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It’s A Painful Lesson

A report from Go Banking Rates. “Although Florida has made headlines lately due to the rising cost of home insurance premiums, it’s not the only state suffering. Robb Lanham, Chief Sales Officer for HUB Private Client listed California, Texas, Colorado, New York, Louisiana, and Montana as other states at risk of rising premiums. In fact, he said that some insurance in these states may now be the costliest line item when it comes to homeownership. Lanham said he has clients deciding where they will purchase their next property based on home insurance prices. ‘We had the CEO of a large company tell us that the monthly cost of insurance on a property he was buying in Colorado was more than the mortgage, and it no longer made sense to purchase it,’ he said.”

From Realtor.com. “Maryland home inspector Welmoed Sisson recently met homebuyers who were about to purchase a house at the very top end of what they could afford. ‘“They told me at the start of the inspection that they had pretty much no budget for repairs,’ Sisson says. Although their finances were stretched thin, they were hoping it would be OK since, as Sisson recalls, ‘the real estate agent swore the house was move-in ready.’ Even though the house looked fine to the untrained eye, Sisson could instantly tell the property was riddled with problems that would cost a bundle to fix. ‘Just in walking around the exterior, I spotted at least $50,000 worth of critical repairs—failing chimney, foundation cracks, rotted siding, and trim,’ she says. ‘The client was shocked, but grateful that I was honest.’ Sisson doesn’t know if these buyers moved forward with the deal; however, if they did, they at least went in with their eyes open (and some leverage in terms of negotiating repairs with the seller). Unfortunately, many homebuyers aren’t so lucky to get a clear preview of the costs coming their way.”

Newsweek on California. “San Francisco’s condos were hit particularly hard by the housing market downturn which struck the Bay Area during the pandemic, with the city’s condo values plunging by 12.8 percent between February 2020 and February 2024, according to Zillow, from $1.14 million to $997,000. During the same timeframe, the city’s single-family home values fell from $1.44 million to $1.36 million as remote workers left in droves, looking for cheaper properties elsewhere. Vacation rental investor Rohin Dhar, who often shares Zillow listings with significant price drops on social media about several condos in San Francisco which recently sold for less than they were purchased for about a decade ago. A condo at the Four Seasons in downtown San Francisco sold on July 11 for $1.25 million—less than the $1.65 million it fetched in 2005. The two-bedroom property at 765 Market Street, located on the 33rd of 40 floors saw a price drop of $380,997 or 23.4 percent in the past 30 days.”

Times of San Diego. “We ask ourselves: Why, after spending tens of billions of dollars, are California’s twin problems of homelessness and housing affordability decidedly worse? You might be tempted to think that the reason we rely on temporary housing is that it is cheaper. However, that is not even the case: Los Angeles is spending $4,500 a month to place homeless people in hotels on a temporary basis. If you gave them $4,500 a month, they could rent a luxury apartment for themselves. We like to brag about being the fifth largest economy in the world, but we are the poorest state based on our cost of living. We are also the homeless capital of America and arguably the world, as I travel extensively to developing countries. I have seen many shanty towns, informal settlements, and refugee camps, but nowhere I have been has as many people sleeping on the sidewalk as California.”

The Wall Street Journal. “Brad Sumrok, all smiles and promise, for years chartered buses filled with people wide-eyed at the prospect of ditching jobs for a life of freedom and wealth. Doctors, engineers, warehouse workers, retirees, married couples and tattooed 20-somethings took seats and rolled through the outskirts of Sunbelt cities, stopping to inspect apartment buildings for sale, one after another. The route was simple: Raise money, take out loans and buy a multifamily rental building. Make cosmetic repairs and raise rents as high as the market will bear. ‘Whatever the eff you do, do not miss the bus,’ he said during a typically inspirational presentation. ‘Get on the freakin’ bus.'”

“More than any single salesman, Sumrok drove the business known as apartment syndication to new heights. From his base in Dallas, he spawned a generation of landlords who now own tens of thousands of apartment buildings that have a collective worth in the billions of dollars. Sumrok encouraged students to outbid competitors based on the expectations of future profit. When interest rates started to rise in 2022, he coached his students to keep buying. The former hospice salesman in Phoenix recently saw a number of his mortgages flagged for potential trouble. The young mother in Seattle has lost some of her buildings to foreclosure.”

