This Has All The Makings Of A Buyers’ Market – Except For The Fact There Are So Few Buyers

1. HBB warning to readers: bloomberg is globalist scum media that peddles conspiracy theories, election lies and mis, mal, and dis-information.

   1. +1

      The 2020 election was stolen.

2. ‘I think sellers need to kind of buckle the seatbelt and know that it’s not necessarily going to be a quick sale,’ Levinson-Katz told me. ‘It could take awhile because buyers are being really discerning right now’

   Wow Libby, you’ve really gone over to the dark side. That subaru payment must be kicking yer a$$.

3. ‘The Bend median sale price declined $46,000 in April, to $707,000’

   That’s the YOY number, but the chart at the link says down $93k from the recent peak.

   1. Bend is populated with equity locusts and the locals who bag their groceries, fill their gas tanks and mow their lawns.

4. ‘All of us need our money — I mean, don’t you want to get paid every week?’ Whaley said. Whaley said they’ve continued to ask Dakota Partners about when they should expect their checks. We keep getting the same answer: ‘We’ll pay you in a week or two weeks,’ Whaley said. ‘And it’s not working’

   It’s working well for the deadbeats Travis. Don’t worry, Richmond is red hotcakes, check is in the mail!

   1. It’s always red hotcakes for affordable housing, and why this is a bad thing?

      This development looks like small 3-bed rowhouses. Based on the ‘hood it’s in, you could price them at $175K or so. With a little gov help, a young couple could afford the place with a $50K plumber apprentice job, and Mom could stay home with two kids. Mom would keep the house tidy and help the kids to study hard at public school. They would grow up to get scholarships to either college for middle-management or even STEM, or go to community college and be a medical tech and both afford a nicer home themselves and start their own fam… 🦄🦄 🦄🌈🌈🌈

      Oh, what am I thinking. If these homes are ever completed at all, it’s going to be a haven for gangs and single mothers all getting drunk or high and dropping out of school and going to juvie and the homes will be trashed within 5 years. Such is life in America. 😕

      1. This post made me smile.

5. ‘The developers funded Tribeca’s construction with a $35M construction loan and refinanced the debt on the building with a $39.9M CMBS loan in 2022’

   Took em for another 5 million pesos.

   ‘The building hasn’t been able to cover its debt service and has been delinquent on interest payments for more than 90 days, according to the Morningstar Credit database. At the end of last year, the property was almost 89% occupied, according to special servicer commentary in the Morningstar Credit database. While occupancy has been steadily increasing, its net operating income has only been able to cover roughly a third of its debt service’

   Now that’s some sound lending right there.

   1. ‘The developers funded Tribeca’s construction with a $35M construction loan and refinanced the debt on the building with a $39.9M CMBS loan in 2022…The building hasn’t been able to cover its debt service and has been delinquent on interest payments for more than 90 days…At the end of last year, the property was almost 89% occupied…While occupancy has been steadily increasing, its net operating income has only been able to cover roughly a third of its debt service’

      Think about that. A 2022 loan, it’s almost full and the money coming in only covers one third of the debt alone. That has fraud written all over it.

   2. its net operating income has only been able to cover roughly a third of its debt service’
      I was a financial analyst in the residential mortgage business for decades and i gotta wonder, how $hitty would the assumptions have to be in order to miss net operating income so badly. I would love to know the assumptions that led to this disaster.

6. ‘The mad run up of office values of the time was almost exclusively the domain of top of the food chain institutional sources of money versus private wealth. These would all be in the hands of the massive fund operators tapping into the oceans of cash held by government pension funds, top dollar university and college endowment money and foreign country sovereign wealth funds. Combine those piles with straight up Wall Street alchemy money-raising schemes and it created a seemingly endless source for the rapid fire office building investments and wild appreciation in that era’

   ‘The general business model of the large scale owners and operators of the fund advisors buying all these assets is not really about the making of money on the asset itself, but more about getting paid for placing the money in the first place. If it does sell at a profit in the future the winnings are shared, but the truth is the risk of a future failure (like now) is well outweighed by the rewards associated with just processing the money. With a few exceptions, the fund operator doesn’t lose any money, only the fund that provided the money does’

   Morer sound lending!

7. You will own nothing.

   1. And your seed will spread no further than a Kleenex tissue.

8. Debt is a prison most people gladly enter, slam the door, and throw away the key.

   1. Self-inflicted, but always crying they’re a victim.

9. ‘said developers have been careful to incentivize buyers without dropping the price per square foot…‘It’s interesting to see how the market has responded because… One of the things you see is that they’re trying to provide incentives that don’t change the base price of the units. Because that’s where you start to see market corrections. If the underlying asset price gets revalued, then that can have a long term knock-on effect’

   That’s the way to protect the comps Matti! Anything to keep those appraisals up.

10. [This rather long post is for Housing Wizard.]

    The Machinery Of Fascism Revisited.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/machinery-fascism-revisited

    Fascism became a swear word in the US and UK during the Second World War. It has been ever since, to the point that the content of the term has been drained away completely. It is not a system of political economy but an insult.

    If we go back a decade before the war, you find a completely different situation. Read any writings from polite society from 1932 to 1940 or so, and you find a consensus that freedom and democracy, along with Enlightenment-style liberalism of the 18th century, were completely doomed. They should be replaced by some version of what was called the planned society, of which fascism was one option.

    A book by that name appeared in 1937 as published by the prestigious Prentice-Hall, and it included contributions by top academics and high-profile influencers. It was highly praised by all respectable outlets at the time.

