Youtube hearted comments of Daniel Bradford (@Falconlibrary).

  1. Looking ahead to 2023, I hope it's a year in which financial experts, regulatory agencies, banks, and legislatures all solve the one problem plaguing consumers worldwide: how to buy a banana.
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  2. I have a confession: I was a simp in my marriage. My wife ran around with her girlfriends ("it's just the girls!"), cooked maybe three meals for me in thirteen years (I can remember each one), and told me on many occasions I was boring. Spent every cent I earned, kept 100% of the money she earned, and kept us in constant debt (which was very stressful for me). I didn't wake up until she walked out after I lost my job and jumped right into some dude's bed, a guy she'd been warming up for a few months. That's when I got myself straight, in my mid-thirties. Didn't have channels like this back then. If only I had, I'd have never married her, and maybe wouldn't have married at all. She did me the biggest favor by abandoning me because I was forced to see her and ME for who we really were. Young dudes, listen to the Romanian. Take the red pill. The sooner, the better.
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  3. Jocko Willink is a former Navy SEAL and said his best weapon in a street fight is his feet: WALK AWAY (if you can). The other person could have a gun or other weapon, and even if you win the fight, you can be arrested and/or sued. Avoid fighting when you can but be ready to fight if cornered.
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  4. My nephew is a Navy SEAL. He's the most physically fit and toughest guy I know. At 41, he trains others now because he's too old to go on missions. His last mission was in the Philippines six years agol. Special ops teams is a young man's game. It's not a woman's game at all.
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  5. I feel your frustration. Not so long ago, that would've been MY rant. When I first moved to LA in the 1990s, I got an apartment 1.4 miles from work, thinking it'd be an easy drive. On a good day, it took me 45 minutes each way. Seven, eight changes of a traffic light before I could get through an intersection. I got a bike and made the trip in under 10 minutes, but angry/careless motorists hit me three times, nearly killing me the third time (one was carelessness, the other two clearly intended to hit me, the third one being a woman in a Range Rover who tried to slam me into a tree and actually bent the bike frame in half. LAPD didn't ticket her). Public transportation? A bus ride meant six changes of buses and the trip took me nearly two hours. After that, I walked, and every day, the same LAPD patrol partners stopped me. I asked them why they stopped me every day and one cop said "Because you're walking and that's a suspicious activity. Don't you own a car?" Miami has a long way to go to equal or exceed that level of crazy. My last five years there, I lived in Beverly Hills and never went anywhere. Groceries = Instacart, car stayed in the garage, walked to work (the BHPD doesn't consider walking a suspicious activity). This is why I've chosen to buy a house in a SMALL town with no traffic and nothing there but houses, a gas station, a Pizza Hut, and a grocery store. Will it be boring? God, I hope so.
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  6. Not a professional economist but I and many other students of US history could see that Powell was going to give us stagflation. If you're gonna raise rates, RAISE 'EM. Yes, it'll trigger a recession. A recession is a brushfire that clears out the weeds and deadwood. Instead, we're now doomed for the rest of this decade to stagflation (stagnant growth, relatively high inflation, relatively high unemployment) because Powell was influenced by the free money addicts in Congress and on Wall Street.
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  7. As a serial dater of Japanese women, I can affirm that everything this young Chad says is true. Japanese women like to struggle and protest. It is definitely part of their mindset. We Western men have been trained to stop when women do that, but then I realized they didn't want me to stop. How did I know? I asked them to explain and to say "I really don't want to" if they REALLY didn't want to. Clear and unambiguous communication is needed with a Japanese woman because of the cultural differences. I wouldn't risk even that in the States, where no means no absolutely (better safe than sorry). All I can say is, when in Rome-- There's only two cultures where the frequency of sex doesn't diminish over time in a relationship (in my experience): Japan and Korea. If anything, it remains constant or even increases. If you have blue eyes and blonde hair, you are exotic to an Asian woman. Blue-eyed blondes are the big prize for them.
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  8. 5:20 6'3"? Dang, I'm only 6'2". Oh well, better luck next time. Dating is hell for us short guys.
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  9. I looked into buying a house and the seller said I had to waive inspection or he wouldn't look at my offer. I declined. My mama didn't raise no fools.
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  10. I sold my house in California near the peak of prices pre-2008. I literally had two prospective buyers show up at the same time and start a fistfight in my living room because they were upset at having competition for the house. These two men were not rational at that moment. Btw, I ended up selling to neither of them after I kicked them out. One of them came back past 11 pm that night, banging on my door and insisting I sell him my house. Had to call the cops on him! So I understand the "gold fever" mentality very well, having seen it first hand. I've never been tempted that way, because I learned a long, long time ago that decisions based on fear are almost always bad. In fact, every decision I ever made out of fear turned out to be a mistake. If people just stop and ask "Am I doing this because I'm afraid?" and the answer is "yes", then it's simple: don't do it.
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  11. 3:14 She looks nice just as she is. Know who makes women insecure about their looks? Other women.
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  12. In my area, realtors have switched from the pressure tactic of "buy NOW because prices are always going to go up!" to "buy NOW because interest rates are always going to go up and prices will never go down!" Get ready for plenty of denial and unsubstantiated "analysis" from panicking, highly indebted (they say "leveraged") real estate investors who thought buying a house for $100k over asking with a 3% interest rate was Willy Wonka's golden ticket. You know who I mean.
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  13. Very few people will read this comment because of its length, but here goes anyway: The same economists who just a few months ago told us: 1. There will be only modest inflation; 2. Inflation will be short-lived; 3. Housing prices are going to go up 20% in 2022 Are now telling us that it'll either be no recession or a brief, mild one. Here's the five biggest problems: 1. Americans have no cash reserves. 61% of Americans can't cover a $1000 emergency in the "richest country on earth". 2. Inflation is mostly supply-side, not demand side. Fed raising interest rates will crush wage growth more than the inflation rate because interest rate rises are meant to fight demand-side inflation. Supply-side inflation caused by material shortages and supply chain disruptions isn't being dealt with by our government. 3. As Michael and Nick pointed out (and also Elon Musk), many badly-run, unprofitable companies have been keeping themselves going with free money. Free money train has been derailed by the Fed and now we may see a lot of companies large and small failing. 4. Housing is in a bubble and when that bursts, it's going to burn a lot of speculators (20% of all houses were bought by investors, aka speculators aka riverboat gamblers) who are going to lose possibly hundreds of billions overnight. 5. Americans not only have no savings, but high debt: the average US household holds debt equal to 129% of its annual gross income. You don't need to be Dave Ramsey to know that ain't good. I think all of these things added together, plus a government run by clueless people who live in a bubble of their own (elderly millionaires), is going to result in a collapse that will be different in some ways from 2008, but actually worse, because there's no clear path to getting out of it. 2022 doesn't look so bad; 2023 looks stormy, indeed.
