Buying Homes

America’s Cities Are Being Turned Into Crime-Ridden War Zones, And Murder Rates Are Way Up Again In 2021

March 30, 2021March 30, 2021 by Michael

The wealthy are reveling in their giant mountains of money, but meanwhile our society is literally coming apart at the seams all around us. The stock market has been hovering near all-time record highs, and for those at the very top of the economic pyramid these may seem like the best of times. But for most Americans, the “good old days” are a long distant memory. More than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed over the past year, poverty is absolutely exploding all around us, and crime rates are shooting higher at an unprecedented rate. In fact, one study of 34 big U.S. cities found that their murder rates rose by an average of 30 percent in 2020…

A study by the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice found that murders increased by 30% across 34 large U.S. cities.

In some areas, carjackings, robberies, shootings, sexual assaults and violence have become so common that it seems like the crime literally never stops.

Unless you have a death wish, there are certain parts of Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore that you should never enter night or day. If you doubt me, just go wander the streets of the worst neighborhoods of those cities and see what happens to you.

This was supposed to be a year when crime rates began to return to normal, but instead they are on the rise again. One study that looked at 37 large U.S. cities found that murder rates are up by an average of 18 percent so far in 2021…

The big increase in the murder rate in the United States in 2020 has carried over to 2021.

A sample of 37 cities with data available for the first three months of this year shows murder up 18 percent relative to the same period last year.

What is truly frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get in America from here on out.

So if murder rates are spiking this much under relatively good conditions, what will our cities look like when things get really crazy?

Some of the crimes that we are witnessing are almost too horrible for words. For example, just consider what just happened to a 12-year-old boy in Miami…

A suspect in a black car kidnapped the boy at about 2 a.m. early Saturday morning from a Miami street, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department.

He drove a few blocks, raped the boy, and then shoved him out of the car and drove off, police said.

A good Samaritan on a bike near the scene of the crime came to the boy’s rescue. He was bleeding from the head and said he had been shot.

How sick do you have to be in order to do something like that?

Sadly, I could write about nightmarish crimes such as this every single day of the week if I wanted to, because they happen constantly.

Much of the crime boom is being fueled by gangs. There are more than 100,000 gang members living in the city of Chicago alone, and a steady stream of illegal immigrants ensures that the gangs will always have an influx of new recruits.

Securing our borders would go a long way toward solving this problem, but we refuse to do that.

Just recently, a sheriff in Texas took a reporter from the Daily Mail down to “the easiest illegal border crossing along the Rio Grande”…

The crossing point is on private property where an abandoned house sits on a quiet rural street that runs parallel to the Rio Grande, about 5 miles out of town from Del Rio, Texas, 150 miles southwest of San Antonio.

Law enforcement has nicknamed it ‘Border Lawn.’

‘It’s the easiest illegal border crossing along the Rio Grande,’ Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

When the river is low, immigrants can wade across the Rio Grande in about five minutes.

Authorities know that hordes of people come across the border at this spot each week, but they won’t stop it.

Of course any immigrants that are detained need to be held somewhere, and facilities at the border are already packed beyond overflowing. In particular, the infamous facility in Donna, Texas is already holding more than 10 times more migrants than it was designed to hold…

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) holding facility in Donna, Texas, is supposed to house no more than 250 migrants during the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday, the tent complex was holding more than 4,100 migrants, including 3,200 unaccompanied children, according to Oscar Escamilla, a Border Patrol official in the Rio Grande Valley who briefed reporters during the first press tour of a CBP facility under President Biden.

So much of the immigration debate is focused on the unfortunate children that are being held in places such as this, but that is just a drop in the bucket.

Each week, thousands of grown men illegally cross the border without being detained at all. Many of those grown men end up in our core urban areas, and with few legitimate employment prospects available many of them turn to crime.

In an article that I published yesterday entitled “We Have Never Seen A Home Buying Frenzy Quite Like This”, I discussed the fact that we have seen a mass exodus from our core urban areas over the past year. Millions of Americans have been looking to buy homes in desirable rural and suburban locations, and this has pushed housing prices into the stratosphere.

Today, I came across another example of this phenomenon. 122 offers were made on a 1,400 square foot home that was listed for sale in Citrus Heights, California in just one weekend…

A Citrus Heights home in a quiet cul-de-sac received 122 offers in one weekend on the market.

The 1,400 square feet home has three bedrooms, two baths and a spacious backyard with a swimming pool and an asking price of $399,900.00.

Could you imagine paying $400,000 for a house that is just 1,400 square feet in size?

The real estate agent that listed this property was astounded to receive so many offers, because it wasn’t underpriced at all…

“People would think that it was underpriced. It was not underpriced. It was straight on with the comps,” said Deb Brittan, the listing agent for the property. “I had hoped, I thought, maybe if we get 20 offers that would be amazing.”

As for the couple that sold the house, they don’t need it anymore because they are moving to Idaho.

As conditions in the United States continue to deteriorate, we will continue to see people flock to rural and suburban communities at an unprecedented rate.

So if you are planning to move, I would not wait.

