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Buyers Are Increasingly Feeling Less Rushed And Are Holding Off For Cheaper Price Tags

A report from Floor Daily. “‘There are a lot of unhappy people in the housing market right now. Among the most miserable are sellers realizing they have listed their properties too late,’ reports the Wall Street Journal. Homes that have been on the market for three months or longer are reducing prices by around 11% from the list price, according to the National Association of Realtors. ‘The days of bidding wars and homes selling for tens of thousands of dollars over asking are over,’ said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.”

From KIRO Seattle in Washington. “‘Today’s buyers have their cups finally overflowing with options as residential inventory grows to about two months of supply,’ said Dick Beeson, managing broker at RE/MAX Northwest Realtors in Gig Harbor. Beeson also said that sellers ‘are starting to see that overpricing just ain’t in the cards right now,’ since inventory is so high and buy and seller expectations have shifted.”

“According to Northwest MLS statistics, active listings have nearly doubled since last year, going from 7,948 available single family homes and condos to 15,381 — an increase of 93.5%. Pending sales are also down 24% from last year, dropping from 11,567 mutually accepted offers to 8,775. Northwest MLS says there’s been a nearly 30% year-over-year decrease in closed sales, dropping from 10,919 to 7,645.”

The Business Times in Colorado. “Real estate activity continues to slow in Mesa County as rising interest rates, higher inflation and mounting uncertainty dampen demand. At the end of July, there were 559 active listings in Mesa County. That’s a 57 percent increase over the same time last year — and relief for buyers who until recently were desperate for more selection, said Robert Bray, chief executive officer of Bray & Co. Real Estate in Grand Junction. Meanwhile, property foreclosure filings continue to increase in Mesa County —  but not to the same degree foreclosure sales. Through the first seven months of 2022, 157 foreclosure filings were reported in Mesa County, said Annette Young, the administrative coordinator at Heritage Title Co. in Grand Junction. That compares to just 13 for the same span in 2021.”

Flagstaff Business News in Arizona. “There have been many interesting changes in the Flagstaff real estate market this year, and it seems to be evolving on an almost daily basis. Inventory in the last few months has been steadily increasing. It is safe to say that Flagstaff’s home values peaked in February of this year. Since then, we have been witnessing a ‘shift,’ as many of my colleagues have coined it. Increasing interest rates, a trepidatious stock market and inflation have put many buyers on pause.”

From 4WWL on Louisiana. “NEW ORLEANS —Do you remember last year, if you were trying to buy a house, you were competing with half a dozen other potential buyers? All making an offer on the same house? Well, realtors now say it’s a buyers’ market. Rosalyn Moore listed her house four weeks ago, but it’s still for sale. ‘The process isn’t going as quickly as we thought it might,’ Moore said. ‘Its taking a little longer because everything was selling so quickly before. We may have to rent it instead of selling it and I am not crazy about that idea.'”

The Merced Sun Star in California. “After a couple years of house prices rising in Merced County, the median selling price of a house in the local market dipped a bit in June. The drop in price has followed a statewide trend between May and June. Statewide, the median price dropped by about 4% in June, according to the California Association of Realtors. Of the California’s 58 counties, that median price fell in 32 counties, including high-priced Bay Area markets like San Francisco, Santa Clara and Alameda counties.”

“There were 259 homes listed for sale in Merced County in April. That number has climbed to 363 homes on the market in Merced County in July. ‘While prices haven’t yet and probably will not fall off a cliff, we have seen a pull back in the number of transactions and many listing price reductions across the board,’ said Brandon Ruscoe, agent for Better Homes and Gardens. ‘There have been slightly over 160 price drops for Merced County single family home listings between June 1 and August 1st.'”

From Ridgecrestca.com in California. “As we walk into a cooling off market, appraisers are reporting that lender underwriters are being pickier when it comes to what type of neighboring homes and features are being used to value the subject home. Some appraisers are experiencing more scrutinizing reviews of their appraisal reports. Gone are the days when it was possible to tip the scales up and over to receive a higher value, especially when it comes to the high-end homes.”

“Lenders typically sell off their loans to the secondary mortgage market, and thus loan underwriters are being more careful about how investors are viewing their files. The more top heavy the files, the more difficult they are to sell. Thus, Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, the entities that guarantee government backed loans, are walking with caution at this time.”

“This will all have an effect on how mortgage underwriters view appraisals. As a result, don’t be surprised if a home price set on the high end does not appraise at the contract price. If you are preparing to list a home, take precautionary steps concerning the list price. In a downward trending market, the strategy is to set a list price below other competing homes.”

From McClatchy News. “A husband and wife real estate team was sentenced to prison after federal prosecutors say they stole more than $300,000 by creating fake sales contracts for several properties — including some that were never up for sale in Virginia. ‘Bills were tight,’ the husband told investigators when asked why the couple carried out the scheme in which they sent at least 19 fake sales contracts to advance commission companies to quickly get money, according to court documents.”

