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Will Prices Come Down Further?

A report from the Gazette Journal in Nevada. “On Aug. 17, the National Association of Realtors will implement changes that its members must follow as part of a sweeping $418 million settlement over its practices. One potential concern from the Consumer Federation of America is whether the new written agreements actually force buyers to become legally bound to pay for commissions, especially if they end up signing agreements that they do not fully understand. ‘Everything is loaded in the industry’s favor in the contracts,’ said Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America. ‘No consumer has a chance. You don’t have a chance and I don’t have a chance.’ One of the biggest effects of the lawsuits and ensuing settlements is that they caught the attention of the average person, according to Brobeck. It put commissions on people’s radar. ‘When consumers don’t know what’s going on, unethical agents get away with murder,’ Brobeck said.”

“Brobeck cited the new contracts from the California Association of Realtors, which were done in response to NAR requiring agents to obtain buyer signatures on buyer representation contracts starting in August. In addition to being written in a way that is hard to understand, the changes being initiated in California essentially obligate the buyer to pay the buyer agent, Brobeck said. ‘Everything is loaded in the industry’s favor in the contracts,’ Brobeck said. ‘They’re terrible and we’re recommending consumers not sign them.'”

“In Reno-Sparks, the ratio of agents to available homes for sale is even tighter. Last year, the area saw about 4200 home sales, according to Beau Keenan, owner of Dickson Realty, a real estate company that operates in Northern Nevada and Northern California. In contrast, the market has about 3,200 real estate agents. Assuming that each home sale uses two agents as well, it translates to less than three homes per agent. The commission that agents get also shrink further when factoring in compensation for their brokers plus referral fees from real estate services such as Zillow, Redfin or OpCity that can siphon between 25% to 35% of their commission. ‘You need to sell 10 to 12 homes a year to make a living out of it,’ Keenan said. ‘So that just goes to show you how many people are not making a living (with real estate).’ Recently, Brobeck surveyed 2,000 agents who worked for big companies. Half of them had either one sale or no sales at all in the past year, Brobeck found. ‘There’s a huge glut of agents,’ Brobeck said. ‘They’re desperate for clients and sales.'”

The Louisiana Illuminator. “Louisiana homeowners will no longer have the assurance of holding onto their longtime property insurance policies after a damaging storm. And they could start seeing increases in premiums and deductibles since the state’s insurance commissioner convinced lawmakers to deregulate Louisiana’s insurance industry. Last year, Jamie Lafollette, a 35-year-old from Santa Cruz, California received the upsetting news that State Farm was not renewing the policy she and her husband had on their home for the previous 10 years. They had never made a claim. Lafollette had been paying about $2,000 a year to insure their home. When she sought a new estimate, she was confronted with annual insurance rates of more than $20,000 a year.”

“‘We’re panicking and we’re frustrated, because we’ve been working so hard to make our properties and our community fire safe,’ Lafollette said. ‘The insurance companies don’t look at individual properties. They’re just looking at a category on a map. So it doesn’t matter if you’ve clear-cut your property or you’ve done all the work to make your property safe.'”

“Andreanecia Morris, executive director for HousingNOLA, said the changes could lead to more foreclosures or homeowners going without insurance because they can’t afford it. ‘We’re looking at construction projects grinding to a halt. We’re looking at record homelessness and displacement,’ she said. ‘We’re looking at homes not being able to be bought or sold because people can’t get insurance policies, while people are rushing to sell their houses.'”

Des Moines Register in Iowa. “By the time Johnston developer Daniel Pettit was locked up in January for contempt in connection with three civil court cases, a wide web of people in several states had accused the one-time millionaire of fraud. Pettit, 44, already had gone on the run for a month instead of reporting to jail in November, and had been accused of lying to a judge, ignoring court orders and subpoenas for financial records, taking steps to hide money and assets from people he owed and trying to fraudulently give away valuable West Des Moines development land.But on June 17, he was released early after serving just over five months of a six-month sentence, bewildering people who are knee-deep in costly lawsuits and missing large sums of money.”

“On Thursday, there were no visible signs of guards at Pettit’s North Liberty home, where he appeared at the front door in the presence of one of his two grown sons. Pettit declined to be interviewed and said he had no comment on the more than $70 million in defaults, judgments and liens against him or allegations of fraud by many of his one-time business partners or investors, including a couple he allegedly swindled out of $60,000 after their son’s death from a fentanyl overdose. More than a dozen other lawsuits involving Pettit and corporations he created are still wending their way through the courts.”

“Pettit, who purported to have a deep Christian faith and founded a faith-based nonprofit called Trailhead International Builders, had successful developments before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. But by 2020, lenders had begun to foreclose on properties in which he was involved, court records show. He also took money from investors for projects that didn’t materialize, and some of those investors knew nothing about others involved, court records and interviews showed. ‘There should be charges,’ said Des Moines attorney Samuel Marks, who has represented Pettit’s ex-wife in a bankruptcy filing after she was named as a co-defendant in almost a dozen lawsuits tied to her husband’s investment schemes. ‘They should have arrested him the minute he walked out of jail. But they didn’t.'”

The Houston Chronicle in Texas. “In another blow to Greenway Plaza, a prominent yet financially struggling mixed-use campus in Houston, a key longtime tenant is poised to relocate its headquarters to a landmark Galleria-area skyscraper next year. A court receiver appointed to manage the property had been trying to shore up leasing at Greenway while also preparing it for a potential sale, according to earlier Bloomberg delinquency notes. A chronic oversupply of outdated office space in Houston has kept the region’s overall office vacancy rate at about 26% in the second quarter, according to Avison Young. Houston’s office leasing activity in the second quarter was 36% below levels typically seen pre-pandemic.”

