Financial News on Real Estate

One of the big three of market bubbles: real estate, the Internet, and cryptocurrencies. Wikipedia: Real Estate

• In first half of 2025, the financial cost of weather catastrophes escalated at record pace, [as global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels worsens weather catastrophes]. The environment-hating Trump's administration stopped updating a database tracking the costs of the s worst disasters. A group of scientists has revived it.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 October 2025

• Not good for the USA-AI bubble: Airbnb choses Alibaba's open-source AI over "not ready" ChatGPT from OpenAI. Airbnb "relies heavily" on Alibaba's Qwen models to power its AI customer service agent.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 22 October 2025

• Mortgage rates will not fall below 6% anytime soon, a top economist says in grim forecast
  - Realtor.com, 20 October 2025

• GDP growth in Zhōngguó grows at the slowest pace in one year, amid crumbling domestic demand and crashing real estate market
  - Zero Hedge, 20 October 2025

• Ever increasing insurance costs for home and auto insurance bring back talk of price caps. Increasingly, insurers in both Republican and Democratic states are being told to cap prices as lawmakers come under pressure from voters.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 October 2025

• The rental boom is remaking the furniture market. For many young adults priced out of the housing market, long-term rentals have become the new starter home. That is a challenge and an opportunity for the home-furnishings industry.
  - Barron's, 18 October 2025

• The Trump organization expands in Bharat, where many of its real estate partners face criminal accusations of fraud and money laundering.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 October 2025

• The land underlying the city of Shanghai sinks as sea levels near the city rise the fastest in 4,000 years
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 17 October 2025

• The state of New York bans "algorithmic price collusion" - using AI systems to determine rental rates for aparrment (some cities have also banned the software).
  - The Verge, 16 October 2025

• Gulf nations are investing billions of dollars in real estate projects along the North Coast of Egypt (west of Alexandria)
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 16 October 2025

• Major real estate developers are fast becoming electric power brokers. A new real estate sector, 'powered land', needs to be secured with the permits, utility commitments, and infrastructure needed to deliver power to a data center.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 14 October 2025

• Home foreclosures in the USA jump 17% in Q3 of 2025
  - Zero Hedge, 11 October 2025

• National home improvement chain Lowe's finalized an $8.8 billion deal this week to acquire one of its competitors. On Thursday, the company confirmed it had completed the purchase of California-based Foundation Building.
  - MLive, 11 October 2025

• Editorial: [capitalists?] Trump and Pulte now want the government mortgage giants (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) to provide socialist subsidies to [capitalist?] home builders
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 October 2025

• The latest abusive use of AI: homeowners and real estate agents are using AI to virtually enhance photos in real estate listings - 'virtual staging'. If not clearly stated on the listing, potential buyers will be deceived into thinking the enhancements exist in reality, as opposed to costing as much as $100,000 more to make real.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 09 October 2025

• Why did Walmart just buy a shopping mall? Walmart plans to turn the Monroeville Mall in Pennsylvania into a mixed-use development that will include retail, dining and entertainment space, according to a recent filing.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 October 2025

• Inside the death spiral of San Francisco's most storied mall. San Francisco Centre, once among Bay Area's top-performing retail centers, is bleeding millions of dollars a year.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 October 2025

• The landmark office buildings in the USA that are on financial 'life support'. For example, the Superman Building in Providence has been empty since 2013, despite a revival effort. "It is dead down here now."
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 October 2025

• The amount of vacant warehouse space in the USA held steady around an 11-year high in the third quarter, but it didn't expand for the first time in three years as demand rose and the amount of newly built space continued to fall.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 October 2025

• Investors comprise the highest share of homebuyers in 5 years
  - Comcast's CNBC, 07 October 2025

• [KM: Socialist housing subsidies for the rich Republicans in Florida.] What Republican politicians in Florida call storm resiliency planning requires hardworking taxpayers to pay for some of our wealthiest residents' lifestyle choices, which often include rebuilding in hurricane-prone areas. Florida's Republican Senate Bill 180 prevents local governments from making building regulations more restrictive after storm damage. This policy encourages expensive redevelopment in hurricane-prone coastal areas, with costs often socialistically subsidized by federal disaster relief. Critics suggest the law prioritizes developer profits over sustainable community growth and taxpayer interests.
  - USA Today, 06 October 2025

• About 170 hospitals in the USA, totaling nearly 30,000 patient beds from coast to coast, are threatened by a great risk of significant or dangerous flooding. Trump has made this worse by dismantling FEMA programs designed to protect hospitals and other important buildings from floods, and slashing the budgets of federal agencies that forecast and respond to extreme weather.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 October 2025

• 140,000 students in New York City are homeless. Can the next mayor change that? The city's housing crisis has contributed to an education crisis, with more children than ever living in temporary housing. They face dismal outcomes.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 October 2025

• Immigrants from Bharat own and/or operate 60% of the hotels and motels in the USA, many of the immigrants from the state of Gujarat in Bharat
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 04 October 2025

• Iran considers moving its capital southward from Iran, to somewhere on the Persian Gulf, because of Tehran's over-expansion and water scarity. Rainfall in Iran has decreased 50% in recent years, and with increased evaporation in reservoirs, there is less water available.
  - Jerusalem Post, 03 October 2025

• Sea level rise could put more than 100 million buildings across the Global South at risk of regular flooding if fossil fuel emissions are not curbed quickly, decreasing their value and making them harder to insure
  - Phys.org, 03 October 2025

• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and five states sued Zillow and Redfin on Wednesday in two separate lawsuits, which argue that the companies schemed to stop competition in the online housing rental market. The alleged scheme was a deal in February in which Zillow "paid Redfin $100 million to shut down its apartment rental advertising business and transfer its clients to Zillow". The lawsuit also claims that Redfin fired hundreds of workers and then worked with Zillow to rehire some of them.
  - Zero Hedge, 02 October 2025

• Trump's new taxes/tariffs on timber, wood, furniture and kitchen cabinets could raise the cost of building and buying a home, increasing inflation
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 October 2025

• Shares of Fair Isaac rise significantly with pricing change. Credit bureaus, not so much. Fair Isaac, the producer of the FICO Score, changed its pricing model, giving it a greater share of the overall credit-scoring revenue.
  - Barron's, 02 October 2025

• Shares of Fair Isaac rise about 25%, and shares of Equifax and TransUnion decline about 10%, after Fair Isaac announced a plan that bypasses the big three credit bureaus - Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion - in providing its credit scores directly to mortgage lenders.
  - Zero Hedge, 02 October 2025

• FICO disrupts the credit-score market. Fair Isaac is offering mortgage lenders a direct path to its FICO credit scores, for the first time giving them a way around the three powerful credit-reporting firms.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 October 2025

• Race to the financial dung heap. I thought cryptocurrencies would be the catalyst for the next collapse, but private credit, subprime auto and commercial real estate give it a run for its money.
  - QTR's Fringe Finance (substack), 01 October 2025

• A housing heat map for the USA signals ongoing deceleration as buyers wait for lower interest rates
  - Zero Hedge, 01 October 2025

• Big corporate landlords have unwelcome new competition. Regular homeowners who cannot sell their properties are renting them out instead, and the growing number of 'accidental landlords' is a headache for big corporate landlords.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 October 2025

• The vanishing American dream: why young adults can not afford homes, families, or stability. They are entering their peak family-formation years already financially crippled.
  - Zero Hedge, 30 September 2025

• Home prices in the USA drop for 5th straight month in July, led by Tampa
  - Zero Hedge, 30 September 2025

• $100,000,000 - FTC accuses Zillow of paying Redfin $100 million to stop competing on rental listings. The agency said the alleged deal reduces competition in an already concentrated market and is likely to drive up the cost of advertising vacancies in rental buildings with more than 25 units. The charges fall under the criminal antitrust laws.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 30 September 2025

• FTC accuses Zillow of paying Redfin $100 million to stop competing on rental listings. The agency said the alleged deal reduces competition in an already concentrated market and is likely to drive up the cost of advertising vacancies in rental buildings with more than 25 units. The charges fall under the criminal antitrust laws.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 30 September 2025

• Soaring home prices in Australia force a record number of retirees to rent
  - Zero Hedge, 30 September 2025

• Why lower interest rates set by the Federal Reserve won't instantly lower your borrowing costs. Interest rates on mortgages are expected to climb by the end of the year despite the reductions.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 September 2025

• Making [Christian-controlled, climate change denying] Florida more flood resistant is forcing hard choices for homeowners. A rule requiring many storm-damaged homes to be demolished or rebuilt to the latest flood-resistant standards has exacted personal and cultural costs.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 September 2025

• FEMA is paralyzed. Disaster-torn communities are paying the price. St. Louis's tornado was months ago, but it is still waiting for hundreds of millions in federal recovery funds to arrive. The delays are due to Trump's plan to shift responsibility to the states and shrink FEMA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 September 2025

• Zillow reports its first profitable year since 2012
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 September 2025

• Existing home sales in the USA remain near 15 year lows as prices keep rising
  - Zero Hedge, 25 September 2025

• Existing home sales in the USA remain near 15 year lows as prices keep rising
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 September 2025

• Refugees in the Netherlands can obtain social housing within 14 weeks; locals wait up to 12 years. "Dutch people in their twenties and thirties live with their parents in the attic or share an apartment with two or three people."
  - Zero Hedge, 25 September 2025

• supporters of the racist Trump in Alabama, in the real estate construction industry, rethink Trump's racist deportations (which they voted for) as immigration raids disappear hundreds of their "god-fearing, family-oriented" immigration workers. [Remember that the next time you vote for an authoritarian racist]
  - Jiaravanon's Fortune, 24 September 2025

• New home sales exploded higher in august, but prices soared
  - Zero Hedge, 24 September 2025

• Trump's appointees are destroying fair housing laws and civil protections in housing because their support racial diversity and equality
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 September 2025

• Are we living the last high-tech/real-estate bubble? The consensus holds there will be another bubble after the Everything Bubble pops, but this might be misplaced confidence in the godlike powers of central banks.
  - Zero Hedge, 19 September 2025

• Heat waves and flooding caused by global heating, due to the burning of fossil fuels, could cost the European Union $50 billion in damage to buildings and agricultural crops as well as a loss of productivity, a new study found.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 September 2025

• The demand for the refinancing of mortgages jumps nearly 60% as interest rates drop sharply
  - Comcast's CNBC, 17 September 2025

• Zinc roofs give Paris its signature look. But they are a nightmare in heat. As global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels helps fuel more severe heat waves, Paris is struggling between maintaining its architectural heritage and keeping apartments livable.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 September 2025

• A billionaire considered to be one of the most powerful people on Wall Street has infuriated neighbors by transporting 30 tankers of water a day to his $80 million estate in the United Kingdom. This un-Tikunish behavior while parts of England are suffering drought. Public authorities terminated his access to public waters.
  - Daily Beast, 12 September 2025

• Indonesia is seeking the help of Zhōngguó to build a US$80 billion giant sea wall along the northern coast of Java in a project that officials see as essential to protecting millions of residents and key industries from rising seas and sinking land, despite criticisms over its financial and environmental costs.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 12 September 2025

• The CEO of RH (formerly Restoration Hardware) predicts "significant inflation" to hit in 2025, and get worse in 2026, as the furniture industry suffers from Trump's taxes/tariffs.
  - Murdoch's MarketWatch, 11 September 2025

• Shares of meme-stock Opendoor soar 50% after the company names a new CEO. OpenDoor buys and sells homes over the Internet.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 11 September 2025

• One reason share of OpenDoor soared is the CEO's promise: to fire 85% of the people working for OpenDoor "There are over 1,400 people working at Opendoor. I don't know what most of them do. We don't need more than 200 of them."
  - Comcast's CNBC, 11 September 2025

• Zhōngguó opens for travel a new record-smashing cable-stayed mega-bridge over the Yangtze River. Structure boasts a number of world firsts, from its striking asymmetric design to the precision tools developed to build it. Meanwhile, the USA builds another AI data center.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 11 September 2025

• Wealthy socialistically subsidized real estate developers in New York City meet to plot the defeat of the socialist mayor candidate, Zohran Mamdani, because his socialism favors the non-wealthy
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 September 2025

• Mortgage demand jumps to the highest level in three years, as interest rates drop sharply
  - Comcast's CNBC, 10 September 2025

• In Charlestown, South Carolina, a climate-change denying state controlled by racist Republicans, there is a plan to build a $1.3 billion seal wall to protect the city's historic downtown peninsula from rising sea levels, while leaving lower-income neighborhoods like Rosemont exposed to rising waters. The eight-mile barrier, with Charleston contributing $455 million, excludes historically Black communities already experiencing regular flooding.
  - The Guardian, 09 September 2025

• Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble: the housing market in the USA gained $20 trillion in the last 5 years, almost doubling to $35 trillion
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 09 September 2025

• Prices of lumber are flashing a warning sign for the economy of the USA. Wood prices are sliding and mills are cutting back because of uncertainty over tariffs and a building slump.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 September 2025

• Tether denies bitcoin sell-off rumors, confirms buying bitcoin, gold, and land.
  - Zero Hedge, 08 September 2025

• Mortgage rates decline on reports of worsening of the economy of the USA. "We are seeing a lot of interest in refinances." One housing economist says the 30-year mortgage rate will drop below 6% if October's jobs report is also negative.
  - Murdoch's MarketWatch, 08 September 2025

• From mortgages to stocks, how higher bond yields for long-term Treasury Bonds hit wider markets
  - Comcast's CNBC, 06 September 2025

• More Christian hypocrisy: FHAA director Bill Pulte accused Fed Governor Lisa Cook of housing fraud. Pulte's family relatives filed similar fraudulent housing claims. After being contacted by Reuters, tax officials in Michigan revoked the 'homestead exemption' on Pulte's father's residence there. Will Pulte be honest and ask for a criminal investigation for his father?
  - HuffPost, 05 September 2025

• Rising river temperatures threaten Paris' water-based building cooling network. Networks of pipes and heat exchangers can transfer excess heat from buildings into nearby bodies of water -- but as the world warms, the cooling potential of some water courses is now diminishing.
  - WIRED, 05 September 2025

• Demand for industrial space in the USA falls for the first time in 15 years. Economic uncertainty brought on by constantly changing tariff policy and persistently high inflation is taking a greater toll on the previously hot warehouse sector.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 05 September 2025

• Mortgage refinancing starts to thaw as rates trend down. With the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate at a 10-month low, homeowners with high-rate mortgages are starting to get excited about refinancing.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 July 2025

• In a plan rejected by the entire world, the Christian Trump and Jewish Istael propose a "voluntary" relocation of Islamic people off their lands in Palestine, by bribing them with a measily $5000 to move out of the region, so that Trump and Israel can build resorts for the rich on the Mediterranean coast of Palestine. 2 million Islamic people would be ethnically cleansed from the Gaza Strip, and also given four years of rent and a year's worth of food. All so that rich people have a new place to hang out. Meanwhile, the Islamic world is proposing a Christian/Tikunish idea: spend $53 billion to massively redeveloped the Gaza Strap for the Palestinians who would not be forcibly removed from their lands.
  - The Guardian, 01 September 2025

• People in South Korea and Nihon are understandably irked by the ease with which foreigners can acquire real estate when locals are struggling. Many of these foreigners are from Zhōngguó.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 01 September 2025

• How an AI company, Builder.AI, went from a grossly inflated (outside the AI world) valuation of $1.5 billion to zero (0, no, nil) dollars in a few months, after the bored of directors discovered that sales had been significantly overstated, the CEO resigned, and the company went into bankruptcy.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 August 2025

• The USA closed many of its shopping malls, but Zhōngguó continued to build shopping malls. Now Zhōngguó has too many. The first closing of an Apple Store in mainland Zhōngguó hints at broader troubles facing Zhōngguó's shopping malls as developers open more of them.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 August 2025

• Editorial: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government owned real estate mortgage companies, apparently can't track mortgage fraud
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 August 2025

• Profitablility pressure grows for state banks in Zhōngguó due to lower margins as well as small reductions in bad loans
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 29 August 2025

• New home inventory is at its highest level since just before the housing market collapse that led to the Great Recession, but that does not mean it is the same market.
  - Jiaravanon's Fortune, 28 August 2025

• Trump's taxes/tariffs on imports of furniture will make it harder to turn yuor house into a home. Protectionism will not save the American furniture industry, but it will increase the cost of living.
  - Reason.com, 27 August 2025

• The authoritarian Trump's attempts to seize control of the Fed is pushing up the interest rates that matter most to consumers
  - Comcast's CNBC, 27 August 2025

• The Panama Canal Authority plans sale of new ports to bring in competition ahead of a deal with BlackRock. The Canal's administrator wants more companies managing canal ports to dilute the influence of BlackRock partner Mediterranean Shipping Company and, potentially, Cosco which is based in Zhōngguó.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 August 2025

• Home prices in the USA decline for the 4th straight month in June
  - Zero Hedge (locked), 26 August 2025

• Millennials and Gen Z are gambling on a big mortgage-rate drop, using ARMs and refinancing. But that could be a "financial ticking time bomb".
  - Jiaravanon's Fortune, 26 August 2025

• 5 years on, the property crisis in Zhōngguó has no end in sight. The government had set out to slow speculation, kicking off a slowdown in real estate values that is still grinding on with wide economic consequences.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 August 2025

• This is the end of a once mightiest property firm in Zhōngguó. Zhōngguó Evergrande, delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday, leaves behind a giant pile of debt and a long line of desperate creditors.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 August 2025

• Realestate/property stocks in Zhōngguó increase in value as investors bet on government stimulus, despite some downbeat earnings reports from major developers
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 August 2025

• Most department store chains are leaving shopping malls. Dillard's is buying one. The department-store chain this month purchased the Longview Mall in Texas, about two hours east of Dallas.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 August 2025

• Sales incentives offered by homebuilders soar as new home sales in the USA disappoint in July, as prices plunge. The share of builders who reported using sales incentives reached a post-pandemic high of 66% this month.
  - Zero Hedge, 25 August 2025

• Adjustable rate mortgages climb to 41% of total held by banks in the USA, surpassing the record high level set just before the global financial crisis
  - Zero Hedge, 24 August 2025

• It is now twice as expensive to buy an entry-level home than rent
  - Zero Hedge, 24 August 2025

• Zuru, a company based in Zhōngguó, run by two men from New Zealand, is buying up real estate in areas destroyed by wildfires in California,in order to build luxury real estate for the wealthy.
  - Zero Hedge, 24 August 2025

• Vietnam announced plans to evacuate more than half a million people and ordered boats to stay ashore, while the southern Chinese city of Sanya closed businesses and public transport on Sunday as both braced for an intensifying Typhoon Kajiki. Wind speeds are expected to rise as high as 180 kilometers per hour. A similiar storm in 2024, Typhon Yagi, caused over $3 billion in damage.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 24 August 2025

• California's cost-ineffective high-speed train's robbery continues. The state rail authority is scrounging for money to complete its bullet train to nowhere after the Trump Administration last month yanked $4 billion in funds. So now it is proposing to build real estate and solar projects on property that was seized for the train.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 August 2025

• Trump says he will impose taxes/tariffs on imports of furniture, causeing shares of Wayfair (down 6%), RH (down 6%) and Williams-Sonoma (down 4%) to plunge
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 22 August 2025

• Trump announces that he will be imposing higher taxes/tariffs on imports of furniture, to be imposed in the next 50 days
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 22 August 2025

• Extreme weather events are driving up both global food prices and home insurance rates as more frequent catastrophic climate events increase the risk of loss
  - Futurism, 22 August 2025

• Research reveals why more US homeowners are at risk of losing insurance: "Insuring properties is a gamble for home insurance companies, and it is increasingly not worth the risk."
  - The Cool Down, 22 August 2025

• Alarming report warns of worsening crisis that could destabilize US insurance system: "Losses are on the rise." "The probability of extreme weather is changing."
  - The Cool Down, 22 August 2025

• A broken housing market: in unprecedented inversion, it has never cost more to buy an existing home over a new home
  - Zero Hedge, 21 August 2025

• $3,950,000 - Oyster Bay, a ritzy Long Island town, has agreed to pay $3.95 million and approve a s expansion just weeks after admitting to inventing a fake grandmother to block the project in court.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 21 August 2025

• Shares plummet 30% of James Hardie Industries - the world's largest producer of fiber cement products, headquartered in Ireland and dual-listed in Sydney and New York - issued a grim housing outlook that sent its Sydney shares plunging the most in 50 years. James Hardie generates about 70% of its revenue from North America. Its flagship product, HardiePlank, is widely used in residential housing as an alternative to wood or vinyl siding.
  - Zero Hedge, 20 August 2025

• Demand for rental housing causes an unexpected jump in building. Apartment construction is climbing steadily, while the construction of single-family homes is declining.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 August 2025

• Homeowners are doing small projects but deferring big ones, according to Home Depot. Home Depot said Trump's taxes/tariffs will soon start hitting some price tags even as consumers continue to hold off on larger projects because of higher interest rates and economic uncertainty.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 August 2025

• Home Depot warns it may raise prices because of Trump's taxes/tariffs
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 20 August 2025

• The Outer Banks of climate-change/global-heating denying North Carolina (the policy of the Christians running the state) are preparing for "sadness and devastation" as Hurricane Erin roars past the coastal region 300 miles offshore. The sandy, vulnerable barrier islands on North Carolina's coast may see houses swept away and a vital roadway flooded - yet again. [Hopefully, not a single taxpayer dollar is being used to insure/repair these homes.]
  - USA Today, 20 August 2025

• Liberal California passes a law that gives interest on insurance payouts to homeowners, payouts held in escrow accounts at banks that currently keep all of the interest for a non-risk service.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 19 August 2025

• $300,000,000+ - Yieldstreet is one of the best-known examples of American startups with the stated mission of democratizing access to assets such as real estate, litigation proceeds and private credit. But some Yieldstreet customers who participated in its real estate deals face huge losses on investments that they say turned out to be far riskier than they thought. Of 30 deals that CNBC reviewed information on, four have been declared total losses by Yieldstreet. Of the rest, 23 are deemed to be on a "watchlist" by the startup as it seeks to recoup value for investors, sometimes by raising more funds from members (one hallmark of a Ponzi scheme). Documents show investors put more than $370 million into 30 real estate projects that have already recognized $78 million in defaults in the past year. Yieldstreet customers who spoke to CNBC say they anticipate deep or total losses on the remainder.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 18 August 2025

• The economy of Zhōngguó slows broadly even as exports keep rising. Officials blamed USA "protectionism" for the dismal July data, but growth was likely held back by real estate and new policies aimed at slowing factory investments.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 August 2025

• The economy of Zhōngguó slows broadly even as exports keep rising. Officials blamed USA "protectionism" for the dismal July data, but growth was likely held back by real estate and new policies aimed at slowing factory investments.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 August 2025

• Nobody is buying homes, nobody is switching jobs - and mobility in the USA is stalling. The paralysis has economic consequences for everyone. Growing families cannot upgrade, empty-nesters cannot downsize, and when people cannot move for a job offer, they often earn less.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 August 2025

• How investors from Zhōngguó transformed Athens, Greece. Investors from Zhōngguó hold nearly half of first-time visas linked to property purchases - and over 60 per cent of renewals.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 16 August 2025

• Non-paid AI is now eliminating paid-human jobs in the apartment industry, taking over work orders, lease renewals, showings and more from paid-humans who are doing such work now.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 15 August 2025

• "Let the rich spend": a political advisor suggests easing property ownership restrictions to spur consumption. A prominent member of Zhōngguó's top political advisory body wants less regulation and more respect for consumer choice.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 15 August 2025

• Do you need to own a house? Many older people in the USA decide they do not. Rising property tax, insurance and home-repair costs are prompting some people 55 and older to consider renting.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 August 2025

• Despite a property glut, risks associated with commercial real estate loans were manageable, HKMA and HSBC said in separate statements on Wednesday
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 13 August 2025

• The Central Valley of California - a huge farming region - is sinking, as much as 1 inch per year, due to excessive extraction of groundwater. This has caused property values in the region to decline as much as 5.8%, though this is masked by overall increases in home prices.
  - SF Gate, 11 August 2025

• Rushanara Ali has resigned from her role as Minister for Homelessness for the United Kingdom, following reports that she removed tenants from her east London townhouse and relisted the property with 700-per-month rent increase
  - Zero Hedge, 11 August 2025

• Panama has signed a $2.486 billion loan agreement with Nihon to fund the construction of Metro Line 3
  - Tico Times, 10 August 2025

• Strong economy? 120 million square feet: store closings in the USA are on pace to set a new record high in 2025
  - Zero Hedge, 09 August 2025

• Two huge socialist IPOs: Trump is preparing public offerings (of the profits) for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which is pure socialism if the government will provide guarantee to their loans
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 August 2025

• Two huge socialist IPOs: Trump is preparing public offerings (of the profits) for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which is pure socialism if the government will provide guarantee to their loans
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 August 2025

• Some insurance professionals fear the world is fast approaching temperature levels - global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels sold by the socialist energy industry - where professional risk managers will no longer be able to offer cover for financial services. Top insurers fear the climate crisis and global heating could soon outpace industry solutions, effectively threatening to make entire regions around the world uninsurable.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 08 August 2025

• Italy will build a bridge that links the island of Sicily to the mainland of Italy, a 50-year dream closer to reality. The government of Italy said the bridge would be a security asset, which allows it to categorize the project as a military expense and count it toward its NATO spending commitments.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 August 2025

• Prices for farmland just reached record highs. The latest USDA Land Values 2025 Report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) reports a 4.3% increase in average farmland values, pushing prices to a record $4,350 per acre. This follows a 5% ($200) increase between 2023 and 2024 and marks the fifth straight year of gains in agricultural real estate. Cash rents for cropland also hit a new high, rising .60% to $161 per acre.
  - Zero Hedge, 05 August 2025

• Coastal flooding in the USA is much worse than official records show - and no one is measuring it
  - ZME Science, 05 August 2025

• Families in Texas (which helped elect Trump) are being offered a measily $3000 for their land along the border with Mexico, so the authoritarian Trump can spend $46 billion to build his racist wall
  - The Independent, 05 August 2025

• Home-sellers outnumber home-buyers by the most in over a decade
  - Zero Hedge, 05 August 2025

• Trump's racist border wall is back -- and so is his fight with landowners in Texas. The cost of the wall has exploded from $8 billion to now over $46 billion which Congress recently allocated taxpayer dollars to pay for.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 August 2025

• Home by home, Rossiya is selling occupied Ukraine to buyers in Rossiya. Kremlin-linked construction firms reap criminal profits from redevelopment of housing destroyed by the military forces of Rossiya.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 August 2025

• The decline in real estate prices in Zhōngguó could be ending. The decline in new home sales in Zhōngguó may reduce to 7% this year, according to Fitch Ratings which had originally predicted a decline of 15 percent.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 05 August 2025

• The abusive "algorithmic audit" done by AI systems could soon plague customers of hotels at checkout time. Loss prevention, or money gouging?
  - Comcast's CNBC, 03 August 2025

• Condominium sellers have not faced a real estate market this weak in more than a decade. Prices are down, supply is up and sellers often feel lucky to get an offer, especially in the South.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 31 July 2025

• Hotel occupancy rates and gambling revenue in Las Vegas are down over 10%, not as bad - YET - of declines before the financial crisis and market crash in 2008
  - Zero Hedge, 30 July 2025

• WeWork founder Adam Neumann liked to say he ran a tech company. WeWork's new, postbankruptcy marketing chief is tasked with positioning the brand as an old-fashioned office space provider.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 July 2025

• Home prices in the USA decline for the 3rd straight month in May
  - Zero Hedge, 29 July 2025

• A construction project in "we glad voted for Trump" Alabama was one time and on budget. The immigration police implementing Trump's [racist] immigration policies raided another project in Florida which scared away half of the workers on the Alabama project, causing delays in completion of the project. Similar fears are disrupting construction projects across the country.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 28 July 2025

• A tiny company is vouching for risky insurers in hurricane country. As major home insurers flee storm-ravaged markets, Demotech's ratings enable smaller ones to step in. A string of failures has left homeowners without compensation.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 July 2025

• High interest rates and prices are deterring individual buyers of homes, leaving an opening for investment firms to purchase large numbers of single-family properties.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 July 2025

• Trump seeks to revive the lumber industry, by increasing logging in national forests in the USA, and increasing trade protections against imports of lumber from Canada
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 July 2025

• Zhōngguó has officially begun construction on a massive $167 billion hydroelectric dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet - to produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours, despite strong warnings from scientists about the region's fragile ecosystem and complex geological condition
  - Zero Hedge, 27 July 2025

• The reasons why the Federal Reserve needs to spend $2.5 billion to renovate its headquarters. The high costs are due to dealing with asbetos, height limits, lead contamination, and including higher-than-expected groundwater under the building.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 July 2025

• Sales of homes in June drop as home prices rise to record highs
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 July 2025

• Sales of homes in June drop as home prices rise to record highs
  - Zero Hedge, 23 July 2025

• Sales of homes in June drop as home prices rise to record highs
  - Comcast's CNBC, 23 July 2025

• Affordable-housing real estate development projects stall over proposed reductions in federal rental assistance to poor people. Trump's tax/spending law elimiinates $27 billion that will make it harder to maintain and pay debt on these properties, developers say.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 July 2025

• Singapore wants to spend billions of dollars to build a 8-mile-long 'Long Island' barrier of islands to defend Singapore against rising seas. Singapore is already suffering 'nuisance flooding' due to rising sea levels, and expects things to get worse.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 23 July 2025

• Warehouses in Zhōngguó are declining in value, as suppliers relocate to Bharat due to Trump's tax/tariff trade wars. Logistics property owners are losing out to their rivals in India, where rents increased this year from the second half of 2024.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 23 July 2025

• Trump considers eliminating the capital gains tax on the same of homes
  - Zero Hedge, 22 July 2025

• Alarming report warns that huge number of once-valuable homes may soon be "worthless" due to destructive weather patterns [due to global heating due to burning of fossil fuels] making these homes insurable
  - The Cool Down, 22 July 2025

• Since the 1970s, the prices of homes has increased more rapidly than the salaries of homebuyers. The price/income ratio has gone from around 4.0 to 5.3
  - Zero Hedge, 21 July 2025

• Fake AI reviews of real estate agents are taking over Zillow, with over 25% of the agents' reviews written by AI. While making rich AI companies richer, "If an agent's online reputation is inflated with reviews that were never written by real clients, it misleads users into thinking the agent is more experienced, successful, or in-demand than they actually are. This 'fake clout' can ultimately steer consumers toward agents who may not deliver the level of service they are expecting, putting them at financial and emotional risk." [KM: But rich, unaccountable AI companies richer.]
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 21 July 2025

• You can protect beaches, or beach houses, not both - a worsening problem as sea levels around the world rise. But if you protect the beaches (by prohibiting barriers to protect homes), the homeowners want the government to give them socialist subsidies for their mistake of their earlier decisions to build close the ocean and not worry about the future of the environment (including Republican homeowners who for too long have denied global heating and sea level rise).
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 July 2025

• Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi sounds a "red alarm" on the housing market and says that homebuilders are "giving up", and will continue to do so (along with declining home prices) until mortgage rates are reduced
  - Jiaravanon's Fortune, 20 July 2025

• More miserable summer weather? Thank fossil fuel pollution - along with other factors - that has turned summers into months of mounting peril, punctuated by relentless heat waves, rampant wildfires and catastrophic flooding. Flash floods? Too much water in the air due to global heating. As Trump undermines environmental protection, if you voted for him, enjoy paying more for insurance.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 July 2025

• Climate catastrophes (wildfires, floods, storm damage), due to global heating from the burning of fossil fuels, is creating a "new market reality" for insurance companies, with insurance losses in 2025 expected to rise about $100 billion
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 July 2025

• Climate catastrophes (wildfires, floods, storm damage), due to global heating from the burning of fossil fuels, is creating a "new market reality" for insurance companies, with insurance losses in 2025 expected to rise about $100 billion
  - Comcast's CNBC, 18 July 2025

• It will take more than low interest rates to make houses affordable in the USA. Even if mortgage rates were to go down again, rising prices mean homeowners would still be stuck with higher costs and higher property taxes that result from rising prices.
  - Mises Institute, 17 July 2025

• Why FHFA meddling in credit score reporting, allowing the less-reliable ratings from VantageScore to be used along with FICO's credit scores, is unwarranted. FICO cannot generate reports for people with minimal credit histories.
  - Real Clear Markets, 17 July 2025

• The megadrought in the western region of the USA might last for decades, bad news for the idiots continuing to build homes and farms in the desert
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 July 2025

• International buyers, led by people from Zhōngguó and Canada, purchased $56 billion worth of homes in 1 year in the USA
  - Zero Hedge, 16 July 2025

• The median age of a first-time home buyer is 38 years old. That is bad for the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 July 2025

• Demand for mortgages in the USA plummets 10%, as interest rates remain high
  - Comcast's CNBC, 16 July 2025

• Goldman Sachs warns of "accelerated property price declines" across cities in Zhōngguó
  - Zero Hedge, 15 July 2025

• Saudi Arabia asks consultants to review feasibility of its futuristic city, Neom, "The Line" megaprojects. The kingdom has been scaling back large-scale construction and investment projects amid rising costs and lower oil prices.
  - Middle East Eye, 14 July 2025

• Nearly one-third of 100 major housing markets in the USA now have home prices declining as inventory/supply increases
  - Comcast's CNBC, 14 July 2025

• Editorial: "Didn't we learn this was a bad idea the first time?" Trump wants to private government mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but still guaranteeing the loans of the to-be-private companies with taxpayers dollars (which led to the financial chaos that forced the government to seize control of the two entitites).
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 July 2025

• Trump's immigration police are scaring off illegal immigrants would are rebuilding the fire-ravaged areas of Los Angeles
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 July 2025

• Editorial: how to increase mortgage defaults in the USA. Trump's regulator for Fannie and Freddie wants to reduce the use of FICO for housing credit, while factoring in rent payments of borrowers.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 July 2025

• Home are flooding onto the market in Las Vegas as retirees leave the city and investors decide to take profits
  - Realtors.com, 11 July 2025

• A record high of over $7 billion worth of homes are on sale in Las Vegas. High interest rates are causing fewer homes to be sold.
  - Benzinga, 11 July 2025

• Wells Fargo ends a partnership with Bilt that offered a credit card that earned rewards when you charged your rent to the card
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 July 2025

• Because there are no alternatives, land finacne and property-driven growth remain the foundation of the economic system of Zhōngguó
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post (locked), 11 July 2025

• Shares of real estate companies in Zhōngguó soar on rumors that the government might reintroduce large-scale stimulus for the economic sector
  - Zero Hedge, 10 July 2025

• The vacancy rate of warehouses climbs to the highest level (7.1%) in more than a decade
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 10 July 2025

• 136,000,000 - A group of 7 homebuilders have agree to pay $136 million to settle antitrust litigation involving allegations of the companies exchanging details about pricing, viewings and incentives
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 10 July 2025

• Undocumented workers at construction projects face unchecked exploitation by their (white) employees who are exploiting Trump's racist immigration activities: "It is more work, less pay".
  - The Guardian, 10 July 2025

• The Agriculture Department is planning to ban the future purchase of farmland in the USA by companies/investors in Zhōngguó (as well as by financial parties in other countries)
  - Zero Hedge, 08 July 2025

• The Agriculture Department is planning to ban the future purchase of farmland in the USA by companies/investors in Zhōngguó (as well as by financial parties in other countries)
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 July 2025

• The Agriculture Department is planning to ban the future purchase of farmland in the USA by companies/investors in Zhōngguó (as well as by financial parties in other countries)
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 July 2025

• Delistings of homes for sale increase 50% as home sellers who cannot obtain the selling price they want leave the market, even with reductions in prices offered by sellers.
  - Realtor.com, 08 July 2025

• Shares of FICO drop 17% (recovering to being down 9%) after the government announces that borrowers for government-backed loans can use credit ratings from a competitor, VantageScore. Welcome relief, as FICO fees have greatly increased in recent years. VantageScore is owned by Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 08 July 2025

