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The Interest Rate Hikes Triggered A Clear Downward Trend And The Bottom Is Not Yet In Sight

A report from KRON in California. “Four real estate professionals in the Bay Area were charged in a years-long mortgage fraud scheme. Tjoman Buditaslim (also identified as Joe Lim), Travis Holasek, Jose Alfonso Tellez, and Jose De Jesus Martinez were all indicted for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft in connection with a years-long mortgage fraud scheme, United States Attorney Ismael J. Ramsey and Special Agent in Charge Herminia Neblina announced. According to the indictment, between May 2019 and Aug. 23, 2023, Buditaslim, 51; Holasek, 51; Tellez, 26; and Martinez, 58, obtained more than $55 million in residential mortgage loans for homebuyers in Northern California by creating fraudulent documents that they submitted to residential mortgage origination companies. The fraudulent documents were used to qualify buyers for residential mortgage loans in connection with the fraud scheme.”

“According to the indictment, in one instance, the defendants allegedly created false divorce decree documents and child support checks purportedly payable to the potential buyer. The potential buyer has never been married to or even met the person who was identified as their ex-spouse. The indictment also states the defendants allegedly created false and fabricated bank statements showing falsely inflated bank account balances for potential buyers, submitted loan applications containing materially false information about buyers’ income to a mortgage origination company, and collected proceeds of home sales by directing payments from escrow to defendants and their associates. As a result of the alleged fraud scheme, a mortgage origination company was required to repurchase loans, causing the company a loss of over $8 million.”

From Newsweek. “Mortgage delinquencies are rising 15 percent year-over-year, signaling a potential increase in foreclosures as American households grapple with inflation, low housing supply and high mortgage rates. The trend marks the sixth consecutive quarter of delinquency increases, according to TransUnion’s Credit Industry Insights Report, adding more pressure to an already distressed housing market. TransUnion’s data also exposes a trend in the health of mortgage vintages. Mortgage vintages, delineating the cohorts of loans initiated in the same time frame, serve as a barometer for the lending climate over time. The graph below shows the trajectory of delinquency rates—the proportion of loans past due by 60 days or more—categorized by the quarter of origination.”

“Vintage performance ‘shows deterioration in more recent originations,’ said Joe Mellman, mortgage business leader at TransUnion, adding that ‘new mortgage vintages are performing worse than vintages of the past four years.’ Recent loan vintages, particularly those from the third quarter of 2021—with an average mortgage rate of 2.98 percent—and those from 2022, when rates rose to an average of 5.90 percent, are exhibiting rising delinquency rates at a notably earlier stage in their term. The trend starkly contrasts with the more mature vintages of the third quarter of 2017 through 2020, suggesting that the financial stability of loans initiated under current economic conditions may be under unprecedented pressure. These vintage performances are set against a backdrop of aggressive rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.”

The Real Deal on New York. “The powerful multifamily lending agency Freddie Mac is investigating Ralph Herzka’s Meridian Capital Group over a deal the brokerage did for the company, sources told The Real Deal. While the probe is ongoing, Meridian is barred from brokering deals on behalf of Freddie Mac lenders. Herzka’s firm has placed a broker on leave and is working with Freddie on its inquiry, according to a source familiar with the investigation. The blacklist designation is a big blow to Herzka’s business. Meridian Capital is one of the country’s largest commercial mortgage brokerages, and Freddie Mac is a huge source of loans for the multifamily industry.”

“An irony of the probe, which concerns loan information, is that Meridian is an investor in a multifamily lending platform headed by former Freddie Mac CEO David Brickman. Freddie Mac has increased its efforts to weed out mortgage fraud. The agency late last week informed a group of lenders that Meridian had been placed on a ‘temporary pause’ from arranging Freddie loans, according to the familiar source. Meridian’s strength is in arranging thousands of loans for small building owners who need to finance their properties. Herzka has a reputation as a hard-driving manager. His firm’s motto is ‘Eat. Sleep. Close. Repeat.'”

Click Orlando in Florida. “If you take a walk down the beach in Volusia County, chances are you will still spot a construction crane or two with crews working to rebuild the coast. This week marks one year since Hurricane Nicole wreaked havoc on Volusia’s coast. The storm caused homes to cave in, condos to be evacuated, and today, many properties are still being cleaned up. ‘We have right now probably just under 30 condo units that still don’t have beach access, still don’t have pools rebuilt and that’s just the ones that we manage,’ said Krista Goodrich, who manages dozens of homes and condos in Volusia and Flagler counties.”

