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If You Need To Sell, Sell Now, Because The Market’s Going Down

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “The average sale price of a single-family house in Mesa has increased 55% in two years and while home prices likely will continue to rise, mortgage rates and an apparent cooling in demand may spell trouble ahead for sellers, a leading Valley housing analyst said. Valley-wide, the Cromford Report reported that over the past six weeks, ‘active listing counts are rising very strongly’ –  up more than 32% in a month – and called it ‘one of the most dramatic shifts in direction we have ever seen. If this trend continues for several months the market dynamics will change significantly.'”

“Cromford said rising mortgage interest rates and rising prices are discouraging potential new buyers from entering the market, citing a 6% decline in listings under contract in April. ‘Closed sales are also down more than 9% from April 2021,’ it said. ‘Demand is weak and getting weaker. The overall effect is a major cooling event, turning a hot housing market into one that still favors sellers (for now) but is looking increasingly dangerous with each passing day. The market does not turn on a dime, but it can certainly change dramatically over a handful of months, as it did between August and November 2005,’ it added, suggesting ‘we are now entering a very different phase of the market cycle.'”

“In Boulder County, sellers’ expectations did not quite match reality, as Easter weekend saw a turn in the market where home showings went from 20 to 30 showings over the course of a weekend to an average of five or six showings. The report notes that listings were still on the market on Monday morning and the county started to see price reductions on homes.”

“‘They say you only know when the downturn comes right after it happened. It seems to have happened a few weeks ago and with more rate hikes on the horizon, we expect a very different second half of the year compared to 2021,’ Kelly Move, a Boulder and Broomfield realtor, said in the report.”

“‘Are we seeing changes with the increase in interest rates? The answer is a definitive, yes,” Aurora-area realtor Sunny Banka said in the report. ‘We are seeing more price reductions on some homes and in some areas. Sellers are perhaps thinking they have hit the top of the current market on pricing. We are seeing some increase in listings, which could be due to the time of year, and we are seeing some median prices go down over the previous month.'”

“A combination of post-pandemic cabin fever and a 75% reduction in new mortgage applications drove thousands of Southern California mortgage loan originators with nothing but time on their hands to the recent California Mortgage Expo in Irvine. It was so surreal, it felt like I was part of an ant farm. I was struck by how creative and aggressive lenders have become in solving the income puzzle for homebuyers. Certainly, the most aggressive loan program I came across was a way for self-employed borrowers to income qualify using the most recent three months of business or personal bank account statements to qualify.”

“In another example, one lender allows income qualifications based on liquid assets. And who says you need your own money to buy rental properties? One program I came across allows 100% gift funds (let’s say Mom gives you a wad of cash) with a FICO score as low as 620. Can you say straw buyer? Pivoting to vacation investment properties, one lender has made it easier to qualify for a purchase or refinance by using the average vacation rents instead of average neighborhood rents.”

“Just how busy was the expo? ‘There were just under 2,000 attendees,’ said originator connect expo organizer Vincent Valvo, CEO of American Business Media. ‘Non-QM (exotic mortgages) were the hot topic.’ For better or worse, walking away after the show got me thinking that virtually anyone can get financed if they have decent credit and 20% down.”

“It was crazy how quickly the market turned, says realtor Dajan Kumarasamy. ‘It was like a flip of a switch,’ he says. He had three or four homes listed in March. One week those houses were drawing 15 to 20 offers. The next week, it was two or three. ‘I was so shocked. I was like, ‘What is going on?’ And then I was telling all the people in my pipeline, ‘Hey, if you need to sell, sell now, because (the market’s) going down.'”

“For the last two years, Kumarasamy had been juggling bidding wars and bully offers. His Durham Region territory was seeing house prices escalate 30 to 40 per cent annually, month after month, as buyers flocked to the suburbs during the pandemic in search of more space. Now, he says, some unique properties — those with big lots or extraordinary renovations — are still seeing 20 or 30 offers, but houses in average condition ‘are just kind of stagnant.'”

“Kevin Crigger, president of the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board has heard other agents expressing concern and the management at his Re/Max Realtron brokerage has been trying to offer reassurance that the market will lift. ‘It’s been crazy the last couple of years. I don’t think everyone has been saving their money the way they should have been,’ he said.”

“First-home buyers are being urged to snap up a property during the coming year as interest rate rises cause house prices to fall. Lloyd Edge, managing director of buyer’s agent Aus Property Professionals, said getting into property when others were scared of mortgage stress was the right time to ‘get a bargain’. ‘That’s when people will be walking away from the market,’ he told Daily Mail Australia. ‘The increase in interest rates will lead to a decline in property prices, and we’re already starting to see the market cool-off.'”

“‘The prices are actually coming off because before there was so much FOMO, prices continued to increase,’ he said.”

“Queenstown median house prices have dipped below $1 million for the first time in 18 months. Figures for April show a 22.1% decrease from the same month last year, from $1.22m to $950,000 for the tourist town.
There was an even larger drop in Wānaka, where the median price dropped 43.3% to $635,000, largely due to sales of townhouses at the Riverside Residence development. ‘There is a rationalisation of the market happening, but it’s too early to panic,’ said Real Estate Institute Otago/Southland spokesperson Liz Nidd.”

