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The Price Has Dropped So Much, I’m Speechless

A report from the Mercury News in California. “It might be hard to fathom in this real estate market, but one in eight home sellers in San Francisco and on the Peninsula is now taking a loss. How can that be? Some sellers who bought at the top of the market in 2021 and 2022 are being forced to accept less than what they paid for their homes. According to Redfin, more than 13% of those who sold homes in San Francisco and San Mateo counties between August and October went into the red — a rate about four times the national figure and the highest share of any major region in the country. The typical loss in the area: $122,500.”

“In October, the median single-family home price in San Mateo County was $2.1 million, according to the California Association of Realtors. That’s a roughly 13% decline from the local market’s peak in April 2022, when the median topped $2.4 million. There was an even bigger drop in San Francisco, where prices fell 20% to $1.65 million. For the entire Bay Area, the median price tumbled 15% from its peak, coming in at $1.27 million in October. After San Francisco and the Peninsula, areas with the highest share of sellers losing money were Detroit and Chicago at around 7%, followed by Cleveland and New York at about 6%.”

“Many would-be sellers are still on the fence, reluctant to give up the lower interest rates they locked in before the recent spike. The drumbeat of news about sky-high rates, sometimes boosting monthly payments for new mortgages by thousands of dollars, is only adding to sellers’ hesitance, said Silicon Valley agent Mary Pope-Handy. As a result, the inventory of homes on the market remains tight. ‘It’s like the toilet paper shortage,’ she said. ‘People say there’s a shortage, and then it becomes one. Except this one is real.'”

The Omaha World Herald in Nebraska. “‘I think the era of very low interest rates was just like a once-in-a-generation thing to happen,’ says Dave Liniger, who co-founded Re/Max Holdings, a real estate franchiser, two generations ago in 1973. ‘And I just don’t see it going back.’ And it’s about time for more single-family houses to get built, says Erin Sykes, chief economist for Nest Seekers International, a multinational real estate brokerage. ‘We’ve had this ongoing conversation about the shortage of housing, which is true, generally speaking,’ she says, ‘but it’s actually a shortage with more of an asterisk. We have an oversupply of multifamily and a shortage of single-family.'”

The Denver Post. “Colorado’s economy next year won’t be a bed of roses, with job gains running at their slowest pace since 2011 and commercial real estate under extreme stress. ‘We went from being roughly a top 10 state to being a bottom 10 state for job growth. How could we be so wrong and do we need to revise down our employment numbers?’ said Brian Lewandowski, executive director of the Business Research Division at the University of Colorado Boulder, of the questions the Outlook panel asked as it tried to prepare its 2024 forecast.”

“A huge reckoning continues in commercial real estate, and while it is playing out slowly, loans made under now unrealistic assumptions will have to be reworked. Banks continue to tighten their lending standards as they try to build up their reserves against losses, and venture capital remains scarce. Marcel Arsenault, CEO of Real Capital Solutions, offered a more dire view of what is coming, shaped in part of his understanding on what is going on in commercial real estate. ‘In our shop, we are worried about a recession,’ Arsenault told the crowd. He predicted Colorado would likely lose jobs next year and that the vacancy rate for apartments, which are being overbuilt, could reach 15% next year, or triple the current rate.”

Reuters on Canada. “Greater Toronto Area home prices fell in November as higher borrowing costs crimped affordability, while the level of sales edged higher for the first time in six months, Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) data showed on Tuesday. The seasonally adjusted average home price fell 2.2% in November from October to C$1,104,062 ($815,769), marking the fourth decline in the last five months. On a year-over-year basis, the average price was up 0.3% but it was down 18.9% from the February 2022 peak.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “As tougher lending requirements have more homeowners turning to the private mortgage market, brokers say having a strategy to eventually get out of the loan is crucial, or they risk falling into a debt trap that could eventually lead to a `For Sale’ sign on the front lawn. They can be a financial lifeline for a homeowner or buyer who can’t get traditional financing because of their low credit score or because they don’t pass traditional lending requirements, but the fees and interest rates associated with these loans are significantly higher than a bank or credit union. Private mortgage interest rates can range from 10 to 18 per cent, depending on factors such as the property value and credit risk of the borrower.”

