Author: Greg Swann (page 15 of 209)

Masks are obviously stupid. If you can smell perfume – or a dog’s fart – your mask is protecting you from nothing. Except anoxia, of course, the silent killer of brain cells.

Even so, the worst advice “the experts” gave us, over the past year, was not about encasing your face in toxic plastics. No, the worst advice was to stay indoors.

The UVC in natural, unfiltered sunlight kills all viruses, practically instantaneously. And when sunlight hits your skin, it is converted to vitamin D, boosting your immune system.

Ignoring for governmental ineptitude, people will have done better against this virus where the sunlight is strong all year – or where they had dogs-to-walk or work-responsibilities that brought them outdoors anyway.

Why weren’t the homeless wiped out by the virus? Sunlight. Why are Texas and Florida doing so much better than Michigan or New York? Sunlight. Why will the virus abate up north with the onset of Summer? Sunlight.

If you tell me “the experts” have been lying about everything all along, I’m an easy sell. But it is beyond doubt that they have been lying about the benefits – undisputed lifelong holistic benefits – of getting outside.

In other news:

MarketWatch: The No. 1 emerging property market in America isn’t in Texas or Florida — you may never even have heard of it.

Housing Wire: Applications drop, despite falling mortgage rates.

The New York Post: Albany’s ‘Good Cause Eviction’ spells bad news for NY’s housing market.

American Thinker: Woke Democrats Broke American Cities.

City Journal: The Big Empty.

American Thinker: Righteous Recycling.

Betsy McCaughey: The CDC’s reign of error has done incalculable harm to America. Yeah, but how are things working out for China?

My nephew is a locksmith, so I know his children’s futures are secure: Home security is a growth industry.

If you live in a city where the police are afraid to enforce civil order, you need security. If you moved away, but not far enough, you need security. And even if you are no less safe than before, if you are more fearful, you need security.

Young and bored to death with schoolwork? Your neighbors need security doors and iron bars for their windows. Their neighborhoods need security gates and perimeter defenses. Talk all day about the internet-of-things, but there is nothing more brick-’n’-mortar than a wall.

We socialized home security to the police, and that worked pretty well where almost no one was a criminal, anyway. The police are defaulting just when they are needed most, and, hence, self-defense had devolved to from whence it first emerged: You – your self, your spouse, your family, hour homestead, your work, your values. Home security is a growth industry because you know that, ultimately, there is no one to defend the things you love but you.

That’s why Americans are buying guns, too, but passive defenses avoid bloodshed by sending bad impulses elsewhere. That would be ‘privilege’, I should think – and give me excess of it! Civilization is people fighting – and dying, if necessary – to sustain their values.

That’s a heavy burden! If you’re in Metropolitan Phoenix, my nephew – Tim Brannum – can help: Lockology, 623-800-5900.

In other news:

Redfin: Urban Single-Family Homes Are Seeing the Fastest Price Growth as Buyers Return to City But Still Crave Space. More little-riot-lies from Redfin: They are documenting the demi-flight from urban cores to ring suburbs – which I have argued will prove to have been a mistake. Their charts are always fun, since the text yammers on about the pandemic, but the results document the riots. What’s going on with apartments, Redfin? What’s going on in CHAZ/CHOP? If you’re walking on tiptoes over there, afraid to speak the truth out Read more

As we talked about last year, the likelihood of rioting in any particular urban environment is broadly predictable by what I jokingly called a RiotScore™. The best tell is the Chief of Police, but by now we all know many ways of predicting where and why riots will occur.

A more granular way of looking at the same issue – where is the safety the residential real estate market is fleeing to? – is something I am calling the ChaosScore™: How much urban chaos is proximate to this home? That is to say: Is this an area where I am more likely to roll down my windows – or lock my doors?

Plausibly, there are Fair Housing issues here, since real estate agents are instructed to send safety questions to third-party resources – but the ChaosScore™ can be precisely that.

So: Like this: Within a three-mile radius, quantity of:

• Supermarkets/pharmacies
• Abortion clinics/gun stores
• Check-cashing/payday-loan stores
• Convenience stores/gas stations
• Traffic lights/limited-access roadways

The lower the score, the better – unless you are plotting the location of your next McDonalds. I could think of other things to measure, but they’re all about non-residential uses of the land. This again is a color-blind way of looking at the impact of location on residential real estate appreciation: Anyone buying a home where the ChaosScore™ is high should expect worse results, going forward, compared with low-ChaosScore™ neighborhoods. Higher risk of both greater-commercialization and condemnation, as well.

