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What Began Imperceptibly Is Now Unmistakable

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Tiffany Todd remembers exactly when the housing market changed. Around May 15, Todd, a real estate agent for TD Realty in Mansfield, put a home on the market in Aubrey and noticed there were far fewer showings than another house she sold just weeks before. The house didn’t sell until early July at just under list price — something that was almost unheard of at the beginning of the year. ‘I had not seen that in years, and so that let me know we were really shifting,’ Todd said, adding that she then noticed other signs, such as homes taking weeks instead of days to get offers and sellers putting money toward buyers’ closing costs.”

“Now many sellers across North Texas are selling homes at or below list price, making price reductions, offering incentives to buyers and making contract compromises that would have been rare before the market cooled down. Matt Puckett decided to sell his McKinney home after he saw interest rates starting to affect demand, which he also saw in his job as an auto salesman. He listed the home for $550,000 on July 13 and sold for $515,000 after 32 days on the market and reducing the price. ‘We were seeing the market change, but we still expected this house to go very fast,’ said Andre Kocher of Keller Williams Dallas Metro North, who represented Puckett. ‘We thought it should have sold instantly, and it didn’t.’  Puckett bought a home in Princeton. ‘They’re building homes as fast as they can, and then what happens when the market slows down? They get stuck with a lot of homes,’ Puckett said.”

“Real estate agent Shay Stein remembers not too long ago when buyers pledged to name their firstborn after homeowners to get to the closing table. Now, buyers are increasingly asking for closing costs, repairs, or in some cases, insist on the availability of street parking or they’ll walk, Stein and other agents say. ‘Last year, they were making offers within two hours of the house being listed and now they’re visiting the home multiple times and asking for all kinds of things,’ says Stein, a Las Vegas real estate agent. ‘It’s like whiplash.’ It’s not uncommon for a buyer to be at an inspection and see that three new homes at better price points have popped up, Stein said.”

“Shauna Pendleton, a realtor in Boise, saw her client’s contract fall apart when the buyer insisted on getting a credit of $7,000 on the agreed-upon purchase price to do some repairs themselves. ‘The buyer walked away,’ she says. ‘Every single house that I’ve closed in the last few months have asked for inspections and there are anywhere from 10 to as much as like 20 items that the buyer wanted fixed. And they’re little things like teeny tiny little things that don’t affect living in the house.'”

“Suzi Dailey, a realtor based in Southern California said her clients, a couple with three kids who recently sold their $2 million home about to buy a bigger house at a similar price range. They were in escrow but backed out of a deal in August after an inspection revealed a neighbor’s shed and fence were 15-20 feet over on their would-be property. Dailey said her clients wanted the seller to get it taken care of either through an easement (permitted use of someone’s property) that would slightly reduce the selling price. ‘The seller refused to make any changes so my clients walked away. The seller was astonished,’ Dailey said.”

“In Greater Boston, there were fewer single-family homes sold in August than in any other August since 2011. Kymberly Terry of Milton, is looking for a new home for herself and her two daughters now that her parents are moving into assisted living and selling the house they all shared and she grew up in. She was looking to spend no more than $700,000 and was preapproved for a mortgage up to that price. Now, after the run-up in mortgage rates, she’s not sure just what she can afford — or what price her lender will approve.”

“‘Right now I am not feeling comfortable,’ Terry said. ‘I am seeing so many houses that had gone under agreement coming back on the market’ after bidders weren’t able to qualify for a loan, she said.”

“Rhode Island real estate agents share what you need to know: ‘People hirer us as advisers to sell their biggest asset, their house, but often, they don’t want to hear our advice,’ Sotheby’s International real estate agent Robert Rutley said. ‘A lot of times, I ask people, ‘What’s your expected price,’ and then I really show them the facts.’ While ‘aspirational pricing’ worked when mortgage rates were half what they are now, it no longer does. ‘I always say, if it’s not within 10% of the actual value, you’re not going to get offers and people will wait for price reductions, and we’re not seeing that expectation going into the future,’ Rutley said.”

“Fewer homes were sold in Whatcom County in the third quarter of 2022 than in the same period in 2021. The median price of homes sold in Whatcom County in the third quarter was $599,000, which was 7.7% higher than the same time last year but 7.7% lower than the second quarter of 2022. ‘Values have been increasing at an unsustainable rate for years and so I think the market softening a bit, kind of finding an equilibrium, is really where we’re at,’ said Troy Muljat of Bellingham-based Muljat Group Realtors. ‘Prices have decreased quarter over quarter.'”

“Bidding war rates have been falling for seven straight months now, and that means sellers are facing a new reality. Redfin listing agent Sam Chute of Miami says: ‘The worst thing a seller can do right now is price their home too high, and the best thing they can do is price just below market value to catch buyers’ interest. Buyers aren’t going to pay extreme amounts of money or waive contingencies like they did last year, but they will pay a fair price for a nice home.'”

“In early 2020, Celeste Strong decided to sell their home in Phoenix. ‘I was on the verge of bankruptcy,’ she said. She found Opendoor, the Tempe-based online real estate company did an inspection and made her an offer. She believes she was shortchanged at least $20,000. ‘I was getting screwed,’ she said. ‘They knew the position I was in. When all was said and done, I didn’t have the capability of stopping the process and trying to go a different way. They’ll say that I did. In the documents, you can cancel anytime up to closing, but then what would I do? I already got a house. I couldn’t do rent and a mortgage. Really, I was stuck.’ Strong’s story is familiar. The Federal Trade Commission and Opendoor reached a $62 million settlement to resolve a slew of allegations.”

“The housing slowdown is raising new questions about the future of iBuyers. ‘They were buying houses like crazy in the first half of the year,’ says Stefan Peterson, co-founder of Zavvie, a real estate technology company. ‘Then in July, they really put the brakes on. They’re just not making a lot of offers. The market’s risky right now. It’s unpredictable, and they’re responding in an appropriate way.'”

