thehousingbubble@gmail.com
Blog

When It Goes South, It Goes South Hard

A report from the Philadelphia Inquirer in Pennsylvania. “About half of home listings in Philadelphia and Delaware Counties in August were what Redfin called ‘extra stale,’ meaning the properties hadn’t found a buyer after 60 days. Likewise, about half of homes for sale in August nationwide were still on the market after 60 days. That’s the highest percentage for August since 2019. And August was the fifth straight month in which the share of ‘extra stale’ listings was higher than at the same time the year before. ‘It feels like we’re getting back to normal, not that we’re experiencing a crash,”’ said Jake Markovitz, an associate broker who is on the board of directors for the Greater Philadelphia Association of Realtors. ‘Looking at the big picture, we had a couple crazy years there as a market, as a society. Coming back down from that, when you zoom out a little bit, it’s back to normal. It’s not necessarily a dire situation. It just feels dire because the last couple years were crazy.'”

“But ‘you still have ambitious sellers who don’t want to reconcile that the market has changed since where we were a few years ago,’ he said. ‘If [a home] isn’t priced right and it isn’t taking into account the reality of the market, it’s gonna sit. You can’t be quite as ambitious as we were a couple years ago.'”

The Daily Voice. “In markets north of New York City, including the Hudson Valley counties of Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess as well as Fairfield County, luxury home sales have experienced a sharp uptick, according to Houlihan Lawrence’s Q3 Luxury Market Report. Greenwich: The number of luxury homes costing $3 million and higher went up 24.6 percent, while the median sale price decreased by 13.7 percent. Putnam and Dutchess counties: The number of luxury homes costing $1 million and higher went up 34.4 percent, while the median sale price went down 4.9 percent. According to Houlihan Lawrence, the reason there weren’t as many high-price bracket sales in each market may have been that there are a ‘finite number of uber-luxury buyers.'”

The Palm Beach Post in Florida. “Question: Our condominium unit caught fire earlier this year. It was electrical, with extensive smoke damage. We hired a contractor to do the restoration, and the contractor presented the HOA with an invoice to do the electrical, plumbing, and drywall, which is their responsibility. Since the association has cruddy insurance, they didn’t want to pay the contractor what he estimated. He already gutted our condo, and we paid our part out of our insurance money, but the association won’t pay him for their portion of the work. So, our condo just sits there half finished. What do we do now to make the association hire their own contractor to do the work so we can get our part of the restoration done and move back in? Signed, D.W.”

“Dear D.W., The problem is that it is expressly the association’s responsibility to make these repairs, and not yours. At this point, I would inform them that the repair of these items is the association’s responsibility, and you would like them to give you a timeline of when they intend to make the repairs. If they refuse, you’ll have no choice but to involve an attorney, because this is an issue that is outside the jurisdiction of the Division of Condominiums. It sounds like this is a big enough project to make the cost of a lawyer worthwhile, but that’s something you’re going to have to calculate.”

The Tampa Bay Times in Florida. “When Lisa Vacante was ready to buy a home in St. Petersburg, she chose the popular Kenwood neighborhood because it was ‘right smack in the middle of a no evacuation zone.’ Over the last 19 years she rode out hurricanes in her 4-bedroom, 2-bath home on 14th Avenue North, but she never experienced one like Hurricane Milton. Her car was fully submerged by heavy rains. Water seeped in under the floors of her home and sewage spewed out of her shower drain. Now, thousands of residents across Tampa Bay who trusted that they lived in neighborhoods that don’t flood — not like those closer to the coast — are shaken this weekend as they assess the damage. Only about 18% of Floridians have flood insurance. That leaves the vast majority of residents, including Vacante, 51, left to pay out of pocket if their homes get drenched in a hurricane.”

From Quartz. “There’s a term that economists like to use: moral hazard. It refers to the practice of creating financial incentives that promote risky behavior. Last week, those incentives for risky economic behavior were on full view as Hurricane Helene and then Hurricane Milton slammed into the southern U.S. So why are residents and businesses rebuilding, time after time, in the same places that were destroyed the last time around? The answer, people who have studied the problem say, is insurance. Even as private insurers flee hurricane zones or raise premiums and lower coverage limits, the federal government, and to a lesser degree the state of Florida, remain as the insurers of last resort.”

“‘This is a classic moral hazard,’ said Simon Buechler, an assistant professor of finance at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and an expert on real estate, finance, and catastrophes. That’s because government insurance programs like the NFIP underprice the risk, so homeowners and businesses in flood-prone areas pay below market price for insurance. ‘They basically bail out the people who didn’t have insurance or the people who were not fully covered,’ Buechler said. ‘You know the federal government and the state government are going to come in and help you when you have a disaster, so you don’t care.’ Even worse, Buechler said, the guarantee of a government bailout actually encourages people to take risks they won’t have to pay for. ‘We know from research that it triggers people to move into these areas where you have more of these floods and more exposure to hurricanes, and that’s partly why we see more of these multi-billion dollar events,’ he said.”

Silicon Valley. “In a recent poll of Bay Area residents, nearly half said they were considering leaving in the next few years. Ken Freeze, 69, and Michele Freeze, 68. Sold: A split-level home in Martinez for $750,000 (Originally bought for $167,000 in 1984). Bought: A 3,800 square foot home in Meridian, Idaho, with a five-car garage for $496,000. Ken and Michele Freeze settled in Martinez in 1984. They loved California, and in 2005 bought several acres in Placerville, where they one day hoped to retire. But by the time retirement rolled around, the state had changed too much for them. ‘The homeless situation in downtown Martinez was just getting out of hand,’ Freeze said. ‘Beautiful Marina Park was just littered with needles. People didn’t want to take their families down there.'”

“Mary Ezell-Wallace, 73, and Samuel Wallace Jr., 83. Sold: A four-bed, three-bathroom house in the hills above East Oakland for $575,000 in 2006 (Bought at $106,000). Bought: A 5,500 square-foot home in El Dorado, Arkansas, for $400,000. For nearly four decades, Oakland was Mary Ezell-Wallace’s home. ‘We could get anything we wanted real fast,’ Ezell-Wallace said. ‘I thought Oakland was one of the greatest places there was.’ But in the early 2000s, the city started ‘to feel like a third-world country,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to wait until everything got worse than it already was.'”

Kelowna Now in Canada. “It’s never good to be pegged as an ‘underperformer’. Yet, that’s exactly what the Kelowna housing market is, according to Francis Braam, the broker-owner of Royal LePage Kelowna. ‘Sales are 45% off their peak. When it goes south in Kelowna, it goes south hard. But, when it comes back, it comes back hard, too.’ Braam admitted he doesn’t have a crystal ball, but he said the comeback won’t be this year or early next. Braam said the real price correction in Kelowna was over two year ago when the average selling price of a single-family home hit a record-high of $1,250,000 in March 2022 and then plunged to $1,050,000 by September 2022. That loss in value of $200,000 in just three months set Kelowna up for the next two years because prices have essentially flatlined since.”