And while I do not ever expect to see a ChaosScore™ on a realty.bot listing, this is the way to do real estate analysis when you are not trying to uphold a demonstrably false, palpably racist agenda.

Yesterday on BloodhoundBlog:

Brian Brady: How To Fix Florida Homeowner’s Insurance Costs.

In other news:

American Thinker: Portland’s mayor should resign first.

Joel Kotkin: The Green New Deal Will Impoverish America.

City Journal: Capitalist Havens of Free Speech: Market-driven innovation is providing new outlets for free expression in an increasingly intolerant media environment.

Townhall.com: The Oscar Speech That Went Viral…For a Good Reason.

If you buy a Coke every time you go through a drive-through or hit the convenience store, you’re drinking a lot of coke. You may have to figure out what to eat, but you always know how you’ll be washing it down.

Coke spends a ton of money on marketing and advertising – with every other marketing budget being a mere fraction of Coca-Cola-Incorporated’s spend. And yet they are spending nothing to get your business. You have probably cost them nothing all along, since you were ordering Coke when you did drive-throughs from the back seat.

You are theirs by habit, and, accordingly, you are the bankable part of their business. The marketing seeks conversion and retention, neither of which are needed to keep your money flowing in.

What is needed? Zero interruptions in the habituated behavior. Steady customers are yours for their reasons, not yours. If you piss them off, they will go away and never come back, taking five to twenty-five cash sales a week with them – each.

As if anyone had to be told, that is why pissing off the customer is a poor idea: You won’t even know for sure why they were doing business with you until they’re gone.

In other news:

The Daily Wire: Black-Owned Businesses At George Floyd Square Beg For Help Amid Spiking Crime, Nosediving Revenue.

The New York Post: Are NYPD officers rushing to retire amid city’s anti-cop climate?

Townhall.com: Woke Democrats Broke American Cities.

John Hinderaker: Why Wind and Solar Energy Are Doomed to Failure.

What’s a CEO to do when he discovers that everyone he has hired since 9/11 is a Marxist fifth-columnist?

It’s a funny question, but I confess I do not know the answer. The actual choice before C-suites, Boards of Directors and shareholders is this: Either destroy your business – “get woke, go broke” – or have it destroyed from within by temporally-displaced anarcho-syndicalists. The worst news: The latter auto-cannibalism will happen, anyway.

If I’m smart enough to see this, so are they. But is it too late for them to do anything about it…?

In other news:

Housing Wire: Home prices soared in March amid record demand.

The New York Post: NYC rents are in free fall, now reaching record lows.

Housing Wire: New homes are selling like it’s 2006 again.

Real Clear Politics: New Jersey’s Self-Inflicted Fiscal Woes May Bring Statewide Property Tax.

Townhall: America, Here Comes the Great Depression 2.0.

Monica Showalter: Wokester apocalypse: Public school enrollment plunges in California — and everywhere else.

As I have pointed out too often, Redfin is on a Marxian crusade to prove that poorer real estate results for black homeowners results from racism, rather than from an aversion to the neighborhoods where black homeowners frequently buy their homes.

In other words, why grasp at an inherently specious claim when “location, location, location” provides so many compelling answers?

Here’s a question Redfin will never dare to ask out loud: Where do more-prosperous black homeowners buy their homes?

And here is a better lens for understanding the whole gestalt: Ants and Grasshoppers. Majority black neighborhoods will tend also to be majority Grasshopper neighborhoods, more is the pity, where peace, plenty and an undoubted civility will abound in majority Ant neighborhoods.

Looking for a color-blind test of this obvious market principle? The neighborhoods around large tax-funded universities will be overrun with Grasshoppers – students and former students who prefer the party life to, you know, life. Real estate results in those neighborhoods will tend to trail nearby Ant neighborhoods in much the same way Redfin observes in majority black neighborhoods.

Grasshoppers are poor stewards of real estate because they are poor stewards generally. People who invest in real estate in neighborhoods where Grasshopper values are readily apparent should expect poorer results with respect to the market – and especially with respect to majority Ant neighborhoods.

In other news:

CNBC: Existing home sales suffer second straight monthly decline as tight supply pushes prices higher.

The New York Post: Millennials are moving back into awkward teen rooms in record numbers.

The College Fix: I’ve lived in Minneapolis my entire life. I’m leaving Friday. I no longer recognize my hometown.

Breitbart.com: Report: Black Lives Matter Protests ‘Correlate with a 10 Percent Increase in Murders’ in Areas Where They Occur.