“‘Landlords are motivated to strike deals, but some are finding it difficult to provide tenant incentives such as improvement packages and rent abatements due to underlying building loans or financial limitations,’ said Wade Bowlin, principal and managing director of Avison Young’s Houston office.”

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. “It’s not just San Francisco struggling to refill its offices. Vacancies in San Mateo County continue to rise, increasing to more than twice its pre-pandemic rate, according to a new report from brokerage Kidder Mathews, which showed the direct vacancy rate for San Mateo County’s office market was about 17% at the end of June 2024, up from 7.8% in 2019 and 15% in 2023. The ‘oversupplied market’ has also significantly slowed office construction, the brokerage added, as have higher interest rates and a slowdown of pre-leasing activity. It’s not just new construction that’s contributing to San Mateo County’s rising vacancy rate. The county saw about 580,000 square feet of negative net absorption, or occupancy loss, in the first half of 2024, though that was lower than the loss of 810,000 square feet for the same period in 2023. Despite the glut of available space, San Mateo County’s office vacancy rates aren’t as high as San Francisco’s, where brokerages have estimated total rates at 37%.”

The Real Deal. “Few real estate investors helped fuel the frenzy of the 2010s quite like Ivanhoé Cambridge — and few are staring down today’s aftershocks like the major Canadian investor. Over the last decade, the real estate arm of Quebec’s $300 billion pension fund tore through U.S. cities, paying top dollar to buy trophy properties. In New York, it paid $2.2 billion in 2015 to buy the 1.2 million-square-foot 3 Bryant Park — at the time the second most-expensive office purchase ever in the U.S. — and acquired the News Corp.-anchored 1211 Sixth Avenue for $1.8 billion. In 2015 it also teamed up with the Blackstone Group to buy Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village for $5.3 billion.”

“Now, nearly $5 billion worth of debt on those properties is set to mature over a 12-month span starting next year. It’ll be a big test for how prime properties bought at the height of the market fare in today’s challenging refi environment. In her interview with CNBC, CEO Nathalie Palladitcheff acknowledged the challenges that come today with refinancing. ‘Office was bad already at the beginning of the pandemic,’ she said. ‘It’s not just about bad assets; it’s also about bad liabilities. So when you have bad on both sides, it’s where the problem starts.'”

CTV News in Canada. “The provincial regulator responsible for policing B.C.’s real estate industry has ordered a former Realtor to pay $130,000 and cancelled her licence after determining that she committed a variety of professional misconduct. Rashin Rohani surrendered her licence in December 2023, but the BC Financial Services Authority’s chief hearing officer Andrew Pendray determined that it should nevertheless be cancelled as a signal to other licensees that ‘repetitive participation in deceptive schemes’ will result in ‘significant’ punishment. He also ordered her to pay a $40,000 administrative penalty and $90,000 in enforcement expenses.”

“Pendray found she had submitted mortgage applications for five different properties that she either owned or was purchasing, providing falsified income information on each one. Unlike other cases referenced by the parties in their submissions, Rohani’s misconduct was not limited to a single transaction involving falsified documents or a series of such transactions during a brief period of time, according to the decision. ‘Rather, in this case Ms. Rohani repetitively, over the course of a number of years, elected to personally participate in a deceptive mortgage application scheme for her own benefit, and subsequently, arranged for her clients to participate in the same deceptive mortgage application scheme,’ the decision reads.”

The Vancouver Sun in Canada. “‘Will prices come down further?’ That’s the top question on the minds of home hunters who walk into realtor Adil Dinani’s office in Coquitlam these days. After several months of cool sales and rising inventory in Metro Vancouver’s real estate market — with a big jump in June — it seems like a reasonable assumption that conditions have tipped in favour of buyers. Inventories of condos are rising more quickly with large numbers of buildings under construction coming to completion, and plenty of presale buyers looking to sell their units. However, detached homes and duplexes that are in good locations and ‘sharply priced’ are still seeing multiple offers, Dinani said.”

“‘This is the caveat. If this trend of listing inventory continues and is not met with an increase in buyer activity or a drop in interest rates, then we could see some price softness,’ Dinani said. ‘We’re seeing that in the condo market.’ If they’re looking at condos, ‘you can be aggressive (with offers) out there,’ Dinani said. ‘Because there’s certainly more supply coming online, especially over the next year.’ ‘My advice is not to be overly aggressive,’ he added. ‘Buyers want to know (that) what they’re going to buy today is not going to be worth less tomorrow,’ Dinani said.”

“Surrey realtor Manny Chehil of Sutton Group West Coast Realty said buyers who are already in the market need to know where they want to move to and their ‘motivations have to be clear.’ ‘If there’s a reason to sell, you sell,’ Chehil said. ‘Otherwise … I tell people you should think twice before you list.'”

ABC News in Australia. “When retired policeman Geoff Gauci packed up his old life and moved to an over-50s gated community on Melbourne’s northern fringe, he pictured his next chapter as peaceful. Seduced by promises of low maintenance and resort-style living at an affordable price, he bought into a Lifestyle Communities development at Wollert, impressed with its high-security cameras and boom gates that guarded a manufactured urban landscape of neat rows of uniform houses and perfectly manicured fake lawns. But 18 months later, earlier this year, he and two other residents, Thom Meads and Steve Doudle, found themselves investigating the utopia they thought they’d bought into. ‘To me, it’s like I’m in a financial prison,’ Gauci says. ‘I’ve got to bail myself out in order to get out, and it’s just wrong.'”

