From Reuters:
Early signs of cooling housing market seen in some U.S. cities, Redfin says
There are early signs of a cooldown in some of the hottest corners of the U.S. housing market, Redfin said in a report on Friday, a fresh indication that high house prices and rising mortgage rates are cutting into homebuyer demand.
Among those early tells, according to Redfin: Google searches for “homes for sale” dropped by double digits in Baltimore, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles in the second week of March from a year earlier; tours of homes for sale in California were down 21% as of March 31 from the first week of 2022, data from ShowingTime shows; Redfin agents in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Boston and Seattle reported a drop in requests for homebuying help at the start of this year compared with last year, even as requests nationwide surged; and agents in California say they are seeing fewer offers on each home than previously.
…
The average interest rate on a 30-year-fixed mortgage, the most popular U.S. home loan, rose last week to 4.9%, a fresh three year high, data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) showed this week.
The U.S. housing market is still hot, however, even in cooling California cities. The average home in Los Angeles, for instance, is sold for 5% over its asking price, with a record share selling within a week of listing, Redfin said.
But the signs are there already, the report said, of a price slowdown in coming months.
Go West
NJ Transit green lights tunnel reconstruction so trains can roll to northwest N.J., Scranton, Pa.
NJ Transit’s board of directors approved a $32 million contract to rebuild a tunnel that will provide rail service to northwest Jersey and could pave the way for Amtrak trains to run to Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The board approved it in a 9 to 1 vote Wednesday, with board member James D. Adams voting no because he had reservations whether the project was the best use of funds.
“Is it the highest, best use of capital funds at this time?” Adams said, noting many other projects are currently unfunded. “I can’t support this project.”
The tunnel, the Roseville Tunnel in Byram, is part of the larger $62 million Lackawanna Cutoff project to extend the Morris & Essex rail line to Andover.
“We are talking about the need to provide mobility and you have to start somewhere,” said Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, transportation commissioner and board chairperson. “Today they don’t have mobility in that region.”
Prior to the vote, north New Jersey officials, including State Sen. Steven Oroho, R-Sussex, urged passage of the contract, saying it would serve an area with no mass transit.
“It has garnered widespread support for many years,” Oroho said, citing “thousands upon thousand of commuters from western New Jersey and Pennsylvania” who’s only option is to drive congested I-80.”
Humm iPhone scammers have been busy.
Wife was just hit with a bill for three brand new iPhone 13 Pro Max phones. Total scam they did not even have the correct address so paper bills never arrived and credit collector letter arrived this week. Spent quite a bit of time with T-MOBILE on the phone and had to go into a store to show ID etc. Real PITA.
Credit agencies no alerts and I looked manually and it came back no inquires so apparently so perhaps some kind of inside job with fake ID etc and no credit checks. Phone IMEI numbers will be blacklisted but if sold already to someone here in USA no joy in the next day or so if active as the phone will stop working here in the US only if blacklisted. Overseas Apple does not care and neither do the phone companies, so they could end up anywhere.
Is the USA only check the IMEI number here.
https://stolenphonechecker.org/spc/consumer
re: “NJ Transit’s board of directors approved a $32 million contract”
Peanuts… $550,000 per NJ Transit Bus.
I heard the NJ Transit bus depot along the mighty Hackensack in Oradell flooded last week during the rains. This one is nestled between the river and the train line. All buses were apparently swamped. That will cost more than a few million for a tunnel to nowhere.
https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x89c2f009aac7143f%3A0x23da33d8ddfc6baf!3m1!7e115!4shttps%3A%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DzG6b_VRBv0BNWNa1wt0RbQ%26cb_client%3Dsearch.gws-prod.gps%26yaw%3D156.18065%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100%26w%3D190%26h%3D192!5snj%20transit%20bus%20depot%20river%20edge%20-%20Google%20Search!15sCgIgAQ&imagekey=!1e2!2szG6b_VRBv0BNWNa1wt0RbQ&hl=en
Govenor Murphy punted today on the gender bender curriculum for 7 year olds. He said he was opening a (cough cough) inquiry and it was up to local officials etc aka skool boards to fix it, as the sample materials outlined in the news were not accurate.
