I Lost Everything I Ever Made While I Was Working, How Could I Have Been So Stupid?
A report from the Wall Street Journal. “Gary and Karen Steppe listed a condo in Indialantic, Fla., in February for $294,900. They expected the two-bedroom vacation home, which is in an oceanside town near Melbourne Beach, to sell quickly. But the couple initially received no bids. One reason: A rising number of homeowners in the area were also looking to sell. With more properties on the market, ‘buyers didn’t have that fear of missing out like they did when the inventory was less,’ Gary Steppe said. The Steppes cut the price, then accepted an offer in April for about $275,000. ‘I wish I had…sold it two years ago,’ when similar condos were selling for higher prices, he said.”
“Only five of the 50 biggest markets posted year-over-year price declines in March, according to data provider Intercontinental Exchange, and four of them were in Texas or Florida: Austin, Texas; North Port, Fla.; Cape Coral, Fla.; and San Antonio. Ben Pfeiffer has cut the listing price on a six-bedroom house in San Antonio 16 times since putting it on the market in October. Due to mortgage rates, property tax and insurance costs and overall inflation, ‘your money doesn’t go as far to buy a house,’ he said. ‘My expectation is that I’m going to keep lowering the price until I get a buyer.'”
Market Watch. “Builder confidence plunged in May, as they see home-buying activity wane in the face of high mortgage rates. Confidence fell to the lowest level since January. Builders are ramping up incentives and cutting prices to keep buyers interested. About 25% of builders cut prices in May, the NAHB said, up from 22% in April. The average price cut was 6%. More builders were using sales incentives — other than price cuts — to improve sales in May, up to 59% from 57%. ‘A lack of progress on reducing inflation pushed long-term interest rates higher in the first quarter and this is acting as a drag on builder sentiment,’ Robert Dietz, chief economist at the NAHB, said in a statement. ‘The last leg in the inflation fight is to reduce shelter inflation, and this can only occur if builders are able to construct more attainable, affordable housing.'”
The Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio. “At the urging of former Copley High School basketball coach Mark Dente, a West Akron man took out 20 loans that totaled nearly $500,000. He signed them over to AEM Services LLC, Dente’s real estate investment company. For three years, Dente made the payments on the loans and the man was able to withdraw funds. That stopped in April 2022 when Dente’s business began spiraling, with talks of it being a Ponzi scheme.”
“‘What about all these damn loans?’ the man asked Dente. He said Dente responded, ‘None of them are in my name.’ ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ the man said. The man, who is 61, took $200,000 from his retirement funds to repay what was still owed on the loans. He returned to work to replace his lost retirement money. The man, who asked that his name not be used, is among 800 people who invested $220 million with Dente and his company, thinking it was being used to buy, renovate and sell homes. Instead, the money was treated by Dente and his associates as a ‘personal slush fund,’ attorneys allege in court records.”
“A Lorain County man had invested in real estate before when he heard about Dente and his company about three years ago. When he invested in the short-term notes, he borrowed $200,000 against his home, which was paid off at the time. He started getting suspicious in late 2021 and early 2022 when he realized he wasn’t earning what was promised on his investments. He said he never got back any of the $388,000 he invested. He also had to pay off what he borrowed against his home. ‘I paid for my home and paid for half again,’ he said.”
“This turn of events was made worse by the fact that this was the second time he’d lost money to a scheme like this. ‘When you add up what I lost, I lost everything I ever made while I was working,’ said the man, who’s in his 60s. ‘I lived my life out of a suitcase to make a better living. In the end, it got me nothing. I was taken by shady people.’ He works in the technology business and had hoped to be retired by this point in his life. Instead, he’s still working and isn’t sure when he can retire. ‘There’s been a whole lot of lost sleep,’ he said. He said he’s haunted by the question: ‘How could I have been so stupid?'”
Fox 4 Dallas-Fort Worth. “We hear about squatters in cities like New York and Los Angeles, but the problem is happening here in Texas as well. Terri Boyette moved to Mesquite for work and purchased a home in 2021. She hired a handyman but then had to leave town for a few weeks for a family emergency. She says the man broke into her home. ‘I called the police. They said, ‘How long has he been there?’ I said about two weeks. They said this is a civil matter,’ she told the committee. Boyette showed video of her home to the senators. While she tried to figure out how to evict the squatter, she says he sold her stuff.”
“‘This is burglary. This is breaking and entering,’ said State Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston). ‘He was selling your possessions on your front lawn. I am outraged. This should not happen in Texas, and it will never happen again after we get this bill passed.’ Boyette says the intruder was eventually arrested but just for the break-in. ‘He spent three days in jail. Now, he’s out walking around,’ Boyette said.”
The Santa Monica Daily Press in California. “It’s an odd location for the City of Los Angeles to have spent nearly $50 million to purchase a brand new, five story luxury apartment building for the homeless. The neighborhood around 1654 West Florence Ave in South LA consists of empty, dilapidated storefronts and abandoned, crumbling apartments. The few local businesses consist of liquor stores, marijuana dispensaries, fast food franchises and auto body shops. The building itself is located less than half a mile from the liquor store where the Rodney King riots broke out in 1992. The boulevard never recovered. The area median income is 35% below the City as a whole. It was by far the highest sale price in the neighborhood’s history. The location and price are the first of many questions about the property.”
“The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) purchased the building in March 2022. More than two years later not a single homeless person has moved in. It is completely vacant. The purchase was made possible through Project Homekey, part of the 2020 federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. According to analyses of publicly available documents, over the past four years HACLA spent more than $810 million to acquire approximately 2,750 apartments and motel and hotel rooms in 38 new and existing multifamily residential buildings. Assisted by three rounds of Project Homekey funding, HACLA’s goal was to get as many people housed as possible, in as short a period of time as possible.”
