From Newsweek:
Housing Market Update: Home Prices Reach Troubling Milestone
Insufficient supply of homes in the market is pushing up prices, Wells Fargo economists said, making it tougher for Americans to afford a home amid elevated mortgage rates.
The median sale price of an existing home rose by more than 5 percent in January, according to the National Association of Realtors, even as sales rebounded from their previous months’ doldrums to jump by more than 3 percent. But the housing market still faces a supply crunch. Properties available for sale at current prices equate to about three months of supply, lower than last month and even lower than in November.
The sale price for a home came in at a little over $379,000 on the back of limited supply in January, a record high.
“[It marked] the highest sales price ever for the month of January and the seventh consecutive month of year-over-year price gains,” Wells Fargo economists pointed out.
…
Nearly 90 percent of homes in America have rates below 6 percent, according to real estate platform Redfin, which means sellers are reluctant to relinquish the cheaper home loans and enter a market where a 30-year fixed rate for a home is above 7 percent.
“With homebuyers taking advantage of lower mortgage rates, low levels of inventory have kept upward pressure on prices,” according to Wells Fargo. “The combination of relatively higher mortgage rates and higher home prices will continue to make housing less affordable to many potential homebuyers.”
…
Experts expect the market to improve when the rates come down.
“We expect rates to resume their decline later in the year as the Federal Reserve’s rate cuts draw closer,” Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said on Thursday in a note shared with Newsweek.
Frist
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chud
Chicago says:
February 25, 2024 at 11:00 pm
Chud
Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BJckCjZ8Tdw&pp=ygUEQ2h1ZA%3D%3D
There’s plenty of houses, but they are owned by Private Equity.
My doctor is now owned by Private Equity
Capitalism at its finest
Mortgage rates under 6 = more buyers, more showings, more offers, higher closing price (well over asking). Higher closing price = new floor in pricing for neighbors, etc.
A lot of Chud history, facts and otherwise. I was unfamiliar with the term. Reposting my ‘Ode to Clot’ poem from last night:
“In frosted wilds, where blizzards sing,
The Chuds stand strong, their spirits cling.
With axes raised and shields held high,
They face the foe, beneath the frozen sky!!”
Private Equity lowers your salary and Private Equity increases your housing costs.
That’s how you become Brazil.
Goldman says only 4 rate cuts this year, the first in June.
Has anyone done an epoxy/polyspartic coating on their garage floor? If so, has it held up well, or have you had issues either with bubbling from moisture rising through the floor, or peeling/delamination due to road salt/hot tires?
My neighbor had it done over the fall with by of those man cave garage companies. Shiny and nice for sure. Perhaps too nice…He still parks in driveway….lol.
My FIl did it 20 years ago, beige color with a silver fleck. It held up well.. Probably cost 3x as much now.
I am too cheap. 2 gallons of grey floor paint. Cost me less than $100.
Juice,
I’m with you. A nice think masonry paint. Takes about 15 minutes to do. If it starts peeling in three or four years. Sweep well, roll again, but thinner coat.
Zelensky’s security chief said last year they exposed 47 covert networks of spies inside Ukraine and arrested several thousand spies working for Russia. They also said their top secret battle plans were leaked to the Kremlin as well.
Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian Soldiers killed in Two Years of War. A number too low for many to believe.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi the now ex-Ukrainian four-star general who Time magazine named one of the 100 most influential people in the world leaked a body count nearly 5x as much. This was right before he was fired.
Zelensky now says millions will die if they do not get the $60 Billion in mostly weapons from the USA. Did anyone tell him we cannot supply them with more 155 shells? We sent a million or more from our stockpiles. The General Dynamics plant is at capacity perhaps it will get to 50,000 a month by the end of the year, and maybe 100,000 a month by the end of 2025?
Where are they going to get the troops to man the front lines?
Where are they going to get the troops to man the front lines?
Chucky Schumer says we need to send our boys over there.
Where I work there is an entire group. They have now become the bottleneck in our workflow. Extreme high turnover. No shows. Outright refusals to work while they still have time left on the clock.
I don’t care. It’s above my pay grade. But it sure causes headaches for the schedulers, staffers, and other physicians that are trying to be efficient.