“Home sales plummeted in the region of Canada’s largest city last month, down 44 per cent from last September at a time when the typically busy fall real estate season is usually getting started. That downward trend was repeated in other major cities, with September sales dropping 46 per cent year-over-year and 10 per cent from August in the greater Vancouver region. In Montreal, September home sales dropped to their lowest level since 2013. Cailey Heaps, president of the Heaps Estrin Real Estate Team in Toronto still sees some sellers pricing their homes as if it were months ago, when the market was roaring. ‘But those people who are realistic about pricing and sort of forget the first five months of 2022 and price to today’s market, in the central core of Toronto, those properties are selling,’ she said.”

“Mail carrier Luc Roy spends a lot of time on the streets of Moncton, N.B. When he started his career two years ago ‘for sale’ signs were seemingly on every other line, but now he’s noticing something different when he walks his route. ‘I have seen a decrease, especially from when I first started, the market was booming,’ Roy says. ‘There was a lot of houses for sale everywhere.’ ‘It felt like almost the tap just kind of shut off as far as the momentum of what we had previously,’ says real estate agent Danielle Johnson.”

“It’s the same story in Halifax. ‘We’ve grown the inventory from about 250 listings to about 750 in Halifax, but then it has just stayed steady for about the last eight weeks or so,’ says Matt Honsberger, the president of Royal Lepage Atlantic. That has caused prices to level off too. Honsberger says the average price for a home and Halifax has dropped from the mid $500,000 range to the low $500,000s or high $400,000s. ‘We certainly saw the peak at around March of this year, where you would’ve seen the highest average price that we have ever seen in Halifax specifically, and it has come back to early year levels, late 2021 levels,’ Honsberger says.”

“Halifax’s Kim Kinnaird said that while economic uncertainty had stalked the market in the past few weeks, the reality was that average house prices had been largely flat since June. ‘This compares to a rise of more than £10,000 during the previous quarter, suggesting the housing market may have already entered a more sustained period of slower growth,’ he said. Jonathan Hopper, of the real estate consultant Garrington Property Finders, warned that the data marked the beginning of a steeper correction across the market. ‘What began imperceptibly is now unmistakable,’ he said. ‘The heat has gone out of the market and a period of price rationalisation has begun.'”

“The slide in Swedish home prices deepened in September amid signs the housing market was drying up. The Nordic nation, with one of the world’s hottest property markets during the pandemic, is now facing a double-digit decline similar to peers such as Australia and Canada. The drop in prices for detached houses has been more pronounced in Sweden’s three biggest cities of Stockholm, Malmo and Gothenburg, with declines of 6-9% from a year earlier.”

“The booming property prices in Queensland’s two biggest regional centres are clearly cooling, with values now falling faster than almost anywhere else in the state. Matt Diesel heads the Real Estate Institute of Queensland on the Sunshine Coast and says while people ‘aren’t enjoying’ watching property prices fall, the change should not come as a surprise. ‘We’ve gone from a nuts market back to a normal market,’ he said.”

“A missed debt payment by the developer of Legoland Korea theme park adds to difficulties faced by the nation’s real estate market already weakened by surging interest rates. The amusement park opened in May just as turmoil in global debt markets made it much pricier for Korean borrowers including developers to refinance debt. ‘There are already increased concerns over real estate project financing debt and lower-rated builders in Korea, and this event will likely further dent investor sentiment toward those sectors, raising their refinancing risks,’ said Kim Eun-gie, credit analyst in Seoul at Samsung Securities Co. ‘It’s like slapping someone who is about to cry.'”

This Post Has 104 Comments
  1. ‘Puckett bought a home in Princeton. ‘They’re building homes as fast as they can, and then what happens when the market slows down? They get stuck with a lot of homes’

    Annnd yer fooked Matt. This is one of those farm to market sh$tholes that barely existed 7 years ago.

    1. ‘Puckett bought a home in Princeton. ‘They’re building homes as fast as they can, and then what happens when the market slows down? They get stuck with a lot of homes’

      “They”? 🤣 Mr. Puckett has a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome.

      Watching housing deliberately getting drown in the bathtub by the very criminals that created this mess makes it all worth it. And all this braying and clucking from out in the barnyard? Priceless!

      San Diego, CA Housing Prices Crater 18% On Surging Inventory And Mortgage Defaults

      https://www.movoto.com/ca/92131/market-trends/

      As one San Diego business owner explained, “California has become the poster child for economic decline. It’s a wasteland here.”

  2. ‘she then noticed other signs, such as homes taking weeks instead of days to get offers and sellers putting money toward buyers’ closing costs’

    See Tiffany, they’re giving it away, right in yer face!

    1. There was a Tik-Tok video that went viral – I don’t have Tik-Tok or Twitter but it was an embedded Twitter link – that showed a young guy going around asking his co-workers what their monthly car payments were. Some were as high as $1,500, and some people had two of them. Guess where they worked? At the auto dealership.

      1. Back in the 90s, a classmate bought a Sears PC clone computer, an Intel 486DX2 based system for about $3,500 on credit. WTF? About 4-months later the Pentium CPU was released, a substantial increase in processing power!

  3. ‘It’s not uncommon for a buyer to be at an inspection and see that three new homes at better price points have popped up’

    Doncha hate it when that happens?

    ‘The seller refused to make any changes so my clients walked away. The seller was astonished’

    Hey, it’s better than giving it away. Hold yer ground!

    1. As inflation in the Netherlands soars to 17.1%, migrants will enjoy free buffets, luxury cruise ship cabin accommodations, and free heating for the winter

      This is clearly being done as a way of the Dutch government giving its citizens the finger: Your Christmas this year will be dark, cold and generally non-festive as you struggle to keep your head above water, but don’t worry about the illegal immigrants, we will take good care of them.

    2. Until globalists like Jeff Bezos’ heads are paraded around on a pike, expect more of the same. This isn’t me calling for such violence, this is just reality. If you look back on the history of civilization, only violent revolutions affect the change that’s needed to swing things back somewhat in favor of the plebs.

      1. I’d prefer the whole lot of Rothschilds Obs-elites. Throw in King Charles for bonus points.

      2. Is this true? Genuine question. I’m trying to think of any revolution that wasn’t violent … coming short.

        I know Ghandi tried the non-violent thing, but that revolution (1947 partition?) ended up with mass murders of both Hindus and Muslims.

