From Bloomberg:
Brooklyn Home Sales Jump Most Since ’10 With Listings Near a Low
Home sales in Brooklyn jumped the most in seven years while the supply of listings hovered near a record low, pushing buyers toward bidding wars in the New York borough.
Purchases of condos, co-ops and one- to three-family homes jumped 46 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to 2,800 deals, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The number of homes on the market at the end of March fell 20 percent to 2,290, the second-fewest since the firms started tracking the data in 2008. The lowest period for listings was the previous quarter.
“What it boils down to is this: I’m starving for inventory,” said Frank Percesepe, who oversees Brooklyn sales for brokerage Corcoran Group, which also released a report on Thursday showing a drop in listings. “We are hurting for inventory and people are buying up what’s there.”
Brooklyn, the city’s most populous borough, and neighboring Queens are setting themselves apart from the sales market in Manhattan, where a growing supply of listings is giving buyers more leverage to negotiate and walk away. Shoppers searching for homes at relative discounts to Manhattan have less to choose from in the outer boroughs, where the post-recession construction boom focused largely on rentals, with a few select luxury-condo developments.
Buyers eager to strike a deal in Brooklyn were willing to overpay — and the lower the price, the more likely people were to bid it up. While 22 percent of all sales in the quarter were above the asking price, half of studio purchases were for more than the seller sought, Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman said. For co-op apartments, which tend to be less costly than condos and houses, the share was 37 percent.
It would take just 2.5 months to sell all of Brooklyn’s existing inventory at the current pace of deals, the fastest rate in nine years, according to the firms.
“People realize there’s not going to be a glut of inventory and say, ‘Maybe let’s get in before prices go up more,” said Sarah Burke, a Douglas Elliman managing director who oversees sales in Brooklyn. “It does make people pull the trigger.”
…
A separate report by brokerage Brown Harris Stevens showed the median price of a one- to four-family home in Brooklyn rose 6.7 percent to a record $870,000. The median for co-ops and condos climbed 18 percent to $670,000, also an all-time high, spurred in part by closings in new developments.
Good Morning New Jersey
If you ever had any doubt as to whether the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton were actually arming Al Qaeda in Syria…
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/852266094379380738
The only part of New York City I would live is Manhattan.
Hey Grim,
Let me know if you get any discount tickets for JetBlue. The Fare to Tahoe on June 24th is $650!!!
Or codes. You know what I mean.
Fast Eddie says:
April 13, 2017 at 9:13 am
The only part of New York City I would live is Manhattan.
nah…..a good number of places in the outer boroughs are pretty cool depending on your interests…..
I agree with Gary. Fifty-somethings don’t live in hipsterville Brooklyn unless they never left.
Spent the last three days in Baltimore. It’s like ground zero for Maryland hipsters. Way too many tattoos, long beards and handlebar mustaches.
The outer boroughs are fine if, as stated, they support a certain lifestyle. I do prefer the heartbeat of Manhattan which houses all the nooks and crannies of a more seasoned lifestyle. One is not better or worse, it’s just preference. I like Broadway plays, museums, the Met, the sights, colors, aromas and the personality of the island. I could honestly see me renting uptown somewhere in a few years.
Someone asked me why I wouldn’t rent in Hoboken and I wanted to barf. This place is the most overrated area in the world. Rent in Hoboken? I grew up here, this is not Hoboken any longer, it’s a post-college campus. Pay to live here so that I can go to Chipotle? Please.
Ok now they’re just trying to lose.
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/12/watch-5-reasons-maxine-waters-should-be-our-next-president/
Native New Yorker here – sure Manhattan has most of the culture but the out-of-towners have ruined it. Few natives are left, everyone you talk to is from Ohio. Fahgeddaboutit! Manhattan has become one giant sitcom. At least in the outer boroughs you have real neighborhoods with their own character, though that is changing in Brooklyn since the hipsters discovered it. Red Hook is hot?? Are you kiddin’ me? Red Hook? In Manhattan you have all those Europeans on vacation (don’t get me started on the French), clogging up the sidewalks, the ladies from NJ out on the town to see an exorbitantly priced show and eat mushy pasta. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.