“Over two dozen condo buildings in Volusia were emergency evacuated for fear of collapse after their seawalls gave out. ‘I worry that you’re going to start seeing a lot of these investment locations, specifically condos, that will be going into foreclosure because if you can’t use it, you can’t rent it, you can’t sell it, what do you do,’ said Goodrich.”

From KUTV. “Utah home builders are pulling out all the stops offering incentives to keep buyers on the hook in a slowing market. ‘Everything has slowed,’ Ross Ford, executive vice president at the Utah Home Builders Association, told KUTV 2News Friday. One builder, Ivory Homes, is advertising several incentives such as buying down interest rates and helping buyers sell their current house. ‘That’s a fear of people right now. They want to move but they’re worried about being able to sell their existing home,’ said Analise Wilson, general counsel and director of communications at Ivory Homes.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “Lenders who are owed a total of more than $203-million have applied to appoint a receiver to manage several housing projects owned by Toronto-area real estate developer Vandyk Properties. Vandyk is just the latest casualty of a treacherous environment for real estate development that so far this year has seen high-profile insolvency proceedings begin for unfinished projects from Coromandel Properties in Vancouver, StateView Homes in Woodbridge, Ont., and The One in Toronto, widely believed to be Canada’s tallest residential condo project.”

“The insolvency application covers five projects in the Greater Toronto Area, which include 1,757 unbuilt homes in a mix of apartments, townhomes and detached houses. Of those, 830 have been sold to preconstruction buyers. None of the projects are close to being finished. In the case of the UPtowns, preconstruction buyers have been left waiting since 2017. KingSett’s application says the project is only about 28 per cent complete, and 329 of 342 planned townhomes have been presold. In recent months, more than a dozen contractors have placed construction liens on several Vandyk projects demanding millions of dollars in compensation for unpaid work.”

Better Dwelling in Canada. “Two years after fraud allegations first hit, a court is finally taking control of a brokerage’s assets. An Ontario judge has placed Wynn Realty Corp under receivership as of October 25th. Realtor Courtney ‘Lynn’ Simpson and her broker/husband Kenneth Simpson are alleged to have defrauded dozens of clients. This isn’t the Realtor’s first rodeo either—she previously served time for mortgage fraud. The latest update comes after the allegations of fraud against the brokerage. Courtney Simpson is accused of defrauding 18 victims out of an estimated $1.9 million in deposits. Police have said some victims were ‘wiped out’ after the losses.”

The Telegraph. “A trained surveyor, Phil Spencer is best known for fronting some of the UK’s favourite property shows: Market activity, a core driver of prices, has fallen significantly. RightMove data suggests the number of agreed sales has fallen 17pc since October last year, in part due to overly ambitious sellers in a market in which 37pc of all listings this year have had their asking price reduced. I have seen sellers find great success, who have been able to generate some competition that results in buyers bidding up rather than down.”

“Do be careful though, I have also seen it go wrong. Where, both at open houses and auctions, sellers have sneakily asked friends to put in an offer in order to kick-off a bidding war and the friend has ended up with the winning bid so the whole thing has to start again. If I am totally honest, it is the longer term trajectory of the housing market I worry about rather than an immediate crisis. The risk is that Britain falls out of love with property.”

The Local on Germany. “Condominiums – or owner-occupied flats – fell in price by an average of 1.5 percent between July and September compared to the previous quarter, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) reported in its analysis published on Thursday. Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, the decline was even greater at 10.5 percent. The dramatic fall isn’t just affecting flats, however: detached homes in Germany cost an average of 3.2 percent less than in the previous quarter and 12.1 percent less than a year earlier. Meanwhile, prices for semi-detached homes fell by 5.9 percent compared to the previous quarter – and by as much as 24 per cent compared to the same quarter of the previous year.”

“The fall in prices for owner-occupied flats compared to last year’s highs is particularly marked in some major cities. For example, the price tag for condominiums in Düsseldorf, the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia, fell by more than 17 percent and in Stuttgart by more than 15 percent. According to the study, the cumulative price declines in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich were also more than 10 percent, or the average price decline for all cities surveyed. Sales prices for apartments in Germany’s seven largest cities – Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and Stuttgart – fell almost across the board in the third quarter.”