        I can think of violent revolutions that weren’t successful, however. South America, Africa …

        You’re making me think.

    3. I saw a comment on an article about this, and it went something like “Perfect, no women, children or older men aboard. Now send it up Davis Strait this winter.”

      I had never heard of Davis Strait, so I did a little reading.

      The strait is famous for its fierce tides that can range from 30 to 60 ft (9.1 to 18.3 m), which discouraged many earlier explorers.

      Made me chuckle.

  4. Women voters played a huge role in installing the horse-faced globalist stooge Jacinda Ardern as PM of New Zealand. Now that they’re reaping what they voted, and their shack prices and purchasing power are both plummeting, they’re starting to see the light.

    Ardern facing annihilation as New Zealand careens toward recession

    https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2022/10/ardern-facing-annihilation-as-new-zealand-careens-toward-recession/

    New Zealanders continue to lose faith in Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government, with the opposition National Party (36.0%) stretching its lead over Labour (29.5%):

    1. Polls now don’t matter. Election is still a year away, she will win in the end…Sheeples will make sure of it.

  5. ‘The buyer walked away,’ she says. ‘Every single house that I’ve closed in the last few months have asked for inspections and there are anywhere from 10 to as much as like 20 items that the buyer wanted fixed. And they’re little things like teeny tiny little things that don’t affect living in the house.’”

    This is as good as it gets, Shauna. Buyers are in the catbird seat, although anyone buying now is almost guaranteed to have buyer’s remorse when the real cratering kicks in.

    1. Every single house that I’ve closed in the last few months have asked for inspections and there are anywhere from 10 to as much as like 20 items that the buyer wanted fixed.”

      The audacity of these buyers; they’ll never be winnahs!

      1. All buyers demand that non-GFCI be replaced with GFCI outlets. They all demand it. I don’t know why. Proally the inspectors make such a big deal about it.

  6. Did you know that the 2020 election was stolen?

    Joe Biden will never be the legitimately elected president of the United States, because the 2020 election was stolen.

    1. The Washington Post is globalist scum media.

      Washington Post — A majority of GOP nominees — 299 in all — deny the 2020 election results (10/6/2022):

      “A majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 299 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election, according to a Washington Post analysis.

      Candidates who have challenged or refused to accept Joe Biden’s victory are running in every region of the country and in nearly every state. Republican voters in four states nominated election deniers in all federal and statewide races The Post examined.

      Although some are running in heavily Democratic areas and are expected to lose, most of the election deniers nominated are likely to win: Of the nearly 300 on the ballot, 174 are running for safely Republican seats. Another 51 will appear on the ballot in tightly contested races.”

      https://archive.ph/nNhkQ

      An “election denier” is anyone who believes that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

      1. The Washington Post is globalist scum media.

        Jeff Bezos is the enemy of the American people. Cancel your Prime membership and never buy a single thing from Amazon or Whole Foods again.

          1. I stopped Amazon years ago. So easy to shop elsewhere. I just type different address into my web browser, it’s truly amazing!

  7. “In early 2020, Celeste Strong decided to sell their home in Phoenix. ‘I was on the verge of bankruptcy,’ she said.

    It was the bank’s house, Celeste, not yours. I’m guessing a pattern of bad choices manifests yet again.

  8. “Home sales plummeted in the region of Canada’s largest city last month, down 44 per cent from last September at a time when the typically busy fall real estate season is usually getting started.

    Is that a lot?

  9. Funny how shack prices are set to plummet the hardest in the globalist Quisling colonies of Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

  10. Chainsaw or gasoline?

    Nice neighbor.

    “after an inspection revealed a neighbor’s shed and fence were 15-20 feet over on their would-be property.”

    1. “I’m saying as a Pediatrician who takes care of hundreds off these kids”

      What these evil people are doing should be brought to the light of day by any means possible as often as possible because I have to believe that if a majority of people not just in this country but in the world knew what they were doing to children the practice would cease to exist and those responsible for the permanent damage done to these kids would face criminal charges.

  11. Terry said. ‘I am seeing so many houses that had gone under agreement coming back on the market’ after bidders weren’t able to qualify for a loan, she said.”

    Debt Donkeys have a strange way of thinking and talking don’t they? It’s almost as if it’s script from a realtor criminal or mortgage sales fraudster.

    San Ramon, CA Housing Prices Crater 16% YOY As Double Digit Prices Declines Envelop Northern California

    https://www.movoto.com/san-ramon-ca/market-trends/

  12. I only got one puddle watching link this morning:

    “for many [home] sellers, it feels like the rug has been pulled out from underneath them”

    How could they be surprised by lower prices?

    Housing did nothing but go up for 12 years (+20% in 2021 alone!)

    Is RE a magical asset that should never mean revert?

    https://twitter.com/menlobear/status/1578035110791692290

    Here’s the link:

    https://www.dmarealtors.com/news/market-trends/dmar-real-estate-market-trends-report-oct-22

    However, for many sellers, it likely feels like the rug has been pulled out from underneath them. Price reductions are rising, while active listings at month end rose 10.72 percent to 7,683. Pending sales declined 15.41 percent for both detached and attached homes month-over-month, which directly relates to a 6.38 percent decline in sales volume month-over-month.

    “I believe we are moving toward a balanced market, which we haven’t seen in over 16 years,” commented Libby Levinson-Katz, Chair of the DMAR Market Trends Committee and Metro Denver Realtor®. “A traditional cycle for the Denver real estate market is seven years. Due to an economic crash and a global pandemic, the cycles were extended, but a correction is needed. The market is entering a period of neutrality where the bullish ways of extreme markets make way for a stage of compromise, with buyers and sellers working together for a win-win experience.”

    New luxury listings were up 18.86 percent from August, with a total of 649 homes priced over $1 million hitting the market in September. The attached Luxury Market saw a massive increase in new listings, up a notable 66.67 percent from the prior month. With 5,962 new listings hitting so far this year, the Luxury Market is enjoying the highest amount of inventory in years.