Brooklyn is a rip off, at Manhattan prices no way when it was less it made sense. Eddie Hoboken and JC are nicer, cleaner and cheaper than the good parts of Brooklyn and Queens, hence the appeal. The only thing missing is the NYC subway and NYC yellow cabs but hey no NYC income tax!
Spanky,
Manhattan has always been that way. When has it not attracted tourists and out-of-towners? The outer boroughs, like JC and Hoboken represent very little from what it used to be.
“When has it not attracted tourists and out-of-towners?”
I would say approximately 1970-1995, things turned around when Giuliani started the “broken windows” policing that turned the city around. I miss that guy!
I hate New York
Outside of the 5 boros, Huntington Village on the North Shore of Long Island had a great cosmopolitan feel and is pretty much tourist-free. I rented a very small apartment for a Winter there and then rented a nice-sized house a couple miles away for a year after that. Huntington is like a much better Montclair without the poverty and much better restaurants. My only knock on Long Island is that waitstaff absolutely blows! There are no poor areas to draw from for the low-paying high hustle jobs.
“I would say approximately 1970-1995”
Ahh, the 70s… near bankruptcy and the wonderful Ed Koch! Actually it was Abe Beame through the 70s and then Koch from ’78 to the late 80s. Giuliani believed in erasing the quality of life crimes which would alleviate the bigger crimes.
Spicer, on dropping the MOAB in Afghanistan – “We must deny ISIS operational space, which we did.”
Maybe we should drop one on Detroit?
Fast: no there was wonderful neighborhoods in Manhattan back in the day. Yorkville time mention just one. Now it is completely filled with mid western and southern douche bags who are completely angst ridden because they think that is the sign of a native New Yorker.
‘If you ever had any doubt as to whether the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton were actually arming Al Qaeda in Syria…’
Trump supplanting Hillary as their new BFF as he ousts Assad.
The more things change.
Gary – Many, many months ago, perhaps even pre-election, I listened to CNN’s Jake Tapper attempt to rake Giuliani over the coals in a one-on-one interview. Giuliani handled it like a pro. He even had the wherewithal, as he criticized the press, to continually stroke Tapper and tell him that he was one of the good ones and he wasn’t talking about him. He said when he was mayor, as a Republican, he knew he would be continually persecuted in the press, so he sought to do as many press interviews as he could so he could use the press as his shared forum. He went on to say that Trump doesn’t need you anymore like I did. He can just go direct to the people via Twitter/the Interwebs, etc.
“I would say approximately 1970-1995”
Ahh, the 70s… near bankruptcy and the wonderful Ed Koch! Actually it was Abe Beame through the 70s and then Koch from ’78 to the late 80s. Giuliani believed in erasing the quality of life crimes which would alleviate the bigger crimes.
Jake Tapper is angry because he’s afraid to go through with a sex change.
chifi – Repeat of last January? Rotation into Utilities, REITs, Telecom, and Staples? I know the P/E’s are ridiculous, but we seem to be going there again, right?
3B,
I always thought of Manhattan as being the only place in the world bigger than those who inhabit it. Call it “City Privilege!” lol. It’s just how I see it. Different strokes… you know?
Abe Beame, Ed Koch – don’t forget David Dinkins!
Giuliani should be given a medal for cleaning up the city. The only downside is that afterwards, when everything was safe and clean, then the mid-westerners moved in, drove the prices up and the families that had been in Manhattan for generations were forced to move out. Look at what happened in Little Italy. Gone. Except for a bakery here, restaurant there, the whole community is gone. Don’t get me wrong, I still love that old whore, New York City. But I don’t love her when she is all dressed up for a night out on the town – I love her for her morning after, when she is walking back down an empty city street with her shoes in her hand. I love her when she is real.
