In the Before – the years prior to what has been styled the “pandemic” (which it was, in the sense that metastatic hypochondria spread like cooties at a ’70s key party) when a house sold it was usually occupied shortly thereafter by the people who bought it.
In the After – our now – when houses sell they often remain empty – sometimes for years. Which makes one wonder about who bought them.
And why.
There are two such houses on my country road, which is not far from the middle of nowhere, in rural SW Virginia. One of these was owned by a friend of mine who had to sell because he got divorced and lost his house. That was more than a year ago now – and the house remains unoccupied. Another house up the road also sold about six months ago – and has yet to be occupied.
Interestingly, both houses sold almost immediately – as in within 24 hours of being listed – and at wildly inflated (for this area) prices.
This is apparently happening all over the country, perhaps on account of the dearth of new construction caused by the Biden Thing’s uncontrolled demolition of supply chains. There is also the factor of affluent people selling their homes in places such as the DC suburbs and so on at even more wildly inflated prices, using the proceeds to get out of those areas before the next round of “lockdowns,” which are less “practiced” in more rural areas.
Or at least it was happening, until the Thing’s uncontrolled demolition of the economy triggered a rise in interest rates – which appears to have popped this bubbly real-estate market.
It still does not explain what is going on with these houses that have been selling that no one’s living in.
That’s what houses are for, after all. Wouldn’t you think it strange if car dealership lots were full up with cars that had been sold?
It’s possible, in some cases, that people bought these just-sitting-there houses as a fallback. A home to go to when their current home becomes untenable, when the “pandemic” waxes, again.
Or – as in the case of the properties on my road – it is possible people may have bought them as second/vacation homes as my area is considered a nice area to get away from it all.
But it is unlikely that both of these homes fall into either case.
It is certainly the case – in the 20 years I’ve lived on this road – that when a home sold, the new people are living in it within a month of the sale. It has never been the case that even one home on my road sold and then sat – for a year-plus, ongoing – with no one home.
No one even visiting – which I would have noticed as I am home almost all the time, because I work from home. Besides which, this is a close-knit, everyone-knows-everyone road. If new people had moved into my old friend’s house – which is just down the road from my house – I would know about it because everyone I know would know. And we all know each other. One of us would know – and then so would everyone else.
That’s how it works in rural USA
So it’s a safe bet no one’s home – in either home.
Nor visiting these homes, either.
This suggests these homes were bought as investments – and probably not by private parties, as there aren’t many of those who can afford to buy second homes out in the country they neither live in, even part-time, nor rent to anyone. It takes a thick wallet to leave a $300,000-plus house just sitting, unoccupied, for years.
But corporations such as BlackRock and Vanguard have very thick wallets. The former is reportedly flush with $10 trillion – not billion – in assets “under management.”
What could that mean?
Do those “assets” include private homes no longer owned by private individuals? And why would BlackRock want to own formerly private, single-family homes? These were – in the Before – not considered “investments” but rather places to live. What are they considered now?
Apparently, BlackRock has been “investing” in private homes – even whole neighborhoods, which it has financial wherewithal to do. What could the reasons be for this “investment” – and why just let those “investment” sit for years without generating any return on that “investment”?
A house just-sitting (and not appreciating) is costing. Capital is tied up. Property taxes must still be paid, even by big corporations and – unless the power’s been turned off – there are still utility bills to be paid, too. Maintenance that must be performed – to keep the house from becoming a liability.
The answer seems to be that either BlackRock, et al were expecting the real estate bubble to continue inflating and then make a killing on re-selling these properties at even more wildly inflated prices . . . or the strategy is to inflate the value of all the real estate in the vicinity – the value of which is tied to what sold and for what – in order to drive those still living in their homes out of them, by making the property taxes so high that few can afford to pay them.
And thereby force the remaining owners to vacate their houses.
Which BlackRock can then rent back to them and thereby achieve cashflow in perpetuity, since renters never own. They therefore never stop paying – and for that reason are always at the mercy of whomever owns the place they are being allowed to occupy. Even if if they pay the rent, they live there at the pleasure of the landlord. A landlord who may be displeased by anyone not “vaccinated,” say. Or who does not “stand” with whatever the latest thing happens to be.
It may simply be another effort at enserfment.
