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Some Of The Lessons From Previous Crises Have Been Forgotten

A weekend topic starting with the New York Post. “Authorities in California have ceded prime real estate on the Venice Beach boardwalk to a rotating cast of vagrants — a microcosm of the insanity plaguing the Golden State amid its spiraling homeless crisis. Scott Beers, who took over the primo real estate with his girlfriend, promised to keep it cleaner than the previous ‘tenant.’ ‘I’ve had homes before so I get it,’ said Beers, who keeps his belongings neatly stacked on an airport luggage cart. ‘These people pay millions of dollars to live by the beach and they don’t want to see that s–t all over the place. Venice is my favorite because you can get hot showers every day. You can go out to the food bank three days a week. There is a church nearby that gives you a hot meal. And you can’t beat the views!’ he said, noting that he gets by with panhandling and $221 a month from ‘general relief’ funds from the Welfare Office.”

The Union Tribune in California. “Jack Mogannam, manager of Sam’s Cable Car Lounge in downtown San Francisco, relishes the days when his bar stayed open past midnight every night. He’s had to drastically curtail those hours because of diminished foot traffic, and business is down 30%. ‘I’d stand outside my bar at 10 p.m. and look, it would be like a party on the street,’ Mogannam said. ‘Now you see, like, six people on the street up and down the block. It’s a ghost town.’ Empty storefronts dot the streets. Large ‘going out of business’ signs hang in windows. Shampoo, toothpaste and other toiletries are locked up at downtown pharmacies. And armed robbers recently hit a Gucci store in broad daylight. Hotel revenues are stuck at 73% of pre-pandemic levels, weekly office attendance remains below 50% and commuter rail travel to downtown is at 33%, according to a recent economic report by the city.”

KGW-TV in Oregon. “Blood-stained walls cover a historic Southwest Portland storefront. It’s just one of the many vacant buildings downtown struggling to get off the market. The Charles F. Berg building once stood out for its avant-garde design and pure gold façade. Now, it’s the latest side effect of the drug and homelessness crisis plaguing Portland. Squatters broke in and took over the 20,000 square-foot space. ‘They were living here for a couple of weeks before we noticed,’ said Denise Brohoski, the broker behind the listing. The building has been on the market for a few years. The current owner purchased it back in 2019. He’s asking for $3.75 million. ‘We’ve got a 30% vacancy rate. It changes these buildings, in that no one’s here to take care of them. I feel empathy for the building owner — he has already lost a million on this and he’s probably going to lose another million before it’s all said and done,’ said Brohoski.”

Fox Business on Texas. “Calls are growing to get Austin’s homeless and crime crises under control as more business owners and nonprofits warn that zero action has been taken by the Texas city. ‘They say that we are a few years behind San Francisco, usually in Austin,’ Documenting Austin’s Streets and Homeless head Jamie Hammonds told FOX Business’ Grady Trimble. ‘And we’re starting to see that. We’ve had a few windows broken. We’ve had a few people camping in carports behind the house, actually,’ Austin-area realtor Jordan Moorhead also told Trimble. ‘We have a listing I keep running somebody off from right now.'”

“‘Just recently we were starting to get some things done from the city where they started to clean the encampment out and getting the folks off the street,’ said Craig O’s Pizza & Pastaria owner Craig Plackis. ‘But what we’re hearing is that, once they get them into the housing, they’re maybe staying there a day or two and then getting right back on the street again.'”

The Star Telegram in Texas. “Home values have tripled in east and southeast Fort Worth neighborhoods like Polytechnic Heights and Stop Six, according to a report. The neighborhoods of mostly one-story, single-family homes are among the city’s oldest. They are also among the city’s poorest: The median household income is $27,000 lower than the city’s $67,927 and one in four families live below the poverty level. Realtor Brandi Vaughn pointed to a client who purchased a plot of land near Texas Wesleyan University three years ago for roughly $10,000 before selling it in 2023 for nearly $50,000. ‘Where you used to be able to get a house for $100,000 or maybe $200,000, now the average price is $300,000,’ Vaughn said.”