“For many of Sweden’s highly indebted consumers, the Riksbank’s sudden interest-rate increase at the end of April marks the start of a new squeeze that officials have long fretted about. The financial legacy of borrowings that swelled during the country’s housing boom of the past decade, stoked by years of subzero monetary policy, is now catching up with citizens who were led to believe such a swift change in the central bank’s stance wouldn’t come to pass.”

“Swedes’ debts at 200% of household income clearly exceed any from the Group of Seven economies. The pile of consumer borrowing prompted Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves to publicly worry last year that he felt like he was ‘sitting on top of a volcano.’ ‘We are facing a large trend shift after 25 years with declining housing-finance costs, and it’s pretty clear that is about to change,’ said Helena Bornevall, senior economist at Svenska Handelsbanken. ‘We haven’t been in a situation where rates increase at the same time as households are pressured by price increases, combined with the level of indebtedness we have today.'”

“‘The party is over on the housing market and domestic demand will stagnate,’ Nordea economist Torbjorn Isaksson said in a new economic forecast. Christina Casserlov, a real-estate broker at Fjelkners, a small agency in the well-off Stockholm suburb of Bromma, is detecting a sense of hesitation among prospective home-buyers. ‘We have seen prices double in 10 years,’ she said. ‘Now the uncertainty is increasing again.”

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This Post Has 136 Comments

  1. ‘It’s been crazy the last couple of years. I don’t think everyone has been saving their money the way they should have been’

    No!

    1. Why save money when you are witnessing the onset of double digit inflation that cuts its value in half every seven years or less? It doesn’t pencil out to save when inflation is running rampant.

    2. A co-worker told me that a cousin of hers and three people on her block all got tummy-tuck/lipo during the pandemic. Likely used house equity moneys to do so. Lot of new cars driving around too.

      1. “Lot of new cars driving around too.”

        Here too. Yet Craigslist and our park-n-ride lots next to the interstate are littered with used high-trim pick-up trucks with 50k mileage and asking $70k and up. It’s like a weird dream where nothing makes sense.

        1. Lots of people are trying to “make money” on their used trucks. They bought it new, drove it two years, and want to get $20,000 more than they paid for it new. My answer to them is to kindly f*** off.

    1. How ironic to discover that stablecoin is so unstable that it warrants Plunge Protection Team intervention.

      1. PS My memory is a little foggy on the details, but it seems like the point when the Plunge Protection Team became openly involved in the 2007-2009 financial crisis was only the beginning of a financial meltdown that lasted for maybe seven months (9/08-3/09) and wiped out about 50% of the value of headline US stock market index levels. And then housing prices cratered for several more years after that.

        I’m not suggesting that the same thing is happening presently. I realize that this time is different.

        1. The posts from these morons is really something. Literally losing all they had on meme magic coins. I just can’t. At least you can hug a Beanie Baby

          1. I own a Beanie Baby which someone gave me for free a few years ago as a token prize in a work training course. He sits in a corner of my office as a daily reminder of the folly of investing in bubble assets.

      2. I don’t fully understand the “bank run” metaphor to describe the untethering of stablecoin. For one thing, you can’t have a bank run without having actual money in the bank. By contrast, cryptocurrency is not actually money.

        Could someone who understands the “bank run” analogy to the stablecoin destabalization kindly explain?

        2. Usually a bank run is due to limited funds being available, however, the underlying Luna hyperinflated to over 6 trillion units causing the price to crash to a fraction of a cent. Apparently there was a buyer for all of them. It really IS different this time!

        3. Stablecoins are backed 1:1 with US dollars. That’s being “pegged.” That is, for every 100 stablecoins, there should be 100 US dollars sitting in a bank somewhere, and you should be able to trade in your stablecoins and get dollars back.

          Problem is, the shysters that issue these stablecoins don’t really have all the dollars in the safe, ready-to-go. Instead, their coins are backed by “assets,” which is a combination of actual dollars, loans to some shady dudes named Dojin or Yuri (who won’t pay the loan back, certainly not today), stocks like Evergrande, and crypto. (Of course, the plan was for the assets to increase in value and the stablecoin pockets the profit, like any other bank.)

          What seems to have happened (simple version), is that some skeptical folks finally figured out that the stablecoin wasn’t backed by all dollars, and that the assets were no longer worth the number of dollars that the stablecoin bank had paid for them. So, the skeptics sold their stablecoins quick and got their dollars back while there were still some dollars. This decreased the value of the stablecoin to less than a dollar, say, 96 cents. That’s a depegging. So of course now everyone wants to trade their stablecoins in for their dollars. Too late; the stablecoin quickly ran out of real dollars. That’s the “bank run.”

          The latecomers are being left high and dry because all they have left for backing is the shady loans and Evergrande stock and crypto, all of which are dropping in value. It seems that a couple stablecoins (Luna and Terra?) lost their pegs and are playing games to get back up to speed. Tether played games and kept its peg (for now), which is why Bitcoin is rebounding.

          1. like any other bank.

            Well, not exactly. Like a Ponzi. Just like a Ponzi. Like, just a Ponzi.

        4. The bank run analogy is that everybody runs for the exits to get back into fiat but there is no market. It is not a great analogy.