“Lifestyle Communities specialises in land lease communities in Victoria, where residents buy the home, usually a manufactured or moveable dwelling, and rent the land, similar to a caravan park. The company is part of the booming $12 billion land lease industry, a sector that houses more than 130,000 Australians across the country, fuelled by a housing affordability crisis and an ageing population. Gauci’s battle with Lifestyle began when he realised one of its competitors, Stockland, was not charging its land lease residents exit fees, but had been selling properties at similar prices, off the plan, which would charge a similar rent and provide similar facilities, just a short ride from his home.”

“Doudle believes the exit fee was misrepresented to him, and he would have never bought into the community if he knew then what he does now. ‘Being here now after three and a half years, knowing what I know, if I knew that at the time of signing, I would not be here,’ he says. ‘When I die … it could take two years to sell or three … why would somebody want to buy in here, when they can go down the road and buy one with no [exit] fees … and by the time maybe they sell it, there’d be nothing for my children,’ one resident said.”

“Robert Humphris says he tried to get out after realising what he bought wasn’t what he expected. He told 7.30 ‘we were victims of the advertising jingle,’ noting that the marketing spin made everything look like Disneyland. He says it cost him almost $100,000 to get out of Lifestyle, including $63,000 in exit fees, short term rental and home improvements, wiping out most of his capital gain. ‘And in your late 60s you never get that back,’ he says.”

The Wall Street Journal. “For years, Liuzhou and scores of other Chinese cities together amassed trillions of dollars in off-the-books debt for economic development projects. The opaque financing was the yeast that helped China rise to the envy of the world. Today, overgrown construction sites, sparsely used highways and abandoned tourist attractions make much of that debt-fueled growth look illusory and suggests China’s future is far from assured. Liuzhou, a city in the southern region of Guangxi, raised billions of dollars to build the infrastructure for a new industrial district, where a state-owned financing group acquired land and opened hotels and an amusement park. Other tracts of acquired land sit vacant, and many area streets look practically deserted. Birds flit through the rows of abandoned buildings at an unfinished apartment complex. ‘The government is broke,’ said one local resident who watched the project falter from her shop across the street.”

“At the heart of the mess are the complex state-owned funding vehicles that borrowed money on behalf of local governments, in many cases pursuing development projects that generated few economic returns. The deterioration of China’s real-estate market in the past three years meant local governments could no longer rely on land sales to real-estate developers, a significant source of revenue. Economists estimate the size of such off-the-books debt is somewhere between $7 trillion and $11 trillion, about twice the size of China’s central government debt. The total amount isn’t known—likely not even to Beijing, say bankers and economists—because of the opaqueness surrounding the financial arrangements that allowed the debt to balloon.”

“Many of the projects funded by LGFVs turned out to be ill-timed, ill-conceived or both. Liupanshui, a city in the region of Guizhou, set up six LGFVs for 23 tourism projects, including construction of a ski resort on a mountain that typically gets enough snow for less than two months a year, though it also is open for offseason recreation. State media reported that 16 of the 23 city ventures are idle ‘low-efficiency’ projects.”

“Another LGFV, in neighboring Yunnan province, ran up $8.4 billion in debt to build projects, including ‘artistic living space.’ After the housing was done, not enough people wanted to live there. The project was sold in 2021, literally, for a few cents, to another LGFV in the same province. ‘The reckoning has arrived,’ said Victor Shih, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who researches China’s politics and financial system.”

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Almost All Will Be Lost

A report from the LA Daily News in California. "Rampant housing inflation means the federal…

This Post Has 94 Comments

  1. ‘Lafollette had been paying about $2,000 a year to insure their home. When she sought a new estimate, she was confronted with annual insurance rates of more than $20,000 a year…‘We’re panicking and we’re frustrated, because we’ve been working so hard to make our properties and our community fire safe,’ Lafollette said. ‘The insurance companies don’t look at individual properties. They’re just looking at a category on a map. So it doesn’t matter if you’ve clear-cut your property or you’ve done all the work to make your property safe’

    Yer in a ‘pool’ Jamie. But it is still way cheaper than renting.

    1. I think the Marshall Fire demonstrated that you can’t “fireproof” a neighborhood in the southwest

      2. People usually plant lots of shade foliage in these sunny places, but it contributes to the fire danger.

    2. “Robert Humphris says he tried to get out after realising what he bought wasn’t what he expected. He told 7.30 ‘we were victims of the advertising jingle,’ . . . ”

      “victims of the advertising jingle” hmm interesting. a new class of victims. now that’s something I can really support. a club that EVERYONE can join. after all, isn’t that what all the recent wailing is about, with that catch phrase: ______ ______ for EVERYONE!!

      Need to hire an ambulance chaser to sue Barry Manilow for that catchy jingle: “And Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is Therrrre”
      hell, he’s got deep pockets.
      and when he settles I might get a coupon whilst the lawyers bank a few mil.

      grand idea, that. brilliant !

      1. “He says it cost him almost $100,000 to get out of Lifestyle, including $63,000 in exit fees, short term rental and home improvements, wiping out most of his capital gain.”

        I don’t know what this means? You have to renovate your kitchen in order to sell? Short term rental, huh? What is this?