“‘The crisis on the German property market is continuing,’ said IfW President Moritz Schularick, summarising the results. ‘The ECB’s interest rate hikes have triggered a clear downward trend reversal on the German housing market, and the bottom is not yet in sight.’ Across all types of housing, around a third fewer sales were registered than in the previous year. Measured against the average for 2019 to 2021, the figure becomes around 50 percent lower. ‘The falling transaction figures indicate that only a few sellers and buyers are coming together at the current prices,’ commented Schularick.”

From Bloomberg. “Country Garden Holdings Co. posted its biggest sales drop in at least six years as customers’ concerns about its ability to complete projects threaten to exacerbate a cash crunch at the defaulted Chinese developer. Contracted sales for October plunged 81.1% from the same period a year earlier, topping an 80.7% drop in September, its corporate filings show. Country Garden, with property developments in almost every province in China, has seen transactions slump since warning in August of ‘major uncertainties’ about the redemption of its bonds. Sales are hovering around a sixth of their average monthly level in 2021 and 2022, underscoring customers’ reluctance to buy.”

“The developer was the country’s largest builder by contracted sales for several years before plunging to seventh spot in 2023. With more 3,000 housing projects underway, Country Garden has the potential for an even greater impact on the housing market than China Evergrande Group’s debt failure in 2021.”

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Yes, It Is Happening

A report from NBC DFW 5 in Texas. "This December marks ten years since the…

This Post Has 55 Comments

  1. ‘As a result of the alleged fraud scheme, a mortgage origination company was required to repurchase loans, causing the company a loss of over $8 million’

    Which company, and where did these people work? But it’s still a sellers market.

  2. ‘Vintage performance ‘shows deterioration in more recent originations,’ said Joe Mellman, mortgage business leader at TransUnion, adding that ‘new mortgage vintages are performing worse than vintages of the past four years.’ Recent loan vintages, particularly those from the third quarter of 2021—with an average mortgage rate of 2.98 percent—and those from 2022, when rates rose to an average of 5.90 percent, are exhibiting rising delinquency rates at a notably earlier stage in their term. The trend starkly contrasts with the more mature vintages of the third quarter of 2017 through 2020, suggesting that the financial stability of loans initiated under current economic conditions may be under unprecedented pressure’

    Well this is is a flash from the past. What do these vintages have in common? Peak of the market. Just like in the 2000’s.

  3. ‘That’s a fear of people right now. They want to move but they’re worried about being able to sell their existing home’

    That’s a bit of a turn around Analise.

  4. ‘The crisis on the German property market is continuing’

    Looks like that whole sh$thole is sinking like a turd in a well.

  5. ‘Do be careful though, I have also seen it go wrong. Where, both at open houses and auctions, sellers have sneakily asked friends to put in an offer in order to kick-off a bidding war and the friend has ended up with the winning bid so the whole thing has to start again’

    Openly discussing fraud, check!

  7. ‘Contracted sales for October plunged 81.1% from the same period a year earlier, topping an 80.7% drop in September’

    This is bad news for a ponzi scheme.

  8. [I posted another version of this non-housing related article several days ago but, IMO, its degree of importance is such that it warrants a repeat. These incidences are so prevalent that a term, “to be rugged”, has been coined to describe them. (“To be rugged” or “being rugged” is to have the financial rug pulled out from beneath you.) As the world moves forward with its scheme to make the planet entirely “cashless” the dangers of being rugged greatly increases as the power over everyone’s lives relentlessly shifts to the rug pullers.]

    Banks are dumping more customers without any warning

    https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/banks-dumping-more-customers-without-144105194.html

    Crypto is notorious for customers getting “rugged”—slang for getting the rug pulled from under them by a service or project that disappears abruptly. But crypto is hardly the only place this is happening. In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of clients getting rugged by their banks.

    In these cases, the rug-pull isn’t as bad since the banks eventually return their money. But the short-term impact is just as bad since customers lose access to their bank account and credit cards, sometimes for weeks, leaving them scrambling to pay bills or just get through the day. As the New York Times reported earlier this week, there is no precise data on how often banks are doing this, but there has been a 50% increase in the last two years of “suspicious activity reports” (SARs), which often lead to them ghosting customers without warning.

    The Times appeared to have little trouble finding over 500 real-life examples of customers getting abruptly dropped by their banks, and cited plenty of instances where the decision was not just sudden but totally unjustified. This included businesses, students, and everyday people who set off a trip-wire and could do nothing but wait for days or weeks until the bank returned their money. The reasons the cutoffs are are often a surprise, but the consequences are not:

    “Individuals can’t pay their bills on time…When the institutions close their credit cards, their credit scores can suffer. Upon cancellation, small businesses often struggle to make payroll—and must explain to vendors and partners that they don’t have a bank account for the time being,” the Times reports.