• Shares of FICO drop 17% (recovering to being down 9%) after the government announces that borrowers for government-backed loans can use credit ratings from a competitor, VantageScore. Welcome relief, as FICO fees have greatly increased in recent years. VantageScore is owned by Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 July 2025

• Evidence of a rebound in the real estate market in New York City: an investment fund in Saudi Arabia is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in one building there
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 July 2025

• The number of people renting housing in the USA rose to a record high, as fewer people can afford to buy a new home with the current salaries
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 July 2025

• Insurance companies in the USA are refusing to sell insurance for homes in high-risk climate zones because the losses from extreme weather events (caused by global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels) makes such policies unprofitable to sell. Without insurance, would-be home owners cannot obtain mortgages from banks and other lenders. Yet the environment-hating Trump is eliminating funding for emergency services and weather monitoring, eliminate funding for renewable energy, to give more tax credits to the fossil fuel companies that are the root cause of the destructive extreme weather.
  - Zero Hedge, 07 July 2025

• As interest rates on mortgages remain 'stuck' above 6.5%, many homeowners can't refinance at lower interest rates and thus are 'stuck' with higher monthly payments
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 July 2025

• Joining protesters in Barcelona and other cities around the world, residents of México City marched to protest the negative social impact of ex-pats and remote workers from the USA gentrifying parts of their city and driving up rents beyond what the residents of the city can afford. [KM: Again, the rich tech companies getting richer]: "Rents are skyrocketing because of Airbnb."
  - Zero Hedge, 06 July 2025

• People in México City are angry at remote workers because the remote workers drive up the price of rents and foods, displacing longtime residents of México City
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 July 2025

• Government relief and insurance programs require significant reform to be equipped to handle a future of increasingly intense and costly climate events due to global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 July 2025

• A real estate megadevelopment in the deserts of California, Diable Grande ... runs out of water
  - SF Gate, 04 July 2025

• Pocket Listing Service, a private homes-for-sale database for the rich and famous in Los Angeles, sues the National Association of Realtors under the antitrust laws, with PLS claiming that the NAR is trying to ruin the business of the PLS
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 July 2025

• Young people in South Africa find it harder to buy homes, as foreign buyers have helped increase property prices 160% since 2010
  - Bloomberg, 02 July 2025

• California has passed a new law that will exclude certain construction projects from being subject to the California Environmental Quality Act, uch as water system upgrades, advanced manufacturing facilities, and wildfire fuel breaks. The Reagan-era law requires developers to consider environmental issues, traffic, air pollution and noise when proposing a new building project. Individuals and groups can challenge a project if they believe it violates the law.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 02 July 2025

• California has passed a new law, with bi-partisan support, that will exclude certain construction projects from being subject to the California Environmental Quality Act, uch as water system upgrades, advanced manufacturing facilities, and wildfire fuel breaks. The Reagan-era law requires developers to consider environmental issues, traffic, air pollution and noise when proposing a new building project. Individuals and groups can challenge a project if they believe it violates the law.
  - Pacific Legal Foundation, 02 July 2025

• California loosens restrictions on its environmental laws by passing, with bi-partisan support, that will exclude certain construction projects from being subject to the California Environmental Quality Act, uch as water system upgrades, advanced manufacturing facilities, and wildfire fuel breaks. The Reagan-era law requires developers to consider environmental issues, traffic, air pollution and noise when proposing a new building project. Individuals and groups can challenge a project if they believe it violates the law.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 July 2025

• Costs of home insurance are increasing in most states of the USA, an average of 8% for the whole country (according to Insurify), with some states having larger increases (such as California at 21% and Louisiana at 28%)
  - Comcast's CNBC, 02 July 2025

• $4,800,000 - A federal judge has ordered Trump Tower in Chicago to pay $4.8 million for killing thousands of fish due to taking large amounts, 20 million gallons a day, of water from the Chicago River to cool the building.
  - The Independent, 01 July 2025

• The prices of homes is rising fast in both Republican and Democratic states (not just Democratic California). Republicans whined that overregulation caused more expensive houses in Democratic states. True, but just because these states were early. Now whining Republican states are overregulating.
  - The Atlantic, 30 June 2025

• Home Depot is buying GMS (a building products distributor) for about $4.3 billion as retailer chases more home pros
  - Comcast's CNBC, 30 June 2025

• Home Depot wins a biding war to buy GMS (a building products distributor) for about $4.3 billion as retailer chases more home pros
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 June 2025

• USA Census data analyzed by Harvard University shows that a third of all USA households, whether they are buying or renting, spend more than the recommended one third of their income on housing and utilities and therefore qualify as cost-burdened.
  - Zero Hedge, 30 June 2025

• Why the surge of the real estate industry in Bharat does not make it a substitute for Zhōngguó. The property sector in Bharat is booming, but Zhōngguó's plays a more important role in Asia and is supported by better fundamentals.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 30 June 2025

• The windows of tall buildings in Chicago makes Chicago one of the most dangerous cities in the USA for migrating birds, and a glassy lakefront conference center, the Lakeside Center at McCormick Place was especially lethal (for example, causing almost 1000 birds to die in one day in October 2023). But a simple fix has reduced birth deaths by 95% - applying a pattern of close, opaque dots, to the glass windows. Researchers have estimated that hundreds of millions of birds die hitting buildings every year in the United States. These strikes are believed to be one of the factors behind an almost 30 percent drop in North American birds since 1970. Time for this simple fix for all such windows.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 June 2025

• Americans are finding ways to use digital currencies to help them buy homes, and new companies are forming to help people gamble in cryptocurrency casinos by borrowing money based on their value of their homes
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 June 2025

• It is bulletproof, fire-resistant and stronger than steel. It is 'superwood'. Waste wood scraps, changed at the molecular level, could become heavy-duty building materials -- and even replace plastic, aluminum and carbon fiber in our vehicles and gadgets.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 June 2025

• Why hotels are eliminating the presence of mini-bars in hotel rooms. The convenient novelty for guests is a logistical nightmare for hotels and staff. Restocking, food spoilage, operational costs and rampant theft all contribute to an amenity that cost more to run than it earned.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 27 June 2025

• Weather-related foreclosures across the United States could jump 380% over the next 10 years, reported CBS MoneyWatch. By 2035, weather-driven events could account for up to 30% of all foreclosures, compared with roughly 7% today.
  - The Cool Down, 26 June 2025

• Zohran Mamdani triumphed (winning the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City) without a majority of Black voters. Where does that leave them politically? Black city leaders are worried their influence is waning at a moment when the rising costs that Zohran Mamdani put at the center of his campaign are pushing Black New Yorkers out of the city.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 June 2025

• The Federal Housing Finance Agency is working to let borrowers use cryptocurrencies as part of their federal mortgage applications without converting it to cash. Only digital assets held on USA-regulated, centralized exchanges will qualify under the new guidance.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 26 June 2025

• Shares of several New York-based banks and real estate investment trusts fell over 3% on Wednesday as Zohran Mamdani's lead in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary stoked concerns that his proposed rent freeze could pressure building owners.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 25 June 2025

• Home prices in the USA continue to plunge in April, with the biggest drop since December 2022
  - Zero Hedge, 24 June 2025

• More homeowners find themselves 'underwater' financially. Some who bought around the market peak in pandemic boomtowns owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 June 2025

• Three Republican-contolled states have the highest share of "seriously underwater" mortgages that face a high risk of foreclosure
  - Zero Hedge, 24 June 2025

• Home sales rose in May, but housing market is still sluggish. Sales of existing homes held near historically low levels, the latest sign that buyers are staying away because of high home prices.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 June 2025

• A $30 minimum wage has hotel owners in Los Angeles in revolt. They are seeking to suspend a city ordinance requiring what union leaders say is the highest minimum wage in the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 June 2025

• Tensions rise on Maui as decision over a phaseout looms for short-term, Airbnb-like, vacation rental. If the bill passes, Maui County would cut its number of vacation rentals in half. "We are here to preserve our community."
  - SF Gate, 20 June 2025

• The governor of Texas signs a new law banning citizens of Zhōngguó from buying property in Texas. The initiative allows those who hold valid USA visas to purchase property, but only if the property is used as a primary residence.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 22 June 2025

• New York City eliminated real estate broker fees last week in a supposed win for tenants, but landlords had the last laugh - wasting little time sending rents skyrocketing in an effort to recoup their anticipated losses. Rents shot up a shocking 15% in the week since the controversial FARE Act took effect, with the average rental in the Big Apple jumping from $4,750 to $5,500, according to an analysis by real estate analytics firm UrbanDigs.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 21 June 2025

• The real estate sector in Zhōngguó has been in an extended slump. A shrinking population is making it worse.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 21 June 2025

• These sleek, energy-sustainable homes are breaking the stereotype for prefab construction
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 June 2025

• Central and southern Zhōngguó were on high alert for more flash floods on Friday as the annual East Asia monsoon gathered pace and extreme rainfall threatened disruption in the world's second-largest economy. Extreme rainfall and severe flooding, which meteorologists link to climate change and global heating due to burning of fossil fuels, increasingly pose major challenges for policymakers as they threaten to overwhelm ageing flood defences, displace millions, and wreak havoc on Zhōngguó's $2.8 trillion agricultural sector.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 19 June 2025

• "It has been on the market 157 days ... only four people have looked at it". Sellers of housing in Florida struggle in once-booming destination: "An effing mess". Sellers blame insurance hikes, high mortgage rates, and hurricane damage as dealbreakers.
  - Benzinga, 19 June 2025

• To make the rich richer, the Trump's and the House's proposed tax law would raise the estate tax exemption to $15 million and make it pernament
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 18 June 2025

• To make the rich richer, the Trump's and the House's proposed tax law would raise the estate tax exemption to $15 million and make it pernament
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 18 June 2025

• Mortgage demand drops, even as interest rates fall to the lowest since April
  - Comcast's CNBC, 18 June 2025

• The California Department of Insurance (CDI) has launched an investigation into State Farm General's handling of claims following the Eaton and Palisades Fires in January. The state will investigate State Farm's alleged constant reassignment of adjusters, a lack of continuity between company representatives and consumers, differing results on similar claims, poor record-keeping, and information-sharing between claims personnel.
  - Zero Hedge, 17 June 2025

• Homebuilder confidence in the USA declines to near 13-year-lows
  - Zero Hedge, 17 June 2025

• Homebuilder sentiment nears Covid pandemic low as economic uncertainty and higher mortgage rates plague consumers
  - Comcast's CNBC, 17 June 2025

• Real estate developers are finally dealing with the office-oversupply problem. Supply is on pace to contract for the first time in 25 years, as incentives help drive conversions to residential buildings.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 June 2025

• Across the U.S., major urban centers are experiencing significant land subsidence, that is, the sinking of land. Houston, Forth Worth and Dallas have sunk the most (-5.2 mm/yr, -4.7 mm/yr, -3.8 mm/yr). This gradual sinking can worsen the impacts of sea-level rise, increase flood risk, and place additional stress on urban infrastructure, particularly in densely developed areas. The primary cause of this subsidence is groundwater extraction.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 June 2025

• Oil-derived 'forever chemicals' detected in 65% of the private wells that were sampled in Pennsylvania
  - Phys.org, 16 June 2025

• A town's single largest taxpayer is also its biggest headache. An empty shell for years, the shopping mall, the Berkshire Mall, in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, shows how difficult it is to redevelop malls in smaller towns. The owners of the mall refuse to sell the property so it can be redeveloped.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 June 2025

• New real-estate math: half a million more sellers than buyers. Home prices are up more than 50% in the last five years, and mortgage rates are holding above 6.5%. New listings have not been enough to jolt the market out of its slumber.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 June 2025

• Congress considers a crackdown on those spammy calls from mortgage lenders. Legislation would reduce 'trigger leads', whereby credit bureaus sell your mortgage application information to competing lenders.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 June 2025

• Trump destroys another USA business: At Home, a popular home goods retailer with 260 stores across the USA, has filed for bankruptcy citing Trump's taxes/tariffs hurting its business and causing consumers to spend less, which made it unable to service its $2 billion of debt.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 16 June 2025

• Trump destroys another USA business: At Home, a popular home goods retailer with 260 stores across the USA, has filed for bankruptcy citing Trump's taxes/tariffs hurting its business and causing consumers to spend less, which made it unable to service its $2 billion of debt.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 June 2025

• How Vienna can teach other cities how to solve the problems of the housing crisis and climate change and global heating. Vienna is championing "social housing", housing that is built or supported by the government, with the government transitioning all of its housing from global-heating fossil fuels.
  - NPR, 15 June 2025

• Construction is booming in capital city of Somalia, and as Mogadishu literally rises from the ashes of its violent past, it is also giving unexpected work and business opportunities to women. "With numerous ongoing infrastructure, energy, and technology projects, the workload has significantly increased. As a result, the association actively encourages greater participation from women, emphasising that they are not only welcomed but also vital in filling critical gaps in the workforce."
  - BBC, 14 June 2025

• People in España use water pistols to protest the destructive impact of mass tourism for a housing crunch worsened by Internet services such as Airbnb (now worth $83 billion, so its executives can afford to rent apartments listed in its services). Cities across the world are struggling with how to cope with overtourism and a boom in short-term rental platforms, like Airbnb, but perhaps nowhere has surging discontent been so evident as in Barcelona, where protesters plan to take to the streets on Sunday. [KM: These ungrateful protesters wanting to not allow the rich to get richer.]
  - Associated Press, 14 June 2025

• People in España use water pistols to protest the destructive impact of mass tourism for a housing crunch worsened by Internet services such as Airbnb (now worth $83 billion, so its executives can afford to rent apartments listed in its services). Cities across the world are struggling with how to cope with overtourism and a boom in short-term rental platforms, like Airbnb, but perhaps nowhere has surging discontent been so evident as in Barcelona, where protesters plan to take to the streets on Sunday. [KN: These ungrateful protesters wanting to not allow the rich to get richer.]
  - The Hill, 14 June 2025

• More homes are finally hitting the market, but buyers are still priced out. Home prices are up more than 50% in the last five years, and mortgage rates are holding above 6.5%. New listings have not been enough to jolt the market out of its slumber.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 June 2025

• Taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public is a dream of Trump. It might just be a fantasy. The companies do not make mortgages themselves, but buy them from lenders, bundle them into mortgage bonds, and guarantee repayment to investors in case of default. Through that process, they guarantee nearly $7 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, or MBS, and provide liquidity to banks and other mortgage lenders so they can keep making more loans. They failed financially in the 2008 financial crisis and were taken over by the government, which nows owns 80% of both. The market value of some classes of Fannie and Freddie's preferred shares, favored by many hedge funds, has more than doubled since the election of Trump.
  - Barron's, 14 June 2025

• Costa Rica's reputation as an environmental leader is under scrutiny. A formal complaint filed by environmental lawyer Marco Levy has called for a criminal investigation into Minister of Environment and Energy Franz Tattenbach. The accusations? Prevarication, corruption, and favoritism that could harm the Gandoca-Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge, a protected Ramsar site in Talamanca, Limón. This biodiverse gem, home to mangroves, flooded forests, and the Sixaola aquifer, is at the heart of a heated debate over development versus conservation.
  - Tico Times, 13 June 2025

• Rents in New York City rise to a record high as the FARE law may send prices higher. The FARE law requires broker fees to be paid by the party who hired the broker, most often the landlord or property management company, rather than the tenant. As a result, the upfront broker fees for most tenants searching for apartments will most likely be passed along in the form of higher rents.
  - Zero Hedge, 13 June 2025

• Hong Kong is urged to turn the Hung Hom waterfront into Hong Kong's equivalent of Cannes and Monaco. People are encouraging a project to emulate famous mega-event destinations, while others question viability of more commercial facilities.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 13 June 2025

• The boom in building data centers for non-intelligent AI systems may turn into a long-term oversupply, with many such investments losing money
  - Zero Hedge, 12 June 2025

• What is brewing in the mid-Atlantic housing market? Canceled listings erupt to five-year high.
  - Zero Hedge, 11 June 2025

• A Trump family real estate project (involving son-in-law Jared Kushner) spurs government resignations and a criminal charge in Serbia. To help the Trump family, the government of Serbia declared a culturally protected building was not long culturally protected. Dozens of architects and cultural historians at the state-run Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments cried foul, accusing the government of violating the law. After many protests, Serbia's organized crime prosecutor charged Goran Visic, the director of the cultural institute, with abuse of power. Will people higher in the government with closer Trump ties be criminally charged?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 June 2025

• How Home Depot became ground zero in Trump's deportation efforts. The White House told ICE to target Home Depot, disrupting the company's symbiotic relationship with the day laborers outside its stores.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 June 2025

• Editorial: to make rich real estate developers richer, Republicans in Congress want to expand a tax subsidy for real-estate developers under the guise of promoting affordable housing. It will do the opposite while larding up the tax code.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 June 2025

• Scientists mapped what happens if a crucial system of Atlantic Ocean currents collapses. The weather impact would be extreme. Parts of the world would suffer a deep freeze, with winter temperatures plunging to around minus 55 degrees Fahrenheit in some cities. This huge cooling, despite global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels. Crops would die, threatening food security, and infrastructure could buckle in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere, meanwhile, is projected to experience increased warming.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 11 June 2025

• Zhōngguó is using some of the money in a $1.5 trillion fund to offer cheap alternative to bank mortgages and boost housing demand
  - Zero Hedge, 10 June 2025

• At $3,000 a night, luxury farm resorts are the next glamorous getaway
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 10 June 2025

• By 2030, rising seas will threaten the beaches and communities of Costa Rica - looding coastal areas, damaging infrastructure, and displacing communities.
  - Tico Times, 09 June 2025

• Nearly 30-year-old tax exemption rules for capital gains blamed for the housing shortage in the USA. Many homeowners avoid selling because of high capital gains taxes, prompting real estate professionals to call for changes.
  - Zero Hedge, 09 June 2025

• Sunnova, one of the largest rooftop-solar installation businesses in the USA, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday, a stark illustration of the strains haunting the clean-energy sector in the USA as shifting federal policies shake investor confidence.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 June 2025

• Sunnova files for bankruptcy after SunPower's collapse
  - Zero Hedge, 09 June 2025

• Sunnova Energy said on Sunday it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States, as the residential solar panel installer buckled under the pressure of mounting debt and weakening demand. The bankruptcy filing of Sunnova comes at a time when the residential solar energy industry in the USA is under immense pressure from higher interest rates; a reduction in incentives in the top market, California; and fears of subsidy rollbacks for clean energy under Trump.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 09 June 2025

• Bankruptcies of solar energy companies signal that the clean energy industry is faltering in the USA, another industry captured by Zhōngguó
  - Bloomberg, 09 June 2025

• The stock market in Hong Kong has revived, but how about real estate? The decline in the interbank offered rates in Hong Kong should be good news for the real estate sector but its underlying problems remain acute (including oversupply, the threat of rates rising, etc.). With the one-month Hibor interbank rate below 1 percent, the effective mortgage rate has falled below 2.4 percent, making home buying less expensive than renting.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 09 June 2025

• A construction boom for AI data centers (for mostly socially useless AI applications) faces local resistance in 28 states
  - Zero Hedge, 08 June 2025

• The United Kingdom now requires that most new homes being built must be fitted with solar panels
  - Zero Hedge, 08 June 2025

• The housing market in the USA was predicted to recover this year. What happened? Economists predicted that the USA would end its long-running housing market slump in 2025. The economists are wrong.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 June 2025

• Why is hail becoming so large? Hailstorms cause billions in damages. Scientists are studying why it happens.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 June 2025

• How extreme weather is increasing the cost of your auto insurance. Insured losses due juse to hailstones have increased fivefold in the USA, costing an estimated $10 billion annually. Research has linked climate change to larger hailstones, which can produce deeper and bigger dents. As the incidence and severity of hailstorms, hurricanes, flooding, and tornadoes increase due to global heating, insurance providers field more claims and face higher repair costs. These outcomes often prompt premium increases, particularly in areas prone to severe weather.
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 06 June 2025

• Foreign buyers are fleeing the condo market in south Florida. Sales to international buyers fell to 10 percent of transactions last year, a steep decline from 50 percent in 2018.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 June 2025

• After the city and county of Los Anageles spent about $1 billion on housing for the homeless, the city and county are littered with empty buildings and empty rooms for the homeless.
  - Zero Hedge, 05 June 2025

• Uncertainty is running high among prospective homebuyers as elevated mortgage rates have pushed buying conditions to the worst levels in decades. While many are hoping for rate relief in the second half of 2025, Goldman Sachs predicts that mortgages rates will remain high (above 6.5%) for the rest of the year.
  - Zero Hedge, 05 June 2025

• Blooms of of smelly, toxic seaweed shattered records in May, growing to over 37 million tons and inundating beaches around the Caribbean. If it is not bad enough already, the amount of seaweed is expected to grow even more in June.
  - The Hill, 04 June 2025

• The atmosphere's growing thirst is making droughts worse, even where it rains. This 'thirst' (the water capacity of air) has made droughts 40% more severe across the globe over the course of the past 40 years due to global heating from the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Phys.org, 04 June 2025

• John Morales, a meteorologist with over 30 years of experience in Florida, warns that DOGE destruction of NOAA will lead to less accurate hurricane forecasts, which could make the impact of hurricances more destructive and costly, probably more costly than the money saved firing large numbers of NOAA employees.
  - Comcast's MSNBC, 04 June 2025

• The number of zombie properties increase in 30 states in the USA. Zombie homes, which can fall into disrepair and negatively impact the value of other properties in the neighborhood, are a sign of distress in the housing market and the broader economy.
  - Zero Hedge, 04 June 2025

• Demand for mortgages drops for the third straight week, even as interest rates decline
  - Comcast's CNBC, 04 June 2025

• South Florida emerges as epicenter of housing weakness
  - Zero Hedge, 03 June 2025

• The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, one of the most horrific episodes of racial violence by white Christians in the history of the USA, murdered up to 300 Black residents and destroyed a neighborhood and its businesses. More than a century later, the mayor of Tulsa announces a $105 million reparations package, the first large-scale plan committing funds to address the impact of the atrocity committed by white racist Christians.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 June 2025

• Nearly half of the $700 billion in homes for sale have gone 'stale' as sellers outnumber buyers by 500,000
  - Zero Hedge, 02 June 2025

• Parts of Tehama County, California, including areas around Red Bluff, Corning, and Antelope, are sinking -- a condition that could cause damage to infrastructure and deplete groundwater permanently if the agricultural-producing county does not reverse it, geologists say. The main problem is too many people are pumping too much water out of the ground in places like the Red Bluff and Corning sub-basins. More than 90% of that pumped-out groundwater goes to the county's agriculture - mostly almond, walnut and pistachios orchards that are water-intensive.
  - Redding Record Searchlight, 02 June 2025

• The Trump administration wants to sell shares in two government-controlled companies, Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac, that are crucial for getting a mortgage. First it needs to figure out what it wants the mortgage market to look like.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 June 2025

• In Uganda, an affordable alternative to dirt floors is a big boost to human health. A company called EarthEnable sells at a reasonable price, clay-based earthen floors that give a durable, sealed floor for less than half the cost of concrete.
  - Associated Press, 01 June 2025

• Sports stadiums are monuments to the poverty of our ambitions, and non-misanthropic technological prowess. Cities build stadiums in part because it is so hard to build almost anything else. Municipal leaders fixate on big-ticket projects because it takes so much money and time to obtain the necessary permission to do anything that only the big things are worth attempting. Because the system makes it hard to build anything other than luxury projects, cities are increasingly for rich people. And make no mistake: Stadiums are playgrounds for the wealthy, thinly disguised as public spaces for the non-rich.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 June 2025

• Howler monkeys in Costa Rica are facing a growing threat from bot fly larvae infestations, and new research points to tourism and land use changes as key drivers. The bot fly larvae burrow under the skin of howler monkeys, creating painful nodules that can lead to infections and weaken the animals. The study suggests that stress from constant human presence, noise, and habitat disruption weakens their immune systems, making them more susceptible to parasites.
  - Tico Times, 31 May 2025

• Who should consider getting flood insurance? These days, almost everyone. Inland areas have suffered severe flooding in recent years, experts note. And standard homeowner policies do not cover flood damage.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 May 2025

• The hospital-bed shortage in the USA is about to become worse. As new construction declines and occupancy rates soar, experts warn that hospitals may soon cease to function properly because of overcrowding.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 31 May 2025

• Sellers outnumber prospective homebuyers in the USA as high prices and mortgage rates skew the housing market
  - Associated Press, 30 May 2025

• "Cities are turned into theme parks": why Airbnb is facing trouble in Españna for profiting while it causes crises in the local housing market. Some in Españna complain that their lives have been blighted by the lack of affordable living accommodation. "Behind each of the 65,000 property listings [such as available through Airbnb] there used to be homes for families, workers, students, who today are expelled from their neighborhoods and see how their cities are turned into theme parks for the excessive profit of a few investment funds and big companies."
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 30 May 2025

• Low incentives and complicated state regulations, combined with high housing and business costs, have rendered California unable to keep Hollywood from moving production to other states and countries, according to an entertainment industry report released on May 27 by the Milken Institute, a California-based think tank.
  - Zero Hedge, 29 May 2025

• "It really fits us": how an American couple traded the south of increasingly authoritarian Florida for the south of France
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 29 May 2025

• Pending home sales in the USA plunge the most in 30 months, back new record lows. "Despite an increase in housing inventory, we are not seeing higher home sales. Lower mortgage rates are essential to bring home buyers back into the housing market."
  - Zero Hedge, 29 May 2025

• Pending home sales in the USA plunge the most in 30 months, back new record lows. "Despite an increase in housing inventory, we are not seeing higher home sales. Lower mortgage rates are essential to bring home buyers back into the housing market."
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 May 2025

• Could Taiwan derail Trump's 'big beautiful' plan for the housing market in the USA? The life insurance industry in Taiwan is a major buyer of USA Treasury Bonds.
  - Zero Hedge, 29 May 2025

• Idiots in the town that voted to become a Musk-controlled town are being warned by Musk's SpaceX that they may lose rights to "continue using" their personal properties.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 29 May 2025

• Home values are dropping in 27 of 50 states in the USA as the housing market shifts amid continuing high interest rates, according to data from Zillow
  - Benzinga, 28 May 2025

• First-time home buyers downsize amid tight supply, high interest rates. Newly built homes have been getting smaller since the a trend home builders have been leaning into to entice buyers and alleviate costspandemic.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 May 2025

• Home prices in the USA dropped in March for the first time in over 2 years, down a modest -0.12% month-to-month.
  - Zero Hedge, 27 May 2025

• Why Vietnam ignored its own laws to fast-track a golf complex for the grifting Trump family. As the grifter Trump blurs the lines between the presidency and business, and threatens steep taxes/tariffs on imports from foreign countries, governments feel compelled/extorted to favor Trump-related projects.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 May 2025

• Non-white homeowners of color in the USA are disproportionately vulnerable to climate risks compared with white homeowners, according to a new study by Zillow. Discriminatory housing practices such as redlining have limited where people of color are able to buy. Increased climate risk and the financial toll -- high insurance premiums, steep rebuilding expenses, lower resale value -- could further set back nonwhite communities.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 May 2025

• Empty lab space keeps piling up around Greater Boston. Nearly one-third of lab space in the region is empty, and 3 to 4 million more square feet of lab space is still under construction, with about 16 million square feet of empty lab space currently.
  - Boston.com, 23 May 2025

• Home sellers are dropping prices, but buyers are still not buying. What could change that.
  - Barron's, 23 May 2025

• Here are 6 signs that the housing market depression in the USA is getting even worse
  - Zero Hedge, 23 May 2025

• Trump's destructive reductions of the National Weather Service is forcing the agency to do more with less as the country heads into a storm season that is expected to see above-normal numbers of hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 May 2025

• Honk Kong will spend about $40 million on flood control projects to protect the city from megastorms
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 23 May 2025

• Existing home sales in the USA are weakest since the great Financial Crisis of 2008
  - Zero Hedge, 22 May 2025

• The numerous aging dams in Zhōngguó pose a serious threat to public safety
  - Zero Hedge, 21 May 2025

• A fire salel of the largest office tower in Portland shows how far the city has fallen. The once-premier building is now over half empty, reflecting how the Oregon city's downtown is struggling with crime and other quality-of-life issues.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 May 2025

• The power of Christian hate: Trump is significantly reducing funding for flood prevention projects in Democratic states across the country while creating new water construction opportunities in Christian Republican states, undoing a Biden-era budget proposal that would have allocated money more evenly.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 21 May 2025

• How Trump's taxes/tariffs on imports of lumber could worsen the affordability of homes in the USA. The USA currently imposes a 14.5% tax on lumber imported from Canada, and Canada accounts for about 85% of all softwood lumber imports into the USA, representing almost a quarter of USA supply. That tax/tariff rate could jump to 34.5% later this year following a regulatory review by the Department of Commerce, further disrupting a sector already reeling from material costs and labor shortages.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 21 May 2025

• Due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, the ice sheets of the world are on course for runaway melting, leading to multiple feet of sea level rise and "catastrophic" migration away from coastlines, even if the world pulls off the miraculous and keeps global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to new research. Since the 1990s, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have quadrupled the amount of ice that has melted, now about 370 billion tons a year. Around 230 million people live less than 1 meter (3.2 feet) above sea level.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 May 2025

• Mortgage rates cross back over 7% after Moody's downgrades the USA credit rating
  - Comcast's CNBC, 19 May 2025

• Españna orders Airbnb to block nearly 66,000 holiday rental listings over rule violations
  - Associated Press, 19 May 2025

• Españna's airport authority will start to limit access to Madrid's airport during some parts of the day as a preventive measure to stop more homeless people from sleeping in its airport terminals
  - Associated Press, 19 May 2025

• Trump's taxes/tariffs are dragging down an already stalled housing market. The problem is two-fold: increased material costs due to Trump's taxes/tariffs and faltering demand for new homes as home shoppers grew more hesitant amid stock market turmoil in April and Trump's tax/tariff-induced recession fears.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 19 May 2025

• Swiss Re beats profit expectations, despite lower revenue. The reinsurer reported a larger-than-expected increase in net profit as it absorbed the impact of the wildfires that ravaged California in January.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 May 2025

• $10,000,000 - For allowing Sean 'Diddy' Combs to violently attack Cassie Ventura in their hotel in 2016, the InterContinental Hotel will pay Ventura $10,000,000
  - Los Angeles Magazine, 16 May 2025

• A crucial system of ocean currents is slowing.weakening, and it already supercharging sea level rise in the USA. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, known as the AMOC, works like a vast conveyor belt, transporting heat, salt and freshwater through the ocean and influencing climate, weather and sea levels around the planet.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 16 May 2025

• Environmental corruption in Costa Rica: citizens of Costa Rica are fined/jailed for building too close to the ocean (closer than 200 meters to the high tide line). Meanwhile, luxury hotels, many owned by foreign investors, continue to operate in ecologically sensitive areas, often with permits granted under questionable circumstances. Critics, including local advocacy groups, argue that the Ministry of Environment's selective enforcement disproportionately targets vulnerable Costa Ricans while shielding powerful tourism interests.
  - Tico Times, 16 May 2025

• The fishing sector in Costa Rica, vital to its economy and food security, faces mounting challenges from overexploitation, inadequate data, and weak governance, according to a new report urging sweeping reforms to ensure sustainability.
  - Tico Times, 16 May 2025

• Permits for new single-family homes plunged in April, while inventories of unsold NEW homes is surging
  - Zero Hedge, 16 May 2025

• The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency admits that he does not have a plan for the next hurricane season. "... clarifying the intent of Trump has been a challenge ..."
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 May 2025

• The woes of commercial real estate in the USA challenge the bank that built its fortunes on skyscrapers. Bank OZK wants to diversify after long defending ultrahigh concentrations of commercial real estate.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 May 2025

• First-time home buyers are struggling. That is bad news for home builders. Even with construction companies offering cheap mortgages, youngish people are finding it difficult to enter the market.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 May 2025

• As the Rio Grande runs dry, politicians and business leaders in South Texas look to new water supplies to sustain growth, such as water for capturing more rain and from treating groundwater. Water levels at the two international reservoirs that store the river water supply for South Texas reached record lows last year, and water levels continue to hover around 20%. And demand for municipal water is only expected to increase over the next several decades, with no increase in supply on the horizon. Global heating caused by burning the fossil fuels that profit Texas so greatly -- are more quickly evaporating more water from the surfaces of rivers, lakes and reservoirs.
  - Texas Tribune, 15 May 2025

• USA homebuilder sentiment declines to its lowest level since 2023. Homebuilders blame Trump's taxes/tariffs as homeBUYERS remain the most depressed in 45 years.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 May 2025

• Your insurance company may be using a drone to spy on your property from the air
  - HuffPost, 15 May 2025

• South Carolina, Florida and Illinois lead states in the USA with the highest number of foreclosures. South Carolina saw 1 in every 2,311 housing units with a foreclosure filing; Illinois had 1 in every 2,405 housing units; and Florida had 1 in every 2,526 housing units. Rounding out the top five were Delaware (1 in every 2,617) and Nevada (1 in every 2,944).
  - Realtor.com, 15 May 2025

• Weather forecasters say that the USA is facing worst tornado season in more than a decade. Severe weather in 2024 resulted in the second-highest number of tornadoes since record-keeping began in 1950.
  - The Independent, 15 May 2025

• A Thai court has issued arrest warrants for 17 people including a high-profile construction tycoon, police said on Thursday, over their alleged involvement in the building of a skyscraper that collapsed and killed scores of workers during a powerful March earthquake.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 15 May 2025

• Apartment owners at a luxury New York skyscraper, 432 Park Avenue, are suing the building's developers over a "far-reaching fraud" in which they allegedly hid structurally significant defects -- including "thousands" of severe cracks on the facade of the skyscraper. Condo owners are collectively seeking more than $165 million in damages, according to the complaint.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 15 May 2025

• Living near golf courses may double risk of being afflicted with Parkinson's disease. A golf course lawn may be beautiful, but the chemicals used to keep it that way may present serious risks for those living nearby.
  - Zero Hedge, 14 May 2025

• Protecting seagrasses could prevent billions of dollars in damages, by capturing and storing vast amounts of carbon. The study predicts that protecting at-risk seagrass meadows could avert climate damages valued in excess of $200 billion by preventing the release of 1.2 billion tons of carbon pollution. This is equivalent to removing the annual carbon footprint of 100 million homes in the USA.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 14 May 2025

• State Farm has been approved for an emergency 17% rate increase on homeowner insurance policies in California, part of an effort to shore up the largest insurer in California, after the devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area
  - Bloomberg, 13 May 2025

• Two reinsurance companies in Deutschland, Munich Re and Hannover Re, lost a combined $1.9 billion due to wildfires in Los Angeles in January 2025
  - Comcast's CNBC, 13 May 2025

• The national mortgage debt of the USA tops $12.6 trillion amid rising interest rates and housing costs such as insurance
  - Zero Hedge, 12 May 2025

• Spain is confronting a housing crisis that has rapidly become one of the most acute in Europe. Since 2015, nearly one-tenth of the housing stock in Spain has been bought by investors or converted to tourist rentals. The scarcity has helped drive up prices much faster than wages, making affordable homes out of reach for many, .
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 May 2025

• "Wildly inappropriate behavior": a real estate group is accused of cover-ups. The Appraisal Institute faces concerns that one of its leaders has a history of harassing women and that it did not disclose that some certification exams were incorrectly scored.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 May 2025

• The rest of 2025 is not looking good for retail-property market. A rebound is fizzling amid store-chain bankruptcies and tax/tariff concerns.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 May 2025

• The spring season for home sales is shaping up to bel a dud. Although inventory has been rising, high home prices and mortgage rates are putting off buyers during the prime selling season.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 May 2025

• Most baby boomers cannot afford assisted living in their retirements, and are weighing on the housing market by staying in their homes, reducing available inventory of homes for sale.
  - Jiaravanon's Fortune, 10 May 2025

• Homeowners across climate-change-denying Texas are feeling the financial squeeze as insurance premiums skyrocket, and extreme weather is a major driver. Homeowners reeling as staggering new cost sweeps across thousands of zip codes in Texas. More destructive storms, rising construction costs, and loose state oversight are all causing insurance premiums to rise.
  - The Cool Down, 08 May 2025