“After receiving the seemingly legitimate contracts, including some that listed nonexistent buyers and sellers, these companies would loan the couple money before the purported closing date of a property sale, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia. The husband, Jessee Allen DeLoach, 40, and wife, Natasha Ashley Miller DeLoach, 38, of Wise, were each sentenced to 15 months in federal prison after they both pleaded guilty to wire fraud, an Aug. 4 news release from the attorney’s office says.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “Real estate markets in Toronto and Vancouver tumbled further in July, with sales and home prices declining for another month as getting mortgages becomes more difficult and buyers wait to see how low prices can go. The home price index, which adjusts for the high end of the market, fell for the fourth straight month in the Toronto region. The typical price of a home was $1,157,500 in July, down 13 per cent from the peak in March and marking the largest four-month decline since the turn of the century.”

“In the Vancouver area, home prices eased for the third consecutive month to $1,207,400. That is 12 per cent lower than the top of the Vancouver market in April. ‘Pricing is dropping across the board,’ said Brendon Cowans, vice-president of sales for Property.ca, a Toronto-based brokerage. Farah Omran, an economist with Bank of Nova Scotia, said more people now expect prices to drop. ‘Buyers are increasingly feeling less rushed and are holding off for cheaper price tags,’ she said in a recent research note.”

The Edmonton Journal in Canada. “Paul Gravelle, board chair for the Realtors Association of Edmonton, said it’s normal for numbers to trend downward in the summertime. ‘You never want to predict some of these numbers, but it’s not shocking that it’s across the board on all products,’ he said, adding he expects to see the downward trend continue for the next month or two. ‘The listings aren’t moving, our average days on market are starting to creep up there so people are taking longer to sell and so you just got to set that expectation for your sellers.'”

The Daily Mail Australia. “A series of interest rate hikes have caused dramatic house price plunges of $250,000 in wealthy suburbs and the downturn is expected to get worse. Upmarket parts of Sydney and Melbourne are suffering six-figure falls in just three months, with Brisbane and regional areas of coastal NSW now also going backwards, after being some of Australia’s strongest performing markets in 2021.”

“Sydney’s north shore, covering Chatswood and Wahroonga, is the worst affected with Domain sales data showing a $250,000 plunge in the median house price during the June quarter. A drop of 8.4 per cent in just three months took the median house price back to $2,720,000. On the neighbouring northern beaches, stretching from Manly to Palm Beach, mid-point house prices in just three months have plunged by $187,500 or 6.8 per cent to $2,582,500.”

“Melbourne’s upmarket inner-east, covering Kew and Box Hill, has seen its median house price fall by $107,500 in three months, with the 6.1 per cent quarterly decline taking the median house price down to $1,660,000. CoreLogic data showed wealthy postcodes in the big cities are leading the downturn with coastal and tree change regional areas also taking a hit after previously being some of the strongest performing markets.”

The South China Morning Post. “Guangzhou R&F Properties warned investors on Friday that its net loss for 2021 could widen to 17 billion yuan (US$2.5 billion) from the previously reported 8.7 billion yuan, due to an additional impairment loss. The company said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange after the market close that it would set aside another 6.9 billion yuan provision for an impairment loss arising from inventory, on top of an initial assessment of 6.1 billion yuan in an unaudited earnings report.”

“‘Bad news about China’s troubled developers is surfacing one by one and it seems that the worst is yet to come,’ said Wang Feng, chairman of Shanghai-based financial services group Ye Lang Capital. ‘No recovery is in sight, as the national economy remains weak.'”

From Yahoo Finance. “The Federal Reserve became ensnared in a ‘cognitive trap’ that made the central bank believe inflation was fleeting, Mohamed El-Erian, Allianz SE chief economic adviser and ex-PIMCO CEO, said. ‘Had [the Fed] listened to companies, they would have been much more humble in saying that we don’t quite understand the inflation dynamics… and yet the Fed got hooked on this notion that it’s transitory, and then it got itself into a cognitive trap,’ he told Yahoo Finance. The term ‘transitory’ is a pointed reference. El-Erian is alluding to Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s 2021 assertions that price increases were ‘transitory.’ Ultimately, Powell walked that back, eventually telling Congress in November that it was ‘a good time to retire that word.'”

“‘You ended up with this absurd situation in March, still pumping in liquidity,’ he told Yahoo Finance. ‘It was still doing QE in March… So, it’s bad analysis, bad forecast, too-little-too-late, and miscommunication ‚ and that’s how we’ve ended up in this mess.'”

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This Post Has 100 Comments

  1. ‘Some appraisers are experiencing more scrutinizing reviews of their appraisal reports. Gone are the days when it was possible to tip the scales up and over to receive a higher value, especially when it comes to the high-end homes’

    That’s some rock solid lending right there.