“A lot of buyers started to look at areas like east Fort Worth during the Covid-19 pandemic when interest rates fell below 3% and there was rabid competition for housing, said Shelby Kimball, a Fort Worth-based Realtor. At the same time, interest rate hikes starting in 2022 have take a lot of people out of the market, he said. ‘There’s still not a lot of houses, but now there’s not a lot of buyers,’ he said.”

KJZZ in Arizona. “It was a bit like group therapy when these residents of Scottsdale met recently at an Old Town restaurant. Adeolu Adebayo says he dreads the weekend, not knowing what havoc might happen. Stephanie Nestlerode hears constant noise and sees a ‘constant rotation of strangers.’ Cheryl Triplett has had people trying to enter her home at 4 a.m., and was attacked by guests who brought their dogs. Kristie Hudson’s neighboring backyard was full of ’10 extremely drunk screaming adults that I can hear inside my home.’ Her front yard is often filled with trash. She observed a drug deal in the alley.”

“These longtime Scottsdale residents are fed up because they feel their neighborhoods are being taken over by short-term rentals and their transient visitors. Triplett says the noise and the nuisance never stops. ‘We’ve suffered property damage with our landscape lights. The garbage has just been piled up and left for days. [We were] woken up in the middle of the night from women and men just, ‘WOOOOO HOOOOO!’ hooping and hollering at the top of their lungs.’ Triplett even claims her underage daughter and her friends were harassed by unruly and rude guests leering over her property wall. She regrets living here now. ‘If somebody had said that I would end up living next door and across the street from five short-term rentals, we never would have bought on our street,’ said Triplett.”

Fox5 Vegas in Nevada. “Some homeowners are risking hefty fines to operate short-term rentals and list their properties online, as the process to issue licenses in unincorporated Clark County faces some delays. Homeowners told FOX5, they are missing out on the busy summer travel season and possibly Formula 1 crowds as they await approval of their applications. To apply for a license, all short-term rental owners had to cease current listings. Leslie Doyle, 83, said her income has been cut by at least half as ended listings on Airbnb and chooses to wait out the process for a legal license. ‘Some of us will die waiting. we [seniors] are the ones who need it most,’ Doyle said.”

Multi-Housing News. “Some real estate players are seeking to benefit from the devalued or distressed properties out there, while others continue to remain on the sidelines until the grey clouds over the economy disappear. The commercial and multifamily mortgage origination volume index dropped 56 percent in the first quarter of 2023, compared to the same period in 2022, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Walker & Dunlop Investment Partners Chief Investment Officer Marcus Duley: ‘Many owners will become forced sellers, as they lack the capital for a ‘cash in’ refinance and are unable to recapitalize their investments. Currently, buyers and sellers are still in the price discovery phase. Buyers are hesitant to purchase properties with declining values, akin to catching a ‘falling knife,’ while sellers are unwilling to leave money on the table by selling too soon. Furthermore, the higher cost of debt and underwriting with negative leverage poses significant challenges in making deals financially viable without downward adjustments in seller price expectations.'”

CTV News in Canada. “Frustration and emotions were high at a town hall meeting as residents expressed their concern over a homeless encampment at the proposed Consumption Treatment Services site in Cambridge. The majority of the pleas centered on the tents in the parking lot of the proposed CTS site, with many fearful about what they say are growing levels of crime. ‘I witness firsthand the countless overdoses in the parking lot,’ said another resident. ‘Many who are intoxicated or high, staggering around the parking lot.'”