• A climate scientist working as an adviser on Saudi Arabia's Neom project has warned that the new mega-city could change local environments and weather systems, including the path of wind and sand storms.
  - Zero Hedge, 06 May 2025

• Loss of forests due to farms and cities expanding, is linked to declining quality of drinking water
  - Phys.org, 06 May 2025

• Home prices in Texas and Florida with lots of inventory are posting the biggest price declines, while prices in the Northeast and Midwest are still rising
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 May 2025

• A $1 billion tax bill is looming over homeowners in Boston. The value of some Boston office buildings has tumbled by 50%, forcing homeowners to pay higher real estate taxes to balance the city's budget.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 May 2025

• Fighting floodwaters in Louisiana with patches of 'green'. Simple, affordable initiatives like rain gardens are helping to soak up water in New Orleans.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 May 2025

• Wealthy investors from Zhōngguó are shifting their investments from the USA to markets such as Thailand, Australia and Singapore, due to Trump's tax/tariff trade war
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 04 May 2025

• Home builders are increasing discounts as they struggle to entice buyers. Demand has been disappointing during the spring home-buying season, and Trump's taxes/tariffs threaten to raise costs.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 May 2025

• Trump kills a Biden-era program to end sewage backups into central Alabama homes, wrongly labeling the whole thing "illegal DEI" because most of the people helped are Black Americans
  - The New Republic, 01 May 2025

• The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - government-sponsored businesses - may foment another financial crisis. They now back more than 60% of new mortgages, versus roughly 45% before the meltdown in 2008.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 May 2025

• Trump's destruction of government agencies are making natural disasters deadlier. Trump is denying recovery funding and slashing money for preparedness. With hurricane season approaching, the results could be catastrophic.
  - The New Republic, 30 April 2025

• Scientists issue dire warning as an iconic American city, New Orleans, sinks into the ocean. "Human intervention has made it worse." New Orleans is sinking at the rate of one to two inches per year.
  - The Cool Down, 29 April 2025

• Homeownership rate in the USA falls to lowest level in 5 years. Elevated mortgage rates contribute to keeping prospective buyers from owning a home.
  - Zero Hedge, 29 April 2025

• Homeowners insurance has risen over 50% in these states: Utah, Illinois, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nebraska. The most expensive states to insure your home are Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Nebraska.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 29 April 2025

• The Federal Reserve is pushing ahead with a huge $2.5 billion revamp of its Washington, DC headquarters despite mounting losses -- as one ex-official accused central bankers of behaving like French royalty
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 27 April 2025

• Working while homeless: in the USA, it is all too common.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 April 2025

• Existing home sales are the weakest in March since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008
  - Zero Hedge, 24 April 2025

• Home sales in March fell 5.9%, biggest drop since 2022. Many buyers, spooked by rising economic uncertainty, stayed away from the housing market during the start of the crucial spring season.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 April 2025

• The million-dollar housing crisis in Canada. Soaring housing costs, with many homes nearing $1 million, have sparked an exodus from cities like Vancouver, and people in Canada want their next prime minister to do address the problem.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 24 April 2025

• White and Black farmers still bear the scars of land grabs in Zimbabwe. How mishandling of land reform evicted many white farmers, "enriched elites", and left Black Zimbabweans in poverty
  - Al Jazeera, 23 April 2025

• Weekly mortgage demand plunges nearly 13%, as interest rates hit 2-month high
  - Comcast's CNBC, 23 April 2025

• Nearly 50% of the home-sellers in the USA are offering price concessions/reductions to buyers
  - Zero Hedge, 22 April 2025

• Millions of student loan borrowers are behind on payments. They are seeing their credit scores drop, which will make it more difficult to buy a car or rent a home. And that has implications for the already slowing economy.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 April 2025

• Why condo owners in Florida are so desperate to sell. Insurance increases, special assessments and limited financing options have sharply elevated costs.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 April 2025

• Why condo owners in Florida are so desperate to sell. Large increases in insurance premiums, unexpected repair assessments and restrictive lending practices have turned the dream of coastal living into a costly burden for many, particularly in older buildings.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 22 April 2025

• The housing market in Miami is hurt by "breathtaking" collapse in demand. Sales are down 50% from pandemic peak, and are 30% below the long-term average for March.
  - Zero Hedge, 21 April 2025

• The housing market in the USA may finally see relief as foreign buyers, illegals and Airbnbs disappear
  - Zero Hedge, 20 April 2025

• The family home: from shelter to a financial asset to a financial liability (due to deflation of asset bubbles and higher maintenance costs such as insurance)
  - Zero Hedge, 20 April 2025

• An exceptionally powerful atmospheric river fueled the deadly early April flooding disaster in the central and southern USA -- a historic flood event and a poignant example of how the phenomenon acts differently in the East than it does in the West. Another flooding disaster is coming.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 April 2025

• Homebuyers rusk to obtain riskier loans, such as adjustable-rate loans, as turmoil due to Trump's taxes/tariffs pushes interest rates higher
  - Comcast's CNBC, 16 April 2025

• Local residents and environmental advocates have banded together to oppose California Governor Gavin Newsom's proposed $20 billion water tunnel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which they argue will cost more and cause more environmental damage. The current proposal will store rainwater to prepare for potential droughts caused by climate change, and is expected to provide $38 billion in benefits: an increased water supply that would be better protected from natural disasters.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 April 2025

• How Nihon built a 3d-printed train station in 6 hours for a small town.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 April 2025

• Because of Trump's attacks on Canada, people in Canada are selling their vaction homes in the USA
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 April 2025

• Wealthy buyers are backing out of multimillion-dollar home deals in the USA. Trump's trade war and stock market chaos have put the once unshakable high-end home market 'on ice'.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 April 2025

• In 15 years, 80,000 homes in the New York area may be lost to flooding
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 April 2025

• How construction contracting work became an economic race to the bottom. The reality of being a real estate contractor includes labor shortages, brutal competition and low, low margins.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 April 2025

• Homeowners in the USA must earn $50,000/year more than renters to cover their housing payments
  - Zero Hedge, 12 April 2025

• Finland bans people and companies from Rossiya from buying property in Finland, banning such nationals from countries who "pose a potential threat to the national security of Finland"
  - Zero Hedge, 12 April 2025

• The Republican Trump's FEMA rejects Republican Trump-supporting North Carolina's request to extend the period in which residents can file for hurricane damage reimbursement. Since taking office, Trump has signaled he wants to do away with FEMA entirely.
  - The Daily Beast, 12 April 2025

• Mortgage rates surge over 75 as Trump's taxes/tariff trade war impacts the bond market. "Forget about housing in this environment."
  - Comcast's CNBC, 11 April 2025

• $300,000,000 - Destiny USA, the largest mall in Syracuse, New York (owned by Carousel Center, a division of the Pyramid Companies), defaults on its $300 million mortgage. Pyramid had been required to make interest-only payments on the loan and then pay off the loan in its entirety or refinance it when its maturity date came on June 6, 2019.
  - Zero Hedge, 10 April 2025

• State Farm pleads for emergency insurance premium rate hikes on homeowner policies in California. The company argues it needs the additional funds to boost capital and avert an increasingly dire financial situation following the devastating Los Angeles wildfires. State Farm General has about 20% of the homeowners market in California with nearly 3 million policies.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 10 April 2025

• Here is how Zhōngguó could crush the housing market in the USA. Zhōngguó could sell its hundreds of billions of dollars of USA mortgage-backed securities in retailiation for Trump's trade war. This would force up mortgage rates in the USA, and kill the housing market.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 09 April 2025

• A swift rise in mortgage rates this week wiped out any advantages of last week'ss decline for homebuyers. Homebuyers are now more concerned with the state of the economy and employment than they are with rates.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 08 April 2025

• Americans have $35 trillion in housing wealth - and it is costing them. But the wealth has come with rising property taxes and higher hurdles for borrowing.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 April 2025

• Prized seaside warehouses to bear brunt of Trump's tax/tariff plan. Disruption of foreign trade could bring lower occupancy rates, reduced property values and less industrial development by port cities.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 April 2025

• Allianz, one of the world's top insurers, warns that climate change and global heating, due to burning of fossil fuels, could destroy capitalism, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate. Without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments.
  - The Guardian, 03 April 2025

• The public insurance safety-net system in California that lost a million-dollar check. Customers of the state-chartered Fair Plan face problems including canceled policies, refusals to treat toxins from smoke and dire customer service.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 April 2025

• The mortgage giant Rocket Companies has agreed to buy Mr. Cooper Group, one of the largest mortgage companies in the USA, in a $9.4 billion all-stock deal.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 March 2025

• Rusting pipes in a barren field and unpaid workers are what remain after African Agriculture, a company based in the USA, promised to turn a huge piece of land in Senegal - about twice the size of Paris - into an agricultural project and create thousands of jobs. The proposal divided the community of subsistence farmers. The investors wanted to use precious water resources in Senegal to grow water-intensive alfalfa, to be exported to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Both traditionally buy alfalfa from the USA, but the amount of land in alfalfa production there has dropped by 38% in the last 20 years, largely due to drought caused by climate change.
  - Associated Press, 31 March 2025

• In Bangkok, looking at high-rises with a new sense of dread. Buildings are rising all over the city, emblems of economic growth. But an earthquake that sent one crashing to the ground has stirred fears about building safety in Thailand.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 March 2025

• Trump and Musk are trying to destroy FEMA. Communities battered by storms are losing billions of dollars in desperately needed support to rebuild (of no concern to the filthy rich), including communities that voted for Trump.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 March 2025

• The surprising good news for shopping mall owners: the bankruptcy of Forever 21. The fast-fashion retailer's store closures create an opportunity for stronger tenants that can pay higher rents.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 March 2025

• Commercial real estate delinquency rate increase in the 4th quarter
  - Zero Hedge, 25 March 2025

• As North and South Carolina burn, the avid supporter of Trump, Homeland Security head Kristie Noem wants to destroy the Federal EMERGENCY Management Agency. Experts have warned that eliminating FEMA would likely weaken emergency response in poorer, disaster-prone, Republican states that voted for Trump.
  - The Independent, 24 March 2025

• As Trump works to destroy FEMA, data shows there was a major disaster declaration every four days in 2024
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 24 March 2025

• Almost 7 years ago, Elon Musk announced he would turn tunnel dirt into "bricks for low-cost housing". Another one of his boulshirt ideas that fizzled out?
  - Benzinga, 24 March 2025

• Signs of a bottom in the office real estate market. Sales of office buildings jumped nearly 21 percent last year, and leasing activity is up, too. Companies are looking for more space as work-from-home policies decline.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 March 2025

• Republicans in Florida are considering to reduce the costs of owning a home by eliminating property taxes. Eliminating property taxes would leave Florida more dependent on its sales tax (which affects the poor the most) and strip local governments of revenue to fund everything from schools to social services (of most benefit to the poor).
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 March 2025

• Fears due to Trump's tax/tariff trade wars with Canada and México are raising construction costs by up to 20%, says the CEO of developer Related Group, Jon Paul Perez.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 21 March 2025

• In 2024, the hottest year in recorded history, sea levels rose at a rate 35% more than expected. While global average sea levels rose by just 0.23 inches in 2024, that was above the expected rate of 0.17 inches and comes at a time when coastal communities in many parts of the U.S. have been dealing with accelerating rates of rise far higher than the global average. The U.S. community with the dubious distinction as the place where seas are rising the fastest, Galveston has seen 8 inches of sea level rise over just the last 14 years. Over just the last 14 years, the sea level in Jacksonville rose by 6 inches, tide gauge data shows. Other cities with big rises include Miami, and Savannah in Georgia
  - Yahoo News, 20 March 2025

• Building permits in the USA decline for the 3rd straigth month. So, the forward-looking aspect of the residential construction data is not pretty - despite mortgage rates tumbling.
  - Zero Hedge, 18 March 2025

• State Farm gets 'provisional' approval in California for a 22% increase in premiums for insurance policies on homes and buildings for owners, and 15% for renters
  - Zero Hedge, 17 March 2025

• $24,000,000 - The Los Angeles Times, owned by the billionaire bio-tech entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, is sued for $24 million for allegedly failing to pay rent, leaving printing plant covered in "toxic ink stains"
  - Murdoch's, 17 March 2025

• Hawaii is sinking 40 times faster than previously predicted -- homes and businesses could soon be wiped out
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 17 March 2025

• A secret mortgage blacklist is leaving homeowners stuck with unsellable condos. Fewer homes can get Fannie Mae-backed mortgages, a response to Surfside condo collapse and insurance crunch.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 March 2025

• In the insurance crisis in the US, hail hits harder than hurricanes and fires. Home insurers are dropping policyholders and raising premiums as the costs of repairing storm damage rises.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 March 2025

• Not just condo prices: the entire housing market in Florida is softening, especially along the southwest coast. Prices are falling and inventory is rising in much of Florida. The turning market comes as migration to the Sunshine State slows, and a combination of hurricane fears, rising insurance and tax bills, and a steady supply of new construction has given buyers more leverage.
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 5 March 2025

• After wildfires, clear skies in Los Angeles conceal a "toxic soup". Scientists collecting water, air and soil samples in neighborhoods ravaged by fires say they are concerned about long-term health risks for residents.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 March 2025

• Compass in talks to buy Warren Buffett's real-estate brokerage unit. The talks are the latest sign of consolidation among real-estate brokerages during a prolonged period of lackluster home sales.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 March 2025

• Trump's taxes/tariffs on imports of lumber and other construction materials to add as much as $10,000 to the cost of the average new home. The trade group said that softwood lumber is mainly sourced from Canada, while gypsum primarily comes from Mexico. Steel and aluminum, along with completed home appliances, come from Zhōngguó.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 13 March 2025

• Scientists issue a critical warning after linking pollution from natural gas stoves in homes to a major health risk. The risk is due to nitrogen dioxide pollution causing asthma and premature deaths. "The problem is far worse than we thought."
  - The Cool Down, 13 March 2025

• Los Angeles has big plans to rebuild after the wildfires. Good luck obtaining insurance. Displaced residents seek a speedy return to their homes in the Pacific Palisades, but the largest insurer in California says, "Writing new policies does not make any sense at this time."
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 March 2025

• Haden Kirkpatrick, a State Farm executive, has been fired after he was secretly recorded alleging that the insurance company hiked rates for California homeowners reeling from the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 12 March 2025

• The Trump's immigration policies are scaring both undocumented workers, and the people who hire them. Fearing roundups, many immigrants are staying home. Construction, agriculture, senior care and hospitality employers say labor shortages will worsen.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 March 2025

• The mortgage giant Rocket Companies has agreed to buy Redfin in an all-stock deal valuing the online real-estate brokerage at $1.75 billion.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 March 2025

• What the war on the water supplies of California is really about, water supplies from a fragile ecosystem. The water needs of the communities where the water originates are often seen as expendable or unimportant compared to the needs of larger distant cities and corporate farmers.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 March 2025

• What went wrong at Noem, Saudi Arabia's futuristic metropolis in the desert. Neom executives shielded Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from the challenges of his fantastical plans, including by engaging in "deliberate manipulation" of financials, according to an internal report.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 10 March 2025

• Noem, the 100-mile skyscraper meant to be built in Saudia Arabia, is turning into a financial disaster. Financial projections were distorted to cover ballooning costs. These efforts were reportedly aided by McKinsey consultants hired by the project, earning $130 million a year.
  - Futurism, 10 March 2025

• It is a surprisingly good time to be in the property insurance business. Insurers, despite inflation and recent disasters, are reporting strong results thanks to pricing and coverage adjustments.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 March 2025

• Trump vowed to lower home prices. He could push them up. Taxes/tariffs (such as on lumber from Canada) and deportations of illegal immigrants (who build houses) threaten to push homeownership out of reach for millions.
  - Barron's, 08 March 2025

• One town in Florida just tripled its HOA (Home Owner Association) fees to over $3,300 per month. The higher fees are to pay for millions owed to Orange County for code violations, increased insurance costs and new legislative requirements following the 2021 Surfside condo collapse
  - Zero Hedge, 05 March 2025

• Meteorologists mark March 1st as the official start of meteorological spring across the Lower 48, signaling a seasonal shift toward warmer temperatures and stronger winds. With the change of season, forecasters are warning of elevated wildfire risks across the Southern states.
  - Zero Hedge, 03 March 2025

• The USA is pushing working people into homelessness. Across the country, men and women sleep in their vehicles night after night and then head to work the next morning. Others scrape together enough for a week in a motel, knowing one missed paycheck could leave them on the street. These people are not on the fringes of society. They are the workers America depends on. What good is low unemployment when workers are a paycheck away from homelessness? Today there is not a single state, city or county in the United States where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a median-priced two-bedroom apartment. More and more workers now face volatile schedules, unreliable hours and a lack of benefits such as sick leave.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 March 2025

• How Trump's proposed taxes/tariffs on lumber imports from Canada is the latest headache for homebuilders. In 2024, soaring lumber prices were a poster child of the inflation shock. Shortages of the building material slowed construction and put upward pressure on home prices.
  - Axios, 01 March 2025

• Trump orders a new probe into imports of lumber from Canada and other countries, which could result in more taxes/tariffs on imported lumber, driving up the cost of building homes
  - Thomson's Reuters, 01 March 2025

• Trump orders a new probe into imports of lumber from Canada and other countries, which could result in more taxes/tariffs on imported lumber, driving up the cost of building homes
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 March 2025

• Wall Street crashed the economy in 2008. Now they are back and bigger than ever. Wall Street expects to sell more than $335 billion in asset-backed debt this year. Remember that conference in "The Big Short"? This year's conference just drew a record 10,000 people.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 March 2025

• Pending home sales in the USA collapse to record lows
  - Zero Hedge, 27 February 2025

• Alexandria, the birthplace of Cleopatra, is experiencing a "dramatic surge" in the collapses of buildings, as sea levels rise. About 7,000 old buildings in Alexandria are at risk of collapse.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 27 February 2025

• Margarete Schutte-Lihotsky, the World War II resistance fighter who created the modern kitchen, with her Frankfurt Kitchen that she designed in 1926, which introduced many of the elements we now take for granted: a continuous countertop with a tiled backsplash, built-in cabinets, and drawers optimized for storage -- all laid out with comfort and efficiency in mind.
  - Atlas Obscura, 26 February 2025

• New home sales in the USA plunge in January as mortgage rates spiked, while median new home prices exploded higher
  - Zero Hedge, 26 February 2025

• Trump authorizes the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, to fire up to 65 percent of the people at the EPA, which protects the Earth. Lee Zeldin, has also reportedly recommended that the White House end its 2009 "endangerment finding" that that climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions is a danger to human health.
  - Nextstar Media's The Hill, 26 February 2025

• Trump authorizes the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, to seize $2 billion in federal grant money from a coalition of nonprofits that includes Habitat for Humanity. The money is set to be used to build thousands of affordable, energy-efficient houses by Power Forward Communities, an umbrella organization for five nonprofits including Habitat for Humanity and United Way .
  - The Daily Beast, 26 February 2025

• New York-based Namdar, the real estate investor that won big on zombie malls, is now going all-in on empty offices, by buying office buildings in major markets after the pandemic hit and office values plummeted
  - MSJ, 26 February 2025

• Home prices in the USA accelerated again to a new record high in December, just six months after the Fed fueled the fire by reducing interest rates a total of 1.0%
  - Zero Hedge, 25 February 2025

• Retail store closures outpace openings amid "historic shift" to service-based tenants. But the outlook is not all bad, as the real estate churn may open up 140 million square feet of retail space in a market where high quality storefronts are in short supply, a JLL report says.
  - Zero Hedge, 24 February 2025

• Why Trump's ending of support for renewable energy could destroy a boom in manufacturing in the USA. A recent bright spot in manufacturing in the USA has been a flood of government funding under the Biden administration: for semiconductors, and for renewable energy. By ending those subsidies, Trump will send American manufacturing back to the doldrums.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 February 2025

• Wildfires in California hit hard State Farm insurance company. But State Farm was already struggling financially.
  - Barron's, 22 February 2025

• Existing home sales in the USA plunged in January as mortgage rates rose
  - Zero Hedge, 21 February 2025

• Subprime crash redux: commercial real estate bond distress hits another record high. If this sounds a lot like the subprime crisis of 2006-2008, s because there are many similarities.
  - Zero Hedge, 21 February 2025

• Glaciers melting due to global heating caused almost 2 centimeters of sea level rise from 2000 and 2023, a loss of 6.5 trillon tons of ice
  - The Guardian, 21 February 2025

• Trump plans to fire 84% of the people working in the government office that helps non-rich people recover from the biggest environmental disasters. More money for tax breaks.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 February 2025

• Zurich Insurance expects that the wildfires in California will lead to $200 million in pretax losses for the group, which reported better-than-expected results for 2024
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 February 2025

• Housing starts in the USA plunged in January (along with homebuilder confidence)
  - Zero Hedge, 19 February 2025

• Small warehouses are becoming harder to find. Beneath the growing availability of warehouses in the USA lies a tight supply of buildings under 100,000 square feet.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 February 2025

• The Trump administration is planning to lay off at least 40% of the workers at the Federal Housing Authority, which helps certain homebuyers secure a loan if they cannot afford a down payment or have below-average credit scores. The FHA is one of the largest mortgage insurers in the world and has insured more than 40 million home loans since 1934.
  - Bloomberg, 18 February 2025

• Home-builder confidence plunged to the lowest level in five months as concerns over Trump's taxes/tariffs and how they could raise the cost of housing weighed on the industry. For buyers, the sentiment shift only adds to the likelihood that home prices could go up in an already expensive housing market. Trump's taxes/tariffs on imported goods from Canada, Zhōngguó and México are increasing the cost of building materials, which is spooking home builders.
  - Murdoch's MarketWatch, 18 February 2025

• Residents in Kentucky, face more destruction and anxiety from storms. The flood damage of recent days was not as catastrophic as some previous climate disasters in the state. But the rains still brought widespread havoc, and painful reminders of trauma.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 February 2025

• The middle class in Zhōngguó feels the squeeze as property slump hits pocketbooks. Zhōngguó's per-capita property income grew at its lowest rate for over a decade in 2024, trimming disposable incomes and limiting consumption.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 17 February 2025

• California rejects the request for an increase of 22% in home insurance rates/premiums sought by State Farm insurance company. The insurer said the rate increase is needed to prevent further depletion of capital that may affect its credit rating and harm mortgage customers.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 February 2025

• Which interest rate should you care about? The Fed's short-term interest rates matter, but the main action now is in the 10-year Treasury Bond market, which influences mortgages, credit cards and much more
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 February 2025

• At least three people, including a child, have been killed after a catastrophic and historic flooding event unfolded across portions of Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virgnia over the weekend as a powerful storm system produced several threats across the eastern half of the USA.
  - Murdoch's Fox News, 15 February 2025

• Trump's Federal Emergency Management Agency has decided to stop enforcing rules designed to prevent flood damage to schools, libraries, fire stations and other public buildings. Experts say the move, which has not been publicly announced, could endanger public safety and may be in violation of federal law.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 February 2025

• The USA is headed toward a landlord-friendly era in the Trump era. Expect higher rent prices. The prospect of apartment rents rising could further stoke inflation and give the Federal Reserve another reason to pause the reduction of interest rates.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 February 2025

• Move over Florida, as retirees are making new plans as climate change and global heating raises housing costs. Extreme weather and soaring insurance costs have many retirees rethinking where to live. What to know if you are in a climate danger zone.
  - Barron's, 15 February 2025

• Due to global heating, the levels of polar sea ice fall to a record low in February, more of a threat to coastal properties.
  - BBC, 14 February 2025

• Shares of Airbnb rise more than 14%, its best day ever, on better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings
  - Comcast's CNBC, 14 February 2025

• As buyers fail to show up, more homes are being pulled from sale. An increase in the number of properties being delisted could be an early sign of a weakening housing market.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 February 2025

• The world's largely unprotected peatlands are a 'ticking carbon bomb', warns study. Bogs and swamps are a colossal carbon store but their continued destruction would blow climate change targets.
  - The Guardian, 13 February 2025

• FAIR Plan, the state-owned home insurance plan of last resort in California, designed for people who cannot get coverage on the private market, does not have enough money to pay claims from the Los Angeles wildfires and is getting an infusion of cash from regular insurers. State regulators said Tuesday that they will allow the program, known as the FAIR Plan, to collect $1 billion from private insurance companies doing business in California to pay its claims. That is likely to drive up insurance costs for homeowners across the state.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 February 2025

• FAIR Plan, the state-owned home insurance plan of last resort in California, designed for people who cannot get coverage on the private market, does not have enough money to pay claims from the Los Angeles wildfires and is getting an infusion of cash from regular insurers. State regulators said Tuesday that they will allow the program, known as the FAIR Plan, to collect $1 billion from private insurance companies doing business in California to pay its claims. That is likely to drive up insurance costs for homeowners across the state.
  - Axel Springer's Politico, 3 February 2025

• The SEC, obeying Trump, is pausing its legal defense of a rule that aims to give investors a clearer picture of the risks companies might be exposed to because of climate change and its effects, including droughts and wildfires
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 February 2025

• Insurance company Travelers estimates it will lose $1.7 billion on catastrophic losses from wildfires in California
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 February 2025

• The growing crisis in the insurance industry may make it hard to get a mortgage in parts of the country in the coming decades, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Tuesday, noting that banks and insurance companies have been pulling out of coastal and fire-prone areas they deem too high risk.
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 1 February 2025

• Renters are tired of moving, settling in for the long haul. Soaring home prices keep many on the sidelines. Renters in need of more space and privacy are making house rentals their long-term homes.
  - Zero Hedge, 10 February 2025

• 17 percent of homeowner mortgages in the USA are at 6 percent interest rates or higher
  - Zero Hedge, 10 February 2025

• State Farm insurance company was all in on business in California - until it pulled out before the recent wildfires. The insurer aggressively grew in Los Angeles, despite getting overweight on fire risk, but decided to cut thousands of policies last year, adding to the home-insurance crisis in California.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 February 2025

• Allstate Insurance says it will pay out $1.1 billion in insurance claims caused by the wildfires that swept through Southern California in January. While the expected payout is significant, Allstate said Wednesday it was able to limit its losses partly by pulling back from the California market.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 February 2025

• The way that hurricanes kill is changing. Hurricane Helene shows how. A close analysis of Helene's fatalities shows how major storms are taking lives in unexpected ways, and how the deadly effects can last long after the skies clear.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 February 2025

• Homebuilders in California say that there are few alternatives to lumber from Canada, even if Trump's threats of taxes/tariffs at 25% are imposed. California lacks mills, environmental policies and supply chains that would allow a quick switch to local lumber production, and making those changes would likely take years.
  - BNN Bloomberg, 05 February 2025

• No more palm trees, and six other ways that Los Angeles can protect itself from wildfires: build safer houses, upgrade dangerous power lines, redesign roads for easier access by emergency vehicles.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 February 2025

• State Farm asked California on Monday if it could hike home insurance rates in the state by an average of 22% to address what it has claimed was a potentially "dire situation" related to payouts from the devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles region. "Over the last 9 years, the lack of alignment between price and risk means that for every $1.00 collected in premium, State Farm General has spent $1.26, resulting in over $5 billion in cumulative underwriting losses." State Farm has a history of trying to make questionable moves in California during hard times.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 03 February 2025

• Florida condominium owners are begging for relief after a new building safety law passed in the aftermath of the deadly Surfside collapse burdened them with staggering fees -- and one lawmaker is warning that it could trigger the "next wave of homeless people". New safety requirements and increased financial demands could bankrupt homeowners and condo associations alike.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 03 February 2025

• That giant sucking sound? It is climate change and global heating devouring the value of your home, especially in climate-change denying states
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 February 2025

• That giant sucking sound? It is climate change and global heating erasing $1.5 trillion of the value of homes in the USA, especially in climate-change denying states. Rising home-insurance costs and more homeowners spurning some risky neighborhoods will drive these declines.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 February 2025

• How SoftBank bet and lost over $4 billion on WeWork. Masayoshi Masa was 'convinced' by Adam Neumann.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 02 February 2025

• The huge wildfires in Los Angeles are fully contained.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 February 2025

• More people in the USA than ever are living in wildfire areas. Across the West, there are now more than 16 million homes in the wildland-urban interface. About 1 in 8 properties in California now face "very high" fire risk.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 February 2025

• Shares of real estate companies in Bharat rose on Saturday after the government announced measures to boost the spending power of the middle class in Asia's third-biggest economy, likely spurring investments in the residential housing space. Bharat's plan to cut income tax rates in the 2025-26 budget was widely welcomed by investors and experts, as it boosts disposable income in a country grappling with sluggish consumption in recent quarters.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 01 February 2025

• The wildfires in Los Angeles burned thousands of homes. Insurance companies predict these risks. What made the wildfires devastating was their path through the Palisades, where home values hover around $3.4 million and aging structures were tightly packed in a recognized high-risk fire zone.
  - Barron's, 01 February 2025

• The perverse incentives depreciating your house. Rather than building homes that are intended to last, construction companies, lured by high present demand, will build homes from cheap materials and use techniques that prioritize speed. Many home builders in recent years have planned for their investment to peak shortly after they build it, counting on housing shortage and buyer indifference to keep home prices in general high. While this is a good strategy for maximizing profit in the current market, people will slowly start to become more critical of new builds as they see their young homes disintegrate.
  - Zero Hedge, 30 January 2025

• Pending home sales drop sharply in December as mortgage rates surge back over 7%
  - Comcast's CNBC, 30 January 2025

• Single women owe millions more homes than single men in the USA - the gap is only growing, despite a persisent pay gap where women earn less than men (16% less on the average). The gap is most prominent in the South. Experts suggest that women are more willing to make financial sacrifices to become homeowners.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 29 January 2025

• Home prices in the USA surge to new record high (except in Tampa)
  - Zero Hedge, 28 January 2025

• Another real estate developer in Zhōngguó is facing a cash crisis. Zhōngguó Vanke, one of the largest developers in Zhōngguó, fired its top executives and said it anticipates a $6.2 billion loss, a sign the property meltdown is still raging.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 January 2025

• Another real estate developer in Zhōngguó is facing a cash crisis. Zhōngguó Vanke, one of the largest developers in Zhōngguó, fired its top executives and said it anticipates a $6.2 billion loss, a sign the property meltdown is still raging.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 January 2025

• Sales of new homes in the USA rise for the second straight year in 2024
  - Zero Hedge, 27 January 2025

• Trump's new taxes/tariffs on imports from Canada will hurt homebuilders and the real estate industry in California as it rebuilds from recent wildfires.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 January 2025

• Homeowners' associations are struggling to find master insurance policies, forcing fees higher for residents. Insurers are boosting premiums or exiting the business, citing rising losses from extreme weather and aging buildings. The steep premium hikes usually end up passed on to individual owners in the form of higher monthly dues.
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 6 January 2025

• Oil, coal and natural gas companies should help pay for the costliest wildfires the history of the USA now occurring in Los Angeles. Coal, oil and gas companies that have contributed substantially to the conditions fueling this and other climate disasters. Major oil and gas companies have known for decades that burning their products could lead to "potentially catastrophic events", like the higher temperatures and abnormally dry conditions that fed the fires still being battled in Los Angeles. Exxon scientists warned about this internally starting in the 1970s. Instead of disclosing these risks, big oil companies deliberately misled the public, policymakers and investors. According to a years-long congressional investigation, even as these companies publicly pledged to meaningfully contribute to a transition away from fossil fuels, they were privately working to continue production for decades to come.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 January 2025

• Spain seeks to curb foreign buyers amid growing housing crisis. The country is at the forefront of a wider crunch spreading across Europe, and its prime minister has proposed a 100 percent tax aimed at foreign real estate investors.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 January 2025

• Los Angeles is on fire, forcing the municipal bond market to wake to the risks of climate change and global heating
  - Barron's, 25 January 2025

• For the second year in a row, insurance rates for homeowners increase by over 10%, and not just in California. In six states, rates increased by more than 20%.
  - Zero Hedge, 24 January 2025

• Existing home sales in the USA decline to the lowest since 1995, with first-time buyers at the lowest on record
  - Zero Hedge, 24 January 2025

• Existing home sales in the USA decline to the lowest since 1995, with first-time buyers at the lowest on record
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 January 2025

• The prospect of mass deportation of illegal immigrants due to Trump could lead to the loss of a huge number of construction workers, which will seriously hinder efforts to rebuild the more than 12,000 structures estimated to be destroyed by the fires in California. Simply replacing those workers with legal American workers may not be a viable solution. Even with millions of undocumented people estimated to be in the country, there were 276,000 open construction jobs as of November.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 24 January 2025

• Housing shortage, not volatile rates, is biggest obstacle for buyers, Zillow CEO says. The housing market in the USA has been hurt by volatile mortgage rates, but a severe shortage of available homes is the most critical obstacle for would-be buyers, Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman said.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 January 2025

• Divvy Homes, once valued at $2 billion, is sold for half that price. The company, backed by high-flying Silicon Valley investors like Andreessen Horowitz, had promised it would reinvent the rent-to-own model and make it more consumer friendly. High interest rates and mortgage rates thwarted those plans.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 January 2025

• The world is getting riskier. Reckless Americans do not want to pay for their poor decisions. Insurance is one of finance's great gifts to mankind. California is a microcosm of what happens when it breaks down - either households face potential ruin, or the public is handed a financial time bomb.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 January 2025

• We have to stop underwriting people who move to, and build in, climate danger zones
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 January 2025

• Rental price-gouging and scamming are worsening the conditions of victims of wildfires in California
  - Zero Hedge, 18 January 2025

• How the wildfires could reshape mortgage lending in California. If the insurance industry stops writing policies for California homes, it will ultimately hit the mortgage industry.
  - Barron's, 18 January 2025

• How the wildfires in California could lead to higher insurance costs for the rest of the country. Premiums have been rising sharply in recent years. The L.A. disaster will make matters worse.
  - Barron's, 18 January 2025

• Trump may privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What it means for shareholders and homeowners.
  - Barron's, 18 January 2025

• A large chunk of the cost of rebuilding after the Los Angeles wildfires is likely to shift to insurance customers throughout the state, under a little-noticed rule change last year by the insurance regulator of California that applies to large wildfires
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 January 2025

• Is the catalyst for the next financial crisis ... homeowners insurance? Millions of Americans are thus left with much of their net worth tied up in houses that are prohibitively expensive to insure - if insurance is available at any price - and are therefore unsellable.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 January 2025

• Fears of a land grab have erupted across fire-ravaged areas of Los Angeles County, as local and state officials have already begun discussing plans for 'Los Angeles 2.0': "They are going to turn Altadena into one gigantic apartment complex, referring to local officials who want to change zoning in the Altadena area from single-family to multi-family. In other words, some officials want to usher in the construction of apartment buildings and so-called 'smart cities'.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 January 2025

• Fears of a land grab have erupted across fire-ravaged areas of Los Angeles County, as local and state officials have already begun discussing plans for 'Los Angeles 2.0': "They are going to turn Altadena into one gigantic apartment complex, referring to local officials who want to change zoning in the Altadena area from single-family to multi-family. In other words, some officials want to usher in the construction of apartment buildings and so-called 'smart cities'.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 January 2025

• Landlords in Los Angeles increase rents as much as 124% as fires force thousands to flee. "The vultures are circling and the flames are not even out yet."
  - Zero Hedge, 15 January 2025

• Wildfires in Los Angeles are expected to cause over $250 billion in losses due to damaged properties. At the end of last week, AccuWeather estimated total economic damages to be around $150 billion, while analysts from other desks expected insured losses north of $20 billion. The analysts noted, "That is a significant volume of insured losses, but it also suggests the majority of economic losses are uninsured."
  - Zero Hedge, 15 January 2025

• Economic toll of the wildfires in Los Angeles goes far beyond that of destroyed homes
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 January 2025

• Many of the most destructive wildfires in California were caused by electric power lines
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 January 2025

• More people in the USA than ever are living in wildfire areas. Los Angeles is no exception. Fierce winds and droughts set the conditions for the wildfires in Los Angeles, but the reckless, profiteering growth of housing in fire-prone areas also played a major role.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 January 2025