“There are other examples in HACLA’s Homekey portfolio. In late 2015, a real estate investment and development firm started work on a 101-unit luxury apartment building at 21121 Vanowen Street. On September 15, 2015 the company paid $720,000 for what was then an empty lot. The building is in a more sought after neighborhood than 1654 West Florence. Applying the higher end estimated construction costs of $400/sq ft the total cost of development for the 97,479 square foot building was just under $39 million. On October 17, 2022 HACLA purchased it for $55.2 million for a profit of $16.2 million, or 42%, for the firm.”
From Truthout. “Just five kilometers from where I live, to the east of Puebla City, activists, locals and La Jornada newspaper have accused the real estate industry of paying people to start nine recent fires in the La Calera eucalyptus forest. Locals told La Jornada they saw men with gasoline drums entering the area, and that getting rid of trees could force a change in land use and a loss of protected status. The fires are happening right after locals and activists rejected municipal plans to increase the housing density in the area from 36 to 200 houses per hectare. Similarly, on March 27, activists closed a road to denounce what they say were intentionally set forest fires to the east of Mexico City allegedly caused by real estate companies seeking to build in the area.”
“Companies also ‘look for legal loopholes,’ said Mexican researcher and doctor of urban land management Melissa Schumacher Gonzalez, in an interview with Truthout. She said a core tactic was divide and conquer, in which developers, ‘buy land, and if someone doesn’t want to sell, they isolate them, cut off their access to the street, to force them to sell.’ Real estate has ‘become an easy way to get rich,’ she said. The value of property per square meters has multiplied around tenfold in a decade, making speculation very profitable, and affording those companies the power and means to buy off authorities.”
“‘The government is a mafia. There’s little difference between it, the narcos, and the companies. It’s basically a corporate narco state … where everything is merchandise and illegal actions are passed off as legal,’ Lila told Truthout.”
The Telegraph in the UK. “On Thursday I become a homeowner. It is a dream that I have achieved precociously, thanks to the generous support of my parents. But the joy (and relief) is accompanied by the knowledge that when I am handed the keys, I am placing a 40-year burden on my shoulders. If I never move again, I will pay off this mortgage in 2064, when I am 63. My 40-year mortgage might not quite be into my retirement but this is only because I am lucky enough to be a first-time buyer more than 10 years before the London average of 35, and because the idea of an early retirement is a fantasy. It doesn’t change the fact that the interest which will be added over those four decades is eye-watering. Once my five-year 3.99pc fixed term ends, my mortgage will revert to NatWest’s variable rate. If I don’t remortgage, current predictions show that I’d repay £489,266.76 – or £3.14 for every £1 borrowed – over the 40-year term.”
“Yet after talking to my mortgage broker, taking on the longest possible term was the obvious decision. Why wouldn’t I, I reasoned, when it will mean my monthly repayments are £400 less than the rent I was paying to live in a shared flat? Nothing is worse than paying rent and watching money effectively go down the drain. Even without a great sage to tell me what I’ll be doing in 10 years (or even in 10 minutes), the stability offered by being a homeowner overrides most of my concerns.”
From Politico. “Picture a far-right voter. That person is probably not an art student. Standing on the curb outside the Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam, a college for media, entertainment and technology in the center of Rotterdam, for a cigarette between classes, young students Chess and Terence complained that the Netherlands is receiving too many of Europe’s refugees. Despite their young age and trendy appearances, Chess van Leeuwen and 19-year-old Terence Voorn, from the nearby city of Dordrecht, fear that their country is deteriorating. The young men ping-ponged worries back and forth: Their concern that they wouldn’t be able to leave their parents’ home; complaints of insecurity and nuisance at Ter Apel, which houses the country’s overcrowded reception center for asylum seekers; expensive environmental legislation; EU rule-making, which they said was ill-adapted to their country.”
“‘I’m not against refugees, not at all. But if it gets too much, in times of crisis, we have to think about ourselves,’ argued 20-year-old Van Leeuwen. Regardless of what else Geert Wilders stands for, ‘the Netherlands comes first for him,’ he said.”
“Across Europe, far right parties are advancing with support from young — and first time — voters. Despite being one of the EU’s wealthiest countries, the Netherlands’ shortage of affordable housing has become a key concern. Amid rising prices, many have an increasingly cynical outlook on life. Unlike their parents and grandparents, this generation feels less restricted by party loyalties, making them more of a wild card and therefore an attractive pool of new voters for anti-establishment candidates. ‘I’m really not racist, but when it comes to my own country, I think I should get priority access to a house,’ argued Van Leeuwen, who said house prices near the seaside, where he grew up, run into the millions.”
ABC News in Australia. “Crime, high interest rates and the lack of government incentives are creating a perfect storm for the Alice Springs residential property market, according to an industry spokesperson. Lindsay Carey is the southern delegate for the Real Estate Institute of the Northern Territory and says the market had ‘seen better days.’ ‘The reality is that the supply versus the demand is certainly lopsided to the supply side,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s concerned about security. There’s a lot of people wanting to leave as they don’t feel safe.'”
“He said the bad press was also making it hard for the region to attract new people and, coupled with high interest rates, it was effecting potential buyers’ borrowing capacities. ‘We’ve seen a turn in the last 12 to 18 months of over 30 per cent less borrowing capacity to what they could have borrowed quite easily two or three years ago,’ Mr Carey said. ‘So the cheap money is gone and it’s definitely impacting what people are willing to spend or can afford to spend.'”