“‘Don’t get me wrong, Kelowna is still unaffordable even with that big adjustment,’ said Braam. ‘And it looks like it will stay that way because prices have held tough for the past two years and will likely stay the same for at least the next while.'”

From CBC News. “Maureen McCartney has been using Airbnb for her travel accommodations for about eight years. But she’s started using hotels instead, after her last few stays didn’t go so well. For a recent visit to Seattle, she booked a basement suite that looked pretty good in the online listing — but in person, felt like something from the set of a Saw movie. She’s not the only one. A Google search for Airbnb on Reddit surfaces complaints above anything else, including ‘Is Airbnb even worth it anymore?,’ ‘Is this the downfall of Airbnb?’ or ‘Staying in a terrible Airbnb right now [Canada].’ Then there’s one of the most recurring insults to injury: requiring guests to clean up after themselves — even if they pay a separate cleaning fee. ‘Take out the garbage. Put everything in the recycle [bin]. Like, it’s as if you’re at home and the whole purpose of the vacation is not to have to do these things. And you don’t have to do them at a hotel,’ said McCartney.”

“For McCartney, however, the bottom line was the price. She says a stay at an Airbnb used to cost her about a third of the cost for a similar hotel room. But now, she’s finding they just aren’t as good a deal as they used to be. For the year ending in August 2024, the average daily rate before fees for all short-term rental listings in Canada was $261.47 — almost 47 per cent higher than in 2019. She adds that a condo building filled with permanent residents is probably healthier for the community, including nearby local and family-owned businesses. ‘I think Airbnb just sucks the life out of a community. And we need to look after the local community before tourism,’ she said.”

The Negotiator. “An off-the-high street estate agency in Wales has closed down after its owner blamed her council’s recent crackdown on second homes as the ‘final nail in the coffin’. Jane Edwards says demand for second homes in Pembrokeshire has collapsed after the county council tripled council tax for those owning this kind of property. She says the consequent slump in demand that this precipitated meant there is little appetite among outsiders to buy second homes in this area of Wales. ‘We went from selling 60 properties in the 2021-22 financial year to just 10 this year,’ she told The Telegraph, revealing that she put in £30,000 of her own money to help keep the company.”

The Daily Record in Scotland. “Residents of Edinburgh’s final city centre scheme have spoken out about how they feel increasingly trapped inside their estate. The neighbourhood was once dominated by low-income families living in social housing, but locals told Edinburgh Live that the estate’s demographic makeup had shifted dramatically over the years. The increased concentration of private landlords and short-term rentals has resulted in a more transitory population than in the past. Many are dissatisfied and have voiced feelings of abandonment since they are surrounded by a costly world that they can no longer enter. Open drug dealing, cutbacks, and the loss of communal space are all important worries.”

“Jim Slaven, a writer, working-class advocate, and 30-year resident of Dumbiedykes, spoke about the changes he has experienced in his area. ‘We have quite a transient population now with a lot of students, private tenants and even Airbnbs,’ the former residents association chair said. ‘You can see Airbnbs going for over £200 a night. We’ve also lost most of our services in the heart of the scheme. You used to have small active businesses including a wee grocers but it is all gone now. For a small while a community group took over a vacant unit and set up a wee shop but then the funding was removed. We don’t have a church, a Post Office, a bus service or shops, nothing is really based here other than smack dealers.'”

The Daily Express. “Thousands of Spaniards took to the streets on Sunday in Madrid to protest against extortionate house prices, as holiday rentals remain the target of angered locals. According to the Spanish Government, 12,000 people participated in the demand for more affordable housing amid fears they are being priced out of the housing market. Nurse Blanca Prieto said, as reported by Reuters: ‘Spaniards cannot live in their own cities. They are forcing us out of the cities. The government has to regulate prices, regulate housing.’ Activists were claiming that Madrid workers now spend half of their yearly earnings on rent, a burden made heavier by the soaring property prices. The Spanish Government announced a crackdown on short-term and seasonal holiday lettings in July, planning to investigate key platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com to verify their licences.”

ABC News in Australia. “The dream home that Simon had built for his family sits unoccupied and untouched, like a time capsule. The family of four’s clothes are still in their wardrobes, handled only by years of dust. Spoiled food fills the pantry. Books and empty water glasses sit where they were left on bedside tables near half-emptied school bags. The family abandoned their home in May 2022 after Simon was told the residence was allegedly filled with dangerously high levels of mould. They left immediately, taking just the clothes on their back and whatever they could carry and decontaminate.”

“Simon does not want his surname used as he is locked in a lengthy legal dispute in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) with the home’s builder over allegations of unsafe site practices, a cut sewage stack and spare bricks that were allegedly on-sold on eBay. The ABC has chosen not to name the builder for legal reasons. Simon signed a nine-month contract for the construction of a house in the outer Melbourne suburb of Parkdale in February 2017. More than two-and-a-half years after the start of the build, in September 2019, the family moved in. After numerous delays, disagreements and defects, Simon was ready to put a frustrating build behind him. But around a year later and right in the middle of a global pandemic, things took another turn. ‘I would describe it as the ultimate nightmare,’ Simon said. Simon is suing his builder for more than $800,000 in costs and damages over the home-build saga, while the builder is suing Simon for unpaid bills. ‘You just shake your head and think, ‘What am I going to do with this? Where’s this going to end up?'”

From Reuters. “Chinese finance industry professional Zhang Jing made enough money from a recent stock market rally to consider hopping on the housing ladder but wants to hear more from the government before making a purchase. ‘I still don’t have enough confidence,’ said the 28-year-old, who believes buying a first home will improve his chances of finding a marriage partner. ‘Stocks, real estate and trade are all very unstable,’ said Chen Gengtao, sales manager for property developer Manjinghua. ‘Many people are losing their jobs, young men can’t find job opportunities and there is no room for wage increases. How can they buy houses?'”

“In Shenzhen, where prices are roughly 40% off their peak, some 1,841 provisional new home sales contracts were signed during the period, up 664% from last year, the city’s housing authority said. In the Daya Bay area nearby, new advertising boards read: ‘Home prices are at their lowest point. Now is the time to buy.’ On Saturday, Minister of Finance Lan Foan said the government planned to ‘significantly increase’ debt to revive economic activity though he did not elaborate on size or timing, disappointing many who tuned in. Economists expect the need for 2 trillion to 3 trillion yuan ($283 billion to $424 billion) in additional fiscal stimulus. Some investors said the figure needs to be even higher to sustain the market rally. Lan’s remarks were ‘not a whatever-it-takes moment,’ said UBP senior Asia economist Carlos Casanova.”

Related Posts
This Post Has 104 Comments

  1. ‘about half of homes for sale in August nationwide were still on the market after 60 days. That’s the highest percentage for August since 2019. And August was the fifth straight month in which the share of ‘extra stale’ listings was higher than at the same time the year before…‘Looking at the big picture, we had a couple crazy years there as a market, as a society. Coming back down from that, when you zoom out a little bit, it’s back to normal. It’s not necessarily a dire situation. It just feels dire because the last couple years were crazy’

    All Time High Larry.