  3. ‘active listing counts are rising very strongly’ – up more than 32% in a month – and called it ‘one of the most dramatic shifts in direction we have ever seen. If this trend continues for several months the market dynamics will change significantly’

    Harry Potter spotted over Phoenix.

    ‘citing a 6% decline in listings under contract in April. ‘Closed sales are also down more than 9% from April 2021,’ it said. ‘Demand is weak and getting weaker. The overall effect is a major cooling event, turning a hot housing market into one that still favors sellers (for now) but is looking increasingly dangerous with each passing day’

    Dangerous how? Should yer panic?

    ‘The market does not turn on a dime, but it can certainly change dramatically over a handful of months, as it did between August and November 2005,’ it added, suggesting ‘we are now entering a very different phase of the market cycle’

    In other words yer fooked, I’ve been saying that for a while. There should never be a frenzy in housing, especially a major sh$thole like Phoenix that can and has, built shacks for decades in every direction.

    1. ‘The market does not turn on a dime, but it can certainly change dramatically over a handful of months, as it did between August and November 2005’

      Invoking the dread 2005. Good times. Remember the frenzy, the multiple offers, the sweet equity! Wa happened next?

      1. What happened next?

        The same realtor, that so smugly stated how “This floor plan has increased $5,000 over last month” was spotted working in Amy’s Hallmark store wiping the dust from the scented candles.

        That’s how I remember it

    2. ‘one of the most dramatic shifts in direction we have ever seen.’

      I keep reading the same words over and over in the financial press these days, in so many different contexts! Another example: Interest rates since early 2022. They sure have gone up alot, and so quickly!

      1. They sure have gone up alot, and so quickly!

        It should be interesting when I eventually catch up with one friend who told me on March 1st that the FED wouldn’t raise interest rates and other friends who bought a flip last August.

        1. Most people don’t realize that the Fed is unable to keep both interest rates and inflation indefinitely low. What we are presently witnessing is the abrupt ending of one such period.

        2. The Grandma-finally-died house on my bock is still sitting there, no offers, no change in price. There’s going to be another open house tomorrow. I suspect I’ll see some action next week.

    3. ‘one of the most dramatic shifts in direction we have ever seen.’

      I keep reading the same words over and over in the financial press these days, in so many different contexts! Another example: Interest rates since early 2022 sure have gone up alot, and so very quickly. It’s unprecedented!

  4. ‘They say you only know when the downturn comes right after it happened. It seems to have happened a few weeks ago’

    Huh, I watch for the Denver and Boulder UHS, etc, but they haven’t mentioned this weeks old change.

  5. ‘a 75% reduction in new mortgage applications drove thousands of Southern California mortgage loan originators with nothing but time on their hands to the recent California Mortgage Expo’

    Oh dear…

    ‘Non-QM (exotic mortgages) were the hot topic’

    There’s yer subprime.

  6. ‘a 22.1% decrease from the same month last year, from $1.22m to $950,000 for the tourist town. There was an even larger drop in Wānaka, where the median price dropped 43.3% to $635,000…‘There is a rationalisation of the market happening, but it’s too early to panic’

    Sounds like they already panicked Liz.

    1. Liz the fact that you haven’t panicked yet means you are screwed. See thats how it works. Back to OnlyFans for you

  7. ‘We are facing a large trend shift after 25 years with declining housing-finance costs, and it’s pretty clear that is about to change’

    I don’t come across much from these reindeer countries cuz they don’t speak much English. But apparently Sweden is loaded up with debt donkeys too.

    1. This is friggin crazy – who knew that the Swedes (makers of Volvo’s etc) were such crazy borrowers on the financial side. “Swedes’ debts at 200% of household income clearly exceed any from the Group of Seven economies. The pile of consumer borrowing prompted Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves to publicly worry last year that he felt like he was ‘sitting on top of a volcano.

      The following is the craziest line from the story. Is this expectation elsewhere in the world? No wonder there are so many drunken sailors these days.
      and on expectations that emergency stimulus would be sustained for years

    2. Having visited Denmark, I can confidently say their English is far better than my Danish.

    1. Is there no place that’s sacred? I mean, I could see Manteca taking a hosing, but not Sacramento? What about the beaches? Is coastal Sacramento holding up?

      1. “The paper price of the yellow rock sjust tumbled back below $1800 for the first time since early Feb…”

        Heh heh…Tyler must HODL physical…

        1. I read about PM’s being a terrible investment. What these mental midgets don’t understand is that PM’s are not an investment, they are insurance.

    2. That looks a lot like a vote of confidence in the Fed’s present resolve to rein in inflation. Whether it also portends a future recession is debatable.

    3. An observation: Gold is the real stablecoin, and its dollar price is the inverse image of the dollar’s real value.

      1. Luckily for Tucker and anyone else who is concerned, Donald Trump’s handpicked Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, is making a concerted effort to bring inflation under control.

      2. If you don’t like Tucker then you could not reply to Jeff’s posts, and you should stick with the Real Journalists.

        Your TDS has grown rather stale.