“The latest data from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario shows private mortgages represented 11.7 per cent of all brokered mortgages in the province last year, compared with 8.4 per cent in 2014. The dollar value of private mortgages in Ontario last year was $25.9-billion, more than doubling from $9.1-billion in 2014, according to the data. Frances Hinojosa, chief executive of Tribe Financial Group says she’s also noticing an increasing number of homeowners who were previously set up with a private mortgage at other firms without a proper exit strategy – they’re now not able to handle the higher monthly payments upon renewal nor do they have proper options to move forward with other financing options.”

“‘We’re starting to have difficult conversations with homeowners saying, really, your only exit strategy at this point is you should seriously consider selling and rightsizing your housing situation – look at buying something smaller or something a bit cheaper,’ she said.”

From News.com.au. “Home builder Simsai Construction has gone into liquidation after a dispute with the Australian Taxation Office over debts nearing $4.5 million, it has been reported. The Perth-based company was working on approximately 100 houses when the business entered administration in early November. The company ran brands First Home Buyers Direct, Express Homes WA and Multi Develop 360. Administrators say the business could have been insolvent as early as July 2021, noting an insolvent trading claim of $4.2m may need to be investigated, the West Australian reported.”

“Administrators also revealed the company had borrowed $230,000 on a three-month high interest loan in June 2023 to keep its doors open. Fees on that individual loan had increased to over $100,000 by November. Additionally, up to $2m could be owed by three former Simsai directors to the business. Administrators indicated directors had been willing to repay outstanding debts, possibly through selling their personal homes. ‘The business was operating but the business had basically run out of cash,’ Mr Schwarz told news.com.au. ‘It’s a victim of the industry unfortunately, all the usual pressures, increasing costs, delays, supply constraints.'”

ABC News in Australia. “More people looking to break into the property market are lying on their loan applications — by either overstating their income or understating their expenses — in desperation to try to secure a home loan, according to new data. Sean Quagliani, the co-founder of financial technology company Fortiro, which big banks and other lenders use to help them detect fraudulent documents, says since interest rates started rising about a year and a half ago, there has been a threefold increase in people lying on home loan applications.”

“‘One example might be, somebody will modify a pay slip to increase the amount of income that they’ve got,’ Mr Quagliani says. ‘We see other examples of people removing transactions from their bank statements to only show that they might have no kids, but they have kids. People can be very creative. If you put yourself in the shoes of a prospective borrower who might be trying hard to get onto the property market and put a roof over their head … it’s a decision between telling the truth to the lender, and potentially not getting access to the credit to get the property.'”

“Doctoring documents or otherwise lying on your loan application can invalidate the loan contract, resulting in a default on the mortgage, and might even land those involved in jail for fraud. Another reason for the threefold increase in ‘liar loans”,’, Mr Quagliani says, is that there’s more opportunity to fabricate documents due to the plethora of free tools available online. ‘You’re not going to a bank and sitting down in front of anybody anymore, it’s a very sort of online digital experience … achievable in probably 30 seconds,’ he says. ‘To give one example, it’s as easy as just downloading a bank statement template that can be filled out pretty quickly on your computer using Microsoft Word.’ He picks out an example of a template that looks identical to that used by a big-four bank. ‘You can either do a DIY and [the website will] give you the template, or you pay $99, and it will create it for you,’ he says.”

“Melbourne-based mortgage broker Philip Robertson also thinks the regulator needs to lower the buffer for those refinancing their loans. He says a small number of his clients are refinancing on lower buffers of 1 or 2 per cent, but that most do not qualify. That, he says, leaves many trapped and thereby they are more likely to take on riskier personal or business loans. ‘There’s a lot of credit card debt out there,’ he says. ‘There’s a lot of unsecured business loans, short-term loans, there’s payday lending, there’s, you know, all sorts of delaying tactics that you can use — borrow money from friends and family, that sort of thing. Their situation and their circumstances will be so much better if they were able to perhaps go interest-only for a short time [or] change to a lender who had a low rate. That will relieve a lot of stress, especially on people who are more vulnerable, or lower-income people.'”