“Charles Lemaire, a retired engineer and Sumrok student, said he and his family members have made more than $4 million investing in apartment rentals. He expects to lose money in a couple of properties because of the increase in interest rates and said Sumrok should have warned students about variable-interest loans. ‘As soon as we were supposed to go to floating rates, I think he should have been putting the brakes on with a whole lot more red flags,’ Lemaire said.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer in Pennsylvania. “When Timothy Sharpe moved into his studio apartment at Brith Sholom House, a senior complex in Philadelphia’s Wynnefield section, he believed that he’d finally found a peaceful, safe place to call home. What followed were two harrowing years of discomfort, and even danger. Sharpe’s 400 square feet of misery is just one small corner of the crisis at Brith Sholom: Its owners have defaulted on a $36 million mortgage, racked up 275 code violations, siphoned off $1 million in residents’ utility payments, and enabled an influx of squatters who have terrorized the senior residents.”

“And Brith Sholom, it turns out, is only one part of a vast empire of neglect tied to a New Jersey real estate dynasty that has made a lucrative business of stripping the equity from affordable housing complexes — more than 100 of them, scattered across Pennsylvania and at least 20 other states. The Puretz family — Yehuda ‘Lieb’ Puretz, his sons Aron and Chaikel ‘Chaim’ Puretz, and Aron’s son Chaim ‘Eli’ Puretz — used a web of hundreds of corporate entities, and, in some cases, falsified documents to hide its involvement, as they became one of the nation’s largest affordable housing providers.”

“The same pattern can be found across many of their properties: They bought older buildings with substantial renovation needs. They saddled the buildings with enormous debt — in some cases, by deceiving lenders about the value of the property. Then, they defaulted on loans, stiffed utility companies, and slashed maintenance contracts — squeezing out profits while allowing properties to fall into decline.”

From Bisnow. “In late October, Denizens Brewing in Silver Spring poured its last beer of the night for the final time. The suburban Maryland staple had served craft brews for a decade, but when its lease came due, founder Julie Verratti decided she wasn’t willing to commit to another 10 years. Her uncertainty is a symptom of a larger plague spreading across Silver Spring, where a once-vibrant downtown commercial district is now lined with vacant storefronts and half-empty office buildings. ‘There’s nobody there,’ Verratti said. ‘It’s crazy.’ Silver Spring has suffered five straight years of negative net demand, with a net occupancy loss of 248K SF since the beginning of 2020, according to CBRE.”

Simcoe.com in Canada. “While two real estate associations that service Simcoe County are hesitant to call it a ‘buyer’s market,’ Terry Irwin isn’t. Irwin and his wife are selling their Collingwood home on Chamberlain Crescent and planning a move to Thornbury to be closer to family. He said the home has been on the market for a week and they’ve had a few showings but not a lot of interest. ‘It’s a buyer’s market right now,’ he said. ‘It’s making a little bit difficult for us. There’s a lot of inventory.’ They have a bit of time as their new home will be ready in October, but the situation is becoming slightly stressful, Irwin said.”

“Bonnie Looby, president of the Lakelands association said the sky-high prices from the pandemic are still impacting some sellers. Looby said when she’s listing a property, she’s hesitant to give a specific price too soon. Looby said prices are dropping around five per cent in her area and changing rapidly. ‘I think people still have that pie in the sky idea of COVID pricing,’ she said. ’I can get a million dollars for my property.’”

The Sarnia Observer in Canada. “Police are conducting an arson investigation after millions of dollars in damage was done to several homes being built on Pottruff Road off Powerline, near the Brant County Sports Complex on Sunday morning. ‘Three new homes under construction are basically destroyed,’ said Brant County Fire Chief Darren Watson about the early morning fire that saw flames shooting into the sky. Watson said several other unoccupied homes had more minor damage and one or two homes on a street backing up to the fire also had minor damage.”

City AM in the UK. “Scandal-hit social housing investor Home REIT is set to wind down after failing to pay off a huge debt pile and struggling under the costs of a slew of legal battles and a probe from the City regulator. In a statement to the market this morning, the former FTSE 250 firm said it had concluded its ‘stabilisation strategy’ was unworkable and the company would now look to offload its entire portfolio and enter a ‘managed wind down.’ The plans come as a sharp u-turn for the company after its investment manager, AEW, said it had been pushing ahead with plans to raise cash via property sales and refinance its debt as recently as two months ago. City A.M. has revealed that a string of its tenants were withholding rent and that swathes of its portfolio were dilapidated and did not qualify for ‘exempt housing benefits’, on which the company said its business model relied. Home REIT said today that after failing to refinance its debt with lender Scottish Widows, the ‘considerable challenges’ and high cost base facing the company made a turnaround unfeasible.”

Radio New Zealand. “The housing market cooled further in June, with prices and sales falling, while buyers have more options as listings continue to rise. Real Estate Institute chief executive Jen Baird said there was a ‘notable decrease in buyer activity’ and a ‘reduced sense of urgency.’ ‘As more listings come to a well-stocked market, those who are in the position to buy are taking their time to carefully select their ideal home,’ she said.”

