they are fraudulent, and they are self serving, and not very humane, and add greedy and power hungry. Add on top of that they weren’t elected and don’t represent the will of the people.

    2. Very well said Housing Wiz. Even better would be to expose people to the consequences of their choices. They would naturally limit the number of offspring they had.

      1. Thanks for posting that song by George Jones. It sorta got to me.
        One of the things that is so evident about freedom is the creativity it produces.
        The box of tyranny takes away creativity.
        How boring if people were put in a box, told what to do, what to eat, what to think. Everybody trying to get a good social credit score that pleases some Big Government Dictatorship.

    2. He was the first to break the globalist media’s monopoly on the airwaves in a big way. Keeping the sheeple in a state of ignorance became a lot harder once Rush showed up on the scene to skewer the libtards’ sacred cows and mock their failed leftist dogma.

    4. Sorry, I should have clarified that it was liberals that would be celebrating. The idiots in Hollywood are already all over Twitter.

  15. Rush Limbaugh died at 70 years .
    Might of been one of the biggest conservative voices of all time.
    It looks like he was working on his radio show right up the the last.

  16. My shipmate Art and I were driving back from El Centro to San Diego in January,1991. We’d just spent a grueling three weeks training fighter aircrews headed for Desert Storm and I was so exhausted that I passed out for about 30 minutes. I remember waking up because I heard a conservative radio host who had apparently crawled inside my head and knew exactly what I was thinking.

    I was a loyal listener for 30 years and I held out on renewing my Rush 24/7 membership because he had been gone for a couple of weeks and I feared that he wouldn’t be back. I hate it when I’m right. God’s speed my friend.

      1. 2 mega bucks and it doesn’t have a formal dining room. just a large nook in full view of the kitchen

          1. Have you tried enrolling your son on an interdistrict transfer?

            My $$$ SD is bleeding enrollment as kids leave the state, in the 100s in our high school.

            PSD needs enrollment too, would be my guess.

            That way you don’t have to spend stupid money on a pos house. Once they verify your addy the first time, its a checkbox. If you want to go really hard, claim homelessness. It’s illegal for them to ask anything beyond that once you’ve declared it. Besides, it’s kind of true.

            https://www.powayusd.com/en-US/Departments/Attendance-Discipline/Student-Transfer-Requests/FAQs-for-Residency-Transfers

            F the Fed.

    2. My favorite part of the Treadwell listing:

      05/18/1998 Sold $502,000

      Good thing incomes have quadrupled since 1998. Oh wait, they haven’t?

      1. Oops my bad, that $502k was the land price. House built in ‘99. So Poway has been in a huge bubble since the late 90s? That was a massive amount of money for unbuilt land back in ‘98.

        1. ‘Oops my bad, that $502k was the land price. House built in ‘99. So Poway has been in a huge bubble since the late 90s? That was a massive amount of money for unbuilt land back in ‘98.’

          $500K is A LOT of money for a residential acre in 1998. Is Poway like an Alpine NJ kind of exclusivity?

          1. When I lived in San Diego, Poway was considered a very desirable location and you paid a hefty premium to live there.

  18. Did you see the following (this one was from CNBC)?

    Homeborrowers are going all in – low interest rates and pandemic related WFH i guess. Is the fed turning around and buying a lot of this debt? It doesnt make sense to me

    —–
    Debt increased 1.4% for the final three months, representing another $206 billion as households took advantage of low interest rates and continued fiscal and monetary stimulus.

    Mortgage debt passed $10 trillion for the first time and rose at the fastest pace in the fourth quarter since 2006. The quarterly increase of $182 billion culminated a year in which homeowners took advantage of low rates to refinance and as city dwellers moved to suburbs amid the continuing shift brought during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    In 2020, total household debt rose by $414 billion amid a shift from borrowing to finance automobiles and education and into mortgages. The year saw mortgage debt increase $486 billion while student loans increased just $47 billion to $1.56 trillion and auto debt nudged higher by $43 billion to $1.37 trillion. Credit card debt declined for the year by $108 billion to $820 billion.

    1. That’s a pretty amazing number on credit card debt. People must have been paying down balances with their vacay munnies. I bet it will skyrocket right back up in the fall.

      1. A lot of it is due to the fact that in a time of record low rates, credit card rates have not really budged. They’re as high as ever. People are HELOCing to pay them off, and the moochers are using their gov monies to pay them off, too. Anybody who’s ever carried a balance on a credit card knows how lame it is. I did it a long, long time ago before I got smart about debt in general. Never again.