From The BBC. “‘I managed to escape this place,’ Nazmi Hanafiah laughs, slightly nervously. A year ago, the 30-year-old IT engineer moved to Forest City, a sprawling Chinese-built housing complex in Johor, on the tip of southern Malaysia. He rented a one-bedroom flat in a tower block overlooking the sea. After six months, he’d had enough. He didn’t want to continue living in what he calls ‘a ghost town.’ ‘I didn’t care about my deposit, I didn’t care about the money. I just had to get out,’ he said. We had arranged to meet in the same tower block he used to live in. ‘I’m getting goosebumps just being back,’ he said. ‘It’s lonely around here – it’s just you and your thoughts.'”

“China’s largest property developer Country Garden unveiled Forest City a $100bn (£78.9bn) mega-project under the Belt and Road Initiative – in 2016. At the time, the Chinese property boom was in full flow. Developers were borrowing colossal sums of money to build both home and abroad for middle-class buyers. In Malaysia, Country Garden’s plan was to build an eco-friendly metropolis featuring a golf course, waterpark, offices, bars and restaurants. The company said Forest City would eventually be home to nearly one million people. Eight years on, it stands as a barren reminder that you do not need to be in China to feel the effects of its property crisis. Currently, only 15% of the entire project has been built and, according to recent estimates, just over 1% of the total development is occupied.”

“Speaking to people in China who bought units in Forest City is not easy. The BBC did manage to reach a handful of owners indirectly, but they were reluctant to comment, even anonymously. However, social media offers some anecdotal evidence. Under a post praising the development, one buyer from Liaoning province said: ‘This is very misleading. The current Forest City is a ghost town. There are no people at all. It is far from the city, has incomplete living facilities, and it is difficult to move without a car.’ Other comments asked how they could get a refund on their property, with one saying: ‘The price of my unit has dropped so much, I’m speechless.'”

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This Post Has 99 Comments

  1. ‘The business was operating but the business had basically run out of cash,’ Mr Schwarz told news.com.au’

    This is one of those situations where I can’t find this guys first name in the article, nor who he is. I suppose he’s another fooked builder.

    2. The company ran brands First Home Buyers Direct, Express Homes WA and Multi Develop 360.

      You know that when a business is dba’ing with more than one name, and said names are trendy instead of simply being “Bob Smith Construction”, that something sketchy is going on.

    3. “…but the business had basically run out of cash…”

      Does Mr Schwarz need an MBA to know what happens next?

        1. You will own nothing, you will eat bugs and like them, all your electric usage will be monitored and rationed, you will obey all commands without question or hesitancy.

          1. you will obey all commands without question or hesitancy

            Unless you are an illegal invader. In that case you can go anywhere you want and all your needs will be provided. And as a bonus you can shoplift.

            A theoretical question: If the governor of NY sends you and your family off to a quarantine camp, can a deserving “immigrant family” be moved into your home?

          2. Can they move an illegal immigrant family into your home? My first answer is “yes,” but they would have go through the 7th Amendment: Eminent Domain with just compensation. Of course, if you have biased judges,* Amendments and laws don’t mean a whole lot, do they.

            —————-
            *where “biased” means” do what we say or we will riot in front of your family home.

          3. “be moved into your home?”

            YES.

            Emphasis on the concept of Replacement. You WILL be Replaced. And the biggest advocates of your Replacement (we’re Naming ’em, folks) are the Anti Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center.

          5. 5th Amendment.

            Ooh, you’re right. I was looking at the text of the original Proposal for 12 Amendments, before they narrowed it down to 10. I knew something was off.

  3. Open borders is TREASON.

    Busload of migrants is dropped off at state Capitol in Denver (12/4/2023):

    “A busload of migrants was dropped off outside the Colorado Capitol building in Denver on Monday morning in what a city official believes is the latest in a wave of buses chartered by the Texas state government.

    It’s unclear how many people were on the bus. Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat who was at the Capitol as the bus was unloading about 8:30 a.m., estimated the number of people onboard at 40 to 50. She directed them into the building to get warm while officials coordinated the next steps.