9 News in Australia. “NSW building company Stevens Construction has collapsed two months after going into voluntary administration. The firm had a portfolio worth more than $400 million, ranging from luxury apartments and affordable housing to retail projects, but on Friday formally went into liquidation, according to documents filed with ASIC. Stevens is the latest in a long list of construction businesses that have collapsed since the pandemic, with supply chain disruptions, skilled worker shortages and high material costs all taking their toll.”

The Courier Mail in Australia. “A three-bedroom house has hit the market at just $99,000, a massive 58 per cent discount on its last sale price, in a town where entry level jobs can pay as much as $130,000 a year. Local real estate agent Janessa Bidgood of Outback Auctions & Real Estate, who is taking the home to market under instruction from the mortgagee, shakes her head when she sees families struggling to rent ‘out east’ when they could be heading west where there are jobs waiting and empty homes available. Ms Bidgood has three houses for sale in Cloncurry priced under $100,000 – including a three-bedroom house on an 809sq m block at 7 Short Street, Cloncurry, which is now priced for sale at just $99,000 by the mortgagee in possession.”

The Washington Post. “Through the period of explosive growth in the 1990s and 2000s, Chinese families poured their life savings into real estate as they moved into cities and up the property ladder. With house prices consistently rising, it was a fast way to get richer. Today, owning a house is more likely to destroy wealth than create it. A prolonged slump in the property sector over the past three years has sparked widespread financial insecurity among the middle class in particular.”

“‘It’s a painful lesson,’ said Clara Liu, a 36-year-old civil servant who lives with her husband in Hangzhou, the eastern Chinese city famous for its tech scene and picturesque West Lake. In 2022, they invested their savings in another apartment they hoped to rent out or resell. Instead, the 960-square-foot apartment sits empty as house prices have plummeted. They can’t find a buyer without taking a huge loss. ‘I will never consider buying a house as an investment again,’ Liu said.”

“They are not alone. With 70 percent of family assets in China stored in property, every 5 percent decline in prices could destroy as much as $2.7 trillion in wealth, Bloomberg Economics has estimated. ‘Those who buy houses today are all people who really need them,’ said Teng Lai, a real estate agent from Foshan. No one buys as an investment and even those who buy out of necessity ‘are waiting and watching to see if prices will be cheaper tomorrow,’ he said.”

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This Post Has 73 Comments

  1. ‘And Brith Sholom, it turns out, is only one part of a vast empire of neglect tied to a New Jersey real estate dynasty that has made a lucrative business of stripping the equity from affordable housing complexes — more than 100 of them, scattered across Pennsylvania and at least 20 other states’

    Another well researched article from the Inquirer, worth reading in full.

  2. ‘We are also the homeless capital of America and arguably the world, as I travel extensively to developing countries. I have seen many shanty towns, informal settlements, and refugee camps, but nowhere I have been has as many people sleeping on the sidewalk as California’

    Weather!

  3. In fact, he said that some insurance in these states may now be the costliest line item when it comes to homeownership.

    FBs who levered up on debt to get up on that housing ladder to effortless riches must be having sleepless nights as holding costs keep rising inexorably while their wages & purchasing power stagnate, thanks to the Keynesian fraudsters at the Fed.

    1. ‘We had the CEO of a large company tell us that the monthly cost of insurance on a property he was buying in Colorado was more than the mortgage, and it no longer made sense to purchase it’

      Libby has put her Subaru up for sale.

      1. I’ll bet the fire risk in those mountain ski towns is off the scale. So in addition to paying a king’s ransom for a shack in places like Aspen, the insurance will be astronomical.

  4. Although their finances were stretched thin, they were hoping it would be OK since, as Sisson recalls, ‘the real estate agent swore the house was move-in ready.’

    After such idiots become cautionary tales, they might learn the hard way that realtors are liars and “experts” citied in the globalist scum media are shills & touts for the REIC.

    1. If the exterior of a home needs 50k worth of repairs and you can’t see that for yourself then you deserve the schlonging.

    2. “Sisson doesn’t know if these buyers moved forward with the deal”

      Looks like they may have avoided idiot-hood. If they did, then good for them.

      1. They still need a b-slap for even considering buying with every last cent they had. 6 months of reserves after purchase used to be the standard. That’s gotta be a least 40k these days.

  5. The two-bedroom property at 765 Market Street, located on the 33rd of 40 floors saw a price drop of $380,997 or 23.4 percent in the past 30 days.”

