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Some Buyers Who Got Caught Up In Fear Of Missing Out Are Now Feeling Remorse

A report from WRLN. “Their billboards used to plaster South Florida. Their contractors went door-to-door, offering expensive and much-needed upgrades to roofs, windows and air conditioning units — with no money down, no credit check needed. Ygrene Energy was the biggest player in a novel and controversial industry that bankrolls home improvements and gets paid back by charges added to a homeowner’s tax bill. But late last year, Ygrene, the state’s most high-profile green energy finance company, suddenly vanished from the Florida market — a move that left contractors in the middle of projects unpaid and homeowners scrambling to pay big unexpected bills.”

“For Ray and Kelly Coulter, the company’s abrupt withdrawal came weeks after their brand-new roof and impact windows were installed on their West Palm Beach home. ‘We were sold a bill of goods that’s no longer there,’ said Ray, a 53-year-old facilities manager. Jonathan Akl, a St. Lucie-based contractor, said he had 60 projects affected under his former employer, leaving some homeowners with unfinished roofs while the financial details were worked out. ‘We had 60 open files with the company. They reneged on every single one of them,’ he said. ‘Literally at midnight they dropped all contracts that weren’t closed. A lot of people got screwed.'”

Bisnow New York. “New York City’s condo market is facing a lull as fewer new units hit the market and sellers of existing units, disappointed with the offers they are receiving, are pulling their listings from the market in large numbers. Sellers delisted as many as 5,300 units in the second half of 2022, Vickey Barron, a real estate agent at Compass, told Bisnow. ‘People have pulled their listings off the market,’ she said. ‘It’s because they’re feeling defeated there. It’s not selling.'”

From Hawaii Business. “It seems like a paradox: More Hawaiʻi homeowners were equity rich at the end of last year, but also an increasing number of homeowners in the Islands – particularly on Oʻahu – were seriously underwater on their mortgages, according to a new report. Oʻahu is just starting to see prices decrease after years of steady increases. The Honolulu Board of Realtors reported the median price of a single-family home in January declined to $970,000 from $1.05 million in January 2021, a decline of 7.6%.”

“For any homeowner who bought in the past few years and is worried about prices going down now, Chad Takesue, chief operating officer of Honolulu real estate firm Locations, says to look at the long-term appreciation: In the last five years, Oʻahu condos had an average of 24% appreciation while single-family homes appreciated 45%. ‘You only make money and lose money when you sell,’ he says.”

The Las Vegas Business Press. “Local home prices continue to decline, with more homes available for sale and fewer being sold than one year earlier. So says a recent Las Vegas Realtors report. LVR reported the median price of existing single-family homes sold in Southern Nevada through its Multiple Listing Service during January was $425,000. That’s the same price as December, and down 2.3 percent from $435,000 in January 2022. It’s also down from the all-time record price of $482,000 in May 2022.”

“By the end of January 2023, LVR reported 5,450 single-family homes listed for sale without any sort of offer. That’s up 199.3 percent from the same time last year. Likewise, the 1,233 condos and townhomes listed without offers in January represent a 282.9 percent jump from one year earlier.”

The Orange County Register in California. “People priced out of the California housing market often approach land real estate agent Danielle Davenport with their Plan B. If they can’t afford an existing house, they’ll buy a piece of land and build, they tell her. But Davenport, a Bay Area-based land director for Keller Williams California, cautions buyers about investing in vacant parcels as an alternative to housing. ‘We go through exhaustive training because buying land is a huge liability,’ Davenport said. ‘Major builders have pulled out of purchasing right now and are working on entitlements.'”

The Colorado Sun. “For the first time in recent memory, the median price of a house in metro Denver is less than it was a year ago. And for some who make a living selling houses, there’s a sense of relief. ‘Every single month in 2021 and the first half of 2022, everybody in our (real estate) community went, ‘Oh my goodness. How much more can this go? What will buyers put up with?’ I mean having to pay a penny over the appraised value is just bonkers to me,’ said Matt Leprino, CEO of Denver-based real estate brokerage Remingo. Metro Denver’s median sales price hit a high of $660,000 in April, up 17.4% in a year. That dropped to $569,804, as of January, which is 1.4% lower than a year-ago January. Mesa County saw a 3.4% dip in its median-sales price, falling to $379,950 in January.”

From Bloomberg. “Retired baseball star Alex Rodriguez took to LinkedIn in late 2021 to ask for help: He’d invested alongside Starwood Capital Group in a single-family rental company that was buying 1,000 homes a month and needed to hire as many as 500 people to keep up. ‘The right time to get on board is now,’ he wrote in a post. More than a year later, the company, Tiber Capital Group, is pulling back, the victim of a sudden housing slowdown that caught many sophisticated players by surprise. The Capitol Heights, Maryland-based firm has sharply curtailed real estate purchases and fired hundreds of workers, according to people familiar with the business.”

“The rapid growth of companies such as Tiber has been one of the defining features of the US housing landscape in recent years, adding to a homebuying frenzy that peaked with the largest single-family landlords buying more than 10,000 homes a month. Now, Tiber and its peers have become symbols of a dizzying retrenchment — cutting jobs and slamming the brakes on buying while they wait for the market to improve. The slowdown in buying has persisted. The 20 largest single-family rental firms, which bought more than 10,000 homes in September 2021, acquired about 850 properties in December 2022, according to data firm SFR Analytics.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “Real estate agent Raymond Chin recently had the daunting task of helping a couple with three small children quickly sell their existing four-bedroom house in suburban Ottawa after the couple purchased a larger house. The couple purchased the detached, four-bedroom house at 526 Antique Court for the full asking price of $1.1-million, and also agreed to the sellers’ request for a June closing – seven months away. But the pair then faced selling their existing detached, four-bedroom home in the depths of the Ottawa winter.”