    Luxury buyers also have more time to decide which luxury home to buy. Both detached and attached markets saw a significant increase in the average days in the MLS from August, up 31.82 percent or 29 days for detached, and 40 percent or 35 days for attached. This slowing market is echoed in the drop in pending sales in September, which decreased by 16.35 percent for detached homes and 8.33 percent for attached. The spring frenzied bidding wars also seem to have subsided: the close-price-to-list-price ratio dropped below 100 percent again this month, to 98.21 percent for detached and 99.30 for attached.

    Although the detached Luxury Market enjoyed an annual appreciation from a price per square foot perspective of 9.41percent and a flat month-over-month appreciation, the attached market suffered a decline in annual appreciation of 0.18 percent and an even bigger decline month-over-month, by 5.26 percent.

    “The luxury segment now has the highest months of inventory for any part of our market, with 2.73 months of homes for sale,” said Colleen Covell, DMAR Market Trends Committee member and Metro Denver Realtor®. “Traditionally, experts say that less than three months of inventory still constitutes a seller’s market, but anecdotally, it doesn’t feel like a seller’s market anymore. We are experiencing full inspection objections, price reductions, no competing offers, no appraisal gaps and even contingent offers. The question on everyone’s mind is are we finally in a luxury buyer’s market? The technical statistics may say ‘not yet,’ but it sure feels close.”

    1. However, for many sellers, it likely feels like the rug has been pulled out from underneath them.

      There was definitely a rug pull by the FED, but they telegraphed it was coming yet all of the stupid buyers and their emo-FOMO disregarded it. Enjoy your negative equity, svckas!

  13. New York Times — Covid Defies China’s Lockdowns, Creating Chaos Ahead of Top Meeting (10/7/2022):

    “China is facing its largest flare-up of Covid cases in a month, complicating its preparations for an all-important Communist Party meeting where Xi Jinping is expected to expand his authority and claim another term in power. Provincial and local officials have vowed to stop the spread of the coronavirus from “spilling over” to Beijing, the capital, where the meeting will be held.

    Daily Covid counts have more than doubled in the past week, to around 1,400 cases on Friday, in the country of 1.4 billion people — a tally that remains tiny by global standards. But Chinese authorities are under immense pressure to ensure that nothing disrupts the party congress, which starts Oct. 16. They have responded by ramping up restrictions that many already deem excessive. They are locking down regions and cities and mandating mass testing and quarantines, disrupting life for millions of people and drawing public complaints.

    The authorities are sticking closely to their “zero Covid” policy of eliminating infections, despite the enormous economic and social cost of the strategy. Mr. Xi has made “zero Covid” a political imperative, linking support for the policy to support for the Communist Party, as he looks to hail China’s success in curbing infections as a sign of the superiority of Beijing’s authoritarian system.

    China’s pandemic strategy is “almost a political campaign to show loyalty to Xi Jinping himself,” said Willy Lam, an adjunct professor of politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “This makes the local officials even more anxious because they all want to stay in the good graces of Xi Jinping.”

    https://archive.ph/ESIMp

    This is the kind of tyranny that the globalists want to impose everywhere, forever.

    Canada, Australia, NZ, Western Europe are almost already there, because they are not free nations, their populations are subjects, not citizens with rights.

  14. This is a convenient way of sweeping the many well documented treasonous felonies committed by Biden Family Inc. restated the other night when Tucker Carlson interviewed Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden..

    Federal agents see chargeable tax, gun-purchase case against Hunter Biden

    Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump appointee, must decide whether to charge the son of the current president

    By Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein
    October 6, 2022 at 2:26 p.m. EDT

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/06/hunter-biden-tax-gun-charges/

  15. Mom-and-pop landlords say it will take years to recover from the eviction moratorium
    CBS Los Angeles
    Oct 6, 2022 The eviction moratorium is now set to expire in a few months but small “mom and pop” landlords say it will take them years to recover from the economic loss.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ7Kt0aThEw

    3:23.

    1. Oct 6, 2022 The eviction moratorium is now set to expire in a few months but small “mom and pop” landlords say it will take them years to recover from the economic loss.

      An eviction moratorium STILL? LMFAO. You can’t make this sh!t up.

  16. Got some bad news yesterday.

    Although Jupiter Fl. did not sustain any structural or flood damage from Hurricane Ian we did have one night with strong feeder bands with heavy rains and wind and another windy night (50 mph) as the storm passed to the north. It took down a lot of palm fronds, tree branches and such which made for a lot of yard trash piled up by the road for Waste Management to pick up which if big enough is usually picked up by a bucket truck 2 to 3 days after the regular pickup.

    Having been about a week with some of my neighbors smaller piles having been picked up and several larger piles of yard trash like mine still there I called to see what was up.

    Well they informed me that a Federal Grant had been issued and FEMA would be in charge of picking up Hurricane debris.

    I said great! If FEMA is in charge of picking it up instead of 3 days I might as well go buy some extra Christmas lights to put on that pile of cr@p in front of my house.

    1. I’m surprised that a budget for storm clean-up doesn’t exist at state level in all the states along the Gulf coast.

      1. I don’t know. I do know Waste Management has always picked up the kind of and amount of yard trash I am talking about so this should add to their bottom line or at least offset some of the fuel price increases they have had.

        On September 28, Governor DeSantis requested a Major Disaster Declaration for all 67 counties, the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and the Seminole Tribe of Florida to ensure FDEM could quickly transition into response and recovery after Hurricane Ian’s landfall. The Declaration makes federal funding available to state, local and tribal governments and eligible nonprofit organizations in affected areas for debris removal and emergency protective measures on a cost-sharing basis. Typically, this request is not made until disaster assessments have been made after the storm. The letter with this request can be found here.

        https://www.floridadisaster.org/news-media/news/20221002-state-of-florida-paves-the-way-for-expedited-debris-removal-fdem-encourages-all-municipalities-to-expedite-removal-to-occur-within-100-reimbursement-window/

      2. I’m surprised states haven’t gotten their acts together and learned that we can exist without the fed in the first place.

  17. Ever notice when realtors, debtdonkeys, mortgage fraudsters and other assorted flunkies prognosticate and “predict”, they’ll always preface everything with “I see/I don’t see”? That’s the dead giveaway that they dont know WTF they’re talking about and anything the actually see is through the bottom of their empty wallet.