The Original NJ ExPat says:
April 13, 2017 at 2:29 pm
chifi – Repeat of last January? Rotation into Utilities, REITs, Telecom, and Staples? I know the P/E’s are ridiculous, but we seem to be going there again, right?
Everything follows the UST Ten….it rallies, then those trades work, if it sells off, then XLF……pick your poison……
did you see this?
From:
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2017 11:10 AM
To:
Subject: WSJ picks up SPIVA analysis
ON A SECOND PASS, THESE RESULTS ARE REALLY RATHER ASTONISHING….AS I STATED PREVIOUSLY, I AM CONCERNED…..BEAR IN MIND…..IT CARVES OUT THE TECH BUST AND ALSO GIVES GREAT WEIGHT TO THE PERIOD 2009-2016. THE DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS IS OBJECTIVE, BUT LUCK-OF-THE-DRAW CREATES AN OSTENSIBLE CHERRY-PICKED RESULT.
PAGE A1 OF WSJ
• MARKETS
Indexes Beat Stock Pickers Even Over 15 Years
New data show that 82% of all U.S. funds trailed their respective benchmarks over 15 years
Index giant Vanguard pulled in a net $33 billion in February, $29.6 billion of which went into index products.
Daisy Maxey and Chris Dieterich
Most actively managed U.S. stock funds were beaten by their market benchmarks over the past decade and a half, a record of underperformance that helps explain why stock pickers are losing billions of dollars in assets each month to low-cost passive investments that track indexes.
Over the 15 years ended in December 2016, 82% of all U.S. funds trailed their respective benchmarks, according to the latest S&P Indices Versus Active funds scorecard. This was the first year that the analysis included 15 years of data, helping smooth out periods of volatility that can affect the performance of active managers.
The results coincide with the rise of passive investing and a growing view among investors and financial advisers that active managers can’t pick stocks well enough to justify the fees they charge over extended periods and that even those managers who do outperform their passive counterparts can’t sustain it year after year.
“We often hear from active managers, ‘You need to measure us over a longer-term cycle,’” said Aye Soe, managing director of research and design at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Even over a full market cycle, which includes peaks and troughs, we still see the majority of active managers performing unfavorably against their benchmarks.”
The debate over whether passive management is as good or better than active management is a long-running and contentious one, but it has heated up in recent years. Active managers’ struggles to beat the market over recent years amid a long-term bull market in stocks have resulted in fee pressure, fund closings, business overhauls and mergers.
Investors have spoken with their wallets, turning to index-tracking funds in droves. Some $1.2 trillion has been withdrawn from actively managed U.S. stock funds since the start of 2007 through March, according to Morningstar Inc. Nearly the same amount, $1.1 trillion, has moved into passive U.S. stock funds over the same period.
The Rise of the ‘Do-Nothing’ Investor
Passive mutual funds are growing rapidly, pushing aside stock pickers and changing the investment world.
Index giant Vanguard Group pulled in a net $33 billion in February, $29.6 billion of which went into index products, and $40.5 billion in March, $35.5 billion of which went into index products, a spokeswoman said.
Among more than a dozen categories tracked, 95.4% of U.S. mid-cap funds, 93.2% of U.S. small-cap funds and 92.2% of U.S. large-cap funds trailed their respective benchmarks, according to the data. The performance analysis, known as Spiva, is published semiannually by S&P Global using a methodology that includes funds that have been liquidated or merged out of existence. S&P Dow Jones Indices is a joint venture of S&P Global and CME Group Inc. It is a major participant in the indexing business with more than $2.1 trillion indexed to the S&P 500 index as of 2015.
A committee composed of three representatives of S&P Dow Jones Indices and two representatives of The Wall Street Journal determine the composition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Dow Jones & Co., a unit of News Corp , sold a majority stake in its index business in 2010 and sold the remaining stake in 2013.
S&P Dow Jones Indices pulls performance data on active funds from a database maintained by the Center for Research in Security Prices, a research and learning center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
The latest Spiva survey period ended during a year of geopolitical tumult of the sort that sometimes is thought to benefit active managers, with market-churning events including Britain’s vote to exit from the European Union and Donald Trump‘s surprise election to the U.S. presidency. Not even the volatility that came with those events was enough to give many more active fund managers the edge over indexes.
