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We’re Tricking People Into Thinking Their Condo Is More Affordable Than It Really Is

A weekend topic starting with WTSP. “The ongoing property insurance crisis in Florida took center stage Wednesday on Capitol Hill. ‘Our proposed renewal for 2023 was more than $8,000,’ testified Tallahassee resident Deborah Wood, going on to describe the impact spiking insurance costs have had on her and her family. ‘At this stage of our lives, we are not willing to risk our financial well-being by buying a home that one day may be uninsurable or craters in value in a housing market fueled by the insurance crisis,’ Wood added.”

The Real Deal on Florida. “In Pembroke Pines, the Heron Pond condo complex’s property insurer halted coverage in April, and the general liability carrier warned it won’t renew its policy when it expires in June. Near North Miami Beach, the Star Lakes condo complex’s board president said he expects this year’s insurance premiums to be about 45 percent more than the association paid in prior years. And at the Hammocks in West Kendall, the association’s general liability and umbrella insurers refused to renew policies this year, and few new carriers offered new policies. These associations have one thing in common: For years, board members pulled off various types of mismanagement and schemes, lawsuits and homeowners allege.”

“They aren’t alone. Condo associations and HOAs across South Florida have been involved in hotly contested disputes, with owners alleging that boards of directors ran plots such as election meddling, fund misappropriation, insider deals with vendors and inadequate property maintenance despite assessment hikes. While Star Lakes’ insurance broker is putting feelers out in the market, preliminary estimates show new policies would cost $600,000 to $700,000, combined, in annual premiums, Star Lakes board President John Baptiste said. That’s more than the roughly $350,000 to $415,000 the association paid in prior years. ‘It’s just a tremendous amount of negligence that is costing us,’ he said.”

KVUE in Texas. “A new report shows Austin continues to build more apartments than any other large metro despite dramatic changes to the nationwide rental market.bAustin has been the face of the construction boom, leading the way in multifamily permitting per capita for the last seven years. Last year, Austin’s pace for multifamily permits was 61% higher than second place Raleigh, North Carolina. The report states that while Austin is seeing a dramatic slowdown in permits for 2024, it’s still on pace for the most new permits per capita. In January, real estate experts predicted Austin renters would continue to pay steep prices, but rents in the Austin metro have dipped by 7%, according to the report. The dip is also the largest decline of any large metro, which the report attributes to new construction keeping up with the influx of new renters.”

Building Salt Lake. “The Lusso Apartments, at 1025 North Temple has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, according to a May 31 filing with the US Bankruptcy Court for Utah. In February we reported that two contractors had filed suit to recover nearly $800,000 owed to them by the sole owner of the project, Donovan R. Gilliland. His bank, Ready Capital, is holding a $36.5 million note on the construction loan. Gilliland assessed the unfinished building’s worth at $25 million. Adam Stein-Sapir of Pioneer Funding Group told us that Gilliland may be trying to stop a foreclosure sale by his construction lender, which is the only secured creditor on the project, or renegotiate loan terms with them. When asked if he would try to buy any of Gilliland’s debt, Stein-Sapir told us ‘This would be a tough case for me to get involved in today. It’s looking pretty grim for these contractors who don’t have a lien, and even for those that do.'”

Mansion Global. “Tales of doom about downtown San Francisco can be found in abundance, but some home buyers have a more optimistic view of the future of the city’s financial and tech district. Sales prices for downtown condos were down 4% year over year in the first quarter of 2024, said June McDaniels, a real estate agent with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Reliance Partners in Berkeley, California. Instead of multiple offers, downtown condos now take an average of 94 days to sell, which gives buyers time to negotiate. Plus, downtown condos are selling for slightly below the asking price, McDaniels said.”

Multi-Housing News. “Northwind Group provided a $23 million first mortgage to a Bay Area condo property. The senior secured inventory loan was collateralized by the remaining 18 unsold residential condominium units in the recently completed four-story property in Los Altos, Calif. The loan refinances a previous loan and allows Edge Development time to sell the remaining unsold units to achieve maximum sales value. The property was completed this year, with more than one-third of the available units having been sold. Northwind previously provided a $111 million first mortgage condo inventory loan for a 17-story residential condominium tower being constructed by Pelican Builders and Ember Group in Houston. That financing closed in February. The firm also provided financing for a New York City hotel-to-apartment conversion last year in the form of a $100 million senior A-Note.”