          1. I’m curious what sort of syndrome or spell makes it so a pervert can touch little boys and girls – on camera – and nothing is done about it:

            Joe Biden pinches child’s nipple
            86,025 views Aug 18, 2020 I found the girl from the video on tik tok and asked her if he pinched her nipple.
            She responded, “Yes”.

            https://twitter.com/jrpessetti/status…

            The video with screenshots of Maria’s confirmation that Biden pinched her.

            https://youtu.be/tY58UuM3M08

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GCTsHCDBkI

            There’s plenty of videos out there, I’ve posted many. If a young boy or girl comes on the stage, he can’t stop for heading that way as if no one else is around. Smelling them, caressing their hair and skin, kissing. Doesn’t it seem odd that it never gets mentioned by the press? Remember when Jeff Sessions was on a stage with his granddaughter, the corrupt senile pedophile headed straight toward the little girl (as usual) and Sessions leapt between them? So it’s a known fact in DC.

          2. you do have BDS

            The vast majority of Americans strongly disapprove of FJB’s policies (those of his handlers). The rest have no idea what his (or his predecessor’s) policies are.

      3. “Wow, cool…I had no idea that Tucker was an economics expert.”

        Read it, he quotes the “experts”.

        Here is some of it…

        “American needs higher, longer-lasting inflation,” declared Bloomberg News.

        Well, when that didn’t work, as it was never going to, because apart from big institutional debt holders, no one in the world actually wants inflation. When that failed, they tried a new tactic. “Yes, inflation is not ideal,” they admitted. “but it’s like fog in the morning. It’s inconvenient, but it’s temporary. It burns off and won’t last long.” The word they used to describe this was “transitory,” and they used that word a lot. Watch.

        JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Our economists have conveyed that they feel that the impact of our proposals will be transitory.

        JENNIFER GRANHOLM, U.S. ENERGY SECRETARY: All of the economists that the president has been relying on suggest that there is a transitory nature to the inflation problem.

        PRESIDENT BIDEN: Economists call all these things transitory effects.

        REP. MAXINE WATERS, D-CALIF.: This inflation that we are experiencing is transitory. It is not going to be here long.

        JANET YELLEN, U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: We’ve had several months of high inflation that most economists, including me, believe will be transitory.

        JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIR: We don’t expect that those, that upward pressure will produce substantially higher prices or that the effects will be persistent. We expect that they’ll be transitory or temporary.

        It wasn’t just Maxine Waters and Joe Biden and Joe Biden’s flack, none of whom can do math, obviously. You just saw the head of the Federal Reserve and the former head of the Federal Reserve tell you this was going to be transitory. Transitory. That was the best they could do, but behind the reassuring happy talk they were, in fact, starting to panic because this was not at all what they had expected or predicted in public.

        In fact, in September, 17 winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, an award that suggests the winner understands economics, signed a public letter urging Joe Biden to spend $2 trillion more because inflation was no longer a concern. There was no way we would get inflation and we’re quoting, “The Build Back Better package,” wrote these economists, “will transform the U.S. economy to be more efficient without presenting an inflationary threat.”

        So, trillions of new government spending, were going to make this country more efficient, but we would never get inflation? It was hard to see, even to not an economist, how that could be true. So, this spending, these trillions, were on top of trillions that Joe Biden had already spent, a bill that he’d already signed. That’s many trillions. And it turns out when you spend that much, you get inflation.

        BIDEN, APRIL 21: 70% of the increase in inflation was a consequence of Putin’s price hike because of the impact on gas and energy prices. I’m doing everything I can to bring down the price to address Putin’s price hike.

        Not only did Vladimir Putin singlehandedly hack the DNC and embarrass the Democratic Party, which is the greatest felony one can commit, but he wrecked our economy. How did he do that from the other side of the world when he runs an economy totally detached from ours? Good question, but that’s really all they have at this point and you can see, given that, why Democrats are encouraging war in Ukraine, why they want that war to last forever. If the war in Ukraine ever ended, who would they blame for the effects of their deranged policies? They’d have to pick a new person – probably you.

        1. You make some good points. Politicians should probably stand clear of the inflation narrative. Controlling inflation is the Fed’s business, not politicians’. Nixon, Ford, and Carter all became laughing stocks for trying to turn a similar inflation episode in the 70s to political advantage.

          1. Politicians should probably stand clear of the inflation narrative

            How could they do so? Bankrupting the country by printing money is what they do.

          2. Of course politicians are involved, because they are involved in starting it (spending too much money, e.g. Vietnam war & Great Society, the recent wave of “free” money, etc), and stopping it (e.g. backing the Fed when it cause pain to some by raising rates/QT)

  11. What do you think about this real estate investment strategy?

    1) Wage a highly visible public campaign to express your interest in buying an overpriced property that nobody else wants.

    2) At the very point the buyer is certain you are ready to consummate your offer, pull out (sometimes called “the rhythm method” in other contexts).

    3) Stand back and stand by while the market value craters in the aftermath of your highly visible canceled offer.

    4) Go back after the dust settles to place a new offer at a far more attractive (i.e. lower) price point.

    Could this work to help promote affordability?

    1. The Financial Times
      Twitter Inc
      Elon Musk puts $44bn Twitter deal ‘on hold’
      Shares drop almost 20% after entrepreneur questions fake accounts on social media site
      Tesla chief Elon Musk
      Elon Musk’s move comes a day after Twitter announced a hiring freeze, cost-cutting measures and the exit of two senior leaders
      Arash Massoudi, Cristina Criddle and Robert Wright in London and Ortenca Aliaj in New York
      3 hours ago

      Elon Musk has put his takeover of Twitter “temporarily on hold” over concerns about the number of spam and fake accounts on the social media platform, raising fresh doubt over whether the Tesla chief executive will complete the $44bn deal.

