Category: Real Estate (page 10 of 266)

There’s Pacaso news linked below, but it’s just a regurgitated press release. I’ve written a ton about them, but that makes one of me. But if the real estate market is turning, it will turn first and worst on marginal products – those easiest to do without.

That means all luxury homes, but especially second homes – by definition ostentatiously-wasted money. Redfin has made much of second-home purchases over the last year, but Redfin can also demonstrate that the fever of this real estate market tracks perfectly with the inverse of each home’s TransitScore: The harder a house is to get to from rioters, the higher the price.

Taking account of that – “Let’s buy a place where we can work-from-home far-from-rioters” – how many of last year’s second-home purchases will turn into this year’s permanent residences? How much of last year – in all single-family-detached homes – was a two-step buy-and-bail?

I’m not implying financial chicanery, just strategy amidst uncertain circumstances. How the future shakes out depends on whether the buyers can continue to work from home. But if there are people sitting on two houses while they try to figure out which one to shed – that implies future market weakness on both ends, as the artificial withholding of inventory wanes.

Bad for Pacaso? You figure that out. I think they have no business masquerading as a business: I think they have discovered what I knew from the first – everyone hates sharing with strangers – and are attempting to soldier on to an IPO despite the emperor’s very-hairy nudity. If they care to dispel any of those suspicions, I’m easy to find – as Pacaso’s many enemies already know.

But a weakening in demand for houses in second-home locations will be very bad for the suckers who already bought Pacaso time-shares. You paid double at the top of the market, y’all. You’re going to be together for a while, like it or don’t…

In other news:

Housing Read more

I haven’t written much about the 1/6 riot in Washington. It was obvious to me at the time that it was a set-up – piss off hot-headed Ants, then call them racists when they complain about it. The fact that Trump did not see this coming and that he abandoned his supporters as soon as the racism lies started are two strikes against his future ambitions.

But: The riot was not an “insurrection.” It wasn’t even much of a riot. It is being treated as a Reichstag Fire event by the Democrats because that’s what Marxists do – as was easily foreseeable. But that reaction is a contradiction of everything America has ever stood for, and that matters.

Everyone being imprisoned over 1/6 is a political prisoner – representing a complete betrayal of everything the United States has ever said on the subject of political prisoners.

No one deserves this treatment, but they are being persecuted precisely because they are true patriots, steady wage-earners, proud tax-payers and reliable supporters of the military, the police and of civil order as such.

Actual criminals deserve and get better treatment. The 1/6 martyrs are being persecuted for being the best Americans – by the worst.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates dip slightly to 2.88%.

Redfin.com: Share of Homes Bought With All Cash Hits 30% for First Time Since 2014.

The Daily Wire: Florida Boat Owners Are Running Supplies To Embattled Cuban Protesters.

Stella Morabito: Why Communism Should Be Tried For Its Crimes Against Humanity.

Christopher Rufo: Going All In: The NEA pledges to bring critical race theory to a public school near you.

Election-theft news is now dropping daily, with the Arizona audit so ripe it were wise to expect a very big “news” event to distract us from it.

If you have been paying attention, you’ve known since election night that the election was stolen. The depth of resistance to audits – from both parties – suggests that many, many races were stolen. If ever again there is fact-reporting in the “news” business, we may someday find out how many elections have been stolen, over how many election cycles.

Regardless, it is beyond stupid to pretend that Slow Joe Biden is anything other than the puppet of the corrupt forces who stole the election – second in his loyalty only to the Red Chinese, who bought China Joe fair and square a long time ago. For Republican politicians to cooperate in any way with this regime is treason-by-prostration – but that’s what they’re good at. Meanwhile, everyone else should simply mock Creepy Joe – the man who made the corruption of the Ruling Class undeniable.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Home Sales Dipped 1.2% From May to June, the Largest Late-Spring Decline Since At Least 2012.

Congressman Jim Jordan: What Did Fauci Know And When? His Emails Point To Panic, Lies, And A Possible Cover-Up.

Jazz Shaw: Good question: Where is the outrage over Biden rejecting Cuban refugees?

The Federalist: Thanks To Neil Gorsuch, The Biden Administration Is Forcing Employers Everywhere To End Free Speech And Put Men In Women’s Bathrooms.