    Gonzales said some of the migrants told her they’d come from Eagle Pass, a Texas town near the border with Mexico. Evan Dreyer, a deputy chief of staff to Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, said he hadn’t received confirmation about the circumstances of the bus trip but that it matched a recent pattern of buses arriving from the border state.”

    https://www.denver7.com/news/front-range/denver/busload-of-migrants-is-dropped-off-at-state-capitol-in-denver

    1. Our latest “refugees” are VIP’s! They were welcomed into the state capitol building. Will there be cots set up for them under the dome? Or once no one is looking will they be shuffled away to another high school gym or church basement?

      Places like Eagle Pass, Laredo and Brownsville must now resemble the Italian island of Lampedusa: completely overrun with invaders, who get fistbumps from the border patrol as they illegally enter the country, but Dumver whines when a couple of busloads of them arrive downtown.

  4. ‘It’s like the toilet paper shortage,’ she said. ‘People say there’s a shortage, and then it becomes one. Except this one is real.’”

    It’s early yet, but this, hands down, will be the stupidest thing I’ll read today, or perhaps ever.

    1. Just wait until the specuvestors start getting foreclosed. But will those houses be put on the market, or will they become shadow or zombie inventory?

  5. “‘We’re starting to have difficult conversations with homeowners saying, really, your only exit strategy at this point is you should seriously consider selling and rightsizing your housing situation – look at buying something smaller or something a bit cheaper,’ she said.”

    “Rightsizing” – Señor Ben, we need a lexicon for all these dissembling realtor weasel words.

  6. The Gateway Pundit website is being blocked on U.S. government computer networks now.

    You can run, but you can’t hide from the truth, that truth being that the 2020 election was stolen and we are living under an illegitimate occupation government.

    2. “The Gateway Pundit website is being blocked on U.S. government computer networks now.’

      No it’s not, not yet anyway.

  8. “For the entire Bay Area, the median price tumbled 15% from its peak, coming in at $1.27 million in October. After San Francisco and the Peninsula, areas with the highest share of sellers losing money were Detroit and Chicago at around 7%, followed by Cleveland and New York at about 6%.”

    Just imagine how these numbers are gonna look if the long-heralded recession happens next year. Lots of investors are in for an ice bath on those extra homes they bought during the mania daze.

    1. Bloomberg
      Slowest Housing Market in Years Is Weighing on Consumer Spending
      Ethan M Steinberg
      Mon, December 4, 2023 at 8:50 AM PST·4 min read
      In this article:

      (Bloomberg) — Plunging US home sales are having a ripple effect on consumer spending, as fewer Americans are moving into houses that need to be outfitted with furniture and appliances.

      The effects are visible across the economy. Spending on furniture and related items fell nearly 12% from the year-earlier period in October. Home goods sellers including Z Gallerie and Serta Simmons Bedding have filed for bankruptcy this year, citing weaker demand, and more are probably coming. Williams-Sonoma Inc.’s chief executive said last month that consumers are hesitant to spend on expensive furniture. Home Depot Inc., the hardware and appliance store, said its revenue will likely drop this fiscal year.

      The Federal Reserve last year started a rate hiking campaign to tame inflation, and slowing the housing market is a key way to make that happen. In October, mortgage rates reached their highest level since 2000, helping to make housing the least affordable since at least the 1980s.

      On Thursday, the effects of low affordability became even clearer: a gauge of pending sales for existing homes reached its lowest level since the measure started in 2001. Home loan rates have started drifting lower amid growing hopes the Fed will start to expand the money supply again next year, but it could take years for the housing market to return to normality.

      “It’s just less affordable to buy a house today than it was a couple years ago when rates were much lower, and that’s closed out a certain amount of spending that would have otherwise happened,” said Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation.
      …
      https://finance.yahoo.com/news/slowest-housing-market-years-weighing-165013478.html

    2. “Just imagine how these numbers are gonna look if the long-heralded recession happens next year.”

      Recessions are so incredibly painful to businesses that operate on a leverage based model, and the easiest fat to trim are employees.

    3. Economists forecast 50% recession odds amid stark economic slowdown in 2024
      By Social Links for Shannon Thaler
      Published Dec. 4, 2023, 12:13 p.m. ET
      Online ‘likes’ for toxic

      The US economy is in for a sharp slowdown in 2024 as a closely watched survey of top economists foresees stubbornly high inflation, a rise in unemployment and a 50% chance of recession.