“Mr. Chin was confident the house in the Half Moon Bay area would sell but the couple needed to fetch a strong price in order to be able to move up to the next property. ‘It was stressful. We had to sell this home,’ he says. ‘The longer it sits on market, the less we get on price.’ To add to the challenge, Mr. Chin says, there were 15 other houses in the neighbourhood on the market at the same time – most at lower prices. The sellers fretted about the low bid and wondered if they should wait until the weekend open house. But the buyers were willing to negotiate, and the two sides eventually struck a deal for 922,000. ‘We’ll see more desperate sellers,’ Mr. Chin says. ‘People should have known [low rates] wouldn’t last forever but no one expected such a rapid increase.'”

“Shawn Lackie of Coldwell Banker R.M.R. says the average sale price in Durham has dropped approximately $342,000 to $886,000 from $1.228-million at the peak in February, 2022. Many buyers are assuming that rates will come down by 2025 or so, he says. They figure that puts them in a better position than people who purchased at the peak. ‘If you’re paying $1-million for a house that you should have only paid $750,000 for, the price of the house is forever,’ he points out.”

“A modest bungalow in Durham, for example, might be listed with an asking price of $699,000 and sell for $725,000 or $750,000 or so instead of a price above $900,000. Mr. Lackie says some buyers who got caught up in ‘fear of missing out’ during the pandemic run-up are now feeling remorse.”

ABC Business in Australia. “In a case of what goes up must come down, property prices in Byron Bay have plunged 25 per cent in the past 12 months as interest rate hikes start to bite and tree and sea changers move back to the city. After experiencing staggering price growth during COVID, the New South Wales Richmond-Tweed area, which takes in Byron, is now the worst performing regional market according to CoreLogic data, with house values falling by an average of 18.6 per cent.”

“CoreLogic head of research Eliza Owen said property prices barely grew in those parts of SA before COVID emboldened people to move away from capital cities such as Adelaide. Ms Owen described this as a price adjustment, off the back of interest rate rises, after ‘exorbitant’ growth during COVID. ‘This was the region where values skyrocketed, with houses increasing more than 50% during COVID, taking the median house value to more than $1.1 million,’ she said. ‘Since then much has changed with borders reopening, outbound travel returning, workers returning to the office not to mention the overlay of nine rate rises. It’s been a swift and significant shift.'”

“She cautioned 2023 would be an ‘interesting test’ for the property market with buyers’ borrowing capacity falling dramatically and many homeowners on fixed term mortgages yet to feel the impact of consecutive interest rate hikes. ‘This is going to really rock the market, whether it is regional capital, city values, it’s going to have an impact,’ she said.”

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This Post Has 117 Comments

  1. I’m running a bit late. This computer keeps getting logged out of everything. Really slows me down having to sign in multiple times.

    3. The December Windows update ruined my computer. I waited too long and when I went to uninstall it, I no longer had the restore point I needed. I am constantly overheating and my fan is running on high with most websites, irrespective of the browser I use. Windows Defender eats up mass power when I open Task Manager.

      I will never buy another Microsoft product. I bought this laptop more than 10 years ago before I knew what a sick, evil human being Bill Gates was. Apple is out, too. Wondering if Chromebook is maybe the way to go, but Google is evil, too.

      1. If it were me, I’d just upgrade Windows to Ubuntu and call it a day. If you’re handy, you could always put Ubuntu on a thumb drive and choose it from the boot menu on startup. That way, you could try it out and see if it works for you first before making a commitment. You could also do a partition with Windoze on one and Ubuntu on the other. You would have to reformat your hard drive to do that, however.

      2. same issue. I think i’m going to go linux next time. I don’t do anything but internet and occasional word processing and excel type stuff (barely). there’s no reason it should be sucking this much power and memory.

    4. “The December Windows update ruined my computer.”

      First, you need to download and run the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), which helps keep Windows computers free from prevalent malware.

      Then, install the February 2023 updates.

      2. How would a Windows update have led to “malicious software” on my computer when I have been running Windows Defender since the computer was new? This issue started the very moment that the computer restarted after the updates.

        1. Without knowing the hardware specs it’d be tough to proceed from the my previous suggestions. Ideally you need 16GB of ram memory and adequate storage remaining.

        2. Your pc is 10 years old. It’s ancient. It has trouble running new software. Time to upgrade. Pc shipments and laptop shipments cratered last year and there are deals everywhere. Spend the money and with the super fast new ssd or nvie hard drives and upgrades ram you’ll feel like you’re in the 21st century. It’ll be worth every penny. I just upgraded my wife laptop and built my own pc. The technology has moved way way beyond 10 years ago. Computers are the cheapest they’ve been in a while.

          1. My wife’s laptop i replaced was 10 years old too. It’s ancient technology. Especially 10 year old laptop technolgy with those spinning platter hard drives and ddr2 ram. Buy a new laptop and you’ll thank me later. It’s time. Seriously. Your laptop is like an old worn out couch. Just get a new one.

          2. Your laptop is like an old worn out couch. Just get a new one.

            I do want to, I’m just unsure of the brand to buy. I like to buy a high quality one, with anti-glare screen and all the goodies. The best they make.

          3. I’m just unsure of the brand to buy. I like to buy a high quality one, with anti-glare screen and all the goodies. The best they make.

            If you’re looking for a laptop, get a macbook air or pro from Costco. Then you don’t have to worry about Windows update/defender!

  3. This article is dedicated to California State Senator Scott Wiener and former Twitter head of Trust And Safety Yoel Roth.

    New York Post — Gay couple charged with molesting their adopted sons also pimped them out to pedophile ring, report claims (1/20/2023):

    “A months-long investigation by Townhall revealed that William Dale Zulock, 33, and Zachary Jacoby Zulock, 35, allegedly used social media to prostitute their two elementary-aged sons.