    The justifications for cutting off accounts in this way is rational enough. In the bloodless language of bankers, it is a matter of “de-risking”—if a customer account flagged by a SARs report could lead to fines or regulatory investigations, it makes sense to cut it loose, the human toll notwithstanding. As one person who worked on the process told the Times, “There is no humanization to any of this, and it’s all just numbers on a screen. It’s not ‘No, that is a single mom running a babysitting business.’ It’s ‘Hey, you’ve checked these boxes for a red flag—you’re out.’”

    It makes sense from a strategic perspective for the banks to operate this way, but it’s also a terrible way to treat people—especially as it would cost little for them to introduce a measure or two to help innocent people caught up in the SARS dragnet.

    This isn’t to say that the crypto industry is any better when it comes to respecting its customers—the customer service is also lousy and there are dozens of novel ways you can get robbed outright. But it’s easy to see why a core message of crypto—that you can give yourself total control over your own money—has become so appealing to so many.

    1. Couldn’t access my online credit union account all day yesterday. Seems to be happening with greater frequency. Prolly time to start looking for a back-up bank, as well as keeping more cash on hand.

      1. You need at least 3 accounts at different places. It sounds like overkill, and usually it is, but when the SHTF you’ll be glad you have fast options.

        My credit union has resorted to outright begging for money. The president abruptly announced retirement and notices have gone out seeking to pay competitive rates on new money only. Old money still gets .03% or if you call or go in they will let you have a special savings rate but you have to beg. Tell me you’re in trouble without telling me you’re in trouble, I am seeking a new credit union. The last straw was seeing two male homosexual invaders holding hands on the beach on one of their rates pages. I almost threw up; apparently that is their real mission. My money has already fled and wont be back.

        T-mobile pays 2.5% on checking and 4% if you make 10 transactions a month. It is easy to setup online, no hassles, and they allow free transfers to anyone in the network like Paypal used to before they tried to suicide themselves. It makes for an easy backup account and is useful in a number of ways especially if you are already a T-mobile subscriber. FWIW T-mobile also has some of the lowest off menu phone rates in the business you just have to ask. Kind of like ‘animal style’ at In-N-Out.

  10. ‘I worry that you’re going to start seeing a lot of these investment locations, specifically condos, that will be going into foreclosure because if you can’t use it, you can’t rent it, you can’t sell it, what do you do,’ said Goodrich.”

    I bet Krista looks hot in her Captain Obvious costume.

  11. ‘That’s a fear of people right now. They want to move but they’re worried about being able to sell their existing home,’ said Analise Wilson, general counsel and director of communications at Ivory Homes.”

    Price your shacks for the market, & they’ll sell, greedheads.

  12. The Globalist Vision: “15 Minute” Prison Cities And The End Of Private Property (11/11/2023):

    “one of the most important aspects of Agenda 2030 for globalists is something called the “15 Minute City”; a project which involves hundreds of city mayors from across the US, Europe and Asia working closely with groups like the World Economic Forum. Any mention of this idea in a negative light and the media erupts with anger as well as mockery as if it’s not a real issue worthy of debate.

    The establishment paints an interesting picture of 15 Minute Cities – A Utopian future in which everything you need is only a short walk away and private transportation is superfluous (or banned). You might even live in mega-complex, much like a giant mall where you also work. You could spend months within one square mile of space, never having to leave for anything.

    It’s no mistake that this idea was pushed hard during the pandemic lockdowns. The public was awash in fear propaganda over a virus with a 99.8% survival rate and that fear made the unthinkable idea of staying at home all the time suddenly thinkable. Media pundits continue to call the connection between covid lockdowns and climate lockdowns a conspiracy theory, but the idea is openly admitted in UN and WEF white papers.

    Some people argue that most cities are already “15 Minute Cities” with necessities all within walking distance of their homes. These folks don’t understand what a 15 Minute City really is. As numerous establishment descriptions of the project note, it’s not just about convenience or close access, it’s about changing every aspect of our current philosophy of living. It’s not about gaining amenities, it’s about making an array of sacrifices in order to appease the gods of carbon emissions.