    2. The credit spigot is shooting like a firehose everywhere. This a total clown show at this point. The FED is deranged. I think what we’re seeing are the results of mentally ill billionaires playing games.

  19. OK, Jon Rappoport, 40 years being a medical journalist ,said something interesting on a podcast.
    In summary, he said the flaw of the fake Pandemic is the PCR test for covid19 . Above 35 revolutions the test is false or meaningless, whatever that means.
    So, apparently each lab sets the PCR test at whatever they want, in terms of this revolution or spin thing..
    So, if they were sitting this spin thing over 35 revolution, the tests were fraudulent, or meaningless.
    So, if your throwing out numbers on cases , scaring the public with a fraud on positive cases , it’s a fraudulent Pandemic. He said the labs would be the first to challenge legally to force the truth out.

    Than Mark Zuckerbierg was caught on tape saying the vaccines alter DNA, when pervious he was censoring any data that claimed that.
    Now this is most likely a deliberate leak, or a cover his ass type leak.
    But again the censoring of Medical information , and inaccuracy of tests is a very big issue. All along I thought that the Covid tests not being accurate was a red flag that it was a fake Pandemic.
    Now I know Big Pharma has no liability if anyone is damaged by a vaccine. But there might be liability with fraud in testing, and obstruction of vital medical information as in the case of Zuckerbierg.

    Jon Rappoport was just talking about what way you have to come at this. But he is on a web site called no more fake news.
    I was shocked when there were reports that came out about the tests being inaccurate for Covid, yet people were lining up in droves to get the test.

    I mean the Global economy was shut down and we don’t know how many tests were true.
    Again, everything is fake . For me I call it deliberate fraud, deception, omission of vital facts to mislead ,deceive or harm.

    1. this revolution or spin thing

      I think they call it Amplification. It’s a doubling of the sought for molecular chain in the sample. You double something 40 times and the number is astronomical. Que the story of the math guy, a chess board and the Arab King.

      I won’t be surprised if we hear later on that all the labs began gradually following the test guidelines (25 amplifications) right around January 7. We’ll see. Nobody will remember this stuff. I was talking about it last spring.

  20. “In summary, he said the flaw of the fake Pandemic is the PCR test for covid19 . Above 35 revolutions the test is false or meaningless, whatever that means.”

    We’ve known this forever, it’s just that “orange man bad” was in charge. The moment that they realized their illegal Coup was a success, they immediately made plans to change the test. Had the Coup not worked, the PCR values would have remained.

    1. Yes I know we have been talking about fake tests for a long time .But his point was this is how you bust the fraud , going after the labs. You know stuff like “who ordered you to turn the spins up to 40. He was speaking in terms of ways to get the Globalist Monopolies for the kind of outrageous stuff they pull.
      Alll we have is rigged financial systems, fake news, fake Pandemics, fake Russian Hoax, fake voting machines, fake climate change ,fake Impeachment Trial, fake fake fake fake everything
      How can a Society endure this constant nonstop damage from non stop fake /fraud in every area?

  21. Police helicopters out searching for stranded motorists in Texas saw what they initially thought was a large SOS in the snow beside a stretch of highway with numerous stranded cars. However, as they descended, they saw that the stranded motorists had banded together to spell out “Realtors are liars.”

    1. A Big Thank You to Chrissie Hynde

      Feb 18, 2020

      MUSIC: (My City Was Gone)

      RUSH: This song that you’re hearing is a looped version of the intro to a song by Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders called My City Was Gone. I’m calling attention to this because I haven’t talked about this song in many, many moons, and I don’t know how many of you know where the song is from. You so identify it with this program — understandably so, after 30-plus years. But this song is used with the permission of one of the most legendary female performers in rock, Chrissie Hynde.

      Her publishing company actually tried to take it away. I guess this was back in the early nineties when we were still doing the program out of New York. The publishing firm tried to take it away, and she interceded and told them, effectively, to pound sand; that, if I wanted to continue to use it, that I would have her permission to use it. We negotiated a price. We pay them an annual fee for the usage of the tune. I point this out because Chrissie Hynde is out today in a story in the U.K. Daily Mail, and the headline:

      “The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde Praises Trump for Honoring Rush Limbaugh — Despite Being a LIBERAL Herself — Because Her Dad Loved the Pundit and She Believes in the ‘Right to disagree.’” This is another reason why. She was on WPLJ in New York when Scott Shannon and the guys were asking her about this during the controversy of the song. I mean, we actually had the song taken away for a period of, I think, three weeks or a month until she interceded.