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  14. We don't have a shortage of houses. So here's what the government can do: turn next-tier houses into "starter" homes by giving first time home buyers tax grants (you don't have to pay grants back) and give a tax break on the profits to anyone who sells to a first time buyer. We can turn over existing stock that way. Might mean slightly fewer bombs for Ukraine, but let's go crazy and focus on the needs of our own people just this one time, see how it feels.
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  15. My landlord is a Boomer property investor. He just bought five new "starter" homes and is going to keep them rent them out at a handsome profit. The listings never made it to the MLS--a realtor he works with hooked him up with the sellers (he paid all cash). I'm living in Lexington, KY right now, and the local paper found that 235 investors controlled one in every 10 Lexington home sales since 2019. The top five investors bought 1,000 houses between them 2019-2022, every single house a "starter" house that people used to buy as their first home. The market is NOT going to fix this problem--we need limits on investors buying single family homes. Period. I know you have a lot of investors watching your channel and they're going to yell Communism or something at me, but everything has to have limits, and that includes capitalism. We already have limits, don't we? Companies aren't free to pollute, they have health and safety standards, we have a minimum wage, and anti-discrimination laws. Limiting investors from buying single family houses will be a good thing for our society.
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  16. "How did I get pregnant by another man?" Oh, come on, cupcake.
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  17. Sellers are still insisting on charging double what they paid for houses two or three years ago. I pointed out to a realtor that at today's mortgage rates (even though I'm a cash buyer), the listing price would have to be reduced at least 30% to have the same mortgage payment as 2020. Her response? "This is a HOT market!" The house has been on the market for 161 days. I've yet to meet a seller or realtor who has a realistic appreciation of how the market has changed. I wonder how long it'll take?
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  18. I've looked at some "newly renovated" homes and have yet to be impressed with the extent and quality of the renovations. It seems to me that the flippers use the absolute cheapest materials and the least amount of skilled labor possible, investing $10,000 for an increased price for $60,000 or more. I suppose they do this because it works on at least some people. In my area, I'm now seeing houses for sale that are "half-finished" flips, where the flippers started the renovations and have abandoned them in progress. If that's not a sign of sellers' panic, I never saw it.
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  19. Warren Buffett switched his holdings from Wells Fargo to Bank of America for a number of reasons, this being among them. WF is a dysfunctional organization and, despite being judged "too big to fail", is at high risk of being absorbed by another bank. You have to be well-managed to make it through tough times, and Wells Fargo just isn't. There might be someone out there with the skill and vision to pull the bank through to the other side, but Charlie Scharf ain't it. From CNN: "Buffett had publicly urged the Wells Fargo board not to hire a leader from Wall Street. Though Scharf has a track record of running consumer-facing businesses and improving them with technology, his resume featured time at securities-industry giant JPMorgan Chase & Co., and more recently atop Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Scharf also struck an agreement to work from New York, instead of the San Francisco headquarters, a move Buffett’s business partner, Charlie Munger, called “outrageous.”
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  20. As of February 17, 2022, they've raised £142,000 (that's $193,000). Scrolling down the list of contributors, and the vast majority of donors are men, not women. Top five donors are ALL men. Almost all of the large contributions are from MEN. There's a simp born every minute.
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  21. He should've said "Hey, you're just Tom Brady's type. Would you like to go for coffee with Tom sometime? He and I are good amigos! I can give you his number." Things would've gone very, very differently.
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  22. The English woman with the dark hair? Very attractive! And then she opened her mouth.
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  23. Big institutional investors can tap limitless funds to buy houses--I don't call them "homes" unless they're owned by individuals--and can and will swoop in and increase their holdings during this crisis. It's exactly what happened in 2010-2012, when they went as far as rigging bids in the Bay Area. Unless our government intervenes to secure housing for individuals, which it has shown zero inclination to do, by 2026, the share of houses sold to investors will go from 20% to 50% (and higher in the most desirable areas). This is demonstrably bad, since owning a house is the best route for people to build wealth for retirement. What's more, people owning their own homes provides much-needed social stability. I live in a neighborhood of duplexes that are 100% rentals and the neighborhood is constantly in flux. Nobody knows their neighbors, so nobody looks after one another. I've owned homes in the past where everyone was an owner and knowing that your neighbor is there for the long haul makes it more likely you'll befriend them. People need those social bonds; we're individuals, but we're also tribal animals and being isolated is bad for us. American society is already under severe strain not just from the pandemic but by the wage gap, and shutting people out of owning their homes may be good for investors' profits, but it's harmful for our society overall. And no, I do not want to debate anybody who bleats about the magic of the market or other Ayn Rand BS. That stuff is a fantasy. We have local, state, and federal government agencies for a reason: they're supposed to intervene and manage our society to make it as fair as possible. If you want to live in a country where there's no government, try living in Somalia for a year and then check back with me if you're still alive at the end of it.
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  24. The Fed is moving too slowly and not aggressively enough to tame inflation. The formula is simple: interest rates have to be at least 2 points higher than the inflation rate in order to tame inflation. The inflation rate is 8.5%. Interest rates need to be 10.5%. Interest rates for 30 year house loans are hovering around 5.5%. The "soft landing" that Powell is trying to achieve has never happened. He's just prolonging the pain. It's like a Band-Aid: one pull, right off!
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  25. As Warren Buffett pointed out recently: as long as the homeowners are gainfully employed, it doesn't matter if they're upside-down in their house. Investors, on the other hand, will dump properties rather than risk getting burned.
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  26. I'm seeing price cuts in my area BUT: 1. The homes are often in poor condition; 2. If you look at the sales history, they're still way overpriced (seller bought the home for half of what he's asking now, with no significant improvements to the property); 3. The neighborhoods aren't the most desirable. Last crash, it took two years for prices to bottom out. It'll take at least a year this time and maybe longer. My guess is that don't buy until a year from now and if you can go all-cash or a huge down payment (50%+), so much the better. Cue the heavily-indebted investors/flippers in the comments, screaming IT'S A LIE! A LIE! THERE'S A HUGE SHORTAGE AND MY HOUSE IS WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD! GOLD I TELL YOU! Yeah, sorry to be the frog in the punch bowl, guys, but you're in trouble.
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  27. The place I'm renting is 22% higher than it was a year ago, landlord says he's raising it another 22% when my current lease expires. Over 200 people applied to rent this place the first and only day it was listed--I got it because I showed up, chatted with the owner, and we hit it off. Sheer luck, in other words. There is an artificially created shortage of properties to rent or buy in the US. I've concluded this is never going away, so I'm leaving the country, where my US pension will allow me to live indoors AND buy food. It's like some kind of a dream come true.
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  28. I lived next to a mini-mansion in Beverly Hills for five years. Hosted way too many guests too often for city regulations, but I let it go as long as they kept relatively quiet. Then the guests' behavior got worse and I ratted them out to the city. I did NOT pay rent to live next door to a hotel! The owner had to sell the house because AirBnB was how she was paying the mortgage. A common trick to get around local regulations about how many days a property can be available is to not give the exact location and to switch hosts, so that enforcement officials searching the listings won't find the exact same listing every time. AirBnB should NEVER have been allowed to take root in our cities. I hope it goes bankrupt and disappears. People buy houses in neighborhoods with the specific intention of turning them into hotels--it's running a business in a residential neighborhood. But AirBnB spread the bribes--er, I mean campaign contributions--around to the right officials, so they were given a license to do this. I always predicted their business model would collapse sooner or later. Maybe this recession will have a few positives, like killing this crap business once and for all.