Displace the owners in favor of renters. Bring in subsidized (Section 8) occupants. The government paying the rent to the corporations, which serve the aims of government by “affirmatively furthering fair housing” – this being the actual term being bandied about. It means cleaving what had been enclaves of private, individual home-ownership (and peace and quiet for exactly that reason) into suburban and even rural simulacrums of the inner cities.
This is wanted for several evil reasons, including the diffusion of red areas of the country into purple-then-blue areas, so as to assure rule by Leftists who promise free things as a “right” – in exchange for everyone having no rights, other than to do as they are told, by Leftists. Who also now control the corporations.
Hopefully, it’s just a case of unoccupied homes that will soon have private owners living in them again.
But it gives me the creeps to see them just sitting there, unoccupied – and thinking about who (about what) might have bought them, more than a year ago.
And why.
. . .
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In bond jargon, MBS went “no-bid.” No buyers for MBS.
The halcyon days of 2020 and 2021 when banks were paying you to borrow money may be coming to an end. Maybe we’ll see real estate become assets again, and the mortgage you took out to buy that real estate go back to being the liability, instead of the other way around as it has been for a couple of years now.
30 year fixed mortgage rates today are about 270bps over the benchmark 10 year Treasury as of this writing (5.85% vs. 3.165%). If we need to get to real bond yields before investors want to buy bonds, that implies a 10 year Treasury somewhere north of 8.6%. That in turn implies mortgage rates north of 11%. (All of that assumes you believe the 8.6% CPI print.)
https://notoriousrob.com/2022/06/finally-no-bid-on-mbs/
Housing Market: Could This Be Worse Than 2008?
Nick Gerli, in his interview with Wealthion, alludes to a number of figures which spell trouble for the residential market. If you own real estate or we’re considering entering the market soon, it’s worth checking out:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-06-09/housing-market-could-be-worse-2008
from zh comments
like Europe, they will move to choke off developments outside of the cities, force everyone into apartments as much as possible, then mass transit plans, bikes, etc.
Plays into the green delirium syndrome.
Rents are going up, If you won’t pay your rent, you can go live in a tent and an immigrant with section 8 funding will move in.
Could this be worse than 2008?
Take 2008 then….
add 50% MOAR in mortgage fraud
add another 1-2 trillion + in bad student loans
add another trillion in bad auto loans
add a few trillion in additional new debt
add 10 million indigent illegal aliens to 2008
sell a few trillion in US assets to foreigners
The average American IQ has dropped so much from 3rd world low IQ immigration and human husbandry (paying idiots to breed) we can’t vote ourselves out of this problem, Americans are simply too stupid to not vote for their own invasion and debt slavery, even if they did our crooked govt would simply cheat and fix elections.
Real unemployment according to shadowstats.com is 25%. The 3.5% unemployment rate refers to people still receiving unemployment compensation. Assuming it’s not a completely fictional number.
There are also quite a few people who are working in so-called “parallel economies”, i.e. the Black Market. They’re not just using cash. They’re using precious metals, bartering, etc. etc. I see people trading all the time. I just witnessed my neighbor trade one boat trailer for another one. No paperwork. Just a handshake. I trade plants on an almost daily basis.
Until people realize that the political process as well as any and all laws are completely useless, they’re only going to fall prey to the elite’s plans to leave them homeless, hungry and destitute.
Think like an Indian who has no intention of living on the reservation. Think like the slave who learns how to write himself his own pass to travel freely from one plantation to another.
I sold my place in California just prior to the 2008 crash, and bought a place in Florida right afterwards for next to nothing. I could sell for ten times what I paid for it, but I’m going to wait until Blackrock comes along and makes me an offer.
What bothers me is the fact that if someone comes along and offers me five to ten times what my place is worth, even with the prospect of being homeless, I’ll still have to sell. The Blackrock people know this.
You’re in Virginia. You can easily go down to your local county land records office and find out who owns these houses, whether it is an individual or a corporate LLC. Your land records might be online, too. Much of Virginia is. It’s all public record, too.
Find out who owns these places and you have another brick from that wall. Maybe even tell your long-time readers what you discovered, too.
This is the site posted in the this thread earlier:
https://floydcova.interactivegis.com/login/
I checked all around Eric’s address that he puts in each post and found no properties owned by any corporations or LLCs. Eric should check the addresses he says are empty houses to see if he finds anything different. Otherwise, this is all a tempest in a teapot.
