From Fast Company:
Housing market map: Zillow just released its updated home price forecast for 400-plus housing markets
Heading into the year, Zillow economists forecasted that U.S. home prices were likely to rise 2.6% in 2025.
However, this year, the housing market—in particular in the Sun Belt—was softer than expected and Zillow has made several downgrades to its forecast for national home prices.
This week, newly released data from Zillow shows that U.S. home prices have decelerated to a year-over-year increase of just 0.4%. Zillow economists now expect U.S. home prices to decline by 0.7% between May 2025 and May 2026.
With inventory up nearly 20% over the previous year, buyers had more options in May than at any time since July 2020. Despite higher sales, sellers still outnumber buyers,” wrote Zillow economists. “This gives buyers more time to decide and more power in negotiations. Zillow’s market heat index shows a balanced market nationwide, one that’s a lot more buyer-friendly than in recent years. Competition among buyers declined to the lowest level seen in May in Zillow records, reaching back through 2018.”
Not only do Zillow economists predict soft national home price growth this year, but they’re also predicting that the housing market will only see 4.1 million U.S. existing home sales in 2025. That would mark the third-straight year of suppressed existing home sales. For comparison, in pre-pandemic 2019, there were 5.3 million existing home sales in the U.S.
Zillow economists added: “Home values have fallen in 22 of the 50 largest metro areas over the past year, and sellers cut prices on almost 26% of listings nationwide—another May high in Zillow records. Homes that sell typically do so in 17 days, about four more than last year and only two days fewer than pre-pandemic averages.”
1st
Rate cut incoming?
Tehran going dark as Israel continues their bombing sorties unmolested. They are taking out the electrical grid now.
Ten 434
Stunning quiet. Really nothing going on. Hmm
Markets are waiting to see if Iran has enough balls to try and take 20 million barrels a day offline.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/tankers-u-turn-zig-zag-pause-around-strait-hormuz-2025-06-23/
Both sides at fault.
According to the latest report from the Social Security trustees, absent action by Congress, the funding shortfall will force deep cuts in retirement and health insurance benefits by 2033, which is no more time than it takes to turn a baby into a third-grader. The blink of an eye, in other words, as any parent of a third-grader can attest.
The long fuse on an inevitable bomb — the underfunded retirement of the baby boom generation — has finally burned down. The demographic studies and actuarial charts were correct, and the explosion is nigh. The question is what to do about it, and, more perplexing, who will do it.
There’s nothing complicated about the options. One is to raise more revenue, either by hiking the 7.65 percent payroll tax (known as FICA, for the Federal Insurance Contributions Act) that supports the programs, or by increasing the amount of income subject to the tax. The first of these options is regressive, striking hardest at those who earn the least. The second would add to the burden of high-salary workers who already shoulder the biggest tax load, and, in any event, there is already a Medicare surtax on earned income above a certain level ($200,000 for single taxpayers).
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Another choice is to further raise the age of eligibility for benefits, which tends to help people who enjoy good health and desk jobs over those in poor health or in physically demanding work.
A third solution is to increase the number of workers paying into the system. But this cuts against the current political mood, because the quickest and surest way of growing the workforce is through easy immigration. And it might be flying in the face of technology, because many experts predict that in the future workforce, artificial intelligence will destroy more jobs than it creates.
Given those imperfect options, the government is choosing its favorite solution: ignoring reality.
Like the toddler who closes his eyes to try to make himself invisible, Congress and the president are grinding away at a “big beautiful bill” that ignores the problem, and in fact makes it worse. By increasing the federal deficit despite unprecedented peacetime debt, the legislation significantly deepens the crater that lies just ahead of us.
Republicans are to blame for the legislation, but the problem is bipartisan. One reason the trustees gave for accelerating their doomsday calculation was the Biden-era law that enhanced Social Security benefits paid to second-career earners who already retired from first jobs covered by certain public pension plans. Red or blue, they all share a yellow streak of cowardice when it comes to paying for the promises they make.