Perhaps they forgot something apparently and it is not LGBT or LGBTQ+ as in it might be LGBTQ2S+ or some other derivative. A $40 million dollar study needs to be done as well as to not offend anyone and will be pubished in 2026 after he leaves for Washington DC.
Is it f-ing over? The NFT nightmare?
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/13/jack-dorseys-first-tweet-nft-went-on-sale-for-48m-it-ended-with-a-top-bid-of-just-280/
No plenty of money to extract from idiots still.
Good news few the unwashed …https://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/New-Jersey-public-school…
Lol – musk offers to buy all of twitter outright?
200 million daily active users. They will say no, his offer is $54 a share a year ago it was worth $73. All employee options and grants get cancelled too without a payout, so lots of employees get shafted.
NJ wins.
https://www.axios.com/property-taxes-lagging-home-price-valuation-real-estate-d4626cfc-bf3d-4022-8e89-e64cc0fadff1.html
If taxes were to rise with the market it would drive out seniors and the workers ….This is gaslighting at it best …
We all know what the plus sign means. Groom the children and then within a few years anything goes.
The End Is Nigh (WTF Do You Think Would Happen Edition):
https://nypost.com/2022/04/14/edna-mahan-womens-prisoners-pregnant-after-sex-with-transgender-inmate/
This article fundamentally doesn’t make sense
Just because property values go up doesn’t mean that A municipalities budget should increase too. Stupid superficial thinking. Ami wrong?
Nomad says:
April 14, 2022 at 7:16 am
NJ wins.
https://www.axios.com/property-taxes-lagging-home-price-valuation-real-estate-d4626cfc-bf3d-4022-8e89-e64cc0fadff1.html
If you think about it should not take that much to turn Twitter into another Facebook or Instagram. Revenues for twitter hit $5 billion and as far as I know they lose money every quarter. Meta is now at an incredible 117 Billion in revenues and rising approx 25 Billion of that is Instagram? Even if Elon took a small piece of the ad buys from them or other social media he would be able to grow the platform for sure.
He hit the nail on the head here. Top accounts barely promote on twitter now, perhaps he can make it sexy again?
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512785529712123906?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1512785529712123906%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialmediatoday.com%2Fnews%2Felon-musk-rejects-twitter-board-seat-after-sharing-various-criticisms-of-th%2F621923%2F
Appropriate music for the Twitter turnaround?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gOHvDP_vCs
re: Ami wrong?
Chi – In Short Yes.
You are a captive source of income for the fiefdoms and their cronies. They don’t operate on cutting anything or sharing services or combining services with other municipalities. No jobs lost, no layoffs, no cutbacks, new equipment every few years and bond bond bond like crazy to fund the new police stations and municipal buildings. It’s the Jerzy way, you don’t like it well like the Governor has said then maybe Jerzy is not for you.
The only exceptions I could see to that are the districts like Jersey City, Hoboken, and Asbury, who’s state aid allows them to keep taxes lower than everywhere else while attracting major investment. Asbury is selling million dollar apartments while siphoning off money to spend over $30k a year per student from neighboring towns.
Juice: I don’t understand how Meta, the Facebook side is still so profitable. I understand that millions have deserted it over the years, mainly the young in the age group advertisers want, not the old people on it.
Slava Ukraini! Seems confirmed now, the Ukrainian homegrown anti-ship missiles the “Neptune” took out the Russian Black Sea Flagship the Moskva.
“Russian state-run media, citing the Defense Ministry, said “ammunition detonated as a result of a fire on the Moskva missile cruiser,” the ship “was seriously damaged,” and “the entire crew” of 510 was evacuated. Hours earlier, the governor of Odessa said Ukraine had hit the ship with Neptune anti-ship missiles and inflicted “very serious damage.”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/14/europe/russia-navy-cruiser-moskva-fire-abandoned-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
It takes time, but the higher the property values go, the higher the cost of living becomes down the line. Aka the cost of doing business goes up aka the cost of everything goes up.