    [snip]

    Everyone in the book was explaining how the future would be constructed by the finest minds who would manage whole economies and societies, the best and the brightest with full power. All housing should be provided by government, for example, and food too, but with the cooperation of private corporations. That seems to be the consensus in the book. Fascism was treated as a legitimate path. Even the word totalitarianism was invoked without opprobrium but rather with respect.

    The book has been memory-holed of course.

    You will notice that the section on economics includes contributions by Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin. Yes, their ideas and political rule were part of the prevailing conversation. It is in this essay, likely ghostwritten by Professor Giovanni Gentile, Minister of Public Education, in which Mussolini offered this concise statement: “Fascism is more appropriately called corporatism, for it is the perfect merge of State and corporate power.”

    [snip]

    All of this became rather embarrassing after the war so it was largely forgotten. But the affection on the part of many sectors of the US ruling class had for fascism was still in place. It merely took on new names.

    As a result, the lesson of the war, that the US should stand for freedom above all else while wholly rejecting fascism as a system, was largely buried. And generations have been taught to regard fascism as nothing but a quirky and failed system of the past, leaving the word as an insult to fling at in any way deemed reactionary or old-fashioned, which makes no sense.

    There is valuable literature on the topic and it bears reading. One book that is particularly insightful is The Vampire Economy by Günter Reimann, a financier in Germany who chronicled the dramatic changes to industrial structures under the Nazis. In a few short years, from 1933 to 1939, a nation of enterprise and small shopkeepers was converted to a corporate-dominated machine that gutted the middle class and cartelized industry in preparation for war.

    The book was published in 1939 before the invasion of Poland and the onset of Europe-wide war, and manages to convey the grim reality just before hell broke loose. On a personal note, I spoke to the author (real name: Hans Steinicke) briefly before he died, in order to gain permission to post the book, and he was astonished that anyone cared about it.

    “The corruption in fascist countries arises inevitably from the reversal of the roles of the capitalist and the State as wielders of economic power,” wrote Reimann.

    The Nazis were not hostile to business as a whole but only opposed traditional, independent, family-owned, small businesses that offered nothing for purposes of nation-building and war planning. The crucial tool to make this happen was establishing the Nazi Party as the central regulator of all enterprises. The large businesses had the resources to comply and the wherewithal to develop good relations with political masters whereas the undercapitalized small businesses were squeezed to the point of extinction. You could make bank under Nazi rules provided you put first things first: regime before customers.

    “Most businessmen in a totalitarian economy feel safer if they have a protector in the State or Party bureaucracy,” Reimann writes.

    “They pay for their protection as did the helpless peasants of feudal days. It is inherent in the present lineup of forces, however, that the official is often sufficiently independent to take the money but fails to provide the protection.”

    He wrote of “the decline and ruin of the genuinely independent businessman, who was the master of his enterprise, and exercised his property rights. This type of capitalist is disappearing but another type is prospering. He enriches himself through his Party ties; he himself is a Party member devoted to the Fuehrer, favored by the bureaucracy, entrenched because of family connections and political affiliations. In a number of cases, the wealth of these Party capitalists has been created through the Party’s exercise of naked power. It is to the advantage of these capitalists to strengthen the Party which has strengthened them. Incidentally, it sometimes happens that they become so strong that they constitute a danger to the system, upon which they are liquidated or purged.”

    This was particularly true for independent publishers and distributors. Their gradual bankruptcy served to effectively nationalize all surviving media outlets who knew that it was in their interests to echo Nazi Party priorities.

    Reimann wrote:

    “The logical outcome of a fascist system is that all newspapers, news services, and magazines become more or less direct organs of the fascist party and State. They are governmental institutions over which individual capitalists have no control and very little influence except as they are loyal supporters or members of the all-powerful party.”

    “Under fascism or any totalitarian regime an editor no longer can act independently,” wrote Reimann.

    “Opinions are dangerous. He must be willing to print any ‘news’ issued by State propaganda agencies, even when he knows it to be completely at variance with the facts, and he must suppress real news which reflects upon the wisdom of the leader. His editorials can differ from another newspaper’s only in so far as he expresses the same idea in different language. He has no choice between truth and falsehood, for he is merely a State official for whom ‘truth’ and ‘honesty’ do not exist as a moral problem but are identical with the interests of the Party.”

    A feature of the policy included aggressive price controls. They did not work to suppress inflation but they were politically useful in other ways.

    “Under such circumstances nearly every businessman necessarily becomes a potential criminal in the eyes of the Government,” wrote Reimann.

    “There is scarcely a manufacturer or shopkeeper who, intentionally or unintentionally, has not violated one of the price decrees. This has the effect of lowering the authority of the State; on the other hand, it also makes the State authorities more feared, for no businessman knows when he may be severely penalized.”

    From there, Reimann tells many wonderful if chilling stories about, for example, the pig farmer who faced price ceilings on his product and got around them by selling a high-priced dog alongside a low-priced pig, after which the dog was returned. This kind of maneuvering became common.

    I can only highly recommend this book as a brilliant inside look at how enterprise functions under a fascist-style regime. The German case was fascism with a racialist and anti-Jewish twist for purposes of political purges. In 1939, it was not entirely obvious how this would end in mass and targeted extermination on a gargantuan scale. The German system in those days bore much resemblance to the Italian case, which was fascism without the ambition of full ethnic cleansing. In that case, it bears examination as a model for how fascism can reveal itself in other contexts.

    The best book I’ve seen on the Italian case is John T. Flynn’s 1944 classic As We Go Marching. Flynn was a widely respected journalist, historian, and scholar in the 1930s who was largely forgotten after the war due to his political activities. But his outstanding scholarship stands the test of time. His book deconstructs the history of fascist ideology in Italy from a half-century prior and explains the centralizing ethos of the system, both in politics and economics.