    1. ** “In the Daya Bay area nearby, new advertising boards read: ‘Home prices are at their lowest point. Now is the time to buy.’

      I think of a metronome, going back & forth between realtors 2 points of selling / buying: Fear & Greed

      left, right
      tick, tock
      buy, sell
      fear, greed

      the only real ammunition in a Realtors arsenal: “Now is a great time to buy because of __________ or ___________. ”

      they can bloviate, equivocate, peacock & prattle on, which they usually do, about whatever nonsense is trendy but it all comes down to . . .

      fear & greed
      back n’ forth
      endlessly
      forever

  4. ‘They basically bail out the people who didn’t have insurance or the people who were not fully covered,’ Buechler said. ‘You know the federal government and the state government are going to come in and help you when you have a disaster, so you don’t care.’ Even worse, Buechler said, the guarantee of a government bailout actually encourages people to take risks they won’t have to pay for. ‘We know from research that it triggers people to move into these areas where you have more of these floods and more exposure to hurricanes, and that’s partly why we see more of these multi-billion dollar events’

    When Florida isn’t crashing, all you’ll find searching for real estate is how they are building on every sand bar they can snap up and crowding as many airboxes onto it that they can. Everything guberment touches turns to sh$t.

    1. you know yer getting close to a popular FL beach when, instead of the beautiful ocean, all you can see is a huge, towering wall of condos/hotels obscuring the view from the ground.

  5. “About half of home listings in Philadelphia and Delaware Counties in August were what Redfin called ‘extra stale,’ meaning the properties hadn’t found a buyer after 60 days. Likewise, about half of homes for sale in August nationwide were still on the market after 60 days.

    Get to sawin’ and slashin’ like you mean it, greedheads, unless you’d rather chase the market down.

  6. “But ‘you still have ambitious sellers who don’t want to reconcile that the market has changed since where we were a few years ago,’ he said.

    Greed & ambition are two very different things, NAR dissemblers.

  7. That leaves the vast majority of residents, including Vacante, 51, left to pay out of pocket if their homes get drenched in a hurricane.”

    I’m starting to think this homeownership thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  8. ‘I would describe it as the ultimate nightmare,’ Simon said. Simon is suing his builder for more than $800,000 in costs and damages over the home-build saga, while the builder is suing Simon for unpaid bills.

    At least Simon wasn’t throwing away money on rent.

  9. On Saturday, Minister of Finance Lan Foan said the government planned to ‘significantly increase’ debt to revive economic activity though he did not elaborate on size or timing, disappointing many who tuned in.

    Debt-fueled “growth” is never sustainable in the long run, no matter how much Paul Krugman and his ilk rhapsodize about illusory “recoveries.”

    1. “Florida condo owners fight back after facing $3,000 hike in fees each month amid real estate crisis”

      That’s nothing compared to some of the six-figure assessments I have heard about.

      1. well, TBF it’s $3,000 per month per unit increase, so $36,000 per year additional.

        But whine whine whine, you blew off maintenance for years and years and now ya gotta pay.
        The article is a joke, says “the federal government should step in to fix this”. (really)

        Wait until they find out their beloved medicare is levels of unfunded beyond this.

    2. ‘We’ve seen that this legislation can happen pretty much overnight.
      From the article.
      They should have seen it coming in 2019 and they certainly knew about it in 2022, so no, it didn’t just happen overnight.

  13. Posted this yesterday but I figure it is worth 2 days because I think JD actually added several new wrinkles to ABC News host Martha Raddatz’s wrinkled from bitterness face during this segment alone.

    ‘Do you hear yourself’: JD Vance slams ABC News anchor

    Oct 13, 2024

    “I’m going to stop you because I know exactly what happened. I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes and the mayor said our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns. A handful of problems,” she said.

    Vance quickly shut down Raddatz’s comments, with him defending Trump’s comments and slamming Vice President Kamala Harris.

    “Martha, do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris’ open border,” Vance said.

    https://youtu.be/lLAXSub78Tg?si=u6wlOrIKqnzCb6qj

    1. I don’t know if DJT and JD are emphasizing this, but the issue isn’t “a handful” of takeovers. The issue is that if this continues under Special K, this is going to spread. It will get even worse when the sanctuary cities run out of money and stop providing all of those benefits like 4-star hotels. IIUC, losing the free housing was the reason for these takeovers in the first place. Migrants lose housing, can’t live on the street, they find some guns, they take over empty units to live in, extort rent from the other units, take over the other units, take over the city, eat the cats and the dogs.

      And that’s coming to a neighborhood near you.

    1. The new Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, was railing against the holiday, shouting that the Spaniards didn’t discover Mexico. Gee, funny how it was OK for her to become prez vs. her mestizo opponent Xochitl Galvez.

      I expect Sheinbaum to continue beating the “you owe us an apology” drum. Us, Kemosabe? I also expect the demands to expand to billions in “reparations”.

      Mexico was already in bad shape. The lawlessness is only going to get worse.

  18. A reader sent these in:

    The number of homes for sale in the Phoenix MLS continues to increase faster than usual.

    The supply for sale usually flattens out in November.

    IF supply continues to increase this November, that would be a huge sign the trend will continue into 2025.

    https://x.com/JohnWake/status/1845483587581149287

    Spoke with someone in the know that a builder had slammed brakes on projects in the West Valley as well.

    No demand for PHX housing & population growth has completely stalled.

    Large driver for growth in these places was their unique affordability from 2019-21 especially in close proximity to California. That advantage is real pretty much eliminated – especially for renters. (Obviously you have the income tax advantage for AZ/NV – AZ very very low SIT)

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1845509438599225633

    The single largest asset class (priced in USD) in the history of mankind is China real estate. $333bn in support won’t move the needle. Epic bubble.

    Now consider that China’s population will halve in the next 75 years. Who wants exposure to China RE here? Falling knife.

    https://x.com/geoffreykarren/status/1845221806548058319

    Then they’ll complain when businesses leave the area 🙄

    https://x.com/SallyMayweather/status/1845080943540781458

    Chicago’s mayor is wild 🤣

    Reporter: “Sir, you’ve spent thousands renovating your wife’s office & are taking a taxpayer funded vacation to London in the middle of a budget crisis. Is that fair to taxpayers?”

    Brandon: “Clearly, you’re a racist who hates black ppl. Next question!”

    https://x.com/SallyMayweather/status/1844728804150837356

    WA restaurants have reached a breaking point, with an even tougher 2025 on the horizon.

    Profit margins dropped to just 1.5% in 2023, now 60% lower than the national average. Seattle sales are down 5% YOY.

    On $1.1M annual revenue, restaurants only pocket $16.5K.

    https://x.com/dedkatbouns/status/1844561699178983788

    U.S. quarterly filings for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection rise to the highest level since 2012 – Bloomberg

    https://x.com/chigrl/status/1845404092316737822

    Spring it is!! I have probably heard this 30 times this week.