  2. ‘Bills were tight,’ the husband told investigators when asked why the couple carried out the scheme in which they sent at least 19 fake sales contracts to advance commission companies to quickly get money’

    Eat yer crowz jingle mail.

    ‘Of the California’s 58 counties, that median price fell in 32 counties’

    Eat yer crowz Thornberg.

    ‘Bad news about China’s troubled developers is surfacing one by one and it seems that the worst is yet to come,’ said Wang Feng, chairman of Shanghai-based financial services group Ye Lang Capital. ‘No recovery is in sight, as the national economy remains weak.’

    Eat yer crowz Dan.

    2. ‘No recovery is in sight, as the national economy remains weak.’

      Time to ramp up military aggression, to take the people’s minds off their real estate investing losses…

        1. China banks may face $350 billion in losses from property crisis
          By: Bloomberg | Updated: August 1, 2022 6:35:36 pm
          File photo of surveillance cameras near residential buildings under construction in Shanghai, China. (Reuters)
          A spiraling crisis of stalled projects has dented the confidence of hundreds of thousands of homebuyers, triggering a mortgage boycott across more than 90 cities.

          China’s banks face mortgage losses of $350 billion in a worst-case scenario as confidence plunges in the nation’s property market and authorities struggle to contain deepening turmoil.

          A spiraling crisis of stalled projects has dented the confidence of hundreds of thousands of homebuyers, triggering a mortgage boycott across more than 90 cities and warnings of broader systemic risks. The big question now is not if, but how much it will batter the nation’s $56 trillion banking system.

          In a worst-case scenario, S&P Global Ratings estimated that 2.4 trillion yuan ($356 billion), or 6.4% of mortgages, are at risk while Deutsche Bank AG is warning that at least 7% of home loans are in danger. So far, listed banks have reported just 2.1 billion yuan in delinquent mortgages as directly affected by the boycotts.

          “Banks are caught in the middle,” said Zhiwu Chen, a professor of finance at the University of Hong Kong Business School. “If they don’t help the developers finish the projects, they would end up losing much more. If they do, that of course would make the government happy, but they add more to their exposure to delayed real estate projects.”
          …
          https://indianexpress.com/article/world/china-banks-may-face-350-billion-in-losses-from-property-crisis-8063662/

      3. These debt crises have a way of growing to much larger size than initially predicted. For a case in point, Ben Bernanke opined that “subprime will be contained to $200 bn”, I believe in the summer of 2007. After Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac blew up, and the Fed bailed out financial institutions all over the planet, it seems like the eventual tally was more like $4 trillion ($4000 billion = 20 X $200 bn).

        2. Somehow the Fed’s balance sheet ballooned from under $1 trillion in 2008 to around $9 trillion recently. And now they are talking about shrinking it…but to what? Is there an optimal size for the Fed’s balance sheet? How large? Why does it even matter?

          https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL

          1. And now they are talking about shrinking it…but to what?

            About $4 trillion is the minimum, from what I’ve read.

  3. ‘‘The process isn’t going as quickly as we thought it might…Its taking a little longer because everything was selling so quickly before. We may have to rent it instead of selling it and I am not crazy about that idea’

    That’s right Rose, hold yer ground. Don’t give it away.

    1. “may have to rent it instead of selling”

      They just automatically assume that renting is so easy. Snap the fingers and multiple renters show up, right? Jesus the delusion here….

  4. ‘wealthy postcodes in the big cities are leading the downturn with coastal and tree change regional areas also taking a hit after previously being some of the strongest performing markets’

    Exactly what happened in 2017 – we’ve been here before. This is a mirror image in K-da, where detached shacks are sinking like a turd in a well compared to airboxes, which are also turd like.

  6. ‘You ended up with this absurd situation in March, still pumping in liquidity…It was still doing QE in March…’

    As we discussed yesterday, the market moved rates up, not Wrong Way Jerry.

  7. ‘Buyers are increasingly feeling less rushed and are holding off for cheaper price tags’

    That’s the spirit buyers! Kick em while they’re down.

    1. No kicking is necessary. Simple patience will do. Just sit on your hands and wait while staying tuned to stories about rising inventories and falling prices.

      If all potential buyers did this, the Housing Bubble would be over in a matter of months.

        1. My nieces’ downfall was high rents. Naturally a bubble drives both rents and home prices skyward. Foresight suggests that falling home proces and rents should also drop in tandem, making it worth waiting out a period of adjustment to lower prices before locking in 30 years of lower mortgage payments. Mortgage payments do not magically adjust downward with falling home prices. Once you’re locked in, you’re stucco.

          2. high rents

            They are temporarily inflated from the “eviction and foreclosure moratoriums,” Airbnb and the massive housing bubble. When prices on houses were increasing $15,000 per month, you didn’t even need a renter. There is a glut of empty housing out there. It will be coming to market.