• $115,000+ - Hotel asset manager Ashford will pay a fine of more than $115,000, after the SEC said it was not forthcoming about a customer data breach.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 January 2025

• Spain plans to help solve its housing crisis with a tax of 100% on homes bought by foreigners
  - Comcast's CNBC, 14 January 2025

• Their wealth is in their homes. Their homes are now ash. Many of the middle-class homeowners in Los Angeles bought properties years ago, before prices exploded. Now, they are figuring out what to do next, as fires accelerate the city's crushing housing crunch.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 January 2025

• FTC prepares to sue the largest apartment landlord in the USA over hidden fees. The FTC is weighing a lawsuit alleging Greystar failed to disclose fees related to trash services and background checks.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 January 2025

• Local governments in Zhōngguó settle overdue bills with apartments, not cash. In recent years, property developers in Zhōngguó have used unsold apartments to settle debts to construction companies and furniture suppliers. Now, local governments in Zhōngguó are doing the same.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 January 2025

• Wildfires in California have caused billions of dollars in losses. Why insurance stocks have a brighter future. The insurance industry has been thriving as climate change increases the demand for coverage.
  - Barron's, 12 January 2025

• Wildfire and extreme weather are big concerns for buyers of homes. Real estate listings websites like Zillow size up a home's likelihood of flood, fire, and wind damage. That could affect prices.
  - Barron's, 12 January 2025

• The USA has more fancy apartments than it is able to fill. The USA has a serious housing shortage, but not for the type of apartments that real-estate investors have been building in record numbers.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 January 2025

• As a climate scientist, I knew that it was time to leave Los Angeles. For those who have lost everything in climate disasters, the apocalypse has already arrived. And as the planet gets hotter, climate disasters will get more frequent and more intense. The cost of these fires will be immense, and they will affect the insurance industry and the housing market.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 January 2025

• Shares of Mercury General, whose insurance organization is mostly centered in California, crashed 35% in premarket trading. About 80% of its premiums of $4.6 billion in 2024 were derived from the state, making it one of the most exposed insurers to the LA County fire.
  - Zero Hedge, 10 January 2025

• California imposes 1-year moratorium on insurance policy cancellations in areas ravaged by wildfires
  - Zero Hedge, 10 January 2025

• How climate change and global heating is supercharging disasters. Extreme weather events - deadly heat waves, floods, fires and hurricances - are the consequences of a warming planet.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 January 2025

• 10 people are dead, and 10,000 structures burned, as the wildfires in Los Angeles continue to burn with little control. The resulting destruction of properties could exceed $150 billion.
  - Zero Hedge, 10 January 2025

• Insurance stocks dive as loss estimates double from fires in southern California: Allstate dropped 5%, Traveller's dropped 2%, Chubb dropped 3%. Power company Edison International drop 10% on Wednesdaty. Pacific Gas & Electric dropped over 10%.
  - Investor's Business Daily, 10 January 2025

• Warehouse leasing prices are holding up despite declining demand. A steep cutback in new construction leaves tenants facing continued high rents after rates soared during the pandemic.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 10 January 2025

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that La Niña conditions have officially developed in the equatorial Pacific. This weather phenomenon has the potential to impact weather patterns across the globe, more specifically in the US, in the months ahead. La Niña s typically associated with warm and dry winter conditions across parts of the USA, adding to drought concerns in California (plagued by devastating wildfires around LA County) and the southern USA.
  - Zero Hedge, 09 January 2025

• $223,000,000 - Owners of a dilapidated hotel in Times Square, the Carter Hotel, which has been cited many times as "America's filthiest hotel", default on a $223 million loan
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 09 January 2025

• Damage from wildfires in Los Angeles likely to be costliest blaze in the history of the USA. Insured losses from the disaster could be more than $20 billion, or even higher if the fires spread further.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 January 2025

• California was already in home-insurance crisis before the recent infernosin Los Angeles. Industry officials warn of widespread economic damage on par with some of the biggest fire disasters in recent memory.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 January 2025

• The home insurance market in California is in a financial crisis. The solution will cost homeowners a 'ton' of money. Between 2020 and 2022, insurance companies declined to renew 2.8 million homeowner policies in the state. Insurers in California have been refusing to write new policies in areas they consider to be at high risk for wildfires, which is a large percentage of the state.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 09 January 2025

• Infernal chaos: the wildfires in Los Angeles spread to Hollywood Hills, with 2000 buildings destroyed and over 130,000 people evacuated. In total, over 17,000 acres have been burned and over 2000 building structures destroyed.
  - Zero Hedge, 09 January 2025

• Wildfires in California threaten insurers already struggling financially from climate shocks due to global heating. Companies started reducing their business in California as earlier fires made it harder to earn a profit. Experts warn that the exodus could grow. It is hard enough for companies to make money on their own policies. But if the state's FAIR Plan (a public last-resort for homeowners who can't find insurance from private companies, with policies that are more expensive and provide less coverage) runs out of money, California can force the private insurance companies to help pay for damages, giving these companies additional reasons to leave the state.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 January 2025

• "A hellscape in all directions": the devastating fires that ignited crisis and chaos in Los Angeles. Fires are burning one of the most iconic swaths of America, upending lives and destroying property.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 January 2025

• The Santa Ana winds driving the wildfires in Los Angeles. Devastating fires in the Los Angeles region are driven by Santa Ana winds blowing from California and Nevada's interior deserts to the Pacific Ocean.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 January 2025

• Fires in California expose a $1 trillion hole in home insurance availability in the USA. Homeowners in increasingly risky areas cannot obtain adequate coverage as insurers flee the state to avoid losses. Pacific Palisades, where over 1000 buildings have been destroyed, has $6 billion in coverage with the State's FAIR insurance system. Even a fraction of that amount would exceed the capabilities of FAIR, which at last report had about $700 million in cash. Additional damage can be passed on to private insurers, which would pass those costs immediately to their less-risky customers.
  - Bloomberg, 08 January 2025

• A lender to purchasers of mobile homes, owned by Warren Buffett, is sued because of its risky mortgages. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, owned by Berkshire Hathaway, made loans to buyers of manufactured homes that it knew the buyers could not repay.
  - Zero Hedge, 08 January 2025

• The Department of Justice said on Tuesday that it is suing six large landlords over alleged anticompetitive practices in housing rental markets, expanding the DOJ's first case alleging algorithmic collusion. The DOJ alleged the landlords exchanged competitively sensitive information on rents, occupancy rates, and pricing strategies through phone calls, emails, and user groups hosted by RealPage. The landlords -- Cortland Management, Greystar Real Estate Partners, Blackstone's LivCor, Camden Property Trust, Cushman's Pinnacle Property Management Services, and Willow Bridge Property -- were named as defendants in the amended complaint.
  - Zero Hedge, 08 January 2025

• The Justice Department expands its price-fixing lawsuit against RealPage to include six big landlords. Greystar, the largest apartment owner in the USA, and Blackstone's LivCor are among the firms added to the lawsuit.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 January 2025

• A lender to purchasers of mobile homes, owned by Warren Buffett, is sued because of its risky mortgages. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, owned by Berkshire Hathaway, made loans to buyers of manufactured homes that it knew the buyers could not repay.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 January 2025

• Why real estate in the USA is burdened with an elevator crisis. The workforce of technicians who know how to fix them is aging. And buildings with elevators in need of repair often need to wait ages for replacement parts due to arcane supply-chain issues. The upper levels of tall buildings are effectively rendered useless until repairs can be made. Nearly 1.1 million Americans end up in the emergency room every year due to incidents stemming from taking the stairs.
  - Axios, 05 January 2025

• Retail is fashionable with property investors again, but only the unflashy kind. More people than ever are running errands at their neighborhood shopping center. Supply of this type of property is surprisingly scarce.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 January 2025

• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac jump 30% after federal agencies reveal a plan to privatize the two mortgage giants (which have been under government control since the financial crisis of 2008, when the two companies received massive subsidies from the government in return for giving preferred shares in the companies to the government which have paid billions of dollars in dividends over the years.)
  - Thomson's Reuters, 03 January 2025

• Sekisui House, a real estate company based in Nihon, quietly becomes the fifth-largest homebuilder in the USA
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 03 January 2025

• Ports in the USA need help from the private sector. Under the government's port authority, political considerations often override commercial criteria, leading to poor investment decisions.
  - Zero Hedge, 31 December 2024

• Concrete can be made 30 percent stronger by processing and adding charred coffee grounds to the concrete mix. Every year the world produces a staggering 10 billion kilograms (22 billion pounds) of coffee waste globally. Most ends up in landfills, worsening global heating.
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 31 December 2024

• Home prices in the USA surge to 17th consecutive monthly all-time high. Home prices in the 20 largest cities in the USA rose 0.32% MoM in October (the latest data from S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller), considerably hotter than the 0.22% rise expected. However, despite the MoM beat, the pace of annual acceleration has declined to its slowest since September 2023.
  - Zero Hedge, 31 December 2024

• The Interior Department is caught between tribes in casino battles. The Biden administration's consideration of three proposed tribal casinos in California and Oregon has touched off a fierce debate about tribal sovereignty and land rights.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 December 2024

• Pending home sales in the USA rose again in November as mortgage rates fell, but mortgage rates have soared since
  - Zero Hedge, 30 December 2024

• An epic construction site in the desert of Islamic Saudia Arabia is a hazard for workers. Gang rape, suicides and highway deaths plague Neom, the futuristic Islamic vision of Crown Prince Mohammed.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 December 2024

• Homeowners have no incentive to sell. This is partly because Americans who locked in ultra-low mortgage rates during the pandemic have little incentive to move into new homes and take on higher borrowing costs.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 30 December 2024

• Can the insurance industry survive global heating due to fossil fuel burning? In one scenario, vulnerable parts of the world become completely uninsurable, and economic and/or natural forces dismantle communities, as natural catastrophes cause more and more multi-billion payouts for insurance claims.
  - Anthropocene, 28 December 2024

• Raging waves batter the coast and piers of California. An increasingly ferocious and volatile surf is raising questions about the future of the state's piers, which have defined the coastline for generations.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 December 2024

• Scott Turner, Trump's choice to be the next HUD secretary, is likely to worsen the housing crisis in the USA. Opposing government intervention in the housing market would make cost of living problems even worse. The choice is a reminder of how's Trump's lies campaign promises to address cost of living greivances were a "thous shalt not" lie charade. Under the last administration of Trump, Turner advocated "opportunity zones", a concept ostensibly designed to offer tax breaks for investment in select low-income communities under Trump's 2017 tax law. But this group failed at that goal in practice: Low-income areas were largely neglected while financially well-off areas received investment, in part because politically connected players steered "opportunity zone" designations and investment to areas that benefited their own pocketbooks - the rich getting richer once again.
  - Comcast's MSNBC, 26 December 2024

• Cost of buyer incentives looms over home builders. Lower-rate loans and other incentives have helped the biggest home builders sell new houses at a decent clip this year, even as stubbornly high mortgage rates weigh on sales of existing homes.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 December 2024

• Insurance and taxes now cost more than mortgages for many homeowners. Insurers have pushed big rate increases in premiums because of losses from natural disasters and rising costs to repair homes. Surging home values in recent years, meanwhile, have lifted property taxes for many homeowners.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 December 2024

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has filed suit against Rocket Homes, alleging the real-estate company provides incentives to brokers and agents to steer home buyers to its parent company's mortgage-lending wing, Rocket Mortgage
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 December 2024

• From 2018 to 2023, the average sale price of a new manufactured home (mobile home) grew faster than that of a new single-family home, according to a recent study, rising 58% to $124,300. During the same period, the average sale price of a new single-family home rose nearly 38 percent, to $409,872.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 December 2024

• The Fed reduced interest rates, but mortgage costs went up. Average 30-year mortgages have climbed to around 6.7% since the Fed started lowering rates in September. And they are only poised to rise further.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 December 2024

• Will the Trump administration's proposed taxes/tariffs on imports from Zhōngguó, Mexico, and Canada send shockwaves through the already vulnerable commercial real estate market in the USA? With a 10% tax/tariff on goods from Zhōngguó and 25% tax/tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, the additional cost will be passed along to the US builder and consumer -- and is a stiff repudiation to the notion of free markets.
  - Zero Hedge, 20 December 2024

• During the past 14 years, sea levels in the southeast region of the USA and the Gulf of Mexico have risen twice as fast as the global average - all areas bordering states controlled by global-heating-denying Republicans lobbied/bribed to deny global heating by the fossil fuel industry
  - Jeff Bezos' Washington Post, 20 December 2024

• Boom, bust, back from the dead: Why are mall retailers the most interesting stocks on the market? Malls defined a generation. Those mallrats grew up. Guess what stocks they're buying?
  - Sherwood News, 20 December 2024

• $290,000,000 - Highgate, a New York-based hospitality investor, forfeited ownership of the sixth-largest hotel in San Francisco, the Hyatt Regency to its lending bank, Blackstone Mortgage Trust, in return for cancelling a $290 million debt
  - Comcast's CNBC, 20 December 2024

• Home sales in November post the biggest annual gain since 2021. Sales of existing homes rose in November, notching the biggest year-over-year gain in more than three years.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 December 2024

• $680,000 - Lafayette RE Management, with a $1 billion in assets, and its founder will together pay $680,000 after a former Lafayette partner, Jesus Nunez-Unda, accused the greedy firm of obtaining a paycheck protection program loan under false pretenses, according to documents unsealed this week in San Antonio federal court.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 December 2024

• Three dozen luxury condos and hotels in south Florida are sinking, a new study determines. The study authors attributed the sinking to sand grains settling more densely in limestone layers, possibly influenced by construction vibrations, groundwater flow, tidal movements, or stormwater injection.
  - Zero Hedge, 19 December 2024

• "If 1.5 million people in Deutschland have them, there must be something in it." - how solar panels on balconies are becoming more popular. Balcony solar panels can save 30% on a typical household's electricity bill and, with vertical surface area in cities larger than roof space, the appeal is clear.
  - The Guardian, 18 December 2024

• Insurers are deserting homeowners as climate shocks worsen. Without insurance, it is impossible to get a mortgage; without a mortgage, most Americans cannot buy a home.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 December 2024

• The housing affordability crisis is going global. Home prices and rents are rising faster than incomes in big cities in Europe and beyond. "The price in Ireland is mental.", said a Dublin teacher who lives with his mother.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 18 December 2024

• About 36 high-rise buildings in South Florida are sinking or settling in unexpected ways, in some cases because of nearby construction. Limestone under the South Florida beach is interspersed with layers of sand, which can shift under the weight of high-rises and as a result of vibrations from foundation construction.
  - Associated Press, 17 December 2024

• Asking rents fall 0.7% to lowest level since March 2022. The median rent is now 6.2% lower than when it hit an all-time high of $1,700 in August 2022.
  - Zero Hedge, 17 December 2024

• Stand Insurance, a new business, seeks to cover homes in areas other insurers are abandoning because of risks from natural disasters like wildfires and floods.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 December 2024

• Dozens of luxury beachfront condos and hotels in Surfside, Bal Harbour, Miami Beach and Sunny Isles are sinking into the ground at rates that were "unexpected", with nearly 70 percent of the buildings in northern and central Sunny Isles affected, research by the University of Miami found. This is due in part to rising sea levels caused by global heating due to fossil fuel burning, global heating that is denied by the Republican politicians that control politics in Florida.
  - Miami Herald, 14 December 2024

• Your home-insurance bill has only one way to go: up. Damage from hail is fueling a jump in insurance claims as more homes are built in disaster-prone areas.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 December 2024

• Millennials are scared of buying a home in the USA. They might have a good reason. Millennials see real estate as a speculative asset. That makes them less apt to buy than their parents did at similar ages.
  - Barron's, 14 December 2024

• $37,000,000 A northwest Indiana man, Brad Detert, secured a record $37 million pretrial settlement after being severely injured in a 2020 construction zone crash in Valparaiso, Indiana. The primary defendant, Traffic Control Specialists, was accused of failing to follow state and federal standards for safely directing traffic in the construction zone.
  - Fox News, 13 December 2024

• Goldman Sach's latest report to clients offers little optimism for resolving the housing affordability crisis in 2025. Mortgage rates are expected to remain elevated while housing prices trend at record highs, further exacerbating challenges for prospective buyers and likely keeping many on the sidelines.
  - Zero Hedge, 13 December 2024

• Gen Z consumers, despite growing up as digital natives, shop in stores about as much as their baby boomer grandparents do. Up-and-coming spenders in this generation are seeking social connection, instant gratification and moments to post on social media, according to interviews with shoppers and experts. Mall owners and retailers are trying to cater to teens and twenty-somethings with unique store features, such as selfie mirrors or videos, and experiences such as pop-up concerts.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 12 December 2024

• How a realtor's non-profit arm quietly funds conservative advovacy groups. The National Association of Realtors has created a non-profit that gives more heavily to conservative causes , and to groups that have little to do with real estate and housing
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 December 2024

• Wall Street is betting billions on rental homes as ownership slips out of reach. Millennials priced out of the most coveted suburban neighborhoods are turning to upscale single-family rentals nearby. Developers are eager to capture that demand.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 December 2024

• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which financially back most mortgages in the USA, know floods and fires are a growing problem due to global heating. But little action has been taken. As sea levels rise and natural disasters become more intense, due to global heating, homes in low-lying coastal areas or tinder-dry mountains are starting to lose value. Fannie and Freddie have reserve capital buffers, but large losses could force the government to intervene. The two organizations are slow to act because of concerns about raising housing costs when homeownership is already out of reach for many, especially for the low-income households that disproportionately live in areas of higher risk.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 December 2024

• Why shares of home building companies are predicted to rebound
  - Barron's, 07 December 2024

• The commercial mortgage crisis deepens. The office real estate sector has been grappling with a severe downturn for several years now, but are accelerating recently as they are driven by persistently high vacancy rates and declining rents.
  - Zero Hedge, 06 December 2024

• Insured losses due to natural catastrophes to top $135 billion in 2024, according to the Swiss Re Institute. Global insured losses from natural catastrophes like hurricanes and floods are on track to exceed $135 billion in 2024, marking the fifth consecutive year with such losses surpassing a level of $100 billion.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 December 2024

• A decrease in home renovations forces home furnishing retailers to increase deals. Record-high home prices, combined with the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate surpassing 7% once again, continue to create the worst housing affordability environment in a generation. Consequently, the residential renovation market sours, pressuring home furnishing companies to offer better deals.
  - Zero Hedge, 04 December 2024

• The construction industry braces for a one-two punch: taxes/tariffs and deportations. Trump's immigration and trade policies put home builders in a vulnerable economic position.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 04 December 2024

• Many of our current housing woes stem from misguided government policies that have distorted the market and created artificial scarcity. Zoning laws and building regulations, often championed as protections for communities, have in reality severely restricted the supply of housing. Rent control, another popular government intervention, has been shown to reduce the quantity of available housing.
  - Zero Hedge, 03 December 2024

• The biggest apartment owner in the USA starts constructing modular homes. Greystar Real Estate Partners plans Monday to open its first modular project in the USA, a six-building apartment complex in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, and is building six more.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 December 2024

• The 850-year-old Smithfield Market in London will be closing. In an era of supermarket chains, which buy produce directly from far-flung food-processing plants, a wholesale meat market in the heart of London makes little sense. The property, in any case, is more valuable as a site for offices, apartments or retail businesses.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 November 2024

• How cruise ship companies - Royal Caribbean, Disney, Carnival - are destroying the environment of the Bahamas. Another vast tourist resort project promising jobs and prosperity. But critics say such developments imperil the pristine environments they advertise, and don't deliver real economic benefits for the locals.
  - The Guardian, 27 November 2024

• $15,000,000 - The private equity firm Blackstone is paying nearly $15 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the previous landlord of violating rent-stabilization rules by overcharging renters for apartments now owned by Blackstone.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 November 2024

• Sales of new homes in the USA 'crashed' in October, the largest month-to-month decline since July 2013
  - Zero Hedge, 26 November 2024

• The Federal Housing Finance Agency is increasing the size of home loans that the government can guarantee against default as it takes into account rising housing prices. Beginning in 2025, mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be able to acquire loans of up to $806,500 on single-family homes in most of the country. FHFA oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy home loans from banks and other lenders, guaranteeing them against default. The loans are then bundled into securities sold to investors.
  - Associated Press, 26 November 2024

• The city of Boston is sinking as global heating worsens, raising ocean levels. Boston, similar to other cities such San Francisco, is suffering from subsidence at the rate of millimeters per year. the sea level has risen 8 inches since 1950 in the Boston area. It is expected to swell another 6 inches over the next 15 years.
  - Boston 25 News, 22 November 2024

• Zhōngguó is building 3000 miles of high-speed rail - that it might not need. The train system is one of the biggest public works in history, and it is becoming a giant money pit.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 November 2024

• Shares of Freddie Mac are up 116%, and shares of Fannie Mae are up 143, since Trump won re-election, on bets that Trump will loosen restrictions over the two mortgage giants. They both play a central role in the US housing market by purchasing mortgages from lenders and re-packaging them as securities, and both fell under government control during the 2008 financial crisis as mortgage defaults soared.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 21 November 2024

• Farmers in the UK protest in London over a change in inheritance taxes. Farms worth more than about $1.3 million will face an estate tax from 2026, ending a previous exemption and prompting anger in some rural communities.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 November 2024

• Big cities in the USA take up fight against apartment rental prices being set by 'BigTech' AI algorithms. The federal price-fixing lawsuit against rental-software firm RealPage could take years, but some cities and states are already cracking down on abuses the company fosters with landlords.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 November 2024

• Housing starts in the USA and building permits decline to levels around the time of the Covid lockdown
  - Zero Hedge, 19 November 2024

• Why a $4 billion settlement of fire insurance claims in Maui is tangled up in court. Insurers that paid claims say a deal unfairly keeps them from recouping their own losses. In the Lahaina settlement, the insurers are instead expected to seek repayment from the people and businesses they insured. A person who received a share of the $4 billion deal, for example, could have to pay a portion of that to the insurance company. The industry is balking at this idea, saying it upends a core piece of its business model. Insurers have turned to state and federal courts to try to block the deal, slowing it down and frustrating fire victims and Hawaii leaders. The insurers have also sold some of their claims to hedge funds that specialize in pursuing cases in bankruptcy court, bringing in another deep-pocketed group with an interest in resisting the settlement.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 November 2024

• Vacancy rates have plunged in the most desirable London submarkets and in the newest office towers especially -- which should sound familiar to anyone in New York real estate
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 17 November 2024

• Homeowners with spray foam insulation are struggling to sell or remortgage as some major lenders are rejecting properties with it fitted, the BBC has found. A quarter of the UK's biggest mortgage providers will not lend against homes with spray foam in the roof, our research suggests. Some mortgage firms are reluctant to deal with homes with spray foam insulation due to concerns over poor fitting leaving moisture trapped and roof timbers at risk of decay.
  - BBC, 17 November 2024

• The Housing and Urban Development agency (HUD) - what has it achieved for the trillions of tax dollars it has spent? The homeownership rate in the USA was 64% in 1967, two years after HUD was created. Now the rate is ... 64%.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 November 2024

• Rents for apartments in Texas are declining due to a surge in new supply and reduced demand. In Austin, Texas, he median apartment rent dropping 15% over the last 2+ years. The vacancies have skyrocketed. Rental concessions are everywhere.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 November 2024

• The economy of Zhōngguó is improving, but still needs more financial help from the government. Beijing's recent cascade of monetary and fiscal easing subsidies have yet to fully reinvigorate an economy weighed down by a yearslong property-sector slump.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 November 2024

• Why Home Depot made an $18.25 billion investment on the real estate professionals business. The retailer announced it was acquiring SRS Distribution, a company that sells supplies to roofing, pool and landscaping professionals, for $18.25 billion in March and closed the deal in June.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 15 November 2024

• The New York City Council approves a law shifting broker fees to landlords. The City Council approved a bill on Wednesday that would curb a loathed New York City real estate practice: making renters pay thousands of dollars in broker fees.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 November 2024

• Sace, the state insurance and financial group of Italy, will grant Saudi Arabia $3 billion in loan guarantees to help the kingdom develop Neom, a sprawling futuristic megacity. Insurer and export credit agency Sace agreed on 80% guarantees for loans from international banks backing Neom. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government is looking to parlay its support for Neom into closer ties with the Gulf nation, and believes the loan deal could open opportunities for Italian infrastructure, construction and transportation groups. A risky investment by Italy, given that he project has faced funding cutbacks as Saudi Arabia grapples with budget deficits, and Bloomberg reported earlier that the kingdom was on the lookout for new forms of cash.
  - Bloomberg, 13 November 2024

• Coffee shops are replacing the office for independent workers, but being a 'third place' can be a 'third rail'. Independent cafe owners are not profiting much and even Starbucks is struggling to adapt, even with paid memberships.
  - Sherwood News, 13 November 2024

• $27,000,000 - Black and Latino families who were pushed out of a Palm Springs neighborhood by white Christian politicians in the 1960s reached a $27 million tentative settlement agreement with the city that will largely go toward increasing housing access
  - Associated Press, 13 November 2024

• The economic downturn in Zhōngguó has not been kind to the ultrarich who made their wealth on its rise. In their haste to cough up cash, the luxury property market in Hong Konh has had some fire sales.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 November 2024

• Foreclosures in Zhōngguó soar, threatening to sharply reduce profits at banks. When the housing market was flying high, mortgage defaults were almost nonexistent. But now the legal system is struggling to keep up with evictions.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 November 2024

• Why are cities still spending big on convention centers? Cities are spending more than ever to land the biggest events, but companies have long pulled back on spending for annual conferences and attendance has dwindled.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 November 2024

• The CEO of Neom, the futuristic city in Saudi Arabia, abruptly leaves the project. ongtime CEO Nadhmi al-Nasr left Neom, Saudi Arabia's marquee development, which has been plagued by delays, cost overruns and staff turnover.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 November 2024

• Real-estate scions are breaking a cardinal rule: never sell. The office-market downturn is forcing some of New York City's multigenerational family owners to sell core properties.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 November 2024

• The next massive volcano eruption will cause climate chaos -- and most countries are not prepared. Volcanic activity will be experienced differently in a world suffering from global heating. If a massive volcano explosion happens in the next 5 years, the costs would be colossal. In an extreme scenario, the economic impacts would cost more than US$3.6 trillion in the first year and $1.2 trillion more over subsequent years, owing to the effects of extreme weather, reduced crop yields and food instability.
  - Nature, 12 November 2024

• Plummeting home prices in Florida haven't been this bad since 2011. A mix of problems are pressuring the market, including increased housing supply, skyrocketing insurance premiums and accelerated construction in recent years.
  - New York Post, 12 November 2024

• Nihon's SoftBank returns to profit after gains at Vision Fund and other investments. SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications. The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank's investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
  - Associated Press, 12 November 2024

• Mortgage rates fell, then rose. What comes next? Many would-be home buyers are still hoping for mortgage rates to come down as the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates. How much they will fall is unclear.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 November 2024

• Home Depot's quarterly sales rose more than 6% year over year, as it folded in a newly acquired business and hurricane-related repairs and better weather in many parts of the country boosted demand for home improvement supplies. The retailer also raised its full-year outlook to reflect its better-than-expected results. But the CEO said consumers are still deferring purchases as they wait for lower mortgage rates and borrowing costs and express caution about the economy.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 12 November 2024

• Home Depot lifts full-year outlook after third-quarter sales rise. The home-improvement retailer raised its guidance following strong third-quarter sales as demand rose for grills and paint. Hurricane preparations in the Southeast also provided an increase in sales.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 November 2024

• Why aren't empty office buildings be used for housing, especially for homeless people living on the streets? Because of a silly local rule that requires that apartment windows can be opened.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 November 2024

• An estimate of the total cost of damage from climate-related extreme weather events globally was approximately $2 trillion between 2014 and 2023, extreme weather events caused by global heating due to burning of fossil fuels that profits the socialist fossil fuel industry.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 10 November 2024

• The environment of the Yellowstone National Park is disappearing to real estate development. The television show, "Yellowstone", may be partly to blame. Development has brought more fences, roads and traffic, the latter compounded by spiking park visitation. Homes with garbage and bird feeders can attract grizzly bears, causing conflicts and bear deaths.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 November 2024

• Growing food instead of lawns in front yards. Front yards transformed to tiny crop farms in Los Angeles provide vegetables to dozens of families and use a fraction of the water needed by grass.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 November 2024

• Opendoor, a real estate tech company headquartered in San Francisco, announced Thursday that it will fire 300 people. The company fired 550 people in November 2022, and 560 more in April 2023. Still, the firm lost $278 million from January through September of 2024. When Opendoor went public, its stock surged and the company hit an $18 billion valuation. Almost four years later, the real estate firm is now worth about $1.3 billion and Has not turned a profit.
  - SF Gate, 08 November 2024

• Freshworks, a San Mateo tech company that makes sales and customer support software for businesses, is firing 660 people. It will make more use of non-paid AI to replace paid humans. Despite needing money by firing people, the company just authorized $400 million in share buybacks. The CEO of Zoho alluded to this financial disaster, saying that firing people "destroys morale" and that "shareholders should come last".
  - SF Gate, 08 November 2024

• Zhōngguó disappoints with the latest "bare minimum" socialist stimulus package, as it waits for Trump's taxes/tariffs
  - Zero Hedge, 08 November 2024

• Zhōngguó announces $1.4 trillion package over five years to help reduce the 'hidden' debt of local governments. The debt swap program, however, fell short of many investors' expectations for more direct fiscal support. The new debt measures would alleviate pressure on local authorities and free up funds for supporting economic growth.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 08 November 2024

• Zhōngguó announces $1.4 trillion package over five years to help reduce the 'hidden' debt of local governments. The debt swap program, however, fell short of many investors' expectations for more direct fiscal support. The new debt measures would alleviate pressure on local authorities and free up funds for supporting economic growth.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 November 2024

• If the Fed is reducing interest rates, why aren't mortgage rates falling? Consumer borrowing costs have not tracked the central bank since it cut rates by 0.5% in September.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 November 2024

• Florida now has 4 of the top 10 American cities where home prices are plummeting the most. However, in cities such as Miami, median list prices are still 50% higher than before the pandemic.
  - MoneyWise, 07 November 2024

• New data centers in Malaysia create thousands of jobs, though ultimately destroying tens of thousands of jobs, and also create worries about power shortages and water shortages for people. Data centers for companies like Google, Amazon, and Nvidia are transforming Johor state, with locals bracing for higher real estate costs and resource shortages.
  - REst of World, 06 November 2024

• The Fed's 'temporary' - NOT - mortgage-backed security experiment will last decades and be a financial disaster for taxpayers. 14 years ago, the Fed starting making huge mortgage-backed securities purchases. The purchases pushed mortgage interest rates to artificially low levels, stoked the second great house price bubble of the 21st century and made houses unaffordable for many. In addition, these mortgage-backed securities investments unintentionally caused massive Fed losses. They are costing the Fed and taxpayers billions of dollars a month and will for years to come, as there is no practical way for the Fed to reverse its very large, deeply underwater mortgage-backed securities investment. Today, these mortgage-backed securities are worth far less than the Fed paid for them. The June 30 Fed financial statement shows an unrealized market value loss of $423 billion on the Fed's mortgage-backed securities investments. This loss is nearly 10 times the Fed's financial statement reported capital of $43 billion.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 06 November 2024

• A company in the USA with investors from Zhōngguó, that owns land near military sites in the USA, successfully petitioned the USDA to change the classification of the land as owned by interests in Zhōngguó.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 November 2024

• Empty apartments in the USA are finally starting to fill up. If that demand is sustained, landlords likely will have more pricing power starting sometime next year.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 November 2024

• Weekly mortgage demand tanks 11% as interest rates surge higher. The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances -- $766,550 or less -- increased to 6.81% from 6.73%. Applications to refinance a home loan fell 19% for the week.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 06 November 2024

• Floating gardens in Mexico City have fed people for hundreds of years. Now the gardens are threatened. Gardens first built by the Aztecs hundreds of years ago, are under threat from encroaching urbanization. Low prices for farmers' produce are forcing more families to abandon the ancient practice in favor of more lucrative land uses, such as soccer fields or tourism.
  - Associated Press, 03 November 2024

• Gentrification by richer foreigners in Costa Rica, and the negative economic impact on residents of Costa Rica. Rents have doubled, and the price of gas and groceries continues to rise with no sign of leveling out. The result is that many locals are having to move because they cannot afford to live in their own neighborhoods anymore.
  - Tico Times, 02 November 2024

• "Homes are still overpriced and unaffordable", as the Fed's socialist 0.5% reduction in interest rates sparks a mortgage rate increase
  - Zero Hedge, 31 October 2024

• A Wall Street landlord bought your neighbor's house. It is a mixed blessing. The zip codes where investors own a bigger share of homes have seen higher-than-average increases in both prices and rents.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 October 2024

• Condominium sales in Florida slow as sellers flood market following new law. Many buildings are starting to show significant wear and tear, while the finances set aside for maintenance - the reserves - are proving insufficient. Condo boards are left racing to meet higher state standards for budgeting, all while insurance premiums on these structures are skyrocketing.
  - Palm Beach Post, 28 October 2024

• Since mid-2022, housing prices in the world's real estate bubble cities have sunk approximately 15% in real terms as central banks embarked on rate hikes.
  - Zero Hedge, 27 October 2024

• Bloomberg reports that Moody's downgraded San Francisco's credit rating to Aa1 from Aaa. This might trigger an avalanche of other downgrades from credit rating agencies in the weeks and or months ahead. Both S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings maintain AAA grades as of Wednseday. Analysts at Moody's explained their decision for the downgrade: "The sea change in office employment to a hybrid work model and reduction in commuting to the city's office core have led to reduced economic activity, very high vacancy rates, and depressed rents."
  - Zero Hedge, 24 October 2024

• Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Arizona Department of Water Resources have made the first move toward regulating the use of groundwater in the state's rural southeast (the Willcox Groundwater Basin in the Cochise and Graham counties) that is being rapidly being drawn down through agricultural use. In the meantime, the basin is closed to new agriculture use while the department decides whether to create the management area southeast of Tucson that would allow it to set goals for the well-being of the basin and its aquifers.
  - Associated Press, 24 October 2024

• Wells Fargo may lose up to $3 billion on its office building loans. "We have reserved for all of it, so the balance sheet is de-risked, but it's going to play out over three, four years."
  - Thomson's Reuters, 24 October 2024

• In a 'ghost' city in Malaysia, echoes of the housing crash in Zhōngguó. Forest City was an audacious $100 billion project by a top real estate developer from Zhōngguó. Today, the project is a fraction of what had been planned and the developer is bankrupt.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 24 October 2024

• Home sales in the USA on track for worst year since 1995. Existing-home sales in September fell 3.5% from a year earlier, as persistently high prices and elevated mortgage rates are keeping potential home buyers on the sidelines.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 October 2024

• Existing home sales in the USA slump to the lowest level since 2010, with the recent 0.5% reduction in interest rates not semming to help much
  - Zero Hedge, 23 October 2024

• Retail space is going fast and pushing out local shops. Small businesses struggle to compete with national chains as rents rise.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 October 2024

• Munich Re net profit misses forecast due to hurricane losses. Munich Re's third-quarter net profit missed consensus forecasts due to hurricane losses but the company said it expected to beat its full-year target.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 October 2024

• 13% of real estate agents in California had a sales transaction canceled due to not finding insurance in 2024. As climate risks grow each year in California, insurance providers are increasingly leaving the state. Fewer providers to choose from can make premiums go up, adding costly expenses to home purchases.
  - SF Gate, 23 October 2024

• As Kamala Harris courts 'Sun Belt', housing costs stand in her way. Shuttered factories and trade deals helped turn working-class Midwesterners against Democrats. Will the high cost of housing do the same in the Sun Belt?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 October 2024

• Scientists are mapping landslide risk in Alaska. But some homeowners do not want to know these risks because it could lower the values of their homes, especially for homes on hillsides prone to landslides. While separate insurance policies exist for floods and earthquakes, landslide coverage is even harder to afford and nearly impossible to find. Experts say that is largely because the risk is so difficult to predict and the marketplace of people requesting the insurance is so small.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 October 2024