    Following an erudite examination of the main theorists, along with Flynn provides a beautiful summary.

    Fascism, Flynn writes, is a form of social organization:

    1. In which the government acknowledges no restraint upon its powers—totalitarianism.

    2. In which this unrestrained government is managed by a dictator—the leadership principle.

    3. In which the government is organized to operate the capitalist system and enable it to function under an immense bureaucracy.

    4. In which the economic society is organized on the syndicalist model; that is, by producing groups formed into craft and professional categories under supervision of the state.

    5. In which the government and the syndicalist organizations operate the capitalist society on the planned, autarchical principle.

    6. In which the government holds itself responsible for providing the nation with adequate purchasing power by public spending and borrowing.

    7. In which militarism is used as a conscious mechanism of government spending.

    8. In which imperialism is included as a policy inevitably flowing from militarism as well as other elements of fascism.

    Each point bears longer commentary but let’s focus on number 5 in particular, with its focus on syndicalist organizations. In those days, they were large corporations run with an emphasis on union organization of the workforce. In our own times, these have been replaced by a managerial overclass in tech and pharma that have the ear of government and have developed close ties with the public sector, each depending on the other. Here is where we get the essential bones and meat of why this system is called corporatist.

    In today’s polarized political environment, the left continues to worry about unbridled capitalism while the right is forever on the lookout for the enemy of full-blown socialism. Each side has reduced fascistic corporatism to a historical problem on the level of witch burning, fully conquered but useful as a historical reference to form a contemporary insult against the other side.

    As a result, and armed with partisan bête noires that bear no resemblance to any really existing threat, hardly anyone who is politically engaged and active is fully aware that there is nothing particularly new about what is called the Great Reset. It is a corporatist model – a combination of the worst of capitalism and socialism without limits – of privileging the elite at the expense of the many, which is why these historical works by Reimann and Flynn seem so familiar to us today.

    And yet, for some strange reason, the tactile reality of fascism in practice – not the insult but the historical system – is hardly known either in popular or academic culture. That makes it all the easier to reimplement such a system in our time.

    [Here is an especially interesting and thoughtful comment on the article …]

    Interesting that when you think about control of media, in the good old days when there was a very material cost of production and distribution of media, then that relationship lent itself to the need to organize mass amounts of capital. Printing a newspaper was akin to running a steel mill. And as a result whenever there is mass amounts of capital needed for execution of an objective you have massive risk that that capital is used in a way that results in loss. And because of that you have the formation of administrative oversight of that capital. The corporation. In such a system, state has the ability to regulate the use of that capital and ergo can exert control over the individuals who have the risk of loss associated with that capital (and the equally important corrolary, the benefit of the profit from that capital ). That is why what we call the “main stream media” has been reduced to nothing other than lapdogs of the state. These large media conglomerates are so because they are legacies of the past model when production and distribution of the medium was extremely capital intensive. The control could be exerted under threat of loss of the capital.

    Enter the Internet. The cost of producing and distributing media has been reduced to close to zero. As a result, we have experienced the explosion of what is known as the alternative media space , Zero Hedge imo is one of the most important cornerstones of this new landscape. And the beautiful irony is because the cost is relatively close to zero (I’m exaggerating but on a relative basis it is), the state can not use the threat of risk of loss on that capital as a cudgel to coerce the owners of that capital to conform to its ideology and messaging. That is why there is no alternative media that pushes the party line or the regime line as it’s been come to be known.

    So what does the state do if it can’t use extortion as the cudgel because the target of extortion doesn’t have the massive amounts of capital at risk. It does what we have seen which is implement censorship strategy. Misinformation and disinformation are oreellian newspeak concepts invented by the fascist state to give it the tools to attack independent media when the historical blunt instrument of threat of financial loss of the profit earned from the rents on massive capital needed to produce and distribute media no longer exists.

    They do however still have targets that deploy massive capital to distribute which are the ghettos as matt drudge so prohetically called them: Google, Facebook, Instagram, what was Twitter (if you think x is not a ghetto you have another thing coming ). These platforms have massive capital at risk and as such are very susceptible to the tried and true state extortion strategy, Zuckerberg likes his 300mm yacht and you can bet your grandmother that he will do whatever he needs to do to keep it.

    Also this is why you see the debanking of alternative media. Another first derivative of state control. The state could certainly make PayPals and JP Morgans lives more uncomfortable if it wanted to, but cutting off the banking services to the alternative media sources certainly would be appreciatwd by the fuhrer (whoever that actually is in the USA at the moment because it ain’t that corpse we have to call president )!

    But despite that, there is hope. And there is more than hope because de facto you are reading this and the Internet enables the almost costless disemination of ideas in a way that , to turn a phrase , allows the truth to get its pants on and catch up to a lie before it makes its way around the world. I hope it catches it.

    1. ” And there is more than hope because de facto you are reading this ”

       Does this guy really think there is any hope that anyone actually read this that far? I TL;DR’ed it four words in.

       1. When I want to read a book, I use Kindle Unlimited.

11. The desire for electric hypercars is already dwindling. Rimac CEO Mate Rimac said this week that buyers at the high end of the market want to differentiate themselves as EVs go mainstream. They want combustion engines and an analog feel, not what the masses buy.

    Mate noted during this week’s Financial Times Future of the Car Summit that a lot has changed since Rimac began developing the Nevera around 2017. While EV sales are slowing, consumers around the world have access to far more affordable options than they did a few years ago.