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  29. Economists are claiming $2.6 trillion socked away in savings. They're both right and wrong. There is $2.6 trillion socked away, but those savings are heavily concentrated in the top 10% of income earners. That's why we have a nation where 61% of Americans can't cover a $1000 emergency but there's trillions in savings laying around. That's why this recession will be very good for the top 10%: they can buy up even more assets at rock bottom prices and then hold until the prices rise again. Income inequality got much worse after the last big recession (2008-2011) and will get even worse after this one. Most of the trillions of new money minted for "COVID relief" in fact went to the top 10%, who are the only people who matter in our politics. People who aren't in the top 10% who think this recession will benefit them are wrong. 90% of us are going to get hurt, and the poorer you are right now, the more you'll be damaged.
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  30. More homes are coming on the market in my area and there are price reductions, but the quality of the homes offered for sale are substandard. The prices are too high to buy them as a fixer-upper.
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  31. Interest rates were 7%-8% throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. 30 year rates didn't go below 5% for the first time ever until 2008. 2008-now is an anomaly and now we're resetting to more normal rates. Naturally, prices are going to have to come down and stay down, or houses won't sell.
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  32. A lot of financial analysts are now saying that homeowners are raiding their retirement accounts and other savings to pay their mortgages and other bills. People are maxing out credit cards at 26% apr and we all know that's a very bad "money management" technique. People got addicted to free money and the government throwing cash at them, and now it's all going away.
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  33. I majored in accounting and I can assure you, big corporations have a hundred ways to make themselves look profitable or unprofitable, depending on their goals...for awhile. Eventually, gravity must be obeyed.
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  34. When will we see the biggest price drops? One year from now to three years from now (1-3 years) is your best window of opportunity. I'd recommend against buying before December 2022.
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  35. If we used the 1981 indicators, inflation right now would stand at 12%. It'll be 20%+ this year. I think it could go as high as 30%, the highest in US history. The pre-1981 Bureau of Labor Statistic metrics were more realistic than the ones being used now and accord more with people's current real life experience as far as I can see. The shock of rising oil prices, which affects everything else in the economy (unlike housing, which has a much more restricted effect), will be one of the primary drivers in this historically high rate. Any sustained double-digit inflation in a democracy tends to topple governments. What seems the most likely scenario is that we get stagflation, which is a recession with high unemployment and negative growth that does NOT deflate prices. Ask anyone who lived through that in the 1970s was like. It's a nightmare. Stagflation happens when there is a so-called negative supply shock. That is, when something that is crucial to an entire economy, such as energy or labor, is suddenly in short supply or becomes more expensive. One obvious example is crude oil.
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  36. I talked to a realtor this weekend who said she's selling all of her single family home rentals. The reason? She increased the rents on all tenants to "market rates" (I'm guessing huge increases), several of her tenants got angry, trashed the properties, and then moved out without notice. She took me on a tour of two of the properties--huge damage but she said she was getting an insurance payout to repair them (but her plan was to take the insurance money and not do the repairs, instead selling the properties "as is"). She said "a lot of landlords are selling their properties for the same reason." Hm, it's almost like making people pay 60% of their income for a dilapidated house angers them, especially when you slap on a double digit rent increase during the worst inflationary crisis in forty years. I'm guessing this is the future for a lot of landlords. As the old saying goes, you don't know where the line is until you cross it, and then it's too late.
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  37. Most women have made it clear that they don't care about us, that we are only a means to their ends. I believe Chris Rock said it best: “Only women, children and dogs are loved unconditionally. A man is only loved under the condition that he provides something.” After experiencing this in my own marriage, I've decided to be a bachelor for the remainder of my life. The relationship I want, where I'm loved just for myself, isn't possible. So I'd rather not have one at all.
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  38. Happy Third Anniversary. The jobs market being "strong" depends on your definition of "strong". Are there a lot of job vacancies? Yes. Are there a lot of GOOD job vacancies paying a living wage and offering benefits? No. Our local restaurants have a dire staff shortage. Restaurant owners have raised prices "to pay staff more" but then don't actually increase their staff's wages nor hire additional servers or prep people. My buddy and I ate at several restaurants when he visited recently and every waitress told us the same thing: the owners want to raise menu prices but don't want to pay wages that would attract workers. The job market is only "strong" on paper. In the real world, where your job pays for the rent and the groceries and your car loan, it's weak as hell.
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  39. I lived in Beverly Hills for years (as a renter in the flatlands). Rich young men from Dubai and Qatar rent houses at that price for a few months during the summer and fall months, which apparently don't have pleasant weather in their home countries. They're infamous for throwing lavish days-long parties and illegally racing "supercars" through residential streets (the noise from those cars was the bane of my existence). Beverly Hills PD doesn't stop them because the partiers hire off-duty BHPD for security at $150 an hour and they're not going to do that if the cops ticket them for street racing. People like that won't be touched by a recession nor even another Great Depression, and I can easily imagine their counterparts renting that overpriced crackerbox. I think it's just a bit early in the year for it: who takes a vacation in Florida in the summer? I predict that house will be rented by September or October, but it's clear the landlord doesn't know how to time the market. Or perhaps he does, and he's listing it for rent now for tax purposes, because it was offered for rent and stood vacant, he can deduct those "lost months" of rent from his total income. Ya gotta think of tax avoidance angles when you're dealing with the rich tribe.
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  40. The past isn't always a guide to the future, but after prices crashed in 2008, they didn't bottom out until 2010. I expect the same timeframe this time, though, because of the cumulative effect of valuing housing on the market. Sellers reduce their prices by 10%-15%, which becomes the new base. If houses still don't sell at that base, sellers reduce their price further, and that becomes the new base--it's a snowball rolling downhill. When owners wake up and realize they're paying a mortgage on a house market valued at $300,000 that they bought for $600,000, people are just going to start walking away if they don't see values recovering in the foreseeable future. This is the scenario all the banks are preparing for right now. Wild cards in the scenario: 1. Will a recession tame inflation or will we have stagflation? 2. How long and how deep will the recession be? Housing prices are going to come down, but these wild cards affect whether prices go down by 20% or as much as 50%. This will vary area by area, but I expect a minimum of 20% price reduction and 50% in others. Not all markets are as wildly overvalued (out of line with household incomes) as others, and all-cash investors may continue to partially prop up some markets. If you want a good bargaining position, wait a year. If you want to really gamble to get the best deal, two years.