Richard Hanania: Why is Everything Liberal? Cardinal Preferences Explain Why All Institutions are Woke.

PJ Media: The End of Basic Education: Biden Issues Universal Public School Critical Race Theory Order.

At last someone in corporate America is being fired for being a race-pandering, business-killing idiot. Said idiot is getting paid $12 million to go away, but that is nothing compared to the shareholder value he has already destroyed, so paying a high ransom to get rid of him is surely worth the price.

Who’s next?

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates drop below 3% for the first time in months.

CNBC: Yelp data shows more than half million new businesses opened in the past year.

KTLA-TV: L.A. ordered by judge to provide shelter for entire homeless population on Skid Row by fall.

Real Clear Policy: Illinois’ Pension Bomb Has a Short Fuse.

The New York Post: Manhattan DA’s Office will no longer prosecute prostitution cases.

John Nolte: Blue Cities Will Continue to Burn Until Media, Democrats Condemn Riots.

Jonathan Tobin: The American Left Now Knows That Threatening To Riot Works Perfectly.

Heather Mac Donald: A Troubled Rule of Law: The pervasive sense that cities would burn if Derek Chauvin were not convicted raises questions about whether the jury’s verdict was reached dispassionately.

City Journal: Profits, Not Causes: The enduring wisdom of shareholder primacy.

The Washington Free Beacon: A New Systemic Racism? Hiring at some of the country’s elite institutions paints a troubling picture.

I’m going to offer up a quote from Andrew Branca, from before the sequestration of the jury, to show you how Derek Chauvin was railroaded, regardless of your opinions of the case:

Frankly, at this point it’s absolutely apparent that Derek Chauvin can receive nothing like a fair trial in this case. When I write that, by the way, I’m defining “fair trial” as one involving a process we’d want for ourselves or a loved one, or even a friend or neighbor.

No one would want to be on trial, or have anyone they cared about on trial, in a courthouse surrounded by a violent, raging mob, being exhorted to further violence by government officials, with militant factions of political groups terrorizing the witness for the defense, and by extension the jury itself.

Yet that is what’s been offered to Derek Chauvin as “justice.”

Regardless of what anyone may think of Derek Chauvin, it is absolute truth that the criminal due process we offer to the worst of us is precisely what any of the rest of us should expect to also receive should we find ourselves having to account in a criminal court. And not one bit more.

If you would not want to be tried under these circumstances, then you ought not want anyone tried under these circumstances, including Derek Chauvin, or worse.

If you think what happened yesterday in Minneapolis was justice, feel free to submit yourself to it as many times as it takes for you to learn the value of ideas like the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, due process and ordinary, everyday fairness – you know, actual equity.

In other news:

CNBC: Weekly mortgage demand jumps 8.6% after interest rates fall to a two-month low.

Mike DelPrete: iBuyer Purchases Recover to Pre-Pandemic Levels.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Texas didn’t see a COVID surge after opening and ending its mask mandate. Here’s why. Sunlight. Period. The cure – lockdowns – IS the disease.

Victoria Taft: The Verdict Is in on Derek Chauvin. An Appeal Is Sure to Follow.

Joy Pullman: There’s No Way Read more

I deliberately do not watch incendiary videos, since the purpose – invariably – is to misrepresent the truth.

As came out in trial testimony, Derek Chavin not only did nothing wrong, everything he did was exactly as he had been trained to do. A well-trained officer took charge of an impossible situation and made the best that could be made of it. His actions should have been commended and praised, instead of his having been betrayed by the people who managed and trained him.

Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection is very worth reading, but perhaps his best argument is that – by impeding the police, delaying the ambulance and forcing the ambulance to flee the scene instead of administering care on site – the crowd itself was the efficient cause of Floyd’s death.

This trial is a lynching – a nearly-universal one, a palliative public sacrifice, a story you will have heard before – the inevitable consequence of the “systemic” failure to uphold the Rule of Law all along. Had George Floyd received all the “justice” he had earned, over the years, he might still be alive. Had the state not made war on fatherhood, he might have grown up to be an honorable man.

Instead, Chauvin faces prison for doing everything right – and every Grasshopper city will go up in flames.

We are children, and we are living in The Lord of the Flies…

In other news:

Redfin: The Price of Racial Bias: Homes in Black Neighborhoods Are Undervalued by an Average of $46,000. Redfin has gone full-on race pirate. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found, of course. Any idea why the made up statistic shot up over the past year? Anyone at Redfin helping poor people get better at managing assets and debt? Black Lives Matter to Redfin just like they do to Planned Parenthood.