Seth Barron: Don’t Even Think About Calling the Cops: For New York City progressives, not even violent crime warrants police intervention.

What’s worst about China Joe Biden’s stolen presidency is how thoroughly it diminishes America. We were founded on ideals – incorruptible justice, equality before the law, due process – and a banana republic junta betrays all of that, repelling allies and emboldening enemies all the while.

Slow Joe yesterday went to the scene of the crime – Pennsylvania – there to slime the people uncovering his election fraud despite near-universal opposition. America is holding hundreds of decent tax-paying Americans as political prisoners, this to argue that Antifa is not the Brown Shirts. Sleazy Hunter Biden is openly selling presidential favors, which crimes no one is permitted to notice. And the United States is refusing refugees from where? From Cuba, where they’re running from political persecution and not in pursuit of loot.

If America is ruined, it will have been ruined by all of these tragically-underfathered children oscillating out of control, screaming into the void in ravenous hunger for the loving restraint that will never, ever come. But ruined nations are led by men like Sleepy Joe Biden – raging incompetents racing from here to there to paper over their lies while everything else goes to hell.

Everybody knows the election was stolen – and thank goodness for that! The worst shame of all would be to think that Americans chose to afflict themselves with Creepy Joe Biden.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage applications jump 16%.

CNBC: ‘New York is back’ — broker says the city’s real estate market is heating up at all levels. Ahem: “We still are at near-record levels of inventory. So the sellers are going down to meet the buyers at their prices. The buyers have options.”

City Journal: California Fleeing: Some deny the Golden State’s demographic decline, but data make it hard to ignore.

The Federalist: Will Movie Theaters Become The Next Blockbuster Video Stores?

City Journal: Why Cops Are Quitting: Police officers no longer feel that they have the public’s support.

Newsweek: Critical Race Theory Has No Idea What To Do With Asian Read more

I was a kid on my own in the Manhattan you see in Moscow on the Hudson – a chaos made of polyglot aspirations and anti-literate violence.

The building I lived in was a mini-United Nations in beehive form – that plus opera singers. Notably, we had two distinct populations of refugees, very dark Haitians fleeing Papa Doc’s predations and very white South Africans evading the eternal peace plans of Winnie Mandela. They set themselves apart among all New Yorkers by speaking in whispers – the indicia of paranoia – camouflaged, I’m sure they thought, by their languages.

Not so much, as it turns out, if you make the mistake of speaking near me. I’m not an eavesdropper, per se, but I am very much a scavenger of small, arcane details: It’s the stuff of good fiction. I had enough French in those days that the Haitians had no secrets from me, and Afrikaans is Dutch is English. Whichever spies they were hiding from surely overheard them, too.

I muse on all this now, with both Haiti and South Africa in the news. South Africa may have fallen by now, and Haiti has yet to rise – ever. Marxists versus the sane? Grasshoppers devouring Ants? Cads overwhelming the few remaining Dads? Or is it just bad luck that shunts Nemesis to the places that can suffer her least?

In other news:

Redfin.com: Homebuyer Competition Eases in June as More Homes Hit the Market.

The New York Post: DNC, Biden allies want phone carriers to vet anti-vax messages: report.

Victoria Taft: Democrats Move to Take Over Your Credit Score and Go Full ‘Woke’ – Just Like Communist China.

Daniel Payne: Sharp increase in police resignations after Black Lives Matter protests in 2020: study.

Brad Polumbo: Exclusive: Cuban Activist Explains What’s Really Motivating the Cuban People’s Uprising.

Citizen Free Press: South Africa looks like Civil War…

J.D. Tucille: Do People Want Their Pre-Pandemic Freedom Back? Polling finds wide support for draconian lockdowns and permanent restrictions.

City Read more

Yesterday in Cuba people were doing the work Americans won’t: Fighting for their freedom. The New York Times is correct in describing this conduct as ‘anti-government’ – just as the January 6th protests were anti-THIS-government. In both countries, the protesters love their country but hate its predatory salve-masters.

The difference? This is the very best ‘anti-government slogan’ I have heard so far: A Cuban protestor to a commie thug: “Shoot me in the chest, motherfucker!”

I don’t drink, but I am delighted to shout “Cuba libre!” Every Marxist dictatorship shames the allegedly civilized, but for America to turn a blind eye to tyranny ninety miles from its shores – to shun a people who have given us so much – this is a stain as ugly any in our history.