    The housing bulls went from “As soon as mortgage rates drop,” to “After the Fed cuts,” to now “Springtime.”

    I wonder what they’ll come up with in spring if that buyer demand doesn’t show up…

    Just remember though, the risk is in the waiting!! 😂😂

    https://x.com/AustinWhittRE/status/1845604263159844996

    Denver inventory of unsold homes on the market is at it’s highest level in a decade.

    https://x.com/mikesimonsen/status/1845181024222969952

    💀🤣

    https://x.com/ClownWorld_/status/1845284060819808295

    1. ‘Large driver for growth in these places was their unique affordability from 2019-21 especially in close proximity to California. That advantage is real pretty much eliminated’

      I don’t know about the rest of what this puddle watcher said, but this doesn’t make any sense. Affordable in 2019? And any connection of shacks and proximity to CA never existed unless yer talking about the tiny sh$tholes of Kingman/Bullhead City/Lake Havasu City.

      1. I read it as Phoenix vs. L.A. / southern california. I”m not sure who’s commuting 250 miles but I think that’s what they are comparing.

    2. Spoke with someone in the know that a builder had slammed brakes on projects in the West Valley as well.

      It must be bad, because the builder boyz typically don’t stop building until the banks providing the construction loans say “stop!”

      1. What they call west valley is a vast flat terrible sh$thole. From Surprise to Wickenburg and everything for miles around it until it dies in the mountains. I’ve driven through it many times in all seasons. It has that Phoenix suburbia hell written all over it. Ugly tract homes in grids connected with feeder roads so the workers can drive and make their payments. Concrete everywhere to control the flash floods, car wrecks, with dull retail crap like yard furniture. And 16 pump gas station/coffee/subway places for the workers to hit the stinky bathrooms. It’s not built out by a long shot and I don’t know if the metro limits will ever truly grow out to Wickenburg.

      2. They’re great at driving prices down. They’ll build until there’s nothing left on the bone, and then a little beyond that. Classic example in our area is a Lennar 3/2 model that last Spring many closed at 595k to 610k. Just had two of this model record last week at 520K. Lennar, Ryder, Toll Bros and the smaller builders really started stacking up the inventory starting about 3 to 5 months ago. The response here hasn’t been that they’ve stopped, but the build cycles have been cut in half. Lennar, for example, used to pull 10 to 12 permits per release cycle. Now their last two have been 4 and 5. And I can tell ya, when I go out and inspect on these sites everyone’s got a scared look on their faces. Crews are getting cut right and left.

        1. That means quality is going up right?
          And they are only keeping the guys doing quality and not the guys doing it the fastest? right? right?

          /sarc
          the last ones built are always the crappiest

          1. Been crappy from the beginning. It’s crazy how lame the quality is on these 600k homes. As a building inspector I can only enforce minimum code compliance. A lot of my friends don’t understand that your city or county inspectors are there for code compliance, not quality control. You’d think the two would go hand and hand but often not. For example, I inspected one today where the finish on the stucco looked awful….but it met code.

  19. Letters to the Editor: This is what happens in a beach town when vacation rentals take over

    To the editor: Your article about the coastal San Luis Obispo community of Cayucos fast becoming a town of vacation rentals describes the problem of residential motels in our residentially zoned neighborhoods.

    Many of us have believed for years that these businesses will destroy our town. In 1991, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of one local zoning ordinance that prohibited renting homes to transient occupants for fewer than 30 days.

    Real estate brokers sell property with the carrot that the home can be a profitable business. We’ve lost businesses serving the community to mostly tourist-centered ones that make up a majority of our downtown. Gone are the four full-service stations (including mechanics) and many other stores that benefited the community.

    Many of us tried to restrict the numbers of vacation rentals 30 years ago as we saw our school enrollment decline. Now is the time (again) for Cayucos to address this problem.

    We need more housing. We should help people who work here have a place to live. Restrict transient rentals to business-zoned areas. Property costs are too high, and many wealthy people who suck up all our housing don’t really care about our community.

    Jan Lewis, Cayucos

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/letters-to-the-editor-this-is-what-happens-in-a-beach-town-when-vacation-rentals-take-over/ar-AA1sbbNF

  20. Influx of homeless encampments under political signages seen across Las Vegas valley

    Seeing political signage on almost every corner is nothing new during an election year, but what’s even more noticeable is the influx of unhoused people making shelter underneath.

    “If candidates aren’t aware of the problem, then there it is, under your sign,” Las Vegas resident, Jeffrey Whitney told 8 News Now.

    As homelessness continues to be a main concern across the valley, the unhoused are trying to find shelter any way they can, like setting up camp underneath political signs, which is hard to miss as people drive and walk by.

    “I’ve seen people coming in and out. They might be cooking inside of there and they are definitely sleeping underneath those wooden signs,” Ronald Polk said.

    Polk lives right across the way from these signs on Bonanza Road and Rancho Drive and said he has seen an influx of homeless move in.

    “I’ve seen them cover both ends of the pyramid in plastic sheets and some have mattresses in there. This has been going on for months now,” Polk added.

    Jeffrey Whitney who lives a couple of miles away couldn’t help but notice while he stopped for gas, stating that there’s irony in the situation to which the City of Las Vegas needs to do more.

    “Now that I see it, it’s symbolic of the homeless problem we have here, that they are camping under candidates signs,” Whitney shared. “Whatever the city of Las Vegas is doing about it, doesn’t seem to be enough because I can’t walk through my neighborhood without seeing trash and human waste everywhere.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/influx-of-homeless-encampments-under-political-signages-seen-across-las-vegas-valley/ar-AA1sdJeU

  21. Tech titans pour millions into San Francisco mayor’s race, hoping to set city on a new course

    Camilo Acosta couldn’t imagine finding the kind of success he’s had as a tech entrepreneur anywhere besides San Francisco.

    Acosta moved to San Francisco from Washington, D.C., 13 years ago and never looked back. He’s founded two start-ups here, including one that was acquired by Meta in 2020, and he runs a $30-million fund that invests in early-stage artificial intelligence companies. When it comes to the tech industry, he said, the City by the Bay is “the center of the universe.”

    Actually living in San Francisco, he said, doesn’t always feel so magical. Acosta said he’s grown disillusioned with the property crime and the ways in which the twin crises of addiction and homelessness spill out into the streets. His South of Market office has been broken into and robbed of laptops. Another time, a homeless man wandered into the building in the midst of a manic episode. Both times, Acosta said, police offered little help.

    Acosta has no plans to join the exodus. Instead, he’s focused on the 2024 mayoral election, when he’ll get the chance to cast his vote for Daniel Lurie, a nonprofit executive and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who is running for mayor against four City Hall veterans, including incumbent Mayor London Breed.

    “When I look at the slate of candidates, I see everyone else except Daniel having worked in city politics for the last 10-plus years. So they helped create this mess,” Acosta said.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/tech-titans-pour-millions-into-san-francisco-mayor-s-race-hoping-to-set-city-on-a-new-course/ar-AA1sefs4

  22. As millions of Canadians head into the Thanksgiving weekend, food banks across the country continue to see a surge in demand.