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  41. I personally know of three cases of PPP fraud: 1. A Youtuber in the Philippines formed a phony business in the States and got a PPP loan which he's never repaid--he won't ever return to the US because he's afraid of the authorities and does visa runs to Thailand every few years; 2. One of my neighbors who owned a one-person business claimed she had employees and collected a PPP loan that she used to buy a new BMW and to go on vacation to Greece when restrictions were lifted; 3. My former landlord, who got a PPP loan and still laid off some of his employees. PPP funds was very poorly monitored, whether by incompetence or by design, and there was rampant fraud.
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  42. I'm taking out a life insurance policy on the universe. When it finally bites the Big One, I'll be rich.
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  43. Anybody else ever hear this at work? "We're like a family here." Yeah, a family with members who will get laid off when things get tough. Imagine doing that with your real family! "We appreciate your years of service, Uncle Bill, but the family is downsizing, so I'm afraid we'll have to let you go. These decisions are never easy."
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  44.  @MichaelBordenaro  Most LA bicyclists and scooter users ride on the sidewalk even though it's illegal because it's the only way they've got a chance. I don't know about Miami, but LA motorists hate bicyclists and pedestrians and actively try to kill them.
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  45. I wouldn't say sellers are "slashing" their listing prices. When you bought the house as an investment 2 years ago, demand double or triple what you paid for it, and then cut your asking price by 10% after sixty days...that's not much progress. Here's an example from the Midwest, using price history from the listing: 2019: Purchased for $80,000 March 2022: Listed for $210,000 June 2022: Price reduced to $195,000 That's with no improvements, either cosmetic or structural. The house needs new windows, a complete bathroom and kitchen remodel, roof is 15 years old...no garage, area is so-so. I would buy the house for what they paid for it, but no more. It's a long way from $195,000 to $80,000. Anybody who pays more than $80,000 and isn't a deep pockets investor is an idiot. You'll have to buy and hold for a decade to recover your investment (but if you're looking to take a loss or stash some cash, it's a "buy"). The seller is apparently heavily indebted with lots of "investment properties" but sellers haven't adjusted to reality yet: people are either getting laid off or afraid of layoffs, inflation is destroying income gains and then some, banks aren't writing new loans, companies are putting an end to remote work, which means Californians who work in tech aren't going to swoop in and rescue property values with their high salaries. And the president can't get up a flight of stairs on his own. No one in Washington is doing anything. Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell have that deer in the headlights look and the president, well, let's just say he might not be a big help here and leave it at that. Will that $195,000 house drop belong six figures? Depends on how long and how deep that recession is. If I were the seller, I'd drop the price to $120,000 for a quick sale and hope some dumb fish takes the bait. But dreams die hard and greedy ones die harder. To answer your question: Yes, I'm fun at parties.
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  46. I found a house I wanted after 18 months of searching. Offered full price for it. An all-cash investor scooped it up by bidding up over asking, and five days later, my dream house was gone. I searched the county property records, and this individual, through his LLC, has bought up over 10% of the homes in a small town. He doesn't control the real estate market; he IS the market.
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  47. Finally seeing price reductions in my area, down to 30%-40% off original listing price. In other words, down to 2019 pricing levels. Sellers are starting to panic because 30 year rates are at 6.6%.
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  48. They'll be regretting it two months from now.
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  49. Sellers were frightened in my area for a minute, now with the recent mortgage rates dip, they raised prices back up again. Example: House was purchased in 2020 for $140,000, listed 6/22/22 for $310,000, price cut 7/24/22 to $285,000, just went to $315,000. I'm working with a buyer's agent and she said that the widespread belief is that there won't be any further interest rate increases this year, and almost certainly a reduction in the first quarter of next year. We'll see if that plays out. It's going to take another 6-9 months before we can see a clear direction. A lot of people are clinging desperately to the market of the past two years as if it wasn't some freakish anomaly. It's like getting up every day and expecting a total solar eclipse, man.
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  50. (Before I start, apologies for a long comment no one will read) People ask "Why haven't home prices collapsed yet?" Three reasons: 1. The recession is just starting. We haven't seen job losses yet--but Target just posted a 90% decline in profits, with many other companies to follow. Companies will stop hiring and/or lay off people, especially after the 2022 Christmas shopping season. 2. The Fed promised to sell off its MBS (mortgage backed securities) but instead is BUYING them. The Fed actually added $8 billion in MBS over last month instead of selling the $17.5 billion they planned. Mortgage lenders set their rates when financial markets open, and then they monitor MBS prices all day (or they pay a service to do this and alert them to significant changes). When MBS prices drop, lenders raise interest rates, and when prices rise, they drop their rates. The Fed is propping up MBS prices and keeping rates from rising. 3. Many sellers are trying to wait this market out. I was negotiating for a house this past week and in the middle of negotiations, my broker informed me that the seller had decided to pull the listing "until he figures things out". Figuring things out = why he can't dictate terms and demand twice what he paid for the house in 2019. How can this be? Ignore all the real estate industry shills (rhymes with "Bamsey") who assure us that home prices are just going to go up. They said the same thing before 2008. The inexorable principle of housing prices is this: when housing prices become disconnected from wages, housing prices will eventually correct back to their true value. A home at the top of the bubble in 2007 that was $250,000 is $475,000 today, while the average income went from $55,000 to $63,000 in that same time period. When people tell you "this isn't 2008", reply: "No, it's a far bigger bubble, much worse" and the coming recession of 2023-25 will be worse than 2008-11.
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  51. I'm dropping my Netflix end of the month. I can't afford Amazon Prime, HBOMax, and Netflix, so I'm dropping the one with the worst selection.
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  52. Inventory is up but almost all of the homes in my area are dilapidated and still priced at twice what the sellers paid for them. Not seeing any quality inventory at all.
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  53. We have at least three more rate hikes in front of us, and if inflation persists (it always rises in the summer, by the way), mortgage rates could easily go to 10% and remain at or around 8% for the rest of this decade. That's actually a reset to normalcy. Learn your history: Historical mortgage rates have averaged just under 8% since 1971. The low rates of 2008-2022 were an historical anomaly, not the norm, and it's a period unlikely to be repeated. You won't see 3% mortgages again.
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  54. Dolly's one of the few rich people who isn't evil.