The Toronto Sun in Canada. “All of Asuman Najib Ssali’s worldly belongings hang from a tree outside a downtown Toronto shelter. He fled Uganda because of government persecution and now has a hard-plastic grey suitcase, two canvas grocery bags, a blue foam bed roll, a beige jacket, his prayer mat, a large plaid floor sheet and an umbrella. Ssali has become part of the growing mass of African people outside of the shelter, where some refugees looking for a place to stay have been camped out for over two weeks. Mid-afternoon Friday, a grey pickup truck rolled up to the shelter blaring African music and two men hopped in the back and started unloading a few bikes, scooters, food, water, and flinging clothing to those clamouring around it.”

“Toronto’s Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie said back in May that the number of asylum seekers in the city’s shelter system grew by 500% in 20 months from a low of 530 per night in September 2021 to more than 2,800 throughout the month of May this year. Diagonally across from the Peter St. shelter, one of the area’s many former nightclubs is boarded up with large ‘For Lease’ signs plastered on the exterior walls. One of the advocates, Rachel, a helper from the Ugandan centre, asked: ‘Why doesn’t the city just go to them and ask to put temporary beds in there for shelter?'”

Radio Canada. “According to official figures, there are currently six million residential mortgages in Canada right now, and about 1.2 million of them come up for renewal every year. About one-third of all mortgage holders have already seen their rates increase, and everyone else should expect to start paying more soon. Mortgage broker Ron Butler says anyone with a mortgage should brace for much higher rates and payments than they were probably ever expecting. ‘In some cases, double the rate they were experiencing and nothing but bigger payments moving forward,’ he said.”

“Lately, Butler says he hears daily from borrowers with a desperation in their voice he’s never heard before. ‘We take calls from some people who are actually in tears,’ he said. ‘They’ve got a renewal [and] they don’t know what they’re going to do.’ Butler said lenders have been delaying some of the payment shock for many borrowers by extending amortizations. That brings relief upfront by keeping monthly payments steady, but it tacks on years to the life of the mortgage by effectively turning them into interest-only loans.”

“‘We hear these stories about 70-year amortization, 90-year amortization — instead of paying off your mortgage, these people’s mortgages are actually getting bigger,’ Butler said. But that doesn’t work forever, as the debt has to be paid back under possibly worse terms later. ‘At renewal … those rates, those payments are going to go up.'”

“Kara Hishon knows that first-hand. She lives in Stratford, Ont., with her husband and three kids. They bought their family home in the summer of 2018 on a fixed-rate loan at 2.8 per cent, which kept the payments well within their budget. While they love everything about their home, the same can’t be said of the loan options she’s been presented with now that their five-year term is up. It’s going to add about $400 a month to their mortgage costs — and comes with another catch: In order to keep the payments comparable, they’ve had to undo the diligent work they’ve done to get their original loan down to 16 years, and re-amortize at 30 years.”

“‘It’s kind of a bummer to have to forego that,’ she said ‘but there’s no way we could have done it otherwise.'”

From Bloomberg. “CityPoint, a 36-story office building in London’s financial district, became one of the symbols of the financial crisis when a Beacon Capital Partners Inc. fund missed a payment on loans secured by the property just over a decade ago. Now, the rise of work from home and surging interest rates mean Bank of America analysts are warning that a default on loans linked to the property is likely. The building isn’t alone in facing a wobble having become tangled up in problems after the 2008 crisis. An office complex in Frankfurt and towers in New York are also running into difficulties again.”

“‘The low cost of debt due to quantitative easing has led to the same property value expansion as observed during the previous cycle,’ said Nicole Lux, a senior fellow at Bayes Business School whose research areas include real estate finance. ‘Lenders and investors now have to admit that they are facing the same refinancing issues for their properties.’ ‘At least some of the lessons from previous crises have been forgotten,’ said Tolu Alamutu, a credit analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, who was speaking generally. ‘The real estate sector may be facing a much more testing outlook than some issuers may be able to weather.'”

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This Post Has 87 Comments

  1. ‘Many owners will become forced sellers, as they lack the capital for a ‘cash in’ refinance and are unable to recapitalize their investments’

    Cash in refinance?