    William Zulock, a government worker, and Zachary Zulock, a banker, were indicted in August 2022 on charges of incest, aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation, felony sexual exploitation of children and felony prostitution of a minor.

    The couple have been active in the local LGBTQ community.

    Prominent LGBTQ publication Out magazine reportedly asked to feature their photos on its website, according to the Daily Wire.”

    https://nypost.com/2023/01/20/couple-pimped-their-adopted-sons-out-to-pedophile-ring-report/

  4. 𝗠𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗮𝗻𝘁, 𝗡𝗖 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟭% 𝗬𝗢𝗬 𝗔𝘀 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝘂𝗱 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗜𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗘𝗮𝘀𝘁

    https://www.movoto.com/annandale-va/market-trends/

    𝘈𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘦𝘥, “𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨…. 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘨𝘰 𝘣𝘰𝘰 𝘩𝘰𝘰 𝘩𝘰𝘰.”

    1. The Financial Times
      Opinion Meta Platforms
      Whatever happened to the metaverse?
      Enthusiasm for a virtual future is draining away — and so is investment
      Jemima Kelly
      Ben Hickey illustration of the Meta sign extension arrow pointing down
      Jemima Kelly yesterday

      Remember when we were all going to ditch our humdrum lives, tedious physical needs and uninspiring friends and family, so that we could live a life of virtual bliss in the metaverse? When we could give up the endless pursuit of self-improvement and just exist as perfect avatars instead? When Facebook rebranded to Meta because, from now on, the company was going to be “metaverse-first, not Facebook-first”?

      It has been just one year since Meta’s fabulously dystopian Super Bowl advert for its VR headsets, in which a group of friends who have lost touch get back together in the virtual world (in the real one they were all alone, with no buddies — or lower halves).

      Yet since that ad, excitement over the idea has withered. Type “metaverse” into Google Trends and you’ll see search traffic for the word has collapsed by about 80 per cent over the past year or so. These days, if you want to raise a load of cash, you’d be better off name-dropping “generative AI” — artificial intelligence that can “generate” text, images or other data. Venture capital investment into that particular sector jumped 425 per cent between 2020 and 2022.

      So unenthusiastic are Meta’s own investors about the idea that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was recently forced to say that the metaverse is “not the majority of what we’re doing”. These days, he’s talking more about efficiency than the metaverse. For good reason, too: Reality Labs, the division that makes the Meta Quest headsets, made an operating loss of $13.7bn last year.

      The company has also fallen remarkably quiet about its big plan to hire 10,000 people in the EU to work on the metaverse — I asked Meta if that was still happening and whether anyone had been hired yet. They told me: “Our expansion in Europe was always a long-term one planned over a number of years. We remain committed to Europe.” Microsoft, meanwhile, has killed its “industrial metaverse team” just four months after setting it up, laying off 100 members of staff.

      Where did it all go wrong?
      …

      1. “made an operating loss of $13.7bn last year.”

        That loss is more than double the entire market cap of Macy’s ($6.14bn).

        1. Something seems odd about that number, as it’s so huge. I wonder if it’s a slush fund for other, possibly non business related activities.

  8. “For any homeowner who bought in the past few years and is worried about prices going down now, Chad Takesue, chief operating officer of Honolulu real estate firm Locations, says to look at the long-term appreciation: In the last five years,…”

    Be sure to pick a starting point for the comparison after the last crash ended.

    A better model might be the large waves piling into the north shore this time of year.

    1. “You only make money and lose money when you sell,’ he says

      Well good thing no one was speculating in that market…..oh, wait…..

  9. Australia’s Drug Regulator Hid Child Vaccine Deaths to “Maintain Public Confidence”

    It gets worse. Dr. McCann was surprised to find that documents 1-10 out of a total 11 documents from the FOI had not been uploaded to the TGA’s public disclosure log, per regular protocol. She emailed the TGA to query why documents 1-10 had been withheld from the disclosure log, and was advised, in a communication on August 24th 2022:

    ‘The decision maker for this request decided not to publish documents 1-10 pursuant to section 11c(1)(a) of the FOI Act as they contain sensitive personal information about deceased persons. As you would appreciate, consultation with the families of the deceased was not considered appropriate, and, as such, consultation was not undertaken with those families. Further, the decision maker determined that disclosure of the documents could undermine public confidence and reduce the willingness of the public to report adverse events to the TGA.’

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/02/15/australias-drug-regulator-hid-child-vaccine-deaths-to-maintain-public-confidence/

    2. Australia’s Drug Regulator Hid Child Vaccine Deaths to “Maintain Public Confidence”

      Why would you want to “maintain public confidence” in something that’s killing the public? This is the first question that needs to be answered. The death penalty is not only warranted for these people, it’s mandatory. They are murderous thugs.

      1. NPR was praising the jab the other day:

        Vaccines have provided powerful protection

        On the other hand, Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, has leaned into the value of vaccines over masks.

        “They’re really powerful in terms of what they were designed to do, which is to prevent severe disease,” Gandhi said. “This is really the time at which you can say, ‘Oh, we have a lot of population immunity in our country.'”