The Real Deal on California. “Canadian investment firm Bonnis Properties has defaulted on a loan tied to the Foreman & Clark building in Downtown Los Angeles, a multifamily property currently occupied by short-term rental startup Sonder, The Real Deal has learned. Bonnis is in default on a $56.4 million loan from Ladder Capital, tied to the 147,000-square-foot building at 404 West 7th Street, according to a notice filed with Los Angeles County. A foreclosure auction on the property can be scheduled no earlier than Aug. 8. Bonnis bought the 13-story office building for $52.5 million, and converted it into 125 apartments. The firm then refinanced with the loan from Ladder Capital in 2021, records show. Ladder’s loan was used to refinance construction debt and help fund the lease-up of the property.”

“But by 2023, the property was renamed The Winfield and had emerged as a 125-key, short-term rental hotel, operated by the San Francisco-based startup Sonder. Rooms at the property start at $158 per night, according to its website. Sonder, once valued at $2.2 billion when it went public through a special purpose acquisition company in 2022, has tried to shed some of its master leases recently in an effort to boost its cash on hand. In 2023, the firm reported negative cash flow of $108 million, according to a financial filing. Sonder also failed to file its annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on time this year, meaning it’s out of compliance with Nasdaq listing rules.”

From Bisnow. “Vancouver-based Bonnis Properties has defaulted on a loan tied to a Downtown LA building that less than a year ago opened as an outpost of the short-term rental company Sonder. Sonder has had its own troubles. In March, the San Francisco-based company told investors that two years’ worth of its financial statements contained errors such that they ‘should no longer be relied upon,’ the San Francisco Business Times reported. The company went public in 2021 at a $2.2B valuation, but it was worth $33.4M after markets closed Friday.”

The Wall Street Journal. “Julie Marks rents out her Jericho, Vt., basement and a guest unit on Airbnb. When state officials proposed a bill in 2021 to restrict short-term rentals, she wrote an opinion piece against it in a local paper. Soon, she got a message from Rent Responsibly, the national network for short-term rental host groups that is partly funded by Expedia Group, which owns the vacation rental-listing site Vrbo. Rent Responsibly encouraged her to form her own state group to oppose the bill. At the suggestion of another state’s host group, she hired a lobbyist. Marks and other group leaders met lawmakers for coffee. They testified at hearings and hosted happy hours at local breweries. Within a few months, the Vermont bill was dead.”

“Hosts have formed countless advocacy groups across the U.S. under Rent Responsibly. They are swarming statehouses, flooding towns with letters and showing up at community meetings by the hundreds. Airbnb also helps leaders craft messages and keeps hosts in the loop about coming legislative hearings through its platform. ‘If Airbnb walks in the door, no one is going to support them,’ Marks said. ‘But if Julie Marks and her three friends, who are also Vermonters, walk through the door, they’ll listen.'”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “There’s a popular bit of folk wisdom that when you’re approaching something new you should hope for the best, prepare for the worst. When it comes to buying a condominium, a new book may give you a whole new list of things you didn’t even know to be prepared for. For instance, did you know that some super-tall high-rise buildings are subject to such high wind pressures that they can force rainwater through even tiny flaws in the waterproofing of exterior walls? According to Sally Thompson, author of Condo Questions and Answers, searching for a leak in even one apartment in such conditions can be a maddeningly expensive prospect. Workers may have to put huge fans outside apartment doors to create negative pressure inside and then people dangling from platforms hanging off the side the building have to spray water all along the surface to hunt out the source of the leak. It happens in modern buildings, according to Ms. Thompson.”

“According to Ms. Thompson, 9 to 15 per cent of all unexpected costs a condominium will face throughout its life will come from the parking garage. And it doesn’t matter the age: Older pre-1985 buildings didn’t have enough waterproofing and that leads to structural decay, but newer buildings with better membranes can also require expensive repairs periodically. ‘We have had several parking garage collapses over the last 30 years, that were eerily similar to the collapse of the Surfside garage: one in Kingston, one in Montreal, one in Mississauga and one in Windsor, [Ont.],’ the book notes.”