    1. Opposite of cash out refi. The lender wants you to put down more money in order to refi once the loan term ends. In private equity, it causes another round of capital calls as investors have to send in more money or else they are penalized. The investment becomes a money pit.

  2. It’s going to add about $400 a month to their mortgage costs — and comes with another catch: In order to keep the payments comparable, they’ve had to undo the diligent work they’ve done to get their original loan down to 16 years, and re-amortize at 30 years…’It’s kind of a bummer to have to forego that,’ she said ‘but there’s no way we could have done it otherwise’

    Kara here knows how to winnah! Sure she’s gonna take an extra 14 years of a$$ pounding with 400 extra K-dn pesos a month, but she’ll sell that igloo for a fortune in 2053 – paid off I bet.

    1. extra K-dn pesos a month

      While paying double for gas and food, plus all the wonderful Carbon Taxes.

    2. Sure she’s gonna take an extra 14 years of a$$ pounding with 400 extra K-dn pesos a month

      And it’s $400 extra per month for the next 16 years she was already on the hook for to begin with – an extra amount she had never considered nor budgeted for. Her house is a financial prison, and will be her financial coffin.

      These housing bubbles are garbage, and the central bankers and bureaucrats who intentionally blew them need to be fired at the very least, and imprisoned.

    3. That pork belly, mortgage broker Ron Butler, looks like he hasn’t done a days’ worth of real work in twenty-five years.

  3. ‘The neighborhoods of mostly one-story, single-family homes are among the city’s oldest. They are also among the city’s poorest: The median household income is $27,000 lower than the city’s $67,927 and one in four families live below the poverty level. Realtor Brandi Vaughn pointed to a client who purchased a plot of land near Texas Wesleyan University three years ago for roughly $10,000 before selling it in 2023 for nearly $50,000. ‘Where you used to be able to get a house for $100,000 or maybe $200,000, now the average price is $300,000’

    Sound lending!

    1. Even people who should know better sometimes say it’s different this time because we don’t have NINJA loans. Again, when you loan someone ten times their income, it’s subprime, whatever label you slap on it. Again, as others here have said, the prices are the problem.

    2. The Stop Six and Como neighborhoods in Fort Worth area pure ghetto. It’s the Texas version of Compton and Watts

  4. ‘the noise and the nuisance never stops. ‘We’ve suffered property damage with our landscape lights. The garbage has just been piled up and left for days. [We were] woken up in the middle of the night from women and men just, ‘WOOOOO HOOOOO!’ hooping and hollering at the top of their lungs.’ Triplett even claims her underage daughter and her friends were harassed by unruly and rude guests leering over her property wall. She regrets living here now. ‘If somebody had said that I would end up living next door and across the street from five short-term rentals, we never would have bought on our street’

    Well it was cheaper than renting Cheryl.

    1. Let he who has never whooped & hollered in the middle of the night cast the first stone.

    2. That’s what slingshots are made for. When the STR’s aren’t occupied, put on a mask at night. Enough window replacements will force the locust investor to sell.

      1. This is Scottsdale correct? Want better than that? A few well placed steelies through an ac condenser will do the trick.

  5. ‘I witness firsthand the countless overdoses in the parking lot,’ said another resident. ‘Many who are intoxicated or high, staggering around the parking lot’

    Recently a guy in Vancouver opened up a heroin/cocaine booth. He died of an overdose later and I don’t know if his shop was closed or not. But some local politicians made a point by going there and drinking a beer. Which is illegal to do on the street as people lined up for dope.