  10. A reader sent these in:

    Reminder that the people not reporting on this supposedly had your health as their top priority over the last 3 years.

    https://twitter.com/AppleJak59/status/1625428829807296515

    Who funds the Norfolk Southern Railway? Oh the same people who own 90% of the media….

    https://twitter.com/luckyburritos/status/1625623001340297218

    an old man once said: ”stock market investing, is the easiest way to divide stupid people from their money”

    https://twitter.com/AlessioUrban/status/1625581898780008476

    I’ve been very critical of Twitter lately, but I must give them props for allowing “Pete Buttplug” to be a trending topic. lol

    https://twitter.com/GeorgeGammon/status/1625572606093959168

    To save money, don’t eat 😅 Thanks WSJ … 🤡 🌎

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1625656701767585798

    Dario nails it!

    https://twitter.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1625944007518953472

    You can now see how all these fiscal and monetary interventions of the last 15 years have just created massive economic volatility and inequalities…was it worth it? What are CBs doing other than perpetuating bubbles that they then use to justify their raison d’être?

    https://twitter.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1625852588720619520

    “After 475 basis points of hikes in the federal funds rate, all the Fed has to show for it is the S&P 500 15% off its lows, the unemployment rate at 3.4%, and underlying inflation still running hot… Forget higher for longer, we still need to get higher”

    https://twitter.com/FerroTV/status/1625605358692474890

    Liz Ann Sonders

    7.2% gain in restaurant retail sales in January was strongest since March 2021 … before pandemic, we’ve never seen that kind of strength

    https://twitter.com/LizAnnSonders/status/1625853269439553536

    This classified as a boomer fart box McMansion? $1,000,000 4,000sqft on a 0.25ac lot with a $300 monthly HOA as the cherry on top.

    https://twitter.com/BarrettKearns/status/1626013208421990402

    Do you know what percentage of total Real Estate value in the USA is owned by millennials? 4% FOUR PERCENT! At their age, boomers owned 32% of the country’s Real Estate value. EIGHT TIMES AS MUCH

    https://twitter.com/texasrunnerDFW/status/1625952452229926935

    Boomer gift to the next generation:
    No retirement
    Low wages
    MASSIVE debt
    MASSIVE inflation
    Inflated prices of things you need to live (housing)

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1626010998686748672

    The government using COVID money to continue to back pay rents is INFLATING rental prices and providing welfare to landlords.

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1626007961461215233

    LOL, “the service charge is not a gratuity.”

    You know what – don’t mislead – raise your damn menu prices, pay people more, and see who still comes to your restaurant. Some interesting comments here:

    https://twitter.com/RudyHavenstein/status/1625958385538433024

    Wrecked

    https://twitter.com/buytherighthome/status/1625953538588217372

    Fort Worth City Council votes to keep short-term rentals in residential areas illegal

    https://twitter.com/JohnWake/status/1625998191505326080

    Home prices on the west coast collapsing at a 14%+ annual rate. Phoenix homeowners losing a median $57,000/yr in value at current trajectory

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1625999316547678209

    US 6-month T-bills now yield about 5%, the highest since 2007, compared with a 5.08% S&P 500 earnings yield. The gap between them is the slimmest advantage that stocks have held since 2001.

    https://twitter.com/lisaabramowicz1/status/1625973635281289228

    Why doesn’t the Fed increase the taper to like $150 billion a month if there’s too much liquidity in the system with the markets rising and inflation not dropping as fast as the Fed would like?

    https://twitter.com/StealthQE4/status/1625940875602796545

    And cut the Fed Balance Sheet in HALF. Not 20 years from now either. In 2yrs or less. The Fed is slow walking this and destroying those who live paycheck to paycheck while appeasing owners of financial and real assets.

    https://twitter.com/rspitz01/status/1625633004696600576

    The GSEs Fannie Freddie and @SenSherrodBrown
    @SenateBanking are trying to implement rules to make it more difficult to foreclose, artificially inflating house prices. All this is really doing is stealing homes from families who make good financial decisions.

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1625923828269613057

    Under-listing continues to be a risky strategy as these home owners found out after not getting their properties sold on ‘offer day’. More downward price discovery for sellers. Cities include: Brampton, Mississauga, Richmond Hill, and Pickering

    https://twitter.com/ShaziGoalie/status/1625919802647642114

    There is no transaction volume. So while prices appear to be slowly dropping/stagnating, behind the scenes, mortgage lenders, RE agents, construction workers, appraisers…etc are slowly bleeding out. No sales = no income

    https://twitter.com/texasrunnerDFW/status/1625913205561098283

    Remember the guy crying about the Fed raising rates? Ya, its the ahole stealing 1000s of houses from families with cheap debt. May cancer strike him down

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1625914730178281472

    In the space of 2 months, we went from “hard landing”, to “soft landing”, to “no landing”, to rocket emojis 🚀 🤣🙏

    https://twitter.com/agnostoxxx/status/1625936789335580672

    This is nearly eight times higher than his bill at the same time last year. “It made me want to puke,” said Eldridge, 48, 🚨

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1626045088362074112

    Legacy media narrative :🗑️ It is not govt policies or central bank policies. It is YOUR fault. 🧐

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1625897407056687113

    John Wake

    Metro Phoenix single-family detached sales in January lowest since 2008.

    https://twitter.com/JohnWake/status/1626025122619588610

    1. This is nearly eight times higher than his bill at the same time last year. “It made me want to puke,” said Eldridge, 48, 🚨

      Now imagine if it actually got cold in Clownland.

      2. Our bill was $613 last month. We had our thermostat at 65F. We’re a small family of 3 in 2400sf.

    2. “The government using COVID money to continue to back pay rents is INFLATING rental prices and providing welfare to landlords.”

      If the COVID money is being used to pay *back* rent, then it’s not welfare to landlords. If the money is used to pay rent going forward, then it’s welfare to the deadbeats who rent, not necessarily the LL.

      1. It is welfare to the landlords and asset owners in general. If people could be evicted, landlords may discover their “market price” is a fantasy.

    3. 1) “You can now see how all these fiscal and monetary interventions of the last 15 years have just created massive economic volatility and inequalities…was it worth it? What are CBs doing other than perpetuating bubbles that they then use to justify their raison d’être?”

      2) “After 475 basis points of hikes in the federal funds rate, all the Fed has to show for it is the S&P 500 15% off its lows, the unemployment rate at 3.4%, and underlying inflation still running hot… Forget higher for longer, we still need to get higher”

      1). The Fed is a private banking cartel, not a gov’t ag’cy. They work for Capital ( banks and corps./1%), which are against Labor (workers /90%). They enable wealth transfer and inequality.
      “Was it worth it?” – Depends on which end of the stick you’re on.