        1. All it means is there’s 50 ways to take a schlonging. Paul Simon is gonna have to rewrite his song.

    1. I wonder how often Mark Walhberg has to fill the private jet to get those teens back to Huntington Beach for the weekend?

  3. “…Lafollette had been paying about $2,000 a year to insure their home. When she sought a new estimate, she was confronted with annual insurance rates of more than $20,000 a year….”

    Another Monday, another out-of-control holding costs story.

    More Mondays to come.

  4. $DJT up 36% since opening bell.

    I’m sure it will stabilize down over the course of the day, but still, that’s a spike.

    1. “Dang, someone’s having a “good” (!!?!) week.”

      I dunno. I’ve heard live rounds flying by, but nothing that close.

  6. Via ZH: Trump Classified Docs Case Dismissed, Judge Finds Special Counsel Appointment Unconstitutional

    1. US District Court Judge Eileen Cannon knows US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas agrees.

      1. At least nobody is blaming this ruling on Saturday’s events (yet). It’s clear that the judge was writing the ruling a least a week ago.

        1. I haven’t read it, but a judge doesn’t whip out a 93-page order like THAT in less than 48 hours.

    2. Democrats adhere to an alien ideology, Marxism, that is fundamentally incompatible with swearing oaths of allegiance to the Constitution or upholding the rule of law.

  7. Some HBBers might be interested in this book.

    https: //nitter.poast.org /JoshuaLisec /status /1812681485612142964#m:

    For 250 years, when the Far Left wants to destroy a society, they first identify groups of people who have a real (or imagined) grievance against “the man,” whoever that may be in their case.

    They then organize all these groups into a “coalition of the fringes” and engage in mass manipulation until their minds are all owned by resentment—until the coalition believes they are totally and completely justified in “unhumaning” the ones they blame for their lot in life.

    And then, the Far Left points these characters at their enemy … and unleashes them. What happens next looks different in each time, place, and race, but the story follows the same basic plot.

    From France to Russia to Spain to China to Cuba to Chile to Nicaragua to Cambodia to South Africa to the USA today . . .

    This is what they do.
    Every single time.

    If you’ve had enough, study Chapters 12 and 13 of unhumansbook.com.

  8. Amazing post! (cleaned to avoid moderation)

    https: // nitter.poast.org / wildbarestepf / status / 1812349004530983364#m:

    graduated in 2012 w a degree in Women’s Studies

    cried in 2016 when Trump got elected

    lost touch w the dems somewhere around MeToo

    discovered entrepreneurship

    updated my voter registration in 2018 but didn’t tell anyone

    told myself i was a ‘single-issue-voting Centrist’

    the last 6-12 months i’ve believed i was going to abstain from voting in the upcoming election because the options are equally terrible

    but watching Trump survive an assassination attempt and act like a total f@ck!ng savage just shifted me into some strange, patriotic gear that my fancy-feminism-white-men-bad infected brain never showed me

    like, the dude took a bullet and stood up with blood dripping down his face, and rallied a f@ck!ng crowd while fist pumping, yelling “FIGHT!”

    sorry, but i’m voting for that.

    and saying it out loud feels so freeing

    (2012 stepfanie would be so p!$$ed but that’s okay because 2012 stepfanie didn’t know sh!t)

    2. like, the dude took a bullet and stood up with blood dripping down his face, and rallied a f@ck!ng crowd while fist pumping, yelling “FIGHT!”

      And he’s not calling for Gun Control nor lashing out at the NRA. Gotta give him credit!

      1. Hubby knows two Never-Trump people now voting for Trump after Saturday. One’s an avid “Morning Joe” watcher.

      2. “…a lot of whistleblowers.”

        Probably from the retired ranks as whistleblowing is often a career ending experience.

  10. “Chehil said. ‘Otherwise … I tell people you should think twice before you list.”

    was ist los?!? ach mein gott! realtors advising NOT to sell !?!?
    next thing ya’ know some hard left celeb (or 2) will be turning on the democratic party.

  11. In a shocking and disturbing display of callous, reckless, hyper-partisan and dangerous rhetoric, Ashley Nerbovig of The Stranger posted, “make america aim again” in response to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. That the Stranger may tolerate this is, unfortunately, not surprising.

    After the post was screenshot and shared, Nerbovig first deleted the disturbing comment. Then she took her entire X account offline. Nerbovig’s author’s page was also removed from the Stranger’s website and a representative from the blog did not respond to a request for comment to explain why. No matter how she tries to erase what she said, Nerbovig should not escape criticism for such a ghastly post.

    Afterward, the Stranger responded with a statement on X condemning political violence. It’s unclear if they would have without Nerbovig’s initial post. This raises significant questions about the continuing deterioration of the culture within that publication and the broader media landscape.

    Even the most vocal opponents of Trump, including those who have trafficked in dangerous rhetoric, came together to denounce political violence. They understood the seriousness of the moment. But not Ashley Nerbovig. She couldn’t be bothered to keep her bloodlust to herself.

    Nerbovig’s X post was not just in poor taste; it was a glaring endorsement of political violence. This kind of rhetoric is not only irresponsible but shows a shockingly and appalling lack of judgment. In a time when tensions are high and division runs deep, such statements can deepen societal rifts and lead to more violence. The fact that a journalist, someone who should adhere to principles of basic responsibility, made this comment is particularly alarming.

    Following the backlash, The Stranger issued a statement saying, “The Stranger condemns political violence in the strongest possible terms. Period.”