      A slew of headwinds will slow the current quarter’s Gross Domestic Product — a comprehensive measure of economic activity and performance — to a pace of 1.2%, according to the National Association for Business Economics’ latest Outlook Survey released on Monday.
      …
      https://nypost.com/2023/12/04/business/economists-forecast-50-recession-odds-amid-stark-economic-slowdown-in-2024/

    4. Prepare for the S&P 500 to plunge 23% by mid-2024 – and the US economy to sink into recession, JPMorgan’s top charts guru says
      Theron Mohamed
      Dec 5, 2023, 4:47 AM PST
      trader chart nyse
      JPMorgan’s head of technical strategy sees the S&P 500 falling by 23% to 3,500 points by the middle of next year. Brendan McDermid/Reuters

      – The S&P 500 is likely to tumble 23% to 3,500 points by mid-2024, JPMorgan’s charts guru says.

      – Jason Hunter, the bank’s head of technical strategy, views a US recession as very likely.

      – Hunter sees cash and Treasury bonds are safer bets than stocks today.
      …

  9. November 30, 2023 | Press Release
    Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton Sues Pfiz­er for Mis­rep­re­sent­ing COVID-19 Vac­cine Effi­ca­cy and Con­spir­ing to Cen­sor Pub­lic Discourse

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Pfizer, Inc., for unlawfully misrepresenting the effectiveness of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine and attempting to censor public discussion of the product.

    Pfizer engaged in false, deceptive, and misleading acts and practices by making unsupported claims regarding the company’s COVID-19 vaccine in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

    The pharmaceutical company’s widespread representation that its vaccine possessed 95% efficacy against infection was highly misleading. That metric represented a calculation of the so-called “relative risk reduction” for vaccinated individuals in Pfizer’s initial, two-month clinical trial results. FDA publications indicate “relative risk reduction” is a misleading statistic that “unduly influence[s]” consumer choice. Pfizer was also put on notice at that time that vaccine protection could not accurately be predicted beyond two months. Nevertheless, Pfizer fostered a misleading impression that vaccine protection was durable and withheld from the public information that undermined its claims about the duration of protection. And, despite the fact that its clinical trial failed to measure whether the vaccine protects against transmission, Pfizer embarked on a campaign to intimidate the public into getting the vaccine as a necessary measure to protect their loved ones.

    In fact, Pfizer’s product failed to live up to the company’s representations. COVID-19 cases increased after widespread vaccine administration, and some areas saw a greater percentage of deaths from COVID-19 among the vaccinated population than the unvaccinated. When the failure of its product became apparent, Pfizer then pivoted to silencing truth-tellers. The lawsuit notes: “How did Pfizer respond when it became apparent that its vaccine was failing and the viability of its cash cow was threatened? By intimidating those spreading the truth, and by conspiring to censor its critics. Pfizer labeled as ‘criminals’ those who spread facts about the vaccine. It accused them of spreading ‘misinformation.’ And it coerced social media platforms to silence prominent truth-tellers.”

    “We are pursuing justice for the people of Texas, many of whom were coerced by tyrannical vaccine mandates to take a defective product sold by lies,” said Attorney General Paxton. “The facts are clear. Pfizer did not tell the truth about their COVID-19 vaccines. Whereas the Biden Administration weaponized the pandemic to force illegal public health decrees on the public and enrich pharmaceutical companies, I will use every tool I have to protect our citizens who were misled and harmed by Pfizer’s actions.”

    The lawsuit follows Attorney General Paxton’s investigation into Pfizer and other vaccine manufacturers announced earlier this year.

    https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-sues-pfizer-misrepresenting-covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-and-conspiring

    3. That’s going to be an interesting case. The vaccine WAS 95% effective … against the Wild-type and Alpha variant. But it was much less effective against the Delta variant — and it was the Delta variant cited in Biden’s executive order mandating the vaccine.

      “COVID-19 cases increased after widespread vaccine administration,”

      Proving this assertion against Pfizer will be an uphill battle; correlation is not causation. Cases could have gone up because Delta and Omicron supplanted Alpha, or because people traveled more, or because young folks went out and partied before the vaccine protection took full effect.