My own guess is that the houses are being bought on a low fixed-rate mortgage and the buyers are banking on high- or even hyper-inflation effectively wiping out the debt in a few years’ time. So the real price of the purchase will just be the cost of servicing the interest for a year or so until inflation works its “magic”. This makes economic sense even if the market value of the house is likely to fall significantly in a hyper-inflationary depression, since the up-front cash outlay is relatively small.
Remember also that we’re soon going to “own nothing and be happy” so those of us who are still alive will need to become renters.
Hi Eric
You made it into ZH comments…..
3 hours ago
And why wouldn’t houses be unaffordable, with Blackrock in the competition – Blackrock reportedly flush with $10 trillion – not billion – in assets “under management”?
Empty houses
“…it gives me the creeps to see them just sitting there, unoccupied – and thinking about who (about what) might have bought them, more than a year ago.?…And why.
“these houses that have been selling that no one’s living in…”
quote from…… eric peters autos
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/these-are-worlds-10-least-affordable-housing-markets
“enserfment”…what a wonderful word. No telling what an insane company with trillions of dollars like Blackrock has in mind. The people running such operations must get supremely bored. They run out of things to buy because none of it satisfies their arrogance and lust for eternal power and control. Maybe they are trying to turn the world into a giant Monopoly game. Look at gates? He’s the poster child for the tyrannically insane parasites which many billionaires have become. Tons of fake money and nothing else that would make them humans again.
Eric,
After the Removal of Trump, My kids on the couch for 2 years, we decided to get out of the urban hell hole that is SE FL. Found a rural property in N Fl. After the purchase it sat unoccupied several months as we were not ready to uproot but felt the window for buying was closing. Owning 2 homes and maintaining them is not easy. I will bet the new buyers are using the houses as their escape plan. All major urban areas will soon uninhabitable as supply chains fail.
Hi John,
I hope so… because the alternatives are not pleasant to contemplate. Congratulations, by the way, on your move!
I live in such a rural place that people are paying huge prices for houses and land and building houses. I feel like I’m being boxed in. It’s an ominous thing. I’ve had a new neighbor across the road who is into real estate that has tried to buy my place.
supply chains…..
Push EV’s that get 25 mpg….lol…..jam fuel prices to the moon to promote EV’s….then starve to death, go bankrupt buying food, fuel………
from another site……………
Our trucks are averaging $1,800-$1,900 a day in fuel and we have 27 trucks doing that……
………bankrupt truckers and you get no food or fuel or anything else, remember 72 hours to anarchy, if people don’t eat for three days they get very unhappy…..
https://www.nsnews.com/bc-news/record-high-fuel-prices-crippling-bc-trucking-industy-5459328
When I started driving a truck over 30 years ago, all of the big trucking companies (e.g. Swift, Shneider, C.R. England, etc.) had at least a dozen drivers who did nothing other than fly all over the country picking up abandoned trucks and trailers. That was back when it was stupid simple to make money driving a truck. Even so, the trucking companies always wanted to get as many people leasing trucks so they had them by the balls and could make them haul illegal loads until they fell asleep at the wheel. Those were the good ol’ days.
SW VA is nice country; been looking to move (back) to the Appalachians; maybe I should look into becoming a volunteer house-sitter (‘squatter’ sounds so tacky); I’m wondering … would the local sheriff care as long as I paid the taxes and kept the yard mowed?
Hi Mark,
There’s a way to find out! Seriously – at some point these empty houses are either going to be occupied or fall into ruin. As others have pointed out, when no one’s home for months on end, small things become big things. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens next…
Larry Fink of Blackrock is a WEF member. He may be purchasing these properties to fulfill the “You will own nothing and be happy” agenda.
This appears that the practice of blockbusting is still alive and well.