• Can a $350 million plan transform 5th Avenue into a grand boulevard? New York City officials and business leaders plan to expand sidewalks, add seating areas and trees and remove two car lanes to make the renowned avenue more pedestrian friendly.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 October 2024

• The economy of Zhōngguó continued to grow at a lackluster pace over the summer, according to data released on Friday, underscoring the urgency of the recent attempts by the government to bolster growth. The central bank has cut interest rates and minimum down payments for mortgages. The finance ministry promised the sale of more bonds to raise money for local governments to pay municipal salaries and buy vacant apartments for conversion into affordable housing.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 October 2024

• Costco is downstairs and the living is easy. The discounter will anchor 800 apartments. The chain signed onto its first residential mixed-use building in Los Angeles, signaling a potential shift in its real estate strategy.
  - Barron's, 19 October 2024

• Housing starts and building permits in the USA plunge in September. So, The Fed cuts short-term rates... mortgage-rates rise... and builders slow their building plans. That is not how it is supposed to work!
  - Zero Hedge, 18 October 2024

• Home prices in Zhōngguó decline the most since 2015, despite efforts to revive market. New home prices in September fell 6.1 per cent year on year in 70 mainland cities, widening from a 5.7 per cent slump in August.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 18 October 2024

• NFL stadiums could experience $11 billion in climate-related losses by 2050, a new report finds. Stadiums near the water and could see insurance premiums rise and repair costs soar as weather-related losses hit.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 17 October 2024

• Walmart has begun selling tiny homes, months after Amazon offered the unusually stylish pop-up abodes. The "expandable prefab house" from Chery Industrial will cost you $15,900 for the 19-by-20-foot option.
  - Jiaravanon's Fortune, 17 October 2024

• Storms be damned, as people in Florida keep building in high-risk areas. Nearly 300,000 new properties nationwide have been built in flood-prone areas since 2019.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 October 2024

• Homeowners in Florida fear soaring insurance cost after hurricanes. Average homeowner premiums in Florida surged nearly 60% between 2019 and 2023.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 17 October 2024

• Stocks in Zhōngguó decline after the round of property stimulus is a dud
  - Zero Hedge, 17 October 2024

• Zhōngguó will win the "tough battle" to preserve the real estate sector of its economy, the minister of housing predicts, by expanding its stimulus to 4 trillion yuan (about $500 billion)
  - Bloomberg, 17 October 2024

• The Small Business Administration's disaster assistance loan program is out of money after hurricanes Helene and Milton struck parts of the United States, the agency has announced. Through its loan program, homeowners can receive up to $500,000 to replace or repair their primary residence, while businesses and private nonprofit organizations can get up to $2 million to cover disaster-related physical damage and economic injuries that are not fully covered by insurance.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 October 2024

• The Small Business Administration's disaster assistance loan program is out of money after hurricanes Helene and Milton struck parts of the United States, the agency has announced. Through its loan program, homeowners can receive up to $500,000 to replace or repair their primary residence, while businesses and private nonprofit organizations can get up to $2 million to cover disaster-related physical damage and economic injuries that are not fully covered by insurance.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 October 2024

• Babcock Ranch, a climate resistant community passed two hurricane tests. On the west coast of Florida, a town built to weather hurricanes hosted more than 2,000 people during Hurricane Milton.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 October 2024

• High home prices force builders to offer mortgage buydowns -- and more. Home builders might have to offer further price reductions, in addition to continuing mortgage rate buydowns.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 October 2024

• $1,900,000 - The Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau penalized Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation for alleged redlining in Black neighborhoods in Birmingham, Alabama, the agencies said on Tuesday, which the company denies. The mortgage lender will pay a $1.9 million penalty and provide $7 million in loan subsidies as a result, the CFPB said in a statement.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 15 October 2024

• How climate disasters are making mobile homes a huge risk. Millions of Americans (6% of homes), many poor and vulnerable, live in mobile and manufactured homes. When catastrophe strikes, they are often on their own with less insurance.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 October 2024

• Dirty money (owned by criminals and corrupt politicians): the little-known factor driving up the cost of housing in the USA. There has been an enormous influx of dirty money from overseas into high-end residential properties in major cities like New York, Los Angeles and Miami. Some of this money comes from Africa, which has lost more than $600 billion to illicit capital flight since the turn of the century. More comes from Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
  - Politico, 14 October 2024

• As hurricanes strike, insurance costs soar for commercial real estate. Struggling landlords and developers are seeking leeway on coverage from their lenders - mostly without success. The insurance brokerage Marsh McLennan estimated that premiums on commercial properties rose an average of 11 percent across the country last year but as much as 50 percent in storm-vulnerable places like the Gulf Coast and California. This year, premiums may have doubled in some of those places, the brokerage said. For apartment buildings, insurance costs now account for 8 percent of operating expenses, twice what they did about five years ago.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 October 2024

• Hurricanes amplify the insurance crisis in riskiest areas. After Helene and Milton (estimated damages are over $200 billion), some small Florida insurance companies risk bankruptcy. Larger insurance companies will be in the hot seat with lawmakers and consumer groups. Since 2021, nine property and casualty insurers have gone bankrupt in Florida. The socialist National Flood Insurance Program is $20 billion in debt.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 October 2024

• People moved to Florida for a slice of paradise. Now they are packing their bags. Hurricanes have driven up the cost - and headaches - of living in the Sunshine State. Some Floridians are reaching their breaking point.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 October 2024

• Stock prices of insurance companies aren't changing much as the losses are manageable from this season's hurricanes. Share prices of insurers bounced back when Hurricane Milton caused less damage than forecast. Here is how invest in these companies now.
  - Barron's, 11 October 2024

• Real estate pro Ivy Zelman is bullish on housing stocks. "What economists don't appreciate is that turnover is extremely depressed not because there is a lack of demand but because of the lack of supply."
  - Barron's, 11 October 2024

• The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, continues to earn his bribes/lobbying dollars by denying that global heating is fueling stronger hurricanes that repeatedly destroy Florida, completely contradicting earth scientists. DeSantis previously voiced skepticism about climate change and signed legislation earlier this year to remove climate goals from state statutes.
  - Politico, 10 October 2024

• Few states elect their insurance commissioners. But in North Carolina, a proposed 42 percent rate hike and Hurricane Helene have raised the stakes in the upcoming election.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 October 2024

• Analysts at Morningstar DBRS forecast insured losses from Milton in the range of $60-$100 billion if the hurricane directly hits the Tampa metro area. A $100 billion loss would put Milton on par with the 2005 storm called Katrina.
  - Zero Hedge, 09 October 2024

• Just how doomed is home insurance? Hurricanes like Milton and Helene are making it harder than ever to insure your home. Most banks will not offer a mortgage without homeowners insurance, and letting a policy lapse can lead to foreclosure. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), a federal program that provides flood coverage to 4.7 million policyholders, is more than $20 billion in debt to the US Treasury accruing $1.7 million in interest daily. In September, Congress reauthorized the program for a few months. The next funding deadline is December 20, 2024. If authorization lapses, the NFIP would stop selling and renewing flood insurance for millions of people. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have come home to a breakup letter from their private insurers, canceling their coverage. Others cannot find any company that will protect their home, leaving expensive, state-run insurers of last resort as their only option. Some private insurance companies have entirely pulled out of states like California, Florida, and Louisiana.
  - Vox, 09 October 2024

• Hurricane Milton threatens to swamp Florida's troubled property-insurance market, potentially pushing prices higher and threatening coverage in a storm-prone region that already has the highest insurance costs in the nation. Some 41 Florida insurers have declared bankruptcy or otherwise failed since 2003, while only 37 have failed in the rest of the country over that time period.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 09 October 2024

• $52,000,000 - Marriott agrees to pay a $52 million penalty to 49 states and the District of Columbia to resolve the harm to its customers from three large data breaches, which took place from 2014 to 2020, affected more than 344 million customers worldwide
  - Thomson's Reuters, 09 October 2024

• Investors who bought 'catastrophe' bonds are preparing for huge losses due to Hurricane Milton's direct path over heavily-populated Tampa, Florida
  - Bloomberg, 08 October 2024

• The great migration to global-warming-denying Florida is coming undone. A surplus of housing inventory and dwindling buyer interest are slowing sales and keeping homes on the market longer. Hurricanes and extreme weather are making it worse.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 October 2024

• Property and casualty insurance stocks in the USA plummeted on Monday after Hurricane Milton intensified into a category 4 storm on its path towards Florida's western coast, marking yet another costly disaster for the industry to cover this year. The S&P Insurance Select Industry (.SPSIINS) index was last down 2.7% on Monday. Heritage Insurance (HRTG.N), which has a big footprint in the state, was last down 26%. Universal Insurance (UVE.N), and HCI Group (HCI.N), fell 15% and 16%, respectively. Sector bellwether Travelers Companies (TRV.N) was last down 3.5%, while Allstate (ALL.N) and Assurant (AIZ.N), declined 4% each.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 07 October 2024

• Homeowners are rushing to file insurance claims after Hurricane Helene left a trail of destruction across six states. Many of them will likely be able to buy full coverage. Property insurers in recent years have hollowed out coverage and sharply increased rates to compensate for steep underwriting losses driven by worsening natural disasters caused by global heating due to fossil fuel use.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 October 2024

• Mortgage rates jumped by more than 0.25 percent on Friday after a government report showed that the labor market continued to remain strong. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate jumped 27 points from 6.26 percent to 6.53 percent on Friday, according to data from the Mortgage News Daily (MND) mortgage rate index that is updated on a daily basis. This is one of the biggest single-day rate increases MND has ever tracked.
  - Zero Hedge, 06 October 2024

• The Federal Reserve cut interest rates, then standard 30-year mortgage rates went up. It is a warning that lower interest rates in the long term are not a foregone conclusion.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 October 2024

• People in California will pay more for earthquake coverage in 2025, as the California Earthquake Authority - a not-for-profit organization funded by insurance companies and managed by the state - is raising rates by an average of 6.8 percent in January. Cited as reasons for the spike are inflation, higher construction costs, and the price of reinsurance - coverage that insurers purchase to help pay claims. About 10 percent of Californians carry insurance to cover damage.
  - Zero Hedge, 04 October 2024

• Global heating denying Republican politicians in North Carolina rejected new standards to make homes less vulnerable to hurricanes and other disasters. The massive destruction caused by the recent Hurricane Helene proved the idiocy of this denial and rejection. Over the past 15 years, North Carolina lawmakers have rejected limits on construction on steep slopes, which might have reduced the number of homes lost to landslides; blocked a rule requiring homes to be elevated above the height of an expected flood; weakened protections for wetlands, increasing the risk of dangerous storm water runoff; and slowed the adoption of updated building codes, making it harder for the state to qualify for federal climate-resilience grants. Those decisions reflect the bribes influence of home building industry in North Carolina.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 October 2024

• After Hurricane Helene, lawyers gear up for battles over who should pay. As storms intensify, so do the legal clashes with insurance companies, aid agencies and others over compensation, rebuilding and even scams.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 October 2024

• Research on hundreds of tropical storms finds that mortality keeps rising for more than a decade afterward. Looking at 501 tropical storms from 1930 to 2015, researchers found that the average tropical storm resulted in an additional 7,000 to 11,000 deaths over the 15 years that followed. Overall during the study period, tropical storms killed more people than automobile crashes, infectious diseases and combat for soldiers.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 October 2024

• The governor of North Carolina said that "hundreds of roads" were destroyed and that entire communities were "wiped off the map" because of storm Helene last week and over the weekend. Tracking website PowerOutage.us shows that nearly 1 million people were without power in South Carolina and North Carolina. More than 450,000 were without power in Georgia, 73,000 lacked power in Virginia, and 64,000 had no power in Florida as of the morning of October 1st.
  - Zero Hedge, 02 October 2024

• An apocalypse hits the electric grids in the Carolinas: 360 substations down, power restoration could take "months"
  - Zero Hedge, 02 October 2024

• The housing surplus in Zhōngguó 'collides' with its shrinking population. Many cities are stuck with empty homes that they will likely never fill, adding to the economic woes of Zhōngguó.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 October 2024

• In a town in Florida ravaged by storms, homeowners all want to sell. Ballooning home insurance costs and the perennial threat of violent storms hit the Tampa Bay housing market hard.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 October 2024

• That luxury home comes with an ocean view -- and surging insurance costs. A lot of high-end real estate is in parts of the USA that have become hotbeds for climate disasters in recent years.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 October 2024

• The house-price supercycle is just getting going. Why property prices could keep rising for years.
  - Economist, 01 October 2024

• Housing starts are tumbling as completions soar, it is very recessionary. The discrepancy between housing starts and completions is the largest since 1980.
  - Zero Hedge, 01 October 2024

• Mooresville, a wealthy town in North Carolina, worries that there is danger lurking under its grass lawns. For decades, utilities across the nation sold waste coal ash to real estate developers. The EPA now warns it poses a cancer risk.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 October 2024

• When Hurricane Helene hit, this disaster-proof neighborhood in Cortez, Florida, kept their lights on. Housing designed for strong hurricanes, and secure solar panels on the roof, proved themselves during the hurricane.
  - Fast Company, 30 September 2024

• The socialist stimulus onslaught continues in Zhōngguó as the State Council calls for faster implementation of easing measures
  - Zero Hedge, 30 September 2024

• Zhōngguó to allow home buyers to refinance mortgages in latest easing move. The move is the latest in a weeklong burst of easing measures aimed at stimulating s moribund property market.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 September 2024

• Will the surprise stimulus plan launched by Zhōngguó work? Getting out of the deflationary hole that Zhōngguó has fallen into is vital, and in the short run all stimulus will help. But for the long term, ZHōngguó needs to stop digging and start consuming.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 September 2024

• Chicago, the third-biggest city in the USA, is on the verge of losing its only intercity bus terminal, jeopardizing access for many low-income, elderly and minority travelers with few other transportation options. It is part of a nationwide trend that disporportionately hurts minority Americans. Greyhound, owned by German company Flix Mobility (which also owns FlixBus), has sold its terminals to investors for lucrative redevelopment in recent years, including dozens to investment firm Alden Global Capital.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 29 September 2024

• Global-warming-aggravated Hurricane Helene to cause from $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage in southern states
  - Zero Hedge, 29 September 2024

• Sorry, your insurance bill probably is not coming down much. Here is why. Both presidential candidates have talked about the rising cost of insurance in the USA. But the factors that make cars and homes more expensive to insure are hard to control -- especially all at once.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 September 2024

• As Hurricane Helene powers through Florida this week, a lot of damage is being done. But insurance companies are better prepared this year to handle the claims over those losses, thanks to higher premiums, strong investment returns, and relatively benign recent weather. The average home-insurance rate in Florida increased 42% last year to over $6,000 a year. And thanks to the mild hurricane season last year, most of that money has turned into profits.
  - Barron's, 27 September 2024

• Zhōngguó's mortgage cut still insufficient to move the needle, boost spending by homeowners. A set of policy and interest rate changes were unveiled on Tuesday as policymakers sought to revive the world's second-largest economy.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 27 September 2024

• A study finds that global heating and climate change doubled likelihood of recent floods in Europe. Storm Boris dumped record amounts of rain over Central and Eastern Europe this month. A new study found global heating and climate change made the deluge more likely.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 September 2024

• Many cities and counties in the USA are selling bonds to cover costs from storms and drought caused by global heating, which many of these Republican states deny is happening .
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 September 2024

• Pending home sales limp off all-time record lows in August in the USA -- "... contract signings remain near cyclical lows even as home prices keep marching to new record highs"
  - Zero Hedge, 26 September 2024

• In global heating denying Florida, Hurricane Helen becomes a "nightmare" storm with "unsurvivable" storm surge ahead of landfall in Florida, having gained much destructive power in the ever-warming Gulf of Mexico waters
  - Zero Hedge, 26 September 2024

• The investment fund of Jared Kushner, Affinity Partners, has reaped over $100 millions in fees, but so far returned no profits to his investors. The son-in-law of Trump has said he has intentionally moved slowly to invest the money of investors, which came primarily from the Islamic world - the investment funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Investments? Or indirect bribes to Trump and his family?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 September 2024

• A homeowner in Florida was dropped by his insurer over drone images of his roof, with no in-person human inspection. "Policyholders in Florida have no protection from any predatory, arbitrary or capricious decisions of insurance companies."
  - MoneyWise, 25 September 2024

• Home prices set to soar over 10% amid an 'explosion' in mortgage refinancing after the Fed lowered interest rates (pushing up inflation that was 'down' enough for the Fed to cut rates)
  - Zero Hedge, 25 September 2024

• Despite declining mortgage interest rates, new home sales in the USA dropped in August
  - Zero Hedge, 25 September 2024

• Argentina scrapped its rent controls. Now the market is thriving. Landlords in Buenos Aires are rushing to put properties back on the market, and many renters are getting better deals after the new president, Milei, scrapped rental laws, along with most government price controls.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 September 2024

• $48,000,000 - Invitation Homes, one of the largest owners of single-family homes in the USA, to settle allegations of hidden costs charged to renters. Invitation Homes agrees to pay $48 million to refund consumers.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 September 2024

• Home prices in the USA hit new record high, but YoY appreciation slows significantly. For the fourth month in a row, home price annual appreciation slowed in July.
  - Zero Hedge, 24 September 2024

• Neither Kamala Harris nor Trump can make housing more affordable. The rise in mortgage rates, inflation cause by federal spending, and a thicket of state and local construction laws are little controlable by the president of the USA.
  - The Hill, 24 September 2024

• Canada and Europe dominate the foreign ownership of farmland in the USA, 50 times more land than owned by interests in Zhōngguó
  - Zero Hedge, 24 September 2024

• The interest rate reduction of 0.5% will not save these real-estate owners. Relief from lower interest rates is coming too late for many highly indebted commercial-property investors.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 September 2024

• Housing asset values supported the consumer economy in Zhōngguó but prices have collapsed. The latest month: housing values down 7% year-to-year. The consumer in Zhōngguó won't spend until housing prices stabilize. The housing bubble must be reinflated.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 September 2024

• After spending $1.9 billion to acquire the Motel 6 hotel chain, and earning $1 billion in profits (net cost $900 million), Blackstone sells the hotel chain to a global travel company, Oyo, for $525 million
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 21 September 2024

• The Motel 6 hotel chain is sold to Oyo, a giant hotel chain based in Bharat. Blackstone agrees to sell one of the USA's most recognizable lodging chains for $525 million.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 September 2024

• $13,000,000 - Jason Adler, supposedly a rich hedge fund manager, is sued by his mother for $13,000,000 - "the world's worst son" - after he defaulted on a $13 million mortgage he took out in 2016 against his late father's swanky townhouse on New York's Upper East Side. In a related case, Austrian billionaire Harald McPike claims Ader scammed him out of $25 million in a 2021 agreement to back a $2.6 billion bid to buy the largest casino in the Philippines.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 20 September 2024

• Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe for global sea level rise. Thwaites holds enough water to increase sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts like a cork, holding back the vast Antarctic ice sheet, its collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise, devastating coastal communities from Miami and London to Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 September 2024

• Existing home sales in the USA decline to near 14-year lows in August
  - Zero Hedge, 19 September 2024

• Homes in the mountain towns of California are too risky for insurers, but residents want to remain in these danger zones. In the San Bernardino Mountains, another wildfire has forced residents to flee, the latest reminder that they must accept the risks of global heating (i.e., no insurance) if they want to remain.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 September 2024

• Combining solar power with farming is getting easier. Developers are wary of added costs. Agrivoltaics may help farms use less water and protect fruit from frost, but many U.S. farmers can still make more money renting their land to developers.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 September 2024

• The Federal Reserves reduces interest rates by 0.5%, despite stocks and home prices being at record highs, with the result that stock prices and home prices will go even higher
  - Zero Hedge, 18 September 2024

• The Fed announces that it will lower interest rates by another 0.5% before the end of 2024
  - Comcast's CNBC, 18 September 2024

• The Federal Reserves reduces interest rates by 0.5%, despite stocks and home prices being at record highs, with the result that stock prices and home prices will go even higher
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 September 2024

• There is no doubt that the Federal Reserve is driving financial markets right now
  - Zero Hedge, 18 September 2024

• Housing starts and permits surged in August as rate-cut euphoria re-emerged
  - Zero Hedge, 18 September 2024

• Why the expected interest rate cut by the Fed will not solve the housing wealth gap. With home prices near record highs and the cost of home insurance and property taxes rising, affordability remains an issue.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 18 September 2024

• Junk fees charged by hotels and airlines are easier to detect -- and you will keep paying. It is becoming more normal for travelers to know upfront all costs associated with overnight stays at hotels, and with airplane tickets.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 18 September 2024

• When property investors want out, these bargain hunters rush in. Investment firms are raising record sums for real estate secondary funds that cut private deals to buy assets from investors who cannot otherwise exit.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 September 2024

• Many people in California are losing the ability to buy insurance for their homes. Insurance carriers are canceling policies because of the difficulty of raising premiums and increased costs due to environmental damages
  - Zero Hedge, 15 September 2024

• Home sales in flood zones are booming. Here is why buyers take the risk. New Yorkers are spending billions on houses in flood-prone areas despite growing awareness of the effects of climate change.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 September 2024

• Home prices in August in Zhōngguó decline at the fastest pace in 9 years, as small cities bear brunt. The smallest cities such as Yangzhou, Huizhou and Dali posted the biggest drops, with their losses widening from July and June.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 14 September 2024

• The housing crisis in the USA is not going away -- even with rate cuts and help from Washignton. Interet rate cuts and socialist subsidies from Washington may help, but homeownership is likely to remain out of reach for millions of Americans. What is ahead for buyers and builders.
  - Barron's, 14 September 2024

• REITs are beating the market. 10 investments with juicy yields. Quality REITs should hold up well as the economy slows down. Here are 10 that you should seriously consider.
  - Barron's, 14 September 2024

• $62,200,000 - Zhōngguó imposes a penalty of $62.2 million on PwC (PricewaterhouseCooper), and bans it for six months from undertaking auditing for clients, for its failures in checking the books of bankrupt developer Zhōngguó Evergrande Group.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 13 September 2024

• Mortgage rates in the USA continue to fall. The average rate on 30-year mortgages declined to 6.2 percent this week, the lowest point since early 2023.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 September 2024

• Neom City, the world's biggest construction project, is a magnet for Islamic executives committing crimes for profit. The Neom project in Islamic Saudi Arabia is contending with corruption, worker deaths, racism and misogyny.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 September 2024

• Scientists discover an amazing practical use for leftover coffee grounds - producing a concrete that is 30 percent stronger by processing and adding charred coffee grounds to the concrete mix. Every year the world produces a staggering 10 billion kilograms (22 billion pounds) of coffee waste globally. Most ends up in landfills. "The disposal of organic waste poses an environmental challenge as it emits large amounts of greenhouse gases including methane and carbon dioxide, which contribute to global heating and climate change."
  - Science Alert, 11 September 2024

• Core inflation comes in hotter than expected as shelter costs unexpectedly rise. One week from today, the Fed will reduce interest rates by 0.25%, sparking the next inflationary deluge.
  - Zero Hedge, 11 September 2024

• Inflation extends cooling streak to hit 2.5% in August. Inflation eased to new three-year lows, teeing up the Fed to begin gradually reducing interest rates at a meeting next week.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 September 2024

• Inflation cooled in August, keeping the Fed poised to cut interest rates. Consumer Price Index inflation continued to cool, reaching a new three-year low. But signs of stubbornness lingered under the surface.
  - New York Time, 11 September 2024

• Indonesia to ban construction of hotels, villas in Bali to tackle overdevelopment. Moratorium could last for up to 10 years as government aims to improve quality of tourism and preserve agricultural land.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 10 September 2024

• The condo market in Florida looks shaky. Could the bottom fall out? Overall, the median sales price of a condo in the state fell 1.3% in July, the latest figures available showed, marking the first year-over-year decline going back to at least July 2020. That is a lot less than the double-digit annual price gains racked up until November 2022, and the decline continues downward as inventory piles up and demand wanes.
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 08 September 2024

• Shocked by extreme storms caused by global heating, a fishing town in Maine fights to save its waterfront. After two devastating storms hit Stonington in January, plans are multiplying to raise and fortify wharves, roads and buildings. But will that be enough?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 September 2024

• Are local governments in Zhōngguó using unsustainable tactics to repay debt? From "smashing pots" to special bonds, regional officials are running out of ways to squeeze businesses for more money, experts say.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 07 September 2024

• Landslides are destroying multimillion-dollar homes in California, and they are getting worse. Rancho Palos Verdes is one of the cities with a lot of damage.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 07 September 2024

• The decision of Thailand to continue with a land bridge project this week despite political and environmental concerns underscores an urgency by the Southeast Asian nation to propel economic growth and shore up the popularity of the government, according to observers. Experts say the focus on the land bridge reflects the ruling Shinawatra family's "penchant for grandiose infrastructure project", but the move also raises questions about the long-term feasibility of the project. The 90km (56-mile) bridge is said to offer a Panama Canal-like short cut for Asian marine shipping by linking the Andaman Sea with the Gulf of Thailand, and is expected to cost at least US$28.6 billion.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 06 September 2024

• Flooding is getting worse -- and fewer homeowners have insurance. Swaths of the USA that have never flooded before are now in danger of being swamped, but the risk is not covered by standard home-insurance policies.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 September 2024

• The rent control market failure in the Netherlands. The radical expansion of rent control by the government of the Netherlands is displacing tenants and aggravating a preexisting housing shortage.
  - Reason, 05 September 2024

• Two years after deadly floods damage Pakistan, it is happening again. Millions of people still recovering from the devastation of 2022 are bracing for the possibility of losing what they have rebuilt.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 September 2024

• Why it is so hard for Zhōngguó to fix its ailing economy. A real estate collapse has made consumers cautious and businesses wary, as Zhōngguó confronts a crisis unlike any other since it opened its economy to the world.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 September 2024

• While the number of construction job openings are down 50% in just 6 months, the number of residential building construction jobs is the highest on record. Are the number of existing construction jobs about to crash to maintain the correlation?
  - Zero Hedge, 04 September 2024

• Mortgage refinance demand is 94% higher than a year ago, as interest rates fall again in the USA. The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($766,550 or less) decreased to 6.43% from 6.44%.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 04 September 2024

• Global heating can cause bridges to "fall apart like tinkertoys", experts say. Extreme heat and flooding are accelerating the deterioration of bridges, engineers say, posing a quiet but growing threat.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 September 2024

• A land deal for the Trump family in Albania upsets many people in Albania. Local landowners are questioning how Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, supporters of Trump, were able to acquire legal development rights for two luxury hotels on hot coastal property. The family that has owned the land for generations says that part of this property was corruptly seized from them after the end of Communist rule in 1991. An Albanian developer, Evi Kokalari-Angelakis, said in an interview that the Albanian government has effectively ignored her proposal to rebuild the site because it wants to impress Trump, in case he is re-elected and can help Albania with its foreign policy goals.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 September 2024

• Apartment construction is slowing, and investors are betting on higher rents. The rise in interest rates pushed construction-loan costs up and property values down.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 04 September 2024

• This once hot real-estate type is now being offered as office space. Developers thought the pandemic era's supercharged demand for life-science properties was sustainable, but they were wrong.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 04 September 2024

• The down payments of homebuyers hit a "record high", surging nearly 15 percent in a year to 18.6 percent of the property price
  - Zero Hedge, 03 September 2024

• Why thousands of hotel workers are on strike. Pandemic-era cuts to staffing and services like daily housekeeping and room service have persisted, which unions say has resulted in lower incomes and heavier workloads for remaining workers.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 September 2024

• As the number of fees rise for booking lodging using Airbnb, more and more consumers are questioning whether or not it just makes sense to book a hotel. After all, at a hotel, you are guaranteed customer service, housekeeping and amenities. With Airbnb, those add-ons can be exactly that ... costly add-ons. Travelers have noticed a shift with Airbnb becoming more expensive than hotels and offering less value, leading to frustration over high fees and uncooperative hosts, according to travel experts.
  - Zero Hedge, 02 September 2024

• As the number of fees rise for booking lodging using Airbnb, more and more consumers are questioning whether or not it just makes sense to book a hotel. After all, at a hotel, you are guaranteed customer service, housekeeping and amenities. With Airbnb, those add-ons can be exactly that ... costly add-ons. Travelers have noticed a shift with Airbnb becoming more expensive than hotels and offering less value, leading to frustration over high fees and uncooperative hosts, according to travel experts.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 September 2024

• Troubles in the real estate market have caught the attention of Congress -- with one New York lawmaker calling it a "ticking time bomb" for banks as nearly $1 trillion in commercial real estate loans are coming due this year. Faced with vacant office buildings and a shortage of millions of homes to meet demand, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying to make it easier for developers to convert underused properties into housing.
  - Politico, 02 September 2024

• Why interest rate reductions will not fix a global housing affordability crisis. Central bankers are lowering borrowing costs, but that will not be a cure-all for a widespread lack of affordable housing. Housing supply is failing to meet demand, helping to push home prices to levels that are out of reach even for middle-income families.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 September 2024

• Hotel strikes by workers during Labor Day weekend reflect the frustrations of a workforce largely made up of women of color. The strikes targeting Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt hotels were set to last one to three days.
  - Associated Press, 01 September 2024

• Strikes start at top hotel chains in the USA as housekeepers seek higher wages and daily room cleaning work. Unionized housekeepers, however, have waged a fierce fight to restore automatic daily room cleaning at major hotel chains, saying they have been saddled with unmanageable workloads, or in many cases, fewer hours and a decline in income.
  - Yahoo News, 01 September 2024

• Strikes start at top hotel chains in the USA as housekeepers seek higher wages and daily room cleaning work. Unionized housekeepers, however, have waged a fierce fight to restore automatic daily room cleaning at major hotel chains, saying they have been saddled with unmanageable workloads, or in many cases, fewer hours and a decline in income.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 September 2024

• Homebuyers flock to city centres as pandemic-induced demand for flats close to nature wanesisland. That shift has become evident in metropolises across the UK and Australia, as well as in compact cities like Singapore and Hong Kong.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 01 September 2024

• Landlords for offices, apartment complexes and other commercial real estate have $1.5 trillion of debt due by the end of 2025, and about a quarter of that borrowing could be hard to refinance. The value of buildings has broadly dropped after higher interest rates boosted funding costs for property owners. Those lower valuations make it harder for landlords to borrow as much, forcing many property owners to raise equity capital to secure new debt.
  - Bloomberg, 31 August 2024

• Offices in Zhōngguó are now emptier than during the peak of Covid lockdowns as the economy declines
  - Zero Hedge, 30 August 2024

• SAD: the majority of people in the USA can no longer afford an average house
  - Zero Hedge, 30 August 2024

• The hotelification of offices, with signature scents and saltwater spas. Hoping to lure workers back to their desks, companies are designing 'work resorts', deluxe spaces meant to compete with the comforts and versatility of their living room.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 30 August 2024

• $34,000,000 - Brandon Miller, the high-profile criminal New York real estate developer who took his own life last month, was in even more dire financial straits than was initially revealed at the time of his death. Miller, 43, who flaunted a high-flying Hamptons lifestyle bankrolled by millions of dollars in secret debt along with his influencer wife, Candace, was nearly $34 million in the red, with just $8,000 in his bank account, TheRealDeal reports.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 30 August 2024

• $3,290,000 - Four land title companies in the District of Colombia are fined $3.29 million for operating an illegal kickback scheme. The title companies offered real estate agents "exclusive, lucrative, and discounted investment opportunities in either the companies themselves or in shell entities" in exchange for client referrals.
  - BBC, 29 August 2024

• "A sales recovery did not occur": pending home sales crash to record low in the USA. "A sales recovery did not occur in midsummer. The positive impact of job growth and higher inventory could not overcome affordability challenges and some degree of wait-and-see related to the upcoming presidential election in the USA."
  - Zero Hedge, 29 August 2024

• How California became a new center of political corruption. Across the state, local politicians engaged in what authorities called an "extraordinary" waves of corruption, unable to resist favors and bribes from land developers. Over the last 10 years, 576 public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges. A heavy concentration of power at Los Angeles City Hall, the receding presence of local news media, a population that often tunes out local politics and a growing Democratic supermajority in state government have all helped insulate officeholders from damage, political analysts said.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 August 2024

• Zhōngguó has another company in its crosshairs over its epic property bust: PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Big Four accounting firm, an auditor of choice for many real estate developers in Zhōngguó, faces blowback over the s epic housing bust.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 August 2024

• How the USA can break its addiction to highway construction. In the 1980s, an unlikely alliance slowed the construction of nature-destroying dams. We need the same for community-destroying highway projects which rarely relieve congestion.
  - Slate, 28 August 2024

• Toxic homes for sale: how the illegal marijuana industry in California ruins houses. Officials are finding houses riddled with residual nerve agent pesticides that are not in any USA chemical library.
  - Zero Hedge, 28 August 2024

• Marylanders to protest AI data center power lines as eminent domain threatens small farms
  - Zero Hedge, 28 August 2024

• Commercial real estate market challenges are more severe for older office towers in downtown metro areas than those outside city centers. The mismatch between funding needs and available credit in a high-interest-rate environment has also intensified the strain on building owners, as elevated tower vacancy rates persist across many markets due to the ongoing trend of remote work becoming the norm.
  - Zero Hedge, 28 August 2024

• Developers and landlords of subsidized housing, who cannot raise rents or charge more for starter homes, say property insurance increases could put them out of business
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 August 2024

• The state of California just passed a new law that will make illegal aliens eligible to receive as much as $150,000 in taxpayer-funded loans to purchase new homes.
  - Zero Hedge, 27 August 2024

• Home prices in the USA surged to a record high in June. Despite this, the Fed wants to reduce interest rates, which will drive up home prices even further, making it even harder for people to buy homes.
  - Zero Hedge, 27 August 2024

• If everything is so great, why are millions of people in the USA sleeping in their vehicles? The primary reason why so many people are living in their vehicles is because the cost of living has soared to unprecedented heights.
  - Zero Hedge, 27 August 2024

• Economic problems for the recreational vehicle industry, with the largest RV dealership offering 55% discounts
  - Zero Hedge, 27 August 2024

• "The ocean is overflowing." - the Secretary General of the United Nations issues a global call-for-help as new reports warn Pacific sea-level rise outstrips global average. This, as two UN reports detail how global heating is accelerating disaastrous changes to the ocean. Sea levels in the Pacific Ocean have risen at almost twice the global average over the past 30 years.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 27 August 2024

• Kyle, Texas, is one of the fastest-growing cities in the USA. But with extreme heat and limited water supplies, that is not necessarily a good thing.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 August 2024

• Cows obstruct the capital of Nigeria as global heating turned grazing lands into deserts, and real estate and industrial development leave non-industrial herders with nowhere to go
  - Associated Press, 25 August 2024

• The National Flood Insurance Program, a public insurance program sponsored by the federal government insures 4.7 million policyholders and protects more than $1.28 trillion in assets. Congress has until September 30 to reauthorize the NFIP. Without an extension, people are not going to be able to get a mortgage in any area that requires flood insurance, a man-made 'disaster'. If the NFIP experiences a lapse in its authority, it will not be able to issue new policies, including for people whose lenders require flood insurance or increase coverage on existing policies (including property owners looking to refinance existing mortgages). Sadly, there are very few private insurers that offer any type of flood insurance, in case Congress fails to do its job.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 26 August 2024

• The social recession is accelerating. Did wages rise 10-fold to match the 10-fold rise in the cost of a modest house? No! That is a social recession in a nutshell.
  - Zero Hedge, 25 August 2024

• Many 'bottom-fishers' are buying office buildings at huge discounts. A new wave of private buyers is betting that they can make money even as the national office market shrinks because of remote work.
  - Barron's, 24 August 2024

• The Justice Department has filed a civil lawsuit against the real estate company RealPage, alleging the software sold by RealPage uses landlord data to artificially inflate the price of rent across the United States by quelling competition in the market. Americans should not have to pay more in rent because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law." The software, according to the complaint, uses non-public data provided by landlords to see what competitors are charging or offering to maximize the amount landlords can charge as well as other ways they can make more money from renters.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 23 August 2024