    Beware.

    Shirley, MA Housing Prices Crumble 18% YOY As Double Digit Price Declines Blanket Massachussetts

    https://www.movoto.com/shirley-ma/market-trends/

  18. Is it time for schadenfreude yet? Should we pop the bubbly? Or do we need to wait a few months when foreclosures start flooding the market and banks start hoarding REO’s they refuse to mark to market again?

    1. You probably realize that housing and stock prices are highly correlated over time. The main difference is that housing prices CR8R more slowly and show up in the data more gradually. But at the end of the day, a large and protracted bust on Wall Street typically shows up on Main Street in the form of CR8Ring housing prices.

    2. Looks to me like all gains since Nov 2020 will be a distant memory by the midterms.

      Look at the weekly chart, it’s ugly. Big needle up through the 200 week MA. Maybe a candlestick expert can correct me, but that makes me think “suck in the last few knife-catchers, then look out below.”

      1. The stock market never goes straight down. There are always knifecatchers to drive it back up during bear market rallies, like happened the past week and late in the summer, then they get wiped out. Rinse and repeat.

      2. Big needle up through the 200 week MA. Maybe a candlestick expert can correct me, but that makes me think “suck in the last few knife-catchers, then look out below.” “Lets herd more suckers in with voodoo BS like technical analysis.”

  19. There’s quite a large CR8R forming on Wall Street leading up to a holiday weekend.

    Did someone perhaps tip off Da Boyz that an epic housing crash is underway, and lots of investment firms that snapped up single family homes at whatever price over the past couple of years face a bloodbath situation?

    1. The Financial Times
      Markets Briefing Equities
      US stocks slide after stronger than expected jobs report
      Markets are pricing in expectations of another 0.75 percentage point Fed rate rise
      The temperature of the labour market is seen as a crucial influence on decision-making by the Federal Reserve
      Jaren Kerr in Toronto and Ian Johnston in London 46 minutes ago

      US stocks fell sharply on Friday after a closely watched labour market report pointed to persistently strong jobs growth in the world’s largest economy.

      The S&P 500 was down 2.6 per cent by the afternoon in New York, after data showed that US employers added 263,000 new jobs in September, down from 315,000 in August but above the figure of 250,000 anticipated by economists polled by Reuters.

      The Nasdaq Composite, which is stacked full of technology shares that are more sensitive to changes in interest rate expectations, had fallen 3.6 per cent.

      1. Job cuts won’t come till next month. November is when most layoffs occur after corporate budgets for the following year are finalized. Bet there’ll be plenty of pink slips handed out around Thanksgiving. December jobs report will show a massive spike.

        1. Job cuts won’t come till next month. November is when most layoffs occur after corporate budgets for the following year are finalized.
          Absolutely true on budget being finalized In November (most times). I am sure plans are being made right now to cut payroll at many companies.

      1. Investing Daily
        Jackson Hole and The Ghost of Paul Volcker
        By John Persinos • August 23, 2022 • Stock Market Investing

        The summer rally just hit a wall. The Federal Reserve’s annual meeting Thursday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming has investors on edge.

        Fed Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to give a speech Friday morning, and Wall Street frets that he might unleash a super-hawkish move. The major U.S stock market indices plunged across the board Monday. In pre-market futures trading Tuesday, stocks were attempting a rebound.

        Jerome Powell in the past has expressed admiration for his cigar-chomping predecessor, Paul Volcker. Will Powell follow Volcker’s example? The evidence belies such fears. Let’s examine the latest signs that inflation has peaked.

        https://www.investingdaily.com/87582/jackson-hole-and-the-ghost-of-paul-volcker/

      1. I wouldn’t go near one of those rolling weapons of mass destruction with or without a demo saw.

    1. Wow… another reason to get out of California before the state bans gasoline powered automobiles.

    2. A flood will pretty much ruin an ICE car too, but at least they don’t catch fire or require a hazmat team to remove them.

  20. “Bidding war rates have been falling for seven straight months now, and that means sellers are facing a new reality.”

    Tip for sellers interested in generating a bidding war: Look up the sale prices of recent comps on Zillow, and list your home for 10% less. I guarantee you will get more offers than you can shake a stick at!

  21. ‘Honsberger says the average price for a home and Halifax has dropped from the mid $500,000 range to the low $500,000s or high $400,000s. ‘We certainly saw the peak at around March of this year, where you would’ve seen the highest average price that we have ever seen in Halifax specifically, and it has come back to early year levels, late 2021 levels’

    If accurate, the big spring blow off top in this igloo cluster lost at least 10% since March. Prices don’t usually drop that fast. A plus of these videos I’m posting is we can this price action is all over the place and went straight into the big overpriced metros. In months.

    1. And during these insane price increases stateside, Jerome Powell was vociferously chiding those asking him about inflation, boldly stating “we’re not even thinking about thinking about raising rates.” And this guy still has a job?

  22. Shocking Consumer Credit Numbers: Everyone Maxed Out Their Credit Card As Economy Slid Into Recession
    Tyler Durden’s Photo
    BY TYLER DURDEN
    FRIDAY, OCT 07, 2022 – 12:44 PM

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/shocking-consumer-credit-numbers-everyone-maxed-out-their-credit-card-economy-slid

    (snip)

    While it is traditionally viewed as a B-grade economic indicator, the August consumer credit report from the Federal Reserve was another shocker especially after last month’s unexpected slow down in credit card debt, which we attributed to the surge in credit card rates and wondered if this implicit deleveraging would continue as the US economy slid into recession, or if US consumers are so desperate for liquidity they will max out their cards – without expecting to repay them – if it meant being able to pay for one more month of goods and services at record prices. We just got the answer when moments ago the Fed published the latest consumer credit data and it was a doozy.

    Total consumer credit rose $32.2 billion, well above last month’s $26 billion and also above the $25 billion consensus estimate.

    And while non-revolving credit (student and car loans) rose by a relatively pedestrian$15.1 billion the stunner again was revolving, or credit card debt, which soared from last month’s sharp drop, rising by the second highest on record at $17.2 billion (from $10.4 billion last month) and only lower than the highest print on record, March’s downward revised $25.9 billion. This sent total revolving consumer credit to new all time highs at just over $1.15 trillion, erasing all the post-covid credit card deleveraging just in time for those credit card APRs to hit record highs!