Hi Anon Y –
You put it aptly – Blockbusting – with the difference, this time, that it’s not owners who are moving in next door but occupants. As in Section 8 occupants…
‘Foreclosure Fraud 2.0…’
“… if Foreclosure Fraud 2.0 visits Main Street soon, much also will be similar to the 2008 to 2014 time period. This is because the underlying problem in 2008–62 million fatally void securitized mortgages–has never been remedied. […]
PROOF THAT THE U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HATES YOU” …
https://www.williambernardbutler.com/foreclosure-fraud-2-0/
The more I think of this, the more things that come to mind – Like how the tax code (particularly in the UK) actually supports and favors this kind of thing. For example, when I ended up buying an extra property I was classified as one of those evil “rich” people – and therefore had to pay an additional tax of 3% of the purchase price (on top of the already heavy transfer tax). Then, if I rent it out, again I’m an evil rich person therefore I am not allowed expenses for the mortgage on the rental property (and effectively the gross rental amount is added to my taxable income).. On the other hand if I was set up as a corporate, none of these taxes would apply to me!!! Its almost as if the whole thing was set up about 5 or so years ago to clear way for the likes of blackrock or others to start buying…. you know so eventually we all “own nothing and are happy”
Hi Nasir,
Communists understand that private ownership of homes and land is a bulwark against communism. It is why the communists – who style themselves “democrats” and “progressives” – favor and push taxes on homes and land, so as to preclude the possibility of true ownership and also to thwart the accumulation of capital. They want everyone paying, endlessly – and owning nothing, ever – which is feudalism. And that is ultimately what “communism” is all about.
Hi Eric
For those with authoritarian ambitions, housing inflation is a boon. Homelessness feeds the kind of desperation that drives the public to support totalitarian actions. They might provide you with housing eventually, but it will be at a terrible cost. requirements: masked, injected, leftist vote,
The last thing anyone with common sense would want is for the government to become their landlord by default. It’s very hard to defy the trespasses of government overreach when that government controls the roof over your head.
guns and gold (real money) too….
When you think about it, it all comes down to control. In a system where currency is backed by gold and citizens have the individual right to own firearms, what do those two things give us, the peons? They give us power and control on a par with government – they level the playing field to some degree.
I don’t think it’s hard (at least in the US) to set up an LLC for your property.
Once you’re in their rental, they’ll tell you that it’s “mandatory” for you to get the lethal injection. Someday… we will all love the smell of burning flesh in the morning.
Eric, in most states, you can find out the status of a property by going to the county assessor’s web site. It’s how those with tax liens are found out, and picked up, often for VERY CHEAP. If you see the owner is a Real Estate Investment Trust, well, there’s your answer.
Don’t expect to see “Blackrock” or any of these massive capital management firms listed openly; they set up shell companies for that specific purpose. This is how Disney, starting about 1961 when Walt decided to build Disney World in Central Florida, bought up all that land near Orlando. Disney’s real estate arm had about twenty-five or so companies set up, each buying property as they could, but in that manner, the local realtors weren’t tipped off; so someone couldn’t grab a choice piece of land, say, off the then-new Interstate 4, and become a “holdout”, making a killing. Disney didn’t actually announce their plans to build the new park until 1965, just before Walt passed on, when all the necessary property had been acquired.
The first all rental single family house new construction subdivision is going thru planning in a local community near me. There is opposition to it being all rental, as there is every time any large apartment complex is proposed (some towns now prohibit apartment complexes). It will likely be built as there is nothing that can block it, as this form of rental is new to here.
I’m actually surprised they are asking permission to make it all rental. If I was developing such a thing, I would just go thru planning as a single family subdivision and just not sell the houses as they are built and just rent them out. By the time most folks figure it out, it would be likely there would be little they could do about it. It would likely be mostly built out at that point.
Its also interesting that billionaires like Bill Gates are buying thousands of acres of farmland. Something is afoot and it ain’t good.
Any clingers to their property will find their neighboring homes filled with multiple families of diverse Section 8 renters, as homogeneous suburbs and rural areas are racist.
Or they’ll do what the Bolsheviks did to the kulaks, and just raise property taxes continually and then evict them from avoiding taxes.
What are the adverse possession laws like in Virginia? Such abandoned homes should be put to good use. Successful adverse possession should be followed with perfection of the title (i.e documenting the history of ownership back as far as possible to establish a clear chain of ownership and make sure their are no unsettled liens).
Shoal,
In Missouri, if you use real property for ten years without paying any fee, you own it.
I wonder, do you suppose Bill Gates has guards watching all these AG properties he’s buying up? Making sure no one is squatting? Desperate times call for desperate measures.