    1. You will no longer drive, because “climate change.” Just don’t expect the globalists to stop using their yachts which burn 300 gallons of diesel fuel per hour and emit 20 tons of carbon dioxide per day. These virtue-signaling globalist focks are raping the lands while castigating you for scraping by.

  10. “Homes that have been on the market for three months or longer are reducing prices by around 11% from the list price, according to the National Association of Realtors. ‘The days of bidding wars and homes selling for tens of thousands of dollars over asking are over,’ said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.”

    Want a bidding war? List 10% lower than the comps. I guarantee you will get multiple offers. I’ve done it…it works!

  11. “The drop in price has followed a statewide trend between May and June. Statewide, the median price dropped by about 4% in June, according to the California Association of Realtors. Of the California’s 58 counties, that median price fell in 32 counties, including high-priced Bay Area markets like San Francisco, Santa Clara and Alameda counties.”

    A 4% drop in one month occurs at an annualized rate of 1-(1-0.04)^12 = 39%.

    This sucker could go down!

    1. A 4% drop in one month occurs at an annualized rate of 1-(1-0.04)^12 = 39%.

      I’ll be putting that in the comments section of YT videos. 🙂

    1. “Heath has two fathers” in an open marriage, I guess. Or they are creepy uncles. I saw one video snippet of people lined up for monkeypox vax and not eligible to get it since doses are limited. I gotta wonder if they are really concerned about their health, or if they want to get back to their fun ways asap.

      Many have noted that this outbreak has followed Pride Month, after a two-year moratorium on fetish festivals. I think this will die out.

      1. “…or if they want to get back to their fun ways asap.”

        Yep, sans the raincoat ’cause it ruins the mood.

        1. Raincoats won’t prevent the spread of monkeypox. Think, in detail, about what happens to spread monkeypox, and what happens when AIDS is spread.

  13. A reader sent these in:

    Rick Palacios Jr.

    July builder vibes in one chart.

    https://twitter.com/RickPalaciosJr/status/1555705478243504131

    Steve Saretsky

    What happens when housing sales hit 20 year lows? Popular Canadian furniture store, Article, lays off 17% of workforce. First round of layoffs since the company was founded 11 years ago.

    Check #Toronto’s Harold the jewelry buyer and mortgage giver commercials. No income? No problem! You get a mortgage for your 2nd, 3rd, 4th property. Then they wonder why there is a crisis.

    https://twitter.com/SensicaCommon/status/1555620653985841152

    Those with more than four mortgages jumped 17.5%. at least they’ve done stress tests…

    https://twitter.com/AlessioUrban/status/1555620124769615875
    https://twitter.com/SteveSaretsky/status/1555671151984054272

    1. Canadas housing bubble slowly popping 🚨

      https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1555540207272960001

      Here is Oshawa

      https://twitter.com/REWoman/status/1555561779891257344

      How bad is Canadian real estate? Niagara’s real estate board stopped updating its site in April. 😂 June for the region was down ~8% ($67k). No update on July, but I’m guessing it’s not super.

      https://twitter.com/StephenPunwasi/status/1555606370539520001

      Housing prices are collapsing and jobless increases. 27% of homeowners has a HELOCs sort of subprime loan with your home as collateral.

      https://twitter.com/AlessioUrban/status/1555575536742809605

      1/6 homeowners in Canada own 4 or more properties. HELOCs have been used to draw equity from primary residences to buy investment properties on speculation.

      https://twitter.com/DM69693644/status/1555576166848905217

  14. No heat for you, Eurocucks:

    “The energy and cost-of-living crisis in the UK continues to intensify, with annual household bills expected to surpass £3,300 ($3,971) this winter, according to energy consultant Cornwall Insight. As many as six million British households could be subjected to power cuts this winter if Russian gas supplies to Europe stop, The Times reported Sunday, citing a Whitehall document.

    https://www.rt.com/news/560354-truss-uk-economy-winter/

    “They’re not sending their best”

    1. “No heat for you, Eurocucks:”

      – You will own nothing, except for some “lovely filth!” Heat? Heat you say? Why with anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the earth is warming. Winters, snow and freezing temperatures are just a thing of the past! Who needs heat? AC might be nice in the summer though! 🙂 Oh wait, you’ll have to give that up too, since greenhouse gases. Right up there with cow farts. I’m personally content to eat crickets in my hovel. None dare call it neo-feudalism, but we’re on that trajectory. Our betters say we will like it! 🙂

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2c-X8HiBng
      Monty Python – Constitutional Peasants Scene (HD)
      4,391,535 views
      Dec 6, 2013

      2. Al Gore and Bill Nye the Science genius assured us that by 2020 there would be no more winter. Ergo, problem solved.

      3. None of these “follow the science” clowns ever mention that bugs are made with stuff humans cannot digest. Chickens can.