    While this unprecedented rush to buy everything on credit at a time when there were no notable Hallmark holidays should not come as much of a surprise, after all we have repeatedly shown that for the middle class any “excess savings” – or any savings for that matter – are now gone, long gone (as the latest GDP revision confirmed) with the personal savings rate plunging to the lowest on record … what is shocking is that consumers are clearly ignoring the highest credit card APRs on record and rushing to charge anything they can find while they can, either because they simply can’t afford to buy anything with their disposable income courtesy of soaring inflation or because nobody has any plan of actually paying down their credit card.

    The consequences of either of these alternatives is staggering, and suggests that the US economy is about to implode… but not before the midterms of course: the fake impression that all is well must be maintained until at least Nov 8. After that, however, we suggest you panic.

  23. “AP Fabricates ‘Completely False Story’ To Smear DeSantis, Then Deletes It”

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ap-fabricates-completely-false-story-smear-desantis-then-deletes

    (snip)

    Tell us you’re a propaganda arm of the Democratic party without telling us…

    On Thursday, the Associated Press fabricated a story about residents on Florida’s Pine Island, who they claimed “have stayed put for days without electricity and other resources while hoping the lone bridge to the mainland is repaired” after Hurricane Ian.

    The headline played into the left’s ongoing attempts to make this into Gov. Ron Desantis’ ‘Katrina’ moment.

    Except, the bridge was repaired the day before.

      1. I’ll say.
        Shocking trove of HHS records reveals most aggressive vaccine propaganda campaign EVER: Screenwriters, comedians, church leaders, black doctors and influencers all PAID OFF to pimp the vax |By healthranger // 2022-10-06
        https://citizens.news/663667.html

      2. They are pathological liars who claim to be “morally superior” and “have history on their side”

  24. FBI Team Involved in Censorship of Hunter Biden Laptop Story Identified

    Laura Dehmlow is a supervisor of FITF. She has been named as a defendant in the case along with Elvis Chan, a special agent who manages the cyber branch at the FBI’s San Francisco Field Office.

    According to new documents produced by the government as part of discovery in the case, Dehmlow briefed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Cybersecurity Advisory Committee on March 1, 2022. Minutes of the meeting show Dehmlow telling members that the FITF actually started in 2016 and has since grown to 80 workers.

    Asked about goals for approaching mal-, mis-, and disinformation, Dehmlow said that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable; we need to early educate the populace; and that today, critical thinking seems to be a problem currently,” according to the minutes.

    Chan, meanwhile, bragged on a recent podcast that the San Francisco office “was very involved in helping to protect the US elections in 2020” by working with private companies and election officials. He also indicated he works closely with CISA Director Jen Easterly, who has been revealed to have taken part in pressuring Big Tech companies to crack down on alleged misinformation.

    “We talked with all of these entities I mentioned regularly, at least on a monthly basis. And right before the election, probably on a weekly basis. If they were seeing anything unusual, if we were seeing anything unusual, sharing intelligence with technology companies, with social media companies, so that they could protect their own platforms. That’s where the FBI and the US government can actually help companies,” Chan said.

    Plaintiffs in the case said that helping social media companies protect their platforms “includes censorship and suppression of speech at the FBI’s behest.”

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/fbi-team-involved-in-censorship-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story-identified_4781643.html

    1. FtFBI in the same way as FJB.

      Back 5 years ago or so, two goons from the Philly office knocked on my bosses door at 8pm. The way he told it and I believe him because I’ve been in meetings with him and seen him operate this way more than once, he opened the door and said who are you, they showed their ID’s, he asked what they wanted…. He said.. and I quote… “go f_ck yourself I don’t have to talk you and shut the door. That was the end of it.

  25. The suspect accused of killing two people and injuring six others during a stabbing rampage on the Las Vegas Strip is in the U.S. illegally, sources told Fox News.

    Yoni Barrios, 32, is a Guatemalan national in the U.S. illegally with a criminal record in California, a source with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

  26. Headline:

    Russia is beginning to ‘prepare their society’ to launch a nuclear attack, Zelenskyy says

    So, is the comedian, gay dancer who cosplays as Ukraine’s president suggesting that the west should launch a preemptive strike?

    It really feels as if we live in Apocalyptic times.

    1. Markets
      CNBC TV
      Watchlist
      Europe Economy
      Britain’s shadow banking system is raising serious concerns after bond market storm
      Published Thu, Oct 6 2022 1:11 AM EDT
      Elliot Smith

      Key Points
      – The Bank of England was forced to intervene in the long-dated bond market after a steep sell-off of U.K. government bonds — known as “gilts” — threatened the country’s financial stability.
      – While the central bank’s intervention offered some fragile stability to the British pound and bond markets, analysts have flagged lingering stability risks in the country’s shadow banking sector – financial institutions acting as lenders or intermediaries outside the traditional banking sector.

      Analysts are concerned about a knock-on effect to the U.K.’s shadow banking sector in the event of a sudden rise in interest rates.

      LONDON — After last week’s chaos in British bond markets following the government’s Sep. 23 “mini-budget,” analysts are sounding the alarm on the country’s shadow banking sector.

      The Bank of England was forced to intervene in the long-dated bond market after a steep sell-off of U.K. government bonds — known as “gilts” — threatened the country’s financial stability.

      The panic was focused in particular on pension funds, which hold substantial amounts of gilts, while a sudden rise in interest rate expectations also caused chaos in the mortgage market.

      While the central bank’s intervention offered some fragile stability to the British pound and bond markets, analysts have flagged lingering stability risks in the country’s shadow banking sector — financial institutions acting as lenders or intermediaries outside the traditional banking sector.

      Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose administration introduced a rescue package for Britain’s banks during the 2008 financial crisis, told BBC Radio Wednesday that U.K. regulators would need to tighten their supervision of the shadow banks.

      “I do fear that as inflation hits and interest rates rise, there will be a number of companies, a number of organizations that will be in grave difficulty, so I don’t think this crisis is over because the pension funds have been rescued last week,” Brown said.