From Reuters. “A campaign by Chinese authorities to encourage people to replace their old apartments with new ones is attracting interest, but faces one major hurdle: the participants in the scheme are struggling to sell their current homes. ‘Some people have enquired about the campaign, but so far we haven’t had any successful transactions,’ said Qin Yi, a property agent in Shanghai. ‘The biggest problem is selling the second-hand properties.'”
“In the secondary market, the number of properties listed for sale was 20 times higher than the number of transactions in April, according to a survey of 14 cities by Zhuge Real Estate Data Research Centre. Listings were up 294% year-on-year in Shenzhen, and 39% in Shanghai, it said. Additionally, tens of millions of apartments are yet to be completed in China. ‘Sales have been falling off a cliff,’ says Ma Hong, senior analyst at GDDCE Research Institution in Shanghai, who estimates the swap programme will have a limited impact. ‘Very few people dare to buy a house.'”
“Some 96% of Chinese households already own at least one home. Before the market turned, the Chinese had for decades regarded apartments – especially the new, more modern ones – as the safest place to park their savings. A property agent in the tech hub of Shenzhen, who only gave his surname Zhou, said more than a dozen people have placed deposits, but that their homes ‘don’t seem to have sold yet.’ One executive at a Chinese developer, asking for anonymity due to the topic’s sensitivity, said their firm ‘had no interest in participating; because the second-hand market was ‘very bad.’ An executive from another developer described the swap programme as ‘meaningless.’ ‘Nobody is buying, so how do you sell to swap?’ the second developer said.”
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Silver hit $30 an ounce today.
Got fiat? LOLZ
Three months ago, gold was struggling around $2000 and suddenly $2300 is technical support. For those keeping score at home, gold has nearly doubled since 2018, outperforming the S&P.
How can that be, when gold is an inanimate physical metal, while the S&P 500 represents companies which are capably managed by seasoned professional executives, focused on delivering continual improvements in product quality and customer experience?
::: snort :::
I know you’re being sarcastic, but there’s a reason. Short version is that for the past few decades, the price of gold (in dollars) has been manipulated by Western paper markets, i.e. JP Morgan playing games with GLD and other markets.
Now that there’s more global instability and some global hyperinflation, citizens in other countries (India, China, Russia) and central banks want gold too. And they want the REAL stuff, not these digits on a computer screen. They are carting off 400-ounce bars by the literal truckload. The West is losing control.
You can call it China madness if you didn’t know. You think speculating in real-estate was bad, just wait and see what the Chinese can do. They are little, but 1.4 billions, and every one of them discovered the new “asset” to invest into after real-estate collapsed. People think it has to do with the dollar. No, it’s 1.4 billion little speculators.
HBB warning to readers: reuters is globalist scum media that peddles conspiracy theories, election lies and mis, mal and dis-informations.
I’m running late cuz the whole blog went down a couple of hours ago. Should be OK now.
The Santa Monica and Truthout articles are worth reading in full.
‘My 40-year mortgage might not quite be into my retirement but this is only because I am lucky enough to be a first-time buyer more than 10 years before the London average of 35, and because the idea of an early retirement is a fantasy. It doesn’t change the fact that the interest which will be added over those four decades is eye-watering. Once my five-year 3.99pc fixed term ends, my mortgage will revert to NatWest’s variable rate. If I don’t remortgage, current predictions show that I’d repay £489,266.76 – or £3.14 for every £1 borrowed – over the 40-year term’
Maddie, you are a winnah!
Banks collecting interest on money they loaned but do not have.
‘I wish I had…sold it two years ago,’ when similar condos were selling for higher prices, he said.”
Nothing more expensive than regret, Greedhead Gary.
Florida is finished
Hazardous heat engulfs Florida with feels-like temperatures reaching 115 degrees in Key West
https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/dangerous-heat-envelops-florida
When I was in the military in the tropics they used to issue the “wet bulb temperature,” which is your sweating evaporative temperature. When it was in the mid eighties our fatigues were drenched in sweat from head to toe.
Greedhead is an understatement. They bought the condo for $117,600 in December of 2017 and the HOAs are 478 a month.
and the HOAs are 478 a month.
Good move selling. I gotta believe when they do a full reserve cost analyst the HOA fee is going to double, at least.
The man, who asked that his name not be used, is among 800 people who invested $220 million with Dente and his company, thinking it was being used to buy, renovate and sell homes.
It would take a heart of stone to read about these housing speculator scum getting fleeced, and not laugh.
I can see why he didn’t want his name to be used.
his turn of events was made worse by the fact that this was the second time he’d lost money to a scheme like this.
I guess stupid didn’t hurt enough the first time and he had to relearn his lesson.
Right now, a realtor is lying to someone.
Van Halen – Right Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU7d2EHV_OQ
He said he never got back any of the $388,000 he invested. He also had to pay off what he borrowed against his home. ‘I paid for my home and paid for half again,’ he said.”
Cry me a river, speculator scum. Houses are meant to be lived in, not turned into speculative asset bubbles.
In the end, it got me nothing. I was taken by shady people.’
Your greed made you vulnerable, and you got vulnered good & hard, Speculator Boy.
For in Colorado, another massive govmint failure
The tanks that hold drinking water for nearly 140 residents in the Prairie View Ranch Water District are full of sludge that is so toxic that the State Water Quality Division has now brought in hazmat crews to dig them up and clean them out. 6 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvX7N5skU70
That’s way out on the prairie. Not sure where they get their water, but out west water rights are always a big deal.
“Across Europe, far right parties are advancing with support from young — and first time — voters. Despite being one of the EU’s wealthiest countries, the Netherlands’ shortage of affordable housing has become a key concern.