‘Apparently, BlackRock has been “investing” in private homes – even whole neighborhoods, which it has financial wherewithal to do.’ — eric
Who enabled BlackRock to do this? Look no further than the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, which contains $2.7 trillion of mortgage-backed securities (9th line in the table):
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/default.htm
To date, it’s a classic “divide and conquer” scheme. Homeowners, and those in property-related businesses, benefited. Renters, by contrast, got screwed up the wazoo.
But as the Federal Reserve throws its Bubble machine into reverse gear next week and starts shedding MBS, everybody starts to lose.
Never has the case been stronger not only to abolish the Federal Reserve, but also to indict its governing board for counterfeiting, fraud, larceny and conspiracy.
Woody Wilson’s unconstitutional Federal Reserve is a malevolent engine of destruction, whose illicit monetary artillery now is demolishing American living standards. Shut the sucker down.
It is absolutely repugnant that these billion and trillion dollar corporations can buy swaths of land and towns and homes. It is very unAmerican, at least in a traditional America. This practice should be banned or regulated HEAVILY! Dark forces are at play here, and that is not hyperbole.
There’s going to be new laws someday — big companies will not be able to buy residential single family homes, maybe no condos either. And we’re going to seize their properties from them to be put on the market at a deep discount for people that will actually live in them.
Hi Harry,
When I can get the time, I intend to flesh out in book form my thinking about corporations vis-a-vis libertarianism. My premise is that the two are at odds because corporations are government-created constructs and thus the natural enemy of natural rights. Corporations, empowered by government, eventually overpower the government – as now – making what was bad (government) far worse because corporations exist outside the restrictions (such as they are) placed upon the government and have the psychological advantage of touting that they are “private” and so can do things that most people (especially “conservatives”) would otherwise object to if government did them. The enforcement of “mask” wearing being an obvious example. I debated a number of people here about this latter. They took the position that because Wal-Mart, et al, are “privately owned” they have the “right” to refuse service and to set forth conditions of service. This I held to be a tragic misapplication of respect for private property because corporations aren’t that, except in a legal-fiction sense. In fact, they are creatures of the government, or its proxies. Whatever they are, they are not the same thing as a store owned by a person who requires shoes and shirts be worn, etc.
More to come…
An argument I’ve long and often made. Corporations are a fictional construct created by the state. They have no rights the state does not grant them. They are not born. They have no inalienable rights endowed by their creator. They have no souls. They are sociopathic by their very nature. They are in fact required by law to operate in the interest of their shareholder’s benefit. The bottom line at all costs. Having no moral foundation, or ethical standard. Except what they pretend to have. Which can change or disappear tomorrow. They are deeply in bed with our current form of government, bureaucracy. Where the bureaucrats that are supposed to keep them in check, actually work for them. CDC, FDA, EPA, NIH, NTS, etc.
I’m buyin’ it, eric!
(Both the argument, and the book!)
I agree. I have been advocating abolishing corporations for some time. They are evil legal constructs that, because of the way they diminish or eliminate liability for their owners, prompted congress to redefine the legal term “person” to mean a legal or commercial entity. Prior to 1868, or so, a person was simply a man’s body or his various “masks,” like Joe the Plumber is one of Joe’s persons. Person as legal entity created a world of fictions in commerce, a kind of cartoon world governed by admiralty. It took over the legal and court system in the 50s pushing common law out da door. I could go on for hours about this, but suffice it to say, property tax, driver licenses, licensing in general, are the result of this change in the legal system, all thanks to the use of the corporate structure.
I found an interesting article, several years ago, on the viewpoint of Thomas Jefferson and others of that generation on corporations. As I remember from the article, corporations of that era were chartered at the state level, for a specific purpose, and for a specific length of time. After the time period had expired, the corporation could be given a renewed charter, or it could be disbanded. Corporate charters could also be revoked if the corporation strayed to far from the limits of its charter. Jefferson and other founders of our country felt corporations should be kept on a tight leash lest they amass too much power. They wished to avoid a repeat of the British East India Company, which is what most of our modern corporations have become. I think we could consider revoking the charters of some of these companies, perhaps, if necessary, in a Boston Tea Party kind of way.
Exactly. I had to argue with my conservative friends about this very issue.