  6. ‘The building has been on the market for a few years. The current owner purchased it back in 2019. He’s asking for $3.75 million. ‘We’ve got a 30% vacancy rate. It changes these buildings, in that no one’s here to take care of them. I feel empathy for the building owner — he has already lost a million on this and he’s probably going to lose another million before it’s all said and done’

    Here’s more from Denise:

    ‘So, this room was completely cleaned and empty. The entire building was completely spotless, ready for tours and showings, but they were obviously doing drugs throughout,” she said, gesturing to piles of dirty clothes, leftover drug paraphernalia, old food and feces — just some of the destruction scattered throughout the four-story building. I’ve never had a commercial property that’s been broken into and lived in by people that were on drugs,” she said of her 18 years selling real estate in downtown Portland. “It’s not a safe environment to be in downtown right now, and it’s hard to attract buyers and tenants into this area.” The smell of urine inside the building was so strong, one could almost taste it’

    Did you pack yer lunch Denise?

  7. The small towns in upstate SC ,are having a housing boom…A house in a college town that recently sold for 400K ,sold just before covid for 130K….I happen to be famailer with that house ,because in 2015 ,it was a junk house , with an old forgotten well under the crawl space , and lots of other structural under floor beam issues ….Some company out of Charlestown SC , glossed over a lot of those issues , added about a quarter inch of white paint , white paint is all in right now….inside and outside…..

    1. Not a fan of white paint BUT it was the only color left on the shelf during the pandemic here in N. CA.

      I had the oh-so-rewarding unwelcome task of renovating my MIL’s 30yr old hoarder cat house after her stroke.

      started in late 2019.
      still not done.
      yeah, it was that bad.

      (I took plenty of pictures this time, because words alone could not
      describe this scene from hell!
      some people have no business owning anything more than a single room. they cannot & WILL NOT maintain their personal dwelling. they are just mentally incapable. and/or lazy.
      which describes about 99.99% of the drug addicts, err, I mean “homeless” grifters.)

  9. The chimney is down. We got the rope looped around it, stood in a triangle 30 feet out in the yard, wrapped it around two hammers, two guys on each hammer handle, a few swift yanks and down she went.

    3. It would have been way more enjoyable to use your truck to pull it down. You could have been blaring ‘Seek and Destroy’ or ‘Damage Inc’ for added effect and the neighbors would have found it very endearing. Missed opportunity.

  10. I want to hear from the posters here what’s going on in your locale with real estate. I’m watching a couple areas. Here in Northern NV prices are a bit sticky, but definitely seeing some declines. Still baffles me to no end to see folks willingly spend 500 to 600k on starter homes here in the high desert. I also watch Oregon, especially coastal Oregon. Now there I’m absolutely seeing the pain starting to set in. Homes stagnating on the market and some big declines.

    1. *”I’m absolutely seeing the pain starting to set in”

      “oh, the pain. . . the Pain!!”
      Dr. Smith

    2. I watch Manitou Springs. Inventory slowly creeping up, and starting to see more significant price reductions, but greedhead wish prices are about what they were when the market turned back in June 2022. Same thing for Colorado Springs. Sellers seem to be completely discounting mortgage hikes and the fact that less than 20% of potential homebuyers have the median income to buy the median-priced shack. Yet shacks are still changing hands.

      https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Manitou-Springs_CO/sby-6?source=web

      1. Yet shacks are still changing hands.

        Until that stops, prices won’t come down. I checked out my little burg on movoto. There are 440 shacks for sale. 1400 is the long term average.

        1. Front range, coal creek, golden, evergreen, Morrison, conifer, etc anything coming on under $750k has been pending in under 1 week. Many of these I look at were in the 5% over/under increase for the better part of the 201-decade. Then since 2021ish + not hard to find 50% per year and still greater fools buy away. Nothing stopping sales to this day. Unreal

      2. LA county is still very sticky despite double digit price declines. There was a spring seasonal bounce that many want us to believe is a recovery. Lack of inventory still plagues the landscape and explains list prices. There are always buyers in every market, and many of them uninformed. It’s hard to predict what will trigger the end of the paralysis. Anyone who doesn’t need to buy should bide their time. Don’t be goaded into believing you’ll be missing out if you don’t buy now. That would be huge mistake to make.