Wait till you see how f’ed Texas and Florida taxes become. Said it for years on this blog, they are turning into jersey/cali right before our eyes. From low cost to high cost as millions of new people come and drive up the price of everything starting with housing.
“Just because property values go up doesn’t mean that A municipalities budget should increase too. Stupid superficial thinking. Ami wrong?”
Juice: The public sector unions control the state. They don’t want consolidation. 70 odd towns in Bergen Co, with almost every one with their own police force, schools, DPW and all the rest. At some point, I think towns will be forced to merge/ consolidate.
3b – Who ever said people were leaving were either lying or delusional, the sheep don’t know any different, the do not venture down the roads less traveled on the internet for information. Daily active users on Facebook is close to 2 Billion, that is about 1/3 of all smartphones in the world. Monthly users it is closer to 3 Billion or 37% of all the people on Earth use Facebook today. Their revenues skyrocketed and it is not just because of the pandemic.
Meta Platforms annual revenue for 2021 was $117.929B, a 37.18% increase from 2020.
Meta Platforms annual revenue for 2020 was $85.965B, a 21.6% increase from 2019.
Meta Platforms annual revenue for 2019 was $70.697B, a 26.61% increase from 2018.
You can see why Zuck is all smiles and pumping 10 Billion a year into his pet project of a creating his version of a virtual world.
Juice: Got it, maybe it’s more overseas, but from what I understand here at least, the young people don’t do Facebook.
Would you wake up? These are rich individuals and willingly pay for the small kingdom they live in. They want total control. You think they are going to give up this control to save what is a few bucks to them?!
3b says:
April 14, 2022 at 8:51 am
Juice: The public sector unions control the state. They don’t want consolidation. 70 odd towns in Bergen Co, with almost every one with their own police force, schools, DPW and all the rest. At some point, I think towns will be forced to merge/ consolidate.
Facebook is still one of the most dominant advertising platforms, if not THE most dominant advertising platform. The vast majority of that money is ad dollars.
Grim: I understand. FB is more advertised than anything else now. I am just trying to understand the disconnect between the young people who have supposedly abandoned it, vs the fact it is still hugely profitable.
3B – A family member of mine worked once for Bergen Co, the county exec wanted him to work with the towns to create a shared services program to cut costs. No matter how many meetings were held he could not get one town to lend another town a used spare snow shovel in August! Unless Trenton breaks up the fiefdoms it will never happen, so it won’t happen as well kinship is more important than what the taxpayers demand.
The 2% cap on school annual spending increases is the best thing that has come out of Trenton in 100 years, and they have been trying to dismantle it since they took over again. However it is not without it’s problems, the annual tax levy increases to the lesser of the rate of inflation or 2%. So now with inflation here you can expect the school portion to increase significantly.
Probably 90% of the distillery advertising budget goes to Meta, 10% to Google, nobody gets anything else.
And just to be clear, the bulk of our targeting is via Instagram, not Facebook – which is where a good portion of the younger crowd went, and for us, is where many of our customers are.
Social and social ads are how we built and grew this business, it’s been incredibly valuable for us. Every time we spend thousands of dollars on print ads (think NJ-centric shiny paper magazines), we question the nearly non-existent ROI in comparison to what we can do on social, with 1/10th of the investment.
We are very happy to give our money to Zuck, because there is absolutely no question that it works for us.
I mean, I’d love to give more money to Google, but they continually reject our ads, and you can’t actually talk to a human unless you have thousands of dollars in annual spend. So, sorry Google!
3B – You have to be at least at least 13 years old to use Facebook, so yes the young kids use TikTok and Snapchat, but that does not mean they don’t use Meta platforms too.
FB generates 13 Billion a quarter in revenue in the US and Canada alone and it is the #2 used smartphone app behind Youtube.
Here are some stats on age groups for the USA. There are something like 200 million active accounts here.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/187549/facebook-distribution-of-users-age-group-usa/
re: non-existent ROI on print ads.
Yeah from the mailbox straight to the garbage bin, those magazines never make it into the house.
The big question for social media, is how they are going to monetize influencers, who are going to start eating into their ad revenue in a BIG way.