  15. The past two years have been an artificial housing market, says Equity Union Real Estate’s Vitacco
    CNBC Television
    Aug 5, 2022 Stephanie Vitacco, Equity Union Real Estate broker, joins ‘Power Lunch’ to discuss the state of the Los Angeles housing market, who sets pricing and more.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGFzycIBGpo

    2 minutes.

    1. New law or no new law that is fuqed up.

      I haven’t seen a leg like 1:10 of that video since Tim Krumrie’s 1989 Super Bowl leg and compared to the rest of the people in the Brazilian Bike video he got off easy.

      1. Right now the criminal element has top cover from their fellow criminals in the Democrat Party. That is subject to change, though, once ordinary people decide they’ve had enough of being victimized by these vermin and their Democrat-Bolshevik enablers.

        1. The 70’s and 90’s crime waves
          , with a dip in the 80’s, lasted a generation. Our crime wave now is just starting.

    2. Ok, so now 6 Doctors have died in Canada, in a short span of time, following the required 2 jabs/2 boosters vaccines in that Country. The last Doctor to die was only 27 years old.
      The fake news in that Country is spinning it must be natural deaths, couldn’t be the vaccine.
      So, fake news also in the US can censor any dispute by thousands of Doctors and Scientists and data that these fake vaccines don’t prevent Covid, and are causing thousands of deaths and injury.
      They think they have the right to supressed information because it might cause ” vaccine hesitancy”.
      Since when does a product maker like Big Pharmacy and media get to censor the first amendment on some privilege that it might cause vaccine hesitancy or what they say is disinformation, to their warp speed new technology lab rat expierment vaccines.
      The Pres Biden can say take the vaccine , you won’t get Covid, its safe and effective , which lured people to their death and injury. We all know Biden’s statements were untrue, and thousands lost their job because they wouldn’t comply to Biden’s dictates.
      But by contrast Alex Jones said Sandy Hook was a hoax, or a false flag, than retracted it later, yet the kangaroo court nails him .

      Every time you have a major event, you have people who have opinion that it might be false.
      Peoples varied opinion on 911
      People who denied the Holocaust occurred.
      People who disputed that JFK was killed by a lone gunman.
      People that say we never walked on the moon.
      Weapons of mass destruction disputed.
      The “official narrative” has been disputed on every major event that has ever happened, including this Covid official narrative fraud.
      They just want to take Alex Jones out, and legal analysis is saying it was a kangaroo court , where he wasn’t allowed due process defense by that Judge.
      And the paid off media gets to decide what’s disinformation , and slander and discredit and deplatform Drs and Scientists
      because Big Pharmacy and Bill Gates thinks the world should be forced to take some product that is lethal.
      Unreal.

      1. In Canada we have VISP the vaccine injury service program. It is supposed to help those can’t work because of their vaccine reaction. Thousands have applied, only a few have been approved. Typical government beaurocy “as fast as molasses in January “

    3. A comment:

      “Great! Here the robbers can sue you, if you call them the wrong pronoun. It hurts their feelings.”

  18. Fatties a national security risk? I like it – although a “woke” military controlled by Democrat-Bolshevik political dilettantes in uniform is the much bigger national security risk.

    Bill Maher says woke ‘fat acceptance’ is now a national security issue because obesity is driving down Pentagon recruitment and slams social justice warriors’ ‘Orwellian’ obsession with body positivity

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11087129/Bill-Maher-says-fat-acceptance-NATIONAL-SECURITY-ISSUE.html

    1. “Bill Maher says woke ‘fat acceptance’ is now a national security issue because obesity is driving down Pentagon recruitment and slams social justice warriors’ ‘Orwellian’ obsession with body positivity”

      – I recently saw a statistic that approx. 40% of Americans are obese. This, and the associated health problems, such as diabetes, are a national health crisis, IMHO.

      1. I went to the mall on Tuesday night and there were a lot of thin teenage girls, thin enough to wear crop-tops with bare midriffs and still look good. Of course they were sucking down on SBUX frappies and slushies.

        I was at WalMart this morning and saw the exact opposite. Probably 60% obese, with a few real at-risk children. I’m now to the point where I can look at the people and guess what’s in their shopping cart, or look at a shopping cart and guess what the people look like. It’s more sad than anything else.

        1. Rich teens are athletic and skinny (mall shopping is super expensive!). Middle class and Poor teens are fat and obese. I see it where I live and with my children’s friends. It’s like two Americas.