Very Stable Genius says:
February 26, 2024 at 6:38 am
There’s plenty of houses, but they are owned by Private Equity.
My doctor is now owned by Private Equity
Capitalism at its finest
These hospital conglomerates are ruining medicine. We spent the better part of a week trying to get my FIL out of RWJ Hamilton for his Cardiac issue. They kept trying to stealthily transfer him to Beth Israel in Newark (also RWJ now) with an ICU doctor trying to supersede the orders of a cardiologist. We were trying to get him to UPenn (where his doctor is) but they weren’t motivated because they can’t do it with a press of a button. As a result, UPenn filled up with no openings so we forced them to send him to Hackensack. It’s sad you have to fight for quality care where as they want to send you to a place that will butcher you up, either by the doctor performing botched surgery or the patrons inside stabbing you.
Btw, some of these ICU doctors/nurses are completely incompetent and stupid to boot. Some of the nurses there were great, and then the shift change comes in and you watch them screw everything up within an hour.
BRT,
When D was in CHOP for the long haul, I did everything in my power to learn how to assist the nurses. By the time D was through his cancer protocol, I was approved to use needles, insert feeding tubes (through the nose), do Heparin flushes of ports and handle most of the pump-related activities. When D’s cell counts were near zero during his three stem cell transplants, timing was critical to avoid infection (especially diaper changes), and D really needed a full-time nurse to keep from getting wounds and infections. That became me. The nurses at CHOP were nearly all very competent. But, they couldn’t be in the room, especially during the overnight hours as often as they needed to be. When the medical staff would come around in the morning for their daily family meeting, usually around 9am, I was nearly always in deep sleep, having been up until about 7am, being the overnight nurse. The appreciation I received from the nursing staff, most of who were truly overworked, was immeasurable. A true karma situation.
BRT,
You spent your money on Ukraine. And warships.
When the nurses make more on TikTok, and don’t have to work swing shifts, weekends, every other holiday for the rest of their lives. So many on here enjoy your “work from home” jobs-talking how great it is. You should see what these young girls go through every day. Hell, if you have the “privilege’ to work at JCMC, you get to pay for your own parking just to wipe a butt.
Honestly I don’t know why anyone would get into this career today. Be a cop or a teacher. Or an influencer.
And half of your nurses are brand new. Don’t know crap yet. Still going out to bars and coming to work hung over, or coming down from a gummy. They are practically children.
The job pays okay, but not at all well with the “imaginary” increases in inflation. Rent is off the scale, housing as well. You get healthcare insurance, you pay for it, and you are limited to staying in the system you work for. No going to “U Penn” like a spoiled teacher who can go anywhere, if you work for RWJ you best not show up in Morristown or you will pay A LOT. But if you are a teacher, cop, or judge, you can go anywhere your heart desires.
An influencer has revealed how she went from making nearly nothing as a nurse to raking in millions through her social media platforms.
Avery Woods, from Arizona, decided to address recent mumblings about ‘influencers’ ‘complaining about their jobs’ in a new post on her TikTok, where she boasts an impressive two million followers.
“I wanna give you a little bit of a backstory of how this became my full-time career,’ the 28-year-old kicked off a nearly 10-minute speech in a newly shared video.
“While she started posting on Instagram casually starting in her late teens, Avery began to use social media more purposefully when she entered nursing school in her early 20s.”
Lib,
You’re a strong person and my heart aches to read above. I believe we’d all forgo sleep, food and water to care for our children. Nothing else matters.
All of this is against hospital policy. All of this could get your nurse fired or sued. How could she explain in a courtroom that she let an unlicensed person do what you did?
Yeah, they are short staffed. America chose to spend money on other things, give money to other countries, but not take care of their own. Insert feeding tubes? Did you order an x-ray to check placement?
If you weren’t there doing what you did, how about the families who don’t have someone doing it?
Bottom line is family members shouldn’t be providing medical treatment in a hospital. Everything you described is wrong.
When D was in CHOP for the long haul, I did everything in my power to learn how to assist the nurses. By the time D was through his cancer protocol, I was approved to use needles, insert feeding tubes (through the nose), do Heparin flushes of ports and handle most of the pump-related activities. When D’s cell counts were near zero during his three stem cell transplants, timing was critical to avoid infection (especially diaper changes), and D really needed a full-time nurse to keep from getting wounds and infections. That became me. The nurses at CHOP were nearly all very competent. But, they couldn’t be in the room, especially during the overnight hours as often as they needed to be.