I expect we’ll see something similar play out in the United States, as growing numbers of Gen-Zs come to realize that “Our Democracy” serves only a corrupt and venal .1% in the financier oligarchy, at the expense of everyone else.
“Far right” is a communist globalist term to slur nationalists.
It is a testament to the times that a young citizen needs to clarify they are not a racist before they advocate for policies that benefit the citizenry. Clown world.
“Shortage of affordable housing”
Capitalism always steps in when pricing is a concern. Why can’t someone just build a home cheaper? Well, they can. But they’re not allowed. Our own local government dictates “building standards” and issues “permits” while banks finance these things over decades to fleece you.
The greatest threat to affordable housing is our neighbor politicians. Hopefully, they have dogs to walk at night.
From The Hill (5/15/2024):
“The North Carolina state Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to ban anyone from wearing masks in public, even for health reasons.
Republican supporters of the ban said it would help law enforcement crack down on protesters who wear masks. They say demonstrators are abusing COVID-19 pandemic-era practices to hide their identities following a wave of pro-Palestine protests nationwide and at North Carolina universities.
The bill goes even further and repeals an exception that’s been state law since the early stages of the pandemic that allows people to wear masks in public for health and safety reasons.”
Health and safety reasons, what a JOKE.
BTW there are still people wearing masks while driving alone in Denver, you see them every day.
Forcing people to wear masks. Forcing people not to wear masks. So confusing.
Masks are as effective against airborne viruses as putting up a chain link fence to keep out mosquitoes.
Supported by the party of Trust The Science™ that is in complete denial of the basic biological reality that there are only two genders, and only one of them can give birth.
“They’re not sending their best”
Unless that virus needs to latch onto a water droplet in order to travel, as SARSCov2 did. In which case the mosquito is going through that chain-link fence riding on a racquetball. About half of them get through.
But that’s REAL science, which is 90% nuance and gray area, and I know you guys aren’t into that.
Science is what we know, not what we make up.
Unless that virus needs to latch onto a water droplet in order to travel, as SARSCov2 did.
Where is your proof of this statement? I was in a conference call with an infectious disease expert at the local hospital here in early 2020, and he specifically said they didn’t know whether the [alleged] virus needed water droplets to spread or could travel on its own. Did the [alleged] virus not spread in dry climates?
But that’s REAL science, which is 90% nuance and gray area,
No, REAL science is about specific, concrete statements which can be proven or disproven. “Nuance and gray area” is pseudo-intellectual gobbledy-gook for “We don’t have a clue what we’re talking about.”
Did the [alleged] virus not spread in dry climates?
You do realize that people breathe out water droplets by the gazillion? Do people not drink water?
Nuance and gray area
Example of gray nuance: “About half of them get through.”
Example of black-and-white: “Masks don’t work,” implying that 100% of them get through, ever.
Who has the better clue?
Example of concrete statement: “This machine detects x chemical in water.”
Example of nuance: “This machine detects x chemical, but it can only calculate the concentration of x chemical if the concentration falls within a certain range, because that’s the only area of the spectrum where there is a linear relationship and we can use a standard.”
Who has the better clue?
You are being replaced.
Washington Post — The incomprehensible, unattainable scale of Trump’s deportation plan (5/15/2024):
“When Donald Trump first ran for president in 2015, he promised that he would implement a process for deporting the 11 million residents of the United States who are here without authorization. There would be a “deportation force,” he said, one that leveraged local law enforcement to identify and expel undocumented immigrants.
On the 2024 campaign trail, though, Trump has revisited the idea — thanks, in part, to the increase in immigrants to the United States under President Biden that has made the issue a centerpiece of campaign rhetoric. Speaking to Time magazine this year, Trump again promised that he would launch a massive deportation effort modeled on Eisenhower’s.
“I don’t believe this is sustainable for a country, what’s happening to us,” Trump said, “with probably 15 million and maybe as many as 20 million by the time Biden’s out. Twenty million people, many of them from jails, many of them from prisons, many of them from mental institutions.”
He indicated he would be willing to deploy the military as part of the effort. Immigrants weren’t civilians, he insisted, but an invading force “like probably no country has ever seen before.”
The odds are good that this is simply Trump using exaggerated rhetoric to amplify his arguments about the Biden administration. But some of the extreme promises he made before 2016 ended up being Trump administration policy. So it’s worth considering just what a massive deportation program would look like — and how it would upend an enormous part of American society and the economy.”
https://archive.ph/heCxq
Key word in that last sentence: the economy.
The Washington Post, and every other vermin media, do not believe the United States is a soveriegn nation with its own culture and heritage.
They view it as nothing more than an Economic Zone, one in which the descendants of European settlers who carved a nation out of the wilderness are an unwelcome nuisance.
And that need replaced by illiterate third world rabble arriving (illegally) to an already established nation coming only to get a check from the government and drop anchor babies to get even more taxpayer money.
You are being replaced, and the Washington Post is in full support of your replacement.
I know cuckservatives who claim that it’s impossible to mass deport the illegals. Operation Wetback proved that to be untrue.
Just eliminating the net drain on taxpayers, deporting 10+ million will pay for itself.
If the U.S. could mobilize for WWII (we did) and win WWII (that part is debatable) we can send all these invaders back home. Let them fix their own sh*thole countries and stay out of mine.
It’s the usual black-and-white from the non-scientists of the bunch: “If we can’t deport them all, then we can’t deport.” The concept of deporting SOME of them, you know, nuance, is beyond these people.
Colonized, not replaced. Western civilization cannot be replaced. It stands alone.