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  55. As with 2008, the inflation in values and the deflation of the bubble vary widely from region to region. Many housing markets in the Midwest and Great Plains are relatively stable; it's the houses in Florida, Colorado, and west of the Rockies that soared in price the most, and which are now crashing hardest. As a native Midwesterner, I never could get used to the cyclical boom and bust of California real estate, because that's not how real estate works in Kansas. I have to hand it to the real estate industry, though: they have the best sales force on the frikkin' planet. Who else can convince people that if they don't buy this house at a 200% markup from what the seller paid three years ago, at a significantly higher interest rate, they will NEVER get a house? Look no further than Trump, who has a real estate empire; the guy's a master salesman (not an endorsement of Trump, just an observation). Full disclosure: My mom was a realtor and she can still sell ice cubes to Eskimos. When I rented my first apartment at age 18, my mom negotiated down the rent by pointing out flaws with the apartment. The landlady was so intimidated she knocked 20% off the rent.😂
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  56. Capitalism as embodied in the US economy is cyclical. It's a boom-bust cycle and the swing in the cycles is getting more pronounced as successive governments deregulate the economy and as more and more economic power is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer companies and individuals. Right now, I'm seeing a lot of denial and panic about a recession that's already underway. It's not coming, it's here. One of my nieces is married to a home builder. Most of his clients have disappeared overnight. This is how recessions snowball. When you predict a recession or say there's one happening, people mistake that for cheering for a recession. I'm not. Recessions can cause lasting harm to individuals and communities. But they're a fact of life and right now is a terrible time to buy a home, either to live in or as an investor, unless you're certain you won't have to sell it in the next decade. I think that's how long it'll take to recover the inflated values we're seeing now. One factor so many people are missing is that we have a depopulation crisis in the US: the Boomers think they're never going to die, but even they are mortal and Millennials and Generation Z don't have the money to buy homes and raise kids. Mass immigration has always meant a periodic influx of young people into the States, but that's going away, too. We're left with an aging, maybe even declining, population. Once a society starts down that road, no one has ever reversed it.
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  57. Michael, I don't know about Florida, but all I'm seeing in the Midwest are flippers and investors trying to dump their half-finished projects, landlords offloading rentals they no longer want to manage, the usual "needs TLC" junk that should be torn down, and a lot of very small, very overpriced vacation homes ("cozy cabin by the lake" that's 600 feet, etc). Still, it's more than we were seeing a few months ago. It's a start. When we do see homes that are worthwhile, most, if not all, will be snapped up by "all cash" investors who will overbid the asking price, same as happened during the last housing crash. I know a lot of folks are pinning their home ownership hopes on this crisis, but I don't see any good news anyone in this except the usual suspects (Boomer investors in the top 10% income bracket). Everybody else is SOL and when we're done, the housing market will be even more skewed than it is now. The federal government needs to manage this crisis, but I don't see that happening, either. They didn't ten years ago and they've made no signs of doing it now.
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  58. Elon Musk said something along those lines in the past couple of weeks: if you have free money and know that you'll be bailed out no matter how bad your decisions are, you throw caution (and money) to the wind. Let's see some of that "free market discipline" unleashed on these investors.
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  59.  @MichaelBordenaro  My Beverly Hills landlord owns 14 properties in the city limits and holds some units vacant so he deliberately shows a loss for his LLC. It offsets the profit in his other businesses. These people have more tricks than a carnival sideshow.
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  60. I'm friends with an officer at a bank and she says that her bank is going to sit on foreclosures and not sell them except a few at a time so the prices don't get too depressed. In other words, even with foreclosures rising, inventory isn't going to go up much because the banks may very well decide to keep the artificial shortage going. With a bailout from the federal government guaranteed for any bank (because the banks and Wall Street own Washington DC), this strategy may be very feasible. We'll have to see how it unfolds, but I think this scenario is the most likely one.
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  61. Top reasons women file for divorce: 1. Their divorced friends encouraged it 2. They're bored 3. Their therapist encouraged it 4. They met another guy or guys and believe they can trade up 5. It was in the back of her mind all along to get her husband's money and make him miserable Notice I didn't list abuse or infidelity by their husbands. Women claim "abuse" but what they really meant was "he didn't let me spend as much as I wanted and didn't let me date other men."
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  62. I live in Kentucky. A "fixer upper" house that sold for 45k two years ago was listed last week for 165k, without any significant repairs done in the interim. Sold in 48 hours. All cash buyer. The average person simply can't compete in this market.
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  63. Google is worried right now because of ChatGPT, which can undermine the core of Google's business (its search engine) if it fulfills its promise. Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, is so worried that he's brought in the founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) to strategize Google's next move. Google is rumored to be undertaking their equivalent of the Apollo Project, catching up and surpassing ChatGPT before they get wiped out. Pichai was complacent and never saw this coming.
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  64. Great points, Michael. Interest rates are going to go much higher and stay there for at least two years. Here's why: Interest rate increases are supposed to fight inflation. However, a lot of the inflation is being caused by supply issues (such as gasoline/diesel), and won't be curbed by interest rate hikes. That means that rates have to stay up to curb inflation in areas of the economic that ARE affected by interest rates, and can't come down until the non-interest rate areas do. This is why our situation is so bad and is a return to "stagflation": the cost of living will go up while economic growth and wages decline. Worst case scenario, not seen since the 1970s and early 1980s. Rates have to be 2 points higher than the rate of inflation to have an effect. Inflation is now 8.5%. Do the math.
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  65. It's funny how those "you'll own nothing and be happy" folks all have private jets, mansions, yachts, and 90% of the stocks. They must be so unhappy.
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  66. I was a career civil servant, allegedly a recession proof job, and was laid off three times in my career, had my pay frozen for eight years (in California!) while living costs kept rising, so every year I got a pay cut. It took me a decade just to make up for those eight years of pay cuts.
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  67. Let's review the record of our esteemed Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen. 2021: Inflation is transitory! 2022: There is no recession! 2023: The banking system is sound! Yellen's recent riveting testimony before Congress, where she admitted she was trying to drive small and regional banks out of business and needed Senator Kennedy of Louisiana to define what a "budget" was, was the icing on the cupcake. This isn't a partisan issue. A person is either good at their job or they're not. She's not.
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  68. Most Americans are bad with money and worse at math, but are also perpetual optimists. If you understand this, it all makes sense. Story of my neighbors: the husband just got laid off, the wife is still working, so even with unemployment benefits, their household income has been reduced by a significant amount. They just bought a new 75 inch flatscreen tv. Because it was "on sale" and they're "saving money". They put their old 65 inch on the curb (still working) and some scavengers came and collected it (there's a good side hustle, collecting other people's castoffs). Oh, and the husband is sure he'll find a job "after the benefits run out". Going to take a long vacation until then! Saw it, wanted it, bought it, it's on the credit card, how will we pay it off? Who knows? My neighbors are NOT a unique case--I'd say most people are like that. Hell, people bought entire houses on impulse, what's a $1100 flatscreen tv or a $45,000 car compared to that? I'm no financial genius and not rich, but I never carry credit card debt, drive a well-maintained car that I paid off years ago with 0% financing and another one I inherited from my dad, and have cash on hand for emergencies. And my television is over a decade old, but it works just fine, so why get another one? I have no financial worries because I've always lived below my means. The materialism of Americans is one of the biggest problems in our society: it's the source of a lot of stress, and part of it (not all of it) self-inflicted.
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  69. That's one small step for bimbos, one giant leap for bimbokind.
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  70. I don't think housing and rental prices are necessarily the problem. The problem is that wages haven't been going up. If the rent on your apartment goes up from $900 to $1700 over a 14 year period, that's not a problem IF wages also double. Wages have been going down in real terms since the early 1990s. The destruction of unions and NAFTA are largely responsible for that. The Fed crashing housing prices doesn't solve the longer-term problem of wage and housing price increases not being matched. The US is becoming Brazil (or any Third World country you want to name), where there's a few very rich people, a lot of very poor people, and a small middle class. The days of the large middle class in the US are gone forever.