    The 15 Minute City is more like a recipe, containing every single ingredient of the climate change and covid lockdown agendas in a single comprehensive Orwellian vision. It includes removing motor vehicles, removing private transportation and roads, smart city and AI monitoring of each person’s electricity usage, monitoring of product consumption and “carbon footprint”, biometric surveillance within a compact and stacked urban landscape, the cashless society concept, equity and inclusion cultism, population control, etc.

    It is the culmination, the end game; a massive prison with no bars. A place where you are conditioned to grow accustomed to artificial limitations on privacy, no civil liberties, no private property, and no work options or mobility. You are tied to the land and the land is owned by the state (or corporation). If you want a historic comparison, the closest I can find is the feudal system of Medieval Europe.

    Within these cities you are a labor mechanism, nothing more. You will never be allowed to own your own property and thus own your own labor. Everything you have is given to you by the state and can be taken away by the state if you defy them. You might be able to leave the village or community you are tied to for a time, but this will change with increasing restrictions on the public’s movement according to the dictates of climate ideology.”

    https://alt-market.us/the-globalist-vision-15-minute-prison-cities-and-the-end-of-private-property/

  13. Contracted sales for October plunged 81.1% from the same period a year earlier, topping an 80.7% drop in September, its corporate filings show.

    Is that a lot?

  14. SW FLORIDA RENT VACANCIES AT 10 YEAR HIGHS!
    Ben Grieco
    Nov 9, 2023
    The rental market in Southwest Florida is in the midst of an inventory explosion that isn’t set to slow down anytime soon. New reports show that the area is now seeing double digit vacancy rates with even more units planned to come online in the coming months. The landlord investor landscape is looking dire as not only are rents falling, but yet another state has thrown Short term (Airbnb) restrictions on the table.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yuQuiQiSl0

    14:29.

    1. Name your price renters….and make sure your landlord picks up your dog’s sh#t as well. Everything is negotiable.

  15. THere is a lot of butthurt in the halls of power in Dumver over prop HH’s calamitous failure and rejection by voters. The governor mumbles “we were just trying help with your property taxes”. How? By taking away TABOR refunds. And to add insult to injury, the property tax cuts would have been small and temporary, while the loss of the TABOR refund would have been permanent.

    Voters saw this scam for what it was: a first step at dismantling TABOR, and over 60% voted no.

    1. watch for the city employees to slack-off in resentment over the HH failure. then blame it on Covid. that’s what happened here in Citrus Heights, CA. a small city/suburb north of Sacramento.

      a sales tax increase proposal was recently defeated so the resentful city drones have been quiet-quitting

      lax law enforcement.
      bums free range
      weeds, trash, bad drivers everywhere.
      rigorous residential code enforcement over petty violations.

      but wait, wait, don’t tell me: we gotta new bike trail kinda-sorta-finished running thru a new housing development. and all the LEO’s/F.D./utility workers have shiny new work vehicles.
      (as commented before) . . . so there’s that

      priorities, ya see.

    1. So all of a sudden it’s “our country” again?

      Perhaps they can draft some of those semi-illiterate immigrants to serve? Of course, if they tried that, there would be a rush to the doors and the caravans would disappear overnight.

      1. If they try to draft white males to fight for a government that hates them, there’s going to be massive push-back. Guaranteed.

          1. Compulsury military only works if there’s a shared national identity. The globalists destroyed that decades ago, and since they’ve ramped up their campaign to eradicate all of the symbols of our tradition and heritage, good luck finding military recruits willing to put their life on the line for “Our Democracy.”

  20. (Jokes that write themselves.)

    Taibbi: According To Pundits, “Ignorance” Makes Americans Give “Wrong” Answers To Economic Confidence Poll

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/taibbi-according-pundits-ignorance-makes-americans-give-wrong-answers-economic-confidence

    Paul Krugman of the New York Times on America’s “belief” problem when it comes to the economy:

    Biden is not, in fact, presiding over a bad economy. On the contrary, the economic news has been remarkably good, and history helps explain why. Nonetheless, many Americans tell pollsters that the economy is bad. Why? I don’t think we really know… Many voters have demonstrably false views about the current economy — believing, in particular, that unemployment, which is near a 50-year low, is actually near a 50-year high.

    e Guardian editorial Krugman linked to explains: Americans continue to believe the economy sucks, even though they’ve been told over and over it doesn’t! Why won’t they listen?

    Commenting on their own exclusive poll, the Guardian wrote:

    The results illustrate a dramatic political split on economic views — with Republicans far more pessimistic than Democrats. But unhappiness about the economy is widespread.