“‘A condominium building is intended to be renewed almost in perpetuity, almost as if in suspended animation, neither improving significantly nor degrading significantly,’ says Ms. Thompson. Ms. Thompson warns that for most condominium unit owners, their maintenance fees and reserve fund contributions have to rise every year – and faster than you’d expect. ‘Fee increases at a rate above inflation are the nature of the beast, especially for the first 20 years of the life of the condo,’ she says in the book. ‘Historically, the cost of construction projects has inflated, on average, at a rate of about 1 per cent per year more than consumer goods. This excess inflation on the construction side likely relates to the fact that construction is labour intensive and can’t be offshored the way consumer-goods manufacturing can be.'”

“It doesn’t matter if your building is new or old, those fees are almost certainly going to rise, and in Ontario those reasons were ‘hard wired’ into the province’s condominium legislation in 2001. Simplified, the first condo reserve fund for a newly completed building is calculated at 10 per cent of annual operating budget. Ms. Thompson says that number is almost always too low, requiring increases of reserve fund contributions by individual condo owners to triple in the first years after completion.”

“‘Too-low first-year reserve fund contributions, the 30-year planning horizon and the falsely low first-year operating budget’ all contribute to new buildings starting off in a financial deficit that can take years to show up for unsuspecting residents unaware of the true costs of maintaining high-rise buildings. ‘We’re tricking young people into thinking their condo is more affordable than it really is,’ said Ms. Thompson.”

The Thaiger. “The Thai condominium market is bracing for a storm as Myanmar’s crackdown on property purchases by its citizens threatens to halt a major influx of foreign investment. According to the Thai Condominium Association, the clampdown could significantly impact condo transfers during the second and third quarters of this year. Prasert Taedullayasatit, president of the association, revealed that Thai condo units valued at over 1 billion baht were prevented from being transferred to Myanmar buyers in April and May following the regime’s stringent measures. ‘This will definitely affect developers’ condo transfers in the upcoming quarters. Myanmar buyers, who are an emerging market among foreign buyers, will face increased difficulties in purchasing Thai condos.'”

“With the once-dominant Chinese market slowing, the importance of Myanmar buyers has surged. Prasert noted that Myanmar nationals have become a vital segment, consistently growing in both number and value of condo transfers, unlike the dwindling local market. In Greater Bangkok, a hotspot for Myanmar buyers, condo transfers skyrocketed by 446% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2024, marking the highest increase among all foreign buyers. Vichai Viratkapan, acting director-general of the REIC stated that the Myanmar buyer market has been on the rise since the political turmoil in 2021. ‘Some developers reported that half of their foreign condo transfers were to Myanmar buyers.'”

“Surachet Kongcheep, managing director of Property DNA Co., added that while those booking off-plan units might not be affected, new buyers might need to explore alternative methods for money transfers, or even consider cancellations if necessary.”

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This Post Has 74 Comments

  1. HBB warning to readers: wall street journal is globalist scum media that peddles conspiracy theories, election lies and mis, mal and dis-informations.

  3. ‘The firm then refinanced with the loan from Ladder Capital in 2021, records show. Ladder’s loan was used to refinance construction debt and help fund the lease-up of the property’

    ‘But by 2023, the property was renamed The Winfield and had emerged as a 125-key, short-term rental hotel, operated by the San Francisco-based startup Sonder. Rooms at the property start at $158 per night, according to its website. Sonder, once valued at $2.2 billion when it went public through a special purpose acquisition company in 2022, has tried to shed some of its master leases recently in an effort to boost its cash on hand. In 2023, the firm reported negative cash flow of $108 million’

    The hotel crater gets flipped into STR and everybody involved is a broke a$$ loser.

    1. Too expensive to for a long-term rental model to pencil out, I guess. Next up, I bet they’ll take state money and rent the place out the migrant “families,” a family is really 6 unrelated military age men guzzling Modelo all day.

  4. ‘Adam Stein-Sapir of Pioneer Funding Group told us that Gilliland may be trying to stop a foreclosure sale by his construction lender, which is the only secured creditor on the project, or renegotiate loan terms with them. When asked if he would try to buy any of Gilliland’s debt, Stein-Sapir told us ‘This would be a tough case for me to get involved in today. It’s looking pretty grim for these contractors who don’t have a lien, and even for those that do’

    Adam is saying the lender is going to hog what’s left of this steaming pile and leave nothing for the contractors.

  5. ‘At this stage of our lives, we are not willing to risk our financial well-being by buying a home that one day may be uninsurable or craters in value in a housing market fueled by the insurance crisis,’ Wood added.”