      The entrepreneur announced the move in a Twitter message on Friday, sharing a link to a Reuters news story this month that suggested the number of fake accounts on the site represented less than 5 per cent of its 229mn users.

      The statement immediately hit Twitter’s share price, with the stock tumbling 19.7 per cent to $36.23 in pre-market US trading. Musk then followed up with an additional tweet two hours later that he was “still committed to acquisition.”

      Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn
      — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

      Twitter now trades at a 33 per cent discount to the $54.20 per share price Musk agreed to pay in mid-April, signalling that investors do not believe a deal will happen anywhere near that price and possibly not at all.

      The doubt introduced by Musk’s tweet is the latest example of the whirlwind manner in which the transaction came together, which even led to Musk waiving his right to carry out due diligence while negotiating terms.

      Twitter and Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

      Tesla shares, which have fallen 33 per cent since Musk tweeted that he was giving serious thought to buying the social media platform in late March, rallied nearly 6 per cent in pre-market New York trading.
      …

  14. “The report notes that listings were still on the market on Monday morning and the county started to see price reductions on homes.” Oh no! “Offer Night” parties are getting postponed or cancelled.

    2. Have these fools never heard of filing for bankruptcy?

      Or are they contemplating offing themselves because they … shudder … might have to g et a job?

      1. The mods of the sub-Reddit /r/Antiwork made it private after it started getting wider attention and being mocked for being such basement dwelling losers.

        “They’re not sending their best”

        1. FYI TheHilldotcom recently ditched their comment section. I guess it got too snarky/botty even for them. Marketwatch is emasculated and the others ditched their comments long ago. It seems that Fox News is the only website left with a real comment section.

          2. Yeah, Beanie Boy is afraid to mention that too. I think it’s a moot point, at least for another year. And I’m tired of talking about it.

    3. Are these the same savvy young folks who were giving each other high fives all around for their investing genius as recently as late last year?

      I’m hoping my daughter’s boyfriend is not among these guys, as her boyfriends’ problems have this curious tendency to become my problems.

  17. I was struck by how creative and aggressive lenders have become in solving the income puzzle for homebuyers.

    You mean, facilitating FBs’ financial Waterloo?

  18. ‘It’s been crazy the last couple of years. I don’t think everyone has been saving their money the way they should have been,’ he said.”

    The hell you say….

  19. Re-post from the lat thread.

    Washington Post — Eugene Robinson — High gas prices hurt, but they’re an opportunity to make good choices (5/12/2022):

    “we all know by now that climate change is ravaging the planet. We just keep finding reasons not to take the steps — or make the sacrifices — that we know are necessary to curb carbon emissions”

    *We* all know, Eugene? Do we now?

    “One of those sacrifices involves paying more at the pump. The nationwide average price of a gallon of gasoline hit $4.42 on Thursday, an all-time high. Low-income Americans struggling to cope with inflation are suffering …

    we must keep in mind that paying higher gas prices now will mean better lives for our children, our grandchildren and the generations that follow”

    Who is this “we” Eugene?

    “Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine leaves the United States and its allies no choice but to do whatever is possible to keep Russian fossil fuels, which fund President Vladimir Putin’s war machine, off the world markets. We need to see this not as a problem but as an opportunity.”

    Eugene, you are globalist SCUM.

    “Imagine the difference it would make if all the pickups on U.S. streets stopped belching carbon.”

    Hey Jeff, Eugene says you need to not drive to work today. All those boxes of joint compound will just deliver themselves to the jobsite.

    https://archive.ph/WwdpH

    “They’re not sending their best”

    1. Hey Jeff, Eugene says you need to not drive to work today. All those boxes of joint compound will just deliver themselves to the jobsite.

      You mean some guy on a bicycle can’t deliver 1000 lbs of construction materials?

      From the Colorado Sun today:

      Denver e-bike rebates are flying off the shelf. Here’s the climate change connection.
      Climate change office has $400 to $1,200 vouchers to make car replacement a reality for bike fans, and thousands are signing up.

      Riding a bike in freezing weather on slushy streets is going to be a blast.

      Why stop at bikes? The truly green solution is to bring back horses.

  20. The financial legacy of borrowings that swelled during the country’s housing boom of the past decade, stoked by years of subzero monetary policy, is now catching up with citizens who were led to believe such a swift change in the central bank’s stance wouldn’t come to pass.”

    “Led to believe”? Any sheeple who trust the MSM and REIC shills (duplicative) while failing to perform their own due diligence deserve to get their heads handed to them.

    1. This is the electoral platform of the Democrat Party for 2022 and 2024.

      The Democrat Party is the party of raping kids.

      “They’re not sending their best”

    1. Encouraging overly sensitive snowflakes to resign is cheaper than laying off with severance benefits.

    2. I find it incredulous that the thin skinned flock of “acceptance and inclusion” woke culture are so eager to censor content and critics.

      Down more than 70%; can the patient be saved?