    Governments have imposed strict regulations to spur EV adoption, and several automakers have already pledged to sell only EVs by a specific date. But some are open to altering those plans. Those forces are “pushing stuff on us that we don’t want,” and people are “a little bit repulsed by it,” Mate said, leading to a decline in demand for high-end EVs that’s affecting his brand.

    The Nevera hypercar is still for sale. The company has already delivered more than 50 cars to customers, but it had plans to produce 150 in total.

    Falling demand and a shift in consumer trends mean that a Nevera successor might have some form of combustion power, Rimac suggests.

    “Rimac isn’t exclusively electric; it’s doing whatever is most exciting at the time,” he said.

    A pure EV won’t cut it, but a potent hybrid might, which might be one reason the Bugatti Chiron successor is getting that wild V-16 hybrid engine. Mate revealed in 2022 that two years before merging with Bugatti, Rimac had already started developing a combustion engine. The writing was on the wall.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/rimac-ceo-says-high-end-buyers-don-t-want-electric-hypercars-anymore/ar-BB1m3dWH

    1. “Governments have imposed strict regulations to spur EV adoption”

       Show me the regulation that requires a heated EV charger in every driveway, or every 50 miles on every major road. Oh, they’re not coming at it from that end, are they.

    2. Nevera

       In Spanish a nevera is an ice box, one of those old time fridges without refrigerant

12. Last week I told you that Pauillac-based fifth-growth Château Batailley released 2023 at an 11.9% reduction on the price of the 2022 vintage. After posting last week’s video, I woke up to the news that Château Léoville Las Cases, a second growth located in St-Julien, had dropped prices for their 2023 by 40% and that Pauillac-based fifth growth Château Pontet-Canet dropped prices by 27%. Then as the week wore on, we saw first growth Château Lafite Rothschild in Pauillac drop prices 31.7%, their second wine Carruades de Lafite drop 19.4%, Château L’Évangile in Pomerol drop by 30.6%, Château Talbot in St-Julien drop by 20.1%, and yesterday first growth Château Mouton Rothschild in Pauillac dropped prices by more than a third over 2022. All in all, these are the best release prices buyers have seen since 2019. Our bordeaux specialist James Lawther MW just came out with his first scores today to assist with your buying. Meanwhile Nick Martin of the wine-collection management platform Wine Owners has been keeping our forum updated with price v score comparisons to show our members which wines are the best-value buys.

    If you’re thinking that price cuts this deep must mean something isn’t up to snuff, that’s not how en primeur works! En primeur is a game of supply and demand. If quality is poor but demand is there, prices still go up. If quality is good and demand isn’t there, prices still go down. It’s a market rebalancing act. What’s happened in the last few years is that prices for premium bordeaux have gone up so much that the market stopped buying. Then prices on the secondary market began to decrease to below the initial release price … In response, producers have slashed their prices to rebalance in the hope of reinvigorating the market.

    https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/bordeaux-price-cuts-hail-frost-and-drought-damage-europe-turkiyes-threatening-taxes

    1. That stuff is crap….doesn’t have the proper metal screw caps!

       1. ‘It’s a market rebalancing act. What’s happened in the last few years is that prices for premium bordeaux have gone up so much that the market stopped buying. Then prices on the secondary market began to decrease to below the initial release price … In response, producers have slashed their prices to rebalance in the hope of reinvigorating the market’

          Mean old Mister Market always shows up at the worst time.

13. Roughly one in 37 homes are now considered seriously underwater in the US and that share is much higher across a swath of southern states, according to data out Thursday.

    Nationally, 2.7% of homes carried loan balances at least 25% more than their market value in the first few months of the year. That’s up from 2.6% in the previous quarter, according to the first-quarter 2024 US Home Equity & Underwater Report from ATTOM, a real estate data firm.

    During the pandemic, government stimulus and rising property prices were a huge boon to homeowners, but higher interest rates meant to curb inflation may be finally be helping to cool the housing market.

    Several southern states saw shares of seriously underwater homes grow more than the rest of the country. Kentucky’s share jumped to 8.3% in the first few months of the year from 6.3% in the previous quarter. West Virginia’s share rose to 5.4% from 4.4% over the same period, while Oklahoma climbed to 6.1% from 5.5%, and Arkansas went up to 5.7% from 5.2%.

    The states with the biggest increase in number of seriously underwater homes are also in the south. Kentucky is in first place with a year-over-year jump of more than 20,500 homes – nearly twice as many as second-place Mississippi and Oklahoma, coming in third.

    Among metro areas with a population of at least 500,000, Baton Rouge, La. had the largest share of seriously underwater mortgages in the first quarter, with 13.4%. Neighboring New Orleans came in second with 7.3%, followed by Jackson, Miss., and Little Rock, Ark., with 6.5% and 6%, respectively. Syracuse, NY came in fifth, with 5.6% of homes seriously underwater.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/seriously-underwater-home-mortgages-tick-040100261.html

    1. With plans in the works to help homeowners liberate equity, you can expect undewaterness to grow in the next leg of housing bubble collapse.

       1. Financial Times
          Opinion On Wall Street
          The mortgage reform that could unleash the next big US stimulus
          Freddie Mac wants to enter the secondary home equity loan market in a win-win for the government, Wall Street and consumers
          Meredith Whitney
          Homes in California
          In 2007, just before the financial crisis, there was more than $700bn in home equity loans outstanding. Today, there is roughly $350bn
          Meredith Whitney May 3 2024
          Jump to comments section
          The writer is chief executive of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group

          What if I told you there could be an unprecedented stimulus injection into the US economy that will cost the government nothing and add not $1 to the national deficit? As early as this summer, a proposed move could begin to unleash almost $1tn into consumers’ wallets. By the autumn, it could be on its way to $2tn.