    “If you compare even September of last year versus September of this year, we’re up 17 per cent,” said Alex Boyd, the CEO of Greener Village in Fredericton, told CTV News.

    In Mississauga, there was an increase of nearly 60 per cent in the number of people who went to food banks in 2024 compared to last year, according to CEO of Food Banks Mississauga Meghan Nicholls.

    “We are continuing to hear from food banks across the country that despite potentially economic upswings, the demand has not slowed,” said Erin Filey-Wronecki, the Chief Development and Partnerships Officer for Food Banks Canada.

    Filey-Wronecki says the current model is not sustainable.

    “Food banks are meant to be there for emergencies, they’re meant to be there for people that are in sort of a downturn, in need. It’s not meant to be the backbone of the social safety net,” she said.

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/food-banks-continue-to-face-a-surge-in-demand-1.7072793

    1. We are continuing to hear from food banks across the country that despite potentially economic upswings, the demand has not slowed

      That’s because there has been no economic upswing, Every metric we are being provided is bogus.

  23. Sticker Mule CEO discusses Trump sign legal win

    Sticker Mule will be allowed to keep its massive, illuminated “Vote Trump” sign on top of its factory in upstate New York after a judge vacated a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order against the custom printing giant.

    New York Supreme Court Judge Rebecca Slezak signed an order on Wednesday vacating the temporary restraining order sought by city officials in Amsterdam, located near Albany, court records reviewed by UPI show.

    “The judge ruled that she did not have jurisdiction to continue the restraining order because the initiating paperwork did not meet the standards required to commence a suit in New York State,” Sticker Mule’s lawyer Sal Ferlazzo said in an emailed statement.

    “Moreover, she found the city did not demonstrate any safety concerns related to the structure of the sign or to its visibility from the public highways.”

    “The city decided to let it go, as far as I understand,” said Anthony Constantino, the company’s chief executive, in an interview. “I’m relieved I didn’t get to go to jail. I think it is better we won this way, the right way, in court. And if they do bring additional challenges to the sign, then we’ll fight them.”

    Constantino told UPI the city took him to court simply because the sign had former President Donald Trump’s name on it. It was a reaction he wasn’t expecting, even though officials previously said he needed permits to erect it, which he didn’t get.

    “The interesting part is how close I was to having to make the decision if I wanted to go to jail over a sign,” said Constantino.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sticker-mule-ceo-discusses-trump-sign-legal-win/ar-AA1scgX9

  24. Young men’s economic prospects are shifting, along with their politics

    For David Tasker, an 18-year-old construction worker in Pennsylvania, his top financial priorities are having enough money for gas, dining out and spending on his girlfriend while living at home with his parents.

    But he worries about the rising prices he’s seen during his teen years as he’s emerged into an economy experiencing decades-high inflation. For his first election, he said he will be voting for former President Donald Trump with those higher costs and concerns about the wider economy in mind.

    “Trump can run America like a business and Kamala would run it as a classroom,” Tasker said. “Trump would care about how Americans can get the most money, how we can care for the most people, and keep America first.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/young-men-s-economic-prospects-are-shifting-along-with-their-politics/ar-AA1sblAQ

  25. A state divided: Wisconsin’s political polarization fracturing families, friendships

    Mary Herrick has lived in Washington County, just outside of Milwaukee, for 50 years but during a recent lunch with a close friend there was an uncomfortable moment: Herrick said she was going to vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris and her friend said she would be voting for former president Donald Trump.

    “I think my jaw probably hit the floor,” Herrick, 76, said in a recent interview from her home in West End.

    “I just couldn’t say anything,” Herrick said about how the conversation with her friend ended. “I just don’t understand why people would vote for him.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/a-state-divided-wisconsins-political-polarization-fracturing-families-friendships/ar-AA1sblrR

  26. JD Vance shocks NYT reporter with his nuanced takedown of illegal immigration: ‘People will do those jobs’

    Republican vice presidential hopeful JD Vance calmly fended off questions from a reporter who suggested a crackdown on illegal immigration could exacerbate the housing crisis.

    Vance, 40, who has long contended that illegal immigration reduces the housing supply and therefore sends prices soaring, brushed aside any notion that illegal immigrants are paramount toward building more houses.

    “About a third of the construction workforce in this country is Hispanic. Of those, a large proportion are undocumented. So how do you propose to build all the housing necessary that we need in this country by removing all the people who are working in construction?” New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro pressed him.

    She stressed that she was “not arguing in favor of illegal immigration,” but merely wanted to gauge how Vance would solve the potential blow to the housing construction sector of his immigration policies.

    “I think that what you would do is you would take, let’s say for example, the 7 million prime-age men who have dropped out of the labor force, and you have a smaller number of women…you absolutely could reengage folks into the American labor market,” Vance countered.

    “People say, ‘Well, Americans won’t do those jobs,’” Vance acknowledged, before refuting that common argument. “Americans won’t do those jobs for below-the-table wages. They won’t do those jobs for non-living wages, but people will do those jobs.”

    Vance has long argued that removing illegal immigrants will free up the housing supply, and therefore, push prices downward.

    The Buckeye State senator also dubbed illegal immigration “one of the biggest drivers of inequality.”

    “It’s one of the biggest reasons why we have millions of people dropped out of the labor force. Why try to reengage an American citizen in a good job if you can just import somebody from Central America who’s going to work under the table for poverty wages?” Vance asked. “It is a disgrace, and it has led to the evisceration of the American middle class.”

    The exchange quickly gained traction on social media and won Vance acclaim among the MAGA faithful.

    “Again, great answers from J.D. Vance. But this “I am not well read outside of my political echo chamber but I’m shockingly arrogant about it” posture embodied by NYT’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro, is one of the many things that makes our propaganda press so repulsive to most people,” Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway wrote on X.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/jd-vance-shocks-nyt-reporter-with-his-nuanced-takedown-of-illegal-immigration/ar-AA1scmet

    1. “It is a disgrace, and it has led to the evisceration of the American middle class.”

      I like this guy more and more.

    2. Well that pretty much nails it, 100%

      I”m amazed he’s allowed to say it and they even printed it.

      It’s funny how supply and demand is only allowed to apply to things, when it’s tried to apply to wages, ti’s like ‘oh no, we can never raise wages”

    3. I think it’s shocking that they call it a shock. Of course, if you shut off the money to those 7 million young men living in basements, they will have to go out to work.

      There are a lot of comments on that MSN article, many of whom say “we can’t just hire people off the street, we need skilled labor.” Really? How “skilled” are those people in the 7-11 parking lot? Those Americans can probably learn the job in 6-7 months, tops.