So Biden wants to finally meet with the Speaker of the House.
If you did not know sleepy Joe has refused to meet with Speaker Johnson since he took office in October. The Speaker of the House has been asking too. Not even a White House coffee klatch.
“President Biden is summoning Schumer, Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to the White House on Tuesday.”
They will be pressing House Speaker Johnson to put up for a vote the “bipartisan” “emergency” national security supplemental that the Senate passed earlier this month.
We need to keep funding shooting down $2,000 Houthi drones with $2 million missiles… and who can forget we need more nuclear submarines ( I bet you did not know that was in there).
Amongst other things like continue to fund the wars in Europe (Ukraine) and the Middle East (Israel and other), and a few billion in arms for Taiwan too. That aught to go over well in Beijing.
All funded by increasing the deficit. No new taxes during an election year even to save the planet.
And if you misplaced that tube, your kid aspirated, and died or ended up with brain damage- are you going to sue?
How is this all going to be explained? There will be an investigation. Are you going to tell the truth? What if the kid ends up not being able to leave the hospital, who is going to pay?
It’s all great till something happens, then the finger pointing happens. And it will.
Have an offer in for a buyer on a Bergen County property listed Friday for under $600,000. Already multiple offers. Gonna be a sh#t show.
It’s good for you isn’t it. You do get a percentage?
Old realtor says:
February 26, 2024 at 11:50 am
Have an offer in for a buyer on a Bergen County property listed Friday for under $600,000. Already multiple offers. Gonna be a sh#t show.
I think Old represents a potential buyer in this transaction. Multiple bid feeding frenzy will make this a frustrating experience for all involved.
Private Equity trained us to think that we don’t want a bureaucrat running our healthcare. We demand Private Equity to run our healthcare.
But Boomer demands socialist universal healthcare for the old run by government. Confusing.
A flag-raising ceremony is expected at NATO headquarters in Brussels later this week for Sweden odically joining NATO less than a year after fellow Nordic country Finland joined the alliance.
Now a military alliance of 32 sovereign states, to provide collective security against the Soviet Union which does not exist anymore.
Like any profession at this point, you have your good and bad. But the problem is, a bad doctor/nurse will literally end your life with their incompetence. The cardiologist at RWJ said that he was stable and we’ll just wait until a bed at UPenn opens. No sooner, an hour later, an ICU doctor comes in, reads a chart, probably misses the cardio’s notes entirely, and signs a transfer into Beth Israel. We told him to decline the transfer to which their response was, as a result, “we are no longer liable for you because your refused the transfer”. We had to call the ICU doctor out on the crap because he was going against what the cardiologist just said. That being said, yesterday was a big relief. They transferred him from Hamilton to Hackensack in an ambulance that was so old that every time they hit a pump, it triggered his pacemaker….
But the cariologist at Hackensack, which is one of the better places to go, was very knowledgable and explained everything very clearly. What are the issues detail by detail, how are we going to treat it, why we think we can treat it, what order are we going to do it in, what time table are we looking at. Friggin RWJ was like, “oh lets take a look, we’re not sure, we are running out of the medication to bring your heart rate down, but let’s drag it out to keep you in network”.
BRT – He is lucky to have you in his corner.
It is sad to say that care is not what it should be the amount of red tape and all can be infuriating.
We shall see. I’m not so sure.
3b says:
February 26, 2024 at 7:58 am
Goldman says only 4 rate cuts this year, the first in June.
So far, everything was successful today and they are looking to discharge him possibly tomorrow. Amazing how a competent doctor can fix you in less than 24 hours while the other hospital languished for a week doing nothing. He’s out tomorrow unless they want to do the plumbing issues right away or wait for full recovery from today’s procedure but the cardiologist said “I’ll defer to the plumber on that one”. Such a breath of fresh air relative to the ICU doctor who wants to supersede the cardiologist.
TBH, all the credit goes to my wife and her sister. They were the ones doing all the fighting on the court. I’m just coaching from the sidelines.
FRB meeting dates. 4 cuts?