          Last month, the government-sponsored mortgage finance agency Freddie Mac filed a proposal with its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to enter into the secondary mortgage market, otherwise known as home equity loans. This was a smart move by Freddie, and the FHFA will do a lot of good by approving it. Despite the more than $32tn in equity on homeowner balance sheets, very little of it has been tapped through home equity loans.
          …

          1. “very little of it has been tapped”

             The way this entire article is written, they think that my home equity belongs to them, and they can just tap into it at any time they need it. F them.

    2. 2.7% of homes carried loan balances at least 25% more than their market value

       I’m trying to figure out how this is possible. Even at the height of cash-out and HELOC, you weren’t approved for more than the appraised value. You might get that high with a 120% LTV improvement loan or a neg-am, but I don’t know if those loans are still offered.

       All I can think is that someone bought the house pre-2018, cashed out to the max during the 2022 frenzy, and then the value dropped in the past two years.

       1. ‘All I can think is that someone bought the house pre-2018, cashed out to the max during the 2022 frenzy, and then the value dropped’

          Have cash-out refi’s caused a problem before?

14. It might be the same Business Insider story already posted, but the headline is more compelling…

    1. Home sellers are facing a summer from hell
       The age of insane bidding wars and desperate dealmaking is coming to an end.
       A house for sale melting in the summer sun
       Deliormanli/Getty, Olivier Verriest/Getty, Andrei Akushevich/Getty, Tyler Le/BI
       James is a senior real estate reporter on Business Insider’s
       Discourse team. He focuses primarily on the national housing market, among other topics.
       …
       James Rodriguez
       May 8, 2024, 3:27 AM PDT

       The past few years were very good to people who decided to sell their homes. The massive relocation shuffle meant most homes hitting the market were the subject of bidding wars. Rich baby boomers jumped in with all-cash offers, and sellers scored huge windfalls as weary buyers pushed prices to new heights. There was no question who had the upper hand.

       Now, sellers’ fortunes are changing. Home prices are still rising, at a modest pace, around most of the country, but gone are the days of throwing up a for-sale sign and waiting for the feeding frenzy to begin. As buyers’ options slowly increase, sellers may have to slash asking prices or wait longer for a viable offer to come along. Today’s home shoppers aren’t so willing to pass on inspections or give up other contingency rights to expedite a sale, either. Unlike their predecessors at the height of the pandemic, buyers can now afford to kick the tires before jumping into a deal.

       Most painfully, mortgage rates have spiked to 7% from their record lows of less than 3% in 2021, which has not only deterred prospective buyers but also changed the calculus for many sellers. Since most people have to turn around and buy another property to live in, even the ones who profit handsomely off a sale are finding it hard to upgrade their digs, given the increased borrowing costs. It’s shaping up to be a cruel summer for sellers who aren’t ready to come to terms with this new reality.

       Of course, it could always be worse.
       …
       https://www.businessinsider.com/home-sellers-summer-disappointment-mortgage-rates-house-prices-real-estate-2024-5

       1. Maybe Microsoft blunted the edge on the headline for polite company?

          Bravo, James!

       2. “Home prices are still rising, at a modest pace, around most of the country, …”

          Like in Austin?

          1. Austin Homepage
             Mar 4, 2024 –
             News
             🏠 Charted: Luxury home prices in decline
             Sami Sparber,
             Asher Price

             Data: Redfin; Note: Luxury homes are in the top 5% by metro-area market value, while non-luxury homes are in the 35th to 65th percentile; Chart: Axios Visuals

             Austin saw the biggest decline nationally in the sales price of luxury homes, according to the latest Redfin data.

             Why it matters: Just as the giddy highs of the pandemic housing market touched everyone in town, apparently the decline is, too.

             Zoom in: The typical Austin-area luxury home sold for $1.69 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, an 8.6% year-over-year drop, per Redfin.

             Worth mentioning: The Redfin report defined luxury homes as those estimated to be in the top 5% of their respective metro area based on market value.

             Also: Nationally, the total number of luxury listings increased most in Austin — 44.5% year over year — as a glut of houses stuck around the buyers’ market.

             The big picture: Wealthy home shoppers, especially those paying with cash, are making up a growing share of the U.S. housing market, Axios’ Sami Sparber reports.
             …
             https://www.axios.com/local/austin/2024/03/04/austin-luxury-home-prices-decline

             1. *Wealthy home shoppers, especially those paying with cash, are making up a growing share of the U.S. housing market…”

                Makes sense after 7%+ mortgage rates shot the legs out from under debt-reliant buyers.

       3. At least it was cheaper than renting.

15. “Facism”
    To me the Powers that Be right now are facism on steroids. Their Communist narratives are just a big fraud to lure people into their narratives that they are seeking equity.
    Its a pre. planned warfare of a partnership between Mega Corporations , Rich Elites, and other Entities, and Governments of the World. Its a power grab of the likes we have never seen before.
    And its not like they aren’t vocal about their vision of a One World Order they want to bring about.
    If anything they are double downing on their insanity and intent to force their agendas.
    Communism is not their end game intent IMHO. Its facism or brute forced power of these psychopaths.
    Just listen to them talk and watch what they do and its clear what their end game intent is.
    Its really insulting how dismissive they are of humans and how they want total control and enslavement.
    Their true colors are so overt now.

16. Are gas prices climbing north of $5 in your area? Hitting the road is becoming a cost burden.

    1. Is gasoline ‘over $7 now’ in California?
       Avatar photo by Tom Kertscher / Wisconsin Watch May 6th, 2024
       Why you can trust Wisconsin Watch
       Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

       No.