      2). Don’t assume that the Fed-Gov. complex actually wants inflation to return to 2%. I think they want it to run hot for years at about 4-5%\yr. Just below the “torches and pitch forks” threshold. Debt reduction strategy (at your expense).

      – The peasants are revolting. Welcome to neo-feudalism. All is proceeding according to plan. You will own nothing.

  11. Russia Today — Andrey Sushentsov: Here’s why Ukraine’s Zelensky wants a long war with Russia (2/15/2023):

    “It is unlikely that President Vladimir Zelensky expects to win militarily. But it seems that he genuinely believes that he will succeed in turning Ukraine into something like Israel – a paramilitary state living with a sense of constant military threat.

    Ukraine doesn’t have the military or economic resources of its own to achieve victory, and the resources provided by the West will never be enough to inflict a final defeat on Russia. Zelensky’s calculation is likely based on the belief that by offering Ukraine as a tool for NATO to use against Russia, he will constantly mobilize Western support and thereby ensure his own survival, and that of his associates.

    In the worst-case scenario, as he sees it, Zelensky is probably counting on emigrating to the West with his closest associates, where they will advocate a continued policy of Russian containment. But does he care about the interests of ordinary people in Ukraine?

    Zelensky’s government acts as if it sees no value in preserving Ukrainian statehood. The administration is squandering citizens’ lives and the economic fabric of the country in the belief that this sacrifice is necessary to gain some possible, rather indefinite, advantage in the future. Instead of acting as a peacemaker, as someone who is prepared to make sacrifices to save the lives of his people, Zelensky acts like a gambler, while feeding the population military propaganda.”

    https://www.rt.com/russia/571525-zelensky-wants-long-war/

    Russia is winning.

    1. New York Times — ‘The World’s Largest Construction Site’: The Race Is On to Rebuild Ukraine (2/16/2023):

      “As the country’s leaders lay postwar plans, companies from around the world are jockeying for advantage in what could be a multibillion-dollar effort, although one loaded with risk.

      “There’s so many initiatives, it’s hard to know who’s doing what,” said Sergiy Tsivkach, the executive director of UkraineInvest, the government office dedicated to attracting foreign investment.

      “They all say, ‘We want to help in rebuilding Ukraine,’” he said. “But do you want to invest your own money, or do you want to sell services or goods? These are two different things.”

      Most are interested in selling something, he said.

      https://archive.is/P3hxA

      Most are interested in selling something.

      Sounds about right.

      1. Don’t forget about rebuilding Turkey & Syria. Maybe with honest construction inspectors this time around.

    2. I remind you that Hungary is a democratic country that is a member of the European Union and the NATO alliance. It is led by a government that won re-election in a 2022 landslide that was widely recognized as free and fair. This is also a government that does not support the United States-led strategy to prolong the Russia-Ukraine war, does not believe in globalist principles on open immigration, does not support same-sex marriage, and will not permit LGBT propaganda to be presented to minors.

      Clearly it is ripe for a Color Revolution — and Samantha Power is here to help.

      My only surprise is that it’s taken this long.

    3. “Ukraine doesn’t have the military or economic resources…”

      Watched a news clip regarding Ukraine running out of ammunition, and they had footage from the trenches where a soldier could be seen standing up holding his his AK47 above his head firing wildly without aiming until the magazine was empty before resuming a squatting position, lighting a cigarette and presumably waiting for the weapon’s barrel to cool.

  16. NPR — ‘New York Times’ stories on trans youth slammed by writers — including some of its own (2/15/2023):

    “About 200 New York Times contributors have signed an open letter calling out the legacy newspaper for its coverage of transgender issues.

    In the letter addressed to the Times’ associate managing editor for standards, the contributors say they have “serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non⁠-⁠binary, and gender nonconforming people.”

    https://www.npr.org/2023/02/15/1157181127/nyt-letter-trans

    Marxists: give us your children, or else…

    1. “In the letter, they say the Times has treated coverage of gender diversity “with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language”

      Pseudoscience? Not The Science™ ?

      These Marxist globalists are demons.

      The Day Of The Rope is coming…

  17. Is it clear at this point that the Fed has brought inflation under control and can now pivot to reducing intrrest rates?

    1. The Financial Times
      2 hours ago
      US producer prices rise in January more than expected
      Alexandra White in New York

      Prices paid to US producers for goods and services rose more than expected in January, a warning sign to the Federal Reserve that a recent slowdown in inflation has begun to stall.

      The producer price index, which tracks the prices that businesses receive for their goods and services, increased 0.7 per cent in January from a month earlier, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Thursday. That surpassed economists’ expectations for a 0.4 per cent increase.

      On an annual basis, the PPI was 6 per cent higher than a year ago, down from an upwardly revised 6.5 per cent in December, but came in higher than the 5.4 per cent rise economists forecasted.

      Producer prices are often regarded by economists as a leading indicator of where consumer inflation is headed in several months’ time.
      …

  18. The Financial Times
    an hour ago
    US housing starts plunge to lowest level since June 2020
    Alexandra White in New York

    The rate of US new home construction fell to the lowest level since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic as higher mortgage rates have weakened demand.

    US housing starts in January fell 4.5 per from February to an annualised pace of 1.3mn, the lowest level since June 2020, the commerce department said on Thursday. Economists had estimated a more modest decline to 1.36mn.

    Single-family starts plunged 40 per cent from a year ago and 1.8 per cent from December, as housing demand waned. The multifamily sector also dropped 22.5 per cent from the prior year but remained flat from December.
    …

    1. US housing starts plunge to lowest level since June 2020

      Surely this must mean the entire country is locked down tight again!

