From CNBC:
Foreigners snap up record number of US homes
Foreign purchases of U.S. residential real estate surged to the highest level ever in terms of number of homes sold and dollar volume.
Foreign buyers closed on $153 billion worth of U.S. residential properties between April 2016 and March 2017, a 49 percent jump from the period a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. That surpasses the previous high, set in 2015.
The jump follows a year-earlier retreat and comes as a surprise, given the current strength of the U.S. dollar against most foreign currencies, which makes U.S. housing even more expensive. Apparently, the value of a financial safe-haven is outweighing the rising costs.
Foreign sales accounted for 10 percent of all existing home sales by dollar volume and 5 percent by number of properties. In total, foreign buyers purchased 284,455 homes, up 32 percent from the previous year.
Half of all foreign sales were in just three states: Florida, California and Texas.
Chinese buyers led the pack for the fourth straight year, followed by buyers from Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico and India. Russian buyers made up barely 1 percent of the purchases.
But the biggest overall surge in sales in the last year came from Canadian buyers, who scooped up $19 billion worth of properties, mostly in Florida. They are also spending more, with the average price of a Canadian-bought home nearly doubling to $561,000.
Good Morning New Jersey
@JimGaffigan
Everyone is overreacting to the Trump & Putin private meeting.
Relax.
It might have been Trump’s performance review.
Heathcare reform failure is not good. Obamacare mandates massive increases in medicare spending. There’s no way this can be done without tax increases. With Obamacare…middle class tax reform is dead.
Sh1thead Kasich singing because he knows his state will see increased medicaid $$$. Trump’s rally in Ohio can’t be coincidental.
The Uniparty wins this round.
Kasich Op ED in NY Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/opinion/john-kasich-the-way-forward-on-health-care.html?mcubz=0
@jpodhoretz
Why GOP health care reform died:
No one made the case for it. And the president was riding a fire truck.
“And now they have failed in the most spectacular fashion when it comes to achieving the goal that has been the greatest Republican preoccupation since March 2010.
I hope Trump learned something in his time riding on the firetruck on the South Lawn, because the GOP just set itself ablaze.”
There’s going to be some interesting Republican Primaries.
@realDonaldTrump
I will be having lunch at the White House today with Republican Senators concerning healthcare. They MUST keep their promise to America!
I don’t want them to keep their promise to overturn a crap bill and replace with another crap bill. How about the house and senate take us this bill which is actually focused on the root of the problem. COST
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2569/text?r=55
@FiveThirtyEight
Trump will conclude his first 6 months as the most unpopular president, at this point, since modern polling began.
I think Trump needs to have another sit down with Rand…..
Is Rand Paul’s Health-Care Stance Really Based on Principle?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449622/rand-paul-health-care-republican-plans-repeal-replace-obamacare-principles-self-interest-ron-paul
The greatest trick any politician can pull off is to get his self-interest and his principles in perfect alignment. As Thomas More observed in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, “if we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly.” Which brings me to Senator Rand Paul, the GOP’s would-be Man for All Seasons. Paul emerged from the smoldering debris of the Republican health-care-reform train wreck as a figure of high libertarian principle, the shining “no” vote on any compromise that came short of full repeal. “Look, this is what we ran on for four elections,” Paul told Neil Cavuto of Fox News. “Republicans ran four times and won every time on repeal Obamacare, and now they’re going to vote to keep it. Disappointing.” I found many of Paul’s arguments and complaints entirely persuasive on the merits. But there have been times when I had to wonder if the merits were all that was driving him. UP NEXT UP NEXT UP NEXT UP NEXT UP NEXT American student sentenced to 10 years in Iran for spying 00:05 00:35 Was it just a coincidence that the bill was terribly unpopular in his home state of Kentucky, where more than one in five Kentuckians are on Medicaid? This is the problem. When touting your principles is a politically expedient way of avoiding accountability, it’s hard to tell whether principles or expedience is in the driver’s seat. But not impossible. Paul learned politics on the knee of his father, Ron Paul, a longtime Texas congressman and irrepressible presidential candidate. In the House, the elder Paul earned the nickname “Dr. No” because he voted against nearly everything on the grounds that it wasn’t constitutional or libertarian enough. “I’m absolutely for free trade, more so than any other member of the