Millions of Americans have already been priced out of the market, and the feeding frenzy is not going to subside any time soon.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

We Have Never Seen A Home Buying Frenzy Quite Like This

March 30, 2021March 29, 2021 by Michael

Could you imagine listing your home for sale and having nearly 100 offers in just three days? This sort of thing is actually happening in hot real estate markets all over America right now. Even though we are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, we are witnessing a frenzy of home buying that is unlike anything that we have ever seen before. Of course one of the biggest reasons why this is happening is because of the utterly insane economic policies of our leaders. They have been creating, borrowing and spending money like there is no tomorrow, and that pushed M1 from 4 trillion dollars to 18 trillion dollars in just 12 months. All of that money had to go somewhere, and one place where it is showing up is in home prices in desirable rural and suburban locations around the country.

For example, a “fixer-upper” in a desirable suburban community outside of Washington D.C. was listed for sale on a recent Thursday for $275,000. On Sunday evening, 88 different offers had already been made on that property…

Ellen Coleman had never received so many offers on a house in her 15 years of selling real estate.

She listed a fixer-upper in suburban Washington, DC for $275,000 on a Thursday. By Sunday evening, she had 88 offers.

It eventually sold for $460,000, which was $185,000 above the listing price.

Isn’t that nuts?

The same thing is happening in lots of other parts of the nation too.

Down in the Austin, Texas area, one real estate agent says that “most homes are going for more than 20% over asking price”…

“Nearly every offer my clients make faces competition, and most homes are going for more than 20% over asking price,” said Austin-area Redfin agent April Miller.

She said she recently helped a client with an offer for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home listed at $515,000 and pulled out all the stops. The offer was for $100,000 over the asking price, and they waived appraisal and financing contingencies, yet still came in third out of 38 offers.

In my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like this.

Overall, the median price of a home in the United States is up a whopping 16 percent compared to this time last year…

The median price of a home has risen 16% from last year, according to the National Association of Realtors, and they have increased even more in some regions of the country like the Northeast and West, which are both up 21% from last year.

Meanwhile, inventory has continued to linger at record lows. In February, the number of available homes for sale was down nearly 30% from a year ago.

Of course prices are not going up everywhere.

In fact, home prices are actually going down in certain core urban communities.

It isn’t just that people are looking to buy homes right now. Rather, millions of Americans have been choosing to relocate due to fear of the things that have been happening in our world.

For example, the COVID pandemic has been one of the biggest reasons for the mass exodus that we have been witnessing, and our public officials continue to drum up more fear on a daily basis. On Monday, the head of the CDC actually used the term “impending doom” to describe what she believes is ahead…

The U.S. is facing “impending doom” as daily Covid-19 cases begin to rebound once again, threatening to send more people to the hospital even as vaccinations accelerate nationwide, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

“When I first started at CDC about two months ago I made a promise to you: I would tell you the truth even if it was not the news we wanted to hear. Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth, and I have to hope and trust you will listen,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing.

And Joe Biden is begging for mask mandates to be reinstated all over the nation…

Joe Biden pleaded on Monday with Republican governors who ended mask mandates to reinstate the requirements in their states and pause reopenings as the administration goes ahead with expanding vaccine eligibility and inoculation sites.

‘I’m reiterating my call for every governor, mayor and local leader to reinstate the mask mandate,’ Biden said during remarks on the White House coronavirus response Monday afternoon. ‘Please, this is not politics.’

As long as Americans are afraid of the COVID pandemic, we will continue to see people relocate from urban areas with a high population density to rural and suburban areas that are more spread out.

At the same time, multitudes of Americans are also relocating from core urban areas due to all of the civil unrest that we have witnessed over the past year.

Many believed that the civil unrest would end once Joe Biden entered the White House, but that has not happened.

Instead, we continue to see violence on an almost daily basis. Here is just one recent example…

Footage captured the demonstrators spraying paint across the windshield of the man’s truck and smashing the tail lights in Salem on Sunday.

The driver, who was wearing an American flag sweatshirt, stepped out of his vehicle as he engaged with the protesters, who then appeared to mace him.

The video then shows him pulling out his gun and pointing it at the anti-fascist protesters.

He could be heard shouting: ‘Get away from me’.

Sadly, the civil unrest in our land is only going to get worse.

So that means that even more people will be fleeing our core urban areas in search of greener pastures.

But now that hyperinflation is hitting housing prices, a lot of middle class and poor people will be priced out of the market.

The wealthy and the ultra-wealthy will have no problem making offers on homes that are way over market price because they have lots of money.

But the vast majority of Americans that are living paycheck to paycheck will find that their options are now greatly limited.

This is why I have always encouraged my readers to do long-term planning well in advance. When I was growing up, I often heard the phrase “you snooze, you lose”, and today that is more true than ever.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

The Great Relocation: Americans Are Relocating By The Millions Because They Can Feel What Is Coming

November 22, 2020 by Michael

This is a really odd time to be having a “housing boom”. We are in the middle of the worst public health crisis in 100 years, endless civil unrest has been ravaging many of our largest cities, and we are experiencing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But even though more than 70 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits this year, home sales are absolutely rocking. How in the world is this possible?