    Two-thirds of respondents (68%) reported it’s difficult to be happy about positive economic news when they feel financially squeezed each month (Republicans: 69%, Democrats: 68%).

    Noting Joe Biden’s achievements include a “landmark $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill” and legislative actions “predicted to create 1.5m jobs per year for the next decade,” the Guardian complained:

    That message may be hard to sell given the widespread disbelief of and ignorance about the health of the US economy highlighted by the poll.

    As well as being wrong about the unemployment data, respondents were unaware of, or chose to mischaracterize, other major economic data points.

    I can’t remember an instance of newspapers polling Americans about their feelings, then telling them their answers are not only wrong, but ignorant! The Guardian takes the additional hilarious step of blasting respondents for making it harder to “sell” the story the economy is doing well.

    Krugman, last seen citing the sqme unemployment stat and insisting those who complain about the economy are Republicans bent on “giving Vladimir Putin victory,” now says the problem is “psychological,” because people want to think higher incomes are personal reward rather than monetary side-effect.

    1. “Paul Krugman of the New York Times”

      Screw this guy and the globalist sh*trag he writes for. Krugman is the Parasite Class, never worked an actual day of his life. Pecking on a keyboard, just kvetching away about the ungrateful rabble.

  24. ‘According to the indictment, in one instance, the defendants allegedly created false divorce decree documents and child support checks purportedly payable to the potential buyer. The potential buyer has never been married to or even met the person who was identified as their ex-spouse. The indictment also states the defendants allegedly created false and fabricated bank statements showing falsely inflated bank account balances for potential buyers, submitted loan applications containing materially false information about buyers’ income to a mortgage origination company, and collected proceeds of home sales by directing payments from escrow to defendants and their associates’

    It appears the barn door is wide open.

  25. WEAK US Debt Auction Pushing Up Canadian Interest Rates (Again): Money Printing Coming Next?
    Mark Mitchell – Mortgage Broker London Ontario

    2 hours ago

    Canadian bond yields (and interest rates) are on the rise following another weak U.S. Treasury Auction, leading some to argue that the Federal Reserve may have to resort to money printing (again)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thd7gDfy9Ak

    9 minutes.

      2. Financial Times
        German economy
        German homebuilding collapse threatens wider economic damage
        Once-thriving residential construction industry has slumped, posing drag on EU’s largest economy
        An apartment building construction site in Hamburg. The downturn in the residential market threatens the broader economy
        Alexander Vladkov in Frankfurt and Valentina Romei in London
        2 hours ago

        Wolfgang Schubert-Raab recalls when the boom times were so good that his firm could not build homes quickly enough.

        “Back in 2021, before we’d even poured the first cubic metre of concrete, we’d already had offers on more than half the complex,” said the managing director of the Raab construction company. Two years on, the market for single-family dwellings is in what Schubert-Raab describes as a state of “completely collapse”.

        Across Germany, homebuilders are facing such a sharp reversal in their fortunes that the downturn in residential construction is threatening to have broader repercussions across Europe’s largest economy.
        …

        1. “…homebuilding collapse threatens wider economic damage…”

          Not to worry. It can’t happen here in ‘Merika.

  26. ‘I worry that you’re going to start seeing a lot of these investment locations, specifically condos, that will be going into foreclosure because if you can’t use it, you can’t rent it, you can’t sell it, what do you do’

    Ennio Morricone – The Ecstasy of Gold – Theremin & Voice
    Carolina Eyck
    6 years ago

    Composed by Morricone for the legendary movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly featuring Clint Eastwood and heavily used by Metallica before the shows.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajM4vYCZMZk

    2:47.

  28. Sounds like Joe and Ashley.

    Via ZH, The Biden-Du Pont Nexus: From A Prestigious Golf Club To A Controversial Child Rape Plea Deal

    In particular, it seems appropriate to revisit a controversial 2009 plea deal offered by then-Attorney General Beau Biden to a du Pont heir accused of raping his own daughter when she was a toddler. Richards was originally charged with two counts of second-degree rape, which carried a minimum of 20 years behind bars. Instead, he pleaded guilty in 2008 to fourth-degree rape, which carries no minimum prison time.

    The deal was offered to du Pont heir Robert H. Richards IV, who had confessed to the fourth-degree rape of his 3-year-old daughter. He was spared prison time, a decision that sparked public outrage and scrutiny. Beau Biden defended the decision in 2014, citing the case’s weaknesses and potential for loss at trial, but these justifications were met with skepticism, given the family’s history with the du Ponts.

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