Social Security has always depended on the workers of the younger generation to pay the retirements of the older generation. Contributions have never been invested in productive assets, as true pension systems do. SS is spending, its funding has always been taxation, under assumed names. But SS does make promises about the future, so congress is likely to be more willing to change taxation versus changing pre-announced distributions. I’m guessing there will be a more “progressive” and larger payroll tax coupled with higher taxation of SS distributions at the high end. They promised to send you a printed out number but they didn’t promise you’d get to keep it after taxes.
It will probably be designed to punish people like Libturd who plan and save and thus have assets and income in retirement, except Libturd will probably figure out the loopholes and escape the new traps.
For my retirement planning, I’m not really counting on SS, other than as a backup plan against 3 sigma financial events, or to help offset higher taxes.
Interesting.
Four top tech executives have joined the U.S. Army Reserve as lieutenant colonels, skipping basic training and stepping directly into roles aimed at helping modernize the military.
For those who don’t know, like I didn’t, all of these top tech executives are now one rank away from a General.
Guess that’s how it’s done these days.
Ten 432
I’m on the side of Zillow on this lawsuit. Private listings are a monopoly of it’s own kind.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/realestate/compass-zillow-lawsuit.html
Compass, the real estate brokerage that sells more houses than any of its competitors in the United States, has sued Zillow, the country’s largest real estate site — in a legal showdown that accuses Zillow of gatekeeping home listings and of breaking federal antitrust laws.
In its suit that was filed in New York federal court on Monday morning, Compass claims that Zillow is engaged in an anticompetitive conspiracy to maintain a monopoly over digital home listings. Online real estate portals have become an integral part of the home-buying process, with nearly 100 percent of buyers now reporting that they use the internet in their home searches. And Zillow, which has a database with about 160 million properties and receives about 227 million unique visitors every month, is the undisputed giant of digital real estate sites.
The lawsuit between two industry heavyweights marks a significant escalation in an ever-raucous debate over who controls home listings.
Brokerages like Compass have sought to find ways to make their listings stand out: Since November, the company has been heavily promoting its Private Exclusives, a marketing channel of about 7,000 home listings available only to Compass agents and the buyers working with them. But in April, Zillow announced that any home that was put on the market but not available for listing on Zillow within 24 hours would be forever banned from its site.
RentLord
The profit they made will be bigger than the fine they get.
It will continue.
What’s a seller’s benefit in limiting the news that your house is for sale? Keeping it a secret from nosy neighbors? Compass buyers are superior and willing to pay more than everyone else?
If Compass is so private and exclusive, why bother ever listing in Zillow?
I can see why Compass would like to create some differentiation with their premium preview zone, but I can also see why Zillow doesn’t want to be everyone’s leftover listing zone.
I’m against pretty much all antitrust enforcement, Zillow and Compass can fight it out with one another, it will all evolve over time, these are two private companies, there’s no physical compulsion involved, nobody is stopping agents from showing the houses to buyers, or even emailing info.
Why would you be against fair competition?
United States antitrust law
collection of federal and state government laws, which regulates the conduct and organization of business corporations, generally to promote fair competition for the benefit of consumers
United States antitrust law – Wikipedia
In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that govern the conduct and organization of businesses in order to promote economic competition and prevent unjustified monopolies.
Well, maybe dad was technically a “criminal,” but he raised his sons to be exemplary Americans who are all in the US Military supporting this country. No bone spurs in sight.
So how, as a son, do you decide who to support? Your father, or your country?
A father-of-three was violently beaten and forced into the back on an unmarked car during an apparent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid, video reveals.
Narciso Barranco, 48, was detained by suspected federal agents in a violent take down outside his workplace in Orange County, southern California on Saturday.
At least seven masked men, armed and wearing US Border Patrol vests, tackled Barranco to the ground and punched him in his face repeatedly in a parking lot.