The Joe Biden Economy.
“McDonald’s confirmed that it will roll out a limited $5 combo meal this summer in hopes of enticing inflation-battered customers who have stayed away after the fast-food chain spiked prices.
The Chicago-based company said it will introduce a month-long promotion starting June 25 during which diners can choose from four items — either a McDouble or a McChicken sandwich, to go along with small fries, a small soft drink and a four-piece Chicken McNuggets — for just $5.
McDonald’s had come under fire after some locations were charging as much as $18 for a Big Mac meal and $7.29 for an Egg McMuffin.
McDonald’s, like its peers, has raised prices by mid- to high-single-digit percentages over the past year in response to a rise in costs of eggs and other raw items. It has also hiked prices in California, where the state imposed a $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast food workers.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/15/business/mcdonalds-confirms-5-value-meal-promotion-to-lure-back-customers/
Yeah, they’re going to lure them back into the store… for a month. Then everyone is going to simply go away again.
I read that this entire promo is basically being subsidized by Coke. We’ll be lucky if it lasts the entire month. And wouldn’t surprise me if they’re doing this just to use up some old and rotting inventory.
Is it safe to say there has never been a better time to buy US single family residences as investment properties? What is stopping you from joining the red hot cakes bandwagon?
Finance · Real estate
Investors are scooping up roughly 1 in 5 homes sold in the housing market and making more money than before
BY Alena Botros
May 15, 2024 at 11:53 AM PDT
Investors are back.
Photo illustration by C.J. Burton—Getty Images
At the start of last year, investors pulled back; their home purchases plummeted almost 50%, according to Redfin, not too far off from existing home sales, which as we know fell to their lowest point in almost 30 years.
…
https://fortune.com/2024/05/15/housing-market-outlook-investors-scooping-up-homes-redfin/
Finance · private equity
Wall Street’s landlord phase is back on, as Blackstone’s $3.8 billion acquisition of Tricon rouses a slumbering institutional investing sector
BY Sydney Lake
January 19, 2024 at 2:08 PM PST
Rows of cookie-cutter homes
Tricon owns 38,000 homes across the U.S., with a majority in Atlanta.
Getty Images—Bloomberg
Housing math wasn’t mathing for many in 2023. Mortgage rates, home prices, and low inventory levels made it both unattractive and increasingly difficult to buy a home in the U.S. It was a far cry from the Pandemic Housing Boom and an institutional homebuying frenzy just three years before. The era of historically low interest rates, easy access to capital—as well as rising rents and home prices, all led to a frozen housing market for both consumers and institutional investors. But a major multibillion-dollar acquisition announced Friday could be a signal that the institutional homebuying market is awakening from its slumber.
Private equity giant Blackstone announced Friday it was buying Tricon Residential, a Toronto-based landlord that owns 38,000 homes across the U.S. and Canada for $3.5 billion. It’s comparable to Blackstone’s prior deal from 2021 for Home Partners of America, which owned more than 26,000 properties, for $6 billion. The deal announced Friday launches Blackstone into one of the top institutional homebuyer spots in the country, just behind Progress Residential and Invitation Homes, according to data from Parcl Labs, a real estate data and analytics company.
The vast majority of Tricon’s rental homes are in Atlanta, Jason Lewris, co-founder of Parcl Labs told ResiClub co-founder and former Fortune real estate editor Lance Lambert in a podcast on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Friday. Tricon owns 7,000 units in Atlanta and other major markets include Charlotte, North Carolina; Tampa, Florida; Dallas, Phoenix, and Houston.
History is also somewhat repeating itself with the Blackstone deal. The firm led a charge across Wall Street in buying homes after the U.S. foreclosure crisis in 2008. It was one of the first big investment firms to buy homes in bulk in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis. After Blackstone agreed to pay $11.25 a share in cash for Tricon, Tricon shares jumped more than 28% to $11.07 at the close of Friday trading.
A recent history of institutional homebuying
The institutional homebuying market was cooking before 2023. When mortgage rates and home prices were low, investors scooped up rental properties with a lower buy-in.
“The institutional side of the market saw a huge boom during the pandemic,” Lambert said in the podcast. “There was a frenzy—low interest rates, home prices were ripping, rents were ripping, [there was] easy access to capital. It was really a perfect storm for capital flowing into the single family housing market.”
That led to more institutional homebuyers like Tricon buying in major markets including Charlotte, Tampa, Dallas, Phoenix, and Houston, he explained. But when mortgage rates hit 8% in October 2023, investments weren’t as lucrative.
“Once rates spiked the math was less enticing for the institutional players,” Lambert said. “We’ve seen a big pullback in institutional buying and there are a good number that have more dispositions than acquisitions.”
Lewris predicts that we’ll see more institutional homebuying consolidations in 2024.
“There is enormous variation in how these portfolios are run, and that deals with the level of sophistication with using data and analytics,” Lewris told Lambert. “That was fine when the housing market was a raging bull. And that’s becoming more of an acute pressure on portfolios that do not really have sophisticated or mature operational efficiencies. So I would imagine there will be other forms of consolidation throughout 2024 in deals like this.”
…
https://fortune.com/2024/01/19/blackstone-tricon-3-8-billion-acquisition-wall-street-landlord/
Series: A Closer Look
The Bailout Is Working — for the Rich
The economy is in free fall but Wall Street is thriving, and stocks of big private equity firms are soaring dramatically higher. That tells you who investors think is the real beneficiary of the federal government’s massive rescue efforts.
by Jesse Eisinger May 10, 2020, 5 a.m. EDT
Wall Street rallied on Friday after the government reported the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
Ten weeks into the worst crisis in 90 years, the government’s effort to save the economy has been both a spectacular success and a catastrophic failure.