  24. Did you buy Wall Street’s dead cat bounce, only to realize that you stuffed your hard earned money into a meat-grinder of forlorn hope?

    1. CNBC TV
      Markets
      Strategist says stock market may become a ‘meat-grinder of forlorn hope’ for dip-buyers
      Published Fri, May 13 2022 10:31 AM EDT
      Elliot Smith

      Key Points
      — Fears that central banks will have to hike interest rates aggressively to curb inflation have led to broad selling across global markets in recent months.
      — Tech and growth stocks, which are most vulnerable to sharp rises in interest rates, have suffered particularly steep declines.
      — The negative start to the year followed a rally that had propelled global stocks from the depths of the initial coronavirus crash in March 2020 to record highs.
      …
      https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/13/stocks-strategist-says-market-may-become-a-meat-grinder-of-forlorn-hope.html

      1. Your bloodbath is what I call market capitalization to the new normal.

        Sounds not so horrible that way…

  26. “‘The party is over on the housing market and domestic demand will stagnate,’ Nordea economist Torbjorn Isaksson said in a new economic forecast. Christina Casserlov, a real-estate broker at Fjelkners, a small agency in the well-off Stockholm suburb of Bromma, is detecting a sense of hesitation among prospective home-buyers. ‘We have seen prices double in 10 years,’ she said. ‘Now the uncertainty is increasing again.”

    I lived in Sweden from 1999-2001 and I was amazed at how their housing market (bubble) held up. I worked with Swedish PhDs who were paid 60% less than I was and they were taxed at a 45% rate but they were all able to buy homes. I couldn’t understand it but they worshiped home ownership and all of its “benefits.” I’m not surprised that they’ve finally mortgaged themselves to the hilt and run their home prices through the stratosphere. They were living on borrowed time and cheap Kronors.

  27. Kootenai County Idaho (Coeur d’ Alene)
    05/01/22 all active listings (land, res,etc): 692 total listings: 1428
    05/13/22 all active listings: 833 total listings: 1557

    20% increase in 13 days. Hurry and buy now!

    1. That’s a very encouraging inventory improvement. Hopefully it will prove contagious and turn into a pandemic level of inventory increases, wiping out non-owner-occupant investors in the process.

    1. Terrible story. I have been reading about a surge in car accidents with people being dazed and losing normal abilities to drive .
      This is another reason why its outrageous that these dangerous vaccines are even allowed.
      Imagine a person passing out while cooking, or flying a plane, or up on a ladder, or working with machinery.

      1. or flying a plane

        It almost happened. An American Airlines pilot had a heart attach just minutes after landing the airplane. He had been told “No jab, no job”

  29. If you support the phony war in Ukraine, why aren’t your children and grandchildren all over their now? Or even better yet, they died in Ukraine and got sent back home to you in a box? Hypocrites.

    Revolver News — Why Funding Ukraine Is Just Dead Wrong (5/12/2022):

    “Quietly, thoughtlessly, and ominously, America is sleepwalking towards a nuclear war.

    Two weeks ago, the Biden Administration asked Congress for $33 billion to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia. But in a divided Washington, the Uniparty has united in agreement that $33 billion is not enough. On Monday, Republicans and Democrats in Congress struck a deal to send Ukraine $40 billion in aid. Leaders unveiled the bill text on Tuesday, and voted on it within hours.

    The bill raced through the House in the dark of night, with unanimous Democratic support. Of course, the phony left-populist poser Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her “Squad” were on board. Republican support was overwhelming as well, but a few members did bravely stand against the tide.”

    https://www.revolver.news/2022/05/biden-neocons-stop-funding-ukraine-current-thing-forever-war/

    It’s time to step up.

    Just imagine how much Reddit karma and Twitter Blue Checkmark upvotes you’ll get when you announce to the world that your child died in Ukraine for money laundering, arms trafficking, human trafficking, and all manner of corruption.

    Your child died for this?

    You will have so many Reddit user-awarded “pieces of flair” attached to your username, you’ll forget that the dead child that was the reason you got them ever existed.

    “They’re not sending their best”

  30. Imagine the stench at a real estate convention. Cheap perfume, stale vodka, and sweaty polyester.

    Realtors are smelly.

  32. ‘We haven’t been in a situation where rates increase at the same time as households are pressured by price increases, combined with the level of indebtedness we have today’

    Helen said a mouthful!

    1. There have been many who advised Get out of Debt and Live below your means for years. Anyone who wanted to hear could.

      1. Centuries old advice:

        “Neither a borrower nor a lender be. For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”

    1. Comedy indeed!

      Sorry I haven’t showered.

      Dude, this is not smell vision!

      All these addled brain “Tokenomics” freaks care about, all they ever cared about, is how many dollars their non-dollars are worth.

      1. The exchange rate from non-dollars to dollars is not trending favorably for cryptocurrency HODLers.

    2. I couldn’t watch the whole thing, due to tearing up so much.

      So I skipped to the end:

      “It’s a sad day for crypto.”

      Indeed.

      1. Dude I couldn’t make it past 30 seconds. The last thing I need is a smelly incel having a public sad. Have fun staying poor, soyboy.

  34. The company is working to create “human milk” in a lab using cells taken from human breast tissue and milk from local women who are rewarded with Target gift cards.

    Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Branson Funding Company Creating Lab-Grown Breast Milk As Baby Formula Shortage Hits

    by Kelen McBreen
    May 13th 2022, 5:07 pm

    Some of the world’s wealthiest men, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, have all invested in a company hoping to soon sell lab-grown human breast milk.

    Back in 2020, the investment firm Breakthrough Energy Venture announced $3.5 million in Series A funding for a company called BIOMILQ, Inc.

    Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Branson are all members of Breakthrough Energy Venture.

    In 2021, the group invested an additional $21 million into the company.

    BIOMILQ is a North Carolina business created in 2019 by cell biologist Leila Strickland.

    The company’s co-founder Leila Strickland told CNN the hardest part about getting the product on the market is convincing regulators it’s safe for babies.

    Now, with media around the nation covering the worsening baby formula shortage and many citizens looking to the federal government for help, the FDA is investigating ways to get more baby formula on the shelves of stores.

    Could the same FDA that recently rushed to give multiple experimental mRNA Covid “vaccines” emergency approval in the face of a crisis now approve the experimental lab-grown breast milk in order to save their own butts?

    https://www.infowars.com/posts/gates-zuckerberg-bezos-and-branson-funding-company-creating-lab-grown-breast-milk-as-baby-formula-shortage-hits/

    1. The Financial Times
      Markets Briefing Equities
      Global stocks record longest weekly losing streak since 2008 crisis
      Sixth straight decline in FTSE All-World index reflects fear of inflation followed by recession
      The US Federal Reserve building
      The US Federal Reserve building. Chair Jay Powell has warned bringing inflation down to its 2% target may not be achieved without ‘some pain’
      Nicholas Megaw, Eric Platt and Joe Rennison in New York and Naomi Rovnick in London yesterday

      Global stocks sank for a sixth consecutive week as the threat of a US recession added to the fears of investors who were grappling with rampant inflation, coronavirus lockdowns in China and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

      The FTSE All-World index is on its longest weekly losing streak since the middle of 2008, equalling in duration the decline before the subprime mortgage crisis led to the catastrophic collapse of Lehman Brothers. A late bounce on Friday was insufficient to offset a brutal sell-off earlier in the week.

      The index dropped 2.2 per cent this week, while the US benchmark S&P 500 index fell 2.4 per cent and the tech-dominated Nasdaq Composite slid 2.8 per cent.

      Friday’s rebound meant the S&P 500 narrowly avoided falling into a formal bear market, when an index declines 20 per cent from its recent highs. But few investors were prepared to call an end to the recent volatility.

      “When movements are this erratic, it’s really dangerous to try to put on your market timer hat and play that game,” said Matt Stucky, a portfolio manager at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management, which manages $237bn. “Really, it’s going to boil down to whether or not the US economy is in recession a year from now.”
      …

    2. The Financial Times
      Technology sector
      Tech groups cut jobs and risk-taking in new reality of market rout
      Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta have collectively seen $2.1tn wiped off their market capitalisations
      Dave Lee in San Francisco and Hannah Murphy in New York
      3 hours ago

      “It’s a hard day,” read the email subject line to Shelly Little from her bosses at Carvana, an online used car retailer.

      The note signalled Little was one of almost 2,500 staff laid off from the US-based company this week, in a mood described by another employee as “mass hysteria”. Since the start of the year, stock in the company famed for its towering multistorey car “vending machines” has fallen 84 per cent.

      “As the ramifications of that kicks in all I can think is — wow,” Little wrote on LinkedIn, informing her friends and coworkers that she was one of the 12 per cent at Carvana being shown the door.
      …

    3. The Financial Times
      High yield bonds
      US junk bond market starts to crack under inflation and supply fears
      Investors reassess high-yield corporate issuers as high prices and manufacturing problems take toll
      Stacks of US dollar bills
      The difference in yield between high-yield bonds and equivalent US Treasury bonds rose to 4.77 per cent this week
      Joe Rennison, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Peter Wells and Nicholas Megaw in New York
      May 12 2022

      Soaring inflation and supply chain bottlenecks have begun to crack the $1.5tn US junk bond market, as the lowest-quality borrowers show signs of stress.

      Unlike the falling stock market, junk bonds had largely escaped worries over the US economy as surging prices add costs for companies. Many bond issuers were flush with cash because they locked in low interest rates before the Federal Reserve started to tighten monetary policy, giving investors comfort.

      This week shook investors’ confidence, forcing a sharp reappraisal of the health of the high-yield market where lower-rated companies raise cash.

      ATM machine manufacturer Diebold Nixdorf and pharmaceutical company Bausch Health were among several companies whose debt dropped steeply in value after reporting hits to their financial results. The moves helped to drag the broader high-yield bond market to its worst level in 17 months.