      1. The pharmaceutical company’s widespread representation that its vaccine possessed 95% efficacy against infection was highly misleading. That metric represented a calculation of the so-called “relative risk reduction” for vaccinated individuals in Pfizer’s initial, two-month clinical trial results. FDA publications indicate “relative risk reduction” is a misleading statistic that “unduly influence[s]” consumer choice.

        1. Plaintiff’s Original Petition, page 2 (emphasis added): “While Pfizer’s 95% figure made its vaccines seem highly effective, the truth was quite different. When it began making those claims, Pfizer possessed on average only two months of clinical trial data from which to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. Of 17,000 placebo recipients, only 162 acquired COVID-19 during this two-month period. Based on those numbers, vaccination status had a negligible impact on whether a trial participant contracted COVID-19. The risk of acquiring COVID-19 was so small in the first instance during this short window that Pfizer’s vaccine only fractionally improved a person’s risk of infection. And a vaccine recipient’s absolute risk reduction—the federal Food & Drug
          Administration’s (FDA) preferred efficacy metric—showed that the vaccine was merely 0.85% effective. Moreover, according to Pfizer’s own data, preventing one COVID-19 case required vaccinating 119. That was the simple truth. But Pfizer’s fusillade of public representations bore no
          resemblance to reality.”

        1. Some lies were believed.

          I still think it is pretty funny that people “knew” what supposed “variant” they had based on a news headline.

          4. Teacher Nurse Campbell spread those lies, handsomely profited from those lies, and continues to profit. Astounding business model!

          5. “As if a handful of base pair changes mattered all that much.”

            The infectiousness of the SARS-CoV19 virus depended only on a 12 base pair insertion at the furin cleavage site. So yeah, it kinda matters.

    1. Business / Investing
      Bitcoin hits highest level in 18 months as investors gear up for ETF approval
      By Allison Morrow, CNN
      2 minute read
      Updated 11:40 AM EST, Mon December 4, 2023
      Representation of Bitcoin cryptocurrency is seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on April 19, 2022.
      Bitcoin is surging on expectations that the US regulators will soon approve a long-awaited bitcoin spot ETF.
      Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

      New York CNN —

      The price of bitcoin soared above $40,000 on Monday, hitting its highest level in 18 months as investors look ahead to a lower interest rate environment and key regulatory approvals that could make the crypto asset more mainstream.

      Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, was up more than 5% over the past 24 hours, trading at $41,600, according to CoinMarketCap.

      On Friday, Investors began piling on after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank’s policy was “well into restrictive territory,” words that some interpreted to mean that interest rate hikes were over, even though Powell underscored the Fed was prepared to raise rates again if needed.

      “Bitcoin breaking $40,000 isn’t as juicy as the first time it happened in January 2021,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of the crypto lender Nexo. “Yet consider where we were a year ago, at $15,500, and this is a significant upturn in fortunes for an asset that looked dead and buried.”

      The rally also reflects investors’ eagerness to move on from crypto’s most recent scandals. Last month, Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, pleaded guilty to federal money-laundering charges and resigned from his role as CEO. That came just weeks after a jury convicted FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried of orchestrating a multibillion-dollar fraud.
      …
      https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/04/investing/bitcoin-price-rally-spot-etf/index.html

      1. OK, so Bitcoin is an “asset” now? Whatever happened to widespread adoption as a currency in, say, El Salvador?

        “key regulatory approvals that could make the crypto asset more mainstream”

        Meaning they want a Bitcoin ETF based on spot price. Whatever happened to Not your keys, not your coin? But anyway, they’re going to get what they wanted, good and hard. A spot ETF will assuredly drop the price of BTC as traders rehypothecate Bitcoins into a ratio of paper Satoshis.

        1. My understanding of BTC is that its key selling point is no one can make the printer go “brrrt!” But if I buy into say Fidelity’s BTC ETF, how do I know they possess any bitcoin? If there is no way to know or tell, then Fidelity can mint as much bitcoin as it pleases, without having to do all that silly “mining”.

          2. no one can make the printer go “brrrt!”