The clearest illustration of that came on Friday, when the government reported that 20.5 million people lost their jobs in April. It marked a period of unfathomable pain across the country not seen since the Great Depression. Also on Friday, the stock market rallied.
The S&P 500 is now up 30% from its lows in mid-March and back to where it was last October, when the outlook for 2020 corporate earnings looked sunshiny. Companies have sold record amounts of debt in recent weeks for investment-grade companies. Junk bonds, historically dodgy during an economic swoon, have roared back.
If you’re looking for investors’ verdict on who has won the bailout, consider these returns: Shares of Apollo Group, the giant private equity firm, have soared 80% from their lows. The stock of Blackstone, another private equity behemoth, has risen 50%.
The reason: Asset holders like Apollo and Blackstone — disproportionately the wealthiest and most influential — have been insured by the world’s most powerful central bank. This largess is boundless and without conditions. “Even if a second wave of outbreaks were to occur,” JPMorgan economists wrote in a celebratory note on Friday, “the Fed has explicitly indicated that there is no dollar limit and no danger of running out of ammunition.”
…
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-bailout-is-working-for-the-rich
US home prices have surged 47% since the start of 2020
By Megan Henney
Published May 14, 2024 12:43pm EDT
Real Estate
FOX TV Digital Team
article
FILE – Single family homes in a residential neighborhood in San Marcos, Texas, US, on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Home prices have surged 47.1% since the start of 2020, easily outstripping the gains seen in recent decades.
That’s according to a recent analysis by ResiClub of the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, which showed that house prices in the 1990s and 2010s grew a respective 30.1% and 44.7%.
On top of that, home price growth so far this decade is on the verge of surpassing all the growth seen in the 2000s. During that time period, housing prices skyrocketed 47.3%, including an 80% spike before the 2007 housing market crash.
There are a number of driving forces behind the spike in prices.
…
https://www.livenowfox.com/news/us-home-prices-have-surged-47-since-the-start-of-2020
47.3% that’s totally sustainable, and all of it based on sound lending, right?
I heard on the Thoughtful Money podcast that Freddie Mac is petitioning to get into the HELOC business. Is this just a scheme to extract COVID equity gains as cash to voters in an election year?
Anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders and three other party leaders agreed on a coalition deal early Thursday that veers the Netherlands toward the hard right, capping a half year of tumultuous negotiations that still left it unclear who would become prime minister.
The “Hope, courage and pride” agreement introduces strict measures on asylum seekers, scraps family reunification for refugees and seeks to reduce the number of international students studying in the country.
“Deport people without a valid residence permit as much as possible, even forcibly,” the 26-page document says.
“We are writing history today,” Wilders proclaimed, saying he had made sure the three other coalition parties, including the one of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, had accepted the core of his program.
“The sun will shine again in the Netherlands,” Wilders said. “It is the strongest asylum policy ever.”
“My party will be at the center of power. It makes us enormously proud,” Wilders said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-netherlands-veers-sharply-to-right-with-new-government-dominated-by-party-of-geert-wilders/ar-BB1mtxPA
The Dutch know very well how to get rid of undesirables , they were better at it then the Germans even were …Think Anne Frank …..there’s an evil edge there , in that crowd
“The Dutch know very well how to get rid of undesirables…”
That’s likely a Eurasian thing…right up there with empire(s).
An Ontario Superior Court judge sided with taxi drivers in their class-action lawsuit against the City of Ottawa, finding that the municipality failed to prepare for the arrival of Uber or to stand up to the company as it operated illegally a decade ago.
Justice Marc Smith was scathing in his assessment of Uber Technologies Inc.’s UBER-N tactics, which he described as scofflaw and predatory. But he blamed the city for not preventing the company’s intrusion.
“Uber bullied its way into the Ottawa market, and for two years, ignored regulations and operated freely and illegally, without any serious restrictions,” he wrote in a decision released Monday.
“The City’s arguments can be summarized as follows: defeat was inevitable. Uber’s operations in Ottawa could not have been prevented. I disagree. Defeat is almost assured when one believes that defeat is inevitable. There are examples where Uber was defeated.”
The lawsuit is seeking $215-million. The judge accepted that the arrival of Uber did serious financial harm to Ottawa cabbies, but did not rule on damages. The plaintiffs – who represent 768 people with nearly 1,200 taxi plates – will have to return to court to establish what losses they suffered.
Asked to protect this asset, many city governments took the position that Uber could not be stopped.
This was Ottawa’s approach. However, Justice Smith noted that the city had previously cracked down on illegal taxi drivers and brokers, and could have done so again under the bylaw in place at the time.
“Uber was a bandit taxicab company, and the city knew, by experience, that failure to enforce against a bandit company would have a devastating impact on the licensed taxi industry,” he wrote. “Therefore, I have no difficulty in finding that the city knew or ought to have known that failure to enforce the 2012 by-law against Uber resulted in reasonably foreseeable harm to the plaintiffs.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ottawa-loses-taxi-class-action-lawsuit-over-lack-of-enforcement/
The One World Order forces think that they will take over all resources, as the goal is to enslave humans under their control grid.
They are serious about their Great Reset, build back better ,pre planned narratives to change the World into their forced dictorship.
Their narratives are ridiculous and absurd and they have shown their true colors as being a anti humanity power grab of the likes we have never seen before.
Did they ask people if they wanted to be hacked and altered, deprived with mandated injections, or the “you will own nothing, eat bugs and be happy.”