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  71. The UK cannot fail to have a bright future with such upstanding citizens growing in number by the day. Winston Churchill would be most proud if he were alive to see this. I'm sorry, I have Opposite Disorder, where I say the exact opposite of what I'm thinking.
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  72.  @MichaelBordenaro  Most realtors talk like they've been slamming Red Bulls. Which they probably have.
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  73. (Dr Evil voice) One billion...I mean...15 MILLION houses in my SHADOW INVENTORY!
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  74. I saw a house listed that needed work. According to its price history, the seller bought it for 25% of the asking price two years ago and did no upgrades, structural or cosmetic to it. In fact, it's been vacant for two years. The realtor: "The seller is very firm on the price because this is a hot market." Yeah, I want to pay you four times what you did for the house because my hobby is hitting myself repeatedly in the head with a brick.
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  75.  @MichaelBordenaro  And it's minimal government bureaucracy. We can use existing agencies to disburse and track the funds, purchases, and sales. It's not some overcomplicated Rube Goldberg scheme and it'd be good for everybody except (wait for it) big corporate investment firms and foreign buyers.
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  76.  @MichaelBordenaro  First step in rehab is to accept that you're an addict. "Hi, my name is Bob, and I'm a housing bubble addict. It's been ninety-four days since my initial listing and I still refuse to lower my asking price."
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  77.  @MichaelBordenaro  Those are kapok trees, which are in the baobab family. Kapoks have the same relationship to baobabs as lemons have to limes: both in the citrus family, but not exactly the same thing. Kapoks were first imported into Florida in the 1930s.
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  78. MICHAEL: The FDIC has to find you another mortgage servicer if yours goes bankrupt. FDIC: Is currently trying to add over 3,500 new employees in anticipation of--well, I think you know why. ME: I owned a house in California pre-2008 crash. I had five different mortgage servicers in 3 years. I took it as a sign of extreme turmoil in the industry and sold my house near the peak and escaped the crash. One of the few times in my life I was smart.
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  79. Women get bored and need constant drama to feel stimulated, and cannot be happily alone. We men are the opposite.
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  80. Good point and if you'd asked me in January if we were going to go that way, I'd say "no". Now? The floor keeps going down on potential price drops, which means a lot of people are in for a really nasty shock. I'd be satisfied with a rollback of the price inflation since 2018-19, but there's a strong chance it goes down more than that. I don't know how severe or long-lasting the recession is going to be. Neither does Jerome Powell. Neither does ANYBODY.
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  81. I'm retired. Are there are any units in the Del Boca Vista development? My friend Art Vandelay said he could get me a deal.
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  82. “We have two lives... the life we learn with and the life we live after that. Suffering is what brings us towards happiness.” ― Bernard Malamud, The Natural
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  83.  @bahiaproductions125  At least 9 months to a year. The recession will have to be very severe and prolonged to return prices to pre-pandemic levels.
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  84.  @ReventureConsulting  Just adding in an anecdote to confirm! I'm quite frankly shocked at the layoffs. Oh, by the way, Walmart in my area just doubled the price of eggs. They said it was because of avian flu, but I checked with three other grocers and none of them raised prices. Aldis did.
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  85.  @MichaelBordenaro  Fair enough. My situation now versus 10 years ago is that I'm now one of those all-cash buyers, but I'll be damned if I bid up the asking price. I was living in California at the time and there was a scandal where all-cash investors were rigging auctions so they didn't bid against one another but the standard offer at that time was asking price +$50k-$100k. The market is so dysfunctional that the only hope any normal person has to get a house is for someone else to lose theirs. I hate that. I need a place to live, but I want everyone to have a place to live.
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  86.  @MichaelBordenaro  I'm in the Midwest and I see what I call "panic selling" by people who are afraid they will have to sell at a lower price when mortgage rates go up even more, or they won't be able to sell them at all. I don't feel too sorry for them. Here's a typical listing: Bought it two years ago for $22,000, now asking $149,000, no structural renovations, just some new carpet and a fresh coat of paint (which likely cost $2000-$3000 max). The house has been on the market since August without a single price drop. That's nine months for the math-challenged. I'm sure the realtor has advised lowering the price but sellers are blind with greed. Let them sit on their empty house while mortgage rates climb up and up, then. Reality doesn't care about your feelings.
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  87. I lived in Beverly Hills for five years. I could walk ten minutes or drive for two and there'd be hundreds of tents for homeless folks lining the sidewalks. The Beverly Hills Police Department artfully shields the city's inhabitants from this grim reality as long as they don't trespass beyond its borders, but once they do, reality bites. Hard. This is what happens when the wealth gap between grows--the middle class disappears and what's left in its place are wealthy and poor people with no buffer between them.
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  88.  @MichaelBordenaro  Unions used to push wages higher. Most of the jobs taken away by NAFTA were union jobs. Even if you weren't in a union, you benefited from unionization because they set wage standards in the market and also used their political power to secure higher minimum wages. Minimum wage hasn't been increased since 2009 and it's because labor has no power. I'm slightly encouraged by the unionization efforts by Starbucks and Amazon. Love to see WalMart and Target workers do that, too.
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  89. Average American moves every 5-7 years and you never know what's going to happen with your marriage, your job, etc.
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  90.  @MichaelBordenaro  If realtor weren't really good at selling, they wouldn't be in the business. But a lot of realtors are desperate themselves, trying to stack up some money before the recession hits. I dated a realtor from 2008-2012. Those were not good years for her in general and that's a long dry spell.
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  91.  @MichaelBordenaro  Well, my experience has been that if they hold out long enough, someone will buy it at asking price. Thing is, the asking price is very inflated in almost every case--50% to 100% over 2020 valuations. So I'm not sure if they did me a favor or not?
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  92. It's a sad state of affairs when the Mafia can't even whack a guy because there's no cement for shoes.
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  93.  @MichaelBordenaro  I recommend home sellers keep a pair of dueling pistols at hand in hot markets. We could've settled it all right then and there if I'd had those.
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  94. County property tax records are open access and list the owner
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  95. Todd and Melissa, I'm seeing a lot more houses with a BACK ON THE MARKET status. It's not my imagination: my buyer's agent says a lot of deals are falling through. #1 reason is financing failures. Sellers are still firm overall on prices, no big reductions. I don't think that can last more than six months.
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  96.  @MichaelBordenaro  I'm just saying what professional economists won't say on tv, because there's a lot of subject matter that's off-limits for their audiences and they know it. This is stuff economists will say in private but not in public, which is why it sounds like some amazing truth. The problem is that politics and economics are inextricably linked, and I don't know how political you're willing to go on your channel. It's not a matter of partisan politics, because both parties have screwed us when in power.
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  97. Hold out for a corner unit with a view!
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  98. I have no doubt that realtors will tell you now is the time to buy when a killer asteroid is hours away from hitting the earth
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  99. When people start refusing to pay those grossly inflated prices. I found the perfect house for me but the seller had it marked up to double what he paid for it two years ago. I can afford even the inflated amount but I said "no thanks". I'm not going to be anyone's fool.