      1. Good observation. In June 2020, the whole country was locked down in Covid fear plus government mandated economic shutdowns.

        Now that the pandemic is over and the economy is open again, it seems odd that the builders are acting like they are operating under pandemic shutdown conditions.

    1. The elite really do believe they can hunker down somewhere in safety while the rest of the world burns. In fact, they are planning on it.

    2. +1 for the Yuval Harari reference.

      We need to keep his name fresh in everyone’s mind, who he is, what he is advocating.

      He’s not an elected official or other government official, so yes his name is on the kill list.

  23. 99-year-old man says cryptocurrency is for idiots
    Charlie Munger also thinks semiconductors are a terrible business, Taiwan’s safe from China, Elon Musk is ‘peculiar’
    Simon Sharwood
    Thu 16 Feb 2023 / 07:32 UTC

    When a 99-year-old man says that “cryptocrapo” is for “idiots” and banning it is not a bad idea, many might think it’s an “Old man yells at cloud” moment.

    But this actually happened on Wednesday and the almost-centenarian was Charlie Munger – vice chair of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the most successful investors of all time. So his opinion about what he also calls “cryptoshit” carries some weight regardless of his age.

    Munger once described Bitcoin as “disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization” and revisited the topic when asked during the annual shareholders meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation, a US publishing company he chairs.
    …
    https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/16/charlie_mumger_slams_cryptocurrency_again/

    2. Yahoo Finance
      Charlie Munger: ‘I’m not proud of my country’ for allowing ‘crypto sh-t’
      Munger called those who oppose his position “idiots” at the Daily Journal annual shareholder meeting Wednesday.
      Alexandra Semenova
      Wed, February 15, 2023 at 12:21 PM PST·3 min read

      Legendary investor Charlie Munger pulled no punches when it came to offering his latest anti-cryptocurrency views on Wednesday.

      In Munger’s view, traditional currencies have helped turn man “from a successful ape to a [successful] human,” he said during the Daily Journal’s shareholder meeting in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Munger said claims cryptocurrencies can replace national currencies are the equivalent of saying that air can be replaced.

      “It isn’t even slightly stupid, it’s massively stupid, and of course it’s very dangerous, and of course the governments were totally wrong to permit it,” Munger told CNBC’s Becky Quick during a livestream of the event.
      …
      https://news.yahoo.com/charlie-munger-im-not-proud-of-my-country-for-allowing-crypto-sh-t-202109158.html

    1. Yahoo
      LA Times
      California’s population dropped by 500,000 in two years as exodus continues
      Terry Castleman
      Wed, February 15, 2023 at 5:00 AM PST·3 min read
      SANTA MONIA, CA – MARCH 29: Jose Rivera with wife Stephanie Rivera watching their nieces and nephew, Ariel, Sophia and Ignacio Arminta as then visit the Santa Monica Pier as people take advantage of the warm weather during the COVID-19 Spring break in Southern California Monday. Santa Monica Pier and Promenade on Monday, March 29, 2021 in Santa Monia, CA. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times).

      The California exodus has shown no sign of slowing down as the state’s population dropped by more than 500,000 people between April 2020 and July 2022, with the number of residents leaving surpassing those moving in by nearly 700,000.

      The population decrease was second only to New York, which lost about 15,000 more people than California, census data show.

      California has been seeing a decline in population for years, with the COVID-19 pandemic pushing even more people to move to other parts of the country, experts say. The primary reason for the exodus is the state’s high housing costs, but other reasons include the long commutes and the crowds, crime and pollution in the larger urban centers. The increased ability to work remotely — and not having to live near a big city — has also been a factor.
      …
      https://www.yahoo.com/now/californias-population-dropped-more-half-130020657.html

      1. And now toss $900 NatGas bills onto the pile of reasons to leave,

        I thought SoCal was becoming unbearable 20+ years ago. It is now approaching dystopian levels.

        1. I thought SoCal was becoming unbearable 20+ years ago. It is now approaching dystopian levels.

          The Beach Cities are amazing, especially if you got in decades ago.

        2. I happen to live in SoCal (Irvine) for 43+ years.

          NatGas bills are nothing compared to:

          1) Incredible near gridlock traffic thanks to overbuilding by Irvine Co.
          (hardly any even 10 years ago)

          2) A omni-present homeless population that didn’t exist even 5 years ago. (Even the concept of homelessness was unthinkable in our bucolic world). See them daily on my bike workout rides.

          3) Dramatic rise in crime. Irvine used to be rated ‘safest city in USA’ or something like that. Now, just yesterday reports of suspected [probably illegal] Chilean gang members [trespassing], casing homes in gate guarded , 24-hour security, very expensive Shady Canyon.

          Not good trendlines.

          1. A omni-present homeless population that didn’t exist even 5 years ago.

            This is what is giving SoCal its BladeRunner vibe. And it’s only going to get worse, a whole lot worse.

          2. “…This is what is giving SoCal its BladeRunner vibe…”

            Sadly correct.

            In the 1950’s and 1960’s Socal was truly a paradise.

            Have noticed a definite uptick in the number of $2m -> $10m+ homes for sale (Mostly around Newport). Informal conversations indicate that many have the same idea and its time to cash out and bail California. One lady I know cashed out a $5mm beach front a few years ago and went to New Zealand. Like California in the 1950’s she says…

          3. At a 5% annual population growth rate a region will double in approx 14 years. What you are experiencing is the dynamic process of a region trying to double in size. One major problem is that each time the doubling happens, it requires more resources than all of the previous doublings combined. The LA region is one of the most interesting areas to observe this process especially with open borders and lots of slow growth/no growth policies in place.