• The Justice Department has filed a civil lawsuit against the real estate company RealPage, alleging the software sold by RealPage uses landlord data to artificially inflate the price of rent across the United States by quelling competition in the market. Americans should not have to pay more in rent because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law." The software, according to the complaint, uses non-public data provided by landlords to see what competitors are charging or offering to maximize the amount landlords can charge as well as other ways they can make more money from renters.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 August 2024

• The Justice Department has filed a civil lawsuit against the real estate company RealPage, alleging the software sold by RealPage uses landlord data to artificially inflate the price of rent across the United States by quelling competition in the market. Americans should not have to pay more in rent because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law." The software, according to the complaint, uses non-public data provided by landlords to see what competitors are charging or offering to maximize the amount landlords can charge as well as other ways they can make more money from renters.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 23 August 2024

• One million square foot office building in Center City Philadelphia appraised for 25% less than 2021
  - Zero Hedge, 22 August 2024

• Home sales in July in the USA break a four-month losing streak as supply rises nearly 20% over last year
  - Comcast's CNBC, 22 August 2024

• California wants to reward illegal aliens with zero down, no payment home loans. "Our state is already facing a housing crisis, and adding more strain through AB 1840 is not the approach."
  - Zero Hedge, 21 August 2024

• Wells Fargo is set to sell the majority of its commercial mortgage servicing business to global loan services provider Trimont, the companies said Tuesday. The move would make Trimont the largest loan servicer in the US industry, according to rankings from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Wells Fargo's deal to sell off its non-agency third-party Commercial Mortgage Servicing business comes as the banking sector in the United States faces increasing pressure due to elevated interest rates and challenges in the commercial real estate market.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 August 2024

• Lowe's reduces its full-year earnings predictions due to "challenging macroeconomic backdrop" hurting homeowners
  - Zero Hedge, 20 August 2024

• Over a million square feet of retail space is empty in vacant chain-drugstore locations across New York City - 'zombie' pharmacies. Here is why its so hard to fill these empty stores.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 August 2024

• A combination of plummeting iron ore prices and the property crisis in Zhōngguó could reduce the revenues of the government of Australia by $3 billion
  - Disney's ABC News, 18 August 2024

• Why D.R. Horton is the home builder stock to buy now. The housing market has been moribund after a post-Covid frenzy. Lower rates and demand for starter homes should provide a tailwind for the shares.
  - Barron's, 17 August 2024

• It is too early to buy distressed commercial real estate. The argument for buying distressed commercial real estate today is that interest rates are about to come down. But if interest rates come down because of a recession, then buying distressed CRE today is not a good idea. If the economy starts to slow down more meaningfully, as the consensus expects, the problems for rental housing, multifamily, and warehouses will get a lot worse.
  - Apollo Academy, 16 August 2024

• Housing starts and building permits plunged to Covid lows in July, while single-family permits fell for the sixth straight month
  - Zero Hedge, 16 August 2024

• Year-to-year home prices in Zhōngguó just plunged the most since 2015
  - Zero Hedge, 16 August 2024

• To solve its housing crisis, Britain turns to an old idea: new towns. By reviving an idea from the 1940s, the Labour Party government is hoping to overcome the development hurdles that have plagued previous efforts with a plan to build new communities.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 August 2024

• State governments in the USA need to make it easier to evict squatters - they need to make the practice a ciminal offense. Most states are reluctant to allow criminal prosecution of squatters as trespassers and prefer treating incidents as landlord and tenant disputes. Police who wish to avoid potentially violent confrontations often do not want to take direct action and instead advise property owners to seek eviction orders from judges.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 August 2024

• Coming soon to San Francisco? A viral video shows 'sub-lethal' remote-controlled paintball gun protecting a commercial building.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 August 2024

• Over 100,000 people in Los Angeles could be homeless by the 2028 Olympics. Will they have to be 'relocated' during the Olympics, and how/where?
  - Zero Hedge, 15 August 2024

• Homebuilder sentiment slumps to 2024 low, homebuyer sentiment at record low
  - Zero Hedge, 15 August 2024

• A construction boom in the USA is sending rents lower and creating perks for renters. The median asking rent prices for all bedroom counts declined in July, the first that that has occurred since 2020. The median asking rent price for a studio or one-bedroom apartment fell 0.1% to $1,498 a month; two-bedroom apartments decreased 0.3% to $1,730; and units with three bedrooms or more, were down 2.0% to $2,010.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 14 August 2024

• A federal regulator signaled it would take a tougher stance with seller-financed home sales on Tuesday, saying that they were subject to many of the same consumer protections as a home bought with a more traditional mortgage. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released an advisory opinion that put sellers on notice that it would not tolerate the predatory practices that have come to dominate the so-called contract for deed market. Contract for deeds are multiyear installment contracts in which the seller retains the title to a home until the buyer makes a final payment. These risky deals often have above-market interest rates and put the burden of repairs on the would-be buyer.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 August 2024

• Home Depot, the largest home improvement retailer in the USA, beat second-quarter earnings and sales expectations but lowered its comparable sales and profit forecasts for the year as higher interest rates "put pressure on demand"
  - Zero Hedge, 13 August 2024

• Drawn by the opportunity to invest with private equity firms, small investors rushed into real estate investment trusts. But the funds have lost some appeal as interest rates have climbed.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 August 2024

• Child care, rent, insurance: where inflation hits hardest now. Costs for child care, rent and car insurance are up. Inflation might be easing, but it does not feel that way.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 August 2024

• A Republican Representative in Congress continues efforts to prevent two Native American tribes, the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, from reclaiming title to 9500 acress of their historical lands in Oklahomaa
  - The Hill, 12 August 2024

• Biggest shakeup in a century set to hit real estate agents this week, as they no longer will be able to require homesellers to pay fixed commissions to both the buyer's and seller's agents, in the past a 6% commission
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 12 August 2024

• San Francisco is sinking in bad hotel debt. The sharp drop-off in visitors since before the pandemic is squeezing the city's hospitality sector.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 August 2024

• Habitat for Humanity helped them obtain homes. An insurance crisis may take their homes from these people. In New Orleans, low-income homeowners are at risk of losing houses built by the nonprofit as more (global heating) storms hit the city and property insurance prices soar.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 August 2024

• Do not expect a rapid decline in mortgage rates. Several market forces could keep them elevated for some time.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 10 August 2024

• Office loans are toxic, but apartment loans are in bad shape too. Distress rates are rising for a type of loan that apartment flippers feasted on during the pandemic.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 August 2024

• The rot in the commercial real estate market in one story. UBS paid $332 million for a building (the Sports Illustrated Building in New York City) in 2006, and then invested another $76 million in renovations for a total of $408 million. Then it sold the building for $8.5 million, a massive $399.5 million loss.
  - Zero Hedge, 08 August 2024

• Shares of Airbnb plunge 15% on slowing demand in the USA as the consumer downturn worsens
  - Zero Hedge, 07 August 2024

• China Evergrande aims to recover $6 billion from executives and others. The heavily indebted real estate developer in Zhōngguó said it is seeking to claw-back the money from seven individuals, including founder Hui Ka Yan, his ex-wife, a former chief executive and a former chief financial officer.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 August 2024

• Left behind in the retail real-estate comeback: department stores. Department stores are bleeding customers, and landlords no longer view them as magnets for shoppers.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 August 2024

• Weekly mortgage refinance demand in the USA soars 16% as interest rates sink to lowest level in over a year. The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($766,550 or less) decreased to 6.55% from 6.82%.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 07 August 2024

• Weekly mortgage refinance demand in the USA soars 16% as interest rates sink to lowest level in over a year. The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($766,550 or less) decreased to 6.55% from 6.82%.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 August 2024

• "I lost everything" - many residents of Sarasota, Florida, dealing with huge property damage during to rising floodwaters after Tropical Storm Debby, which dumped huge amounts of rain on northern Florida due to global heating of the oceans (which fuel storms), a global heating denied by the governor of Florida.
  - Zero Hedge, 06 August 2024

• Homeowners increasingly tap home equity lines as savings rate plummets
  - Zero Hedge, 06 August 2024

• Hotels in New York City do not need licenses. Should they? New York's hundreds of hotels are subject to less regulatory scrutiny than many other businesses. The industry is resisting City Council efforts to change that.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 August 2024

• Trump cites opportunity zones as a triumph. Their success is middling. A tax incentive, with bipartisan roots, aims to foster development in poor areas. It has fueled building, but it has not always aided local residents, only rich investors. Some people consider it an expensive boondoggle that allows wealthy investors to enjoy higher returns by financing projects that they might have backed even without an extra carrot.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 August 2024

• A mortgage alternative for lower-priced homes comes with risks. Seller-financed loans known as 'land contracts' (buyers do not obtain full ownership until the house is fully paid for) do not involve a bank and lack the consumer protections available with traditional home loans.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 August 2024

• Voters in Wisconsin seethe over out-of-control housing prices. Wisconsin had the biggest jump in home prices among presidential battleground states -- and people in Wisconsin say their frustration over finding affordable housing could determine how they vote in November.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 August 2024

• Mortgage rates plunge to 6.4%, the lowest level in more than a year, after weak employment report
  - Comcast's CNBC, 02 August 2024

• Wayfair executives warn of a slowdown in the sales of home goods that correlates with the 2008 global financial crisis
  - Zero Hedge, 02 August 2024

• A 23-floor office building in New York City just sold at a 97.5% discount, a sign of how much the Covid pandemic upended the market for office buildings in New York City.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 August 2024

• What happened to the fantasy, multi-billion dollar city to be built by R&B singer Akon in Senegal? Sapco-Senegal, the state-owned entity charged with developing Senegal's coastal and tourism areas, has given Akon formal notice to start work on his project or the government will take back 90% of the 136 acres of land granted to him. His Akoin has plummeted 98% from $0.15 to $0.003. Residents sat that they haven't een reimbursed for the land given to Akon that they relinquished to Sapco back in 2009. Questions about financing and feasibility remain unanswered and locals are wondering whether the promised benefits will ever come.
  - Bloomberg, 01 August 2024

• "We do not need more concrete": a new village in Tanzania will use a 3D printer and soil to construct buildings for its community
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 01 August 2024

• The Biden administration begins paying over 40,000 Black American farmers who faced discrimination from white officials in banks and the government. The thousands of payouts, which will total $2 billion, follow years of delays and lawsuits that frustrated struggling Black farmers. The Biden administration had wanted to pay out $4 billion until white farmers filed lawsuits against the payments.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 August 2024

• It is "absolutely stunning": a CRE analyst lists latest office tower and mall valuation collapses. "One of the largest malls in Baltimore has plunged a shocking $320M in value since 2013". "Brookfield owned Gas Company Tower in Downtown LA has plummeted over $400M in value". "Goldman Sachs and Ballast are set to surrender 82 apartment buildings (~1,200 units) in San Francisco to lender Royal Bank of Canada. They recently defaulted on loans totaling $687.5 million".
  - Zero Hedge, 30 July 2024

• Starter homes cost at least $1 million in 117 cities in California. When homes are ranked by value, those in the bottom third are considered starters. The average U.S. starter home sells for $197,000.
  - Zero Hedge, 30 July 2024

• Surge in commercial-property foreclosures suggests bottom is near. Lender portfolios of foreclosed and seized office buildings, apartments and other commercial property grew 13% in the second quarter.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 July 2024

• The share of young adults living with parents is the highest since 1940
  - Zero Hedge, 29 July 2024

• Many resourceful house-hunters are doing an end-run around high mortgage rates -- by seeking out sellers who have assumable, low-rate mortgages. Generally speaking, the only assumable loans are those backed by a federal agency such as the Veterans Affairs Department (VA) or the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). By "backed", we mean loans where the government -- acting well beyond the bounds of the Constitution -- guarantees lenders they will be made whole if the borrower defaults. Roughly 80% of outstanding VA mortgages have a sub-5% rate. Plenty are sub-3%.
  - Zero Hedge, 29 July 2024

• Insurance companies in the USA suffer the biggest losses in the 2000s due to the home insurance policies, losing $15 billion in underwriting losses in 2023
  - Thomson's Reuters, 28 July 2024

• Why Europe has become an epicenter for anti-tourism protests this summer. At the center of the protests lies the growing issue of rising rents and house prices, which has made home ownership almost impossible for some residents.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 27 July 2024

• Motels are having a new moment. What is old is new again, and the humble roadside motel that an older generation might dismiss as outmoded is appealing to a new group of younger fans attracted to hit-the-road adventures.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 July 2024

• Hotel owners and union clash over proposal to regulate nonunion hotels. The New York union says the measure would enhance safety, while hotel owners say it would destroy businesses.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 July 2024

• The housing market in Florida is seeing "nightmare scenarios" as buyers cancel purchases due to affordability concerns. Borrowing costs also remain elevated, which has helped pushed buyers away from the market.
  - Business Insider, 26 July 2024

• Unsold new homes just hit an all-time high in the USA South
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 26 July 2024

• There will be more bank failures. CRE loans in the USA are occupying a large portion of the banking sector's entire portfolio (Total Assets), standing at a significant 10%. CRE loans are also regarded as the most widely held loan type among banks, which is confirmed by the fact that the majority of banks (99%) have positive CRE loans. Basically, almost every bank in the U.S. is holding some type of CRE loan on their balance sheets. Therefore, it is no surprise that this is an area warranting close observation, especially because the risks posed by CRE exposure spread quite unevenly between large and small banks.
  - Zero Hedge, 26 July 2024

• One explanation for the global boom in use of self-storage space: "Instead of having sort of an interior office for file storage, firms moved into self-storage facilities because it was half the price or less, and they were able to use their offices in a more productive way."
  - BBC, 25 July 2024

• Real estate crisis? Small banks say their loans are fine. Community banks are big commercial real-estate lenders. But they say their loans are to sturdy local businesses, not those facing vacant office space.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 July 2024

• The downturn in housing in Florida "keeps getting more intense by the day". "With active listings skyrocketing 82% over the last year. To 10,759 homes on the market. That's the highest level of supply since at least 2017. Suggesting: home prices will be going down in Orlando. And potentially by a lot."
  - Zero Hedge, 24 July 2024

• New home sales in the USA unexpectedly tumbled in June as homebuyer confidence crashes to record low
  - Zero Hedge, 24 July 2024

• Climage change and global heating are ending the Sun Belt boom. As climate change and global heating makes warm places hotter and cold places more livable, more Americans are staying put in the North, while others are leaving the South. Christian climate deniers in the Republican Party will find it increasingly difficult to explain away rising costs related to a warming planet. Home insurance rates are rising four times as fast in states with severe weather as in the rest of the country.
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 24 July 2024

• Blackstone's mortgage REIT slashes dividend by 24% as distress piles up in CRED market
  - Zero Hedge, 24 July 2024

• The office market in Washington, DC, is in trouble - no matter who wins the presidency. The Biden administration has struggled to get members of the federal workforce back to the office on a more regular basis.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 July 2024

• Existing home sales in the USA puked (again) in July, as median prices rose once again to a new record high
  - Zero Hedge, 23 July 2024

• Landlords used software to determine rents. Then came the lawsuits. Antitrust cases contend that use of RealPage's algorithm, which lets property owners share private data, amounts to collusion.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 July 2024

• Thinking about a cruise on the Mississippi River? There is one big 'if'. Though operators are building ships, and towns are investing in landings and other infrastructure, fluctuations in the river's flow, exacerbated by climate change, are hampering sailings.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 July 2024

• The plans of rich authoritarian investors from Silicon Valley to build their own city is delayed. The East Solano Plan, a proposal for a walkable urban community in a rural corner of the San Francisco Bay Area, stoked tension, fear and mistrust among some neighbors.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 July 2024

• The plans of rich authoritarian investors from Silicon Valley to build their own city is delayed. The East Solano Plan, a proposal for a walkable urban community in a rural corner of the San Francisco Bay Area, stoked tension, fear and mistrust among some neighbors.
  - SF Gate, 24 July 2024

• Proposed rural land reform in Zhōngguó could be very profitable for farmers after bold move at third plenum. Long hindered by restrictions on profiting from sales of land on which they live, rural residents now may benefit from a "very valuable" proposal to "allow farmers to revitalise and use their legally owned homes via renting, becoming shareholders, and cooperating with others".
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 22 July 2024

• The Olympics in Paris is transforming their neighborhood, Seine-Saint-Denis. And the government is kicking them out. The Games brought billions to redevelop this Paris suburb, which has many abandoned factories and spaces like the warehouse, which have become unauthorized housing for homeless people and immigrants.. What will the thousands of homeless people who live there do?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 July 2024

• In London, a houseboat used to be the affordable option. Not anymore. With land-based home prices increasingly out of reach, more Londoners are taking to the water. But as the canals fill up, even this affordable living option is becoming less attainable.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 July 2024

• A plan by the Biden administration to limit rent increases across the USA is reigniting debate. A proposal to make tax breaks for landlords contingent on rent limits has drawn industry pushback, progressive applause and some alternative approaches.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 July 2024

• The Federal Housing Agency has not gotten its economic house in order, under both Democrats and Republicans. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has had a decades-long resistance to fighting fraud. HUD's absence from a fraud case in New York was more a result of the agency's inability to properly track rental-assistance money that, because of error or fraud, ends up in the wrong places -- what the government calls improper payments.
  - Zero Hedge, 19 July 2024

• How Forewarn, a $20/month database, is sweeping the real estate industry by giving instant access to vast amounts of homebuyer data. Forewarn allows users to gather publicly available information without having to visit courthouses and municipal offices, a process which would normally take days. Authoritarianily, Forewarns tells its customers: "Do not tell the prospect that they are not permitted or unqualified to purchase or sell property because of information you obtained from Forewarn". As Forewarn continues to penetrate the real estate industry, one of the biggest questions for the company is whether it will be able to evade scrutiny and pushback by privacy advocates who say it is essentially mass profiling renters and potential homebuyers in silence, as well as regulators who have cracked down on similar practices.
  - The Record, 18 July 2024

• Towns in the USA are rebelling against megamansions. As house sizes are exploding, communities across the country are debating limits.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 18 July 2024

• A New York City pension fund makes the rights of renters an investment priority. The fund has adopted standards aimed at encouraging the landlords it invests in to limit rent increases, and provide 30 days of notice for eviction filings. The city's four other pensions could do so as well.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 18 July 2024

• Investors such as private equity funds are not to blame for the priciest housing in history. The percentage of home sales to landlords with 1,000+ properties jumped from under 1 percent in the years leading up to the pandemic to nearly 2.5 percent by mid-2022. That is not a lot to drive housing prices up a lot. What was the cause? Ultra-low interest rates (bottoming out at 2.65 percent in January 2021) artificially engineered by the Federal Reserve combined with its gusher of capital to the real estate sector. The Fed nearly doubled its portfolio of mortgage-backed securities (MBSs). The central bank essentially printed $1.3 trillion in new dollars, directly injecting this into the real estate market. This massive increase in MBS holdings is the equivalent to $300,000 mortgages on 4.3 million homes -- a stunning number equal to the entire existing home sales market in some years. The rise in investor purchases was an effect of these Federal Reserve policies rather than a leading cause of the price surge. Government mortgage subsidies and the Federal Reserve's multi-trillion-dollar socialist injection into the mortgage market remain the primary culprits. But addressing this is far more difficult to tackle politically due to vested interests than simply misplacing the blame on investors.
  - AIER News, 17 July 2024

• Devastating, back-to-back power outages, due to hurricanes and flooding, have led some in Houston to consider whether they want to stay in the city they love.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 July 2024

• "Taylor Swift is my nemesis" - hotel prices soar due to the pop star's concert tour in Europe. Some people assume they could book a hotel at a given rate, only to find they would have to pay what sometimes equates to hundreds of dollars more per night.
  - Murdoch's MarketWatch, 16 July 2024

• With buyers wary, Argentina's zombie mortgage market has a long road to revival. Argentina's mortgage market is tiny, less than 1% of the country's GDP versus around 30% in Chile, 10-15% in Brazil and Mexico, and 15% in the U.S. Regular cycles of economic uncertainty mean borrowers - and lenders - fear the risk of long-term credit. "People buying properties in Argentina come with cash, in a backpack or a bag."
  - Thomson's Reuters, 16 July 2024

• By burning down buildings in controlled conditions in laboratories, insurers want to change how they are built. Property insurers are trying to force changes in construction standards that they say are necessary to protect against wildfires.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 July 2024

• Evictions surge in major cities in the American Sunbelt. Filings in cities including Las Vegas, Houston, and in Phoenix over the past year in a half-dozen cities are up at least 35% from pre-2020 norms.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 July 2024

• Do not expect home prices to go down anytime soon, say experts. Lack of inventory and high interest rates will continue to push home prices up into 2025, experts say.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 July 2024

• Malaysia is building malls like crazy, but shoppers are not coming and buying. Dozens of new malls are under construction in the country even as existing complexes struggle to attract customers. Many tenants of less popular malls are finding it difficult to compete amid an explosion in retail space that even the COVID-19 pandemic failed to stymie.
  - Al Jazeera, 15 July 2024

• Trillions in hidden debt drove economic growth in Zhōngguó. Now the debt threatens the future of Zhōngguó. Local governments racked up as much as $11 trillion in off-the-books debt to build industrial districts, resorts, transit systems and housing projects, including many that failed.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 July 2024

• Trillions in hidden debt drove economic growth in Zhōngguó. Now the debt threatens the future of Zhōngguó. Local governments racked up as much as $11 trillion in off-the-books debt to build industrial districts, resorts, transit systems and housing projects, including many that failed.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 July 2024

• GDP growth in Zhōngguó unexpectedly tumbles as new home prices plunge most in 9 years
  - Zero Hedge, 14 July 2024

• When rents rise, so does homelessness
  - Zero Hedge, 13 July 2024

• Insurance premiums for homes in the USA are wildly distorted. Climate change is driving rates higher, but not always in areas with the greatest risk. Higher premiums are being charged in states where regulators apply less scrutiny to requests for rate increases, compared with states where officials question the justifications offered by companies and try to keep rates low, the research shows.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 July 2024

• Opinion: we built our world for a climate that no longer exists. Our power grids, our infrastructure, are built for the cooler climates of yesterday.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 12 July 2024

• Home insurance premiums are surging -- and states are allowing it. Industry denies 'bullying' tactics after getting approval for premium increases averaging 20% since last year.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 July 2024

• Insurers are braced for more early-season 'Hurricane Beryls'. Despite its early arrival, the storm hits an insurance market that has already raised the price of catastrophe coverage.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 July 2024

• The housing crisis in cities in Spain drives rise in homelessness as tourism booms, creating more short-term rentals for tourists and fewer long-term rentals for residents of Spain (but more profits for billion-dollar tech companies)
  - Thomson's Reuters, 11 July 2024

• As climate toll grows, FEMA imposes limits on building in flood plains. New restrictions are meant to reduce damage during floods. The rules were first proposed in 2016, then the climate-change-denying Trump administration scrapped the rules. The agency said Wednesday that projects constructed with FEMA money must be built in a way that prevents flood damage, whether by elevating them above the expected height of a flood or, if that is not feasible, by building in a safer location. The rule also makes it clear that building decisions must reflect risks now and also in the future, as climate change makes flooding more frequent and severe.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 July 2024

• Homes in the big cities of California cost 10 times more than the average income
  - Zero Hedge, 10 July 2024

• Bloomberg cited data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, reminding us that banks will face a $1 trillion maturity wall of CRE loans at the end of this year. This only means more bank failures are ahead because of the bad property debt held on balance sheets.
  - Zero Hedge, 10 July 2024

• Housing market cracks: a record number of listed homes have price drops. The housing market is on the verge of creating its own reflexive and self-reinforcing liquidation spiral, as more sellers cut prices, forcing even more sellers to cut prices until suddenly the specter of a full-blown housing crash returns.
  - Zero Hedge, 10 July 2024

• Real estate firms from Israel are touring cities in North America, marketing homes in Israel -- and in West Bank settlements legally allowed to be settled by Jewish families by the government, displacing Islamic families.
  - The Intercept, 09 July 2024

• Kind of like communist housing meets corporate housing": Lennar showcases new home-builds in Texas. "Illegal immigrants in NYC are living in less cramped conditions than that community in Texas.".
  - Zero Hedge, 09 July 2024

• Videos of Barcelona residents shooting water pistols at tourists at a city restaurant have been widely shared on social media. A record flow of visitors has impacted the housing sector, pushing rental prices higher and out of reach for some city residents. Over the past decade, rent rose by 68 percent and the cost of buying a house increased by 38 percent, making the city unliveable for locals. Apartments for tourists, including online rental sites, have strained the local housing market.
  - Al Jazeera, 09 July 2024

• Property fraud allegations snowball as commercial real-estate values fall. A drop in values caused by higher interest rates and a rise in defaults exposes more schemes.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 July 2024

• The decline of the commercial real estate market in San Francisco. The vacancy rate for San Francisco office space reached a fresh record of 34.5% in the second quarter.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 08 July 2024

• Apartments could be the next real estate business to struggle. Owners of some rental buildings are starting to struggle because of rising interest rates and waning demand in some once booming Sun Belt cities. Only some have stopped making payments on their mortgages, but analysts worry that as many as 20 percent of all loans on apartment properties could be at risk of default.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 July 2024

• The rush to exit commercial real-estate funds is going mainstream. More Main Street funds -- not just non-traded REITs -- are limiting withdrawals of their clients' funds.
  - Murdoch's MarketWatch, 06 July 2024

• The strong USA dollar spells opportunity for investors. Quality corporate bonds, mortgage-backed securities, and overseas stocks look attractive at these lofty levels for the currency.
  - Barron's, 06 July 2024

• The real-estate market is in for sharp correction with losses that could take a decade to recover from, strategist says, with both residential and commercial properties that could soon experience a wave of distress, causing prices to plunge about 30% in both markets
  - Business Insider, 04 July 2024

• Hurricane Beryl batters Jamaica as 2 other islands, Carriacou and Petite Martinique, lie in ruin with marinas and a hospital destroyed, rooftops torn away and tree trunks snapped like matchsticks across the drenched earth. The powerful storm, which devastated communities in the eastern Caribbean earlier this week, was headed next to the Cayman Islands.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 July 2024

• Construction industry suffers largest layoffs 'since Lehman' as initial jobless claims disappoint (again)
  - Zero Hedge, 03 July 2024

• A real-estate fund industry is bleeding billions after Starwood Capital restricted withdrawals from its $10 billion real-estate fund. Redemptions industrywide from real-estate funds are expected to hit $16.5 billion this year while new fundraising dwindles to $5.7 billion.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 July 2024

• It is home-building season, but no one is buying lumber. Closures of sawmills that manufacture lumber have not stopped lumber prices from falling to postpandemic lows, a warning sign that residential construction and home-improvement markets are buckling.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 July 2024

• While the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies are publicized as protecting families in the USA, they are causing the American dream of homeownership to slip away. By raising the federal funds rate to combat their self-inflicted inflation, the Fed has driven up mortgage costs, making it harder for aspiring homeowners to secure a place in the housing market. These policies have resigned aspiring homeowners to a future of perpetual renting. While the rich get richer houses.
  - Zero Hedge, 30 June 2024

• Barcelona officials plan to ban short-term tourist apartment rentals by 2028, mirroring policies that have bubbled up across Europe in recent years. The city will scrap all 10,101 apartment licenses approved as short-term rentals. The tourism boom has benefited the country but choked the local supply of apartments and driven up the cost of rentals for locals by around 68% in the last 10 years. And the cost of a house rose 38%, exacerbating already problematic inequality.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 30 June 2024

• What to know about the plan of Israel to legalize 5 settlements in the West Bank, legalizations done with the support of the USA. Israel says it will legalize five West Bank settlements previously considered illegal, as the government accelerates what critics call a slow-motion annexation of land meant for an Islamic state in Palestine.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 30 June 2024

• The 'frozen' housing market is warping the economy in the USA. Cheap mortgages are forcing millions of homeowners in the USA to stay put. That is becoming a problem well beyond the property market, as renters, realtors and job recruiters (people can't accept new jobs without new housing) are among those suffering financially.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 June 2024

• This homebuying season is the worst in more than a decade. Existing-home sales from February through May were at their slowest pace for that period since 2011.
  - Barron's, 29 June 2024

• Moody's predicts that 24% of the office towers in the USA will be vacant by 2026. Elevated interest rates and persistent remote and hybrid working trends could result in around 24% of all office towers standing vacant within the next two years. The office tower apocalypse will result in more depressed values that will only pressure landlords.
  - Zero Hedge, 28 June 2024

• Beijing became the last major city in Zhōngguó to trim mortgage rates and down-payment requirements for home buyers, part of growing efforts across the country to resolve a long-running property crisis
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 June 2024

• Pending home sales in the USA unexpectedly plunge in May to a record low, lower than during the Covid lockdowns
  - Zero Hedge, 27 June 2024

• The housing market in the USA is in deep trouble, with people unable to buy houses (prices, insurance, etc.) and those that want to sell finding it hard to buy a replacement home for the same reasons
  - Zero Hedge, 27 June 2024

• McDonald's admits that customers reject fake-meat burgers. McDonald's admitted that its plant-based burger tests across San Francisco and Dallas markets ended in a major failure.
  - Zero Hedge, 27 June 2024

• Some Wall Street banks, worried that landlords of vacant and struggling office buildings will not be able to pay off their mortgages, have begun selling their portfolios of commercial real estate loans hoping to cut their losses.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 June 2024

• Goldman Sachs raises $3.4 billion for buying stakes in real estate funds. Goldman Sachs's asset management arm has raised one of the largest pools of capital targeting stakes in private real-estate funds, benefiting from investors' desire to take advantage of mounting liquidity problems among other investment managers and their limited partners.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 June 2024

• Hotel room rates in Hawaii have increased dramatically in the past five years. It is causing some travelers to look elsewhere, as the number of visitors to Hawaii is declining.
  - SF Gate, 26 June 2024

• Brookfield's plan to turn malls into minicities falls short. Six years after a big bet, only two projects have been completed.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 June 2024

• KKR makes its biggest foray into apartments, betting on rising rents. The private-equity firm paid $2.1 billion for more than 5,200 apartment units across the country.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 June 2024

• Scientists identify new Antarctic ice sheet 'tipping point', warning future sea level rise may be underestimated
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 25 June 2024

• If you can't beat high mortgage rates, consider joining them. A high cost to borrow is also resulting in higher yields for investors in some mortgage bonds.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 June 2024

• A housing downturn in Austin, Texas, is "remarkable" as inventory spikes to a record high
  - Zero Hedge, 21 June 2024

• For the first time since the financial crisis, CMBS investors face Europe's first AAA Loss
  - Zero Hedge, 21 June 2024

• The government of the USA - Freddie Mac in particular - wants to socialistically nationalize/guarantee second mortgages (so consumers have more money to spend to prop up a failing economy). What could go wrong, other than everything?
  - Mises Institute, 21 June 2024

• Existing home sales tumble in May, while prices set new record highs, making it harder for first-time home buyers
  - Zero Hedge, 21 June 2024

• Allstate Corporation on Thursday reported pretax catastrophe losses in May of about $1.4 billion. The Northbrook, Illinois-based insurer said 14 events contributed to nearly $1.5 billion in catastrophe losses for May, with 70% attributable to five wind and hail events mostly in the states of Texas, Colorado, and Illinois. A year ago Allstate recorded pretax catastrophe losses for May of about $885 million.
  - Zero Hedge, 21 June 2024

• Forever 21 is asking some landlords for rent concessions as high as 50% as it faces financial difficulties. The company is struggling to manage its sprawling store footprint and compete with savvier digital upstarts.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 21 June 2024

• Local authorities in Zhōngguó have been encouraged to buy unsold homes to create affordable housing amid efforts to address a property crisis, but many of these governments are already struggling with debt.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 June 2024

• Banks are selling their best commercial real estate assets because they can receive prices at least equal to what they are carrying in loans on their balance sheets. There is no other reason to sell good loans but to generate liquidity, especially regional banks. Not only are banks carrying a collective half a trillion dollars in unrealized losses on securities portfolios, but also, as Ms. Benitez explains, bank commercial real estate loan books are underwater as well.
  - Zero Hedge, 20 June 2024

• Housing starts and building permits in the USA plunge to Covid lockdown lows, and multi-family permits cratering to their lowest since Oct 2018
  - Zero Hedge, 20 June 2024

• Housing starts and building permits in the USA plunge to Covid lockdown lows, and multi-family permits cratering to their lowest since Oct 2018
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 June 2024

• The Biden administration is currently reviewing a proposal by mortgage giant, Freddie Mac, to begin buying second mortgages. Fannie Mae would be certain to follow. Not only would such be inconsistent with the administration's legal obligations, but it would also intentionally put the taxpayer and countless families at considerable risk. Freddie's proposal should be rejected. The current proposal fails on that account. As of Q1 2024, Freddie Mac backs almost $3.5 trillion in mortgages. Yet its net worth, or capital, to absorb losses from those mortgages stands at just over $50 billion. That is leverage of almost 70 to 1. That is twice the leverage of Bear Stearns in the quarter before its failure in Spring 2008.
  - Real Clear Markets, 20 June 2024

• The luxury real estate world is rocked by rape allegations against star brokers. In multiple lawsuits and interviews, women accuse Tal and Oren Alexander, brothers, of sexual assault.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 June 2024

• RealPage, the rent-fixing software company currently under FBI investigation, also has apps for bogus fees, monetizing vacant apartments and inflating toxic property bubbles. By now, you have probably heard of Yieldstar, the private owned software that numerous plaintiff's attorneys, tenant advocates, and state attorneys general say is actually a front for a sprawling nationwide cartel that fixes rent prices to ludicrous heights and has caused the cost of an apartment to surge between 50 and 80 percent over the past seven years in several of the markets where the software is employed. In theory, and in its early days, Yieldstar offered property managers 'recommendations' for pricing and duration of leases based on real-time data on what competitors were offering. But by the time Yieldstar parent RealPage acquired its biggest competitor, Lease Rent Options, from the hotel price-fixing giant Rainmaker in 2017, the algorithm had metamorphosed from a tool for informing pricing decisions into a weapon for systemically and liberally hiking them to "way too high" levels, to quote a leasing manager in one of the many lawsuits. RealPage has also been accused of retaliating against anyone who balked or attempted to circumvent the program, with newer 'clients' especially singled out for indoctrination and surveillance to root put rogue leasing agents and ensure maximum compliance with the system's demands.
  - The American Prospect, 18 June 2024

• Miami is entering a state of unreality. No amount of adaptation to climate change can fix the water flooding problems of Miami. Meanwhile, the politicians that control the state refuse to allow any government official to use the phrases "climate change" or "global heating". Ostriches are jealous, not that is there much sand left to stick heads into.
  - The Atlantic, 18 June 2024

• A new way social injustice, : the growing business of surf pools, building artificial surfing pools inland, with many planned for areas facing water scarity where poorer residents don't have adequate water supplies
  - MIT Technology Review, 17 June 2024

• Prices of new homes in Zhōngguó plunge the most since October 2014
  - Zero Hedge, 17 June 2024

• Brace yourself, a 2008 mortgage crisis may be set off by this crazy Biden scheme. In 2008, one of the matches that lit the bonfire was Freddie and Fannie offering generous taxpayer-guaranteed mortgage insurance to risky borrowers. The latest scheme by the Biden administration is to encourage families to borrow more money by using the equity in their home as collateral. Home equity loans are often very risky. If prices fall, home equity can become negative. There is nearly $18 trillion in home equity, and it's one of the largest sources of savings and ownership for American families. The Bank of America believes this scam could result in $1.8 trillion in government-insured home equity loans. This is the homeowner equivalent of the student loan forgiveness program.
  - Murdoch's Fox News, 17 June 2024

• Some insurance companies in Zhōngguó have risk exposure in excess of 15 percent of shareholder's equity
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 17 June 2024

• A big bond rally is promising some help for home buyers. The sharp rise in bond prices has pushed down the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note, a benchmark for mortgage rates and other borrowing costs across the economy.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 June 2024

• Wells Fargo invested in a flashy credit card (offered by a fintech startup) that you can use to pay rent interest-free. Wells Fargo is losing money every month on the program as savvy customers flock to the card and projections on key revenue drivers turn out to be inaccurate.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 June 2024