Juice: Same here, tried multiple times for shared service agreements with Oradell and New Milford. Could not even agree to bid jointly on sanitation contracts. Long story short, we now only have twice a week garbage pickup from end of May to end of August. I agree on the 2 percent cap, at least it’s something. Trenton needs to step in and force consolidation. Contrary to what some believe, Bergen Co, ain’t just Saddle River and Alpine. Lots of struggling towns, like Garfield, Wallington, Fairview, the Ridgefields, Englewood. As well as the middle/ lower middle class towns like Bergenfield, Dumont, New Milford, Waldwick.
8 days no comments.
The only NJ glossy we care about is Edible Jersey – that you’d pick up at your local Whole Foods or fancy restaurant. Though we’re even questioning that one. When they do their special guide issues, it’s about a $5k spend to be featured and get 1/2 or 1 page ad. If you wonder how those mags stay in business – the risk of not being featured in a “guide” is usually too high, so you invest because you don’t want to not be included. It’s not FOMO, it’s fear of being missed.
To put in in context, we’ve never, ever, ran an Meta campaign at even 1/10th that cost. I’ve been itching to try it, to see. OR, the new digital signage ads on a major highway, which run around that same price $5-10k/mo).
Grim: That’s what I understand from my kids, Instagram is where the young, younger people have flocked, but as you and Juice noted there are still enough to o drive add sales on FB.
Yeah, if you haven’t ever been exposed to it, the level of specific targeting that Meta provides is pretty incredible. That’s part of the magic. It’s something you aren’t getting anywhere else. That continues to be a differentiating feature.
20 years ago, you’d be hiring an ad agency to hand you a list of publications that match your target market, maybe radio stations and local tv stations. Maybe take out an ad in the local paper? If you like pina coladas, long walks in the rain. Maybe buying a bunch of email addresses to spam?
Today, I can laser focus on 25-50 year olds, who are interested in craft beer, farm to table restaurants, gastropubs, farmers markets, and cocktail culture. I can target specifically those who spend time in Essex, Hudson, Passaic, Bergen, and Morris Counties, I can prioritize those who have liked or followed us, and their friends. Every ad dollar is surgically spent.
The stunt that the Texas governor busing immigrants to Washington DC would probably work better is he dropped them off in Rehoboth Beach Delaware, as they could use the cheap labor. I read we are spending 1/2 million to build Biden a 10 ft high wall with stone columns around his beach house, it should do wonders for the neighbors views.
Here is the breakdown on social media ad spending by platform. Facebook still is king.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/259379/social-media-platforms-used-by-marketers-worldwide/
When we were looking at a house in Sparta back in 2000, the agent said that train line would be up and running soon. 20 years later and still nothing.
Grim, sounds like the issue between brand advertising and promotional advertising.
The idea was supposed to be that the print stuff doesn’t generate a sale, it generates brand awareness, someone thinking, “oh that might be a good place to go sometime.” While the instagram ad leads to “come visit/order now”. So the one person who gets the instagram ad actually takes action and invites friends, a few of whom says “oh yeah, I read about that place somewhere, it sounds like fun” which makes it more probable they come.
That’s the old theory, but maybe it doesn’t hold anymore. I’m so old that when I was learning it, it was soap opera TV ads versus coupons debated.
Remember when Groupon was going to take over the world?
Personally I’m getting sick of both Facebook an Instagram, ads seem to be reaching their limit, and no way am I going to live in a metaverse of Facebook’s design.
It’s always been Eyeball driven. The money moved from print along time ago, the fact that there still is some print amazes me actually. Every time a phone book arrives for example, it’s like it was sent by a time machine after one quick look it goes into the bin. To think the local plumber once could take out full page ad and corner the business on late night clogged plumbing emergency calls.
Chi,
regarding taxes. I have not yet figured it out but the rest of the country keeps the mill rate the same but allow the valuation of the homes float each year. Doesn’t seem to make sense that the taxing jurisdiction revenues just grow at rate of home appreciation regardless of the needs of the jurisdiction. I don’t know what they do with the excess, spend it?