S&P Dow Jones Indices found that 89.4% of U.S. mid-cap stock funds, 85.5% of small-cap funds and 66% of large-cap actively managed funds trailed their benchmarks in 2016. That came in a year in which stock markets performed well. The S&P 500 index delivered a total return of nearly 12% last year, while the S&P MidCap 400 and the S&P SmallCap 600 rose 20.7% and 26.6%, respectively.
Even stock funds that manage to top the market for many years can stumble badly. One high-profile example is Sequoia Fund, operated by Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb, a firm co-founded by William Ruane, a value investor and friend and mentor to famed investor Warren Buffett.
Until the end of 2015, Sequoia Fund was the top performing large-cap growth mutual fund tracked by Morningstar over the previous 15 years, nearly doubling the annual performance of the S&P 500. But the fund was badly burned by a heavy position in Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. Valeant’s stock price has plunged 96% from its peak in August 2015 amid questions about its accounting practices.
Steep losses in Valeant have left the fund near the bottom of all large-cap growth funds over the past one, three and five years. The fund’s return over the past five years is less than half of the S&P 500’s 13.9%.
“We’re working very hard to restore the track record that our investors have come to expect from us,” said David Poppe, co-manager of the fund.
Giuliani deserves around 1/3 of the medal. To his credit, the job fits his personality. The job required a sandpaper grade angry miserable pugilist that he was. He fought with everyone, anyone remembers the fight with wife and son. That enlarged prostate was no fun.
1/3 of the Medal goes to AIDS. It really did a number cleaning house. At first it was the gays, then junkies, and then 2 generations of the criminal world that associated with the junkies.
1/3 goes to legalize abortion. The Freakconomics books talks about it. The 3 states that had legal abortion before Roe v Wade (CA,HI & NY) experienced a synchronize drop in crime that was later matched by all states after Roe v Wade.
Scorpion attack on united flight – you can’t make this shit up.
chifi – I’m a big fan of Ken Fisher and he told me two things a month ago that made perfect sense:
1. Everyone is projecting an average year, 5-8% portfolio growth, so it is a crowded opinion/trade. We’ll either suffer greatly or profit immensely, because that’s where the crowd isn’t.
2. There isn’t a whiff of real inflation, so long term rates will fall.
That’s it.
Everything follows the UST Ten….it rallies, then those trades work, if it sells off, then XLF……pick your poison……
Spank – that was a steaming pile of bull excrement. I am not saying that those two things didn’t play a role, but it was a minor role. Look at Chicago today – AIDS? Under control. Abortion legal? Yup, has been for decades. Funny how, once again, a wildly leftist Democrat further screws up a major city.
Wow. It seems like real news paralyzes the fake news machine. The best they can do is, “That’s not what he said he was going to do!”
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
CNN: What Napolitano said
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/13/politics/trump-russia-british-intelligence/index.html
In the locker room last night, I heard DeBlazio wants to take the guns away from the city cops, citing results from countries with strict gun control.
Sorry Spanky, but you are dead wrong. Not being political here.
Worked in EMS in northern NJ craph0les and NYC in mid 80’s- on. Picked up plenty of “humanitarian” prisoner release sent home to died, usually a year or two later family/friends also dying off.
Why do you think you are hearing about the her0in problem now. All the junkies and crack heads killed off by AIDS. We are 20 yrs ( a new generational cycle) into the use of anti-retrovirals against HIV. So what looks like an opiate crisis, is really the return to normal, which had been artificially suppressed by AIDS.
What AIDS did do is kill off a large portion of troublemakers and troublemaker’s associates. Abortion helped a lot. A kid not wanted will not be a happy adult. Look at Latin America – Brazil and Mexico, look at the Middle East for what how horrible it is for society.
“That’s not what he said he was going to do!”
I think all the flip-flops just make him look like any other politician.
