They’re All In, And They Can’t Pay Any Bills

A report from Maryland Matters. “As the Trump administration continues slicing the federal workforce and laying off probational employees in large numbers, much of the conversation on how it impacts Maryland can center around the populous counties that lie just outside of the District of Columbia – Prince George’s County and Montgomery County. But relative to population size, you’re actually more likely to run into a federal worker in St. Mary’s County than in the either of those counties, given that nearly 10% of the workforce in St. Mary’s is considered a federal employee, according to state data. The county’s largest employer is the Naval Air Station Patuxent River — which employs 9,800 civilian employees, 5,700 contractors and 2,400 active duty military personnel, according to the base’s website.”

“‘It’s no doubt that St. Mary’s is a company town,’ said Del. Matthew Morgan (R-St. Mary’s) in an interview last week. ‘The main driving force of St. Mary’s: DOD (Department of Defense) government workers and DOD contracts. The economy on this is entirely based on that.’ Del. Andre V. Johnson, Jr. (D-Harford) says that larger counties can overshadow the impacts in his district. ‘Aberdeen Proving Ground being our No. 1 employer, it’s going to hurt. In all intents and purposes, Harford County is a military community … with the new administration coming in, it’s going to affect us in a really big way,’ Johnson said. ‘We’re going to do everything in our power down here in Annapolis to make sure that people can still pay their bills and feed their families.'”

Fox 4 Now in Florida. “A recently released real estate report named Charlotte County as one of the most vulnerable markets for a downturn, and stated it had the highest foreclosure rates in the country in the fourth quarter of 2024. The report, compiled by ATTOM Data Solutions, states that 561 properties in the county filed foreclosure cases during that time, 1 in 198 properties were at risk of foreclosure and that 14% of properties were underwater on their mortgage. Despite a bleak report, Peter Rivera, broker-owner of RE/MAX Palm in Port Charlotte said the data doesn’t tell the full story of the local market. ‘I wouldn’t say downturn, I would say it’s more of a leveling off,’ said Rivera.”

“Rivera said the market is stabilizing after a housing boom prior to, and during covid. He added that the inventory levels are returning to normal after those years of high demand, prices and low supply. ‘It’s not doom and gloom, the market has changed and we’re not seeing the 20-30% increases year-over-year, that has slowed down and in many ways it’s better for everybody,’ said Rivera. What has caused a rift in the market, according to FGCU Lucas Professor of Real Estate Shelton Weeks, is affordability. ‘The cost of home-ownership has increased rather dramatically,’ said Weeks. ‘And that has put some purchasers in a somewhat precarious situation in terms of their budget. It puts them in a dangerous situation in terms of being able to have the cash flow needed to continue making payments on their homes.'”

The Houston Chronicle in Texas. “Over the past decade, Conroe’s homebuilding boom has far outpaced every other major suburban municipality in the Houston area, according to permit records obtained by the Houston Chronicle. ‘When homes become increasingly expensive, there’s this mentality of ‘drive a few more miles down the road, and you’ll find something that works,’ said Dan Potter, director of the Houston Population Research Center at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. ‘Up north we went, from Houston to Spring, from Spring to the Woodlands and now from the Woodlands to Conroe.’ Median home values have skyrocketed across all five of the region’s largest suburban municipalities, rising far faster than household incomes. In 2015, a typical home in Sugar Land, for example, sold for $288,700. By 2023, that figure had climbed by 50% to $433,600, according to U.S. Census data. Its median household income, on the other hand, only grew by 20%.”

“At first, home construction lagged, and city officials had to offer financial incentives, including reimbursing builders $1,500 per rooftop, to jumpstart development. In 2015, Conroe issued just 627 new single-family home permits. By 2021, that number had more than quadrupled to 2,575 and stayed above 1,800 every year since then. As its popularity rose, the price of a typical home in Conroe more than doubled from $158,200 to $323,800, according to Census data.”

From Realtor.com. “Home prices in Las Vegas are climbing, as for-sale properties are continuing to pile up in Sin City because the average potential buyer cannot afford the sticker price, raising questions about the volatility of the real estate market. The median home price in Nevada’s most populous metro in February reached $469,974, up 1.1% compared with a year ago, making last month the highest February in the data’s history, according to Realtor.com® researchers. At the same time, the number of active listings in the self-described Entertainment Capital of the World soared more than 60% year over year, reaching 7,447 properties and capping off six months of uninterrupted inventory growth. And the share of listings dangling price cuts in front of buyers shot up 13.6 percentage points year over year, reaching 27.3% last month.”