    While this response is necessary, it appears to be an attempt at damage control rather than a genuine condemnation. The question remains: how did such a toxic mindset develop within their ranks? This incident reflects poorly not just on Nerbovig but on the editorial standards and culture of The Stranger as a whole.

    https://mynorthwest.com/3965960/ashley-nerbovig-stranger-reporter-donald-trump-assassination-attempt-political-violence/

  12. An apparent assassination attempt has many questioning how a shooting that wounded former U.S. president Donald Trump was even possible.

    Ken Gray, a former agent with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a senior lecturer at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, shared his thoughts with CTV News Channel on Saturday’s shooting, weighing on the agents’ performance and what this might mean for future rallies.

    From Gray’s perspective, the service performed a “good” and “competent” job by throwing their bodies on Trump(opens in a new tab) to protect him from any more shots fired, he said

    “Nonetheless, the counter sniper team may have had eyes on this shooter and did not react to that. So that’s something that will have to be looked at as this investigation goes on,” Gray said.

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/what-an-ex-fbi-agent-noticed-in-the-aftermath-of-donald-trump-rally-shooting-1.6963527

      1. I’d like to see that “manatee” on a military qualification 5-mi run with 8.5-min per mile while wearing issue boots.

    2. It was almost certainly a coms failure. Spectators at the rally were pointing out the gunman for a full two minutes, the LEO snipers had eyes on the gunman for at least 30 seconds, and an LEO climbed the building, saw the gunman and ran away. Any of the security, no matter at what level, should have had a panic button to get Trump OFF THAT STAGE, and take care of the gunman.

  13. China’s property downturn is weighing on yet another corner of financial markets: ESG-labeled securitized debt. Chinese developers are issuing far fewer securities tied to climate or social objectives, resulting in only $2.8 billion being raised in Asia Pacific in the first half, data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence show. That’s an 86% drop from a year earlier, and bucks a trend in both the US and the Europe, the Middle East and Africa region, which saw increases.

    “This is definitely a bit of a setback,” after large issuance in Asia in 2022 and 2023, said Trevor Allen, head of sustainability research at BNP Paribas SA. As the housing market has cooled in China, there have been fewer loans to roll up into green securitizations, he added.

    Special purpose entities of developers China Jinmao Holdings Group Ltd. and Shui On Land Ltd., along with electric vehicle maker BYD Co. were among China’s top three issuers in 2023 though have either slowed down or are absent this year, according to the BI data.

    Korea Housing Finance Corp., a major issuer of securitized debt aimed at affordable housing in recent years, has also been absent in 2024.

    There have also been no sales by Chinese developers of commercial mortgage-backed securities with an ESG label in 2024, compared with a combined $4.3 billion over the past two years, BI data show.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-property-crash-battering-niche-230000935.html

  14. Wheeler Dealers star Mike Brewer has admitted classic car prices are “coming down” after a major “resetting of the market”.

    The presenter of the classic car restoration show revealed prices had gone “completely flat” with valuations down between 10 and 20 percent.

    Mike stressed fees were still “on the way down” with price reductions set to continue for another “six to eight months”.

    The TV host admitted the sudden fall was down to an oversupply of good classic car stock in recent years. He also pointed out that prices were “over-inflated” during the coronavirus pandemic where costs were higher than they should have been.

    Speaking to the Telegraph, Mike said: “The market got swamped with good quality classics that bumped prices up because sales were high.

    “But now the market has gone completely flat and prices are on their way down, dropping 10 to 20 percent over the past six months and still coming down.

    “I can see that happening for the next six to eight months. It’s a resetting of the market to where it should be – prices got over-inflated during and after Covid.”

    https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1923178/wheeler-dealers-admits-classic-car

    1. It is my understanding that “classic cars” don’t have the same appeal to younger generations as they do to boomers (and older), so as older dudes pass on and their classic 60’s cars go to auction, the interest in them might not be what it used to be. I’ve also read that it’s starting to get harder to find parts for those cars.

      1. That’s happening across all antiques, and it’s not recent. Especially furniture. I’ve long felt antiques were terrible investments. You have to shelter them, etc. But fads came and went and now the people with antiques need to sell (estates for example) just when younger people have no interest. I like antiques, if I can use them or put them on a wall.

        1. I find those types of markets interesting. There is a curve to most of them that rises as a younger generation gets adult money and wants things from the past that they admired and now can afford to buy for themselves. If you hit the curve right you can do well but always beware the other side of the curve where demand falls off a cliff.

          That said, I am amused watching some of the 70’s cars that were junk when they were new go to extremes now. Fools and their money…

          1. “…some of the 70’s cars that were junk when they were new…”

            Shoehorning cubic inches into an overweight door slammer was the only technology back in the day. And you’re correct; they were (are) junk!

      2. I’ve also read that it’s starting to get harder to find parts for those cars.
        A buddy has a 1970 Buick convertible which was his pride and joy for over a decade but no longer runs. Not sure if he is too old and lazy to fix it or doesn’t have the money. Either way it is just sitting in the garage doing nothing.

  15. Big retailers and home delivery services eager to improve efficiencies by employing robotics are learning the hard way what happens when technology meets culture and common sense. It’s not pretty.

    Airborne delivery drones being tested by companies such as Walmart, Amazon and Google are being shot out of the air by homeowners claiming the machines are harassing them. A 72-year-old Orlando-area man shot a Walmart drone late last month with his handgun because he said he thought it was spying on him, a serious offence that could mean jail time.