    Gosh, Deborah, if millions of would-be buyers start thinking like you, Always Be Closing will get exponentially harder for the UHSs.

  6. Condo associations and HOAs across South Florida have been involved in hotly contested disputes, with owners alleging that boards of directors ran plots such as election meddling, fund misappropriation, insider deals with vendors and inadequate property maintenance despite assessment hikes.

    But as long as shack & condo prices were going up, residents turned a blind eye to these shenanigans. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. This is a morality tale for ‘Murica writ large: tolerance for corruption – including election meddling – has consequences.

  7. At the suggestion of another state’s host group, she hired a lobbyist. Marks and other group leaders met lawmakers for coffee. They testified at hearings and hosted happy hours at local breweries. Within a few months, the Vermont bill was dead.

    “Our Democracy” in a nutshell.

  8. ‘We’re tricking young people into thinking their condo is more affordable than it really is,’ said Ms. Thompson.”

    Fauxahontus could not be reached for comment.

  9. Europe is following Italy’s lead, a black-clad Giorgia Meloni declared in the bright sunlight beating down on the new migrant processing facilities in Albania.

    The Italian prime minister has struck a Rwanda-style deal with Tirana, which is expected to be operational and housing 3,000 people a month, by August.

    The timing of her visit was calculated and clever, like Ms Meloni herself. It was just days before this weekend’s European Parliament elections, where her Brothers of Italy party, the heirs to Mussolini’s fascists, is predicted to triumph.

    “With Giorgia, Italy is changing Europe,” was the ubiquitous motto at a final rally before the June 8-9 vote.

    Italy’s first female prime minister has positioned herself as a Brussels kingmaker ahead of the scrabble for EU positions and power after the elections.

    The 47-year-old is courted by ardently Europhile centrists and hard-Right Eurosceptics alike.

    It is an astonishing turnaround for an outcast decried as a populist, neo-fascist when she replaced the internationally respected technocrat Mario Draghi as prime minister in October 2022.

    At 5ft 3 inches tall, the Italian premier was dwarfed by her 6ft 7in Albanian counterpart Edi Rama during their press conference in front of the flags of Italy, the EU and Albania this week.

    But in the world of European politics, it is Ms Meloni who is the big beast and her influence is reaching a peak.

    So how did a woman who flirted with fascism and recently accused Brussels of wanting to force people to eat insects to fight climate change get the keys to the EU establishment?

    She had, after all, described the EU as “rotten to the core” and called on Italy to, Brexit-style, quit the bloc.

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/why-europe-is-listening-to-meloni/ar-BB1nR8uL

      1. Was she walking her dog?

        Gotta love how her assailant was probably a “new Dane” and the media covered it up.

        1. Her Social Democrat party have been at the forefront of flooding Denmark with 3rd World migrants. This is poetic justice at its most sublime.

          1. Now she knows she shouldn’t go anywhere without a body guard.

            Hopefully after the impending election Denmark will have a better Prime Minister.

    2. The timing of her visit was calculated and clever, like Ms Meloni herself. It was just days before this weekend’s European Parliament elections, where her Brothers of Italy party, the heirs to Mussolini’s fascists, is predicted to triumph.

      Funny, how wanting to keep hostile, incompatible foreigners out of your country earns you the dreaded fascist label. In order to be one of the good and beautiful people you have to let the hordes overrun your country, even help them.

  10. It has been a very depressing week at the Washington Post. On Sunday night, the newspaper announced that executive editor Sally Buzbee had stepped down after three years atop the masthead. Buzbee’s resignation was clearly linked to new CEO and publisher Will Lewis’ decision to drastically reorganize the Post newsroom while installing two former colleagues in high-ranking editorial roles at the paper. In a newsroom meeting on Monday, Lewis defended his hires and spared no words in assessing the paper’s reported financial dilemma. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience is halved,” Lewis said. “People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

    https://slate.com/business/2024/06/washington-post-news-jeff-bezos-sally-buzbee-amazon.html

    1. WaPo lost $70 million last year. Seems expecting your subscribers to pay good money to be fed globalist propaganda and DNC talking points, along with anti-white dreck from “talented minority voices” is becoming non-viable as a business model.