    3. I stopped paying attention to metro Denver because I’ll never pay the asking prices to buy something here, and I’ll be renting until I leave.

  11. wild weather in India…The rescue operation is underway in Lahual-Spiti for 300 people stranded at Chandratal Lake on July 12. Losar village in Lahaul and Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh received an ‘unexpected’ spell of snowfall on July 09 as various parts of north India remain affected due to heavy rainfall. The entire village was covered with thick snow after it experienced the surprise snowfall.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdOq5ng5-6c

      1. Water temps down by Key West are hitting records, 98.5 recently, might be some discounts on a beach town or two this fall. Some assembly required.

        1. I remember the wet bulb temps in the high 80s at Ft Polk. You’d hop out of the shower and towel off, but you couldn’t get dry…sweating profusely.

    1. So these blokes have no savings or other assets to tide them over until they reach the full retirement age for their equivalent of social security??

      1. Likely many of these guys have spent a lifetime paying interest on revolving debt for stuff they didn’t need, but had to have it.

    2. Tree lopper Peter said politicians needed to get out of their cushy offices and do some “physical work” to understand the realities of the age increases.

      Learn to code, blokes!

      1. Or just find a less back breaking job, albeit one that pays less, to tide you over for a couple of years.

    1. Has Pence even attempted to backpedal that statement?

      I know that a lot of fundyvangelicals thought Pence was the bee’s knees because they are in the same club.

      1. That made me think of other campaign-ending moments like Romney’s 47% comment, Hilary’s deplorables comment, etc. Romney might have salvaged something by saying, “Well, where’s the lie?” Don’t think that’ll work for Pence though.

      2. Pence doesn’t have a snowballs’ chance in hell of reaching the oval office with his evangelical ideas of padlocking the labia of the chaste, monogamous as well as promiscuous women.

  21. Does it seem like the porcine beauticians have an incorrigible habit of prematurely calling housing market bottoms?

    Unless this time is different, it will take another half decade for housing to bottom out. Meanwhile, try not to catch yourself a falling knife.

    1. Analysis: Will home prices this year surpass peak-pandemic prices?
      Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
      USA TODAY

      House hunters seem to be getting used to paying more for homes even as interest rates keep creeping higher.

      The median existing-home price increased in May to 396,500. That’s $1,000 more than in April, 2022 when the pandemic boosted prices and despite 10 consecutive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

      In April 2022, mortgages rates for a 30-year fixed loan were generally below 5.3%. Home prices reached an all-time historic high of $413, 800 in June 2022 while mortgage rates remained well below 6%. Once mortgage rates started edging toward 6%, a seven-month slowdown from July 2022 until January 2023, ensued.

      But home prices in May surpassed the April 2022 numbers despite mortgage rates hovering above 6.3%.
      …
      https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/07/16/are-high-home-prices-here-to-stay/70414598007/

    2. TRENDS
      Foreclosures Continue To Surge With More Homeowners Now in Danger of Losing Their Properties
      Foreclosures Continue To Surge With More Homeowners Now in Danger of Losing Their Properties
      Foreclosures Continue To Surge With More Homeowners Now in Danger of Losing Their Properties

      More Americans are in danger of losing their homes as the number of foreclosure filings continues to surge.

      In the first half of this year, foreclosure starts shot up 15%—nearing pre-COVID-19 levels—according to real estate data provider ATTOM’s Midyear 2023 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. Nearly 186,000 properties across the country received foreclosure filings during that period.
      …
      https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/foreclosures-continue-to-surge-with-more-homeowners-now-in-danger-of-losing-their-properties/

      2. the number of foreclosure filings continues to surge

        Will those shacks be put on the market or will they become shadow inventory?