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  100. 64% of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck. Let the good times roll.
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  101.  @MichaelBordenaro  Has to be that way. If the Fed lowers interest rates, it just creates more asset bubbles. Housing isn't the only asset that's inflated; so are stocks, commodities, services. Wall Street's new line of propaganda is that 5% inflation is acceptable. 2% inflation wasn't pulled out of thin air--it's the optimal number for balanced economic growth. Inflation higher than 2% erodes wages and benefits only one class of people: those who own lots of assets. Also known as "rich MFers".
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  102. Few things to consider: 1. Many of the "quitters" are Boomers who are retiring; 2. Many of the younger quitters are leaving low-paid jobs in the service industries and taking higher-paying jobs elsewhere; 3. Home prices are unsustainable once the Federal Reserve raises interest rates for a 30 year mortgage above 4.5%. I don't see a crash but rather a market correction region by region.
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  103.  @MichaelBordenaro  You already know this stat, but 64% of Millennial buyers regret their home purchase. They bought too-small fixer-uppers in less-desirable locations that need a lot of work, and now they'll be stuck with them or will have to walk away if they lose their jobs or get transferred. I hate getting a house that way. It's a scarcity mindset when in fact we have an overabundance of houses. I live on a cul-de-sac, 18 houses, all rentals. 7 are being held vacant by their owners. That's seven houses that could be sold to somebody and make this a real neighborhood. Nobody stays here longer than 1-2 years. No point in getting to know the neighbors when they could be gone tomorrow.
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  104. Every Boomer I talk to plans to live forever. Their generation never was strong on grasping reality.
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  105. I lived in California 1999-2021. My last residence was in Beverly Hills. I won't ever go back. California is a great place to live only if you're a One Percenter. But then again, what place isn't?
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  106. Lots of women try to find a physical substitute for the man they really want. Jada Pinkett is still mourning Tupac's death decades later and making her husband and kids miserable in the process. She doesn't want Will, she wants Tupac. This dude should run and I mean fast.
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  107.  @MichaelBordenaro  I understand it's hard to adjust to reality. It's hard to accept the fact that a month ago, you could've sold that house for $210,000 and made a bundle of money with basically no effort. It's the American Dream! But I do see sellers trying to offload properties now because they sense that a month or two from now, it'll be much more difficult and three months on, next to impossible just to break even. I actually don't rant at parties. I'm one of those people who become unbearably wonderful after I've had a few.
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  108. And I just read that Texans are getting sticker shock on their property tax reassessments.
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  109. I was a teacher for thirty years. Teenage boys now are almost all raised by mothers. Dad is either entirely absent or has been pushed to the margins even if he's in the house. Women run things, and the boys they raise are punching bags for girls. I showed some of my male students how to use tools in a standard household toolkit and they were amazed. My dad showed me how to use tools when I was growing up; these boys have no one to do that. I showed one boy how to change a washer in a faucet, loaned him the tools and some washers to do it, and he came back the next day full of pride because he'd fixed the leaky kitchen tap. Of course men just sit there and allow women to publicly humiliate them. They've been taught by their mothers, by most of their teachers, by most of society, that they are worthless.
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  110. The politicians are all bought and paid for by these investors, that's why. You don't bad mouth the boss.
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  111. I put in an offer for a house that was 7% list than asking. The seller's agent responded: "The sellers aren't going to GIVE this house away!" It's been on the market since October 2022. Still not sold. What can I say? Housing inflation is stickier than strawberry jam on a sidewalk in July.
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  112. Some people bought because they're sure they're going to stay put for the next decade. I wish I could see that far into the future. I don't even know what I'm having for lunch tomorrow.
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  113.  @MichaelBordenaro  I don't think it's illegal. It's their property once they've foreclosed and they can let it sit vacant if they want. Again, the US needs a vacancy tax at 5% of assessed value to incentivize owners to sell/rent property.
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  114.  @MichaelBordenaro  They did it in California 2009 onwards. Steve Mnuchin's One West bank illegally repossessed hundreds of thousands of homes. Attorney General Kamala Harris refused to prosecute. Mnuchin made a bundle, Harris became a US Senator and then Vice President, and Mnuchin became Trump's Secretary of the Treasury. Crime does pay.
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  115. Report from the rich people's universe: Job market is so strong it set a historical once-in-a-lifetime record; Housing market is rebounding sharply; Inflation is plummeting. That's their universe. We don't live there. Can't afford it. I feel we're being gaslighted with all of the economic reports. If 90% of CEOs expect a recession in 2023, then who's hiring all these people? Housing market is rebounding? Maybe in some places. Inflation is going down? For yachts and private jets and champagne, maybe. Everything else is sky-high.
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  116. Unless the Bradford Plan is enacted! Anybody here remember the Cash for Clunkers plan? The auto industry was DOA in 2009, so Obama signed into law a program that gave you cash for an old car if you bought a new one. I traded in an old Mercedes with a Blue Book of $1500 for $4500, 0% financing, $2500 cash back on a 2009 Sonata. Still have that car and never had a problem with it, even though I acquired a Lexus since then. Cash grants (you don't repay a grant, it's a gift) to help buyers and a tax break for sellers would keep housing going through the coming recession.
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  117. As interest rates rise, it makes more and more sense to pay off your house. I bought my first house in the 1980s at 12% interest (Volcker years at the Fed, when he was fighting stagflation) I worked two jobs and lived very frugally to get the house paid off in a little under 5 years. Living debt free (owning your home free and clear etc) is the best of all.
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  118. Remember the film Demolition Man, where all restaurants in the future are Taco Bell?
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  119.  @MichaelBordenaro  I see a lot of sellers suddenly eager to dump their flips in mid-progress or to divest themselves of their less desirable rental properties. Suddenly real estate isn't looking so juicy.
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  120. The government will take every measure possible in these troubled times to raise revenue. Other than, you know, tax the rich. Warren Buffett's tax rate is higher than that of his secretary (and yes, he wants the government to change that). I pay a higher percentage of my income to taxes than my multimillionaire landlord. These rich folks aren't breaking the rules, but they are making the rules. I had a long phone conversation with one of my former colleagues, who is a professor of economics, and he said the bailout for Signature and SVB have established a legal precedent for depositors who exceed FDIC insurance limits--in fact, he said the limits effectively no longer exists and that the FDIC is certain to be bankrupt within ninety days.
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  121.  @MichaelBordenaro  That's why I advise people to stop exercising and smoke and drink heavily. Also, no seatbelts or motorcycle helmets
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  122. Great video and a not often-covered topic. I'm retired and will pay cash for my house when I buy later this year or in 2023, but not all retired folks are so fortunate. Qualifying for a mortgage in retirement might be a good topic.
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  123.  @MichaelBordenaro  Always best to own your home free and clear in retirement, but that's not possible for everybody. The problem is proof of income: I have a pension and so a guaranteed income, but other people just have withdrawals from retirement accounts plus Social Security, and the retirement accounts can fluctuate (as we've all seen).