  27. The Question Hanging Over Harris’s Campaign

    Contra Donald Trump’s claims, Vice President Kamala Harris is not a Communist. For one, no evidence suggests that she seeks the collectivization of the means of production, or even that she is especially hostile to corporate America. When outlining her vision for an “opportunity economy,” Harris speaks of “a future where every person has the opportunity to build a business, to own a home, to build intergenerational wealth.” This is rhetoric that brings to mind George W. Bush’s “ownership society,” not the liquidation of the kulaks.

    Granted, we’re not obliged to take Harris’s campaign pronouncements at face value, and there is no question that she has supported a number of policies that place her firmly on the left of the Democratic Party. But since emerging as President Joe Biden’s chosen successor, Harris has jettisoned her past support for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act, a ban on fracking, and the decriminalization of illegal border crossings, conspicuously distancing herself from the ideological commitments of her short-lived 2020 presidential campaign.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-question-hanging-over-harris-s-campaign/ar-AA1sefaN

    1. I was busy tearing those signs (and any like the “keep distance, masks, etc) down in 2020 and 21. I even took down one of those stupid curtains around the cashier at a restaurant. While it was open and I was the customer.

      Irish Democracy is a thing, it’s pathetic those are still up.

      1. The local supermarkets even had those stupid “one way” stickers on the floor, which I always ignored.

  29. Welcome to Tariff Land: The Retreat of Free Trade

    Free markets? Free trade? The modern economic world has little time for these erroneous, misdirected terms. More evident are the feelings of resentment, prejudice and indignant parochialism more accurately called My Country First, and Everyone Else Last. Back your industries; hobble the competitors. And everyone is doing it, except certain ideologues who, childishly, cling to the view that there ever was such a thing as a true laissez-faire world.

    From 2016 onwards, the free traders have been pummeled. With Donald Trump in the White House, America First meant imposing, among other things, tariffs of 25% on US$50 billion on Chinese goods under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. More rises followed.

    Under the Biden administration, Trump’s tariff legacy remained in place, though some suspensions were made. (These were subsequently reimposed.) This enabled President Joe Biden to sharpen the focus on specific categories: electric vehicles (EVs), semiconductors, lithium ion batteries. Tariffs on Chinese semiconductors spiked to 50%, while Chinese EVs received a bruising 100% increase.

    In April last year, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan delivered an address to the Brookings Institution tearing the free-market consensus to shreds with what he called the “new Washington consensus”. China was the convenient excuse for doing so, a country that had subsidised “at a massive scale both traditional industrial sectors, like steel, as well as key industries in the future, like clean energy, digital infrastructure, and advanced biotechnologies.” US competitiveness had, as a result, been eroded.

    The response from foreign affairs pulpit huggers such as Walter Russell Mead was excoriating. Sullivan’s position represented a wish to “return to the system of relatively closed and highly regulated national economies that characterised the immediate post-Second World War era.”

    Even those on the consultancy front are proclaiming the end of free trade. The Boston Consulting Group, for instance, declared in May that global free trade, an era “spanning the late 20th and early 21st centuries, has ended, and a new geopolitical landscape has emerged: a multipolar world characterized by distinct economic and political blocs.”

    Little wonder, then, that the stomp on a forced, generally fictional notion has also appealed to European Union officials who have now made their entry into the thorny undergrowth of Tariff Land. On October 4, the European Union votedto place tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles after a yearlong investigation into the role played by Chinese subsidies and export dumping practices. The vote was split: ten EU states agreed to the measure, while five voted against it, with twelve abstentions.

    The reasoning on that score is clear enough: the EU has, ideologically and foolishly, imperilled itself to a free trade agenda that has enabled Beijing to make considerable inroads into the European market regarding EV technology. While the United States huffs and struts in imposing 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, such a policy can be pursued with assurance. The US market was only ever going to suffer negligible losses, there being negligible Chinese EV imports to begin with. For the European Union, up to 25% of all EVs sold this year will have a Chinese origin.

    It is little wonder that there is no true European consensus on how to euthanize the free trade patient. Germany, as one of the countries voting against the imposition of tariffs (a third of new German cars are sold annually in China), failed to exert sufficient influence on the final vote, hardly surprising given disagreements within its own political ranks. “Germany and European industry can no longer convince the Commission to be reasonable,” lamented Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. “But then again, who can?”

    How different it was from 2013, when the country, under the stewardship of Angela Merkel, convinced then European Commission president José Manuel Barroso that China should be exempt from tariffs in favour of a minimum price threshold.

    If nothing else, the values of Tariff Land are revealing. The decarbonising program seen as essential to stay a rise in global temperatures has balkanised. Disputing trade officials, not technological innovators or scientists, dominate the discussions. The US government is even chewing over banning the use of Chinese technology in autonomous and connected cars, showing how far this will go.

    Joseph Webster, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, expresses the sentiment. “The EU – as well as other US allies, especially Australia – do not appear to be grappling with the real and uncomfortable tensions between decarbonization objectives on the one hand, and the security risks Chinese-linked connected vehicles pose on the other.” Yet again, the free trade globalists have been shown up, leaving way for the chest beating patriots to take centre stage over the corpse of an idea.

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/14/welcome-to-tariff-land-the-retreat-of-free-trade/

  30. What Austria’s election teaches us about the far right’s rise and migration fears

    Two weeks after the federal elections in Austria, it is still unclear which parties will form the next government. The far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), led by Herbert Kickl, clearly won the elections with almost 29%, but the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), which gained 26%, excludes a coalition with them as long as Kickl is in play. Dropping the leader who achieved the best result in the party’s history hasn’t seemed to gain traction in the FPÖ so far. Hence, the ÖVP might decide instead to form a coalition with the social democrats (SPÖ), who came third with 21%, and probably include the fourth-placed liberal NEOS (9%) as well.

    While standing closer to the FPÖ on key economic and migration policy issues, the ÖVP aligns better with the SPÖ and NEOS regarding the rule of law and foreign policy. Moreover, this would allow the ÖVP to assume the chancellorship rather than be the junior partner to the FPÖ. However, this broader option, the “coalition of the losers,” as Kickl puts it, promises no stability either: the German traffic light coalition of social democrats, liberals, and greens serves as a warning sign to all concerned parties about how difficult it would be in such a diverse coalition concerning crucial policy areas like the economy.

    A few days ago in Social Europe, Robert Misik argued that it is up to the ÖVP and SPÖ (and NEOS) to push back against the far right by forming a coalition. While the situation in Hungary substantiates this worry, a cordon sanitaire around the winner may not be the right strategy—either democratically or tactically. Even less so, as the ÖVP never ruled out the option of forming a coalition with the FPÖ (minus Kickl) during the campaign, yet 26% decided to vote for them. This suggests that 55% of Austrian voters do not share the apocalyptic concerns related to an FPÖ in government and might feel betrayed by being told, “It’s nice that you used your democratic right, but you voted wrong.”

    Exclusion from the opportunity to form a government and the anticipated austerity politics in the coming years to address the budget deficit could further strengthen the far-right, enabling them to win even more support in the upcoming regional elections and in five years in the federal elections.

    https://www.socialeurope.eu/what-austrias-election-teaches-us-about-the-far-rights-rise-and-migration-fears

    1. but the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), which gained 26%, excludes a coalition with them

      But they will form a coalition with leftists. Keep those borders wide open!