In other news:

CNBC: Homebuyers are finally catching a break as new listings rise and mortgage rates drop.

The Daily Wire: Bankers Are Begging Their Employers For Transfers From New York To Florida.

City Journal: The Boomer Wealth Boom.

Martyr Made: The Disillusionment of the Deplorables: How Trump voters formed an ugly—and accurate—view of America’s ruling regime.

“Canadians are a lot like Americans, except they can save money and spell properly.”

That’s a joke I used to make with Canadian investors. This was 10+ years ago, and while it was arguably a fair-housing violation – nationality is trayf – it was demonstrably true at the time: Canadians had money to buy American houses when Americans did not.

Canadians have mattered to Phoenix since Phoenix was Pumpkinville – we are the southernmost city in Alberta – but perhaps never so much as now: Canada is losing its mind. It’s the same crap as here – underfathered wretches melting down over their desperate need for boundaries – but holiness spirals spiral best among the reliably rigorous.

So: Don’t pull out those ‘Reduced!’ riders just yet. With every burning church in the great white north, Canada may be cooking up a whole new batch of refugees.

In other news:

Hannah Cox: What Is the Great Resignation of 2021? (If You Don’t Know, You’ll Want to Read This).

Ronald Bailey: How Much Scientific Research Is Actually Fraudulent? It may be more than you think.

Christopher Rufo: The Enablers: Defending phantom freedoms, certain intellectuals usher in the concrete tyrannies of critical race theory.

Ashli Babbitt was slain in a police shooting so egregious that keeping it secret has become a “whole of government” priority. Former President Donald Trump acknowledged her murder this week – only six months late.

Last night on Fox News, Tucker Carlson finally admitted that Trump’s re-election was stolen – eight months ago.

If the audits come to something, that’s great. If enough of the stolen states become less-stealable, even better. But if you’re looking for leadership, Diogenes, your lamp needs recharging…

In other news:

Housing Wire: Homes are selling well over listing prices as buyers compete against each other.

Housing Wire: Biden renews push for housing in infrastructure plan.

The Daily Signal: San Francisco Political Leaders Out of Touch as City Descends Into Lawlessness.

City Journal: The Prosecutor Exodus: In an adverse political environment, experienced professionals are leaving the field—and crime is surging.

Matt Vespa: Twitter Thread Nails Why Trump Supporters Feel the Way They Do About the 2020 Election.

Julie Kelly: No Relief for Lego Man or Other January 6 Detainees.

I am enmired in a Batman story, and it’s making me cranky: I don’t like Batman. I don’t believe his motivation, and I would not respect it if I did. Batman is nuts, but Batman is also a schmoo.

But here’s the problem expressed generally: What will you do to defend your values when civil authority has abdicated its duty and civil order is thereby imperiled?

The question is inverted, a devolution in human social concourse: Until now, the promise of the police and the military was that they would obviate the need for defense of person and property among the rich and provide it to the poor. Now that these entities are turning their backs on you, what will you do instead?

Batman is both Irreproachable and Untouchable in one, a self-absolving berserker. Don’t be Batman. Batman is nuts. But do be prepared.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Housing Market Update: New Listings of Homes For Sale Surpass 2019 Levels.

Redfin.com: Home Prices Rose Twice as Fast in Car-Dependent Neighborhoods as Transit-Accessible Areas During the Pandemic. They cannot not lie about the riots, even when it’s as plain as the nose on your face: Ants moved away from places Grasshoppers (i.e., potential rioters) can get to easily.

WolfStreet.com: Americans See the Raging Mania: “Bad Time to Buy a Home” & “Good Time to Sell a Home” Sentiments Spike to WTF Record.

City Journal: The Zoning Tax: In some American cities, regulation costs homebuyers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Stacey Lennox: Putting Cameras in Classrooms May Be the Best Thing for Everyone—Especially Teachers.

The fear-porn media are aghast that China Joe plans to send vaccine cops door-to-door to track down the vax-resistant. Much rending of garments, but who didn’t see this coming?

More importantly: Who gives a shit?