Well, this phenomenon is actually quite easy to explain. As our society comes apart at the seams all around us, vast numbers of Americans are seeking greener pastures. According to ABC News, the chaotic events of 2020 have caused “millions of Americans” to relocate. In New York City alone, more than 300,000 former residents have permanently moved to new addresses.

We have never seen anything quite like this before, and it is anticipated that this trend will continue into 2021. Even though most Americans don’t know exactly what is ahead, I think that on some level many of them can feel what is coming, and they are getting out of the big cities while they still can.

So even though we are literally in the midst of a horrifying economic depression, homes are selling like hotcakes right now…

Home sales rose again in October, at their highest pace in 14 years, according to the National Association of Realtors.

But a record low inventory of available homes and a greater number of luxury homes sold have pushed the median home price up to a record $313,000, almost 16% more than a year ago.

With so many interested buyers and such little inventory, it has definitely become a seller’s market…

At the current pace of sales, it would take just 2.5 months to clear the existing inventory — a record low.

If you want to sell your home, now is a really good time to do so.

But then good luck finding a new place.

This incredible surge in demand for housing has also fueled a tremendous boom in housing starts…

Single-family starts experienced continued gains in October, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Census Bureau. Single-family construction is up 8.6% year-to-date, with notable gains in 2020 for the Midwest and other lower-density markets.

The pace of single-family starts in October was the highest production rate since the spring of 2007.

So even though so many other sectors of the economy are deeply hurting at the moment, those that build homes are loving life right now.

Real estate websites are also doing extremely well. In particular, “Zillow surfing” has become a new national pastime…

Zillow usage has climbed since March, with online visitors to for-sale listings up more than 50 percent year-over-year in the early months of the pandemic.

People bond over listings on Discord servers, group chats and “Zillow Twitter,” and their obsession has made many strange and obscure listings go viral. Curbed, a website covering city life, real estate and design, recently started a column called My Week in Zillow Saves, in which people (myself included) share the homes they’ve admired on the site.

If you can believe it, “Zillow surfing” has become “especially popular among teenagers”…

Zillow surfing is especially popular among teenagers. A TikTok meme over the summer consisted of users talking about knowing where the bathrooms were in their friend’s or crush’s house before ever visiting it because they had toured all of their classmates’ homes on Zillow. Many young people have extensive lists of saved homes and discuss and share listings with friends.

When life is miserable, people like to daydream about something better, and “Zillow surfing” allows them to do that.

Personally, I have been hearing from so many people that have either recently relocated or that would like to move. So many that I know are feeling an urgency like never before, because they sense that really dark times are fast approaching.

Interestingly, one of the most important things that people look at when they are thinking of relocating is the political orientation of an area. In fact, one recent survey found that 42 percent of Americans “would be hesitant to move to an area where most people have political views different from their own”…

Forty-two percent of U.S. residents would be hesitant to move to an area where most people have political views different from their own, up from 32% in June, according to a new report from Redfin (redfin.com), the technology-powered real estate brokerage. That’s the highest share since 2017, when Redfin began posing this question to survey respondents.

Increasingly, Democrats are moving to “blue states” and conservatives are moving to “red states”.

Could this potentially have some very serious implications down the road?

I don’t know. I am just asking the question.

For other Americans, leaving the country entirely seems like a promising option…

Americans are leaving the country or seeking foreign visas in record numbers, according to immigration lawyers and expatriate organizations, during an oppressive year of political violence, racial strife and an uncontrolled pandemic that has kept families locked in their homes for months – with no clear end in sight.

As the economic suffering in the U.S. intensifies, the number of people wanting to leave will almost certainly go even higher.

With each passing day, more new restrictions are being put in place to try to control the COVID pandemic, and these new restrictions are going to make our ongoing economic depression a whole lot worse.

Already, it has become clear that another huge wave of economic pain is upon us.

The Greater Los Angeles Food Bank says that demand is up 145 percent compared to last year, and the other day people waited in absolutely massive lines for up to 12 hours at a food bank in Texas just to get some food.

Other Americans are stockpiling huge quantities of toilet paper and other supplies in anticipation of a very difficult winter.

No matter what happens with the election, things are about to get really crazy in this country.

Whatever you need to do to get prepared for what is ahead, I would do it as soon as possible.

The clock is ticking, and it appears that our day of reckoning is nearly here.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Much Worse Than Expected: Experts Shocked As New Home Sales Plunge 8.9 Percent

November 28, 2018November 28, 2018 by Michael

The U.S. economy is definitely deviating from the script, and we just got more evidence that “Housing Bubble 2” is bursting. Experts were expecting that new home sales in the U.S. would rise in October, but instead they plunged 8.9 percent. That number is far worse than anyone was projecting, and many in the real estate industry are really starting to freak out. And to be honest, things look like they are going to get even worse in 2019. One survey found that the percentage of Americans that plan to buy a home over the next 12 months has fallen by about half during the past year. Mortgage rates have steadily risen as the Federal Reserve has been hiking interest rates, and at this point most average Americans have been completely priced out of the market. Home prices are going to have to come way down from where they are right now, and just as we witnessed in 2008, rapidly falling home prices can put an extraordinary amount of stress on the financial system.