    2. Yeah they all seem to do this (make a coalition against the “right”). England, France, Germany, Austria I”m sure there are more.

      but next cycle the “right” is going to end up with a true majority, where they can just waltz in and take power (50% +1) and do whatever they want. And i’m sure after being excluded and crapped on, they are totally going to want to “work across the aisle”

      They will have done this to themselves. I’m going to be watching and cackling with glee.

      1. I just hope we (the west) have five years left for this to happen. I do greatly fear that if the Dems get away with another steal that the republic will be finished by 2028, or we will be in a hot civil war.

        1. The globalist scum are rushing to adopt ‘far right’ policies. They have capitulated on the most important issues. We’ve already won.

    1. In 2023, while 13.5% of Americans households grappled with food insecurity

      And yet, there have never been more obese people, who more often than not are “poor”. Even countries like Mexico have an obesity crisis.

  32. It’s simple that Harris/Walz are One World Order puppets. We just should start naming these people the One World Order dictorship party.
    They can’t get up there and really talk about the miltary/industrial complex and other enemy forces Agenda to take over the World.
    Actually Biden openly endorsed One World Order, and Transfer of Power by Treaty to UN/WHO.

    You get no MSN asking these candidates about the treasonous global transfer of Powers by treaty , which is biggest power grab attempt in history probably.
    The fraudulent narratives of Climate Change doomsday and Panademic gain of function med tyranny isn’t discussed .
    How about questions like, “What is you standing on mandated vaccines, lockdowns and masks.” What is your standing on UN/WHO getting unlimited power by transfer of power by Treaty by global governments.”
    It’s clear that the Invasion of Borders of US and other Countries is a treasonous act , with no justification other than to destroy the US.
    Harris/Walz aren’t being asked about transgender assult on minors .
    And the attempt to portray Harris/Walz as gun owning Champions of middle class and small business, defies their previous record.
    Harris said she won’t answer any hypothetical questions, which is the basic of determining what the candidates stance would be on issues. . So, you just vote for these Con Artists based on what exactly. They are refreshing, not burdened by what has been, or what will be. They are a blank slate , but Trump will be a Hitler and a Dictator and a threat to democracy, according to them.

    Vote for Harris just because she is a women, or because she is black, and never mind what her policies are, or what will be if she gets elected.

    At this point its insulting to any thinking individual who wants to vote for their self interest, as they are entitled to do.
    We are not all in this all together.We are US Citizens voting for our self interests and a Government that represents those freedoms and self interests, and pursuits of happiness as laid out in the US Constitutional Republic.
    Harris/Walz want to overthrow the US on behalf of Entities like the WEF and the entities in collusion.That’s what the evidence shows .

    1. “Vote for Harris just because she is a women, or because she is black, and never mind what her policies are, or what will be if she gets elected. ”

      Unfortunately correct. The msm did it’s job on the useful idiots. That’s how you get the 76 year old broad in Milwaukee absolutely incredulous that anyone would vote for Trump.

  33. Will the next US president be our first crypto president?

    Would now be a good time to dump your overvalued stocks and go all in to crypto?

    1. Yahoo Finance
      RECORD-HIGH WATCH
      Nvidia stock heads for record, eyes title of most valuable company

      Bloomberg
      Bitcoin Climbs With Harris Pledging Regulatory Framework Support
      Sidhartha Shukla
      Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 9:29 AM PDT
      2 min read
      In this article:

      (Bloomberg) — Bitcoin climbed to the highest level in two weeks with Vice President Kamala Harris pledging to support a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies.

      The promise added to optimism seen during Asian trading hours that a mixed reaction to China’s latest stimulus will embolden speculators to chase after cryptocurrencies rather than the nation’s stocks.

      The largest digital asset rose as much as 5.6% on Monday before paring some of the increase to change hands at $65,630 as of 12:25 p.m. in New York. Smaller tokens including second-ranked Ether and top-10 coin Solana advanced too.

      The pledge by Harris to support a framework follows years of complaints by crypto industry officials that US officials have chosen a path of regulation through enforcement rather than providing clarity. Former President Donald Trump has actively sought crypto voters during the current presidential race and has several crypto-related endeavors.

      Prediction markets have flipped in the past few days, assigning Trump higher odds of victory than Harris.
      …
      https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-jumps-traders-weigh-china-055859218.html

        1. She specifically says she’ll protect black men but who is going to protect black women from the Diddy Coin? Oprah?

          I’m sure it will be fine.

    2. “Would now be a good time to dump your overvalued stocks and go all in to crypto?”

      All other “Crypto” is the centralized Ponzi the majority of this board says it is. BTC is the only truly decentralized digital asset. Meaning it has no king, government, agency, controller, board or issuer of any kind. It just is. It’s permanently limited to 21 million which means it is far more scarce than gold or silver. Though all 3 are great and are the only refuges for what is to come.

      1. it is far more scarce than gold or silver

        Just so I can check your math, what is the weight of all bitcoin discovered to date?

        2. “Just so I can check your math, what is the weight of all bitcoin discovered to date?”

          Approx $1.3 trillion (19.77 mil btc). Why does gold have huge value over iron or silver? Because the world and the riggers say it does. You can’t eat it, heat your house with it, make medicine, build a shelter etc. You can basically only wear it or trade it. At least silver has massive industrial and even some medical use. It comes out of the ground at 7/1 to gold yet gold is over 80 times the price? Speaking of weight, $250k in silver would weigh about 535lbs. Kind of hard to move/store that money. Who knows what blockchain does?

          1. “Why does gold have huge value over iron or silver?”

            Because it has for thousands of years and that’s good enough for me. (I also own BTC)

  34. You know it occurs to me that this Globalist Cult are a bunch of S&M perverse psychopaths that are into bondage and control.
    They want to turn humanity into masochistic victims of their agenda to brainwash people into compliance , while they are being whipped.
    We will give you some food and some energy if you tap dance to our sadistic demands.
    And Rockfeller and his elk were noting but a bunch of fraudsters, trying to rig the game to loot the public .
    The pre planned scams to take life, liberty and pursuit of happiness from humanity is brainwashing billions into hating themselves because they are carbon emitter, or diseased beings by fake or gain of function viruses or pathogens.
    Unreal.

  36. ‘If [a home] isn’t priced right and it isn’t taking into account the reality of the market, it’s gonna sit. You can’t be quite as ambitious as we were a couple years ago’

    I see what yer saying Jake. Two years ago ‘we’ were ambitious, but now UHS needs bacon in the pan. YOU seller are on yer own.

  37. ‘According to Houlihan Lawrence, the reason there weren’t as many high-price bracket sales in each market may have been that there are a ‘finite number of uber-luxury buyers’

    So many variations of this over the years. One of my favorites was when the super lux airbox bubble popped in New York City. 2015 or 2016. Jonathan Miller said, ‘there weren’t as many billionaires as we thought.’