       The average price of regular unleaded gasoline in California was $5.36 on May 1, 2024, the highest nationally, according to GasBuddy.com.
       …
       https://wisconsinwatch.org/2024/05/gasoline-gas-price-trump-california-wisconsin-biden-cost/

    2. In the Carolina’s and Georgia where I’ve been traveling lately high Octane is $3.75 to $4.00ish. Low is $3.20 to $3.50. Been here a while. I saw one of the large oil companies CEO on fox saying as a country we’ve never pumped this much oil in the history of the U.S. It should be lower….I think geo polical has a lot to do with it. He also said usa demand is at a record…..I believe it…..airports and highways are full.

    3. I paid $3.13 yesterday

       1. We’re at $5.20 for premium.

17. Sounds like a swell buy

    https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/harris-county/east-houston-airbnb-shootout/285-15430266-b437-49f3-a20b-fcc7e6345fe6

    1. The good news is best buy has been almost giving away air fryers at wayyy less than half price for months

       https://www.bestbuy.com/site/bella-pro-series-9-qt-digital-air-fryer-with-dual-flex-basket-stainless-steel/6461452.p?skuId=6461452

    2. All too often they get away before police arrive, however, here is one where the police arrived right as the shot was fired and immediately terminated the perp. This happened here recently and, in fact, is a constant issue here. For some reason the libtard women (and men) don’t seem to learn from it. There are way too many murder houses on my way anywhere now and it’s always the same story. The victims thought it would be hip to get involved romantically or do some sort of sketchy ‘business’ with them.

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7wdnqviYvs

       1. Did that perp actually miss the woman from less than 2 feet away? She doesn’t appear to be hit.

          1. Yeah, Rastus must’ve been high; imagine that?

          2. She was hit and requires extensive facial reconstruction surgery. The restraining order didn’t work out.

       2. “All too often they get away before police arrive…”

          There’s a great video from Florida of a tatted white punk attempting to car jack someone, but the someone was an off-duty detective who shot a few rounds in him, and then quickly hand cuffs him. He bleeds out while his girlfriend is frantically bleating, “that’s muh baby daddy!” Fentanyl would have been painless.

18. 2 things;

    Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has announced a global withdrawal of its Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, known as Vaxzevria, after acknowledging in court that the vaccine could cause rare but serious side effects.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/05/astrazeneca-announces-worldwide-withdrawal-covid-19-vaccine/

    was picked by the Republican Party of Florida on Wednesday night as one of the state’s at-large delegates to the Republican National Convention,

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/barron-trump-florida-delegate-republican-national-convention-rcna151388

    1. Safe and effective!

       1. Take the jab, eat your free donut, get turbo cancer.

    2. Not as big a deal as people are making out. Nobody is buying the product, so they stopped selling the product. This is standard issue.

       1. It’s Over
          Russell Brand

          May 9, 2024

          So, it’s happened. AstraZeneca withdraws Covid vaccine worldwide, months after admitting to blood clots.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y34NWEf0Hd4

          16 minutes.

          1. They Are Deleting Evidence, But We Kept The Receipt’s
             WE GOT A PROBLEM

             3 hours ago

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

             19 minutes.

             1. Arnold sums it all up:

                “Screw your freedom!”

19. Seems reasonable
    A group of migrants are refusing to leave an encampment in Denver until the city meets a list of 13 demands.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/denver-migrants-send-list-of-13-demands-to-mayor/ar-BB1m6nBY?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=60023ad5eb114595d389e1254eec9a4e&ei=16

    1. The article has 148 likes from MSNBC readers. I wonder if this is a typical number of likes, or if the article is being ratio’ed. Comments are conveniently turned off.

    2. Buy your own culturally appropriate ingredients. Masa and limes are cheap, just be sure to pay your SSN taxes first.

       1. FWIW, Venezuelans don’t eat tortillas

    3. You have no idea how bad it is here unless you live here. It’s certainly been a Fundamental Transformation, and none of it in a good way.

       Denver is a failed city.

       1. The mayor announced a $500M plan to break the downtown doom loop. That sounds like a lot of grift.

20. ‘The further and further we get from the peak of the market,’ Peterson told me, ‘the harder it is to deny what’s happened’

    So yer saying realtors are a lion Eric?

21. ‘said he is seeing sellers waiting to sell their home until more buyers enter the market. With many buyers tight on cash as they try to put as much into a down payment as possible, Scott said buying a fixer upper is becoming less and less likely. He said this leads to sellers needing to get their homes pre-inspected and any major repairs completed before putting their homes on the market. Sellers are also having to think more about what they are willing to sell their house for as bidding wars are largely over. This is causing homes to sell just below the listing price, rather than a bidding war driving the price above listing’

    That may be Josh, but Skagit County is still a red hotcakes sellers market.

22. ‘A stalled re-development project along Dorchester’s Port Norfolk peninsula that would bring new housing and a modern marina to the neighborhood took a new turn this week when one of the development partners filed for bankruptcy to stave off a public auction of the land that was set for Tuesday…filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just hours before the Paul Saperstein Company was to begin auctioning off the property to bidders on the waterfront site. Rise Together, a co-developer on the project, filed suit in Suffolk Superior Court against CPC Ericsson in February for failure to pay a Connecticut-based consultant, who had previously filed suit against Rise Together last year. The two companies have plans to build four buildings to include 120 residential units, office space, and a marina on the roughly 3.6 acres on four lots. The project — known as Neponset Wharf— was approved by the Boston Planning and Development Agency in Jan. 2022’

    ‘failure to pay a Connecticut-based consultant, who had previously filed suit against Rise Together last year’

    Time wise, this was a face plant.