    On the ground, small autonomous delivery carts such as Kiwibots used by restaurants and food delivery services on many U.S. college campuses, have been bot-napped by pranksters.

    Bravo, not because the culprits are breaking the law with such extreme acts, but because their pushback calls out yet another example of gratuitous use of technology that will complicate our lives, not simplify them.

    At its core, this is about technology for technology’s sake, and more proof that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

    Tech sycophants swoon at the potential of these so-called advancements, ever-faithful to the belief that everything can be made better by using machines. It can’t.

    Until companies realize that sometimes technology is not the right answer, delivery drones will continue to be shot out of the sky and bot-napping will continue, no matter how severe the penalties. Score one for the humans.

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-delivery-drones-are-getting-shot-out-of-the-sky-robots-kidnapped/

    1. I think a good case could be made that it is better for a drone/bot to get shot than a pizza delivery dude. Progress!

  16. When President Joe Biden delivered his 2023 State of the Union address, Washington was drowning in a sea of red ink. The annual budget deficit was in the process of doubling from $1 trillion to $2 trillion in a single year due to some student-debt cancellation shenanigans. That year’s budget deficit would become the largest share of gross domestic product (GDP) in American history outside of wars and recessions. Economists at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and across the political spectrum warned that continuing to ignore the escalating Social Security and Medicare shortfalls while also opposing new broad-based taxes was unsustainable and could bring a painful debt crisis.

    Paradoxically, the faster government debt escalates toward an inevitable debt crisis, the less politicians and voters seem to care. In the 1980s and 1990s, more modest deficits dominated economic policy debates and prompted six major deficit reduction deals that balanced the budget from 1998 through 2001. That era is long gone. In the past eight years, President Donald Trump and then Biden enacted $12 trillion in deficit-expanding legislation even as Social Security and Medicare shortfalls drove baseline deficits higher. When even liberal economists warned politicians that the post-pandemic economy faced a modest degree of rising inflation and interest rates—and that a federal spending spree would pour gasoline on that fire—lawmakers responded by enacting the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan. When inflation and mortgage rates resultantly surged to 9.1 percent and 7.8 percent, respectively, lawmakers brazenly continued the inflationary spending spree.

    Why are we no longer responding to soaring debt and its economic consequences? While there are many factors, the three most important are these: 1) We’ve convinced ourselves that deficits do not matter; 2) partisan politics and the collapse of lawmaking have turned deficits into a weapon to be politicized rather than a problem to be solved; and 3) few of us are willing to face the unpopular reality that this issue cannot be resolved without fundamentally reforming Social Security, Medicare, and middle-class taxes.

    Few voters, or even politicians, have fully grasped how perilous Washington’s fiscal outlook has become. While budget deficits have historically averaged 3 percent of GDP—ensuring the debt grows no faster than the overall economy—the deficit reached 7.5 percent of GDP last year and is projected to swell to 14 percent of GDP over three decades if current tax and spending policies are extended. If the federal debt continues to roll over into the 4.5 percent interest rate seen at recent Treasury debt auctions, then the budget deficit may surpass $4 trillion within a decade.

    When a debt becomes this enormous, interest rates become a budgetary time bomb. Even if rates stay below 4 percent forever—as the CBO’s projections questionably assume—projected interest costs will consume a quarter of all federal taxes within a decade and become the largest annual federal expenditure within two decades. If rates rise, each percentage point will add $35 trillion in interest over three decades—the cost of adding another Defense Department. Again, that’s for each percentage point.

    Progressives even invented an absurd justification for enormous deficits. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) inexplicably claimed that Scandinavian-size spending could be financed by radically expanding the money supply without significant inflation. The 72 leading economists on the left and right responding to an expert survey unanimously rejected the MMT’s ahistorical and nonsensical claims. The MMT’s real purpose was to concoct an economic justification for progressives’ longstanding desire to drastically expand government unconstrained from the limits of plausible taxation.

    In hindsight, the economy managed the post-2000 debt surge because the initial 32 percent of GDP debt level provided some fiscal space for additional borrowing. Furthermore, the sluggish economy, an accommodating Federal Reserve, and a global savings glut drove a historic interest rate decline that made debt more affordable for families, businesses, and the federal budget.

    That free-lunch era is now over. The federal debt exceeds 100 percent of GDP and is set to double or even triple over a few decades. These debt levels are rendered even more unaffordable by rising interest rates, as the structural factors that long reduced rates begin to reverse. Consensus economic analysis suggests that the debt surge itself will elevate interest rates by as much as three percentage points.

    Unfortunately, American politics has not caught up to this new economic reality—which brings us to one of the biggest barriers to reform.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/why-did-americans-stop-caring-about-the-national-debt/ar-BB1pUpJi

  17. I’m thinking this last paragraph speak volumes. Look at the 10yr active inventory AND the 10yr home sale trends charts
    Updated on July 10th, 2024

    Is the Colorado Springs housing market forecast to crash soon?
    Over the past year, we’ve seen an increase in available properties, yet the market remains vibrant and active, avoiding any downturn toward a recession. The median price for homes listed for sale has remained stable, closely mirroring last year’s figures. This stability is a positive sign, showing no immediate risk of a housing market crash in our area. Instead, we’re witnessing a shift.

    In 2024, home prices in the Pikes Peak region have held steady despite average interest rates. This balance is thanks to a gradually increasing supply meeting the demand for single-family homes in Colorado. As the inventory continues to align with buyer demand, we might anticipate a slight price adjustment throughout the year.