It is hard for me to put into words just how bad this latest number is. Even though I write about our growing economic problems on a daily basis, even I didn’t expect to see a number anywhere near this bad. Sometimes a really bad number from one part of the U.S. can drag down the overall number, but that wasn’t the case this time. According to Reuters, there were “sharp declines in all four regions”…

Sales of new U.S. single-family homes tumbled to a more than 2-1/2-year low in October amid sharp declines in all four regions, further evidence that higher mortgage rates were hurting the housing market.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday new home sales dropped 8.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 544,000 units last month. That was the lowest level since March 2016. The percent drop was the biggest since December 2017.

But of course it isn’t as if this latest report is coming out of nowhere. The truth is that new home sales have fallen in four of the last six months, and so a very clear trend is now developing.

Sadly, most mainstream economists still don’t seem to be understanding what is happening. According to Reuters, the consensus estimate was that we would see new home sales rise 3.7 percent in October, and so an 8.9 percent plunge came as a real shock.

New home sales have now missed expectations for seven months in a row, and the similarities to 2008 are starting to become undeniable.

Sales of previously owned homes have been falling as well. In fact, in October we witnessed the largest drop for previously owned home sales in four years…

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes posted their largest annual decline since 2014 in October, as the housing market continues to sputter due to higher mortgage rates that are reducing home affordability.

If you want to blame someone for this mess, blame the Federal Reserve.

They created a “boom” in the housing market by pushing interest rates all the way to the floor during the Obama years, and now they are creating a “bust” by aggressively jacking up interest rates at a pace that our economy simply cannot handle.

If we had allowed the free market to be setting interest rates all this time, we would not be on such a roller coaster ride.

Just like during “Housing Bubble 1”, millions of Americans have been buying houses that they cannot afford, and that could mean another massive wave of mortgage defaults as this new economic downturn intensifies. At this point, the debt to income ratio for mortgages insured by the FHA is at an all-time record high…

One worrying indicator: The average debt-to-income ratio for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration, which makes up about 22% of the housing market, is now at its highest level ever.

This is yet another indication that we are even more vulnerable than we were just prior to the subprime mortgage meltdown during the last financial crisis.

Let me try to shed some light on what is coming next. Even if economic conditions remained stable, housing prices would need to start falling dramatically in order to attract buyers. In fact, we are already starting to see this happen in southern California and other markets that were once extremely “hot”. As housing prices fall, millions of Americans will suddenly find themselves “underwater” on their mortgages. In other words, they will owe more on their homes than their homes are worth. During the last recession, many “underwater” homeowners ultimately decided to walk away rather than continue to service ridiculously bloated mortgages.

But the truth is that economic conditions are not likely to remain stable. In fact, many are projecting that the approaching downturn will be even worse than 2008.

In such a scenario, millions of Americans will lose their jobs, and that means that millions of Americans will suddenly not be able to make their mortgage payments. As a result, mortgage defaults will skyrocket and home prices will drop like a rock. Just like last time around, there could be people that wake up one day and realize that they owe two or three times as much money on their mortgages as their homes are currently worth, and the stampede of people walking away from “underwater” mortgages could become an avalanche.

Needless to say, millions of mortgages suddenly going bad is a scenario that our financial system is not equipped to handle. What happened in 2008 was absolutely catastrophic for our large financial institutions, and what is coming is going to be even worse.

Of course the big financial institutions will want the federal government to bail them out, but there may not be much of an appetite for more corporate bailouts this time around.

And considering the fact that we are already 22 trillion dollars in debt, we can’t exactly afford to be throwing money around.

The Federal Reserve has set the stage for a giant mess, and it is going to shake the housing industry to the core.

We should have learned from the mistakes that we made in 2008, but we didn’t, and so now we are going to pay a very great price for our negligence.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

In California, Home Sales Are Plunging Like It Is 2008 All Over Again

November 1, 2018November 1, 2018 by Michael

What goes up must eventually come down. For years, the California housing market was on the cutting edge of “Housing Bubble 2” as we witnessed home prices in the state soar to absolutely absurd levels. In fact, it got so bad that a burned down house in Silicon Valley sold for $900,000 earlier this year, and a condemned home in Fremont sold for $1.2 million. But now things have changed in a major way. The hottest real estate markets in the entire country led the way down during the collapse of “Housing Bubble 1”, and now it looks like the same thing is going to be true for the sequel.

According to CNBC, the number of new and existing homes sold in southern California was down 18 percent in September compared to a year ago…

The number of new and existing houses and condominiums sold during the month plummeted nearly 18 percent compared with September 2017, according to CoreLogic. That was the slowest September pace since 2007, when the national housing and mortgage crisis was hitting.

Sales have been falling on an annual basis for much of this year, but this was the biggest annual drop for any month in almost eight years. It was also more than twice the annual drop seen in August.

Those numbers are staggering.