            The Irvine Company correctly identified a long term opportunity when they set up their scheme back in the day, however, there is a point where it will all turn to shit if our current policy errors are not corrected and I see no reason to believe that they will be. We used to discuss these things publicly and people said we should have less kids or no kids to stop overpopulation but then they changed their mind and said we should have unlimited 3rd world immigration instead. I’m sure it will all be fine, right?

      2. I watched an interview yesterday with the LA County Sheriff, and he said the 58 county sheriffs from across California meet in Sacramento every three months, and Gov Newsome has not once attended their meetings, whereas the former governors always attended these meetings.

          1. Did he want 500,000 decrease in population?

            For some reason, I suspect those exiting the state are above average in household wealth and income. My sample is admittedly biased, as the folks I know personally who left generally cashed out $1 million or so in home equity which they applied towards a home purchase in another state.

  25. Did you say Yutes?

    Shock Video: Elderly Man Beaten by Mob of ‘Juveniles’ at Philadelphia University

    by Dan Lyman
    February 16th 2023, 11:24 am

    Security guards watch as horde of assailants pummel helpless victim

    Keep Us Safe @ Temple University
    @K_U_S_T_U
    ·
    KUSTU STUDENT SUBMISSION: Man jumped and beaten by group around 4pm at Broad & CB Moore.

    #TempleU #Philadelphia

    📍Directly across the street from Morgan Hall

    @TempleUniv @TU_Police @officialTUPA @TUPAPresident @PhillyCrimeUpd @SEPTA_SOCIAL

    https://twitter.com/K_U_S_T_U/status/1626051498026074114?s=20

    2. The Temple area in Philly is trash. Has been for decades, and only getting worse. I’m so glad my kid didn’t want to go there. Can’t imagine who would.

    1. I want Klaus Schwab and the WEF erased entirely. Bye-bye. And all of the globalist sh!tbags, too – a cleansing.

  27. To add to the challenge, Mr. Chin says, there were 15 other houses in the neighbourhood on the market at the same time – most at lower prices.

    “It’s just a gully.”

  28. ‘We’ll see more desperate sellers,’ Mr. Chin says. ‘People should have known [low rates] wouldn’t last forever but no one expected such a rapid increase.’”

    Artificially suppressed rates when the central banks were going full Zimbabwe with their money creation was never sustainable. The ‘tards who failed to see that deserve everything that’s headed their way.

  29. Mr. Lackie says some buyers who got caught up in ‘fear of missing out’ during the pandemic run-up are now feeling remorse.”

    Die, speculator scum.

    1. From what i read, it’s 2 of them. The first one missed.

      Gives one ideas doesn’t it?

      Also shows how the “primitive” Taliban was able to do things

        1. Updated Thu, Feb 16 2023
          5:30 PM EST
          Dow closes 400 points lower as hot inflation report, comments from Fed’s Bullard raise rate hike fears: Live updates
          Carmen Reinicke
          Sarah Min

          Stocks fell Thursday after another hot inflation report, and a decline in jobless claims, showed the economy is holding up amid the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes.

          The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 431.20 points, or 1.26%, to close at 33,696.85. The S&P 500 dipped 1.38% to 4,090.41, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.78% to close at 11,855.83. Microsoft and Disney contributed the most to the Dow’s decline, down 2.66% and 3.12% respectively. Tesla shed 5.69% following a vehicle recall, weighing on the S&P 500.

          Stocks slipped after January’s producer price index, another inflation measure, rose 0.7% on the month per Thursday’s report, while economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected a 0.4% increase. Initial jobless claims unexpectedly fell for the week ending Feb. 11, per a Labor Department report.

          The new data comes after January’s consumer price index and retail sales report were both higher than expected, suggesting that the Fed may have further to go in its efforts to tame inflation.

          “Both inflation readings this week point to the stickiness of inflation and that the fight isn’t over, especially when considering today’s PPI reading was the highest month-over-month increase since early summer,” said Mike Loewengart, head of model portfolio construction at Morgan Stanley.
          …
          https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/15/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

  32. ‘If you’re paying $1-million for a house that you should have only paid $750,000 for, the price of the house is forever,’ he points out.”

    Cheers up! You only lose money if you sell!!!

  33. ‘It was stressful. We had to sell this home,’ he says. ‘The longer it sits on market, the less we get on price’

    I feel tears wellin’ up cold, deep inside
    Like my heart’s sprung a big break
    And a stab of loneliness, sharp and painful
    That I may never shake
    You might say that I was taking it hard
    Since you wrote me off with a call
    But don’t you wager that I’ll hide in sorrow
    When I may lay right down and bawl
    Now the race is on
    And here comes pride in the backstretch
    Heartache’s goin’ to the inside
    My tears are holdin’ back
    They’re tryin’ not to fall
    My heart’s out of the runnin’
    True love’s scratched for another’s sake
    The race is on and it looks like heartache
    And the winner loses all
    One day I ventured in love
    Never once suspectin’ what the final result would be
    And how I lived in fear of waking up each morning
    Finding that you’re gone from me
    There’s ache and pain in my heart
    For today was the one that I hated to face
    Somebody new came up to win her
    And I came out in second place
    Now the race is on
    And here comes pride in the backstretch
    Heartache’s goin’ to the inside
    My tears are holdin’ back
    They’re tryin’ not to fall
    My heart’s out of the runnin’
    True love’s scratched for another’s sake
    The race is on and it looks like heartache
    And the winner loses all
    Now the race is on
    And here comes pride in the backstretch
    Heartache’s goin’ to the side
    My tears are holdin’ back
    They’re tryin’ not to fall
    My heart’s out of the runnin’
    True love’s scratched for another’s sake
    The race is on and it looks like heartache
    And the winner loses all

    1. We had to sell this home…in order to be able to move up to the next property

      Poor, poor gambler. So much for the backstretch.

    2. ‘The longer it sits on market, the less we get on price’

      Well….. that is the case historically.