    Additionally, there’s a growing trend of homeowners tapping into their equity by borrowing against their property. This movement indicates a change in the national housing market. However, it’s still too early to forecast how these dynamics will fully play out and when the inventory will increase to stabilize the market further.

    https://greatcoloradohomes.com/colorado-springs-real-estate-market-statistics.php

      1. I was around in 2008 when this was happening ad nauseum. Guy, I knew buying up rentals bragging about how he was an instant millionaire. *owning* 4 or 5 rental properties. Needless to say, he fell flat upon his face. Sad thing is he simply walked away from all these properties and by about 2014 he was whole again. It’s like the PPP money. Who knows where the heck all that cash went and for what?

      2. “These are people that need the money.”

        Yep, broke äžž losers without $400 for an emergency.

    2. The annual budget deficit was in the process of doubling from $1 trillion to $2 trillion in a single year due to some student-debt cancellation shenanigans. That year’s budget deficit would become the largest share of gross domestic product (GDP) in American history outside of wars and recessions.
      They way I like to view the shortfall is more in the line of:
      Revenue: 4.9 Trillion
      Spending 7.0 Trillion
      Shortfall 2.1 Trillion or 43% of Revenue

      I think overspending vs revenue is another important number to view because I see a lot of things counting as GDP, but in many cases, don’t add any real value. But revenue is revenue and is more difficult to manipulate.

    3. The inventory of properties for sale in Colorado Springs has been rising inexorably, and is about to break 4,000. Fully one quarter are “price reduced” – but the delusion is strong here, and the greedheads are clinging tenaciously to their wish prices or making piddly reductions that are laughable compared to how insanely overpriced most shacks are, especially the shoddily-constructed crap most developers & builders have thrown up over the past several years.

      https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Colorado-Springs_CO/sby-6

      1. Yes I have been watching this too. There was a great video done by some local news and a realtor for the area sometime in 2021 or so. I linked it here but no idea who to find it. Anyhoo he was saying how with an inventory of 300-400 homes it’s a sellers’ market ask whatever you want. The interviewer stated that inventory was starting to climb close to 1,000 homes and he said “Yeah it’s climbing a BIT” then the clip abruptly ended. Much like “We beat Medicare..Thank you Mr. president”

  18. Former President Donald Trump announced on July 15 that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) will be his running mate, ending months of speculation.

    The former president made the announcement shortly before delegates at the Republican National Convention are scheduled to nominate him and his choice for vice president to represent the GOP in the 2024 presidential election.

    “After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” former President Trump wrote in a statement on Truth Social.

    “J.D. honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of The Yale Law Journal, and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association. J.D.’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a Major Best Seller and Movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country.

    “J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond….”

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-selects-jd-vance-as-running-mate-5686707

      1. Didn’t your original screen name have Ohio in it? A difference between 2020 and 2024 is the vast majority of people in the US don’t currently suffer from mass formation psychosis. In 2020, I’d bet the majority were under some form of it.

  20. Interesting Vance’s wife works for the law firm charlie Munger started…….yes that charlie munger

    Vance is now an attorney at the San Francisco and Washington, DC law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson where she focuses on complex civil litigation and appeals.

  22. Globalist scum media keeps calling failed assassin Crooks a “registered Republican.” What they fail to note is that PA has open primaries, and Democrats are encouraged to register as Republicans to affect the outcome of the GOP primaries.

  23. Coming down further…

    CURRENT Apr 30 2024 $1,200,000
    LISTED Sep 28 2023 $1,380,000
    SOLD Jun 11 2021 $1,2800,000

    I just noticed that realtor does not show the actual listing price of this home from June 11 2021 sale. I know for a fact that this home sold for $80k above listing. Therefore it WAS listed for sale at $1.3 million. It appears Realtor has removed the Paying-Over-List information from their site.

    https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/510-S-Snowmass-Cir_Superior_CO_80027_M17575-21327?from=srp-map

    1. 144 days on Realtor.com. Hangry realtors are going to stop wasting their time with delusional greedhead wish prices.

    1. Sitting unsold for 144 days. Get to sawin’ and slashin’ like you mean it, greedhead seller, unless you’d rather chase the market down & get schlonged even more bigly.

    1. In Commiefornia, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” ― Joseph Stalin

  28. In Reno-Sparks, the ratio of agents to available homes for sale is even tighter. Last year, the area saw about 4200 home sales, according to Beau Keenan, owner of Dickson Realty, a real estate company that operates in Northern Nevada and Northern California. In contrast, the market has about 3,200 real estate agents. Assuming that each home sale uses two agents as well, it translates to less than three homes per agent. The commission that agents get also shrink further when factoring in compensation for their brokers plus referral fees from real estate services such as Zillow, Redfin or OpCity that can siphon between 25% to 35% of their commission. ‘You need to sell 10 to 12 homes a year to make a living out of it,’ Keenan said. ‘So that just goes to show you how many people are not making a living (with real estate)’

    That’s OK Beau, because all those UHS who were pretending to work selling two shacks a year (one to their cousin) put up plenty of filthy lucre in the golden years.

  29. ‘Few real estate investors helped fuel the frenzy of the 2010s quite like Ivanhoé Cambridge…Now, nearly $5 billion worth of debt on those properties is set to mature over a 12-month span starting next year…‘Office was bad already at the beginning of the pandemic,’ she said. ‘It’s not just about bad assets; it’s also about bad liabilities. So when you have bad on both sides, it’s where the problem starts’

    I don’t know when you started Nathalie, but yer riding a dead horse. At least the paychecks checks don’t bounce yet. You guys were winnahs! back in the day though.