I think may and april are out.
2 or perhaps 3 before the eleciton?
March. 19-20*
Apr/May. 30-1.
June. 11-12*
July. 30-31.
September. 17-18*
November. 6-7.
December. 17-18*
Juice,
If AI madness continues, and judging by the NVIDIA results, they will. I would not be surprised if FED continues to delay. They already surprised us by raising the rates as much and as rapidly as they did. I think we have to look at them differently now. They used to always puss out.
Phoenix,
I hear you on the legal side. CHOP wasn’t stupid. I was certified for the shots, the feeding tube and the flushes. The pumps, well, I’m mechanically inclined. Truth is, my kid threw up his feeding tube so many times from that damn Nestle vanilla formula they were drowning him in that I was better at in than all but the oldest nurses. As for certification, both Gator and I had sessions with the a nurse trainer for each of these tasks. Gator passed, but never felt confident about performing them. Being the much more mechanically inclined of the two, I actually felt better about doing them than having watched some of the nurses. I also became master of the pumps often helping them out when they failed. If I could only tell you how many times they would forget to plug the rack back in, since the batteries ran for hours.
Honestly, I couldn’t understand why the pumps, D had as many as 8 running at a time, were not centrally monitored like the vitals are in the ICU. Relying on nurses hearing alarms is both stupid and sleep depriving. Or at least bluetooth them and give the nurses a monitor. For what you pay to stay there, you would think they would figure out the low hanging fruit to better outcomes.
On that formula crap. It’s another example of profit over health. The day we switched D over to Nourish, which is actually a food based formula instead of processed nutrition, he did not throw up a single time and was able to take in quantities many times larger and quicker. We’ve told every cancer patient we know on enteral formula and they all experienced the same result. But the Nutren is so much cheaper, so greater profit. Nearly all health insurance plans will cover Nourish. Just the smell of the Nutren made me sick. Nourish smelled like carrots and sweet potatoes.
If you compare the ingredients, your mind will be blown.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9370549/
Looks like my anecdotal evidence matches the scientific.
Lib, not saying you aren’t good, or even better. But everything you do in this business comes down to legal. There is no qualified immunity. No district attorney to say we have investigated ourselves and it’s all legal.
It’s just the way it is.
Columbia Business School commercial real estate expert says NYC commercial real estate has entered a 1970’ s doom loop. Details in Fortune Magazine.
3b,
If there is a reason for FED to lower interest rates, it will be to help commercial real estate refinance.
Lib: True, but you still have to fill that empty space at some point I would think.
Had a plumber come by to do some non-urgent work in the basement today. He seemed like a nice guy – 6’2 or so heavy dude. We talked for a bit before I left him to work, while I went upstairs. About an hour or so into a meeting I thought I heard something (luckily I had my AirPods in transparency mode). Came down to see the guy flat on the floor covered in vomit and heavy breathing – not conscious. Hands were limp and turning blue. Called 9-11 and the cops and parameds were there within 5 mins. They struggled to take him up the stairs – even dropping him by accident, but they rushed him to RWJ hospital.
I heard later in the afternoon that he had a cerebral hemorrhage – may not make it. 48 years old, healthy dude – worked as a plumber for 20 years.
F8ck my basement project. F8ck the renovations. Life is short. Enjoy what you have!
R3nt.
Depending on severity and location, his best bet might be that he doesn’t make it. Nothing worse than being a gork if you are that type of guy.
Seen it a hundred times, done those emergency flaps. Gotta get them real quick or else. We can pop ’em in about 5 minutes including prep.
R3ntL0rd says:
February 26, 2024 at 9:57 pm
Last week I had a guy that worked for me/with me for over 20 years, he was clearing snow from driveways at my last rental. Using the snowblower doing the parking lots, keeled over and had massive heart attack, tenant actually found him and called police and turned off snowblower. He was 51 years old, as you can see it has affected me deeply…. I am not usually up at 3 in the morning writing something on the blog. RIP Pat you will be missed by all and me especially.
Here with you
Life sucks sometimes
Thanks Chi.
I appreciate the support. Maybe I will stay up and see if I can get the number 1 spot on Grims next article. LOL
Actually have a busy day tomorrow (today) just can’t sleep .