    3. Feels like we’re between 06 and 07 here. 06 in that sales are dropping, fundamentals collapsing, which bulls in Wile E Coyote fashion don’t notice yet. Also like 06 with bankers not really tightening credit yet, rate hike theater notwithstanding, if I remember the last loan officer survey right. 07 in that a few high-profile turds have actually sunk (SVB), soon shrugged off, of course. Real pain hasn’t even begun yet.

  22. Housing
    Published July 14, 2023 3:10pm EDT
    US home prices still face a ‘steep and sustained’ decline this year, economist warns
    Economist warns ‘the bulk of the drop in home prices is yet to come’
    By Megan Henney FOXBusiness
    ProChain President David Tawil explains why he predicts rate hikes are on the horizon and likely to stay high ‘for a number of years.’ video
    Fed rate hikes will eventually ‘crush’ housing, ‘interest rate-sensitive’ markets: David Tawil

    ProChain President David Tawil explains why he predicts rate hikes are on the horizon and likely to stay high ‘for a number of years.’

    The U.S. housing market has defied expectations for a crash so far this year, but a steep decline in home prices could be right around the corner, according to a new analyst note from Pantheon Macroeconomics.

    In contrast to the widespread belief that the housing market has already hit bottom and is now in the midst of a recovery, Pantheon economist Kieran Clancy argued that the better-than-expected performance seen this spring was merely the result of “aggressive discounts and a lack of resale inventory – not an actual housing market recovery.”

    “We are baffled by the emerging narrative in the commentariat that housing is now recovering, because it isn’t,” Clancy wrote in the note. “Home sales jumped at the start of the year, lagging the late-2022 dip in mortgage rates, but they have fallen more recently thanks to the latest back-up in rates, and mortgage applications signal that they will soon dip to a new cycle low.”
    …
    https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-home-prices-still-face-steep-sustained-decline-year-economist-warns

    1. “…but they have fallen more recently thanks to the latest back-up in rates, and mortgage applications signal that they will soon dip to a new cycle low.”

      Good luck to the porcine beauticians in the face of stubbornly high inflation and steadily climbing mortgage rates!

      1. Homebuyers must ‘learn to live’ with near-7% mortgage rates, says RE/MAX chairman
        By Matt Egan, CNN
        Updated 11:53 AM EDT, Fri July 14, 2023

        New York CNN —

        Dave Liniger has spent the last half-century living through the ups and downs of the interest-sensitive housing market.

        Liniger, who co-founded real estate giant RE/MAX with his wife in 1973, doesn’t think mortgage rates are all that high today. After all, he recalls the early 1980s when the Federal Reserve’s war on inflation briefly spiked mortgage rates above 18%.

        “Everyone has been spoiled by the past 15 years of low interest rates,” Liniger, now the chairman of RE/MAX, told CNN.

        Interest rates plunged to historic lows early this decade as the Fed flooded the market with easy money in a bid to revive the Covid-riddled economy. The weekly average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped to as low as 2.65% in January 2021, according to Freddie Mac.

        Dirt-cheap borrowing costs, along with changes caused by the pandemic, set off an epic housing boom.

        Mortgage rates near 7%

        The days of easy money are long gone. The Fed has taken extreme steps to fight inflation.

        Mortgage rates climbed to 6.96% during the week ending July 13, up from 6.81% the week before, Freddie Mac said Thursday. That’s’ the highest level since November.

        Liniger said homebuyers may be “stuck” with these interest rates for the foreseeable future.
        …
        https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/14/business/mortgage-rates-buy-home/index.html

        1. “Homebuyers must ‘learn to live’ with near-7% mortgage rates”

          The MSM narrative says that high rates are prospective buyers’ problem.

          What about the poor owners who are HODLing highly leveraged home equity investments which are rapidly headed to underwater positions? Shouldn’t we be shedding tears of sympathy for them?