    1. Video removed.
      Shot from behind, surreptitiously. Whole room full of young women down on all fours twerking. Looked unfortunately suggestive, like in what exactly in RE social media is this training you to do?

    1. Yahoo Finance
      Retail investors are pouring a record $1.5 billion per day into the stock market
      Tesla remained the favorite among this group, with retail inflows to the stock totaling $9.7 billion year-to-date in 2023 so far.
      Alexandra Semenova
      Thu, February 16, 2023 at 11:38 AM PST·3 min read

      Individual investors have been snapping up stocks at the fastest pace on record as U.S. equity markets have charged higher to start the year.

      Over the past month, retail investors funneled an average of $1.51 billion each day into U.S. stocks, the highest amount ever recorded, according to data from research firm VandaTrack published Thursday.

      “With recent surveys showing the institutional investor community remaining broadly bearish on stocks, it would be unwise to underestimate the importance of the retail cohort,” strategists at VandaTrack said in a note. “That’s in keeping with retail sales and jobs data for January, suggesting that consumers retain impressive levels of buying power.”
      …
      https://finance.yahoo.com/news/retail-investors-record-inflows-us-stock-market-193801422.html

    2. Investing.com | Feb 17, 2023 12:08AM ET
      Asian stocks rattled by hawkish Fedspeak, head for weekly losses
      By Ambar Warrick

      Investing.com — Most Asian stock markets fell on Friday and were set for weekly losses as hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation data and more hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve drove up concerns that interest rates will keep rising.

      Technology-heavy bourses were among the worst performers for the day, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index, South Korea’s KOSPI and the Taiwan Weighted index down between 0.4% and 0.8%.

      The Hang Seng was also the worst performer in Asia this week, down 1.5%.

      China’s Shanghai Shenzhen CSI 300 and Shanghai Composite indexes fell 0.5% and 0.2%, respectively, even as government officials declared a “decisive victory” over COVID-19, citing a low fatality rate. The announcement comes nearly two months after the country ended its zero-COVID policy.

      But recent economic indicators from China showed that certain facets of the country were still struggling to recover from the impact of the pandemic. To this end, the government has rolled out a slew of stimulus measures to support growth.

      Broader Asian stocks also fell as U.S. producer price index data read higher than expected for January, coming in line with a red-hot consumer price index reading for the month. The readings drove up fears that the Fed will maintain its hawkish rhetoric and drive interest rates higher.

      Fed officials James Bullard and Loretta Mester furthered this notion in separate speeches, and also warned that the central bank could raise interest rates at a sharper pace in the coming months, if inflation remains sticky.

      Rising interest rates bode poorly for Asian stocks by limiting the amount of foreign capital flowing into the region. Regional central banks are also expected to hike rates in tandem with the Fed, tightening local liquidity conditions.

      Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.7%, and was also set to snap five straight weeks of gains amid continued uncertainty over the path of monetary policy under new Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda.
      …
      https://m.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/asian-stocks-rattled-by-hawkish-fedspeak-head-for-weekly-losses-3006381

  38. Dumb question of the day: With extreme investor penetration of housing this cycle, and widespread predictions of falling housing prices to come, what is stopping investors from cutting their losses by dumping their HODLings en masse?

    1. UC San Diego – Today
      New UC San Diego Model Predicts Housing Prices to Fall as much as 18% this Year
      Study finds internet search data can be used as an early indicator of where the market is going
      Real Estate Market Falls. Red arrow down on the background of houses.
      ADragan/iStock
      By: Christine Clark – ceclark@ucsd.edu
      Published Date
      February 16, 2023

      A new model of forecasting home prices based on consumer demand predicts that prices for housing will decrease by 5% nationally and 12% in San Diego County by the end of this year. The model, which highlights online search activity, was recently published in a new study from the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management.

      The model’s predictions have a proven accuracy rate of up to 70% and are unique to other price predictors — such as Zillow, Goldman Sachs and Redfin —because those consider a variety of factors like interest rates, wage growth, unemployment and housing supply. Whereas the housing search index created by Allan Timmermann of the Rady School and collaborators at Arhus University in Denmark, focuses on consumer demand by tracking the rate at which prospective buyers use the internet to search for homes.

      “It is one of the purest measures of potential demand that you can get because the first thing you do when you’re looking for a house or interested in buying a house, is to go to the internet and look at what is available,” said Timmermann, a distinguished professor of finance at the Rady School. “Those in the market for a home leave a big footprint with their online search activity because of the time it takes – often several months – to find something that is the right fit.”

      Cities like San Diego have housing prices dropping more than the national average because it’s where the market overheated the most during the pandemic, Timmermann said.

      “What you saw following the lockdowns in March 2020 was that sunshine and suburbs became a big thing,” Timmermann said. “People were shifting to working from home, so they wouldn’t have to be located close to the job and then they might cut out of their area altogether, choosing to live somewhere with more space and better weather. San Diego has plenty of suburbs and desirable weather, of course.”
      Allan Timmermann, the Dr. Harry M. Markowitz Endowed Chair in Finance and Investing and a Distinguished Professor of Finance at the UC San Diego Rady School of Management.
      Allan Timmermann, the Dr. Harry M. Markowitz Endowed Chair in Finance and Investing and a Distinguished Professor of Finance at the UC San Diego Rady School of Management.

      These traits plus limited supply caused prices to skyrocket across the county, but the market has cooled by 2.5% since May of 2022 when prices peaked.

      “Many households got priced out of the market so now we are seeing levels adjust,” Timmermann said.
      …
      https://today.ucsd.edu/story/new-uc-san-diego-model-predicts-housing-prices-to-fall-as-much-as-18-this-year

      1. 12% in San Diego County by the end of this year

        Is that in addition to what we’ve seen since May 2022?

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