If you don’t have a ‘No Soliciting’ sign at your door, it’s because you like awnings and security doors and satellite TV – and being closed on. In the age of SnooperCops, you may want to add ‘No Trespassing.’ Making war on my own kind – the spewers of verbiage – I might append ‘No Leafletting – Save a tree, no debris.’ And my all time favorite sign, seen long ago in a TV commercial, could wrap things up: ‘No Crybabies!’

Or: You could do what I do: Don’t answer the door.

I am a certified walking antique, but I am one with the smartphone ethic: Texting is immediate without being intrusive, so if I don’t know why you’re at my door – if you just showed up for whatever reason and rang the bell – I won’t be there to greet you.

At our place, a doorbell ring is either a delivery driver – than whom none are more forthcoming, nor quickly departing – or a solicitor who has now become a trespasser and who is no doubt a recidivist leafletter. I’ll stay where I am and sustain my concentration, thanks all the same – although I may in due course disable the bell; I’ve done that in other houses.

I do the same with my phone: If you’re not in my contacts, you’ll go to voicemail until you are. Likewise email. I am avidly attentive to my work, my clients, my agenda, but – for that reason – I shun every kind of spam.

As usual, I’m the systemic solution to the topical problem, but, even so, shunning particular busy-bodies is easy if you are already habitually shunning all busy-bodies.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Fannie Mae: Sellers still thriving as home prices stay high.

CNBC: U.S. housing shortage will be around for ‘years to come,’ says Taylor Morrison CEO.

Housing Wire: Read more

At the middle of the bell curve, appraisers are nerdy introverts who, for whatever reason, didn’t get college-tracked in high school.

Low-status nerdy introverts get picked on in school, and low-status nerdy introverts going to majority-minority (a masterpiece of modern ambiguity!) schools get persecuted. They get short-circuited out of high school before they even get the chance to get short-circuited out of college.

The appraiser licensing process is onerous, eliminating all aspirants who are not well prepared in intellectual capital and well supplied with spendable cash for what amounts to an apprenticeship to a poorly-paying tradesman’s job: Low dough, low status, high risk of conflict and litigation.

Now take the few black candidates who might have qualified for that gauntlet and destroy their prospects with high schools from hell.

I expect it makes no actual difference in housing evaluations, but that’s why there are so few black appraisers: Few black nerds make it out of high school whole – and those who do have much better prospects than grinding away pricing houses.

That argues that appraiser-licensing standards will be lowered to admit marginal candidates, which in turn argues that flesh-and-blood appraisers will be replaced by Automated Valuation Models – only as biased as the software and stone reliable – and then there will be no more appraisers.

But even then, majority-minority high schools will still be hell for everyone condemned to them.

In other news:

CNBC: Mortgage applications sink to their lowest level since before the pandemic hit.

Paul Bedard: Biden is gun salesman-in-chief, threats driving surge in purchases.

Matt Margolis: Wikipedia Co-Founder: Site Has Become ‘Thought Police’ That Shackles Conservative Viewpoints.

Jack Posobiec: America’s Ruling Class And China’s Ruling Class Are More Similar Than You Think.

Julie Kelly: 20 Questions for Nancy Pelosi About January 6.

The Epoch Times: Preschool and Kindergarten Enrollment Drops 13 Percent Nationally.

I have a listing at 12 Days On Market – literally my worst performance in years. It’s leased, so it’s being marketed to investors only. Were it vacant, it would have gone in the first weekend.

But: Still: I may have found the top of the market.

All real estate is hyper-local, by now. The recently-riotous real estate markets were caused by last summer’s riots, which in turn were caused by the Deep State’s need to purge itself of Donald Trump. This summer is more peaceful because there is no national election this year. Black Lives won’t Matter to Democrats again until 2022 and 2024.

But cities and states that actually enforce the laws will continue to fare better than those that don’t. The Ant exodus preceded the virus and the riots, and it will continue to slowly deflate those big Grasshopper bouncy-houses going forward.

As for my seller, the world is his oyster: The house should sell now; the rent prognosis is excellent. If it doesn’t, we can withdraw it, continue to operate it as a rental home and market it again later. A producing asset and zero urgency: Waiting is painless and could turn out to be enriching.

I don’t actually understand the idea of the cat-bird seat, but I figure this must be it…

In other news:

Kerry McDonald: How Cities Are Pushing Small Daycares Out of Business.

Stephen Moore: Whatever Happened to Property Rights?

Daniel Greenfield: Meet Amazon’s Radical New CEO.