    Even applying my Common Core maff skills, I can’t work out how this is going to build muh generational wealth.

  6. ‘A condo at the Four Seasons in downtown San Francisco sold on July 11 for $1.25 million—less than the $1.65 million it fetched in 2005. The two-bedroom property at 765 Market Street, located on the 33rd of 40 floors saw a price drop of $380,997 or 23.4 percent in the past 30 days’

    This market peaked in 2015 and has been sinking like a turd in a well ever since.

    1. Ben, you need to get hooked up to city water, that well of yours always seems to have sinking turds in it 🙂

  8. “We ask ourselves: Why, after spending tens of billions of dollars, are California’s twin problems of homelessness and housing affordability decidedly worse?

    Globalist scum media will never acknowledge this, but Democrat Compassion, Inc. rackets are all about patronage and graft, not about “helping” the ever-growing category of “victims.”

  9. ‘Whatever the eff you do, do not miss the bus,’ he said during a typically inspirational presentation. ‘Get on the freakin’ bus.’”

    And now these flopped speculator scum are boarding the train to Schlongville. Funny how the universe has a way of setting itself right, after things have gotten too far out of whack.

  10. ‘As soon as we were supposed to go to floating rates, I think he should have been putting the brakes on with a whole lot more red flags,’ Lemaire said.”

    Caveat emptor, Charles. It’s going to be heartwarming to watch you and your fellow greed-motivated real estate mogul wannabes get your heads handed to you as Housing Bubble 2.0 implodes.

  11. Her uncertainty is a symptom of a larger plague spreading across Silver Spring, where a once-vibrant downtown commercial district is now lined with vacant storefronts and half-empty office buildings.

    Funny how “vibrancy” seems to be linked with empty boarded-up storefronts and downtown commercial districts circling the drain.

    1. About 20 years ago, that area had a huge revitalization in the urban core, next to a big Metro/bus transit center. They revived an Art Deco single-screen theatre for art movies, and built a whole new complex of shops, eateries, a Whole Paycheck, a new cinema multiplex and community center. North of the urban core is surrounded with nice shady-suburb SFH packed full of We Believe signs and social justice warrioresses. But the southern side is Grade B apartment towers, run-down buildings from 70s, and the DC line.

      It’s a dream of mixed-use city planning with a 90+ Walk Score, i.e., a 15-minute city. But it’s also the type of place where gentrification is an uphill battle. Without a continual infusion of cash and jobs from a roaring economy, over time it will fall back to its semi-blight. Between work-at-home, a shadow recession which kills restaurants, and a giant transit center attracting homeless druggies, it looks like the area is failing.

      It’s sad but not surprising. I guess in 20 years it will be revitalized again, rinse and repeat.

      1. “I guess in 20 years it will be revitalized again…”

        It’s tough to have family formation when the currently employed cohorts don’t even earn enough to pay down their student loans never mind attract the opposite gender.

        1. It’s tough to have family formation when the currently employed cohorts don’t even earn enough to pay down their student loans never mind attract the opposite gender.

          Have you seen the price of childcare? And with housing costs, two incomes is a must unless one person does very well (but they’d better hope they aren’t laid off!).

  13. Stevens is the latest in a long list of construction businesses that have collapsed since the pandemic, with supply chain disruptions, skilled worker shortages and high material costs all taking their toll.”

    Try as they might, the globalist scum media can’t conceal the fact that the chickens are coming home to roost from the scamdemic-era “stimulus” binge and economy-ruining lockdowns & mandates.

    1. They forgot to mention the top reason: collapsing demand for new construction and remodels.

  14. “A three-bedroom house has hit the market at just $99,000, a massive 58 per cent discount on its last sale price, in a town where entry level jobs can pay as much as $130,000 a year.

    Oh dear…the destruction of fake wealth created by central bank funny money is starting to get serious.

  15. Today, owning a house is more likely to destroy wealth than create it. A prolonged slump in the property sector over the past three years has sparked widespread financial insecurity among the middle class in particular.”

    Welp, thankfully this wealth destruction is limited to China, and buying a shack remains the best way to build generational wealth, per the globalist scum media “experts” and Suzanne’s research.

    Oh, wait….

    1. It’s all money. Even if the DEI hires were good workers (I’m sure there were some), the cost of all those consultants and short courses and program staff was not trivial.

      1. Not to mention that Microshaft probably wants its coders writing code and not sitting in stupid, unproductive seminars where the presenters tell them that they are horrible (white and Asian) people who are responsible for all the ills of the world.

        1. Now cnn is getting the message????

          More like they are facing insolvency and are no longer getting cash infusions from billionaires, as they are no longer useful. So now every penny counts.