    2. The military is starting to get wind of the keto diet as a way to get their recruits in shape. The question is whether the military can or will scale this up to include all recruits. There are some problems of course.
      1. Young people accustomed to high-carb diets have to be weaned into keto (and fasting) and the military doesn’t have time for that nonsense.
      2. Keto is, as a rule, fairly expensive. American food companies have finely tuned their products for low cost. Returning to the “normal” food of, say, 1970, will be expensive, especially now that all the meals are provided by profit-hungry contractors.
      3. Keto/IF is amazingly hard to stick to. I can’t do it for more than a week or so. I’ve returned to Paleo/IF and it’s more sustainable.
      4. The higher-ups in the military are probably still stuck in the calories-in-calories-out model which has been proven to be a massive failure.

      https://ehe.osu.edu/news/listing/ketogenic-military-diet-has-potential

        1. “Calories out” is a massively complex system governed by dozens of hormones and the function of the liver, pituitary gland, and metabolic processes.
          But go ahead and kill yourself on the treadmill. The primary reason exercise helps you lose weight is that exercising is fasting too.

        2. calories in – calories out always works. All else is subterfuge.

          Yep. Only the fatties try to fight the message.

      2. The Department of Defense will simply dust-off their BMI chart when a conservative administration orders it to happen. The over weight will struggle to lose pounds through diet and exercise, but at the end of the day most will fail to meet the BMI targets and exit the military.

        1. My dad joined the Marines in WWII. He said they starved and exercised everyone of all their excess weight and then built them back up again. From the pics I’ve seen, that Gunny Sarge was one lean machine.

          1. then built them back up again

            My maternal grandfather, named Shirley of all things, enlisted in the Marines in 1942, fought at Iwo Jima, and was a drill instructor. He was also an a$$hole who cheated on my grandmother with a family friend and beat my mother. He died shortly before my parents married.

  19. “‘Today’s buyers have their cups finally overflowing with options as residential inventory grows to about two months of supply,’ said Dick Beeson, managing broker at RE/MAX Northwest Realtors in Gig Harbor.

    There’s only one option that makes sense: sit out the madness until the Fed’s Everything Bubble bursts under the weight of its own debt, fraud, and unsustainable valuations.

  21. Few things are as heartwarming as watching the sheeple who elected globalist Quisling regimes get exactly what they voted for, good & hard.

    Chaos as Sydneysiders caught in petrol rush in bid to buy while prices were low

    https://www.news.com.au/finance/money/costs/chaos-as-sydneysiders-caught-in-petrol-rush-in-bid-to-buy-while-prices-were-low/news-story/470a267b0c35351fbf73dcfebe5c5135

    Australia’s cost of living crisis has been laid bare after Sydney residents rushed to a local petrol station only for things to turn ugly.

    1. Australia’s cost of living crisis has been laid bare after Sydney residents rushed to a local petrol station only for things to turn ugly.

      The central bankers went apesh!t printing money, and it’s really focked the world up.

  22. “According to Northwest MLS statistics, active listings have nearly doubled since last year, going from 7,948 available single family homes and condos to 15,381 — an increase of 93.5%.

    Is that a lot?

  23. Since then, we have been witnessing a ‘shift,’ as many of my colleagues have coined it.

    Your colleagues are realtors, and realtors are liars. This “shift” is exclusively downward, so “crater” is the word that applies, despite realtor attempts at dissembling.

  24. Do you remember last year, if you were trying to buy a house, you were competing with half a dozen other potential buyers?

    No, I don’t remember this, because I wasn’t stupid enough to be caught up in bidding wars with a bunch of lemmings at the peak of the most insane Fed-blown housing bubble in history.

    1. “Do you remember last year, if you were trying to buy a house, you were competing with half a dozen other potential buyers?”

      – Sure. I want to pay way more that the property is worth because FOMO and asset bubble mania (2.0), rather that wait for the inevitable crash. I’m told that patience is a virtue.

      – This quote seems apropos:

      “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffett

      – Recent buyers are so screwed, where “recent” is going back a few years.

    1. Here’s one of them:

      $393,173 3 bd 2 ba 1,316 sqft
      Price cut: $20K (8/5)
      5772 Thurless Ln, Colorado Springs, CO 80927

      https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5772-Thurless-Ln-Colorado-Springs-CO-80927/2063403834_zpid/

      Date Event Price
      8/5/2022 Price change $393,173 (-4.8%) $299/sqft

      8/5/2022 Listed for sale $413,173 (+0.7%) $314/sqft

      7/5/2022 Listing removed $410,379 $312/sqft

      It says new construction. Ugly shack.

      5/9/2022 Price change $410,379 (+1.2%) $312/sqft

      5/5/2022 Listed for sale $405,379 $308/sqft

      1. I’ve watched that development go up. Hideous – you couldn’t pay me to live in such a soulless place with the houses crammed in a few feet from each other, and overpriced by hundreds of thousands of Yellen Bux.

        1. The CAD rendering on Zillow and the real houses on Googlemaps look very different. The CAD pic looks like contempo-cool, with the garage in back. The real houses are the same ol’ puke-inducing boxes with horrid proportions, useless shallow-pitch dormers, and of course a dominant garage door. Are these supposed to be the same houses? At least these look like a reasonable size. 3/2 in 1300 sq ft is nice for a starter home. But $400K… better have at two $75K incomes in that household.