Stephen Kruiser: Manhattan Institute Offers Toolkit for Parents to Fight Back Against Woke Schools.

As revisited yesterday, the fee estate is a defensible redoubt, a freehold – which may come to matter, alas, as it has many times in America’s past. But for most people, most of the time, detached and separated housing is simply the most practical way to have the most friction-free freedom while still reaping the benefits of low-overhead commerce.

Translation: How can you live free of your neighbors’ complaints about your dog’s barking or your kid’s loud music and still live close enough to civilization to have a job and snag some drive-thru?

You do it with your own dirt, that’s how.

Wall it, gate it, build an armory and an arsenal – or just play croquet in the back yard: It’s yours to do with as you choose, which is the point.

Multi-family housing lost its luster last year – it’s a disease vector, widely-known since Rome, at least – with 2021 piling its own rubble onto the pile. When I lived in Fun City, the drummers would typically stop practicing around 3 am, and the opera singers wouldn’t get started much before 5, so there was always plenty of time to sleep. 😉

Real estate is kids and dogs because they are the impetus behind the move. We have learned a lot about housing from the pandemic and from the riots: The Hoplites were right. The freehold is a better place to live.

In other news:

Andrea Widburg: America’s teachers demand Critical Race Theory in schools.

The Scholar’s Stage: Culture Wars Are Long Wars.

Voctor Davis Hanson: The Genesis of Our American Collective Meltdown.

This is me in The Arizona Republic on July 6, 2007:

By the time you read this, Independence Day will have passed, but I thought I’d give you one more reason to celebrate our freedoms: Real estate.

We call our culture Judeo-Christian, but we owe our laws and political institutions to the Greeks and the Romans. The Greek Hoplites, in particular, are the model upon which Western Civilization is based: Individual family farmers, freeholders in the land they farmed, who owned their own weapons of warfare and who banded together as a virtually unconquerable infantry when their lands were attacked.

What accounts for the independence of the Greeks? Was it their unprecedented military tactics? Was it their superior weaponry? Or was it the savage dedication of free men fighting for their own land?

The Hoplites fought against ragtag slave armies, engaging in combat only out of fear of the lash, never losing sight of the chance to desert. But the Greeks fought to retain the rights they had wrested from despots, rights ordinary people, until then, had never known.

We derive many more treasures from the Romans, among them the story of Cincinnatus, the retired general called back to battle and given dictatorial power because the situation was so dire. Instead of abusing that power, Cincinnatus won the war, set down his arms and picked his plow where he had left it.

We honor the citizen-soldier in the conduct of George Washington, who could have declared himself king of America, but who instead, like Cincinnatus, surrendered his power and went back to his farm.

Politicians will tell us that we owe our freedoms to representative government. This is twice false. The interest we share in government is the land we each own individually, like the Hoplites. Moreover, representative government without free ownership of the land is tyranny in camouflage.

Americans are free because we have the uncontested right to buy, use, enjoy, rent, let and sell the land we live on. If you have any fire-crackers left over, you might light one for Read more

Libertarians like to say that taxation is theft, but it is more accurate to say that taxation is extortion – your funds are not stolen undefended, you hand them over voluntarily in response to a threat.

Accordingly, it is still more accurate to say that taxation is lifelong extortionate slavery – you get to keep some of your production, provided you concede that the prior claimant is the state.

Less important than the stolen wealth is the coerced concession, since you can’t rule the world on insane premises unless everybody goes along. But as soon as you acknowledge the insanity, you’re free to see it for what it is: There cannot be a right to predation, nor can there be any reason to suffer predation – and to deny either claim is not just insane but literally self-enslaving.

You’ll do what you must to stay out of jail, but you can declare you independence right now from the idea of predation: The state does not have any right to prey upon you – but you have no right to prey upon anyone else, either.

There’s more to ridding humanity of the scourge of government – the terminal disease masquerading as its own cure – than robbing it of the power to tax. But government will be a whole lot less attractive to predators when it is once again starved for funds.

In other news:

Housing Wire: June jobs report is great news for the housing market.

City Journal: Our American Inheritance.

Frontpage: Celebrating Freedom in the Shadow of Tyranny.

Julie Kelly: Defund the FBI.

FEE.org: Famous Investor: The Homeschooling Boom Is Just Beginning.