It has proven to be a genocidal depopulation agenda on top of everything else. What else can you call it?
They get increasingly more fraudulent and
ridiculously more intent to pull off their insane blueprint to create a sustainable world of their evil vision.
Their isn’t anything about their agendas that would make life better for the populations of the worlds. Their solutions to Panademics they create, and Climate Change doomsday is a joke, absolutely ridiculous joke solutions to fraud narratives.
They declare what their end game plans are, as if nothing can stop them.
I think they can be stopped, but that’s just me, I’m a optimistic by nature.
Are you forgetting its an election year?
Bird Flu coming soon, you’ve been warned…
Bird Flu coming soon, you’ve been warned
And the mandatory jab will be an mRNA nightmare.
The ‘Pandemic Agreement’: What it is, What it isn’t, and What it Could Mean for the U.S.
Published: Apr 01, 2024
What is the Pandemic Agreement?
The pandemic agreement is a potential international agreement currently being negotiated by the 194 member states of the WHO, including the U.S. Many governments and WHO leadership felt it was necessary to develop a new agreement to address some of the weaknesses in capacities and lack of international cooperation that occurred during the global response to COVID-19. The formal negotiation process (known as the International Negotiating Body, or INB) was launched in 2021. In the view of the WHO Director-General, there would be three key benefits to a new agreement: driving a more equitable global response, helping safeguard national health systems, and enhancing cooperation among member states during pandemics.
What has been the U.S. engagement with and positions on the agreement so far?
The Biden Administration has been actively participating in the negotiations since the INB was formed in 2021. Co-led by the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. representatives’ stated goals include to “enhance the capacity of countries to prevent, prepare for, and respond to pandemic emergencies…ensure all countries share data and laboratory samples from emerging outbreaks quickly, safely, and transparently…[and] support more equitable and timely access to, and delivery of, vaccines, diagnostic tests, and treatments and other mitigation measures” during health emergencies. The U.S. supports the deadline of May 2024 as the goal for voting on an agreement.
https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/the-pandemic-agreement-what-it-is-what-it-isnt-and-what-it-could-mean-for-the-u-s/
“The man, who asked that his name not be used, is among 800 people who invested $220 million with Dente and his company, thinking it was being used to buy, renovate and sell homes. Instead, the money was treated by Dente and his associates as a ‘personal slush fund,’ attorneys allege in court records.”
A night out with Dente…
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/2e8156c6-aaf0-4350-8392-8b85779d8fa7
Toga parties are a necessary management function.
$2M BASH AN ORGY OF EXCESS – JURORS FINALLY WATCH VIDEO OF TOGAS BABES & BEEFCAKE
By Laura Italiano
Published Oct. 29, 2003, 5:00 a.m. ET
Toga! Toga! Toga!
Prosecutors in the $600 million Tyco embezzlement trial pressed “play” on the long-awaited Sardinian party video yesterday – treating jurors to 20 minutes of mostly middle-aged, wealthy couples boozing and boogying while watching nubile, toga-draped dancers.
Tan female models in Roman gowns tossed flower petals into the air. Tan male models in knee-boots and form-fitting yellow Speedos stood on platforms striking virile poses.
“Let’s rock!” shouted singer Jimmy Buffett – flown in to perform at a cost of $250,000.
It was “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” meets “Animal House.”
https://nypost.com/2003/10/29/2m-bash-an-orgy-of-excess-jurors-finally-watch-video-of-togas-babes-beefcake/
Dead tree edition of the New York Times front page 2/16/2021:
“Inflation fears fall by wayside in the Biden era”
https://ibb.co/3hyDYpY
Are you any better off now than you were in January 2021?
Money printing has consequences…
“The WHO Treaty”
Its a Treaty power transfer to World Health Organization to supersede all Sovereign Countries
to dictate global health policy, which would include Climate Change, and just about everything else.
Power given to a corrupt organization that’s in collusion with the WEF, China, and Bill Gates gives major bucks to the WHO. The head of WHO isn’t even a Doctor, and has history of being commie terrorist. This one guy would have last word on global health policy dictates.
Its a joke a absolute joke.
They seems to think they can supersede all Constitutional protections, freedoms, etc of the bulk of Global Countries, by a construct of Global emergencies.
In leaked email, FBI official encourages agents to use warrantless wiretaps on Americans
05/15/2024 // Cassie B. // 1.8K Views
In the e-mail obtained by Wired dated April 20, Abbate instructs employees to find ways to use the authority, writing: “To continue to demonstrate why tools like this are essential to our mission, we need to use them, while also holding ourselves accountable for doing so properly and in compliance with legal requirements.”
He added: “I urge everyone to continue to look for ways to appropriately use US person queries to advance the mission, with the added confidence that this new pre-approval requirement will help ensure that those queries are fully compliant with the law.”
He explained that in addition to giving the government the power to force any American who repairs or installs anything capable of transmitting or storing communications to spy on behalf of the government, it also prevents those who are forced to participate in this surveillance from speaking about it to anyone.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-05-15-fbi-official-encourages-agents-warrantless-wiretaps-americans.html
no poseerás nada y serás feliz
You’ll own nothing and be happy
And your seed will spread no further than a Kleenex tissue.
Blinken hopes you won’t find out that Ukrainian officials got rich using our tax dollars to invest in fake companies (5/16/2024):
“Another day, another foreign policy disaster from the failed Biden regime. This time around, inept Secretary of State Antony Blinken is praying to whatever “god” will listen to him at this point, hoping the American people don’t discover that Ukrainian officials in Kharkiv have been using US tax dollars to get rich quick by investing in fake companies.
https://revolver.news/2024/05/antony-blinken-kharkiv-defenses-millions-stolen/
“Joe Biden isn’t great at much, except raising troubled kids and lining his pockets on the American people’s dime.”