23. ‘Kind of backs up my theory that the further the distance between the money and the pocket it came from, the worse the decisions are made about how to spend it’

    This ladies and gentlemen is why it’s a good thing everybody put 20% down.

    1. Kind of backs up my theory that the further the distance between the money and the pocket it came from, the worse the decisions are made about how to spend it’
       Reminds me of my money (my taxes) and the Govt.

24. ‘Together, the group of insolvent SID-affiliated corporations own more than 600 rental properties in housing markets across the province with lower average costs of living, including Timmins, Sudbury and the Sault — making it ‘one of the largest holders of residential real estate in Ontario’

    All those precious igloos. In K-da no less. They should be rich beyond their dreams, yet they are broke?

25. ‘As of the end of 2023, the number of unsold residential units in Greater Bangkok totalled 209,894 units worth 1.17 trillion baht, up 13.7% and 26.7% respectively from 2022, according to REIC…said the company would put land purchases on hold for three years and freeze new project launches this year. ‘Buying new land leads to holding costs if we don’t have plans to develop projects in the near term,’ he said. ‘Even when a project is completed and there are unsold units remaining, those units are subject to the land and building tax’

    Yer right Kajonsit, flog off those worthless airboxes to knife catchers before you start even more.

26. “she’s advising sellers there to price their homes conservatively and take care of big-ticket items, such as large repairs, before listing.”
    And don’t be expecting any love letters, either.

    1. Summer Camp?

       Is this a Summer Of Love kind of thing? Like Seattle 2020 with all the rapes and overdoses and assaults and illegal occupation of public and private property?

       Party on, Wayne.

27. a few observations about the leasing of these battered towers come to mind. Selling for pennies on the dollar from the prices of just three years ago,
    Pennies on the dollar and I think they may have still over paid. I gotta wonder being that the properties are in CA if these properties will end up having negative value and actually be given away.

28. Some Sellers Offering Generous Price Reductions (York Region Real Estate Market Update)
    Team Sessa Real Estate

    1 hour ago VAUGHAN

    In this episode we take a look at the current Vaughan Home Prices, Richmond Hill Home Prices & Markham Home Prices and real estate market trends for week ending May 1, 2024. We discuss some of the crazy price reductions we’re seeing in the market.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eP7WbG4zM4

    12:21.

29. Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names
    https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/09/us/shenandoah-county-confederate-school-names-reaj/index.html

30. Would it be considered fraudulent if Blackstone grossly mislead investors about the value of its BREIT?

    1. Blackstone REIT in media cross hairs over valuation
       Blackstone California
       Sketchy math dogs private market investments sold to retail investors.
       May 8, 2024
       By Bruce Kelly

       This column for years has been writing about the bedeviling, bewitching math behind nontraded real estate investment trusts and other illiquid investment products that financial advisors sell to their clients.

       Such products are difficult to understand because they don’t trade every day on an exchange but instead often rely on internally hired appraisal teams to determine a value at the end of the month. They also often come with high or complex fees and commissions that benefit the product manager and the brokers who sell for them.

       Investors’ recent rush to pull billions in cash from the illiquid $59 billion Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust Inc. – or BREIT – is the latest event in a 20-year history of retail nontraded REITs that underscores the need to question what these products are actually worth and who should buy them.

       Valuations for nontraded REITs in the past, particularly during and after the 2008 credit crisis, have been so embarrassingly bad the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. in 2016 actually changed industry rules so clients had a truer picture on their account statements of what an illiquid REIT may actually be worth. Until then, many nontraded REIT prices valuations had been frozen for years at $10 per share, the price at which they were sold, regardless of the ups and downs of the real estate markets.

       A number of REIT executives for years defended the $10 per share valuation method, often citing the fact that their or their friends’ grandmothers didn’t like seeing investments jump up and down on account statements. Such swings made the old ladies nervous.

       In the second half of 2022, the questions about nontraded REIT valuations returned. Investors were increasingly fearful of rising interest rates and the falling commercial real estate market, and BREIT and other real estate funds said they temporarily turned away some clients who wanted to pull money from their funds.
       …
       https://www.investmentnews.com/alternatives/opinion/on-advice/blackstone-reit-in-media-cross-hairs-over-valuation-253106

    2. Financial Times
       Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust
       Blackstone’s liability to University of California doubles on property fund losses
       Breit has failed to deliver return promised to university in exchange for shoring up real estate fund
       Sather Gate on the University of California at Berkeley campus
       Blackstone offered the University of California an 11.25% annual return to secure its $4.5bn investment in the struggling Breit
       Antoine Gara in New York
       February 26 2024
       Blackstone owes the University of California twice as much as it did last quarter as part of a complex transaction to shore up its flagship real estate fund.

       The world’s largest alternative asset manager promised UC an 11.25 per cent annual return from the property fund, called Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, or Breit, as part of a deal to draw $4.5bn in new investment. But as the fund lost value last year, Blackstone’s liability to UC has grown to $560mn.

       It underscores the financial risk Blackstone assumed to draw UC’s investment by promising high returns on property investments hit by rising interest rates.

       In late December 2022 and January 2023, Blackstone received a $4.5bn investment from UC that helped Breit meet a spate of redemption requests from other investors and shore up its liquidity. The new cash helped Breit avert a fire sale to meet the requests.

       To entice UC, Blackstone made a promise that Breit would achieve 11.25 per cent annualised returns over six years. The US private capital group pledged $1.1bn in Breit shares it owned to guarantee some of those returns. Since the UC investment, Breit’s redemption requests have dropped by about 80 per cent.