            The same has been said about gold and silver. But there are precious metal ETFs out there, mainly GLD and SLV. And according to USDebtClock dot org, there are:
            132 paper silver ounces to physical silver ounces
            133 paper gold ounces to physical gold ounces.

            That is, there 133 people for every 1 physical gold coin. If everyone simultaneously tried to redeem their shares of GLD for physical gold, 1 person would get a coin and 132 would be reimbursed in equivalent dollars.

            If a Bitcoin ETF is approved, we will see the same thing. Brokers will trade in bitcoin futures, while nobody has the actual(?) Bitcoin. Manipulating the price will be easy peasy.

  11. Benzinga
    ‘The Last Thing Americans Need Is A Bezos-Backed Investment Company Further Consolidating Single-Family Homes’ — US Rep. Ro Khanna Says, Housing Should Not Be ‘A Speculative Commodity’
    Kevin Vandenboss
    Tue, December 5, 2023 at 8:50 AM PST·3 min read
    In this article:

    U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) posted on X earlier this month to gain support for his Stop Wall Street Landlords Act bill.

    “The last thing Americans need is a Bezos-backed investment company further consolidating single-family homes and putting homeownership out of reach for more and more people,” he posted on X. “Housing should be a right, not a speculative commodity. Congress must pass my Stop Wall Street Landlords Act.”
    …
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/last-thing-americans-bezos-backed-165053190.html

  12. What a liar. we have a GLUT of luxuriee housing. and a severe shortage of average housing.

    We have an oversupply of multifamily and a shortage of single-family.’”

  13. … I’m not an economist and it is hard for me to understand the supply and demand in US is it working in US anymore? The say there is a shortage of 5 million hoses in US, which means US developers and builders refused to make money last 8 years , or they still are afraid of 2008 crash?

    2. I can say that my little burg has done everything possible to discourage the construction of new shanties. The biggest obstacle now is subdividing. You need to provide water rights before being allowed to subdivide, and out here they called “blue gold”

      1. Other communities, like nearby Johnstown, want to grow as much as possible. The new Buc-cees (the first in the state, I believe) is being built there.

        1. Buc-cees

          I had to look that up; I’ve never heard of it. Looks like a combination gas station/cowboy gift shop.

    3. Investors used massive leverage to suck up all the inventory during the pandemic, creating the appearance of a shortage.

      Until these guys get washed out by higher rates and falling prices, it will be hard to assess the supply and demand picture. This will take a few years!

      1. Didn’t we see the same thing with open land during the 2007 bubble? Homebuilders like Tool Bros bought rights to a ton of buildable land, but when the bubble busted, they couldn’t pay the fees to maintain the land and had to sell the land for lower prices. We’ll probably see that again.

    1. A “Bring out your dead” cart would be much more economical. Perhaps it could even carry a poop scooper for added economies of scale?

      Denver is a shithole.

  15. Given that the last two major US housing busts (1990-1996, 2006-2012) both took upwards of five years to play out, should we expect the current one to play happen over a similar time frame (2023-2029)?

    Or is it different this time?

  16. Are Rate Cuts Coming? All Focus is on Real Estate. 2023 Canadian Housing Market.
    Jon Flynn Broker of Record, Flynn Real Estate Inc.
    1 hour ago

    More real estate collapses and new home fires. What will the Bank of Canada do this week? Early statistics from across Ontario and Calgary which include huge losses in 4 regions.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtbZKvhq-PU

    10 minutes.

  18. ‘We’re starting to have difficult conversations with homeowners saying, really, your only exit strategy at this point is you should seriously consider selling and rightsizing your housing situation – look at buying something smaller or something a bit cheaper’

    Take yer a$$ pounding, and nobody cares where you go, but you can’t stay here.

  19. ‘there’s more opportunity to fabricate documents due to the plethora of free tools available online. ‘You’re not going to a bank and sitting down in front of anybody anymore, it’s a very sort of online digital experience … achievable in probably 30 seconds,’ he says. ‘To give one example, it’s as easy as just downloading a bank statement template that can be filled out pretty quickly on your computer using Microsoft Word.’ He picks out an example of a template that looks identical to that used by a big-four bank. ‘You can either do a DIY and [the website will] give you the template, or you pay $99, and it will create it for you’

    This system is rock solid!