        1. As a pre-eminent globalist propaganda outlet, I’m guessing WaPo is subsidized by the .1% in the financier oligarchy who dictate The Narrative to their media mouthpieces.

          1. I thought it was the CIA’s mouthpiece. CIA, WEF, 0.1% financier oligarchy . . . basically one and the same.

  12. Newrez, a large mortgage lender based in Pennsylvania, informed the state on Monday that it will fire another 317 workers in Colorado beyond the 103 it said it would dismiss in early May.

    “Newrez LLC will be conducting a reduction in force at its Greenwood Village, CO facility located at 6200 S Quebec Street … on August 2, 2024. This mass layoff is expected to be permanent,” Donnie Gravley, a senior director of human resource operations at the company informed the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter.

    Newrez was the nation’s fifth largest mortgage lender in the first quarter, producing $10 billion in loans, according to estimates from Inside Mortgage Finance as reported in HousingWire. Its portfolio of $536.6 billion in unpaid mortgage balances is the sixth largest in that category in the U.S.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/mortgage-lender-newrez-dismissing-another-317-workers-in-greenwood-village/ar-BB1nO3F5

  13. The New York Post is Murdoch owned, controlled opposition, globalist sc*m media.

    New York Post — Videos show hundreds of migrants pour across the US southern border — undeterred by Biden ‘crackdown’ (6/7/2024):

    “Migrants continue to pour across the southern border of the US in groups of hundreds despite the Biden administration’s latest ‘crackdown’.

    Video taken Thursday by The Post shows hundreds of migrants from mainly China and Turkey still crossing the border unhindered into California, then rounded up by Border Patrol.

    In rural Texas Wednesday, another video obtained by The Post shows scores of migrants from Central and South America crossing onto private land in Normandy, Texas, and being rounded up by state troopers.

    The processing center in San Diego County — which has been the top area in the US for illegal crossings since April — reached 237% capacity Thursday, holding roughly 2,300 migrants in facilities meant for 1,000, according to internal data.”

    https://nypost.com/2024/06/07/us-news/migrants-pour-across-border-undeterred-by-biden-crackdown/

    When I loaded this article on my phone, reader comments were enabled. On my laptop, there are no reader comments.

    Why is that, New York Post?

    1. We mustn’t allow the proles out in flyover country to monkey-wrench The Narrative.

    2. I was able to see comments on my PC.

      Anyway, it’s pretty clear that illegals are not going to take no for an answer. And if they aren’t going to be deported, why should they stop coming?

      Which reminds me that the primary election to choose RINO Ken Buck’s replacement in the 4th Colorado Congressional District is coming up. One of the candidates, a Deborah Flora, insists she is tough on immigration. When asked if she supports mass deportations, she said that was a “nuanced subject”, so in other words she doesn’t support mass deportation. Miss Flora is just another RINO.

  14. Globalist oligarch Mark Zuckerberg donated $419 million to the DNC in 2020 to fund the election steal. His creepy Orwellian Facebook has been zealous in censoring and banning truth-tellers who challenged approved globalist Narratives, especially during the scamdemic. Now FB is having to answer in court for unfair ‘shadow bans.” Let’s hope this is the first in a tidal wave of lawsuits against this evil tech company.

    ‘A first victory against Big Tech!’ — Belgian lawmaker awarded €27k from Meta for unfair Facebook ‘shadowban’

    https://rmx.news/article/a-first-victory-against-big-tech-belgian-lawmaker-awarded-e27k-from-meta-for-unfair-facebook-shadowban/

  15. A reader sent these in:

    The ECB cut rates by 25bps and concurrently raised their inflation estimates for 2024 and 2025.

    Just in case you are wondering how desperate they were to cut 😝

    https://x.com/agnostoxxx/status/1798700460725211364

    U.S. employers announced plans to hire 4,326 workers in May, the lowest total for the month on record, per Challenger

    https://x.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1798719624147780071

    California fast food restaurants have cut 10,000 jobs since state passed $20 minimum wage (layoffs, closing) : business agency

    https://x.com/dailyjobcuts/status/1798754328288841783

    Nvidia vs Cisco

    https://x.com/great_martis/status/1798455682016190953

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to Sell Up to $735 Million in Stock

    https://x.com/OilHeadlineNews/status/1798704133656195234

    WWE Wrestler $HULK (@HulkHogan) Solana Memecoin plummeted from $17 million to $2 million in just a few minutes after he deleted tweets about the coin.