Whereas in NJ and most of the Northeast the home valuations remain static and the taxing jurisdiction determines a budget and then adjusts the mill rate to bring in the required revenue.
When we were looking at a house in Sparta back in 2000, the agent said that train line would be up and running soon. 20 years later and still nothing.
Oh, I would’ve loved to play the naïve role with that one! House tour guides try so hard, don’t they?
I blocked Twitter a while back. Full of imbeciles. Degrades the culture with the level of discourse. Anything as hell to keep promoting to install the app too.
It’s going to be fascinating to see how Starbucks and Amazon crush the union drives. The corporations are woke on the outside but it never extends to the bottom line. Scott’ Schulz was called back to snuff it out.
Marketwatch article: Mortgage rates soar to their highest level in a decade, even the wealthy are feeling it. Second home purchases big in the pandemic have come to a “screeching halt”
Seems the XOFLUZA worked on my son symptoms are almost non-existent today, he is not on any Advil either.
Condo: agreed
That sound you hear is the Ten going through 280
Nothing built, nothing back, nothing better… still.
11/8/2022
“Even if Elon took a small piece of the ad buys from them or other social media he would be able to grow the platform for sure.”
Ad buys on TWTR worth less…they have nowhere near the information on their users that FB, GOOG, AMZN, etc do, so spending is much less effective there…
” I am just trying to understand the disconnect between the young people who have supposedly abandoned [FB], vs the fact it is still hugely profitable.”
Instagram….
“Eight (8) days Pumpkin-free”
ooops, grim hits the Instagram point already….probably ought to read all the way through the day’s forum before posting replies….
“Eight (8) days Pumpkin-free”
American Dream Mall Ferris Wheel opens today. . .
Cost: $20 per rider
Height: 300 feet
Gondolas: 27
Riders per gondola: 16
The last number for estimated cost to build of the “New York Wheel” which was the proposed Staten Island 600-foot tall ferris wheel was pushing $1B. This would have been located at the northern tip of Staten Island, with good views of manhattan and New York Harbor.
So, let’s say Ghermazian spent $300M on the ferris wheel at American Dream, what kind of ROI are they looking to get? I’m going to estimate that 40% of a ride is cost, so it’s $12 of operating profit per ride. They can have a max of 432 riders per half hour, but I’d think that there will be long lines for a few weekends only. If they can get 2,000 people to ride per day (being open 6 days per week due to blue laws), that would be 624,000 riders per year. If so, they are netting, pre-tax, $7.5M, which would be pretty bad against a $300M build. So, I’d imagine that their estimated ridership is higher or their cost to build was lower.
Las Vegas “High Roller” ferris wheel cost $300m to build, completed in 2014. It is 550 ft tall.
Adams wants to flood the subway with cops, AOC, says no. Grew up in leafy Yorktown Heights in Westchester Co, and not old enough to remember the bad part old days of the 70 s and 80s. But this clueless person knows best.
Maybe the financial analyst doing the ROI analysis for the American Dream Mall Ferris Wheel was a diversity hire. Or just expand that to everything American Dream Mall related. Previewing the kind of ROI analysis one can expect for Build Back Better.
Maybe they think a giant wheel creates advertising beyond its revenue.
Best to assume it’s just more stupidity in a stupid state.
There’s only one person I can imagine wanting to ride it.
That sound you hear is the Ten going through 283.
That sound you hear is the Ten going through 283.
What’s the significance? Four years ago it was at around 3.15. Just trying to understand.
Still questionable whether one would earn positive real returns owning 10yr bonds to maturity. Very unlikely after taxes.
Trump 2024: “We’re sending illegals to Rwanda, like the UK does!”
You sunk my battleship!
Been saying this for a while on this blog…others seem to be thinking it too now.
“Gen Z’s housing options when they’re in their 30’s will be the suburbs that Baby Boomers will be vacating, not the ones Millennials have been moving into over the past 5-10 years. If you had the demographic/geographic data you could probably project this.
But they’ll be okay with that — the young/vibrant/up-and-coming neighborhoods today will be stable/stagnant/aging in the 2030’s.