  20. Toronto Real Estate Market Update – What Were These Buyers Thinking? (Nov 29, 2023)
    Team Sessa Real Estate
    22 minutes ago

    In this episode we take a look at the current Toronto Real Estate home prices and market trends for week ending Nov 29, 2023. We also discuss the need for buyers to take more precautions when purchasing a property and accepting responsibility for their decisions.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDR8DtQVrkI

    19:40. FB story right off the bat. At 4:10 ‘it was a bad decision from the very beginning, but they didn’t see that.’

    1. “‘it was a bad decision from the very beginning, but they didn’t see that.’”

      See? People are stupid.

  21. ‘after six months, he’d had enough. He didn’t want to continue living in what he calls ‘a ghost town.’ ‘I didn’t care about my deposit, I didn’t care about the money. I just had to get out,’ he said. We had arranged to meet in the same tower block he used to live in. ‘I’m getting goosebumps just being back,’ he said. ‘It’s lonely around here – it’s just you and your thoughts’

    Dan says this is how Chinese build new cities Nazmi.

  22. “Some sellers who bought at the top of the market in 2021 and 2022 are being forced to accept less than what they paid for their homes.”

    Why are people who bought as recently as 2022 already selling? Presumably they’re speculators (die, scum!) who never planned to live there?

    1. Yahoo
      Business Insider
      Collapsed US money supply is a threat to employment, growth, and inflation, Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel says
      Jennifer Sor
      Mon, December 4, 2023 at 3:28 PM PST·2 min read
      US Capitol with money illustration
      The M2 money supply is seeing its longest stagnation since World War II, Jeremy Siegel said.
      Douglas Rissing/Getty Images/iStock

      – US money supply has seen its longest stagnation since World War II, according to Jeremy Siegel.

      – The Wharton professor said the US now faces major recession, unemployment, and deflation risks.

      – “You can’t really have a growing economy when the M2 money supply is decreasing,” Siegel told CNBC.

      The US money supply is flashing a major warning to the US economy, according to Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel.
      …
      https://finance.yahoo.com/news/collapsed-us-money-supply-threat-232810085.html

    1. U.S.
      Housing Market
      Housing
      San Francisco
      Economy
      San Francisco Home Price Drops $10 Million as Housing Market Collapses
      Dec 05, 2023 at 7:32 PM EST
      Advertisement 0:06
      By Alexander Fabino
      Reporter, Economy & Finance

      A San Francisco home has been sold at half its original listing price, crystallizing the stark real estate climate in the city and in the U.S.

      The home in the Russian Hill neighborhood sold for $9,990,000 on November 9, after being listed in October 2022 at $19,995,000. The house sat on the market for almost a year before selling at almost half the original list price in a city that is becoming emblematic of the nationwide housing slump.
      …
      https://www.newsweek.com/san-francisco-home-sale-10-million-loss-housing-market-collapse-1849859

    1. Financial Times
      FT-Booth Survey Federal Reserve
      Economists see Fed keeping rates at 22-year high until at least July
      FT-Booth survey respondents think US central bank will remain more hawkish than market expects
      The Federal Reserve building in Washington
      Three-quarters of economists polled expect the US Federal Reserve to lower the federal funds rate from its current 22-year high by just half a percentage point or less next year
      Colby Smith in Washington and Eva Xiao in New York yesterday

      The US central bank will hold off on interest rate cuts until at least July 2024 and deliver less relief than financial markets expect, according to leading academic economists polled by the Financial Times.

      While most of those surveyed thought the rate-raising phase of the Federal Reserve’s historic monetary tightening campaign was now over, almost two-thirds of the respondents thought the central bank would only begin to cut its benchmark rate by the third quarter of 2024 or later.

      Three-quarters of the economists, polled between December 1 and December 4, also expect the Fed to lower the federal funds rate from its current 22-year high of 5.25-5.5 per cent by just half a percentage point or less next year.
      …

      1. Economists see Fed keeping rates at 22-year high until at least July

        Many of the K12 schools start in August, so there goes the summer moving season.

      2. Economists see Fed keeping rates at 22-year high until at least July

        What does the re-elect Brandon campaign see?

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