    1. Unless they start confiscating people’s savings and homes, I don’t see how they fund it.

      1. Yet one has to acknowledge that Hunter has been pretty successful at spreading his seed far and wide.

    2. The Only Jan 6 Protester Being Protected By The Media. WHY?
      The Jimmy Dore Show
      Jul 16, 2023
      The mainstream media, Democrats and liberals in general have deemed the January 6th rioters as enemies of democracy and a threat to everything the nation holds dear. Yet one rioter who can be seen on video repeatedly inciting people to enter the Capitol Building has gotten a pass, even after appearing on a list of FBI suspects (a list his name soon disappeared from).

      Jimmy wonders why this individual, whose name rhymes with “Bay Bepps,” has become such a darling of liberals despite being an insurrectionist Trump supporter.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgCr-fRrKhI

      9:17.

  28. Have you noticed how since the SEC supposedly cracked down on crypto corruption, crypto has gone nowhere but up, up, up?

    What am I missing here?

    1. Yahoo
      Decrypt Media
      SEC Formally Accepts BlackRock Spot Bitcoin ETF Application for Review
      Ryan Ozawa
      Sat, July 15, 2023 at 1:39 PM PDT·2 min read

      BlackRock’s application to offer a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) has been added to the official docket of the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of its proposed rule change process. The move, recorded late Thursday, advances the most closely-watched Bitcoin-related proposal to the SEC to date.

      The application for the iShares Bitcoin Trust was filed nearly a month ago, prompting a new wave of optimism across the crypto market, and additional filings for spot Bitcoin ETFs from a number of other prominent players, including from firms like Invesco, Wisdom Tree, Bitwise, and Fidelity—which saw its previous application rejected last year along with those from other contenders.

      When the SEC signaled last month that BlackRock’s application was lacking, the company filed a revised application, adding a “surveillance sharing” clause that would involve the Coinbase crypto exchange monitoring and reporting possible illegal activity.
      …
      https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sec-formally-accepts-blackrock-spot-203936576.html

  29. Oli London
    @OliLondonTV

    Father interrupts Drag Story Hour for children calling it “Men dressed as prostitutes reading filth to children.”

    Do you agree with what he said? ⬇️💬

    https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1680151925046628352?s=20

    Matt Wallace
    ·
    Jul 16, 2023
    @MattWallace888

    🚨 WOKE CULT MEMBERS DESPERATELY TRY TO HIDE WHAT’S HAPPENING AS DAD EXPOSES DRAG QUEENS DRESSED AS PROSTITUTES READING SEXUAL BOOKS TO CHILDREN 🚨

    https://twitter.com/MattWallace888/status/1680461658257338368?s=20

    No Fey Contract (Can’t HaveIt)
    @sirpettybone

    Replying to @OliLondonTV
    if it is so wholesome and friendly, why not let people video it?

    why are they always trying to hide what they are doing with chidlren?
    3:50 PM · Jul 15, 2023

    Andy Martin
    @Dollarlogic

    Replying to @OliLondonTV
    Of course, and the perps are shielding it from the cameras like it is a money laundering or illegal drug operation. All these adults should be in jail. And the man that stopped it should win an award.
    5:47 PM · Jul 15, 2023

    Frank
    @Franktheshihtzu

    Replying to @OliLondonTV
    The fact that they were blocking the door says it all.
    6:01 AM · Jul 15, 2023

    Dr Stevie 
    @SteviestStevie

    Replying to @OliLondonTV
    Why so desperate to block the view of something they say is ‘totally innocent’…

    We all know the answer, they are hiding noncery
    6:02 AM · Jul 15, 2023

    Vinyl Princess🎵
    @Aflgirl126

    Replying to @OliLondonTV
    Why are they hiding and acting aggressive if they aren’t doing anything wrong
    7:53 AM · Jul 15, 2023

    Oregon Chicken
    @OregonMoto

    Replying to @OliLondonTV
    Weird how they were behind closed, protected doors. That alone is weird.
    9:08 AM · Jul 15, 2023

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