      She was on PLJ in New York and they asked her about it. “I don’t care. If Rush wants to use it, fine with me,” which totally confounded her publishing company. So, we got the song back. The reason is that her dad was a huge fan of this program. Her dad’s name was Melville. His nickname was Bud, and Chrissie Hynde says that her late father, Melville, would have loved Trump’s presidency, would have absolutely adored Trump, and would have just been excited as he could be when Trump presented to me the Medal of Freedom at the State of the Union.

      https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/02/18/a-big-thank-you-to-chrissie-hynde/

  24. Are you expecting your Buttcoin to reach $1,000,000 per imaginary coin? If you can imagine it, it can happen.

  25. Tech
    Bitcoin at $1 million? Some analysts are bullish but others warn of risks ahead
    Published Wed, Feb 17 2021 7:57 PM EST
    Updated Wed, Feb 17 2021 8:29 PM EST
    Arjun Kharpal

    Key Points
    – Bitcoin has surged over the last few months and surpassed $50,000 for the first time this week.
    – Anthony Pompliano, co-founder and partner at Morgan Creek Digital Assets, said bitcoin could hit $500,000 by the end of the decade, and eventually go on to reach $1 million per coin.
    – One JPMorgan strategist warned that a major risk could be retail flows into bitcoin drying up as economies reopen.
    …

  26. You can safely ignore all the stock market scare stories.

    With an interminable flood of Powell bux, the Greenspan-Bernanke-Yellen-Powell put firmly undergirding share prices, and the end of COVID-19 in plain sight, the stock market can only go up from here.

    1. The Financial Times
      US Inflation
      US bond sell-off stirs warnings over stock market strength
      Investors say a further sharp rise in yields would threaten Wall Street’s record run
      Investors are scrambling to identify the potential tipping point for equities
      © FT montage
      Aziza Kasumov and Colby Smith in New York 2 hours ago

      The drop in US government bond prices in the opening weeks of 2021 poses a threat to Wall Street’s record run, analysts and investors have said.

      High prices and vanishingly slim yields on Treasury bonds have provided a key support for equities since the shock of the coronavirus outbreak last year. But, stung by expectations for rising inflation, yields have swept higher, with the 10-year benchmark yield briefly touching 1.3 per cent this week, from a little above 0.9 per cent at the start of the year. Already, February is shaping up to provide one of the biggest monthly increases in yields since 2018.

      Investors are now scrambling to identify the potential tipping point for equities.
      …

      1. Does anyone recall what happened to stock prices after inflation reared its head in June 2008, sending gasoline prices over $4 a gallon?

        1. Investor Toolkit
          Warren Buffett explains how to invest in stocks when inflation hits markets
          Published Mon, Feb 12 2018 8:30 AM EST
          Updated Wed, Feb 14 2018 2:23 PM EST
          Eric Rosenbaum
          Key Points
          – Warren Buffett has been vocal on the subject of inflation in past periods of rising prices.
          – In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he devoted significant portions of the Berkshire Hathaway annual letter to investing in stocks during inflationary periods.
          – He warned before the financial crisis that inflation would cause a shock, and after the crisis that central banking policy would ultimately force a reckoning in stocks.

          Warren Buffett has always been a firm believer that staying invested in stocks is the only course.

          If anything, Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is famous for the ultimate statement on dip buying: Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

          But these Buffett-isms may mask the fact that, throughout his life, Buffett has offered many wise words on just how much inflation can ding stocks. Now that inflation is back in the crosshairs of the markets, as investors try to understand what has caused such a swift correction in stocks, it’s worth looking back at what Buffett has said about inflation in the past.

          Buffett devoted significant portions of Berkshire annual letters in the late 1970s and early 1980s — amid high inflation in the United States — to discussing what rising prices mean for stocks, corporate balance sheets and investors. Buffett lived and invested through a period when inflation hit 14 percent and mortgage rates spiked as high as 20 percent — amid what some called the greatest American macroeconomic failure of the post-World War II period.

          He never lost that focus on — or fear of — inflation, either.

          In June 2008, as the price of gas went above $4, Buffett said “exploding” inflation was the biggest risk to the economy. “I think inflation is really picking up,” Buffett said on CNBC. “It’s huge right now, whether it’s steel or oil,” he continued. “We see it everywhere.”

          Do you remember what happened after that?
          …

          1. “Warren Buffett has always been a firm believer that staying invested in stocks is the only course.”