And it is interesting to note that sales of new homes are being hit even harder than sales of existing homes…

Sales of newly built homes are suffering more than sales of existing homes, likely because fewer are being built compared with historical production levels. Newly built homes also come at a price premium. Sales of newly built homes were 47 percent below the September average dating back to 1988, while sales of existing homes were 22 percent below their long-term average.

At one time, San Diego County was a blazing hot real estate market, but now the market has turned completely around.

In fact, the county just registered the fewest number of home sales in a month since the last financial crisis…

A combination of rapid mortgage rate increases and decreased affordability, San Diego County home sales collapsed 17.5% to the lowest level in 11 years last month, in the first meaningful sign that one of the country’s hottest real estate markets could be at a turning point, real estate tracker CoreLogic reported Tuesday.

In September, 2,942 homes were sold in the county, down from 3,568 sales last year. This was the lowest number of sales for the month since the start of the financial crisis when 2,152 sold in September 2007.

And it can be argued that things are plunging even more rapidly in northern California.

In the San Francisco Bay area, sales of new and existing homes were down 19 percent in September on a year over year basis…

Home sales in the San Francisco Bay area have been falling for months, but in September buyers pulled back in an even bigger way.

Sales of both new and existing homes plunged nearly 19 percent compared with September 2017, according to CoreLogic. It marked the slowest September sales pace since 2007 and twice the annual drop seen in August.

If a new real estate crisis is really happening, these are precisely the kinds of numbers that we would expect to see. If you still need some more convincing, here are even more distressing numbers from the California real estate market that Mish Shedlock recently shared…

The California housing market posted its largest year-over-year sales decline since March 2014 and remained below the 400,000-level sales benchmark for the second consecutive month in September, indicating that the market is slowing as many potential buyers put their homeownership plans on hold.
Existing, single-family home sales totaled 382,550 in September on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate, down 4.3 percent from August and down 12.4 percent from September 2017.
September’s statewide median home price was $578,850, down 2.9 percent from August but up 4.2 percent from September 2017.
Statewide active listings rose for the sixth consecutive month, increasing 20.4 percent from the previous year.
Inventory reached the highest level in 31 months, with the Unsold Inventory Index reaching 4.2 months in September.
September year-to-date sales were down 3.3 percent.

Of course a similar thing is happening on the east coast as well. At this point, things have cooled off so much in New York City that it is being called “a buyer’s market”…

New York City’s pricey real estate has become a “buyers market,” new data suggests, characterized by lowball offers and a rise in the number of properties staying on the market for longer.

The latest figures from Warburg Realty show that among higher-priced homes, New York City is in the throes of a “major shift” that reflects a cooling market, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in almost a decade.

“Offers 20 percent and 25 percent below asking prices began to flow in, a phenomenon last seen in 2009,” wrote Warburg Realty founder and CEO Frederick W. Peters in the report, which surveys real estate conditions around the city.

In the final analysis, it is no mystery how we got to this point.

During the Obama era, the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates all the way to the floor for years, and this caused “Housing Bubble 2” to become even larger than the original housing bubble.

Now the Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising interest rates, and this is now busting the bubble that they created in the first place.

So if you want to blame someone for this mess, blame the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has created huge “booms” and “busts” ever since it was created in 1913, and hopefully the American people will be outraged enough following this next “bust” to start calling for real change.

I have been calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve for years, and there are many others out there that also want to return to a free market financial system.

History has shown that free markets work exceedingly well once you take the shackles off, and as a nation we desperately need to return to the values and principles that this nation was founded upon.

The Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots. It is a premium members-only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically. The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

Evidence The Housing Bubble Is Bursting?: “Home Sellers Are Slashing Prices At The Highest Rate In At Least Eight Years”

September 21, 2018September 21, 2018 by Michael

The housing market indicated that a crisis was coming in 2008. Is the same thing happening once again in 2018? For several years, the housing market has been one of the bright spots for the U.S. economy. Home prices, especially in the hottest markets on the east and west coasts, had been soaring. But now that has completely changed, and home sellers are cutting prices at a pace that we have not seen since the last recession. In case you are wondering, this is definitely a major red flag for the economy. According to CNBC, home sellers are “slashing prices at the highest rate in at least eight years”…

After three years of soaring home prices, the heat is coming off the U.S. housing market. Home sellers are slashing prices at the highest rate in at least eight years, especially in the West, where the price gains were hottest.

It is quite interesting that prices are being cut fastest in the markets that were once the hottest, because that is exactly what happened during the subprime mortgage meltdown in 2008 too.

In a previous article, I documented the fact that experts were warning that “the U.S. housing market looks headed for its worst slowdown in years”, but even I was stunned by how bad these new numbers are.

According to Redfin, more than one out of every four homes for sale in America had a price drop within the most recent four week period…

In the four weeks ended Sept. 16, more than one-quarter of the homes listed for sale had a price drop, according to Redfin, a real estate brokerage. That is the highest level since the company began tracking the metric in 2010. Redfin defines a price drop as a reduction in the list price of more than 1 percent and less than 50 percent.