        2. Think thats bad? You might check out Cityscapes at The Views by Richmond American Homes in broomfield co. Directly in the path of the end of the runway of Rocky Mountain airport of 5 flight schools every single day starting anywhere after 3:30am. Now mind you by the time the pipers are overhead you could smell the burnt Avgas. Poor suckers. I cringe when I see pending. Worst thing is that realtor site states aircraft noise as medium. I guess they don’t consider that the first left turn bank places them directly overhead. And get this, you get a 4 minute maximin reprieve out of the multiple training planes lasting well into the afternoon.

    2. How do you get the “recent reduced” numbers? I recall when the springs had between 300-400 listings this time last year. How times change. I’m predicting >3k by end of month if not sooner

  27. Sorry, Democrat-Bolshevik mayors, but you’re going to have to rely on your own corrupt, incompetent law enforcement & judiciary to cope with the flood of Democrat-on-Arrival illegals the Brandon regime has allowed to waltz across our non-secured borders.

    Biden’s Pentagon DENIES DC mayor’s request for National Guard to help with illegal migrants being sent there by Texas to alleviate the border crisis as first busload arrive in New York City

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11087461/Bidens-Pentagon-DENIES-DC-mayors-request-National-Guard-help-illegal-migrants.html

    President Joe Biden’s Pentagon has denied the Washington DC mayor’s request for National Guard assistance to deal with the city’s growing migrant problem.

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey have been shipping thousands of illegal immigrants to the nation’s capitol to spread out the burden of a surge in illegal immigration since the president decided to lift a pandemic-era emergency health order that restricted migration on the southern border.

  31. Somehow the Fed’s balance sheet ballooned from under $1 trillion in 2008 to around $9 trillion recently. And now they are talking about shrinking it…but to what? Is there an optimal size for the Fed’s balance sheet? How large? Why does it even matter?

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL

    2. “Somehow the Fed’s balance sheet ballooned from under $1 trillion in 2008 to around $9 trillion recently. And now they are talking about shrinking it…but to what?”

      “QT will be like watching paint dry“ – Janet Yellen (2017)

      – BTW, NOT unwinding their balance sheet is true debt monetization. The Fed has no idea what their target is, but in order to avoid Banana Republic status, it needs to go to zero. THAT of course, is never gonna happen. They’ll be lucky to knock of a $T or so before the SHTF with stonks and the economy.
      – Recall that last time they tried to end QT in early 2019, it didn’t end well…

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2019/02/19/qt-is-dead-federal-reserve-buckles-massive-federal-reserve-balance-sheet-the-new-normal/?sh=399e6b687710

      Investing
      QT Is Dead, Federal Reserve Buckles, Massive Federal Reserve Balance Sheet The New Normal
      Clem ChambersSenior Contributor
      Intelligent InvestingContributor Group
      Feb 19, 2019,02:12pm EST

      “After a year of easing in reverse-QE, or QT as it’s called, the Fed has all but announced it plans to stop soon. The reason is simple: the long-planned balance sheet normalization can’t be done without crashing the world economy.“

      “So the new normal is a Federal Reserve with a mountain of other people’s debt on one side of its balance sheet and a load of its own on the other. On a per head basis that balance sheet is similar in scale to the net assets of an established working family. That is just one reason the Federal Reserve wanted to be shot of it. Like all mountains they can come tumbling down into the valley and sweep everything away.”

      – Move over Argentina, the U.S. is the new Banana Republic. Meanwhile, Congress and the WH continue to spend with wild abandon as the Fed buys the debt (debt monetization). This of course, will only exacerbate the current high inflation. Weimar 2.0.

  32. CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, George Steponallofus, Chuck Todd and the Sunday network news shows along with the late-night comedians will all have stories about Alex Jones paying 50 or100 million dollars for calling Sandy Hook a hoax 10 years ago, January 6 hearings, abortion protests, climate change but you will not hear one word about our installed leader who received 81 million votes which would have been 87 million votes if Trump had 82 million when the polls closed and his documented business dealings with the Chinese Communist Party that enriched himself and his family at the expense of the American people.

    Report: Vice President Joe Biden Met with CCP-Linked Energy Executives at White House in 2014

    WENDELL HUSEBØ6 Aug 2022

    Vice President Joe Biden reportedly met at the White House two Chinese energy executives who worked with a CCP-linked company, Wanxiang, on July 25, 2014, between 11 A.M and 12.15 P.M., emails from Hunter’s laptop reveal.

    While Joe Biden and his staff have claimed at least seven times that the president has had no part in the family business, documentation on the laptop reveals he has been involved in the family business at least 18 times over nine years. The latest example comes from White House visitor logs, which show Joe Biden met with the CCP-linked executives with “just one day’s notice,” The Daily Mail reported.