This^
I can assure you owning nothing, eating bugs, deprived of energy, surveillance 24/7, forced injections, and probably hacked, is not the pathway to happiness.
Its just some ridiculous pre planned power grab by a bunch of psychopaths and fraudsters that have infiltrated Governments, institutions, Science and you name it.
Its so incredibly apparent that these Powers that Be are anti humanity and genocidal.
Its like some kind of bad movie, that’s playing out in real life and is so unbelievable that how could such nonsense be true.
It’s true alright.
Have you ever seen THX1138?
End Wokeness
@EndWokeness
Jen Psaki and Rachel Maddow mock West Virginians for worrying about immigration despite their distance from the border.
Mar 5, 2024
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1765211456113373685
Illegal Alien Crimes
@ImmigrantCrimes
🚨 Berkeley/Jefferson County, WV and Frederick County, VA: David Antonio Calderon was arrested in VA for crimes in WV.
– The murder of a woman last week
– Maliciously wounding two people last month
Police have identified him as an illegal alien who was released by the Border Patrol in 2023.
May 14, 2024
https://x.com/ImmigrantCrimes/status/1790400771353088324
Illegal Alien Arrested for Murdering Woman, Attacking Homeless Victims In West Virginia
by Dan Lyman
May 16th 2024, 2:03 pm
An illegal alien from El Salvador who was released by U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) last year has been arrested for killing a woman and attacking multiple homeless people in West Virginia, according to reports.
David Antonio Calderon, 46, was apprehended on May 8 in Frederick County, Virginia, as the primary suspect in a gruesome murder days prior in Jefferson County, WV.
On May 6, firefighters in Martinsburg, WV, were called to extinguish a couch that was ablaze and at the scene they discovered the body of a 33-year-old woman who had been reported missing from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office home confinement program.
“Investigators located video surveillance of the suspect and his vehicle in the same area and same time as [displayed by] the GPS tracking unit located on the missing female,” the Berkeley County (WV) Sheriff’s Office explained in a press release.
After identifying Calderon as a suspect, authorities learned he was also wanted for beating two homeless victims with a baseball bat last month outside a Walmart in Charles Town, WV.
“The two victims suffered serious injuries and were transported to Winchester Medical Center where they were determined to have sustained broken bones and concussions,” The Winchester Star reports.
https://www.infowars.com/posts/illegal-alien-arrested-for-murdering-woman-attacking-homeless-victims-in-west-virginia
Is WV a capital punishment state?
‘cut the listing price on a six-bedroom house in San Antonio 16 times since putting it on the market in October…‘My expectation is that I’m going to keep lowering the price until I get a buyer’
Chase that market down Ben!
‘A lack of progress on reducing inflation pushed long-term interest rates higher in the first quarter and this is acting as a drag on builder sentiment…The last leg in the inflation fight is to reduce shelter inflation, and this can only occur if builders are able to construct more attainable, affordable housing’
Jerry broke it off in yer a$$ Bob.
‘He was selling your possessions on your front lawn…He spent three days in jail. Now, he’s out walking around’
It is still cheaper than renting Terri.
“Now, he’s out walking around”
Yep, looking for another place to burglarize and squat.
‘More than two years later not a single homeless person has moved in. It is completely vacant…Assisted by three rounds of Project Homekey funding, HACLA’s goal was to get as many people housed as possible, in as short a period of time as possible’
800M pesos. I’m still a believer in central planning.
‘says the market had ‘seen better days.’ ‘The reality is that the supply versus the demand is certainly lopsided to the supply side,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s concerned about security. There’s a lot of people wanting to leave as they don’t feel safe’
Hold on Lindsay, let’s be clear here. It’s still a red hotcakes sellers market in Alice Springs and you got a big fat shortage!
‘We’ve seen a turn in the last 12 to 18 months of over 30 per cent less borrowing capacity to what they could have borrowed quite easily two or three years ago,’ Mr Carey said. ‘So the cheap money is gone and it’s definitely impacting what people are willing to spend or can afford to spend’
So the crime wasn’t a big deal until rates went up? Amazing what 5% interest rates change.
‘Some 96% of Chinese households already own at least one home. Before the market turned, the Chinese had for decades regarded apartments – especially the new, more modern ones – as the safest place to park their savings’
This 90% number was true 20 years ago. They never needed all these shacks and airboxes.
‘What about all these damn loans?’ the man asked Dente. He said Dente responded, ‘None of them are in my name.’ ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ the man said. The man, who is 61, took $200,000 from his retirement funds to repay what was still owed on the loans. He returned to work to replace his lost retirement money. The man, who asked that his name not be used, is among 800 people who invested $220 million with Dente and his company’
Ennio Morricone – the ecstasy of gold
theItalyWiki
13 years ago
Ennio Morricone conducting his own composition, “The Ecstasy of Gold” from the film, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKFpaCMRWgU
3:45.
Are you worried that the debt-fueled consumer economy is running on fumes?
ECONOMY
The consumer slowdown is here and its flashing a recession warning for the economy
Jennifer Sor
May 16, 2024, 12:56 PM ET
REUTERS/Mark Blinch
Consumers are finally slowing their spending and experts say that’s a warning sign of the economy.
Americans have propped up the economy with a powerful spending spree in the last two years.
But consumer confidence is starting to wane amid elevated inflation and a weakening job market.
…
https://www.businessinsider.com/recession-outlook-hard-landing-economy-consumer-spending-slowdown-growth-gdp-2024-5