That is absolutely crazy.

I have never even heard of a number anywhere close to that in a 30 day period.

Of course the reason why prices are being dropped is because homes are not selling. The supply of homes available for sale is shooting up, and that is good news for buyers but really bad news for sellers.

It could be argued that home prices needed to come down because they had gotten ridiculously high in recent months, and I don’t think that there are too many people that would argue with that.

But is this just an “adjustment”, or is this the beginning of another crisis for the housing market?

Just like a decade ago, millions of American families have really stretched themselves financially to get into homes that they really can’t afford. If a new economic downturn results in large numbers of Americans losing their jobs, we are once again going to see mortgage defaults rise to stunning heights.

We live at a time when the middle class is shrinking and most families are barely making it from month to month. The cost of living is steadily rising, but paychecks are not, and that is resulting in a huge middle class squeeze. I really like how my good friend MN Gordon made this point in his most recent article…

The general burden of the American worker is the daily task of squaring the difference between the booming economy reported by the government bureaus and the dreary economy reported in their biweekly paychecks. There is sound reason to believe that this task, this burden of the American worker, has been reduced to some sort of practical joke. An exhausting game of chase the wild goose.

How is it that the economy’s been growing for nearly a decade straight, but the average worker’s seen no meaningful increase in their income? Have workers really been sprinting in place this entire time? How did they end up in this ridiculous situation?

The fact is, for the American worker, America’s brand of a centrally planned economy doesn’t pay. The dual impediments of fake money and regulatory madness apply exactions which cannot be overcome. There are claims to the fruits of one’s labors long before they’ve been earned.

The economy, in other words, has been rigged. The value that workers produce flows to Washington and Wall Street, where it’s siphoned off and misallocated to the cadre of officials, cronies, and big bankers. What’s left is spent to merely keep the lights on, the car running, and food upon the table.

And unfortunately, things are likely to only go downhill from here.

The trade war is really starting to take a toll on the global economy, and it continues to escalate. Back during the Great Depression we faced a similar scenario, and we would be wise to learn from history. In a recent post, Robert Wenzel shared a quote from Dr. Benjamin M. Anderson that was pulled from his book entitled “Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914-1946”…

[T]here came another folly of government intervention in 1930 transcending all the rest in significance. In a world staggering under a load of international debt which could be carried only if countries under pressure could produce goods and export them to their creditors, we, the great creditor nation of the world, with tariffs already far too high, raised our tariffs again. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of June 1930 was the crowning folly of the who period from 1920 to 1933….

Protectionism ran wild all over the world. Markets were cut off. Trade lines were narrowed. Unemployment in the export industries all over the world grew with great rapidity, and the prices of export commodities, notably farm commodities in the United States, dropped with ominous rapidity….

The dangers of this measure were so well understood in financial circles that, up to the very last, the New York financial district retained hope the President Hoover would veto the tariff bill. But late on Sunday, June 15, it was announced that he would sign the bill. This was headline news Monday morning. The stock market broke twelve points in the New York Time averages that day and the industrials broke nearly twenty points. The market, not the President, was right.

Even though the stock market has been booming, everything else appears to indicate that the U.S. economy is slowing down.

If home prices continue to fall precipitously, that is going to put even more pressure on the system, and it won’t be too long before we reach a breaking point.

Housing Crash 2.0? Experts Warn That ‘The U.S. Housing Market Looks Headed For Its Worst Slowdown In Years’

July 29, 2018 by Michael

Is the United States heading for another absolutely devastating housing crash? It has been 10 years since the last one, and so many of the exact same signs that immediately preceded the last one are starting to appear once again. Back in 2007, home prices were absolutely soaring and it seemed like the party would never end. But interest rates went up, home sales slowed down substantially, and eventually prices began to crash. Millions upon millions of Americans were suddenly “underwater” in their homes just as a crippling recession hit the economy, and we plunged into a foreclosure crisis unlike anything that we had ever seen before. Well, now the cycle is happening again. Home prices surged to unprecedented heights in 2017, and this was especially true in the hottest markets on the east and west coasts. But now interest rates are going up and home sales are starting to slow down substantially. We certainly aren’t too far away from the next crash and another horrible foreclosure crisis, and many experts are beginning to sound the alarm.

For example, the following very alarming numbers come from a recent Bloomberg article entitled “The U.S. Housing Market Looks Headed for Its Worst Slowdown in Years”…

Existing-home sales dropped in June for a third straight month. Purchases of new homes are at their slowest pace in eight months. Inventory, which plunged for years, has begun to grow again as buyers move to the sidelines, sapping the fuel for surging home values. Prices for existing homes climbed 6.4 percent in May, the smallest year-over-year gain since early 2017, and have gained the least over three months since 2012, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Those are definitely troubling figures, but perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that mortgage applications are way down right now…

Mortgage applications to purchase both new and existing homes have been falling steadily, and mortgage rates are rising again. Single-family home construction also fell and was lower than June 2017.

Of course economic numbers always go up and down, and just because we have had a few bad months does not necessarily mean that disaster is looming.