He was also pepper-sprayed during the arrest, his son Alejandro Barranco, 25, told The Los Angeles Times – although the video, which went viral after being shared by Instagram account @SantaAnaProblems, does not depict that moment.
Alejandro, a US Marine who served in Afghanistan, says his father is currently being held in a detention facility in Los Angeles.
Barranco’s other two sons are also in the military.
Alejandro alleges Barranco’s shoulder was dislocated during that violent incident and as of Sunday evening, more than 24 hours after his arrest, had not received medical treatment, food or water.
No One – Yes, Compass and Zillow are big. So are Remax, Century21, etc., in their own light. So, very soon each will want to list privately until it gets stale before listing it on zillow for the “others”. Now, is this a good thing or not, we don’t know.
But then comes market manipulation – and maybe not the best analogy, would turn into everyone having their own meme coin. A chinese company may want to first open houses only to chinese in the US, etc.
I guess it also depends on the market.. but that’s why we have laws like what DP pointed out.
“Fair competition” is a word that a government agency has arrogated itself to be the arbiter of. Yet these bureaucrats and academics have a faulty understanding of what competition even means in a capitalist economy, and have a history of quite stupid and economically destructive decisions, all allegedly for the “public good”. What’s actually in the public good is for them to laissez nous faire.
“We love you God”
https://www.reddit.com/r/stockbetz/s/dNf1CVsZSe
I need to throw up now!
So Iran fired on US bases this afternoon?
Guess this officially means war.
Not so sure how comfortable I am flying around this week.
Stay safe folks. From out here, we’ve seen a “war” of sorts which is surreal. This’ll gut punch the conservative farmers around here.
Me? Just happy to be finished with Open Houses! Heading north in a week on pretty good paper. Things are as they should be. Renter here!
My son has a trip planned to Spain with friends.. and he is debating if he should cancel. What was wrong with stability and peace again?
“I want to just thank everybody and in particular God I want to just say we love you God and we love our great military protect them.”
That was so awkward from DJT. Clearly a guy who doesn’t spend a lot of time listening to people praising him. I’m an atheist but I might even be able to fake it better than that. “Big shoutout for God, he really helped us out this time, one of my favorite Gods out there, way ahead of that elephant looking one, though many have said that I’d be the best of all time, and he really let us down with that China COVID situation, well nobody’s perfect, though believe me if I’d been God I wouldn’t have allowed such a slip up.”
Reminds me of when Eric Cartman made a best-selling religious music album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9qDz_d8BJg
“I wanna get down on my knees and start pleasin’ Jesus. I wanna feel his salvation all over my face”!
ExLAX, I wouldn’t mind giving up my handle to you, but just co-signed 2 rental leases for the kids housing.. so I’m back to being a renter 2 times over.
Bahrain and Qatar suspend commercial air traffic.
This is the closest we have been to WW3.. and getting even more close.
Russia just launched strikes in Kiev and killed 10 – says US wasn’t fair. Doesn’t take much to drag them into this war. Europe failed to bring Iran to talk. China is against it too.
Are the Trump resorts in Gaza worth all this?
F’all’yall. I actually rent my primary.
Rent – He should bring a water gun and otherwise enjoy himself.
The only interesting, and possibly personally impactful, development in all this mess is Iran’s call for the waking up of terrorist sleeper cells within the US.
re: “Iran fired on US bases ”
We pulled all of our aircraft out of Al Udeid Air Base and others in the region days ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0W2-ALqfAo
Rentlord
Check the 529 rules but You can only take out from the kids 529 the cost of room and board to live on campus if the college offers housing, even if their off campus housing is more. Don’t know what the rules are if the college doesn’t have housing.
You also can’t take the cost of a campus parking permit out of the 529.
HMB, looked into it.. each college has a set limit we can withdraw for housing. And it is quite a bit less than the current rentals. Not much of a choice there.. but we’ll draw as much as it’s allowed.
The off campus rentals are run by rental mafia.. there was a $250 “application fee” on my daughter’s rental. And these kids are too soft to negotiate. I was able to take off $100 after a phone call.. but so many little things that add up.