      “The brutality of the equity market has now come to high yield,” said John Dixon, a high-yield bond trader at Dinosaur Financial Group. “[This week] I feel like I’ve been sat in the spin cycle of a washing machine.”
      …

    1. Tech
      Cryptocurrency luna crashes to $0 as UST falls further from dollar peg
      Published Fri, May 13 2022 4:12 AM EDT
      Updated Fri, May 13 2022 7:49 PM EDT
      Arjun Kharpal
      Ryan Browne

      Key Points
      — Luna, the cryptocurrency associated with TerraUSD, or UST, is now worth $0 as the stablecoin has dramatically lost its $1 peg.
      — The Terra network stopped processing transactions twice in 24 hours.
      — Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, temporarily delisted UST and luna.
      …
      https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/13/cryptocurrency-luna-crashes-to-0-as-ust-falls-from-peg-bitcoin-rises.html

    2. Crypto Bros Are Now on the Frontlines of a Full-Blown Mental Health Crisis

      Financial crises can trigger serious mental health disorders and have been linked to surges in suicide attempts. But neither the crypto world nor our current health-care system is equipped to handle the fallout from this week’s crypto crash

      This week, the cryptocurrency market saw a crash unlike many before it — one that ripped down the value of major coins like Bitcoin and Etherium, as well as alternative crypto options that had been lauded for their stability. Chief among them was TerraUSD and its sister coin, Luna — a relationship built on financial symbiosis, and one that had proven incredibly profitable for investors over the last year.

      TerraUSD and Luna’s combined crash is so bad that it’s impacted other cryptocurrencies and financial markets, and it’s looking likely that Luna will never bounce back. As the value of these coins plummeted, many took to social media to look for solace. And as we saw in the 2008 housing crash, it became obvious that many people had lost their life savings, and were nearing wits’ end.

      Then came the posts about people considering suicide.
      …
      https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/terrausd-luna-crypto-crash-mental-health-ramifications

      1. “Then came the posts about people considering suicide.”

        Watch out for these guys. Anyone who has read Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Macbeth realizes there is a thin line between suicidal and homicidal thinking.

    3. The Financial Times
      The Big Read
      Bitcoin
      The week that shook crypto
      The failure of a once-hyped stablecoin has sparked serious questions over the functioning of the entire crypto market
      Scott Chipolina and Katie Martin in London yesterday

      In January, Mike Novogratz — hedge fund rock star turned crypto heavy hitter — tweeted a picture of a sizeable new tattoo on his left shoulder. It featured the image of a wolf howling at the moon and a banner saying “Luna”, a cryptocurrency then trading at $78.

      “I’m officially a Lunatic!!!” enthused the one-time macro investor at the Fortress hedge fund group, and now founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, an investment management firm with ambitions to be “the Goldman Sachs of crypto”. By the start of April, luna peaked at $116 after being snapped up by buyers including enthusiastic retail investors.

      But this week, luna lost it all. Its value slid to zero after terraUSD, a sister token, collapsed in value, despite being designed to track the value of the US dollar.
      …

    4. Is This the Beginning of the End for Crypto?
      By Hadas Thier

      Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin took huge nosedives this week. Unfortunately, we aren’t living through the end of crypto — but hopefully the talk of it being the money of the future that will make us all rich has been shown to be lies.

      Bitcoin, the oldest and most widely held cryptocurrency, has dropped in value by over 16 percent in one week and more than 50 percent over the last six months.

      I wonder what Matt Damon is doing today.

      Last year, he was shilling hard for cryptocurrency in a multimillion-dollar Crypto.com ad that aired at the Super Bowl. There, he uttered with breathtaking affect as he peered out at what looked like Mars, “Fortune favors the brave.” It’s a long way from his days in Good Will Hunting, playing a working-class kid from Boston’s south side who fights with entitled yuppies at bars and delivers a scathing critique of US imperialism.

      Now cryptocurrency prices are tanking across the board, and a lot of ordinary people who swallowed the crypto pill hawked by Damon, Jimmy Fallon, Kim Kardashian, and a fleet of other celebrities have taken an absolute beating.

      The TerraUSD and Luna cryptocurrencies, “stablecoins,” are at the center of the storm, and their subreddit has been filled with devastating stories and suicide prevention hotlines over the last forty-eight hours. One person wrote: “I lost over 450k usd, I cannot pay the bank. I will lose my home soon. I’ll become homeless. Suicide is the only way out for me.”
      …
      https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/05/crypto-cryptocurrency-bitcoin-stablecoin-crashing-terra-luna

    5. The Ledgercryptocurrency
      ‘I didn’t get out because I got greedy’: Investors share losses on Luna Reddit forum as the coin drops 97% in 24 hours
      By Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
      May 11, 2022 2:31 PM PDT

      A huge drop in the value of a major stablecoin has shaken the crypto world, and the real-life consequences of the collapse are playing out on social media.

      TerraUSD (UST), an algorithmic stablecoin that should always be worth $1, lost its peg to the U.S. dollar last week and has dropped to as low as 30 cents. Luna, its sister cryptocurrency that is tied to the price of UST and is used to “stabilize” UST’s dollar peg, lost 97% of its value between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. As of Wednesday, UST had still not recovered its dollar value, and Luna was trading down more than 90% at $1.79.

      Now, the pinned post on u/TerraLuna, a Reddit forum dedicated to the Luna cryptocurrency, is a series of links to help lines around the world, including the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

      “For everyone panicking, here are some National helpline numbers,” the title reads.
      …
      https://fortune.com/2022/05/11/luna-ust-reddit-stablecoins-crypto-crash/

    7. I’m starting to wonder if cryptocurrency is a bursting bubble, with a lot more wailing and gnashing of teeth to come.

      Thougts?

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