• Condominium owners in South Florida are dumping/selling their homes after getting slapped with six-figure special assessments to finance renovations due to stricter safety standards
  - MoneyWise, 15 June 2024

• Shares of homebuilder companies have been 'hammered' down. Why they will rise again.
  - Barron's, 15 June 2024

• Another day, another push to give many millions to multimillionaires. These subsidies to build new stadiums for billionaires is complete economic nonsense -- "billionaries using public funds to build a private playground for the rich and powerful". The 'economic impact studies' n which stadium subsidies are based have another name: lies.
  - Am. Inst. Economic Research, 14 June 2024

• Micro communities for the homeless sprout in US cities eager for small, quick and cheap solutions. In downtown Atlanta, shipping containers have been transformed into an oasis for dozens of previously unsheltered people who now proudly call a former parking lot home.
  - Associated Press, 14 June 2024

• Millions in drug money has made its way into the south Florida commercial real estate market
  - Zero Hedge, 14 June 2024

• Storms do not need a name to wreak havoc in south Florida. Between days of excessive heat and days of unrelenting storms, the summer rainy season is starting to feel different -- and highly unpredictable.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 June 2024

• Buyers snap up aging and empty office buildings for deepl discounts. Bargain hunters are getting deals of up to 70 percent, a sign of the pain in the commercial property market that could lead to large losses for banks and investors in real-estate-backed loans.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 June 2024

• Heavy rain and "life-threatening flooding" hit South Florida, prompting the climate-change-denying governor to declare an emergency.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 13 June 2024

• The price for owning a home is rising rapidly in the USA -- and we are not just talking about mortgage payments. Homeowners in the USA are now paying an average of $18,118 a year on property taxes, insurance for their homes, maintenance, energy and various other expenses linked to owning a home, according to a new Bankrate study. These expenses have risen 26% in the last four years.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 12 June 2024

• When JPMorgan Chase arranged a series of trades to shift the risk of losses from $20 billion of its loans, some of those dangers wound up at a familiar place: rival banks. The deal, struck late last year, was one of the biggest ever Synthetic Risk Transfer trades, or SRTs, opaque transactions heralded by Wall Street and approved by regulators that are supposed to hand possible loan losses to hedge funds and other nonbank investors. Yet some buyers in the JPMorgan deal -- and in multiple other SRT trades -- borrowed money from other banks to help finance their stakes and inflate returns. The lurking presence of Wall Street loans behind some of these complex trades suggests exposures that were meant to be shifted elsewhere remain tied to the banking system, an outcome that is starting to spook regulators.
  - Bloomberg, 11 June 2024

• Shares of Target Hospitality crash 35% on news that the Biden administration will shutter the ICE facility in Texas that TH services
  - Zero Hedge, 11 June 2024

• The government of Zhōngguó liquidates Dexin Zhōngguó Holdings, another property developer that had unmanageable debt
  - Zero Hedge, 11 June 2024

• What retail apocalypse? Shopping centers are making a comeback. Vacancy is the lowest it has been in two decades, at 5.4 percent, according to a recent report. The properties are thriving even as retailers such as Macy's and Express shutter many stores.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 June 2024

• For shrinking Mississippi River towns, frequent floods worsen fortunes. Flooding has pushed people out of their homes near the Mississippi River at a roughly 30% higher rate than the USA as a whole.
  - Associated Press, 11 June 2024

• An office building in popular Old City section of Philadelphia sells at a 38% discount to its assessed value
  - Zero Hedge, 10 June 2024

• The cats of Old San Juan are being run out of town. Locals can empathize. A federal plan to remove feral cats from a historic site in the capital of Puerto Rico has upset some residents, who are also feeling pushed out as housing costs soar as investors buy properties, which pushes up rents and home prices.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 June 2024

• "Not Sustainable": high insurance costs threaten affordable housing. Homeowners in areas battered by climate disasters are facing dizzying insurance rate increases. But builders of housing for the homeless and other low-income families are also struggling.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 June 2024

• Office building losses start to pile up, and more pain is expected. The distress in commercial real estate is growing as some office buildings sell for much lower prices than just a few years ago.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 June 2024

• Moody's may reduce the credit ratingss of six regional banks in the USA which have much exposure to commercial real estate debt
  - Bloomberg, 06 June 2024

• Investors in real estate are wiped out in bets fueled by Wall Street loans. Syndicators made big purchases that are unraveling with high interest rates, adding distress to an already troubled property market in the USA.
  - Bloomberg, 06 June 2024

• Property stocks in Zhōngguó tumble into a bear market as the government bailout fades
  - Zero Hedge, 06 June 2024

• The government of Zhōngguó has relaxed or eliminated measures on home buying to spur new purchases. This has made a vocal constituency of existing homeowners very unhappy.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 June 2024

• Renters and owners live in separate economies. In short, renters are in dire straits financially, while homeowners are "continuing to reap the rewards" of cheap pandemic money.
  - Zero Hedge, 05 June 2024

• The boom in the construction of apartments ends, with a major negative economic impact ahead. Interest rates are too high for many projects to start. Some started projects are in trouble. And banks have other issues that keep them from lending as much to apartment builders this year. Many regional banks are souring on the commercial real-estate loans already on their books. Impact includes a huge slowdown in durable goods needs coming up: Appliances, furniture, light fixtures, etc.
  - Mish Talk, 04 June 2024

• Zhōngguó needs to inject $276 billion into its property market to stabilize prices, according to Goldman Sachs
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 04 June 2024

• $517,000,000,000 - Unprecedented ocean temperatures make this hurricane season especially dangerous and destructive
  - USA Today, 02 June 2024

• Commercial property meltdown clobbers pension funds. Recent moves by government pension plans offer a new glimpse into the widespread and slow-moving commercial real-estate slump.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 June 2024

• $580,000,000 - A government regulator in Zhōngguó fines the Evergrande Group $580 million for alleged financial misconduct, dealing the former property giant another blow as it navigates liquidation proceedings
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 June 2024

• The little-known reason counties keep building bigger jails that cost the taxpayers more money: architecture firms seeking more subsidies. All over the country, architecture firms make the case for bigger jails -- and then get hired to design them.
  - The Intercept, 31 May 2024

• A downsized WeWork will leave bankruptcy in search of its first profit. The flex-office provider projects to turn a profit in 2025 under its new owner, software firm Yardi Systems.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 31 May 2024

• Since 1980, there have been 383 extreme weather or climate disasters where the damages reached at least $1 billion. In total, these disasters have cost more than $2.7 trillion
  - Zero Hedge, 30 May 2024

• Pending home sales in the USA plunged to record lows in April as interest rates rose
  - Zero Hedge, 30 May 2024

• Home insurance is clobbering consumers. Yet it is barely counted in inflation statistics. Skyrocketing premiums are hitting homeowners hard, but they barely factor into common price measures. The biggest jumps occurred in Texas, Arizona and Utah - three leading climate-change-denying states run by Christians.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 30 May 2024

• Shares of Kohl's plummet 20% after a massive earnings miss and after lowering its forecast for the full year
  - Comcast's CNBC, 30 May 2024

• Zero-percent down mortages are once again available. What could go wrong, other than everything like the last time.
  - Zero Hedge, 29 May 2024

• Bankruptcies have left more stores vacant, but the space does not sit empty for long. Available retail locations are near record lows, and that makes it easier than ever for landlords to replace departing tenants.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 May 2024

• Why a state government plan in California to build more homes is failing. Very few new housing units have been completed under a two-year-old law that eliminated zoning restrictions on duplexes constructed alongside single-family homes.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 May 2024

• Why hotels in New York City are so expensive right now. The average hotel room rate in the city is $301 a night, a record. A major reason: One of every five hotels is now a shelter, contributing to a shortage of tourist lodging.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 May 2024

• Zhōngguó has a socialist plan for its housing crisis - have the governmnet buy apartments no one else wants to buy. Here is why it is not enough. A new approach by the top leaders in Zhōngguó is bold but pales against the problem: a vast number of empty apartments no one wants to buy. The government has committed $41.5 billion to help fund loans for state-owned companies to start buying unwanted property. But estimates are that the government needs to spend $280 billion to $560 billion to save the real estate industry.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 May 2024

• Americans are delaying their home renovation plans and opting for more affordable options amid high borrowing costs and a housing market recovery that has yet to materialize. Two of the top home improvement retailers in the USA, Home Depot and Lowe's, reported this month that consumers are spending less on big-ticket projects that often require loans and trading down for more affordable do-it-yourself remedies. Customers are looking for cheaper alternatives in categories like cabinets, flooring, lighting fixtures, and countertops.
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 25 May 2024

• Facing a possible cash crunch, giant real estate fund limits withdrawals. Starwood Real Estate Income Trust is restricting what investors can redeem rather than sell its properties to raise cash. The fund will buy back only 1 percent of the value of its assets every quarter.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 May 2024

• Reinsurance - the hidden driver of soaring home insurance costs. A looming round of reinsurance renewals could signal a slowdown in premium increases.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 May 2024

• Why technology has not transformed the building industry. Much of the construction of homes and buildings is still down manually.
  - BBC, 24 May 2024

• For the first time since the 2008 global financial crisis due to criminally leveraged real estate bonds, holders now of AAA 'CRE-backed' bonds are hit with losses. "Now that we've seen the first commercial mortgage-backed securities get hit, other AAA bonds are bound to see losses."
  - Zero Hedge, 24 May 2024

• Competing forces on rent, where do we put 8 million illegal immigrants? Millions of immigrants keep pouring in. New residential construction has stalled and multi-family construction is in decline. Completions are rising, but is that enough housing?
  - Zero Hedge, 24 May 2024

• 64 office buildings in New York City are planning to be tranformed into residential units. The city has a Conversion Accelerator Program to simplify the labyrinth of rules and building codes, assisting owners in repurposing their spaces.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 24 May 2024

• The price of new 30-year government bonds in Zhōngguó have been volatile since their recent debut, as small investors pile into a bet seen as safer than the the property and equities markets in hōngguó.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 May 2024

• The price of new 30-year government bonds in Zhōngguó has whipsawed since their recent debut, as small investors pile into a bet seen as safer than the the property and equities markets in hōngguó.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 24 May 2024

• Climate change and global heating is making it harder to obtain insurance for homes, with insurance companies cancelling the policies of hundreds of thousands of homeowners. In Florida, one in three residents dropped by their insurer have moved or are planning to move. The core of all this discontent is that insurers are struggling to stay afloat because the risks they have to protect against are mounting, driven in part by climate change. As average temperatures rise and disasters reach greater extremes, the magnitude of losses mounts, rendering parts of the US uninsurable. In some states, Christian Republican politicians whore themselves, accepting bribes to deny climate change.
  - Vox, 23 May 2024

• Priced out of housing, communities take real estate development into their own hands
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 May 2024

• As climate change makes disasters more frequent and severe, the insurance industry is in tumult. Losses have been spreading beyond states that have been ravaged by hurricanes and wildfires, like Florida and California, and into places like Iowa, Arkansas, Ohio, Utah and Washington. Even in the Northeast, where homeowners insurance was still generally profitable last year, trends are worsening.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 May 2024

• Rent is harder to pay for and inflation is a burden, a Fed financial survey finds. The Federal Reserve's 2023 survey on household financial well-being found Americans excelling in the job market but struggling with prices.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 May 2024

• A $10 billion real-estate fund is bleeding cash and running out of options. A long line of investors in Starwood Real Estate Income Trust, known as Sreit, want their money back.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 May 2024

• Sternlicht's Starwood REIT running low on cash as redemptions soar amid a crisis with commercial real estate
  - Zero Hedge, 18 May 2024

• Sternlicht's Starwood REIT running low on cash as redemptions soar amid a crisis with commercial real estate
  - Zero Hedge, 18 May 2024

• Sternlicht's Starwood REIT running low on cash as redemptions soar amid a crisis with commercial real estate
  - Zero Hedge, 18 May 2024

• Sternlicht's Starwood REIT running low on cash as redemptions soar amid a crisis with commercial real estate
  - Zero Hedge, 18 May 2024

• The government of Zhōngguó will start buying apartments as the housing slump worsens
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 May 2024

• The central bank of Zhōngguó announces a $42 billion program of cheap funding to allow state-owned companies to purchase unsold homes, providing an interest rate of 1.75%, to boost the debt-stricker housing market.
  - Zero Hedge, 17 May 2024

• Republican politicians in Florida, pass a law deleting 'climate change' from the state policies of Florida. The law also stops programs designed to encourage renewable energy and conservation in a state that is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Meanwhile, it is geting harder and more expensive to obtain home insurance in Florida ... because of climate change.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 May 2024

• Shares of real estate companies in Zhōngguó rise as more cities unveil rescue efforts, rising on expectations that government entities are helping buy up excess housing in a bid to revive the struggling real-estate sector.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 May 2024

• Condominium owners in Florida are selling tens of thousands of their condos, unwilling to pay special assessments of up to $100,000 to retrofit buildings to new safety standards
  - Zero Hedge, 16 May 2024

• Inside the rent inflation measure that economics nerds love to hate -- the 'owner's equivalent rent'. Detractors blast if for being so slow-moving that it does not reflect up-to-date conditions in the economy. Critics argue that it uses convoluted statistical methods that make little sense. The most intense haters insist that it is giving a false impression about where inflation stands. The Consumer Price Index inflation measure accounts for housing costs in a complicated way. There are reasons for it.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 May 2024

• The government of Zhōngguó is considering the purchase of millions of homes to save the property market
  - Zero Hedge, 15 May 2024

• A new law in Florida is disrupting the condominium market three years after the collapse of the Surfside building. More units are being dumped on the market because of six-figure special assessments tied to repairs for older buildings.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 May 2024

• Sky-high housing costs in the USA propel construction of rental homes. Rental builders are betting that the lowest level of home affordability since the 1980s means that even relatively affluent people in the USA will remain renters.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 May 2024

• The obscure Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted 2 (Democrats) to 1 (Republican) in a partisan split on Monday on a new rule that could help speed up wind and solar energy
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 May 2024

• New rules to overhaul electric grids could boost wind and solar power. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the biggest changes in more than a decade to the way power lines are planned and funded in the USA.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 May 2024

• New rules to overhaul electric grids could boost wind and solar power. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the biggest changes in more than a decade to the way power lines are planned and funded in the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 May 2024

• Stubbornly high rents prevent the Federal Reserve from finishing inflation fight. For more than a year, the central bank has expected slowing rent increases to show up in official housing measures. The Fed is still waiting.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 May 2024

• Trump may owe $100 million from fraudulent double-dip tax breaks, audit shows. A previously unknown focus of an IRS audit is a dubious accounting maneuver that effectively meant taking the same write-offs twice on a Chicago skyscraper.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 May 2024

• Even a real estate company tied to the government cannot escape the real estate crisis in Zhōngguó. Zhōngguó Vanke's stock shares listed in Hong Kong have lost two-thirds of their value over the past year. That is bad news for those hoping the worst is over for the real estate market in Zhōngguó.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 May 2024

• Only half of adults say they could afford their childhood home today
  - Zero Hedge, 10 May 2024

• Country Garden misses bond payments, says government could help. Country Garden said a state guarantor could come to its aid after the troubled developer missed deadlines for bond payments, presenting a key test in an ongoing debt crisis in the property sector of Zhōngguó.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 10 May 2024

• Manhattan apartment rents gain momentum, signal potential record highs this summer
  - Zero Hedge, 09 May 2024

• Local governments in Zhōngguó swap debt for data as pressure builds to relieve debt burdens. Analysts warn plan has not been thoroughly evaluated, with inconsistent valuations of data and potential legal issues yet to be resolved. They are forced to do so, since profits from land sales have vanished.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 09 May 2024

• Office tower turmoil in New York City worsens ahead of trillion dollar maturity wall
  - Zero Hedge, 08 May 2024

• The big questions, including that of honesty, hanging over a $59 billion Blackstone real estate fund. Wall Street has been debating how the investment giant's $59 billion real estate fund has managed to outperform virtually all its rivals. Many rivals have fallen in value, some quite dramatically, in the face of high interest rates and a flagging property market. BREIT's performance has floated above its competition, and it has boasted a 10.5 percent annual return since its 2017 debut.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 May 2024

• The biggest contruction project in the world gets an economic reality check. Saudi Arabia's plans for twin 100-mile-long skyscrapers have lost momentum amid spiraling costs and construction glitches.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 May 2024

• The private-equity deal/rape that flattened a hospital chain and its landlord. Cerberus made a huge profit - the rich getting richer, but the Steward hospital chain went bankrupt and its landlord suffered big losses.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 May 2024

• Surging distress with CRE CLO loans spurs lender rush to repurchase delinquent multifamily mortgages. In April, about 8.6% of commercial real estate loans bundled into collateralized loan obligations were distressed. $78.5 billion of CRE CLO loans are outstanding.
  - Zero Hedge, 07 May 2024

• Where is "growth" coming from? Fed says banks tighten credit standards while loan demand drops further. For all CRE loan categories, banks reported having tightened all queried lending policies, including the spread of loan rates over the cost of funds, maximum loan sizes, loan-to-value ratios, debt service coverage ratios, and interest-only payment periods.
  - Zero Hedge, 06 May 2024

• How a 'hidden' tax of $1.4 billion will force water bills to rise in New York City. Mayor Adams plans to charge a rent to the city's Water Board.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 May 2024

• A Chinese debt trap? Sri Lanka's Hambantota port set to debunk narrative with its success. The transaction was not contingent on default by Sri Lanka on its external debt to Zhōngguó's Exim bank; rather it was a lease arrangement for 99 years at a fee of US $1.12 billion.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 03 May 2024

• Americans greatly increased their use of self-storage. That demand is suddenly cooling. Many developers, spurred by the Covid pandemic to invest money in new self-storage facilities, have been caught short by this drop in demand.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 May 2024

• The property slump in Zhōngguó - Beijing ends curbs on multiple home ownership in outer areas of city to stimulate buying. Home transactions outside the fifth ring road accounted for around 80 per cent of the total in the city in 2023, according to Centaline.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 01 May 2024

• Defaults on loans for office building near historic levels with billions on the line. More than $38 billion of office buildings in the USA face loan defaults, foreclosures or other forms of distress, the highest amount since 2012.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 May 2024

• Offerings of 'golden visas', once a boon, lose their luster. Spain is the latest European country to end its program, which brought in billions of euros from real estate investors seeking residency status but worsened a housing crisis for locals.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 30 April 2024

• Wall Street has spent billions buying homes. A crackdown is looming. Some lawmakers say investors that scooped up hundreds of thousands of houses to rent out are driving up home prices.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 April 2024

• Wall Street has spent billions buying homes. A crackdown is looming. Some lawmakers say investors that scooped up hundreds of thousands of houses to rent out are driving up home prices.
  - Zero Hedge, 30 April 2024

• The dark side of solar poewr: some of the most productive farmland in the USA is at risk. No one knows how much cropland nationwide is currently under solar panels or leased for possible future development. Solar leases in Indiana and surrounding states can offer $900 to $1,500 an acre per year in land rents, with annual rate increases, according to a Reuters review of solar leases and interviews with four solar project developers. In comparison, farmland rent in top corn and soybean producers Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa averaged about $251 per acre in 2023, USDA data shows.
  - Fast Company, 29 April 2024

• WeWork rejects a $650 million bid from former founder Adam Neumann, while obtaining a bankruptcy deal with creditors. The restructuring, now supported by all of the major creditors of WeWork, would transfer WeWork's equity to its senior lenders and cancel its $4 billion in debt.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 29 April 2024

• Availability of office space hits a record high in San Francisco. "Rents will definitely come down. And once that debt workout happens, there is going to be a larger reset."
  - Zero Hedge, 27 April 2024

• $250,000,000 - Warren Buffett's real estate brokerage agrees to $250 million settlement. HomeServices of America, the largest residential real estate brokerage in the United States, will settle the claims brought by home sellers who said they were forced to pay inflated commissions, pending court approval.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 April 2024

• How realtors tamed a wild housing market and created a lucrative monopoly. The National Association of Realtors has long protected its high commissions but has agreed to big changes after losing a landmark court case.
  - Barron's, 27 April 2024

• Miami is 'ground zero' for climate risk, especially flooding due to rising seas and stronger hurricanes. People are moving to the area and building there anyway. The average elevation of Miami is six feet -- the same amount of sea-level rise expected in Southeast Florida by the end of the century. The city is simultaneously sinking. It sits on porous limestone rock, which some engineers have likened to Swiss cheese; in other words, water can easily seep from underground.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 26 April 2024

• A luxury apartment building in Washington, DC, fires all of its front desk human employees and replaces them with Amazon lockers, sparking tenant protest. [KM: whiners - let the rich get richer.]
  - Zero Hedge, 25 April 2024

• The folly of the real-estate boom in Zhōngguó was easy to see, but no one wanted to stop it. Developers, home buyers and Western bankers all ignored warning signs, but not two accountants who went looking for "financial anomalies" and "shenanigans".
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 April 2024

• First-time buyers must earn $120,000 to afford the average home
  - Zero Hedge, 24 April 2024

• CoStar, a real-estate data analytics company, which became a WeWork landlord in February, said it has no intention to give lease concessions and more time to restructure leases
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 April 2024

• Payments by homebuyers hit record high as mortgage rates climb back above 7% for the first time in 2024. The combination of high mortgage rates and prices have brought homebuyers' median monthly housing payment to a record $2,775, up 11 percent year over year.
  - Zero Hedge, 23 April 2024

• Reversing the real-estate doom loop is possible. Just look at Detroit. Barely a decade after it declared bankruptcy, the city is emerging as the most unlikely real-estate boomtown in the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 April 2024

• Real-estate agents and investment advisers chafe at new anti-money-laundering rules. The Treasury Department is looking to bring two new industries under regulations intended to stem the flow of illicit money.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 April 2024

• Construction beings on the new high-speed passenger rail line between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, which hopefully will reduce the number of people travelling by air, or clogging the weekend highways of Los Angeles. The private venture is receiving a $3 billion subsidy from the federal government.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 22 April 2024

• Foreclosures on loans for commercial real estate soar to levels not seen in nearly a decade
  - Zero Hedge, 22 April 2024

• People who rent will decide the 2024 presidential election between Biden and Trump
  - Zero Hedge, 21 April 2024

• Construction jobs in Philadelphia set to plunge as residential projects hit a wall
  - Zero Hedge, 21 April 2024

• The middle class cannot afford homes in nearly half of the top 100 metropolitan areas in the USA
  - Zero Hedge, 20 April 2024

• A huge number of homeowners have mortgage rates too good to give up. Their reluctance to change homes alters housing supply.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 April 2024

• $10,000,000 - Charles Hill, former star of HGTV, is fined $10 million for real estate fraud, a Ponzi scheme
  - Zero Hedge, 19 April 2024

• Cities in Zhōngguó are sinking below sea level. Development and groundwater pumping are causing land subsidence and heightening the risks of sea level rise.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 April 2024

• Housing market slumps as mortgage rates top 7%. Existing home sales in March posted their biggest monthly drop in more than a year, buffeted by mortgage rates that rose again.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 April 2024

• Meredith Whitner, the 'oracle of Wall Street', who predicted (kind of) the 2008 financial crash, says the rise in young sexless men living with their parents will cause home prices to plunge 30%
  - The Daily Mail, 18 April 2024

• The zombie office timebomb: commercial real estate foreclosures in the USA jumped 117% in March - as experts warn it could trigger the next banking crisis. Soaring interest rates are making it tougher for owners to refinance property.
  - The Daily Mail, 18 April 2024

• Existing home sales plunged (again) in March, but prices continue to rise. Home sales are stuck because interest rates have not made any major moves.
  - Zero Hedge, 18 April 2024

• Amsterdam bans construction of new hotels as a way to fight overtourism
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 17 April 2024

• Big Tech is downsizing workspace in another blow to office real estate. The pullback marks a sharp reversal after years when companies had been bolstering their office footprints by adding millions of square feet of space.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 April 2024

• Housing starts in the USA collapsed in March - biggest drop since Covid lockdowns, led by a collapse in rental property construction
  - Zero Hedge, 16 April 2024

• "Water is more valuable than oil": the corporations exploiting water scarcity in the USA. In an unprecedented deal, a private company purchased land in a tiny Arizona town -- and sold its water rights to a suburb 200 miles away. Local residents fear the agreement has "opened a Pandora's box", though admittedly, building residential communities in the desert is just as exploitive and idiotic
  - The Guardian, 16 April 2024

• Shares of Bank of America drop after humans actually read the latest earnings report, and notice soaring charge-offs for real estate and credit card losses
  - Zero Hedge, 16 April 2024

• Bank of America reports solid earnings, but commercial real estate losses unexpectedly surge. Banks are starting to finally pass massive CRE/office losses through the Income statement. How ugly is it about to get.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 April 2024

• A growing shortage of water in Texas: a window into problems across the USA. Cities as small as San Angelo and as large as San Antonio have purchased water rights in rural areas, diverting the supply of water used by farmers and ranchers over long distances for urban use. Rural Texas, which already had serious water deficits, is in trouble. Farmers and ranchers must have reliable supplies of water to produce the food that we eat. Existing wells are drying up as demand for more wells arises with the building of new subdivisions. Many people, including those in existing subdivisions, are having to purchase water in bulk and have it delivered to meet their basic needs. County officials in Texas do not have sufficient authority to manage growth while protecting our water resources.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 April 2024

• Why the stone walls of New England are unlike any others. Bigger than the Great Wall of Zhōngguó, Hadrian's Wall, and the Pyramids of Giza combined, the region's ubiquitous stone walls are also a unique ecological habitat.
  - Atlas Obscura, 15 April 2024

• Many empty-nesters are staying put rather than downsizing, keeping housing inventory tight in a market where higher interest rates and steep prices are making homeownership less affordable for the average family.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 April 2024

• Pope Francis sides with Peruvian villagers who accused a Catholic group of trying to steal their land. The villagers have been fending off lawsuits from companies associated with the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae since 2014. The Sodalitium has come under increased scrutiny in recent years after its founder and some of its main leaders were accused of committing sexual abuses against children. Prosecutors in Peru have also launched investigations into the finances of the Sodalitium and have accused the group of hiding money in offshore bank accounts.
  - Associated Press, 13 April 2024

• The housing market in Bharat is booming. What is driving the big gains? It takes financing, patience, and a little bit of luck to buy a home in the hottest real estate markets in Bharat.
  - Barron's, 13 April 2024

• Property taxes in the USA have become increasingly racist, hurting Black Americans and benefitting white Americans
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 April 2024

• Mortgage rates near 7% again. The rise threatens the revival in sales of homes that many had hoped for this year.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 April 2024

• Nearly 20% of homes sold in San Francisco during the three months ending February 29 sold at a loss. What is more, the typical SF homeowner took $155,500 less than they bought it for, which is 400% more in dollar terms than the nationwide median loss of $39,912 over the same period.
  - Zero Hedge, 11 April 2024

• The real estate nightmare unfolding in downtown St. Louis. The office district is empty, with boarded up towers, copper thieves and failing retail stores -- even the Panera outlet shut down. The city is desperately trying to reverse the 'doom loop'.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 April 2024

• Homeowners face a $25 trillion bill due to damages from climate change. Property, the biggest asset class in the world, is also its most vulnerable.
  - Economist, 11 April 2024

• Zhōngguó is buying billions of dollar less from farmers in the USA, and more from farmers in Brazil, in protest of rules for land ownership that make it harder for Zhōngguó to buy land in the USA.
  - Zero Hedge, 10 April 2024

• Shares of Shimao Group, a real estate developed in Zhōngguó, dropped 14% after a state-run bank in Zhōngguó, in a rare case, filed a liquidation petition against the heavily indebted developer in Hong Kong, adding uncertainty to a proposed restructuring of billions of dollars of offshore debt.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 April 2024

• Luxury brands go shopping for upmarket boutiques. Big luxury companies have spent more than $9 billion on real estate since the start of 2023.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 April 2024

• Real estate prices in Austin, Texas, have gone from boom to bust in just a few years, from $420,000 on the average iun 2020 to $669,000 in 2022 and down to $525,000 in 2024
  - Benzinga, 08 April 2024

• Blackstone makes $10 billion bet on multifamily homes as real rents begin re-accelerating
  - Zero Hedge, 08 April 2024

• Blackstone makes $10 billion bet on multifamily homes as real rents begin re-accelerating
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 April 2024

• A staggering land deal in Liberia, where the government has agreed to sell about 10% of the country's land to Dubai-based company Blue Carbon to preserve forests, raises fears about risks to the livelihoods of indigenous people in Liberia. Blue Carbon will sell carbon credits to make money. Some experts argue that the model offers little climate benefit, while activists label it 'carbon colionialism'. Activists say the government has no legal right over the land and that Liberian law acknowledges Indigenous land ownership. "Many such projects are associated with appalling human rights abuses against local communities at the hands of park rangers."
  - Associated Press, 07 April 2024

• The rent really is too damn high: why you feel poorer than ever. Americans feel real economic pain, but it is not just due to three years of inflation -- it is about 30 years of disaster
  - Salon, 06 April 2024

• Revenue earned by companies in Zhōngguó from engineering and construction works in Africa has dropped by 31 per cent since the peak of lending in 2015. Observers say factors including a more conservative approach from lenders and a falling number of projects are behind the decline, a situation which is unlikely to change.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 06 April 2024

• The realtors still need market reform. Despite a recent lawsuit settlement, the cartel keeps home prices high and damages the economy. REX founder Jack Ryan wants federal antitrust action.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 April 2024

• Banks are extending office loans. Are they also pretending? Many 2023 maturities were pushed into 2024, giving lenders more time for rates to drop and other investors to buy some of their debt.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 April 2024

• Even the mainstream is starting to acknowledge the massive problem of vacant office buildings littering American cities, slowly turning them into post-Covid wastelands. The potential for an 'Urban Doop Loop' (where struggling office districts negatively impact entire cities) triggered by CRE is now being widely acknowledged as a possible trigger for a broader economic meltdown. In an industry that lives and dies by interest rates, the problem provides another powerful source of pressure on the Fed to cut rates this year, boosting the bottom line for commercial landlords and developers who are being squeezed by a high cost of borrowing and already scrambling to change the terms of their debt.
  - Zero Hedge, 04 April 2024

• How a Covid pandemic boom led to a "property tax mess" in Colorado. A surge of new residents into Rocky Mountain states drove up home prices. The result was property tax increases of 40 percent or more for some of those already there.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 April 2024

• The vacancy rate of office towers hits a record high of 19.8% as 'zombie' buildings litter skylines of cities.
  - Zero Hedge, 03 April 2024

• Co-working space provider WeWork said its lease restructuring effort so far is expected to result in more than $8 billion in future rent savings and that it aims to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of May.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 April 2024

• The dollar-store showdown comes down to real estate. Dollar General, located mostly in rural areas, plans to expand, while the more urban-focused Family Dollar will close hundreds of stores.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 April 2024

• The climate change denying governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, raises alarm by call the state's self-insurance program, Citizens Insurance, "not solvent" as an 'explosive' hurricane season is predicted to cause great damage in Florida. The state has to self-insure becauses of its policies that don't allow insurance companies to set rational premiums for such insurance.
  - Benzinga, 02 April 2024

• $48,200,000 - Trump's bond benefactor, Don Hankey, earned billions from subprime car loans. In 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered two of his companies, Westlake Services L.L.C. and Wilshire Consumer Credit, to refund customers $44 million and pay a $4.2 million fine for deceiving customers
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 April 2024

• Knight Speciality Insurance agrees to issue a bond of $175 million to Trump to allow Trump to appeal a conviction for business fraud
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 April 2024

• Knight Speciality Insurance is known for providing high-interest loans to car buyers with bad credit histories - subprime auto loans.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 April 2024

• Why it is so expensive to live in Phoenix. Arizona is a presidential election battleground state, and a dire shortage of affordable housing there is sowing economic anxiety among voters. Since 2010, the number of rental properties available for $1,000 or less in greater Phoenix has declined 86 percent. Too much land is zoned for single-family homes.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 April 2024

• They grow your berries and peaches, but often lack one item: insurance. Farmers of fruits and vegetables say coverage has become unavailable or unaffordable as drought and floods increasingly threaten their crops.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 April 2024

• New home prices in Zhōngguó rose at the fastest pace in more than two and a half years in March versus a month earlier, a private survey showed on Monday, driven by a slew of supportive steps to prop up the crisis-hit property sector.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 31 March 2024

• The historic economic comeback of Nihon demonstrates just how screwed up the economy of Zhōngguó is right now. Like Nihon in the 1990s, Zhōngguó is suffering a collapse in the real estate market.
  - Business Insider, 31 March 2024

• The Brooklyn Tower, the 1066-foot building which is the tallest building in all of Brooklyn, has defaulted on its loan controlled by JDS Development
  - Zero Hedge, 29 March 2024

• Bloomberg is warning that defaults in commercial real estate loans could "topple" hundreds of banks in the USA. Leaving taxpayers on the hook for trillions in losses. There is $929 billion of commercial real estate debt coming due in the next 9 1/2 months.
  - Zero Hedge, 29 March 2024

• Kongjian Yu has a plan for cities that flood: stop fighting the water. A landscape architect in Zhōngguó has a surprising strategy to help manage surges of water from storms supercharged by climate change -- the development of hundreds of landscaped urban water parks where runoff from flash floods is diverted to soak into the ground or be absorbed into constructed wetlands..
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 March 2024

• Home Depot buys roofing distributor in deal valued at $18 billion including debt. The retailer said it would acquire SRS Distribution in a deal with a value of $18.25 billion, which includes assumed debt.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 March 2024

• Delinquent property taxes in New York City approach a total of $1 billion, after the expiration of a tax-lien punishment
  - Zero Hedge, 28 March 2024

• Renting is now cheaper than owning in all of the largest metro areas in the USA
  - Zero Hedge, 28 March 2024

• A leaked document reveals that Amazon plans to get rid of office space it rents to save $1.3 billion, in a cost-cutting move amid a crisis in the value of commercial real estate towers
  - Zero Hedge, 28 March 2024

• Zhōngguó signals more support for the real estate industry, but substance to be key for turnaround. The premier of Zhōngguó and its central bank chief have sought to calm the embattled property sector in recent days, but investors are waiting on something slightly more elusive: concrete steps.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 March 2024

• The market for officce space is in turmoil. So why are rents more expensive? Office rents in the USA are holding steady -- or even rising -- despite soaring vacancy rates, a record amount of available sublease space, and rising defaults.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 March 2024

• Home-flipping plummets as profits slump
  - Zero Hedge, 26 March 2024

• Home prices in the USA rose for 12th straight month in January, despite soaring rates
  - Zero Hedge, 26 March 2024

• A Black couple who claimed an appraisal company undervalued their Baltimore home based on their race have settled their lawsuit against their mortgage lender, loanDepot, which has agreed to a number of sweeping policy changes that could offer significant relief to homeowners who allege racially biased appraisals in the future.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 March 2024

• Windowless rooms and town-gown battles: how student housing got expensive. Investors like student apartments because returns are steady and tenants can borrow to pay the rent.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 March 2024

• More retirees are leaving Florida and moving to the southern Appalachia region (from West Virgina southwest). High real estates in Florida are one reason.
  - Zero Hedge, 25 March 2024

• The attempt by Adam Nuemann to buy back WeWork faces an uphill battle due to financing challenges. In trying to reclaim WeWork, Neumann has to contend with a checkered past at the company, uncertainty over funding and the difficulty in valuing a business that is midway through a restructuring process.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 25 March 2024

• Adam Neumann has submitted a bid of more than $500 million to buy back WeWork, the office-sharing company he co-founded and propelled to a $47 billion valuation before it fell into bankruptcy, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 25 March 2024

• Adam Neumann has submitted a bid of more than $500 million to buy back WeWork, the office-sharing company he co-founded and propelled to a $47 billion valuation before it fell into bankruptcy, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 March 2024

• New home sales in the USA unexpectedly dropped in February as prices tumbled, with the lowest median new home price since June 2021
  - Zero Hedge, 25 March 2024

• New York Community Bank and Meridian rode the property boom together. Now they are struggling financially. The bank got many of its loans from a broker now blacklisted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 March 2024