2:27 – True. The Iranians also pulled out of Fordow all personnel and anything they had there long before we dropped the bombs.
So it was all for naught. If anything, Iran will now get more support to build a bomb from other countries. Especially because Israel has one that they don’t disclose.
Some press this afternoon that material was not removed from fordow.
I have to imagine we’ve had satellites watching Iran pretty closely. If they moved material and equipment, we know where it was.
re: “anything they had there” “removed” etc.
As if it’s easy to move 3,000 gas centrifuges bolted to the floor and highly toxic Uranium Hexafloride? Any moisture and reacts violently….
The site was hit by a dozen 13,600kg massive ordnance penetrators – known as bunker busters – at approximately 2.10am Iranian time. It was the weapon’s first operational use. The number used suggests a lack of confidence that a smaller strike could penetrate through to the target.
The result to a large extent depends on the kind of concrete inside the facility. Estimates of the bunker busters’ penetration are based largely on reinforced concrete resistant to 5,000psi. Iran is believed to have used more resistant concrete.
While video from the site showed evidence of a fire in the immediate aftermath, satellite images published on Sunday were suggestive but far from conclusive.
The main support building at the site appeared to be undamaged, but the topography of a prominent area of ridge line appeared to have altered and been flattened out, with some evidence of rock scarring close to two clusters of bomb craters around the ridge.
Analysts had suggested that a strike could hit the main entrance tunnel to the site, but the main effort appears to have been in a different location.
At odds with Trump’s claim of “complete obliteration”, two Israeli officials who spoke to the New York Times described serious damage at Fordow but said the site had not been completely destroyed.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, added: “As for the assessment of the degree of damage underground, on this we cannot pronounce ourselves. It could be important; it could be significant, but no one … neither us nor anybody else could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/22/how-effective-was-the-us-attack-on-irans-nuclear-sites-a-visual-guide
If you think Trump’s declaration that the bombers completely destroyed the site is true, then you have forgotten the “mission accomplished” propaganda after Iraq.
That said, according to Israeli experts it may take weeks before we know what the true damage to Fordow was.
Both you guys…… exactly…. the whole skeptic thing fails the logic test…. and I have no axe to grind either way…..
Grim says:
June 23, 2025 at 3:28 pm
Some press this afternoon that material was not removed from fordow.
I have to imagine we’ve had satellites watching Iran pretty closely. If they moved material and equipment, we know where it was.
Juice Box says:
June 23, 2025 at 3:47 pm
re: “anything they had there” “removed” etc.
As if it’s easy to move 3,000 gas centrifuges bolted to the floor and highly toxic Uranium Hexafloride? Any moisture and reacts violently….
Friend of mine who manages a state pension fund told me that he had a meeting with a geopolitical analyst last year. He claimed the Iran regime would be replaced either by proxy war or by Israel within the next two years. Guess he was on point.
We don’t have a crystal ball.. mmmm wait, we kinda do.
Asking GPT, here’s what i got:
1. Iran has history of dispersing assets
• After the Stuxnet sabotage in Natanz, Iran has adopted a policy of redundancy and relocation. They have multiple sites capable of enrichment and modular designs for moving IR-6 and IR-1 centrifuge units fairly quickly.
• Enriched uranium is also typically stored in separate, more secure vaults, and not kept in bulk at the enrichment site long-term.
2. No confirmed radiation leak or chain-reaction event post-strike
• Had enriched uranium or active enrichment been destroyed inside Fordow, we’d likely see signs of contamination or containment efforts. The lack of any radiation alerts points to either:
• The strike missing critical underground infrastructure (likely), or
• The materials being evacuated in advance.
3. Iran’s strategic messaging
• The Iranian government has not portrayed Fordow as heavily damaged, which may mean they’re confident the core capabilities were unaffected — or removed. Their downplaying could also be a psychological tactic to preserve deterrence.