House,” he told National Review’s John Miller in 2007. “But I’m against managed trade.” So Paul opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement and all other trade deals, not on Trumpian protectionist grounds but in service to his higher libertarian conscience, which, in a brilliant pas de deux, landed him in the protectionist position anyway. Every time health-care proceedings moved one step in Paul’s direction, he seemed to move one step back. Ron Paul loved earmarks. He’d cram pork for his district into must-pass spending bills like an overstuffed burrito — and then vote against them in the name of purity, often boasting that he never approved an earmark or a spending bill. In 2006, Republicans proposed legislation to slow the growth of entitlements by $40 billion over five years. Democrats, as usual, screamed bloody murder about Republican heartlessness and voted against it. And so did Ron Paul — on the grounds the reform didn’t go far enough. Man, that sounds familiar. Now I can’t say for sure that Rand Paul is carrying on the family tradition. He is different from his dad in many ways. And yet: Every time health-care proceedings moved one step in Paul’s direction, he seemed to move one step back. Senator Ted Cruz offered an amendment that would open up the market for more flexible and affordable plans, like Paul wanted. No good, Paul told Fox’s Chris Wallace. Those plans would still be in the “context” of the Obamacare mandates. “My idea always was to replace it with freedom, legalize choice, legalize inexpensive insurance, allow people to join associations to buy their insurance,” Paul said. Sounds good. Except a provision for exempting associations from Obamacare mandates was already in the bill. Paul insists he’s sympathetic to the GOP’s plight and its need to avoid a midterm catastrophe. (It would look awful if the party did nothing on health care at all.) His solution? Just repeal Obamacare now, and work on a replacement later. “I still think the entire 52 of us could get together on a more narrow, clean repeal,” he told Wallace. That sounds like a constructive idea, grounded in principle. And yet: That’s what GOP leaders wanted to do back in January. And one senator more than any other fought to stop them, and even successfully lobbied the White House to change course and do repeal-and-replace simultaneously. Guess who? “If Congress fails to vote on a replacement at the same time as repeal,” Paul wrote back then, “the repealers risk assuming the blame for the continued unraveling of Obamacare. For mark my words, Obamacare will continue to unravel and wreak havoc for years to come.” In the wake of the Senate bill’s collapse this week, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says he’s all for a clean repeal, and so does Rand Paul. For now.
@StephenKing
The news is real. The president is fake.
The Daily 202: Teflon Trump gets blamed less by base for Obamacare fail than Senate GOP
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/07/19/daily-202-teflon-trump-gets-blamed-less-by-base-for-obamacare-fail-than-senate-gop/596e9f9c30fb04367954319f/?utm_term=.4f5211c99c68
christie catches foul ball at mets game yesterday….then get’s boo’d by crowd.
https://twitter.com/joshdcaplan/status/887474811588444161?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2017%2F07%2Fgov-chris-christie-booed-entire-stadium-catching-foul-ball-mets-game-video%2F
He’s a douche…but he’s our douche
Property tax vs median household income. Where it hurts the most.
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/07/highest_property_tax_burdens_in_all_21_counties.html#incart_river_mobileshort_home_pop
Imagine making $50k household income BEFORE taxes…then paying federal/state taxes…then staring down the barrel of a $7k plus property tax bill.
Irvington, East Orange, Orange
Disaster
I’m telling you all, increase in property taxes hit those areas worse than ARM resets and shit subprime mortgages.
But aint’ nobody wanna hear it.
You wanna talk predatory? It’s not mortgage brokers, it’s NJ State Government.
Most of those towns/cities are low income renters. They don’t actually own the homes, the landlords do. The landlords get the homes for dirt cheap, so the taxes aren’t as much of a problem as the stats make it seem to be. They also get to feed off section 8 in a lot of cases. So in a town of renters, why is income brought up in comparison to property taxes?
D-FENS says:
July 19, 2017 at 10:38 am
Imagine making $50k household income BEFORE taxes…then paying federal/state taxes…then staring down the barrel of a $7k plus property tax bill.
If you lowered the taxes, you would just be helping landlords like me. You wouldn’t be actually helping the tenants.
Puzzy,
The State of Illinois is on the verge of bankruptcy. Can you tell us what a “great job” your party did to that State while it was in charge all those years. It’s now in financial crisis.
Trump will conclude his first 6 months as the most unpopular president, at this point, since modern polling began.
Well, Moana Puzzy, at least he IS the president!
That is complete and total horsesh1t. They are my neighbors. They are not renters.