But when you step back and take a broader perspective on the housing market, it really does start to feel like early 2008 all over again.

In fact, Nobel Prize-winning author Robert Shiller says that this “could be the very beginning of a turning point”…

“This could be the very beginning of a turning point,” said Robert Shiller, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who is famed for warning of the dot-com and housing bubbles, in an interview.

Just like last time, the slowdown is being felt the most in the markets that were once the hottest. In southern California, home sales just fell to the lowest level in four years…

Southern California home sales hit the brakes in June, falling to the lowest reading for the month in four years. Sales of both new and existing houses and condominiums dropped 11.8 percent year over year, as prices shot up to a record high, according to CoreLogic. The report covers Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties.

And as I explained in a previous article, much of this drop is being fueled by a record decline in foreigners buying U.S. homes.

Meanwhile, red flags are popping up on the east coast as well. New York foreclosure actions have skyrocketed to an 11 year high, and many analysts expect them to go much higher.

If you follow my economics website on a regular basis, then you already know that I have been warning about a downturn in the housing market for months. As the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates, it was only a matter of time before the housing market really cooled off. And if the Federal Reserve keeps raising rates, we are going to see home prices collapse, another massive foreclosure crisis, and enormous stress on our largest financial institutions.

This is one of the reasons why we must abolish the Federal Reserve. By allowing a panel of central planners to determine our interest rates, it is inevitable that artificial “booms” and “busts” are created.

Yes, there are always “booms” and “busts” in a free market economy as well, but they would not be as severe.

In recent months, central banks all over the world have been tightening, and other global real estate markets are really starting to feel the pain as well. For instance, home prices are really cooling off in Canada, and it appears that they are on the precipice of a full-blown market crash.

When a new recession didn’t hit in 2015 or 2016, a lot of Americans assumed that the threat had passed. But just because a threat is delayed does not mean that it has been diminished. In fact, the coming recession is probably going to be substantially worse than it would have been in 2015 or 2016 because of the central bank manipulation that delayed it until this time.

And the signs are all around us. An indicator that tracks the vehicle buying plans of Americans just plunged to the lowest level in five years, and even USA Today is running articles with titles such as “Are you ready for the next recession? How to prepare now for a potential downturn”.

Yes, we just got good GDP data for the second quarter, but virtually everyone agrees that the number for the third quarter will be significantly lower. And it would be foolish to ignore all of the harbingers that are emerging on an almost daily basis now. Just recently, I explained that the U.S. economy has fallen into recession every single time that the yield curve has inverted since World War II, and now it is about to happen again. We live at a time when there is great turmoil at home and abroad, and the elements for a “perfect storm” are definitely coming together.

It is only a matter of time before the next recession begins, and it looks like it could be a really, really bad one.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

You Can Buy A House For One Dollar Or Less In Economically Depressed Cities All Over America

February 2, 2014February 2, 2014 by Michael

Would you like to buy a house for one dollar? If someone came up to you on the street and asked you that question, you would probably respond by saying that it sounds too good to be true. But this is actually happening in economically-depressed cities all over America. Of course there are a number of reasons why you might want to think twice before buying any of these homes, and I will get into those reasons in just a little bit. First, however, it is worth noting that many of the cities where these “free houses” are available were once some of the most prosperous cities in the entire country. In fact, the city of Detroit once had the highest per capita income in the entire nation. But as millions of good jobs have been shipped overseas, these once prosperous communities have degenerated into rotting, decaying hellholes. Now homes that once housed thriving middle class families cannot even be given away. This is happening all over America, and what we are witnessing right now is only just the beginning.

The photo that I have posted below was sent to me by a reader just the other day. It is a photo of a house in Yakima, Washington that is apparently being given away for free. At one time it was probably quite a lovely home, but now nobody seems to want it…

This piqued my curiosity, so I started doing some research and I discovered that homes all over the nation are being sold off for a dollar or less. The following are just a few examples…

–Buffalo, New York: “The Urban Homestead Program that is offered by the City of Buffalo enables qualified buyers to purchase a home that has been deemed ‘homestead eligible’ for $1.00 and there are plenty of properties left. There are three main requirements when purchasing a homestead property; the owner must fix all code violations within 18 months, have immediate access to at least $5000, and live there for at least three years. You also have to cover the closing costs of the purchase.”

–Gary, Indiana: “Officials say that a third of the houses in Gary are unoccupied, hollowed dwellings spread across a city that, like other former industrial powerhouses, has lost more than half its population in the last half-century.

While some of those homes will be demolished, Gary is exploring a more affordable way to lift its haggard tax base and reduce the excess of empty structures: sell them for $1.”

–South Bend, Indiana: “How could you refuse this offer? The city of South Bend, Indiana wants to give this handsome circa-1851 Italianate farmhouse away to anyone willing to properly restore it. Aside from the boarded up windows (the boards are painted to look like real windows), the place is in pretty good shape, with a completely restored exterior, new roof, and all new HVAC, plumbing and electrical systems. All you’ll need to do is restore the gutted (but clean as can be) interior.”