          1. It goes deeper than most people can imagine. All sorts of unpleasant unintended consequences occur. For example, not long ago USAA’s website was plastered with so much DEI b.s. you could barely tell it was a serious business. They went all in and decided to replace their traditional workforce with DEI hires and before long over in the banking arm peoples accounts were getting cleaned out. Turns out the DEI hires were selling account info on the side. Took local media stories and requests for comment to get USAA to admit it and give people their money back. They have since toned their DEI stuff way down. Funny how that works.

          2. It goes deeper than most people can imagine.

            Which explains why so many things just don’t work anymore.

          5. It goes deeper than most people can imagine.
            It does, I used to subscribe to Bloomberg but go so damn tired of seeing DEI related articles that I cancelled it.

    2. “‘no longer business critical’”

      Translation: we can get by without investment from Blackrock now.

  17. New details have been uncovered Monday in the moments leading up to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, according to our sister station in Pittsburgh, WPXI-11.

    Thomas Crooks was spotted by law enforcement on a roof nearly 30 minutes before shots were fired that injured Trump, killed a former fire chief, and injured two others in the crowd.

    Beaver County’s ESU team had eight members at the rally, including snipers and spotters, WPXI-11′s Nicole Ford confirmed.

    One of them noticed a suspicious man on a roof near the rally at 5:45 pm, called it in and took a picture of the person.

    WPXI-11′s sources confirmed the person in that picture is Thomas Crooks. It is not clear if Crooks had a gun with him at that point.

    A law enforcement officer had also previously seen Crooks on the ground and called him in as a suspicious person with a picture before 5:45 p.m.

    An officer checked the grounds for Crooks but did not see him, according to WPXI-11′s sources.

    26 minutes after the second picture of Crooks was taken by law enforcement and the information called in, shots were fired from the roof of the American Glass Research building.

    Seconds later, a Secret Service sniper returned fire and killed Crooks.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/gunman-spotted-roof-30-minutes-205314658.html

    1. On Sunday, NYT ran an article discussing the iconic photographs. 2/3 of the comment section agreed that T was

      “showboating” for those photographs.
      Calling for his shoes like a weakling
      Mouthing “F–k” instead of “fight.”
      Exploiting the images…

      etc.

      1. You have to be a subscriber to comment on NYT articles. So yeah, f* all those people for actually giving money to those vermin.

  18. * 9 News in Australia. “NSW building company Stevens Construction has collapsed two months after going into voluntary administration. . . . Stevens is the latest in a long list of construction businesses that have collapsed since the pandemic.

    Geez, ANOTHER one folded! I can’t imagine there are too many Australian construction companies left.
    and I have quite the imagination.

  19. Minutes after Saturday’s shooting at a Trump rally in Butler, Pa., liberals began flooding social media platforms with conspiracy theories.

    They claimed the blood on former president Donald Trump’s ear was from a theatrical gel pack; that the shooting was a “false flag,” perhaps coordinated by the Secret Service in collaboration with the Trump campaign; that the scene of a bloodied Trump raising his fist under an American flag was “#staged.”

    “When did the Secret Service start allowing the President under duress to tell them ‘to wait’, then stand up to be seen by the crowd fist-pumping?” one user posted on X. “Can you blame me for thinking this is fake?”

    The shooting threw into overdrive a phenomenon dubbed “BlueAnon” — a play on the right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon — that refers to liberal conspiracy theories online. As more Americans lose trust in mainstream institutions and turn to partisan commentators and influencers for information, experts say they are seeing a big uptick in the manufacture and spread of BlueAnon conspiracy theories, a sign that the communal warping of reality is spreading well beyond the right.

    “The good-versus-evil paradigm of QAnon has really taken hold of the anti-Trump movement and you’re seeing two sides that feel like they are fighting a battle between good and evil,” said Mike Rothschild, author of “The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult and Conspiracy Theory of Everything.” “It’s coming from major leftist and liberal ‘resistance’ influencers who believe that Trump is so devious that he’d fake his own assassination attempt in order to help his campaign.”

    That theory was boosted by at least one influential Democrat: Dmitri Mehlhorn, a political adviser to Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, encouraged supporters in an email late Saturday to consider the “possibility — which feels horrific and alien and absurd in America, but is quite common globally — … that this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash.”

    He added: “NOT ONE NEWSPAPER OR OPINION LEADER IN AMERICA IS WILLING TO OPENLY CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY THAT TRUMP AND PUTIN STAGED THIS ON PURPOSE. Ask the question, people.”