    https://x.com/SolanaFloor/status/1798811071114817707

    May 29: Treasury buybacks
    June 3: QT taper
    June 5: New all time highs
    So easy.

    https://x.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1798431585382875475

    Full-time workers: -625K
    Part-time workers: +286K

    People are so rich and economy is booming that they only work part time now

    https://x.com/eliant_capital/status/1799059549502255134

    The unemployment rate increased to 4% in the United States in May, up from 3.9%

    In Canada – unemployment increased to 6.2% as full time jobs plummeted while part time jobs gained.

    https://x.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1799057170816004581

    Most ‘economists’ have simply never touched grass in their lives. It’s a field of people (mostly on one side on the political aisle) that stare at data points all day and try to extrapolate those data points onto the population. Theorists try to apply academia to the real world and it’s why we ended up with disasters like the inflation crisis, and now why they look at 40% higher prices and rising unemployment and go – the economy is strong because initial claims are low. They make no effort to understand or try to diagnose why so many people are pissed as they watch millions come in annually to pump up NFPs and suppress wages that they earn. ‘Stocks are up!’.

    ‘Data’ and datapoints are useless without understanding and investigation.

    This is why they fail and this is why we will continue to expand and grow on the work that we’ve done thus far.

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1798865500652634496

    The top 1% are killing it.

    https://x.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1799118479863517363

    May NFP 272 K great number… until you realize the birth / death blackbox was 231 K or almost 90% of the increase…

    https://x.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1799057772434366530

    Nonfarm employment from the payroll survey continues to astound. While every other one of the NBER 6 recession indicators is showing signs of weakness, this one just keeps going up. Needs a closer look.

    https://x.com/intheyield/status/1799076653769150593

    Per Zelman’s preliminary May homebuilder survey, “May net orders declined at a 10-15% rate versus April, worse than the average 7% sequential decline witnessed in the decade prior to the pandemic…on track to be the third-worst May sequential decline over the survey’s history”

    https://x.com/DoomersNN/status/1798712483538231320

    The US office vacancy rate hits a fresh record high of 19%, surpassing levels seen in both 2008 and 2020.

    In other words, roughly 1 out of every 5 offices in the US is currently vacant.

    ~$1.7 trillion of commercial real estate debt is projected to mature from 2024 to 2026.

    This means that ~30% of outstanding commercial real estate debt will need to be refinanced at much higher rates.

    All while 70% of these loans are held by small banks that remain under pressure from the regional bank crisis.

    CRE is beyond bear market territory.

    https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1799140731627725083

    60 years ago, our society produced 18 year-old boys willing to charge headlong into machine gun nests, mines and mortar fire to take over one of the most heavily fortified beaches in the world.

    Today, we rally around a 40-year old man in a cat costume leading sheep to the slaughter in a meme stock promotion.

    What stage?

    https://x.com/Ross__Hendricks/status/1799137951118733615

    They really are losing the plot on how to manipulate the numbers: not only a crash in full-time workers, but Household Survey was DOWN 408K, vs 272K establishment survey.

    The gap between the two surveys has never been bigger

    https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1799060881730670835

    🛠️ San Antonio construction Zachry Industrial lays off over 4,000 workers…👎

    https://x.com/dailyjobcuts/status/1798865235773964422

    The mystery continues, almost 1.2 Million full time jobs were eliminated during last 12 months, unemployment rate went up from 3.7% to 4%, but nonfarm payrolls continue to be positive each month. Magic, pure magic.

    https://x.com/MichaelAArouet/status/1799097901890813958

    Listen to what is going on in the Texas housing market. Foreclosures are accelerating and at the end of the video he says it’s not due to job loss, it’s due to taxes and insurance doubling. What was once an $1,800 payment is now $3,200-$3,800.

    The average person/family could afford $1,800 -$2,500. Now that payments are getting well above $3,000, you’re starting to see things break.

    https://x.com/BankingNewsGuy/status/1798813346659012665

    “Syndicators made big purchases that are unraveling with high interest rates, adding distress to an already troubled US property market.”

    https://x.com/NewsLambert/status/1798818725245960284

    The Prosper Police Department shows off their $689,000 multi-purpose vehicle at the annual Chrome and Coffee car show

    https://x.com/DallasTexasTV/status/1798331056829108320

    The BLS just announced they are reducing the sample size of the Household Survey due to ‘budget constraints’- when you don’t get the data you want – simply defund it. Welcome to Cuba.