  38. “That’s because government insurance programs like the NFIP underprice the risk, so homeowners and businesses in flood-prone areas pay below market price for insurance. ‘They basically bail out the people who didn’t have insurance or the people who were not fully covered,’ Buechler said. ‘You know the federal government and the state government are going to come in and help you when you have a disaster, so you don’t care.’”

    Subprime Sam loves to dole out insurance at below market prices. The same moral hazard incentive in flood insurance also describes federal crop insurance and federally insured mortgages.

    1. ‘Subprime Sam loves to dole out insurance at below market prices’

      It’s not different this time.

      2. Fear & Greed Index
        Business / Economy
        Mortgage companies could intensify the next recession, US officials warn
        By Matt Egan, CNN
        4 minute read
        Updated 7:29 PM EDT, Mon May 13, 2024
        Nonbank mortgage providers like Rocket Mortgage could make the next recession worse, federal regulators warn.
        David Ryder/Bloomberg/Getty Images

        New York CNN —

        US officials worry the next recession could be intensified by a cascading series of failures in the mortgage industry caused by crashing home prices, frozen financial markets and soaring delinquencies.

        The US Financial Stability Oversight Council, a SWAT team of financial regulators formed after the 2008 crisis, sounded the alarm on Friday about an increasingly influential corner of the industry that has largely escaped scrutiny: nonbank mortgage companies.

        Unlike traditional banks, nonbank mortgage companies are heavily exposed to swings in the mortgage market, depend on funding that can dry up during times of stress and don’t have stable deposits to rely on as a safety net. And, unlike banks, these companies are lightly regulated at the national level.

        FSOC warned that these unique vulnerabilities risk a domino effect in a future crisis where multiple mortgage companies fail, borrowers are locked out of the mortgage market and the federal government is left holding the bag.

        “Put simply, the vulnerabilities of nonbank mortgage companies can amplify shocks in the mortgage market and undermine financial stability,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who chairs FSOC, said in the report.
        …
        https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/13/economy/mortgage-company-risk-regulation-fsoc/index.html

        1. Really!?

          “The US Financial Stability Oversight Council, a SWAT team of financial regulators…”

          SWAT team
          (swɒt tim IPA Pronunciation Guide )
          Word forms: SWAT teams
          countable noun

          A SWAT team is a group of police officers who have been specially trained to deal with very dangerous or violent situations. SWAT is an abbreviation for `Special Weapons and Tactics.’

          https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/swat-team#google_vignette

  39. ‘So, our condo just sits there half finished. What do we do now to make the association hire their own contractor to do the work so we can get our part of the restoration done and move back in? D.W.’

    ‘At this point, I would inform them that the repair of these items is the association’s responsibility, and you would like them to give you a timeline of when they intend to make the repairs. If they refuse, you’ll have no choice but to involve an attorney, because this is an issue that is outside the jurisdiction of the Division of Condominiums. It sounds like this is a big enough project to make the cost of a lawyer worthwhile’

    You got one big clusterfook of a story there D.W. But I thank you for today’s HBB Pitfalls of Commie Urban Living™.

  40. ‘When Lisa Vacante was ready to buy a home in St. Petersburg, she chose the popular Kenwood neighborhood because it was ‘right smack in the middle of a no evacuation zone.’…he never experienced one like Hurricane Milton. Her car was fully submerged by heavy rains. Water seeped in under the floors of her home and sewage spewed out of her shower drain. Now, thousands of residents across Tampa Bay who trusted that they lived in neighborhoods that don’t flood — not like those closer to the coast — are shaken this weekend as they assess the damage’

    You told me it wouldn’t flood! The confusion in the property insurance biz signals weak something.

    ‘Only about 18% of Floridians have flood insurance. That leaves the vast majority of residents, including Vacante, 51, left to pay out of pocket if their homes get drenched in a hurricane’

    But the lending is sound overall. We’re just talking about a few hundred fishing shacks down there.

  41. ‘Sold: A four-bed, three-bathroom house in the hills above East Oakland for $575,000 in 2006 (Bought at $106,000). Bought: A 5,500 square-foot home in El Dorado, Arkansas, for $400,000… ‘We could get anything we wanted real fast,’ Ezell-Wallace said. ‘I thought Oakland was one of the greatest places there was.’ But in the early 2000s, the city started ‘to feel like a third-world country,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to wait until everything got worse than it already was’

    2006. Good move Mary, didn’t have to endure any more decline.

  42. ‘said the real price correction in Kelowna was over two year ago when the average selling price of a single-family home hit a record-high of $1,250,000 in March 2022 and then plunged to $1,050,000 by September 2022. That loss in value of $200,000 in just three months set Kelowna up for the next two years because prices have essentially flatlined since…‘Don’t get me wrong, Kelowna is still unaffordable even with that big adjustment’

    Yer saying even with a yuuge a$$ pounding no one can afford yer igloos Francis.

  43. ‘An off-the-high street estate agency in Wales has closed down after its owner blamed her council’s recent crackdown on second homes as the ‘final nail in the coffin’. Jane Edwards says demand for second homes in Pembrokeshire has collapsed after the county council tripled council tax for those owning this kind of property. She says the consequent slump in demand that this precipitated meant there is little appetite among outsiders to buy second homes in this area of Wales. ‘We went from selling 60 properties in the 2021-22 financial year to just 10 this year,’ she told The Telegraph, revealing that she put in £30,000 of her own money to help keep the company’

    Housing bubbles make you poor and then they pop.

  44. ‘You used to have small active businesses including a wee grocers but it is all gone now. For a small while a community group took over a vacant unit and set up a wee shop but then the funding was removed. We don’t have a church, a Post Office, a bus service or shops, nothing is really based here other than smack dealers’

    Other than that Jim, how’s the walk ability?

    1. Colorado mailed to voters ballots have arrived. Vote harder this time, I guess. The Statehouse and Denver City Hall are controlled by Marxists.

      The first decade here was pretty good, the last few years not so much…

  48. Some people think that taking stoves, cars, property rights, and steak and eggs at Norms is no big deal.
    But , I’m telling you its a big deal. Why don’t we make a deal with the Globalists that they can keep their jets, if we get our list of must haves.

    The bug thing, that’s really insulting. That’s pestilence stuff that has plagued the earth , and was a punishment from God in the Bible.

    No way, why would I be happy if I owned nothing.Me owning nothing and eating bugs isn’t going stop doomsday climate change .What’s going to stop doomsday climate change is arrests.

    And I have a simple solution to Panademics. Shut down all the gain of function bio labs, than you won’t get any accidental labs leaks . Than we can wait a 1000 years for a bat to cough on a racoon to get a minor respiratory virus.

    And forget this vaccine thing because it will give your the virus, and you don’t want that damn virus.

    And I take personnel offense to blocking out the Sun, and getting rid of co2 carbon admissions. Who thought of those ideas, they should of asked me.

    And lastly, the Powers that Be want to take free speech and all the guns. Why don’t they take toxins, pollution and eggplant instead.

Comments are closed.