    On Sunday, Mehlhorn apologized, saying he now regrets the email, and that he “drafted and sent it without consulting team members or allies.” In a text to The Washington Post, Mehlhorn wrote: “We must unite in condemnation of such violence in every instance, without reservation. Any other topic is a distraction.”

    Initially coined by conservative social media users in 2021 to mock news coverage they saw as overblown, such as the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the term “BlueAnon” has since been used by people across the political spectrum to describe particularly outlandish conspiracies and denialism from Biden supporters. The term took on new meaning and prominence last month after Biden’s disastrous performance during a prime-time debate with Trump on CNN sparked a battle over Biden’s fitness for office, including calls from many Democrats for the 81-year-old president to step aside.

    Social media users with a history of supporting Biden falsely claimed that the president had been secretly drugged before the debate. (Biden has blamed his poor performance on jet lag and a bad cold.) They floated the conspiracy theory that actor George Clooney, an ardent Biden supporter, penned a subsequent New York Times op-ed calling on the president to drop out of the race as part of an elaborate revenge plot inspired by Biden’s support for Israel in the Gaza war. (The Clooney Foundation for Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) And they claimed without evidence that ABC News doctored Biden’s audio to make him sound infirm during an interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired in prime time on July 5 — an interview the White House had hoped would restore faith in Biden’s vigor. (ABC News declined to comment.)

    Last week, the liberal author and professor Seth Abramson posted to Threads and his nearly 900,000 followers on X that he believes tough media coverage of Biden’s struggles is “not organic” and “the closest thing to an internal coup America has seen since what Trump tried to do at [the Justice Department] in 2020.”

    Left-wing accounts focused mainly on the conspiracy theory that the shooting had been staged. Dozens of influencers posted to that effect in the hours before news emerged that two people were dead — a rallygoer as well as the suspected shooter — and others injured.

    But some prominent anti-Trump accounts suggested that the deaths were part of the show. “I can totally see Trump ‘sacrificing’ one of his cult followers to make his ‘assassination attempt’ look more realistic and believable,” the pro-Democrat influencer @LakotaMan1 wrote to his more than half-million X followers, in a later-deleted tweet. On Sunday morning, he posted a photo of Trump after the shooting with the caption: “Fake blood. An upside[down] American flag. I ain’t buying it. Too perfect.”

    Early Sunday, as more details emerged about the tragedy, at least one Biden supporter seemed to recognize what was happening and tried to backtrack. “My knee-jerk reaction that the Trump rally shooting was staged appears to be a bad miscalculation,” wrote a woman whose Threads profile identifies her as a “strong Dem.” “Trump has completely broken down any possible trust or belief in him as a person that I immediately questioned the authenticity of this occurrence. I was wrong.”

    But other users with a history of posting pro-Biden messages seemed unconvinced.

    “Trust your instincts,” one user replied. “There are no limits to what Trump … will do to secure the November election.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/blueanon-conspiracy-theories-flood-social-media-after-trump-rally-shooting/ar-BB1pYgOQ

    1. perhaps coordinated by the Secret Service in collaboration with the Trump campaign

      Like the Deep State would ever do that.

  20. Developer forced to cut prices of homes down south

    To the Editor:

    The Developer has gotten himself in too deep and this all will end up collapsing on top of him. This is why there are so many homes for sale. This is why the Developer is having to reduce the sale of their homes in Dabney and Denham. The Developer isn’t even going to make any money off the bonds, if he doesn’t cut back.

    Sharon Rohweder
    Village of Chatham

    https://www.villages-news.com/2024/07/13/developer-forced-to-cut-prices-of-homes-down-south/

    1. Developers are usually considered lucky if they break even on their last projects before a recession takes hold.

  21. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was convicted on all 16 counts in a sweeping pay-for-play scheme to sell his office to foreign powers and shady businessmen. Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has called on him to resign. Now do Biden.

  22. Former sniper Rep. Cory Mills raised questions about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump as he called for a thorough investigation.

    Mills spoke to CNN following the rally shooting in Pennsylvania on Saturday (13 July).

    “The amount of negligence, the amount of mistakes that were made here, I have a very difficult time not leaning myself towards this was intentional as opposed to fecklessness,” Mills told CNN anchor Kate Bolduan on Tuesday (16 July).

    Appearing shocked, the CNN host pressed Mills further, to which he replied: “I sit here and scratch my head. You don’t want to be the conspiracist. That’s the issue. You walk this fine balance, but you look at it and think ‘How could this have gone so wrong?’”

    https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/former-sniper-rep-cory-mills-raises-questions-about-trump-assassination-attempt/ar-BB1q69qX

    1. $DJT still higher than it was last week. It was stable around $31 on Friday. Monday morning it shot up to $41. Now it’s re-stabilized around $37. I wonder how many millions of net worth that translates into.