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1799145684945588235

    We can afford 10,000 people crossing the border per day but can’t afford the few million bucks to conduct surveys on our own economic health? Sounds suspicious.

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1799153543514829275

    “Budget Constraints” as the Feds spend more money than ever.

    https://x.com/Holmes35S/status/1799152069367971998

    Would you hire this electrician?

    https://x.com/ClownWorld_/status/1799228464991805612

    1. “Most ‘economists’ have simply never touched grass in their lives”

      Paul Krugman.

    2. “Would you hire this electrician?”

      Many customers have.

      Without opening up the drywall, you could have done that same installation using Wiremold hardware. It’s obsolete, but still in use and parts available.

    3. The unemployment rate increased to 4% in the United States in May, up from 3.9%

      According to Kudlow the labor force participation dropped 250K in May. So the rising unemployment rate means but one thing, that jobs were lost, contrary to what the gooberment claims. Kudlow also mentioned that the household survey confirms that hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost in May.

      1. It’s easy to decrease total unemployed. Once someone is unemployed long enough they magically no longer count.

        So rolling layoffs are a clever way to not increase total unemployment.

        1. My understanding is that as long as they are looking for work they count as unemployed. Once they stop looking they are no longer considered part of the “workforce”

          1. My understanding, which could be wrong, is once unemployment insurance runs out, if you are not employed you are no longer considered looking for work. I am specifically referring to the reported U-3 numbers.

            U-3 excludes the discouraged, the contractors who did not get renewed, and many more.

          2. Per investopedia, the definition of U3 is:

            The official unemployment rate is known as the U-3 rate or simply U3. It measures the number of people who are jobless but actively seeking employment.

      2. The BLS relies on “surveys” where they call people up randomly and say “hey are you employed.” It would cost next to nothing to get a bot — it doesn’t even have to the be AI — to scrape monthly data from the IRS looking for new W-4s, but of course they won’t do that. They don’t want to know.

  16. 60 years ago, our society produced 18 year-old boys willing to charge headlong into machine gun nests, mines and mortar fire to take over one of the most heavily fortified beaches in the world.

    60 years ago, we had a society & country that were worth defending. Today, not so much. As the globalists and neocons agitate for WWIII, the “woke” U.S. Army is belatedly realizing that sending Team DEI up against adversaries like Russia or China is a recipe for disaster. However, judging by the epic fail of an Army recruiting ad aimed at the white male warrior class the perfumed princes at the Pentagon have been systematically marginalizing and sh*tting on since the Clinton Administration, no self-respecting Heritage American white male is going to put their live on the line for a corrupt multicultural banana republic or a government that hates them.

    https://x.com/USArmy/status/1721665315078127697?

    1. +1

      My oldest uncle served in WWII. Not at D-Day but in North Africa and Italy.

      Did the West really win the war? Winning for what, 80 years on?

  18. The US 9th district Court just ruled that Covid 19 vaccines don’t qualify as vaccines. This ruling might strip their vaccine immunity standing subjecting them to lawsuit liability.

      1. Trump’s greatest legacy from his first presidency is arguably his judicial appointments. I can’t wait to see what he does in his second.

      2. Ok, so I like this ruling from this Court.
        We on this blog repeatedly stated that they changed the definition of a vaccine, and the Covid shots were gene therapy or medical treatment, not a vaccine that gave immunity, or stopped transmission.
        Who knows if this case will be upheld if it goes to the highest Court.
        Also another case being filed are Plaintiffs suing the World Health Organization for the PCR test fraud and basically calling a false Panademic based on diagnosis testing fraud.
        If some movement toward justice ,in terms of the biggest crime in history is happening, that would be great, but I’m holding back my hopes until everything is said and done.

  24. ‘At this stage of our lives, we are not willing to risk our financial well-being by buying a home that one day may be uninsurable or craters in value in a housing market fueled by the insurance crisis’

    Deb is a well known far right racist, Putin puppet, stopped clock, doom and gloom death shot and election denier.