Yeah, I could see the Sun Belt arb go away entirely — good neighborhoods in Nashville and Atlanta and Austin will trade at a premium to some of the Baby Boomer neighborhoods in New Jersey/Chicago/etc. You’ll save money settling in high-tax states.”
Twitter rumor is that the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Igor Osipov, was arrested by people in civilian clothes. Witnesses report that the detention was rather harsh – the admiral’s adjutant was beaten very badly.
As far as the Ukrainian weapon used on the Russian battleship that is now apparently confirmed sunk, it was the domestically-produced RK-360MC Neptune anti-ship missile. They don’t have many it’s a new system, so the Brits are now sending the Harpoon an a all-weather, over-the-horizon sea skimming anti-ship missile.
This will be an escalation for sure, it’s a top of the line Boeing developed Harpoon, it has a 221 kg warhead bigger than the Neptune and thousands have been built and delivered to 30 countries.
Make no mistake the Brits are sending lots and lots of additional lethal arms there, this is going to get real messy soon for the Russians.
If they can get them in range, it’s feasible they sink the entire stationed fleet in minutes.
Iowa and NH out as early primaries for DNC in 2024 . . .
NJ Dems are lobbying to be early in the presidential nomination process for 2024.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/13/dnc-remake-presidential-calendar-00025120
Spread product (interest rates higher than government bonds; e.g., mortgages) trade at rates higher than the underlying Treasury. The Treasury is considered the benchmark which is used to price everything else. In this case, the UST 10 Year bond is used to price mortgages. I think I wrote a post a few weeks ago that offered details. While these markets a related and strongly correlated, they are in fact two separate sets of buys and sellers. In the year 2018, the fixed income market was more strongly central bank manipulated than it is in April 2022. We are still subject to central bank manipulation, but it is being removed in earnest …..finally. The interference severed to reduce spreads (a government subsidy dampened volatility/reduced risk, and also added a extra subset of buyers which tended to reduce the spread/all-in rate). So a mortgage bond in 2018 was 315 + a smaller spread, than April 2022 at 280 + 210-225.
Additionally, there was really nothing in 2018 like what is going on right now, so govt inference or not, the risk is higher and spreads are wider (bigger).
Just remember, nothing is black and white…… all shades of gray.
Fast Eddie says:
April 14, 2022 at 2:19 pm
That sound you hear is the Ten going through 283.
What’s the significance? Four years ago it was at around 3.15. Just trying to understand.
What kind of tax incentives will they offer?
crushednjmillenial says:
April 14, 2022 at 5:43 pm
Iowa and NH out as early primaries for DNC in 2024 . . .
NJ Dems are lobbying to be early in the presidential nomination process for 2024.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/13/dnc-remake-presidential-calendar-00025120
Yup. Grateful for this period of oversold high growth. Hope it dips more.
“Coca-Cola stock just hit a 52-week high.
27x next year’s earnings (according to Bloomberg)
This is a business that struggled to grow its revenues by a mere 9% over the entirety of the last decade or so.
High-growth tech is in deep value territory and low-growth, the opposite.”
Look on the bright side, you can lock in a 10 year CD at 0.75% at your local bank.
Banks be like, f*ck you.
re: “bright side”.. Yes and you should get the noise the crypto kids make heck it’s basically an offshoot of Occupy Wall St from 2011. However grandma on fixed income was smart. At least for mine Amazon at 180 and Apple at like 13 and will be fine.
Needless to say where is the gain gonna come from now? Correct me if I am wrong but our resident CFA was asking us recently. Not sure why perhaps a slip up when he had his hands down his pants still figuring out if it works!
Take that one
https://www.nj.com/morris/2022/04/nj-olympian-not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity-in-attempted-murder-case.html
I am glad this guy got off, tired of tenants always getting the advantage. I have had tenants attack me, cheat me, not pay, destroy apts. etc… then our governor gave them free rent for 2 plus years and landlords had tp pay their taxes. Fortunately all my tenants paid during pandemic.
Hooray for Barisone, they literally drove him crazy. Most tenants are honorable and good people… get a d*ck and you lose money and sleep. I am peeling off my buildings now because @ my age I have had enough of the Bullsh*t.