      “I do think there’s got to be eternal vigilance about what has happened to what is called the shadow banking sector, and I do fear that there could be further crises to come.”

      https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/06/britains-shadow-banking-system-is-raising-serious-concerns-after-bond-market-storm.html

    2. Markets
      DOW -2.11%
      S&P 500 -2.80%
      NASDAQ -3.80%

      Fear & Greed Index
      The bond market is starting to worry Wall Street
      By Nicole Goodkind, CNN Business
      Published 7:48 AM EDT, Wed October 5, 2022

      New York CNN Business —

      Persistently high inflation, the Federal Reserve’s tightening policy and record-breaking US debt have wreaked havoc on US Treasuries this year.

      Now, economists are noting a fundamental and worrisome imbalance in the bond market. There are trillions of dollars worth of bonds for sale, they say, but a growing scarcity of buyers. If this trend persists, it could lead to credit problems and inhibit the US government’s ability to fund itself. That’s particularly concerning after America’s national debt climbed north of $31 trillion for the first time on Monday.

      What’s happening: US bond prices rallied alongside equities this week as investors, spurred on by a loosening labor market, bet that the Federal Reserve could ease its aggressive rate hike policy earlier than expected. The upward swing brought some temporary relief to the bond market, which is in the midst of a historically awful year.

      But that relief may be short-lived. The US Treasury — backed by the US government and considered the safest of bonds — is experiencing what JPMorgan analysts describe as a “structural absence of demand.”

      JPMorgan strategists, led by Jay Barry and Srini Ramaswamy, write that the three main buyers of US government debt — the Federal Reserve, commercial banks and foreign governments — have significantly eased up on their purchases.

      Using Federal Reserve data, they found that commercial banks’ collective holdings have fallen by $60 billion over the last six months compared to the same period last year, after growing by more than $700 billion between 2020 and 2021. Foreign governments’ official holdings have dropped $50 billion over the past six months. The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, has dropped its Treasury holdings by about $180 billion so far this year as a part of its monetary tightening program to fight inflation and cool the economy.

      The move by the Fed was expected. At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, growth slowed and the Fed began purchasing $120 billion in government backed bonds each month as a way to inject money into the economy. Now, the central bank has reversed course.

      Still, overall, the drop in demand for Treasuries is extraordinary.

      “The reversal in demand has been stunning as it has been rare for demand from each of these three investor types to all be negative at the same time,” wrote Barry and Ramaswamy.

      What’s next: Investors will pay close attention to unemployment numbers out this Friday. If unemployment grows, it could signal the Fed will ease on its rate hikes. That’s good news for the bond market. If unemployment continues to remain low, the retreat from Treasuries could continue.

      As bond prices tumble, yields rise, raising the cost of borrowing for the government.

      https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/05/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html

    3. The Financial Times
      Pensions industry
      How bond market mayhem set off a pension ‘time bomb’
      A strategy to focus on retirement scheme liabilities is facing tough questions
      Harriet Agnew, Adrienne Klasa, Josephine Cumbo, Chris Flood and Anjli Raval 46 minutes ago

      As they made their pitch to overhaul the pension scheme of one of Britain’s biggest retailers, Next chief executive Lord Simon Wolfson remembers the consultants were “very sure of themselves”.

      “Liability-driven investing”, the consultants promised, was a stress-free way to protect the fund from swings in interest rates by using derivatives.

      There is one particular phrase that still sticks in Wolfson’s mind from the 2017 meeting: “You put it in a drawer, lock the drawer and forget about it.”

      But Wolfson and his team ultimately rejected the plan. “If you only took historical data, it looked pretty robust,” said Wolfson. “But the great lesson from the financial crisis is that you can’t look to the past as a foolproof way of predicting the future. In the end, we didn’t care what the spreadsheets said: we didn’t like the smell of it, so we decided not to do it.”

      Next went as far as to warn the Bank of England that LDI strategies, which currently have £1.5tn invested in them in the UK, “looked like a time bomb waiting to go off”.

      Last week came the explosion. After chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced £45bn in unfunded tax cuts on September 23, the pound fell and over the next few days UK government bond yields soared on the prospect of higher borrowing.

      UK defined benefit scheme liabilities are measured against such long-term interest rates and, in general, higher yields are helpful, since they shrink companies’ outstanding obligations to retirees.

      But the LDI strategies use a variety of derivatives to allow pension schemes to increase their exposure to gilts, without necessarily owning the bonds outright. When bond prices fall, counterparties demand more cash as collateral to keep the arrangement in place.

      The shock fall in gilt prices led to a rush of cash calls. To raise the money, funds were forced to sell assets, including gilts, depressing prices further and risking a “doom loop”.

      “The speed and the scale of the move in the gilts market was unprecedented,” said Simon Bentley, head of UK solutions client portfolio management at Columbia Threadneedle. “You had almost four consecutive ‘black swan’ days in terms of market movements.”

      Responding to pleas for help from the pensions and asset management industry, the BoE intervened last Wednesday, promising to buy up to £65bn of long-term gilts to stabilise the market.

      “The crunch event was not in anyone’s models,” said Aoifinn Devitt, chief investment officer of Moneta Group, a financial adviser, “but it was not entirely unforeseeable.”

    4. Pensions industry
      Bank confirms pension funds almost collapsed amid market meltdown
      – Official explains how promise to buy up to £65bn of government debt staved off destructive UK financial spiral
      – A Bank of England deputy governor said funds with more than £1tn invested came under severe strain with a ‘large number’ of them in danger of going bust.
      Richard Partington Economics correspondent
      Thu 6 Oct 2022 08.04 EDT
      Last modified on Fri 7 Oct 2022 02.50 EDT

      Pension funds managing vast sums on behalf of retired people across Britain came close to collapse amid an “unprecedented” meltdown in UK government bond markets after Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget, the Bank of England has said.

      Explaining its emergency intervention to calm turmoil in financial markets last week, the central bank said pension funds with more than £1tn invested in them came under severe strain with a “large number” in danger of going bust.