“Aldo M. Martinez, a broker at Berkshire Hathaway HomServices, tells Realtor.com that a typical family of two hospitality workers earns about $110,000 a year before taxes, meaning that they cannot afford to buy a $400,000 home in Las Vegas. ‘They’re all in, and it’s just an average home in Vegas right now … and they can’t [pay] any bills,’ Martinez says. ‘That’s why 43% of our residents in Las Vegas are renters, because that’s what they can afford.'”

ABC 30 Fresno in California. “More ‘For Sale’ signs have been popping up along the roads. Realtor Noel Escobar has worked in the industry for more than two decades. ‘Our housing market is actually doing very well right now up here in the mountains,’ she said. ‘We are seeing an increase in inventory. Just in Coarsegold alone, we have 80 active listings currently on the market.’ Escobar has noticed price reductions every day on available homes. Despite the inventory, prices are still coming down. Escobar figures it takes 90 days to sell a home in the Coarsegold-Oakhurst area.”

The Press Democrat in California. “For Maria and Stephen Crane, the final straw came in February, when they combed through a document filed in the LeFever Mattson bankruptcy case. It was a claims register — a comprehensive list of the hundreds of people who had filed financial claims to money that had been cast into question by the disintegration of a juggernaut California real investment company once valued at over $400 million. The Cranes were on the list. They had invested their entire retirement fund in Divi Divi Tree LP, a self-directed IRA established by Ken Mattson and Tim LeFever, founding partners of the company that still bears their names. And they’d put much of their lifetime savings into other LeFever Mattson investments.”

“Now the Cranes are locked out of that money. Stephen Crane is 69. Maria is 65. Both had retired. But with their passive income frozen — and perhaps forever diminished — Maria has gone back to work as an elementary school teacher and Stephen, a doctor, is having to reactivate his medical license. They have taken in a renter in their Santa Rosa home to make ends meet. The claims indicate the men seen as culpable for the business implosion — which now includes at least 60 separate bankruptcies, nine lawsuits, a federal investigation involving a grand jury and FBI search of Mattson’s Sonoma home, and dozens of local properties scheduled for sale — are competing with their beleaguered benefactors for scraps of a tattered empire.”

“‘They are using investor resources, and time, to sue and fight each other,’ Maria Crane said, ‘instead of having the integrity and character to say, ‘We blew it, and our investors are paying the consequences of our mismanagement, and we need to focus on fixing this and restoring the funds they entrusted to us.’ ‘I’m super frustrated, and extremely pissed off,’ said Michael Granados, a LeFever Mattson investor who lives in Fremont. ‘I don’t know where the guy’s at.’ He was referring to Mattson, who alone controlled at least 88 Sonoma properties but has been seen around town less frequently of late. The latest comments by Mattson’s camp may not prove convincing to investors, many of whom felt a personal bond with Mattson and defended him in the early stages of the business breakup that began last year. The contrast is made all the more stark given the hardships they share, and the lifestyle they imagine Mattson and LeFever are enjoying.”

Wall Street Journal. “When Colorado became one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, an enthusiastic county commissioner here said he wanted Pueblo to become the ‘Napa Valley of cannabis.’ ‘The streets were going to be paved with gold,’ recalled Carole Poysti, who raises goats on her small farm. ‘The elementary schools were going to be the greatest in the country.’ A decade later, Pueblo’s dreams have gone up in smoke. A once-thriving industry of retailers, growers and cannabis-oil extractors—there were more than 200 such businesses in the county in 2017—has collapsed.”

“In Pueblo, sentiments about legal cannabis have swung the other way, fueling a backlash against the county’s embrace of the industry. The landscape is dotted with abandoned marijuana growhouses, their roofs torn off by wind and fabric netting shredded. Real-estate agents said they can’t sell empty buildings outfitted with irrigation systems and grow lights. Kate Brophy started a business growing marijuana in Pueblo County in 2017. Once nearby states opened up, she said, the biggest companies left Pueblo. Brophy and her partners closed up shop and are trying to avoid foreclosure after losing a few million dollars, she said. Their efforts to sell the business and property went nowhere for more than a year, she said. They recently accepted an offer. ‘My Realtor has over a dozen empty grows they’re trying to move,’ she said.”