–Detroit, Michigan: “Now that the motor city has effectively run out of gas and declared bankruptcy, some rather eye-popping deals are presenting themselves to first time home buyers who appreciate the challenge of a fixer-upper.

Hundreds of Detroit homes currently listed on Zillow have asking prices below $5,000, with at least one seller so desperate as to offer his house for just $1, ABC News reported.”

—–

And guess who is selling more “one dollar homes” than anyone else?

If you guessed “the federal government” you would be correct.

Right now, the federal government is selling foreclosed homes to low income families all over the country for just one dollar…

HUD’s Dollar Homes initiative helps local governments to foster housing opportunities for low to moderate income families and address specific community needs by offering them the opportunity to purchase qualified HUD-owned homes for $1 each.

Dollar Homes are single-family homes that are acquired by the Federal Housing Administration (which is part of HUD) as a result of foreclosure actions. Single-family properties are made available through the program whenever FHA is unable to sell the homes for six months.

By selling vacant homes for $1 after six months on the market, HUD makes it possible for communities to fix up the homes and put them to good use at a considerable savings.

Before you get too excited, there are a whole bunch of reasons why you wouldn’t want to actually buy any of these one dollar homes.

First of all, most of them have been totally trashed. Just to get them up to livable condition would take thousands of dollars in most cases. Many of them are full of asbestos, and severe wiring and plumbing issues are quite common.

Secondly, you assume all of the liability for a home when you buy it. So if a homeless person stumbles in and injures himself, you could be liable for his injuries.

Thirdly, many of these homes are in very high crime neighborhoods. In some of these areas, people will literally rip up and carry away anything that is not bolted down.

Fourthly, property taxes are very high in many of these cities. Local governments are desperate to get people into these homes so that they can get the taxes flowing again. In many cases, what you would pay in taxes for a year is more than the true value of the home itself.

So, like I said, these homes are not the “great deal” that they may appear to be at first glance.

But that is not really the issue.

The real question is this: What is causing our communities to decay so dramatically?

And of course a big part of the answer is that the middle class in America is dying.

According to Time Magazine, one new report has discovered that nearly half the country is constantly living in a state of “persistent economic insecurity”…

But as evidenced by a report out Thursday from the Corporation for Enterprise Development, nearly half of Americans are living in a state of “persistent economic insecurity,” that makes it “difficult to look beyond immediate needs and plan for a more secure future.”

That same report also found that 56 percent of all Americans now have “subprime credit”.

We are a nation that is losing our independence and sinking into poverty.

Right now, 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program, and the U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.

Millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas, the control freak bureaucrats that are running things are absolutely killing “the little guy”, and poverty in the United States is exploding at a frightening pace.

Things are “changing” in this country, and not for the better.

One way that the death of the middle class is manifesting itself is in the death of shopping malls all over America. The following is an excerpt from a recent Business Insider article…

All across America, once-vibrant shopping malls are boarded up and decaying.

Traffic-driving anchors like Sears and JCPenney are shutting down stores, and mall owners are having a hard time finding retailers large enough to replace them. With a fresh wave of closures on the horizon, the problem is set to accelerate, according to retail and real estate analysts.

According to that same article, one prominent retail analyst believes that we could see up to 50 percent of the shopping malls in America close within 20 years…

Within 15 to 20 years, retail consultant Howard Davidowitz expects as many as half of America’s shopping malls to fail. He predicts that only upscale shopping centers with anchors like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus will survive.

And did you catch that last part? Only the shopping malls in wealthy areas will survive because the wealthy will be the only ones with enough money to support them.

For much more on this phenomenon, please see my previous article entitled “What Recovery? Sears And J.C. Penney Are DYING“.

At this point, things have already gotten so bad that now even Wal-Mart is having trouble. In fact, Wal-Mart is blaming the recent slowdown in sales on cuts to the federal food stamp program…

Wal-Mart announced today that cuts in a federal food stamp program as well as record cold temperatures hurt its fourth quarter profits.

After previously reporting “relatively flat” sales for the quarter, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. now says that sales for its namesake store and its Sam’s Club locations would be “slightly negative” for the November-January quarter, according to Agence France-Presse.

Wal-Mart’s Chief Financial Officer, Charles Holley, blamed the revised forecast on deeper-than-expected cuts to the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the extreme cold weather occurring in the past month.

This is how far the middle class in America has fallen. So many people are now on food stamps that even a slight reduction in benefits has a huge impact on the largest retailer in the entire country.

And actually, many rural communities could end up losing their Wal-Mart stores in the years ahead as the economy continues to deteriorate. In a recent CNBC article entitled “Time to close Wal-Mart stores? Analysts think so“, it was suggested that Wal-Mart should close about 100 “underperforming” supercenters in rural locations around the nation.

We are rapidly becoming “two Americas”. In the “good America”, the wealthy will still have plenty of retail stores to choose from within easy driving distance from their million dollar homes.

In the “bad America”, which will include most of us, our shopping malls will be closing down and the rotting, decaying homes of our neighbors will be sold off for next to nothing.

So which America do you live in? Please feel free to share what is going on in your neck of the woods by posting a comment below…

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