      The Bank said a dramatic rise in interest rates on long-dated UK government bonds in the days immediately after the chancellor’s mini-budget had triggered a “self-reinforcing” spiral in debt markets, putting the stability of Britain’s financial system at risk.
      From mini-budget to market turmoil: Kwasi Kwarteng’s week – video timeline

      Had the Bank not intervened with a promise to buy up to £65bn of government debt, funds managing money on behalf of pensioners across the country “would have been left with negative net asset value” and cash demands they could not have met.

      “As a result, it was likely that these funds would have to begin the process of winding up the following morning,” the Bank said.

      The central bank said the meltdown was at risk of rippling through the UK financial system, which could have then caused “excessive and sudden tightening of financing conditions for the real economy”.

      Threadneedle Street stepped in last week after a collapse in the pound to the lowest level against the dollar in history and as interest rates on UK government bonds rose to the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis.

      In a letter to the Commons Treasury committee explaining the intervention, the Bank’s deputy governor for financial stability, Jon Cunliffe, suggested the largest market movements came after the chancellor’s mini-budget.

      On the day the Bank raised interest rates on Thursday 22 September, he said the currency had been “broadly stable” and long-term interest rates – or yields – on government bonds rose by about 20 basis points. Only on the following day, when Kwarteng unveiled £45bn of unfunded tax cuts, did the Bank’s market intelligence identify the first concerns from pension fund managers.

      Cunliffe said sterling collapsed by about 4% against the dollar and 2% against the euro, while long-term bond yields rose 30 basis points amid “very poor” conditions for the number of buyers and sellers prepared to trade on that day.

      Ministers had attempted to argue that the market turmoil reflected global factors. However, the Bank appeared to undermine this suggestion, publishing a chart highlighting a sharp rise in 30-year borrowing costs after the mini-budget that was not replicated in the US or the EU.

      Sources in the City warned of a “doom loop” emerging last week for pensions funds invested in liability driven investment (LDI). The funds had invested in complex derivatives, using long-dated government bonds as collateral – assets pledged as security to back up a financial contract.

      https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/06/bank-of-england-confirms-pension-funds-almost-collapsed-amid-market-meltdown

      1. BoE in murky water with qualified ‘whatever it takes’: Mike Dolan
        Contributor
        Mike Dolan Reuters
        Published
        Sep 30, 2022 02:00AM EDT

        ‘Time-limited’ and ‘whatever it takes’ don’t sit comfortably together. Even if a law of diminishing returns suggests the legendary ‘whatever it takes’ warning from policymakers to markets is waning somewhat, the phrase still derives power from its simplicity and open-ended commitment to overwhelming force.

        LONDON, Sept 30 (Reuters) – ‘Time-limited’ and ‘whatever it takes’ don’t sit comfortably together.

        Even if a law of diminishing returns suggests the legendary ‘whatever it takes’ warning from policymakers to markets is waning somewhat, the phrase still derives power from its simplicity and open-ended commitment to overwhelming force.

        Used most effectively in the financial context by then European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi 10 years ago, it all but ended the raging euro zone sovereign debt crisis of the day simply by signalling unlimited ECB use of all available firepower for however long it took to steady the ship.

        No taboos, with no size or time constraints.

        Circumstances, context and exact phrasing may be different this week, but the Bank of England did ape some of that language on Wednesday in its dramatic decision to buy British government bonds to prevent an implosion of the so-called gilt market.

        As market dysfunction risked a doom loop of pension fund cash calls and forced selling due to soaring yields, wildly exaggerated by the UK government’s tax-slashing fiscal plan last Friday, the Bank clearly had to act – even though ostensibly against the thrust of its ongoing tightening of monetary policy.

        “The purpose of these purchases will be to restore orderly market conditions,” the BoE statement read. “The purchases will be carried out on whatever scale is necessary to effect this outcome.”

        Forceful words, with some echoes of 2012.

        Like the ECB 10 years ago – or again this year when it designed an anti-fragmentation tool to limit intra-euro borrowing spreads – the BoE justified Wednesday’s intervention by the need for properly functioning markets to adequately transmit its monetary policy.

        Yet unlike the ECB a decade previously, the BoE’s underlying monetary policy is the polar opposite of what it has to do to calm markets and risks side-swiping its interest rate rise campaign to control inflation. More particularly, it cuts across its commitment to run down its 800 billion plus balance sheet by actively selling 80 billion pounds of gilts over the coming year, part of its quantitative tightening pledge (QT).

        So much so, the BoE was compelled to qualify the seemingly forceful “whatever scale is necessary” line with what Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden on Thursday stressed would be a “strictly time-limited” operation.

        The hope is it just buys two weeks of time for pension funds to sort out cash and collateral crunches at the long end of the bond market – and allow the BoE to unwind those purchases ‘smoothly’ once again, resume the postponed QT sales next month and deliver what futures markets now assume will be a whopping 1.25 percentage point increase in its policy rate on November 3.

        That’s a hopeful expectation.

        GILT TRIP

        If the problem was just about quarter-end quirk in derivatives hedging, perhaps it works.

        But if the central problem is soaring bond yields and swap spreads amid sky-high inflation expectations, rising rates, unfunded tax cuts and a plummeting pound – then it may just the issue into year-end at latest.

        “While the Bank of England’s intervention on Wednesday averted a vicious cycle of forced sales that had begun, the underlying risks from high inflation, a weak pound and uncertainty over the government’s fiscal plans remain,” said Invesco Solutions Portfolio Manager Derek Steeden.

        Steeden said collateral calls are expected when gilt yields rise and most pension schemes have a pre-agreed order of what assets to sell first.

        But while schemes had been working through these reserves in recent months as yields climbed, he said the latest spike, which saw 30-year interest rate swaps balloon by more than 100bp, means they now need to sell well beyond the gilt market, not least as pressure to ‘de-risk’ funds increases as discount rates determining funding levels are so much higher.

        “This is not over yet – many UK pension funds invest globally but have sterling liabilities and use currency hedging programmes to help neutralize the impact of currency moves,” he stressed. “These programmes have yet to settle losses resulting from the falling pound.”

  27. Dumb question of the evening:

    Has the volatility vortex reached a state of agitation beyond the limits of central bankers to contain it?

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