  30. ‘determined that it should nevertheless be cancelled as a signal to other licensees that ‘repetitive participation in deceptive schemes’ will result in ‘significant’ punishment. He also ordered her to pay a $40,000 administrative penalty and $90,000 in enforcement expenses’

    This is a weird story you can check out if interested. She hardly did any business, but what she had was littered with fraud.

  31. ‘Inventories of condos are rising more quickly with large numbers of buildings under construction coming to completion, and plenty of presale buyers looking to sell their units…’If this trend of listing inventory continues and is not met with an increase in buyer activity or a drop in interest rates, then we could see some price softness,’ Dinani said. ‘We’re seeing that in the condo market.’ If they’re looking at condos, ‘you can be aggressive (with offers) out there,’ Dinani said. ‘Because there’s certainly more supply coming online, especially over the next year…My advice is not to be overly aggressive,’ he added. ‘Buyers want to know (that) what they’re going to buy today is not going to be worth less tomorrow’

    That’s right, the market needs knife catchers Adil, spreads the pain around.

  32. ‘But 18 months later, earlier this year, he and two other residents…found themselves investigating the utopia they thought they’d bought into. ‘To me, it’s like I’m in a financial prison,’ Gauci says. ‘I’ve got to bail myself out in order to get out, and it’s just wrong’

    You didn’t even own any land Geoff.

  33. ‘raised billions of dollars to build the infrastructure for a new industrial district, where a state-owned financing group acquired land and opened hotels and an amusement park. Other tracts of acquired land sit vacant, and many area streets look practically deserted. Birds flit through the rows of abandoned buildings at an unfinished apartment complex. ‘The government is broke’

    ‘At the heart of the mess are the complex state-owned funding vehicles that borrowed money on behalf of local governments, in many cases pursuing development projects that generated few economic returns. The deterioration of China’s real-estate market in the past three years meant local governments could no longer rely on land sales to real-estate developers, a significant source of revenue. Economists estimate the size of such off-the-books debt is somewhere between $7 trillion and $11 trillion, about twice the size of China’s central government debt. The total amount isn’t known—likely not even to Beijing, say bankers and economists—because of the opaqueness surrounding the financial arrangements that allowed the debt to balloon…Many of the projects funded by LGFVs turned out to be ill-timed, ill-conceived or both’

    This LGFV phase was an extraordinary period of the mania. I’ll point out that even at the time, most media pointed out how reckless it was. Are we there yet?

  34. Thousands of Colombians tried to gate crash the Copa America final yesterday, which was played in Miami. Many tried to climb over the fence surrounding the stadium (Hard Rock Stadium). Where have I seen that behavior before? Oh, I remember! It was at the border! I’ll bet most of those gate crashers are “refugees”!

    Anyway, Argentina beat Colombia.

  35. Here is some humorous trivia: Many blog posters I ran across have now re-tagged “Brandon” as “The Vegetable”.

  36. Hot Source: As Dump Biden Movement Fizzles, Hollywood Turns Its Angry Eyes on Jeffrey Katzenberg.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/hot-source-dump-biden-movement-183102606.html

    [snip]

    Donald Trump literally dodged a bullet Saturday but the attempt on his life has already had unintended consequences both profoundly tragic and deeply ironic. Along with leaving one of Trump’s rally-goers dead and injuring two others, the failed assassination attempt appears to have mortally wounded the dump Joe Biden movement, at least as far as some Hollywood donors are concerned.

    “We missed the window and there’s no appetite right now for any big moves that will throw more uncertainty and friction into this race,” a well-placed agency executive told Hot Source the day after the shooting. “I think the consensus among donors is that we just go with what we have and make our case and hope for a miracle.”

    [another snip]

    But now, with the shooting in Pennsylvania apparently crushing all that replace-Biden momentum, Democrats in Hollywood are surveying the wreckage and looking for someone to blame. And for many, the obvious someone to point a finger at is Jeffrey Katzenberg, former DreamWorks co-founder, Quibi co-creator, and currently Biden’s campaign co-chair. For months, Katzenberg has not only been bragging about his intimate access to the President but assuring anyone who would listen (and write a check) that Biden was in tip-top mental shape. While Biden’s press conference last week soothed some frayed nerves, others remained unconvinced.

    “People are pissed,” a top Hollywood donor tells Hot Source. “Katzenberg asked for big, big checks and when people asked about the President’s health, he said, ‘No, no, no, he’s fine.’ But that was just a lie, a total lie.”

    In the words of another high placed Hollywood exec, “Jeffrey viewed Biden like he was an animated character that he could market to people. There’s real resentment towards him.”

    1. “We missed the window”

      I was talking about this to a friend of mine. Individual states have drop-dead dates for the parties to supply the official names to print on the ballots. Because so many states have early voting, the ballots have to be printed early too. I don’t know the exact number, but they possibly had a two-week window to both get Biden off the ballot AND agree on a replacement. With Joe/Jill/Hunter resisting, and members of Congress slow to react, I don’t think they could have gotten Biden off the ballot in time, much less agree on a replacement. And that’s *before* Saturday’s events.

    2. “Jeffrey viewed Biden like he was an animated character”

      Well, given what he did at Disney… he’s not wrong…

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