  23. “‘Those who buy houses today are all people who really need them,’ said Teng Lai, a real estate agent from Foshan. No one buys as an investment and even those who buy out of necessity ‘are waiting and watching to see if prices will be cheaper tomorrow,’ he said.”

    Luckily for US real estate investors, this could never happen in America, where real estate always goes up.

  24. he and his family members have made more than $4 million investing in apartment rentals. He expects to lose money in a couple of properties because of the increase in interest rates and said Sumrok should have warned students about variable-interest loans.
    So it’s all good when you make $4.0MM but as soon as you lose some money, someone else screwed up and should have warned you?
    OK……..

    1. I’m really glad I started covering the apartment bubble in 2014. I didn’t have time the previous decade and this is much worse than 2008 or what ever year people use. This article is fascinating in capturing a red hotcakes moment with pretty average airboxes. Using Mel Watts pedal to the metal and Yellen/Jerry bucks, these people were really making incredible profits in a short of time using very little money. One of the mantras of that time was you never get quick slowly. The company is mentioned in the article but not that quote, I remember it from radios shows, etc.

      To see it in a prominent article, about the most risky market segment is gratifying. But these guys were fooked when Jerry broke it off in their a$$, not 2024.

  25. ‘Maryland home inspector Welmoed Sisson recently met homebuyers who were about to purchase a house at the very top end of what they could afford. They told me at the start of the inspection that they had pretty much no budget for repairs,’ Sisson says. Although their finances were stretched thin, they were hoping it would be OK since, as Sisson recalls, ‘the real estate agent swore the house was move-in ready’

    Let’s be clear Welmoed, despite those challenges, the lending is always rock solid.

  26. ‘While two real estate associations that service Simcoe County are hesitant to call it a ‘buyer’s market,’ Terry Irwin isn’t. Irwin and his wife are selling their Collingwood home on Chamberlain Crescent and planning a move to Thornbury to be closer to family. He said the home has been on the market for a week and they’ve had a few showings but not a lot of interest. ‘It’s a buyer’s market right now,’ he said. ‘It’s making a little bit difficult for us. There’s a lot of inventory.’ They have a bit of time as their new home will be ready in October, but the situation is becoming slightly stressful’

    Yer looking at this all wrong Terry. You are about to be the winnah! of not just one but two igloos! Or the debt for two.

    ‘Looby said when she’s listing a property, she’s hesitant to give a specific price too soon. Looby said prices are dropping around five per cent in her area and changing rapidly. ‘I think people still have that pie in the sky idea of COVID pricing,’ she said. ’I can get a million dollars for my property’

    Acceptance <- Bonnie you are here. Good luck with those would-be movers.

  27. ‘Three new homes under construction are basically destroyed,’ said Brant County Fire Chief Darren Watson about the early morning fire that saw flames shooting into the sky. Watson said several other unoccupied homes had more minor damage and one or two homes on a street backing up to the fire also had minor damage’

    Still no fatality reported yet. Always at night. It was raining that night BTW, per the article

  28. ‘there was a ‘notable decrease in buyer activity’ and a ‘reduced sense of urgency.’ ‘As more listings come to a well-stocked market, those who are in the position to buy are taking their time to carefully select their ideal home’

    Reading that made me realize Jen: it’s been a long time since I’ve heard of a buyers love letter to the seller!

  29. ‘A three-bedroom house has hit the market at just $99,000, a massive 58 per cent discount on its last sale price, in a town where entry level jobs can pay as much as $130,000 a year. Local real estate agent Janessa Bidgood of Outback Auctions & Real Estate, who is taking the home to market under instruction from the mortgagee, shakes her head when she sees families struggling to rent ‘out east’ when they could be heading west where there are jobs waiting and empty homes available’

    Check out the photos of these shacks. There must be a reason for this condition, and it isn’t fly in fly out like the article suggests.

    1. a town where entry level jobs can pay as much as $130,000 a year

      It’s a remote mining town, in a place that is floods in winter and Death Valley in the summer. Sure, just come and take a six figure job. What, no mining boom today?

    2. “Check out the photos of these shacks.”

      Not much curb appeal. Looks like the kind of hard scrabble home where the kids all have different dads.

  30. The last part of the second quoted sentence tells you everything you need to know about who writes for The Atlantic. This alleged John Hendrickson felates Paul Krugman, “mundane” indeed, you soft hands city boy keyboard pecker.