            I love how the CNBC peops worked in that plug for owning stocks. What they aren’t talking about is the large cash positions Uncle Warren has built up at times of market greed.

    2. I’m thinking about that timeless piece of sage investing wisdom handed down from Uncle Warren:

      “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

      I have been watching the markets since a violinist friend with a day job as vice president of a stock brokerage company got me interested, back in the mid 1980s. I cannot recall a time when markets were greedier than now, with the possible exceptions of the junk bond party of the late 1980s, the tech stock bubble of the late 1990s, and Housing Bubble 1.0 in the 2005-2007 blowout phase. All of these bubble-era greed pandemics ended with great muppet reapings that lasted over months or years, followed by periods of deep remorse and extreme market fears.

      Try not to get caught on the wrong side of history’s greed-fear cycle, my friends.

      1. Mint Curator
        What Warren Buffett’s stock market strategy has signalled
        4 min read
        Updated: 17 Feb 2021, 09:33 PM IST
        Tara Lachapelle
        His company deployed only a tiny fraction of its huge cash stockpile

        It was already pretty safe to say that Warren Buffett wasn’t going to get in on the overzealous GameStop Corp. buying action of late. But a regulatory filing Tuesday signalled that the famed investor is still hesitant about stocks generally, with his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. back to hoarding cash while riding out a market that’s been disjointed by a global pandemic, steep valuations and lately, bitter Reddit users.
        …

      2. With the two price increases and a good chuck of listings with sales prices over the asking prices, we (locally) might be near that blowout top you mentioned.

  27. I’m a fan of Roaring Kitty. Let’s get these Wall Street investigations going!

    The Financial Times
    Retail trading
    Reddit day trader urges Wall Street probe ahead of GameStop hearing

    Keith Gill, also known as Roaring Kitty, to testify alongside hedge fund boss who lost billions

    Roaring Kitty on his YouTube channel. He has been one of the most outspoken bulls on GameStop shares
    © Youtube
    Eric Platt and Ortenca Aliaj in New York and Miles Kruppa and Hannah Murphy in San Francisco yesterday

    The day trader at the centre of the short squeeze on GameStop stock urged a House committee to investigate “potentially manipulative shorting practices” on Wall Street, ahead of a hearing in which he will appear alongside the hedge fund manager who lost billions on the other side of the bet.

    Keith Gill defended his investment in the video games retailer and demanded clearer answers on why GameStop share purchases were restricted by online brokerages at the height of the trading frenzy, according to prepared testimony published by the financial services committee of the House of Representatives. He also sought answers on why GameStop came to be so heavily shorted by hedge funds.

    The remarks lay the groundwork for a high-stakes hearing, as policymakers attempt to make sense of an upsurge of retail investor trading and respond to the outrage generated by the trading curbs last month.

    “I’ve had a bit of experience and even I barely understand these matters,” Gill said. “It’s alarming how little we know about the inner-workings of the market.”
    …

    1. Investor Toolkit
      Investing with borrowed money can be a big win — for some
      Published Wed, Jan 24 20187:59 AM EST
      Updated Wed, Jan 24 2018 8:14 AM EST
      Kayleigh Kulp
      Share
      Key Points
      – Professional traders have used leveraged money to invest in ETFs and other stocks for decades, but this tactic can be ruinous for the average individual investor.
      – There’s evidence that trades on margin are increasing as the stock market continues its bullish ascent, demonstrating investor confidence.
      – About $551 million in margin debt was reported to the NYSE in August, compared to about $471 million last year.

      In a 1991 speech at the University of Notre Dame, Warren Buffett offered a few of what are now regarded as some of his wisest words: “I’ve seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage — leverage being borrowed money.”
      …

    2. My ex-girlfriend had a mentally disabled sister — bless her heart — whose favorite, oft-repeated expression was, “I have a great idea.”

      1. “My ex-girlfriend had a mentally disabled sister”

        I was really expecting that to be the opening line of a joke.

        I will now raise your “bless her heart” with one – Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

  32. Kermit the Frog Sing Along

    https://youtu.be/awhyiBv-oQc

    All of us under its spell
    We know that it’s probably magic
    Have you been half asleep, and have you heard voices?
    I’ve heard them calling my name
    Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors?
    The voice might be one and the same

    I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it
    It’s something that I’m supposed to be

    Someday we’ll find it, the stolen election
    The Marxists, the Liars, and me
    La-da-da-de-da-da-do
    La-da-da-da-da-de-da-do

Comments are closed.