• The new normal for mortgage rates will be higher than many hope. Changes across the market for mortgage-backed bonds mean rates can stay elevated even once the Federal Reserve starts cutting.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 March 2024

• The new target of a drug cartel in Mexico? Seniors and their timeshares. One the most violent criminal groups in Mexico, Jalisco New Generation, offer to buy the vacation properties of retirees. Then the cartel empties its victims' bank accounts. Over the last ten years, the cartel has stolen hundreds of milions of dollars. This crime builds on the crime of timeshare businesses in general, which charge high fees and make it hard for owners to cancel their contracts.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 24 March 2024

• Could real estate agents be thrown out of work the same as were travel agents? Not quite, since buying a home is a longer term investment than buying a plane ticket.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 23 March 2024

• Richard Lara, the insurance commissionerof California, declares a "crisis" after State Farm, the largest home insurance provider in California, announced that it would discontinue coverage for tens of thousands of policies this summer. tate Farm announced on March 20 that it would cut 72,000 home and apartment policies in California because of inflation, regulatory costs and increasing risks from catastrophes.
  - Murdoch's Fox News, 23 March 2024

• Insurers report a rising number of damage claims due to hail. Inflation is driving up the cost of materials and labor to repair roofs and cars. Adding to the costs of insurers is increased development in areas affected by severe storms.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 March 2024

• Roughly two weeks after state regulators said they were collecting details on the homeowners/realestate businesses of insurance companies, to find out why homeowners insurance has become so expensive, key states may opt out, undermining the effort. Some of the states where homeowners face the greatest risks of damage from severe storms and where insurance markets are most turbulent -- such as Louisiana, Texas and Florida, where Republican politicans are paid/bribed to regularly ignore policies dealing with climate change -- are sharing limited data or none at all.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 March 2024

• How have retailers fought off the fees they charge home buyers/sellers for so long? A political action committee tied to the National Association of Realtors has been the top briber contributor to campaigns in every election cycle since 1999.
  - Barron's, 23 March 2024

• State governments in the USA are still confiscating the homes of peope for small amounts of unpaid taxes, despite a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the theft. Tax lien transactions (an investor pays the unpaid taxes, puts a lien on the property, to collect more money) re popular with banks, investment firms, and other financial institutions because they are seen as relatively secure investments.
  - Zero Hedge, 22 March 2024

• $57,500,000 - Real estate brokerage company Compass will pay $57.5 million as part of a proposed settlement to resolve lawsuits over real estate commissions
  - Zero Hedge, 22 March 2024

• Existing home sales unexpectedly exploded higher in February ... and so did prices
  - Zero Hedge, 21 March 2024

• Real estate stocks just cannot seem to catch a break. Among this year's worst performing sectors in Europe, even the prospect of interest rate cuts might not immediately reverse this year's downward spiral. Real estate is dismally lagging the broader equity index so far in 2024, with losses of 8% and erasing the outperformance seen at the end of last year. Dovish signals this week from the Federal Reserve and Bank of England could bring some relief, but few expect this to be forthcoming from the Fed.
  - Zero Hedge, 21 March 2024

• A legal settlement has upended the model for buying and selling homes for the past three decades and prompted more than a million agents to re-examine their careers
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 March 2024

• Turbulences in real-estate markets on both sides of the Atlantic raised fears of contagion risks for the financial sector in Europe, but analysts see European banks better insulated from the downturn than their banking peers in the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 March 2024

• A homeowner in New York City is arrested for changing the locks on one of her properties that has been illegally occupied by squatters
  - Zero Hedge, 19 March 2024

• Economic impact of a shortage of plumbers should concern everyone. Three years ago, the National Association of Home Builders reported there was a 55% shortfall in the number of plumbers available for work.
  - Washinggton Examiner, 19 March 2024

• $78,000,000,000 - Regulators in Zhōngguó have accused Evergrande and its founder of inflating revenues by $78 billion, putting the insolvent property developer at the heart of the biggest financial fraud case in Zhōngguó. Regulators penalized Hengda Real Estate a fine of $580 million, Evergrande's main unit.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 19 March 2024

• $580,000,000 - Regulators in Zhōngguó have accused Evergrande and its founder of inflating revenues by $78 billion, putting the insolvent property developer at the heart of the biggest financial fraud case in Zhōngguó. Regulators penalized Hengda Real Estate a fine of $580 million, Evergrande's main unit.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 19 March 2024

• Trump is rejected by 30 insurance companies as he seeks a $454 million bond that he needs to appeal a civial fraud penalty in New York
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 March 2024

• Cities face cutbacks as commercial real estate prices tumble. Lost tax revenue fuels concerns over an urban 'doom loop'.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 March 2024

• The Biden administration on Monday finalized a ban on the only type of asbestos, chrysotile, still used in the United States (for construction, cement, car parts), the first time since 1989 the federal government has moved to significantly restrict the toxic industrial material. Chrsotile has been linked to lung cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer that forms in the lining of some internal organs.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 March 2024

• The effects will not happen quickly as Nihon ends selling is bonds with negative interest rates. The long-term effects of positive rates could be profound -- on everything from mortgage rates to U.S. government finances.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 March 2024

• The 'fire-sale' for office buildngs in the USA has barely begun. Only 3.5% of offices sold last year came from a distressed seller, thanks to optimism and forgiving lenders.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 March 2024

• ICON, which developed one of the first fully 3D-printed housing developments in the U.S., is taking automation another step further. It recently unveiled what it calls Vitruvius, an AI program that helps consumers design custom homes online (without paying an architect) and obtain the construction plans, making the process cheaper and faster for the consumer, and less income for the architects, [KM: while making rich AI companies richer].
  - Comcast's CNBC, 19 March 2024

• Half of the office space in downtown Pittsburgh could be empty in 4 years
  - Zero Hedge, 18 March 2024

• $1 trillion in 2024 maturities of commerical real estate debt could lead to hundreds of bank failures
  - Zero Hedge, 18 March 2024

• Default: investors in the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco are late with a $3 Million loan payment as foreclosure looms. There are 22 active commercial mortgage-backed securities loans for hotels in San Francisco maturing in the next two years.
  - Zero Hedge, 17 March 2024

• Closing costs for buying a home have risen along with rates. These mortgage fees increased 22 percent from 2021 to 2022. One likely factor is the greater use of discount points to nudge interest rates down.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 March 2024

• The real estate market in Zhōngguó just set a record -- but not a good one. Secondhand home prices in the most developed cities saw their the worst decline since the government started releasing data in 2011, suggesting that the real estate slump in Zhōngguó shows no signs of ending.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 March 2024

• Shares of online real estate services providers, Compass and Zillow, drop 14% after a jury orders the NAR to pay $418 million in antitrust damages
  - Investopedia, 15 March 2024

• Why a Native American nation is challenging the USA over a 1794 treaty. The Onondaga have asked an international commission to find that the United States violated a treaty guaranteeing the nation 2.5 million acres of land.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 March 2024

• Criminal gangs of immigrants from South America are targeting mansions in Baltimore, as President Biden's border crisis spread chaos
  - Zero Hedge, 15 March 2024

• $358,000,000 - The National Association of Realtors agrees to pay $418 million in damages, and eliminate the fixed 6% commission on home sales, to settle its shares of a jury penalty of $1.8 billion levied in November of 2023.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 15 March 2024

• Private equity wants your credit card debt. And car loan. And mortgage. Private fund managers like Apollo, Blackstone and KKR are pushing into asset-based lending and targeting the biggest prize in the global economy: the American consumer.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 March 2024

• Hilton Hotels bets on college towns with $210 million deal. The lodging giant is acquiring Graduate Hotels, a brand with properties near dozens of college campuses throughout the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 March 2024

• "Urgent Action Needed", as rents in New York City get closer to record highs
  - Zero Hedge, 14 March 2024

• Wall Street prepares for a 'time bomb' involving commercial real estate. With the typical U.S. commercial lease ranging from three to five years, the clock is ticking for office and retail property owners and their creditors in the financial sector as remote work has taken off and prompted changes in urban land use. Office vacancy rates have climbed sharply in the wake of the pandemic after falling steadily in the decade before. It is more of a problem for smaller and regional banks who have loans to commercial real estate develoeprs. And it could lead to decades of slow demand for new construction.
  - The Hill, 14 March 2024

• Concrete is one of the worst pollutants in the world. Making concrete the 'green' way is a booming business. Concrete accounts for more than 7% of global carbon emissions, according to some estimates.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 March 2024

• The market for office space in Miami was 'red-hot'. Now its tallest planned office tower cannot fill its space. The 1,000-foot project under construction is still searching for an anchor tenant.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 March 2024

• Banks in Zhōngguó are reportedly scrambling to bail out, Zhōngguó Vanke, one of the country's biggest property developers, after its credit rating was downgraded to "junk" status by Moody's on Monday. 12 major banks in Zhōngguó are talks to provide a syndicated loan for Vanke worth as much as 80 billion yuan ($11.2 billion) to enable the company to meet upcoming repayment deadlines.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 12 March 2024

• Coastal land is sinking, doubling the potential damage from rising seas. That could have profound impacts on real estate, infrastructure and the U.S. economy. Coastal lands are sinking as much as five millimeters a year in some areas. Sea-level rise is about three millimeters a year. If you add the sinking of the land to sea level rise, it doubles the frequency of flooding and cuts the time that cities and coastal residents have to prepare in half.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 12 March 2024

• Over 140,000 farms (about 7% of all farms) have been lost in 5 years in the USA. While the number of farm operations and acres operated declined, the value of agricultural production increased, rising from $389 billion in 2017 to $533 billion in 2022.
  - Zero Hedge, 11 March 2024

• Investors based in Zhōngguó sell $31.7 billion dollars of commercial real estate in the USA over the last 5 years, sales driven by capital controls and lending caps. The sales were first driven by the nationwide deleveraging campaign, but have continued due to a structural shift in the property sector.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 10 March 2024

• The surprising left-right alliance that wants more apartments in suburbs. The YIMBY movement is not just for liberals any more. Legislators from both sides of the political divide are working to add duplexes and apartments to single-family neighborhoods.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 March 2024

• Electric utility Xcel Energy has admitted "Our facilities appear to have been involved in an ignition" of the worst wildfire in the history of Texas. Shares of Xcel have plunged 15% since the fires have begun.
  - Zero Hedge, 07 March 2024

• Electric utility Xcel Energy has admitted "Our facilities appear to have been involved in an ignition" of the worst wildfire in the history of Texas. Shares of Xcel have plunged 15% since the fires have begun.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 March 2024

• Banks have resurrected credit default swaps - which caused the market crash of 2008 where their risk models completely failed - with a new scam called "synthetic risk transfer" - which are simply credit-linked notes (which have been relatively uncommon since the great financial crisis) offering high (mid-double-digit) yields for borrowers willing to accept the implied credit default swap (that effectively transfers the credit risk tied to a pool of loans - such as CREs). We have seen this movie before though: of course, the quants have their models, perfectly calibrated to 'synthetically transfer' that risk at a premium that pays big bonuses, but after scraping away the copulas and the codependencies, this is nothing more than a game of hot-potato (who can hold the potato long enough to earn a decent yield before it permanently scars your 'hand').
  - Zero Hedge, 06 March 2024

• Income needed to afford a home in the USA has soared by 80% since 2020
  - Zero Hedge, 05 March 2024

• A new study shows that white-collar employees who can work remotely now live roughly twice as far from their offices as they did prepandemic.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 March 2024

• Warren Buffett is getting dragged into the real-estate commissions litigation. Plaintiffs are suing Berkshire Hathaway Energy, owner of one of the brokerage defendants, trying to collect on potentially billions in damages.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 March 2024

• Warren Buffett is getting dragged into the real-estate commissions litigation. Plaintiffs are suing Berkshire Hathaway Energy, owner of one of the brokerage defendants, trying to collect on potentially billions in damages.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 March 2024

• Investment managers who have bought up forestland are going tree by tree to figure out whether they should be felled for timber or kept up for carbon-credit generation, as the growing voluntary carbon market has opened up a new way to make money from such holdings.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 March 2024

• An architect builds toward the future on the border of Mexico with the USA. With her library, senior center, markets and sports complexes, Fernanda Canales is bringing a sense of community, beauty and safety to underserved towns.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 March 2024

• A global recession wave is building steam. Recessions in Germany, Nihon, and the United Kingdom are coinciding with commercial real estate worries. It could shake markets.
  - Barron's, 02 March 2024

• Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, a top pension fund in Canada, just sold its 29% share of a New York City office building ... for $1. The other owners will assume the fund's debt obligations. It did the same in December with another property.
  - Zero Hedge, 29 February 2024

• Pending home sales puked in January, back near record lows, and the "surprise" surge in December was revised down large.
  - Zero Hedge, 29 February 2024

• The East Coast is sinking. New satellite-based research reveals how land along the coast is slumping into the ocean, compounding the danger from global sea level rise. A major culprit: overpumping of groundwater.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 February 2024

• A devastating wildfire ravages parts of the Texas Panhandle, home to more than 85% of the state's cattle herd. This comes when the nation's cattle herd has collapsed to a seven-decade low, pushing up retail beef prices at the supermarket to record high levels.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 February 2024

• Climate change is raising the already high wildfire risks of climate-change-denying Texas. The Smokehouse Creek fire is a sign of more to come. Property insurers in Texas are already raising the price of their policies, and withdrawing sales from some parts of the state. Homeowners in Texas saw their insurance rates increase 53.6 percent between 2019 and 2023.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 February 2024

• The second-largest wildfire on record in Texas raged across 850,000 acres on Wednesday, as firefighters from around the state tried to contain it. The blaze has consumed houses, burned vast ranch lands, killed livestock and forced evacuations across the sparsely populated Texas Panhandle.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 February 2024

• Another property giant in Zhōngguó, Country Garden, has a creditor, Ever Credit, who wants it dismantled. The creditor has asked a Hong Kong court to liquidate its operations and pay off lenders. The court filing involves Country Garden's failure to repay a loan of $204 million plus interest owed to Ever Credit.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 February 2024

• Another property giant in Zhōngguó, Country Garden, has a creditor, Ever Credit, who wants it dismantled. The creditor has asked a Hong Kong court to liquidate its operations and pay off lenders. The court filing involves Country Garden's failure to repay a loan of $204 million plus interest owed to Ever Credit.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 February 2024

• Goldman Sachs says office tower prices must plunge 50% for conversion to multi-family housing to make economic sense
  - Zero Hedge, 28 February 2024

• Rural America set to be transformed by a federal plan for to use up to 55-million acres of solar farms. The Biden administration to propose designating as much as 55 million acres of public lands as potential sites for industrial-scale solar farms.
  - Zero Hedge, 28 February 2024

• Employee shortages at hotels threaten to push travel costs even higher. Room rates look poised to rise as owners pass on escalating wage costs.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 February 2024

• The warehouse boom fades, and the hopes of a region in California fade with it. As e-commerce soared, warehousing jobs in San Joaquin County surged too. Did the area bet too heavily on one industry?
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 February 2024

• Home prices in the USA rose for 11th straight month in December, but mortgage rates are on the rise again
  - Zero Hedge, 27 February 2024

• Housing costs are running hot, but is the data missing a cooling trend? Pandemic disruptions may have muddled the measurement of home prices in inflation data. That could complicate the future plans of the Federal Reserve on interest rates.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 February 2024

• Can owners of heavily leveraged Airbnb properties can withstand a prolonged downturn in the short-term rental market, especially those who used stupid amounts of leverage to buy Airbnb properties?
  - Zero Hedge, 26 February 2024

• New home sales in the USA in January decline a bit, while median prices are at 2-year lows as supply jumps
  - Zero Hedge, 26 February 2024

• The sate of Washington wants to limit annual rent increases to 7 percent. Oregon and California have passed similar measures.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 24 February 2024

• Surging home insurance costs could force families to leave these 10 states - with Florida having the most expensive home insurance
  - Murdoch's Fox News, 24 February 2024

• Home prices in Zhōngguó decline, increasing pressure on Beijing. A prolonged fall in home prices shows the huge task facing policymakers, who have so far proved unable to turn the market around.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 February 2024

• Egypt has agreed to a $35 billion deal with the United Arab Emirates to develop the town of Ras el-Hekma town on its northwestern coast, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced on Friday after weeks of speculations. Egypt will receive an advance amount of $15bn in the coming week, and another $20bn within two months.
  - Middle East Eye, 23 February 2024

• Reckoning for realtors in the USA? An estimated $100 billion in annual real estate commissions could be cut by 30%, analyst says -- putting as many as 1.6 million agents out of work. Here is why.
  - MoneyWise, 23 February 2024

• An estimated 2.5 million people were forced from their homes in the USA by weather-related disasters in 2023, according to new data from the Census Bureau. The USA experienced 28 disasters last year that each cost at least $1 billion.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 February 2024

• It is "absolutely crazy": a vacant office tower in Los Angeles is to be torn down for just 30 new charging stations for electric vehicles. The value of commercial real estate has plummeted so much that this makes economic sense.
  - Zero Hedge, 22 February 2024

• Existing home sales in the USA decline as home prices hit a record high for January
  - Zero Hedge, 22 February 2024

• An insurance crisis leaves homeowners vulnerable (and with less insurance) in hurricane-prone (and Christian climate changing denying) Louisiana. Since the 2020 hurricanes, nine insurers became insolvent in the US state of Louisiana within a couple of years.
  - Al Jazeera, 21 February 2024

• As the costs of home insurance continue to increase, coverage is decreasing. Frequent natural disasters and high inflation have led insurers to raise premiums, and forced many customers to pare reduce their policies. Underinsurance is not a new problem, but it has become far more widespread and severe over the past three years, as rising inflation and climate change have created a highly volatile and unreliable insurance market and raised costs for homeowners.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 February 2024

• Sales at Home Depot decline for the fifth quarter on weak demand for housing, the result of higher mortgage rates that have put a big freeze on the housing market
  - Zero Hedge, 20 February 2024

• The gap in homeownership in the USA between Black and White owners is worse now than a decade ago. The Black homeownership rate saw a modest annual uptick to 44.1% in 2022 from 44% in 2021, but remains significantly behind the White homeownership rate of 72%.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 February 2024

• Zhōngguó supercharges stimulus with the biggest reduction in its mortgage reference rate on record, from 4.2% to 3.95%
  - Zero Hedge, 19 February 2024

• Zhōngguó supercharges stimulus with the biggest reduction in its mortgage reference rate on record, from 4.2% to 3.95%
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 February 2024

• Xi Jinping, the president of Zhōngguó, is grappling with $7 trillion downturn as the country's debt levels soar, the real estate market collapses, and stock markets pull back over 21% from 2021 highs
  - Benzinga, 19 February 2024

• Thanks to soaring housing prices, the era of the 400-square-foot subdivision house is upon us. People are forced to buy these small houses because a house under $300,000 that they can afford is something increasingly hard to find.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 February 2024

• These small towns have a big city problem: the rent is way too high. Long considered more affordable than New York City, the Hudson Valley presents a stark example of how the nationwide housing crisis is squeezing renters.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 February 2024

• Unleash the powers of 'evil financial power' of unlimited credit and excess capital on a limited, essential resource such as shelter and this is what we end up with: artificial scarcity, rent-serfs and half-vacant neighborhoods owned by rich absentee landlords
  - Zero Hedge, 17 February 2024

• $450,000,000+ - The state court ruling in Trump's includes a penalty of over $450 million. The ruling in Trump's civil fraud case could cost him all his available cash. The judge said that Trump's "complete lack of contrition" bordered on pathological.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 February 2024

• Value of farmland in the USA hits record high amid tighter credit conditions
  - Zero Hedge, 16 February 2024

• Another sector of the commercial real estate market is in trouble. Major retailers are returning to a "just-in-time" lean inventory management strategy after Covid forced "just-in-case" inventory management due to snarled supply chains. This shift in inventory management style has forced consumer goods maker Newell Brands, retail pharmacy chain Rite Aid, and sports apparel retailer Fanatics to shrink warehouse footprints.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 February 2024

• Another sector of the commercial real estate market is in trouble. Major retailers are returning to a "just-in-time" lean inventory management strategy after Covid forced "just-in-case" inventory management due to snarled supply chains. This shift in inventory management style has forced consumer goods maker Newell Brands, retail pharmacy chain Rite Aid, and sports apparel retailer Fanatics to shrink warehouse footprints.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 February 2024

• Housing starts collapsed in January - biggest MoM decline since Covid lockdowns. Multi-family permits plunged (bad news for CPI as no rent-relief in sight).
  - Zero Hedge, 16 February 2024

• Zhōngguó revives socialist ideas to fix its real-estate crisis. President Xi Jinping aims to put the state back in charge of the crumbling property market, part of a push to rein in the private sector.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 February 2024

• Late mortgage payments pile up for giant apartment lender in the USA. Arbor Realty loans funded a Sunbelt apartment boom. Many of its borrowers are now struggling with higher interest rates.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 February 2024

• Today in the collapse of commercial real estate: the '1515 Market' building in Philadelphia put into special-servicing with $59.4 million left on the mortgage. The building generated about $6.6 million in net operating income when the loan was written in 2014, however that number has now fallen to under $4.4 million in 2022.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 February 2024

• Climate change has hit home insurance. Is health insurance next? Insurers are adjusting to assessing climate risk as extreme heat and air pollution have been linked to a rise in hospitalizations.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 February 2024

• Student housing has a new mantra: bigger is better. Off-campus complexes are getting larger, with some being home to more than 1,500 students, and being built on prime parcels of land as close to campus as possible.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 February 2024

• Another bank subsidy that America should kill off. The Federal Home Loan Banks offer loans to Wall Street that are too cheap.
  - Economist, 14 February 2024

• The valuation crash with commercial real estate is unfolding: "Yes, that is not a typo - it literally sold for $9 per square foot" (referring to a 262,000 square foot building in Ohio). In a commentary, Neil Callanan of Bloomberg highlighted, "The commercial real estate crash unfolding in the USA is a natural consequence of QE/moneyprinting by the Fed." Callanan continued: " ... which intentionally pushed investors out of safer assets like bonds and into alternatives like private equity, malls, and warehouses."
  - Zero Hedge, 12 February 2024

• Squatters are taking over homes across the USA on an industrial scale and turning them into dens of crime
  - Zero Hedge, 12 February 2024

• Americans in the Gen-Z/millenials bracket having long abandoned the dream of homeownership, turned to tiny houses and camper vans as alternatives after the Great Recession. Yet, these options, for the newest generation (Gen-Zers) coming to age - are also becoming expensive. They are now 'car living'.
  - Zero Hedge, 12 February 2024

• Morgan Stanley: why the commercial real estate crisis will be with us for a long time. "CRE challenges should persist, and a quick resolution is unlikely, in part because a majority of loan loss reserves at banks reflect visible transactions, not forward-looking peak-to-trough estimates."
  - Zero Hedge, 11 February 2024

• What the 'electric vehicle city' of Zhōngguó, Hefei, says about the state of the economy. Hefei has led the country in making electric vehicles and other tech products, but it still has not escaped a nationwide housing crisis.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 February 2024

• Many people believe that the reluctance of homeowners to move and give up their low-cost mortgages is behind the recent rise in housing prices. This analysis is not quite correct because it fails to recognize that a severe housing shortage is the problem, not low supplies of existing homes. Only a sizable increase in new construction can relieve the shortage and boost housing activity.
  - Murdoch's Barron's, 10 February 2024

• So-called 'zombie-offices' spell trouble for some banks. Bank tremors serve as a reminder: Just because a crisis has not hit immediately does not mean commercial real estate pain is not coming. A recent study estimates that 14 percent of all commercial real estate loans -- and 44 percent of office loans -- are underwater.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 February 2024

• How to house the fastest-growing population in the world. About 70% of buildings needed in Africa by 2040 are not yet built.
  - Economist, 07 February 2024

• Big Banks are well positioned to prosper from the distress at smaller banks due to failing loans associated with commercial real estate
  - Zero Hedge, 07 February 2024

• TAG, a big landlord in Germany, warns home prices could 30% from their peaks in 2022. Properties are already down 10%.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 07 February 2024

• The decline in value of commercial real estate in the USA is causing banks/lenders in Deutschland to suffer. Bloomberg reports that real estate-focused German lenders were hammered this week after Morgan Stanley analysts told clients to sell senior bonds linked to Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG due to the lender's high exposure to the CRE market in the USA.
  - Zero Hedge, 07 February 2024

• Deutsche Pfandbriefbank prepares for a wave of bad loans in the "greatest real estate crisis since the financial crisis". Shares of PBB, the second German bank to warn of mounting losses on commercial real estate in two weeks, slid nearly 6% in Frankfurt. The stock has slumped 25% so far this year.
  - Newhouse CNN, 07 February 2024

• Why one financiallly-troubled bank is stirring fears of a wider financial mess. New York Community Bancorp's plunging stock price highlights risks that loom over lenders large and small. The bank ballooned in size over the past year, to more than $100 billion in assets, after taking over the fallen Signature Bank last spring in an auction organized by federal regulators. New York Community Bancorp's stock nose-dived after it released an ugly earnings report that included unexpected losses on real estate loans tied to both office and apartment buildings. Its shares have lost more than half their value over the past week.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 February 2024

• Shares of New York Community Bancorp crash despite reassurances that there is "virtually" no outflow of deposits from branches
  - Zero Hedge, 07 February 2024

• Adam Neumann tries to buy back WeWork as creditors mull a sale. WeWork executives have been cool to Nuemann's interest and it is unclear how much financial backing he has.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 February 2024

• Adam Neumann tries to buy back WeWork as creditors mull a sale. WeWork executives have been cool to Nuemann's interest and it is unclear how much financial backing he has.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 February 2024

• Luxury retailers are buying out their landlords. The parent companies of Prada and Gucci are among those spending hundreds of millions of dollars for Fifth Avenue properties.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 February 2024

• A federal appeals court has issued a limited temporary block on an authoritarian law in FLorida that bans citizens of Zhōngguó from buying property in Florida.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 February 2024

• Insurers such as State Farm and Allstate are leaving fire- and flood-prone areas. Home values could take a hit.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 05 February 2024

• Why major cities in the USA are becoming a problem for foreign banks. International banks often have greater exposure to the real estate problems in downtowns and big cities in the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 February 2024

• A group of antitrsut lawsuits accuse large landlords of price-fixing the market rate of rent in the USA using RealPage. One complaint filed by Washington D.C's Attorney General alleges 14 landlords in the district are sharing competitively sensitive data through RealPage, a real estate software provider. They allege that landlords share competitively sensitive data through RealPage, which then sets artificially high rents on a key slice of the local rental market.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 February 2024

• The 6% commission for sales of home is under attack (why not flat fees?). Inside the fight to keep the high fees in force. Despite years of technology disruption, home commissions remain stuck near 6%. Now courts, consumers, and some brokers are fighting back, with the National Association of Realtors spending $52 million to bribe lobby politicians in Washington. "Changes to the commission structure would save consumers between $20 and $30 billion dollars a year", says Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America who previously served as its executive director.
  - Murdoch's Barron's, 03 February 2024

• Starting February 1, renters in Los Angeles renters, in full, any unpaid rent between October 1, 2021, and January 31, 2023, ending a pandemic-era policy. Landlords in Los Angeles are owed an estimated $898 million. Landlords sent an estimated 77,000 notices to Los Angeles renters from last February to December with 96 percent of such for overdue rent, with the average rent owed about $3,774.
  - Zero Hedge, 02 February 2024

• $70,000,000 - Keller Williams agrees to pay $70 million to settle real estate agent commission lawsuits nationwide
  - Associated Press, 01 February 2024

• Shares of Aozora Bank in Nihon plummet 20%. Following a profit warning from New York Community Bancorp on Wednesday, partially attributed to turmoil in the commercial real estate sector, Aozora Bank in Nihon slashed the value of some of its US office tower loans by a staggering 50%.
  - Zero Hedge, 01 February 2024

• Banks around the world are losing money as commercial real estate losses increase. The value of many buildings has plummeted as millions of workers have stuck with pandemic-era remote working, leaving vast tranches of office space vacant or underused. At the same time, historically high interest rates have made it harder for real estate developers -- who often take out huge loans to finance projects -- to make good on their repayments.
  - Newhouse CNN, 01 February 2024

• Banks around the world are losing money as commercial real estate losses increase. The value of many buildings has plummeted as millions of workers have stuck with pandemic-era remote working, leaving vast tranches of office space vacant or underused. At the same time, historically high interest rates have made it harder for real estate developers -- who often take out huge loans to finance projects -- to make good on their repayments.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 February 2024

• The real estate crisis in Zhōngguó "has not touched bottom". The forced liquidation of Zhōngguó Evergrande epitomizes the struggles of the real estate sector: nationwide, sales are down, and millions of homes have been paid for but not delivered.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 January 2024

• Factory activity in Zhōngguó contracts for fourth straight month. A lackluster start to the year points to limits in the ability of exports to drive growth as real estate struggles.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 31 January 2024

• Home prices in the USA rose for the 10th straight month in November, but gains slow
  - Zero Hedge, 30 January 2024

• For retailers, business is back and landlords say no more rent discounts. Landlords are having a much easier time filling prime retail space and are far less likely to agree to concessions.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 January 2024

• Zhōngguó Evergrande was once the biggest developer of properties in Zhōngguó. Now, it has been ordered to liquidate because of its massive debts.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 January 2024

• Zhōngguó Evergrande was once the biggest developer of properties in Zhōngguó. Now, it has been ordered to liquidate because of its massive debts.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 January 2024

• Why President Lulu of Brazil has failed to address the Yanomami genocide. The humanitarian and environmental crisis in Indigenous lands in Brazil has deep roots and cannot be resolved with half-measures. The encroachment on their lands by the Brazilian state, corporations, illegal loggers, and illegal miners has now doomed them to starvation and disease.
  - Al Jazeera, 27 January 2024

• Median rents in the USA slide for eighth month on surge in new apartment supply
  - Zero Hedge, 27 January 2024

• Trump's golf-course tax break could reach $323 million. Federal benefits stem from agreement not to build atop a golf course in Florida, dwarfing similar Trump deals.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 January 2024

• WeWork withholds $33 million in January rent as lease renegotiation tactic. The co-working company has been in bankruptcy nearly three months and its lease-restructuring efforts appear to be intensifying.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 January 2024

• "Rural Renaissance": a venture capital fund plans new community in rural Kentucky to escape Soros-enabled-hellhole cities. The fund, Hew Founding, is developing "rural towns and communities nestled in the bucolic hills of the Eastern Highland Rim area of Tennessee and Kentucky."
  - Zero Hedge, 23 January 2024

• WeWork wrestles to amend leases as landlords seek clarity on restructuring plan. The co-working company has achieved at least $3.7 billion in savings through rejecting and amending leases, but talks for further concessions are dragging on.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 January 2024

• The farmers had what the billionaires wanted. In Solano County, California, a who's who of tech money is trying to build a city from the ground up. But some of the locals whose families have been there for generations do not want to sell the land.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 January 2024

• Home sales were the lowest in almost 30 years in 2023. High mortgage rates and prices made home-buying prohibitively expensive for many people last year.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 January 2024

• 2023 was the worst year on record for existing home sales
  - Zero Hedge, 19 January 2024

• A firesale: Blackstone's defaulted Manhattan office tower loan portfolio is marketed at a 50% discount
  - Zero Hedge, 17 January 2024

• Blackstone's flagship BREIT records wortst annual performance since inception
  - Zero Hedge, 17 January 2024

• The bill is coming due on a record amount of commercial real estate debt. More than $2.2 trillion in debt is maturing before 2028, and much of that will have to be refinanced at higher interest rates.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 January 2024

• The housing crisis in Ireland. Soaring rents have left many struggling to afford homes in Dublin and have created a generational divide. Two-thirds of younger adults in the city live with their parents. "The social contract has been completely ruptured."
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 January 2024

• As realestate development alters the nature and culture of the islands of Greece, some local residents fight back. As a proliferation of pools threatens some water supplies and housing costs skyrocket, people of the Cycladic islands say the Aegean islands' character is being lost to the crime of real-estate homogenization.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 January 2024

• Buying home and auto insurance is becoming impossible
  - Zero Hedge, 14 January 2024

• The USA was hit by a record number of high-cost disasters in 2023. There were 28 storms, wildfires or other disasters that each cost at least one billion dollars in damages, a sign of the growing economic burden of climate change.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 January 2024

• Mortgage rates and inflation could draw attention to the Federal Reserve this election. The Federal Reserve is poised to cut interest rates in 2024 while moving away from balance sheet shrinking. Yet a key event looms in the backdrop: the election.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 January 2024

• The insurance market is healing. Higher prices and lower interest rates are drawing more capital into reinsurance, which can ultimately benefit home and auto policies.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 January 2024

• Office vacancies hit record high across cities in the USA as CRE downturn worsens. "The bulk of the vacant space are buildings that were built in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s."
  - Zero Hedge, 09 January 2024

• The office space vacancy rate in the US has reached its highest level since 1979. In the fourth quarter of 2023 19.6% of office space in major US cities was not leased. Since 2021, commercial real estate prices are failing to keep up with inflation. Is this an indication that the commercial real estate bubble is already deflating?
  - Zero Hedge, 09 January 2024

• Buying home and auto insurance is becoming impossible. Huge losses from national disasters have prompted the industry to jack up prices and pull back from some markets.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 January 2024

• Tracy Kasper, the new president of the National Realtors Association, resigns after a blackmail threat. The resignation is latest in a series of blows to the trade organization.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 January 2024

• CalSTRS, one of the biggest public pension plans in the USA, plans to borrow tens of billions of dollars to maintain liquidity instead of triggering a fire-sale of its assets. Bloomberg reports the roughly $318 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) plans to borrow $30 billion, or about 10% of its portfolio, instead of raising funds through an asset sale that might trigger fire sales. The need to increase leverage comes after a report from the Financial Times last April explained that CalSTRS was planning to write down the value of its $52 billion commercial real estate portfolio after high interest rates crushed the values of office towers.
  - Zero Hedge, 07 January 2024

• As once-routine weather events become increasingly destructive, the rising cost of home-owners insurance threatens to further stall a national housing market that is already groaning under the weight of high interest rates, rising prices and surging construction expenses.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 06 January 2024

• Land along the East Coast of the USA continues to collapse at a worrying rate of up to 2 millimeters a year (while coastal waters are rising 4 millimeters a year). It is steadily sinking or subsiding, which is destabilizing levees, roads, and airports. With each millimeter of subsidence, it gets easier for storm surges to creep farther inland, destroying more and more infrastructure.
  - Condé Nast's Ars Technica, 06 January 2024

• The biggest hospital landlord in the USA suffers new losses. Medical Properties Trust said it would record about $350 million of write-downs related to its largest tenant, sending its shares down nearly 30% in early trading Friday.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 January 2024

• The supply of apartments in the USA hits the highest level in 40 years
  - Zero Hedge, 05 January 2024

• Warehouse availability surges to highest level since the Covid pandemic. The fourth-quarter vacancy rate of 5.2% reported by Cushman & Wakefield was up from 3.1% in the same period a year earlier.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 January 2024

• The averagel household in the USA can afford only the cheapest 16% of listed homes. For the average American, 2023 was the worst year ever for housing affordability.
  - Zero Hedge, 03 January 2024

• The economy of Britain is "not working", for at least 2 key reasons. The power grid cannot keep up with demand for connections, and local planning authorities can block new construction for years. Overcoming these roadblocks has gained essential support.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 January 2024

• Apartment rent relief is expected to continue in 2024. A surge in new supply has pushed vacancy higher, making it harder for landlords to raise prices.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 January 2024

• New York City and San Francisco are the leading cities with the heaviest debt-loads for CRE office space, followed by Chicago and Los Angeles
  - Zero Hedge, 02 January 2024

• Property reinsurance rates in the USA rise by up to 50% on January 1
  - Thomson's Reuters, 02 January 2024

• The slowdown in the residential real estate market, a crucial cog in the American economy, is threatening sectors like home improvement and storage
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 January 2024

• A real-estate juggernaut ran off the rails in 2023. At nontraded REITs, fundraising tumbled and shareholders cashed out as worries rose over the commercial-property market.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 January 2024

• How the property crisis in Zhōngguó ruined investments that could not lose
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 January 2024