    The Atlantic — The mood at the Republican National Convention has been oddly serene (7/16/2024):

    “I asked Lang, who still considers Pence a friend, how he himself can support Trump, knowing what happened. “The thing about the Republican Party is we’re a ‘big tent’ party,” he said. He smiled. In no time, he, too, was talking about kitchen-table issues such as the economy, inflation, interest rates, and home costs—palatable, even mundane, talking points.”

    https://archive.ph/0ROZv

    1. ‘A lot of Hispanics that I represent in Georgia are business owners—they own taquerias; they own Mexican restaurants,” Martinez told me. “What happens when the price of oil goes up?” Inflation “has really killed us,” he said. Another Georgia delegate, an 85-year-old named Alton Russell, told me that inflation and American energy independence are among his biggest concerns. “Biden will tell you that Trump is telling a lie,” he said. “But I know, in 2020 I was paying $1.85 a gallon for gas in Columbus, Georgia, where I live. It’s $3.30 now. You can’t tell me that that ain’t got something to do with Biden being president’

      1. ‘Perhaps the RNC’s overall relaxed atmosphere can be attributed to the fact that Trump is comfortably ahead of Biden. The president has been doing more interviews and events, including a one-on-one with NBC’s Lester Holt last night, but he hasn’t been able to reverse his position in the race or fully stymie questions about his acuity. Trump, meanwhile, just survived an assassination attempt with a raised fist. Fair or not, he appears strong, while Biden appears weak. And Democratic cries of 2024 potentially being “the last election” seem to be going nowhere’

        That’s some funny sh$t right there.

        1. ‘Pete Hoekstra, the chair of the Michigan GOP (as well as a former congressman and Trump’s former ambassador to the Netherlands) batted away the idea that democracy is on the ballot this fall. “We’re having an election,” Hoekstra told me matter-of-factly. “We will decide who’s the next president by and through an election.” Attempts at sweeping rhetoric, he suggested, were proof that Democrats didn’t have foreign-policy or economic successes to highlight. “I find it a great attempt to transfer and morph the agenda to something that you can’t measure,” he said. Trump is on track to win Hoekstra’s state of Michigan—a building block of Biden’s “blue wall” in the upper Midwest. Hoekstra, like everyone else I spoke with, seemed at ease’

      2. “Another Georgia delegate, an 85-year-old named Alton Russell, told me that inflation and American energy independence are among his biggest concerns.”

        The U.S. exports a variety of fossil fuels. Change your diaper, Alton.

  31. ‘It’s a painful lesson’…In 2022, they invested their savings in another apartment they hoped to rent out or resell. Instead, the 960-square-foot apartment sits empty as house prices have plummeted. They can’t find a buyer without taking a huge loss. ‘I will never consider buying a house as an investment again’

    If yer going to go broke Clara, go big. And yer broke.

    ‘They are not alone. With 70 percent of family assets in China stored in property, every 5 percent decline in prices could destroy as much as $2.7 trillion in wealth’

    Is that a lot?

    ‘Those who buy houses today are all people who really need them’…No one buys as an investment and even those who buy out of necessity ‘are waiting and watching to see if prices will be cheaper tomorrow’

    That’s the spirit Teng, down right inspirational!

    1. could destroy as much as $2.7 trillion in wealth’

      Sorry, but things you borrowed money to buy aren’t actually wealth. A lesson that gets learned the hard way every few generations.

  32. Intense Pressure Due To Massive Debt (Toronto Real Estate Market Update)

    Team Sessa Real Estate

    58 minutes ago

    In this episode we take a look at the current Toronto Real Estate Market specifically the detached home prices and market trends for week ending July 10, 2024. We also discuss how problematic it can be when using private lending without having a strategy for how to get out.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAyFqGk52NQ

    11:30.

    1. 3:30, ‘although you borrowed eighty thousand, you should know, they are giving you only fifty thousand’

  34. New York Times (via Archive) — Elon Musk Says He Will Move X and SpaceX Headquarters to Texas (7/16/2024):

    “Elon Musk said on Tuesday that he would move the headquarters of two of his businesses, the social media platform X and the rocket manufacturer SpaceX, from California to Texas in protest against a new law designed to protect transgender children.

    The California law, signed on Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, bans school districts from requiring teachers to notify parents if their children change their gender identification.

    “This is the final straw,” Mr. Musk posted on X. It is “attacking both families and companies.” He added that he had previously warned the California governor of such consequences.”

    https://archive.ph/q6Bxz

    Get woke, go broke. Haven’t you abominations learned already? There is no such thing as a “trans child” only groomer parents, groomer teachers, groomer school psychologists, and groomer doctors, every single one of them steeped in and dripping with Marxism.

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