It is exactly why people stopped paying their mortgage and picked up and left….and why they still do. They were forced to make a choice.
The Great Pumpkin says:
July 19, 2017 at 11:17 am
Most of those towns/cities are low income renters. They don’t actually own the homes, the landlords do. The landlords get the homes for dirt cheap, so the taxes aren’t as much of a problem as the stats make it seem to be. They also get to feed off section 8 in a lot of cases. So in a town of renters, why is income brought up in comparison to property taxes?
At least he ‘is’ President.
I have a funny feeling Trump regrets it. How could he not. He’s going to spend the next four years getting pissed on the same way all of his predecessors did. It’s a shitty job. But it does come with a pension.
D, yes, it doesn’t apply to all. I feel bad for parts of west jersey.
Vote with your feet and go get stuck me boxes
Stuck me = some.
I am starting to channel jj. Just need some crushed valor and a few encounters with the kennedys
He’s going to spend the next four years getting pissed on the same way all of his predecessors did.
You think the level of whining, anger, tantrums and crying by the media and the fat, little sl0bs on the left rival anything past presidents had to endure?
You are far from being regular folk……..far from it……
The Great Pumpkin says:
July 18, 2017 at 9:12 pm
We start calling places like Wayne as regular folk, your middle class, when they are far from it.
@paulkrugman
In a way Trump’s sheer awfulness protects him:
people who voted for him reluctant to admit that they were chumps
lol, Oregon is going to do a bicycle tax
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/17/first-bicycle-tax-nation-deflates-oregon-riders/
Are we great yet Gary?
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/07/17/outline-trumps-achievements-first-six-months-office
We’re we great with Obama? Did we get our hope and change? Oh and I voted for neither trump or Obama.
3B,
Yes we were. Donnie is reupping the greatness.
https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/trump-re-ups-iran-nuclear-deal-he-once-called-the-worst-1797022366
After six months in office, our 45th President seems to be a most unhappy warrior. Yes, Donald Trump’s face lights up when they bring big trucks to the White House, and he gets to sit behind the wheel. But for the most part he offers no more than a thumbs up or a few hand claps to indicate enthusiasm, and his eyes reflect the look of a man who would rather be anywhere else but Washington.
Source: CNN
Fab seriously?? Are you that blinded that you actually think Obama was great? You people are so easily fooled left or right.
‘You think the level of whining, anger, tantrums and crying by the media and the fat, little sl0bs on the left rival anything past presidents had to endure?’
That cross….heavy?
3b Seriousl, why don’t you take off the blinkers!
He stopped the country going off an economic cliff and handed over an economy that is in far better shape than it was when he took office. He extricated America from two protracted, inconclusive wars. He restructured health care, in which most today are in favor of. He gave us Immigration reform, environmental protections, labor policy and LGBT rights.
But for most he’ll be remembered for his dignity, grace, and the lack of scandal all in the face of those, such as Trump, who questioned his legitimacy and denied him the right to govern. He left office with a solid approval rating and a lot would have given him a third term. He has a shot to crack top 10.
Fab. I will give you dignity and grace, as well as a lack of scandal. The rest is talking points. You forgot to mention race baiting, hubris, an inability to network and build coalitions, and a fundamental lack of leadership by personal persuasiveness versus using the power of the office. The worst part about him was that so many held him in high regard, yet no one held him in as high regard as he held himself.
Chi,
I’ll disagree Show me where “no one held him in as high regard as he held himself”. Even with the Nobel committee, it was dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t. I think he handled it pretty well. I don’t want to accept this, but I have to.
“Race baiting”, yes race is a factor in some of the opposition against him, but he still delivered one of the best speeches shining a light on that.
“an inability to network and build coalitions,” As Donnie just found out when the GOP says no, it’s a no. It is a testament to O that he got anything done, with the party of No against him, for 8 full years!
But here is where I think you and I really differ. You say you voted Dem in your youth, now you are older the GOP speaks more to your views. That is fine and that is democracy in action. I don’t have a problem with that.
For me, I have always voted Dem. I came from dirt poor and remember it well. While these days that is in the rear view mirror, and the GOP would do more for my bottom line. But I can’t take the Clarence Thomas approach. I can’t kick the ladder back for those that would follow me. That to me is the Rubicon. The Dems for all their flaws are still fighting for the lower percentages. The GOP gave up!