His appearance as a non-political force of change seems to be what’s taking a hit.
Dedicated to Stu:
April 12, 2017 7:10 p.m. ET
A train derailment last week at New York’s Penn Station may have caused more travel disruption in the Northeast than any snowstorm this winter, and waylaid commuters have Amtrak to thank. The snag that caused the accident reflects a systemic dysfunction at Amtrak that requires radical repair.
Penn Station, the busiest train depot in North America, connects Amtrak passengers riding from Boston to Washington, D.C., while fielding commuters from New Jersey and Long Island. Even minor snafus can cause major headaches as happened last week when a New Jersey Transit train derailment on Amtrak-owned tracks shut down eight of 21 tracks. Less than two weeks earlier an Amtrak Acela derailed and side-swiped a commuter train. There but for the grace of God ride passengers.
Amtrak CEO Charles Moorman blamed last week’s accident on rotting wood ties beneath the track, which the railroad had flagged during a routine track inspection. “We clearly did not have the understanding that there was an imminent failure,” the CEO said. “But we did have that location identified with others, and we knew that at some point this year in our maintenance program, we would be getting to it.”
Passengers must be relieved that Amtrak knew of the problem but failed to correct it. The March derailment was reportedly due to a mismatch between rail pieces. How many other track malfunctions have inspectors identified as not in need of urgent repair?
Most commuter and light-rail trains including New Jersey Transit and Washington, D.C.’s Metro (which is known to catch on fire) aren’t paragons of safety, frugality or performance. But Amtrak’s shoddy record deserves special note because national taxpayers are subsidizing the rolling disaster.
The Northeast Corridor is one of the few segments in the country in which Amtrak owns and is responsible for upkeep of the track. Nearly three-quarters of the miles Amtrak trains travel are owned by other railroads, the biggest being Warren Buffett’s BNSF. Amtrak pays these railroads to use their tracks and competes with freight carriers for priority, which can cause delays all-around.
The bigger problem is these long-distance train routes are consuming hundreds of millions of dollars each year that would be better spent improving service along the Northeast Corridor where the potential exists to support profitable high-speed rail. During the 1960s, heavily regulated railroads were losing millions of dollars on passenger service. So Congress socialized the costs by establishing Amtrak in 1970, and the routes have continued to bleed red ink despite numerous attempts to impose accountability.
In 1997 Congress ordered that Amtrak be operationally self-supporting within five years. By 2001 the railroad was running a $1.1 billion deficit. Recommendations by an Amtrak Reform Council to restructure the railroad into two companies and spin off the Northeast Corridor were ignored. In 2008 Congress tried to force states to shoulder more of the costs for shorter routes (e.g., St. Louis to Chicago), but then handed Amtrak $1.3 billion from stimulus funds.
Only a third of state-supported routes last year covered their operating costs excluding depreciation and interest, and all of those exceeding 750 miles ran large deficits. The two biggest money losers are the California Zephyr (San Francisco to Chicago) and Empire Builder (Chicago to Seattle) lines, which together account for more than $100 million of Amtrak’s $1.1 billion annual operating deficit.
Amtrak’s $500 million operating profit along the Northeast Corridor was wiped out by losses on long-distance routes that can’t compete with airlines in cost or speed while offering equally miserable customer service. Someone who pays $176 to take a 62-hour ride on the Texas Eagle train from Los Angeles to Dallas to Chicago must really want to minimize Christmas with the in-laws. By contrast, Amtrak carries three times as many riders between Washington, D.C., and New York City as all the airlines combined. The annual ridership on the Northeast Corridor is more than three times the population of Connecticut.
In 2015 Congress authorized $8.1 billion in funding for Amtrak between 2016 and 2020, but only a third will go to the Northeast. Last year Amtrak contracted with Alstom to produce high-speed trains for the Acela that are supposed to be ready by 2021. But Amtrak doesn’t have enough money to upgrade the tracks, so speeds won’t exceed 160 miles per hour—about 25 mph faster than the current top speed between New York and Washington—and trip times will be about the same.