  25. ‘They aren’t alone. Condo associations and HOAs across South Florida have been involved in hotly contested disputes, with owners alleging that boards of directors ran plots such as election meddling, fund misappropriation, insider deals with vendors and inadequate property maintenance despite assessment hikes. While Star Lakes’ insurance broker is putting feelers out in the market, preliminary estimates show new policies would cost $600,000 to $700,000, combined, in annual premiums, Star Lakes board President John Baptiste said. That’s more than the roughly $350,000 to $415,000 the association paid in prior years. ‘It’s just a tremendous amount of negligence that is costing us’

    That’s all in the past John, winnahs! focus on the future. When these weak hands give it away, you can add to yer portfolio! In the meantime, how full is yer fridge?

  26. ‘In March, the San Francisco-based company told investors that two years’ worth of its financial statements contained errors such that they ‘should no longer be relied upon,’ the San Francisco Business Times reported. The company went public in 2021 at a $2.2B valuation, but it was worth $33.4M after markets closed Friday’

    You’ve been disrupted. They make a lot of noise when they show up but hardly a whimper when they go under.

  27. ‘In January, real estate experts predicted Austin renters would continue to pay steep prices, but rents in the Austin metro have dipped by 7%, according to the report. The dip is also the largest decline of any large metro, which the report attributes to new construction keeping up with the influx of new renters’

    Lot’s of experts. But they always over build. Has there ever been one example of a town or city building just the exact right amount of airboxes and shacks?

    1. Lot’s of experts. But they always over build.

      Building is what the builder boyz do. Very few see the signs and batten down the hatches, and I suspect those are the ones who don’t go BK.

  28. ‘When state officials proposed a bill in 2021 to restrict short-term rentals, she wrote an opinion piece against it in a local paper. Soon, she got a message from Rent Responsibly, the national network for short-term rental host groups that is partly funded by Expedia Group, which owns the vacation rental-listing site Vrbo. Rent Responsibly encouraged her to form her own state group to oppose the bill. At the suggestion of another state’s host group, she hired a lobbyist. Marks and other group leaders met lawmakers for coffee. They testified at hearings and hosted happy hours at local breweries. Within a few months, the Vermont bill was dead’

    Just another way of passing the loot to the politicians. What’s different now from the 2000’s is Craigslist wasn’t raising billions to bribe everybody.

    1. We saw the same crowds and parades in 2020 and look what happened. And we saw all the signs for a red wave in 2022 and look what happened.

      I have zero optimism

  31. ‘A condominium building is intended to be renewed almost in perpetuity, almost as if in suspended animation, neither improving significantly nor degrading significantly,’ says Ms. Thompson. Ms. Thompson warns that for most condominium unit owners, their maintenance fees and reserve fund contributions have to rise every year – and faster than you’d expect. ‘Fee increases at a rate above inflation are the nature of the beast, especially for the first 20 years of the life of the condo,’ she says in the book. ‘Historically, the cost of construction projects has inflated, on average, at a rate of about 1 per cent per year more than consumer goods. This excess inflation on the construction side likely relates to the fact that construction is labour intensive and can’t be offshored the way consumer-goods manufacturing can be’

    I don’t know Sally, this whole urban living thing is sounding like it’s screwed up!

    ‘Simplified, the first condo reserve fund for a newly completed building is calculated at 10 per cent of annual operating budget. Ms. Thompson says that number is almost always too low, requiring increases of reserve fund contributions by individual condo owners to triple in the first years after completion’

    ‘Too-low first-year reserve fund contributions, the 30-year planning horizon and the falsely low first-year operating budget’ all contribute to new buildings starting off in a financial deficit that can take years to show up for unsuspecting residents unaware of the true costs of maintaining high-rise buildings. ‘We’re tricking young people into thinking their condo is more affordable than it really is’

    Sally, the good news is the guberments would never back trillions of pesos in loans on these doomed to fail airboxes.

  33. From 9News:

    WELD COUNTY, Colo. — The need for food is rising dramatically across Colorado.

    Weld Food Bank’s CEO Bob O’Connor said they’re breaking records they wish they weren’t.

    In May, they distributed 10,000 emergency food boxes for people in immediate crisis, an all-time high. He said it usually takes them four months to give out that many.

    I’m sure that this story is repeated at foodbanks from coast to coast.

  34. Folgers announced they are going to raise coffee prices.You know the other coffee companies will do the same thing.
    Might be a time to stock up before increase.

  35. Does it seem like the rate daters will get their wish for lower-for-sooner rates some time soon?

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