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  124. Sorry for the long story. It has a happy ending, but feel free to skip it. My wife of 15 years left me for some guy she'd met a few months before AFTER I got laid off (no fault of my own) from my job. I went through the grind of applying for jobs and going on interviews, but it didn't matter to her. "I don't want to struggle" were her exact words. 6 months later, I landed my dream job and bought a dream house and started dating women younger and just as pretty as my ex. Chad Bad Boy? Turns out he wasn't monogamous and a year after SHE filed for divorce, she called, begging to get back together after she'd seen me driving around in my new convertible with one of my girlfriends. I hung up on her. I retired early and am living in comfort. She's still working and living in a rented room after she divorced husband #2 (he was "toxic") and husband #3 (he was "abusive"). She admitted to my sister that she made the worst mistake of her life leaving me, but that I was "abusive" for not giving her a second chance. My mom snorted and said "She made her bed, now she can sleep in it." Current girlfriend: A woman 25 years younger than me who's a high-earning physician, a Vietnamese immigrant who is very feminine and thinks the world of me.
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  125. Amount: a quantity of something, especially the total of a thing or things in number, size, value, or extent Number: an arithmetical value, expressed by a word, symbol, or figure, representing a particular quantity and used in counting and making calculations and for showing order in a series or for identification Dude, I wouldn't give a dime for the difference between the two. And a dime is both a small number and a small amount 😉
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  126. I see all-cash investors buying up houses at asking price in my area. The problem: according to the sales price history, the sellers bought these homes in the past 2-4 years for HALF of what they're selling them for now. A realtor told me "They're going to rent these houses out" to which I replied "Good luck renting to people with no jobs and no money". The rents will have to be so high to give the investors a decent ROI that they're going to struggle and retain tenants. Oh well, some people have to learn the hard way. I can't imagine buying a house for any reason and not bargaining down the price.
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  127.  @MichaelBordenaro  That station would just play the blues and old school country western. Up next: A Johnny Cash classic: "Busted" My bills are all due and the babies need shoes, But I'm Busted Cotton's gone down to a quarter a pound And I'm Busted
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  128.  @MichaelBordenaro  It's incentivized to be by the tax code and by federal, state, and local laws. Change the tax code and the other laws that incentivize speculation in housing and the problem WILL be fixed. What we need is political pressure. "The market" isn't going to fix this. Here's something that would work almost overnight: any SFH that's not owner occupied must pay a 50% surcharge on property taxes and any house that's sold must be offered to owner occupants ONLY for the first 30 days on the market. Yeah, I know, some dream, huh?
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  129. Sounds like whoever wrote this affordable housing bill was watching your channel and reading the comments! Even if you're against government intervention on principle, remember: affordable housing is the basis for a stable, prosperous society. People who are always moving and are always under financial strain are stressed, unhappy people who don't have an emotional investment in our society. Incentives, rather than price controls, allows the market to work within limits. We have all kinds of limits on capitalism: OSHA health and safety regulations, speed limits on roads, hygiene standards for restaurants, child labor laws, pollution regulations, etc. Libertarians will tell you that we don't need any of those, but none of us would really want to live in a society where anyone could do anything they wanted without limits. I haven't read this bill in Florida, but from your summary, it seems the main thrust of it is to make housing more affordable for families and individuals, not to fatten up investors, and that's going to be a good thing for the people of Florida. If you have a nice house that you can afford, you'll stay there, your neighbors will stay there, and you'll build a stable community. I grew up in a neighborhood like that in Kansas, and I still keep in touch with people I knew as a kid because we were all part of a real community. That's what this country needs. By the way, are you the real Michael? Because I wasn't aware that he owns any long sleeve shirts. Just seems wrong.
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  130. Interesting video. Just for fun, I searched for news clips and articles from business channels/business publications in early 2008, a few months before the economic crisis hit. According to all of those news programs and publications, the economy had a few "adjustments" to make but the future was looking better and better, nothing to worry about. Fast forward to now, same message. So either these people are idiots or liars. Either way, why listen to them? This is America, son. And somebody's always selling something to somebody. And facts get in the way of a good sales presentation.
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  131. Pushups, dude. Learned that in boot camp.
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  132. Interest rate increases usually have a lagging effect, so 1-2 years for the full effect to be felt
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  133. I only date "foreign" women. My current girlfriend is a Vietnamese immigrant who is an M.D. She's highly educated, financially successful, and traditionally feminine. Why would I waste my time with masculine-acting, masculine-thinking, narcissistic American women?
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  134. I used to work for LA Public Library. Two patrons started an argument and a homeless guy got off one of the lounge couches and said "Hey! Do I act like this in YOUR home?" Because if we didn't close, he'd have never left.
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  135. I won't argue with your data or prediction, but I will say this: I lived through the 2008 housing crash in the Bay Area. There will be NO bargains for anyone except the big banks and big real estate investors like Blackrock. Same as last time. If you're a mom-and-pop investor (which I assume is your channel's targeted audience), forget it, unless you can offer a bank all cash and $50k-$100k over asking price for a foreclosed house. I worked with one of the Bay Area's top realtors for over a year, trying to find a "bargain house" and EVERY single one was taken by all-cash investors. (I had a six figure income and a credit score over 800). I had no chance and she later admitted that she knew it the whole time, but thought I might "get lucky". Being a realtor definitely means being very optimistic.
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  136. 1. Always assume the road rager is armed 2. Always assume the road rager is irrational 3.Equip your car with a dashcam and drive to the nearest police station if possible 4. Do not get out of your car, do not attempt to retaliate in ANY way 5. Make sure you're armed and trained in using the self-defense gun in your car (as a last resort)
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  137. And? So all-cash investors--both institutional and individual--will snap up properties and then turn around and rent or sell them at exorbitant prices. There's no good news for anyone who isn't already rich. I know someone who is trying to sell his home and he said "it'll be a cold day in Hell before I lower my asking price". All-cash investors will give him his asking price and then turn around and rent now or sell when interest rates go back down and make a bundle.
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  138. As a retiree, those are places I don't want to go. A hot economy means rising prices for everything. I was in LA and San Francisco for over twenty years. I need a slower pace now, some place where leaving my turn signal on for several miles is normal.
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  139. I retired several years earlier and left California. The vast potential of that state, which should have the brightest future of any state in the union, has been squandered by the oligarchs who run it. The five families (as I call them) who control California's politics (nobody gets to be governor without them) have finally killed the goose that laid the golden egg. The only way California can revive itself is to free its political system of families like the Gettys, but Californians are so complacent and ignorant that's not likely to ever happen.
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  140. So women are upset because their lives don't look like a carefully composed Instagram post.
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  141. Who pays for our military spending, which is more than the next ten nations combined? I didn't hear the big corporations or rich people complaining when they were getting pandemic bailouts. Money spent on housing people isn't an expenditure, it's an investment in our future. If you don't believe in that, you don't believe in building a society.
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  142. At least put on a car cover.
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