    In 2012, Seneca Global Advisors, Hunter Biden’s business, had a client named GreatPoint Energy that partnered with Wanxiang on a $1.25 billion natural gas plant in communist China. Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping was at the signing deal between the two entities. Wanxiang is also known for dealing with a copper mine owned by North Korea. Hunter has also been reportedly involved in the copper and cobalt mine business between a different Chinese entity and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    The deal between GreatPoint Energy and Wanxiang is notable because Hunter’s business, Rosemont Seneca Partners, also invested in the Fisker car company that was bought by Wanxiang after Fisker when bankrupt in 2013. “Hunter was listed as a creditor on its [Fisker’s] filings,” the Daily Mail reported.

    According to the report, Hunter bought one of Fisker’s vehicles for $142,300, but the car had apparently failed to operate. Wanxiang’s America president, Pin Ni, who had met with Joe Biden four days prior, offered to service Hunter’s vehicle in an email discovered by the Daily Mail:

    ‘Last Friday when we visited DC, I heard that your Fisker is out of order and could not get serviced. Sorry,’ Ni wrote.

    ‘It would be our honor to get your Fisker fixed… I would like to give you a call to see what we could do as next step.

    ‘It would be our great honor to welcome you to visit Fisker or Wanxiang at any time.’

    The emails reveal what a close relationship the Biden family had with a CCP-linked company that acquired an American company while Hunter Biden was peddling influence to then-vice president Joe Biden. According to a Harris poll, 58 percent of voters believe that Joe Biden has played a role in his family’s business. Sixty percent say Hunter Biden has sold “influence and access” to the president.

    It should be noted that before Fisker bankrupt in 2013 and later sold in 2016 to Wanxiang, Joe Biden claimed to have brokered a massive deal between Fisker Automotives and an automotive plant with a taxpayer-funded loan. “In 2016, China purchased the electric vehicle company Fisker Automotive, after U.S. taxpayers had spent $193 million funding the company’s electric vehicle research,” Breitbart News reported. “Fisker Automotive was acquired at a bankruptcy auction by the China-based Wanxiang Group Corporation.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/06/report-vice-president-joe-biden-met-ccp-linked-energy-executives-white-house-2014/

  33. I wanted to mention something I came across watching these videos. It was a loan officer explaining how the ‘rate buy-downs’ work. They call the options 0-1, 1-2 and 1-3 (or something like that). That’s years. So these buy-downs are temporary, then the rate goes back to the prevailing rate at purchase.

    1. Bankers have endless financial gimmicks and tricks designed to juice/prop up asset prices and enslave borrowers for decades.

  34. China’s Chip Bubble Burst as Top Players Fall From Grace | Chip Scam
    China Observer
    Premiered 20 hours ago China’s Great Leap Forward campaign to build chips has resulted in project failure and corporate bankruptcy, which also means that the chip investment bubble has burst. The resulting huge losses naturally require someone to take responsibility. Recently, China suddenly set off a “chip anti-corruption” storm, the Minister of Industry and Information Technology, the seniors of the semiconductor “national fund”, and a number of former and current top executives of chip giant Tsinghua Unigroup have fallen. According to internal sources, the anti-corruption campaign, which triggered a major earthquake in the chip industry, stemmed from a question Xi Jinping asked of the chip industry in early July.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR6krlaW8ZI

    15 minutes.

  35. Via Business Insider, the FTC just slapped Opendoor with a $62 million fine for ‘misleading’ customers about the true costs of its homebuying business

    Opendoor CEO on Twitter: being fined by this FTC is a sign of innovation.

    Um, no.

    2. I see the same type of language when there’s talk of regulating Bitcoin. “Oh, but you’re stifling innovation.” Yeah, well, I would love to innovate my own paycheck and tax laws too.

  36. Could almost be a Christmas song.

    On the Hundredth day of Biden Kamala gave to me

    20 Gang Members, Five Sex Offenders and a truck full of Fentanyl.

    Five Sex Offenders, 20 Gang Members Arrested at Border in South Texas

    BOB PRICE
    6 Aug 2022

    Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents arrested five previously deported sex offenders and more than 20 dangerous gang members during a one-week period of time. The arrests took place along the border and as far inland as 80 miles.

    Falfurrias Station Border Patrol agents apprehended Manuel Ramirez, a Honduran national illegally present in the United States. During a background investigation, agents discovered a conviction from a New York court in 2017 for first-degree attempted rape, according to information provided by Rio Grande Valley Sector officials. The court sentenced the Honduran national to four years in prison. The agents also reported the man as a member of the hyperviolent Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang

    https://www.breitbart.com/border/2022/08/06/five-sex-offenders-20-gang-members-arrested-at-border-in-south-texas/

    1. ‘Later that day, Rio Grande City agents also arrested’

      That was a crazy town back in the day.

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