PJ Media: Minneapolis Seeks to Ensure the City Will Burn by Crippling the Police Response.

Jonathan Tobin: Dems have abandoned all principle by telegraphing approval of some rioting.

Tristan Justice: DeSantis Signs Anti-Riot Bill As Second Summer Of Rage Threatens Read more

Maxine Waters yesterday crossed state lines to foment riots – an undoubted federal crime. Nothing will happen, of course: Ants are to have been devoured, but Grasshoppers are to be placated – if not worshipped. This is how civilizations die, by making idols of their enemies.

Why more riots? Because Derek Chauvin should be acquitted, even if it turns out his racist lynching is ultimately successful. He not only did nothing wrong, he performed admirably, exactly as trained, under extreme stress. The man deserves a commendation. Instead, George Floyd, a lifelong menace to society, got seven funerals and a gold casket. See above for how civilizations die.

Many people who fled the riots moved only a little way: From the gentrified core of the rioted cities to their ring suburbs. This will prove to have been a poor idea – although it should afford plenty of opportunities to placate and worship Grasshoppers before the Ants are completely devoured.

The Rule of Law is not perfect. But Lynch Law is always evil – as you are seeing.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Why isn’t mortgage industry alarmed by FHFA actions?.

RedState.com: San Francisco Ordinance Requires Property Owners to Make Lifetime Rental Offer to Tenants — for Real.

Christopher Bedford: COVID Databases Are Among Us, And The Right Must Fight And Win Now — Or Never.

Thomas Lifson: Signs that 2021 rioters will be attacking and burning wealthy neighborhoods.

American Thinker: ‘Stubborn Things,’ and the Chauvin Trial.

Andrew Branca: Chauvin Trial Verdict Prediction (of Sorts): On legal merits alone, not guilty — but political dynamics drive injustice.

The Federalist: 10 Politically Correct But Factually False Words And Phrases To Stop Using Immediately.

I am training a puppy this weekend, so my concentration comes in batches as big as 90 seconds at a time. Lucky for me, there is no reason to ponder over the reasons for lumber shortages, no need to decry the future of Austin reimagined as Detroit, no call to mention that I pointed out long ago that Democrat-run big cities are dooming themselves to eternal Detroiticity.

The incentive to silence? The first rule of Riot Club…

In other news:

Fox News: Red-hot lumber prices may cool housing boom.

Bryan Preston: You Will Not Believe the INSANE Proposals Austin Is Considering for ‘Reimagining’ Public Safety.

John Nolte: BLM, Antifa Checkmate Democrat-Run Cities into Committing Suicide.

When will the riots stop? When law enforcement resumes enforcing the law. An easy first step: Every government employee arrested at a riot – especially schoolteachers – should be fired at once.

When will the lies about Trump and his voters stop? When the people caught lying, again and again, are publicly excoriated and excommunicated for their lies.

When will juvenile corporate asswipes learn how to shut up and take the money? When the current crop of proud-mouths is very loudly fired.

An uncle once told me that, “Locks keep the honest people honest.” That’s not quite right. Fathers keep the honest people honest. Locks keep the dishonest people at bay.

Sociopaths thrive on your weakness. The won’t not be predators if you are vigilant in your self-defense. But at least they’ll be inhibited by fear.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Housing inventory is starting to recover.

City Journal: Undermining Justice: Progressive politicians’ anti-police statements will hurt most the very groups they claim to defend.

Frontpage: Tears We Must Not Cry, Atrocities We Must Not Witness, Solutions We Must Not Grasp: Horrific crimes demand action – action the Left forbids.

Andrew Gutmann: A New York father pulls his daughter out of Brearley with a message to the whole school. Is the dam starting to break?

Christopher Rufo: Critical Race Theory: What It Is and How to Fight It.

If you haven’t guessed, I am sick of being lied to about the further consequences of the riots. The real estate media is thrilled to tell us about hot markets in placid places, but only local media and the alt.press address the devastation in the rioted cities.

Is there actual new demand – and if so, where did it come from? If the demand is highly-targeted to where the riots aren’t – as we all already know it is – which domiciles are being vacated to soak up every square inch of suburban dirt, from 5 to 5,000 miles away from the conflicts?

Long marketing times? Price cuts? Listings withdrawn or never offered? Or is the demand coming mainly from rental housing? Are apartment vacancies surging? Everywhere, or just where the riots are?