       But Blackstone has had to record a liability to UC based on how far Breit has fallen below its return promises. In the fourth quarter, Blackstone more than doubled its liability to UC, raising it from $260mn at the end of the third quarter to $560mn by the end of 2023, according to a securities filing.

       Breit recorded a 0.5 per cent loss in 2023, its first annual loss since its launch in 2017, putting Blackstone significantly behind on its promised return. Breit’s value fell as Blackstone marked down some property investments. In addition, some interest rate hedges that had gained substantially in value lost ground amid rising expectations of interest rate cuts from the US Federal Reserve.

       The annual losses in turn caused Blackstone’s liability to UC to increase. Though it is an accounting entry and no cash or assets are changing hands, the liability reflects the increased risk Blackstone may eventually have to forfeit some Breit shares it owns to the California-based endowment. If Breit’s performance soars in coming years, the liability could reverse or even turn into an asset.
       …

       1. “Blackstone offered the University of California an 11.25% annual return to secure its $4.5bn investment in the struggling Breit”

          What kind of idiots would trust that kind of crazy offer?

    3. Yahoo Finance
       Collins becomes latest Fed official to warn rates will likely stay higher for longer
       Jennifer Schonberger
       Wed, May 8, 2024 at 8:45 AM PDT·4 min read

       Boston Fed president Susan Collins said Wednesday it will take longer “than previously thought” to bring inflation down, becoming the latest policymaker to make it clear that rates need to stay at their current levels.

       “The recent data lead me to believe this will take more time than previously thought,” Collins said in a speech at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “There is no pre-set path for policy.”

       Collins believes that improvements in supply chains that helped cool inflation quickly last year may not continue this year, and that slower economic growth will be needed to bring down demand and therefore inflation.
       …
       https://finance.yahoo.com/news/collins-becomes-latest-fed-official-to-warn-rates-will-likely-stay-higher-for-longer-154507285.html

    4. The University of California Is Bailing Out Private Equity Giant Blackstone
       By Matthew Cunningham-Cook

       Amid a housing crisis that is leaving thousands of its students and employees homeless, the University of California is bailing out private equity behemoth Blackstone, siphoning billions of dollars to privatized student housing and corporate landlords.

       As the world’s largest private equity firm faces potential losses from a cloudy real estate market, its executives blocked jittery investors from withdrawing their money from one of its real estate funds, while insisting that rent increases and evictions will bolster returns.

       Now, the Blackstone Group’s real estate investment trust has received a multibillion-dollar bailout from a source whose employees and students are already suffering through the housing crisis: California’s public university system.

       Just months after Blackstone’s real estate investment trust purchased America’s largest owner of private student housing, the same trust received a $4.5 billion infusion from the University of California’s Board of Regents, two of whom have close ties to the company. The investment rewards the financial firm only a few years after the company and its executives spent $5.6 million to kill California ballot initiatives that would have expanded rent control in the state.

       Blackstone, a firm that’s valued at $111 billion and manages $991 billion in assets, also faces broader headwinds in its real estate sector. The profits that the firm distributes to shareholders plunged 36 percent last year, driven by real estate losses.

       Effectively, University of California (UC) is funneling cash into privatized student housing and corporate landlords — doubling down on a controversial investment strategy that comes with a massive layer of fees and Wall Street profits — instead of doing its part to address a growing housing crisis, one that affects its students and employees.

       In 2021, 5 percent of UC students, or more than fourteen thousand, experienced homelessness, while the university’s unions report that many of their mostly blue-collar members simply cannot make ends meet due to California’s spiraling cost of rental housing.

       The latest episode revolves around the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, or BREIT. In August 2022, BREIT purchased 69 percent of American Campus Communities (ACC), the country’s largest student housing company, in a $12.8 billion deal. ACC’s business model is built around rent revenues; in January 2022 the company’s CEO boasted that it was “experiencing the most substantial fundamental tailwinds we’ve seen in many years” thanks in part to soaring rents.

       ACC has apartments at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Irvine.

       Five months after this acquisition, the UC Regents pumped $4.5 billion into BREIT. Around the same time, Blackstone spent more than $150,000 in the final quarter of 2022 on lobbying UC for more investment dollars, doubling the amount it spent the previous quarter.

       In December, Nadeem Meghji, Blackstone’s head of real estate for the Americas, told CNBC that UC’s unprecedented bailout of BREIT “changed the narrative” around the fund.

       That same month, Blackstone began blocking redemptions to investors, after it received an influx of redemption requests. But that didn’t stop Blackstone from distributing to itself more than $200 million in management fees in the fourth quarter of 2022, a Lever review of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings show. Between management and performance fees, Blackstone extracted more than $1.5 billion in fees from the $50 billion fund in 2022.
       …
       https://jacobin.com/2023/04/university-of-california-private-equity-blackstone-corporate-real-estate-investment

31. Is Wall Street way ahead of itself with pricing in future rate cuts destined as a response to the recession that has yet to happen?

    1. ECONOMY
       A ‘proper’ economic downturn is looming, which could trigger steep rate cuts as soon as this year, economist says
       Filip De Mott May 7, 2024, 2:23 PM ET
       In this photo taken while zooming with a slow shutter speed Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference about the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy at the Federal Reserve, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, in Washington.
       Alex Brandon/AP Photo

       Economist Frances Donald told Bloomberg TV that a sharper Fed pivot is ahead.

       With a slowdown in the US labor market, two negative quarters of growth could hit at the end of the year.
       When that happens, the central bank will have to ease quickly and beyond what markets expect.
       …
       https://www.businessinsider.com/recession-downturn-outlook-us-economy-fed-pivot-interest-rate-cuts-2024-5

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