Kelowna Now in Canada. “There’s a certain uncertainty surrounding the Kelowna housing market. ‘Typically we see a seasonal uptick in momentum leading in the spring market,’ said Kaytee Sharun, president of the 2,600-member Association of Interior Realtors. ‘However, external factors, such as economic uncertainty and the potential impact of tariffs may be among the influences causing a slight easing off the accelerator in real estate activity.’ When it comes to prices, the benchmark selling price of a typical single-family home in February was $1,036,900, up ever so slightly from the $1,030,600 it was in January. It peaked in the post-COVID boom in April 2022 at $1,131,800. While prices are down from their peaks, Kelowna is still considered unaffordable for many. It wasn’t all that long ago — in 2015 — that the typical single-family home in Kelowna was selling for $511,073, a townhouse $371,367 and a condo $258,546. That shows that home prices have doubled in the past decade, while salaries and incomes certainly haven’t.”

Insauga in Canada. “The latest real estate numbers show prices are down in the GTA. The average selling price, at $1,084,547 last month, was down by 2.2 per cent compared to the February 2024, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. However, people who purchased at peak high prices in late 2021 to early 2022 continue to sell for a loss. There are many examples of homes selling for well under what purchasers paid. A north Oshawa home sold for a $510,000 loss less than three years after it was purchased. A Mississauga home sold for a $445,000 loss in January.”

“A home in Guelph at 7706 Speedvale Ave. E. sold for the biggest loss in this group of four homes. The home sold for $2,350,000 in early 2022, it was listed several times in 2024, according to online real estate records. Records show the home finally sold for $1,775,000 on March 7 — a $575,000 loss. A Brampton home at 7 Odeon St. sold for $2,100,000 in April 2022 and was listed several times starting in early 2023 until it finally sold for $1,640,000, according to online real estate records. This is a $460,000 loss. An Oakville home at 2892 Arlington Dr. also sold for a $460,000 loss. The home sold for $2,100,000 in February 2022 and was listed in late 2024 for $1,649,000 — it sold for $1,640,000 on March 6, real estate records show. Finally, a home at 2 Edsall Ave. in Bowmanville was purchased in late 2021 for $1,025,000. It was listed just a few months later in May 2022 for $1,299,000 but didn’t sell. It was listed again in February 2025 for $740,000 and sold in March for $660,000 — a $365,000 loss, according to online real estate records.”

The Daily Star. “The tale of Tulip Mania in 17th century Netherlands remains one of the most infamous examples of speculative excess in economic history. At its peak, the price of a single tulip bulb reached astronomical levels—equivalent to the value of an entire house—only for the market to collapse abruptly, leaving thousands financially ruined. While centuries apart, the underlying causes and consequences of Tulip Mania find striking parallels in Bangladesh’s current economic landscape.”

“Tulip Mania, which unfolded between 1633 and 1637, was fuelled by a speculative frenzy surrounding rare tulip bulbs in the Netherlands. What began as a fascination among the elite quickly spread to ordinary citizens, with people from all walks of life buying tulip bulbs in hopes of making a fortune. At its height, the most coveted tulip bulbs sold for more than 10 times the average annual wage of a skilled worker. When confidence in the market evaporated in February 1637, prices plummeted, leaving investors bankrupt. This episode revealed how greed, herd mentality, and poor regulation can create and burst economic bubbles—an enduring lesson for modern economies.”

“Much like the ‘wind trade’ of tulip futures, the stock boom in Bangladesh is often driven by borrowed money through margin trading, amplifying risks if market sentiment shifts. The real estate sector in Bangladesh, especially in urban centres like Dhaka and Chattogram, has experienced staggering price increases over the past decade. Land prices in Dhaka alone, rose by 2700 percent between 2000 and 2021, making housing unaffordable for many middle-class families. This boom is reminiscent of the speculative excesses of Tulip Mania.”

“Luxury housing developments dominate the market, while affordable housing remains neglected. Many property purchases are financed through loans, increasing the risk of default if prices decline. If the real estate bubble bursts, it could destabilise the financial system by increasing non-performing loans (NPLs) and causing a credit crunch, echoing the collapse of tulip prices in 1637.”