I don’t pay for ordinary information – it’s how this blog got started – so it could be I’m missing something.

No new babies – too much the contrary – and despite the “debate”, immigration is a trickle, month-over-month, against a population of 330 million.

The population is not increasing. What is the source of the demand being ballyhooed in the lands where the dandelions grow?

In other news:

Housing Wire: These were March’s hottest housing markets.

Redfin: Home Prices Surge 17% Amid Historic Housing Shortage. Shortages everywhere?

Housing Wire: Builder confidence jumps, despite crazy lumber prices. Where has all the plywood gone…?

Thomas Lifson: Federalism to the rescue as states preparing anti-riot legislation.

The New York Post: Media pushes false narrative of racism.

Paula Bolyard: Harvard Law Prof Calls for Ban on Homeschooling, Saying It’s ‘Dangerous’ to Leave Children with Their Parents 24/7.

City Journal: Let’s Talk About Free Speech.

Transportation Secretary Alfred E. Neuman recently declared that some American highways are racist. Too ludicrous?

I haven’t read his remarks, but there is truth in what he says. Robert Moses essentially invented the modern freeway – in Democrat-controlled New York City and State. He was a royalist, an undoubted racist and a big fan of making omelettes by breaking heads. He situated inner-city freeways bestride ghetto neighborhoods, thus to constrain them enduringly. The engineers who studied under him – from all over the world – did things the same way: Inner-city freeways typically form a barrier between disparate neighborhoods.

When Moses built the Southern State Parkway on Long Island, he deliberately made the headway under overpasses too low for buses – so ghetto denizens of every sort could not sully his precious Jones Beach.

Robert Moses is interesting in lots of ways – state and national parks and public housing are also his; it’s why they’re all eerily similar everywhere. But his most interesting characteristic, today, is his actual racism. There is nothing like this in the U.S. now – except for all the anti-white rhetoric. Robert Moses was an actual white-supremacist of influence – huge influence – but there is no one you can point to like that now.

Except, of course, for Transportation Secretary Alfred E. Neuman. But he’s a Marxist, so we will pretend not to notice when he uses highway funds to break heads.

In other news:

Redfin: March Was the Hottest Month in Housing History.

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates move down to 3.04%.

CNBC: Homebuilder confidence rises in April despite record high lumber prices.

Paul Bedard: Murders surge as police are defunded, up 64% in Minneapolis.

Tristan Justice: Los Angeles Neighborhood Deteriorates Into Street Slum As Violent Gangs Terrorize Residents.

Network In Vegas: Broken Monuments, Trashed Hotels, Garbage in the Streets – Welcome to Sisolak’s New Las Vegas.

Peter Navarro: Is Dr. Fauci the ‘Father of the Pandemic?’

City Journal: Here We Go Again: Biden’s infrastructure plan will fail for the same reasons that Obama’s did.

Tom Knighton: The Pushback Against Critical Race Theory.

For the past couple of years, I’ve had my eye out for a top to this market. That was when there was one – a market. Now there are zillions of real estate markets, no two alike, and what is going on in Greater Phoenix is necessarily counter-balanced by bad news in other hyper-local markets.

I’ve been very concerned, lately, since surging valuations price out buyers, as do rising interest rates, sated irrational demand, etc. The investors I work with bought at 6:35 on the clock’s face – not the absolute bottom of the market, but just after it. Our goal is to sell at 11:55 in preference to 12:05. Knowing when high noon is impending is my job.

And since Monday, my job is much easier. If we have another Summer of riots, Phoenix will continue to soar toward the ever-fecund sun. We are the world’s biggest suburb but we are still also the world’s biggest cow town. The state of Arizona has never not been open-carry. We have almost none of what Ants are fleeing from – and a cornucopian abundance of everything they are fleeing to.

All of this will be true nationwide: The cites being fled to will continue to do well, going forward. Any pain in the real estate markets will be felt first, worst and longest in the cities being fled from. Redfin, Zillow and the NAR all have the data to prove me wrong – if I am – and if they ever dare to admit that the riots are happening and that they are roiling real estate markets everywhere.

In other news:

CNBC: Mortgage refinance demand hits lowest level in over a year, and homebuyers retreat, too.

Redfin: Are We In a Housing Bubble? Will the Housing Market Crash in 2021?

CNBC: ‘When is the housing market going to crash?’ is a red-hot search on Google – here’s why.

The Blaze: Study: San Francisco lost the most residents of any major city in the United Read more