President Trump has proposed zeroing out funding for Amtrak’s long-distance routes to prioritize improvements in the Northeast. Congress should do him one better by spinning off the Northeast Corridor—private investors might be interested—and devolving shorter distances to states. New York Senator Chuck Schumer and other Democrats who take the train might even hop on board.
ChiFi…Tell me something I don’t know!
Who Will Buy Baby Boomers’ Homes?
https://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/04/who-will-buy-baby-boomers-homes/522912/?utm_source=feed
I just filed my taxes electronically using Turb0Tax. Interestingly, TT charges $25 to file NJ, but NY passed a law that says it’s illegal to charge for state filing if you purchased tax software. I love NJ.
Great, people finally get it. Read the comments on the article…people are not buying the bs.
goodfriday says:
April 14, 2017 at 2:12 pm
Who Will Buy Baby Boomers’ Homes?
https://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/04/who-will-buy-baby-boomers-homes/522912/?utm_source=feed
goodfriday,
Good article. So many variables, however.
#1 being will these new millennial homeowners feet be held to the fire to pay the 49 billion dollar pension shortfall, will it get kicked down the road, or will these retirees be shafted. No one seems to know, care about or address this issue. Stay tuned.
Today’s workers don’t have any lifelines anymore. No pensions for them, healthcare that follows the swiss cheese model. Stupid to get in debt. Much easier to plant roots with a solid job in one area. I have been watching the millennials in my area of work, the smart ones are avoiding debt. I tell them avoid if possible purchasing ANYTHING that does not have the potential to go up in value (when possible of course). As far as being employees, with nothing on the back end (pension, healthcare, etc) they damn well better get every dime they can upfront, if not, they will never see it. Everyone today is an at will employee, might as well beat an employer up as much as you can at the start and keep looking for something better every day.
No such thing as loyalty anymore…
Steam,
“I heard DeBlazio wants to take the guns away from the city cops”
Ahahahahaha, yeah, that will end well. I seriously hope he tries.
Spank, let’s just take a look at the AIDS/IV drug users point – NYC had a population in the 1980’s of over 7 million. According to this article from the NY Times written in 1987, the number of iv drug users with HIV who would later develop AIDS was about 30,000 (“City health officials estimated that half of the city’s 200,000 intravenous drug users were infected with the virus that causes AIDS and that at least 30 percent or more of them would contract the deadly opportunistic infections associated with AIDS within five years.”). That is well under 1% of the NYC population that were IV drug users infected with HIV and expected to develop full blown AIDS by 1992. Not a large population, even if that number held true for every year. The drug of choice in the 80’s wasn’t heroin, it was coke and crack – those two drugs fueled the crime wave of that era. The prisoners you picked up most likely got AIDS from prison. One of the fellas I grew up with ended up in prison at the age of 19 for robbery – not his first criminal arrest. He was released from jail three years later, and died from AIDS when he was 25 – not an IV drug user, he was repeatedly raped in prison. As for the epidemic of heroin use that we are seeing today, I say look to Afghanistan’s poppy fields. The mujahedeen and the Taliban put an end to poppy farming in the 80’s – when we invaded, it took off again. Nothing fuels a drug epidemic more than “cheap” and “plentiful”.
Here’s the link to the NY Times article I mentioned above – cause I know you all want to read it – http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/aids/102287sci-aids.html
My friend, seriously don’t worry about this. It will be taken care of one way or another. Picture 1860’s, president shot and country torn from civil war. Imagine all the problems back then. They solved them as will the future of humanity. Gotta close your eyes and have faith. Life finds a way! Always does, always will.
Phoenix says:
April 14, 2017 at 5:53 pm
goodfriday,
Good article. So many variables, however.
#1 being will these new millennial homeowners feet be held to the fire to pay the 49 billion dollar pension shortfall, will it get kicked down the road, or will these retirees be shafted. No one seems to know, care about or address this issue. Stay tuned.
Pumps, your attitude is exactly how we got here…