What could Iran realistically move?
IR-1 / IR-6 centrifuges
• Mobility: Moderate
• Time to evacuate: 1–2 days
• Notes: Modular and not too large; can be disassembled, crated, and trucked out fairly quickly.
Low-enriched uranium canisters
• Mobility: High
• Time to evacuate: Hours to 1 day
• Notes: Stored in portable canisters; easily transportable if advance warning is received.
Computers and control systems
• Mobility: High
• Time to evacuate: Within hours
• Notes: Likely backed up and physically removed; small enough to relocate fast.
Rent: reposting for second time….
Grim says:
June 23, 2025 at 3:28 pm
I have to imagine we’ve had satellites watching Iran pretty closely. If they moved material and equipment, we know where it was.
The other day I suggested that they would sequence the bombs on the same trajectories/targets to achieve better penetration, looks like that was exactly the case.
It’s not a question of whether one bomb can penetrate, because it was 3.
First bomb takes out the rock, second bomb takes out the concrete, third bomb takes out the bunker?
And that’s all assuming the boys over at National Forge in PA didn’t mix up something a little bit more special for this trip.
DailyBeast is not reliable news but –
https://www.thedailybeast.com/vance-hints-uranium-was-moved-after-trump-tipped-off-tehran/
Maybe this is just opening the door for more MOPs to be dropped?
All that said, how do you measure success?
Can you guess what Israel will do after breaking up Iran via a regime change and instigating a civil war. Where is next in Bigger Promised Land?
Aircraft ~125+ (7 B‑2s + F‑35s, F‑18s, tankers, recon)
MOPs dropped Fourteen 30,000-lb Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs)
PGMs dropped ~75 precision-guided bombs
Tomahawks launched ~30 submarine-launched Tomahawks.
Range of B‑2 mission ~7,000 miles round-trip
Duration of mission ~36–37 hours
Defenses engaged? The strikes were executed without detection or Iranian response—no air defense shots fired.
Any questions?
All that said, how do you measure success?
By the amount of hefty laughter at the expense of the democrats as they try to be taken seriously.
Again folks the stockpile was not where we dropped the MOPs at Fordow. There was evidence suggesting that Iran had moved its 400 kg (880 pounds) of 60% enriched uranium stockpile, it was previously stored at Isfahan.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed that his teams last saw the stockpile about a week before Israel began its attacks.
There is no way the centrifuges were moved quickly out of Fordow. They would have had to hack up miles of piping, valves and containment vessels in addition to the centrifuges.That would have wrecked all that equipment and leaked the toxic uranium hexafluoride. A massive system like that 3000 centrifuges would need to be drained of the gas first and all plumbing flushed with lots and lots of nitrogen gas before it could even begin to be taken apart in an orderly fashion safely.
They need to give it up whatever remains of that stockpile. Give it to China or Russia to save face if you have to.
Rentlord
Good you’re on top of the 529 rules.
High schooler might go to school at UT in Austin with limited on campus housing. Not looking forward to off campus rent.
On the lighter side
Eat mushrooms to avoid giving off old people smell
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14838493/Old-people-smell-cured-everyday-food-aging.html
ceasefire? Already?
Journalist flies in B-2 on a training run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEVU7AXGQW0
Will say, it’s refreshing to have a VP who is so obviously engaged in global geopolitics vs. vanity causes and PR.
HMB, regarding 529s. It all started with my wife dragging me to a local library where a financial advisor was giving a talk about financial planning. That was 13 years ago and since then our NY Saves 529 fund has more than doubled. So far the older 2 kids have bene in on-campus housing.. and just starting off campus housing this year (older starting his PhD) and the second one a sophomore at RU… this is the first time they’ll be in off campus rentals. The boy was smart and when he was not in the dorms he commuted and saved a bunch for us.
I recommend NY Saves to any parent I talk to! It beat the other portfolios hands down.
https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance/morningstar-529-ratings-best-plans
fridt