Well said Eric (as usual), our new society will probably use your book, and even if you don’t write a book, we’ll certainly be reading whatever else you have to say, and will most definitely be asking for your input/consulting.
Unoccupied houses are targeted by Squatters. Once those are in there, exercising their “Squatter’s Rights”, the investment companies are going to have an even bigger problem on their hands.
Ayn,
Indeed, one who has no place to live has little to lose by simply moving into such property. They will at least have a dry, perhaps warm place to live, for at least a while. If they make it for ten years (in Missouri) they own it.
Melissa Dykes (“Truthstream Media”) did a relevant documentary recently: This Is a Housing Crisis.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/fhq0VLYTqEo/
It’s overlong, and a tad repetitive, but the high production values make it worthwhile to watch the whole thing. In short, the film depicts what the intended fate of gentiles after the Great Reset is going to look like. Namely, it will look like the sprawling squalor of mega-homeless encampments, and dilapidated old hotels repurposed as “shelters,” filled with squatters and human revenants.
Blackstone is buying up all residential real estate to drive up prices and rents, and price out all working people from even basic housing. This swelling market also drives up property taxes, by increasing assessments. It’s a systematic push to dispossess the goyim, with no mercy, and no quarter. Dispossession by artificial housing-cost-inflation is just one of the many fronts of the low-intensity war being waged against the masses, along with “health protocols” (social distancing/vaxx-passes), “war with Russia” (energy-price inflation), “carbon rationing,” etc.
Sooner or later, every single one of us will be broken financially. How long you hang on to the roof over your head is just a function of how far below your means you have lived up to this point. But sooner or later, every single goy will be dispossessed either by rent-hikes or tax-hikes, in combination with the fuel-and-food inflation that is going to strip us all bare. It’s all an automated process. A machine.
The short of it all is: you have to pay to live in this satanic world. You struggle to hang on until you fall off. The Machine is going to dog our heels right to the grave. Once they’ve got you on the streets, then they come at you with “health ordinances” and “vagrancy laws” to hound you relentlessly from camp to camp. (Cf. Grapes of Wrath, where “Typhus Outbreaks” were the go-to pretext for the Pinkertons and sheriffs to clear out the Okie camps.) When you’ve been run completely ragged, desperate for any relief, all your meager personal effects confiscated or left behind to be burned, then, they’ll say you have to go to one of their mega-shelters. It’s that or jail. Whether you choose the mega-shelter or jail, you will have to be injected. “For safety,” of course.
The Great Reset is a bulldozer, operating on every level of society and the economy, to crush and drive out the gentiles, just like every genocidal campaign of YHWH in the Torah.
Joshua 11:21-22: “And Joshua came and wiped out the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel, Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities. There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel.”
Now, all the world is Israel, and we are all Anakim. And YHWH has taken the form of a mechanized, computerized, automated banking and government combine. YHWH has emerged as a Machine—precision-engineered to wipe us all out, in genuinely biblical fashion.
That’s probably the most plausible explanation and assessment of the current terrain I have seen.
quote: “Blackstone is buying up all residential real estate to drive up prices and rents, and price out all working people from even basic housing. This swelling market also drives up property taxes, by increasing assessments. It’s a systematic push to dispossess the goyim, with no mercy, and no quarter. Dispossession by artificial housing-cost-inflation is just one of the many fronts of the low-intensity war being waged against the masses”
Ding, Ding, Ding – give that man the prize. That is the most sensible thing I’ve read on this topic since it became known that Blackrock had entered the real estate market. In fact Eric (who is a lucid genius) should of wrote his essay in that verbage because that is what is going on – warfare against us by the usual suspects.
Eventually, everyone is going to be forced up against the wall and will have to name the suspects or die. The biggest hurdle for truthtellers is to get people to acknowledge who is doing this to us. It is the same people who did 911, and Sandy Hook, and all the false flag shootings.
Here is more proof – a shocking chart and map of all the food processing plants being burned down (on purpose of course to starve us into submission):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FUjGW-IXsAAM0MO?format=jpg
https://www.godlikeproductions.com/search.php?q=food+processing
(((Note: If you don’t view the world in terms of a conspiracy against us you simply can not understand what is going down.)))
Great website for those waking up to the evil consuming us:
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/
“give that man the prize”
Ooh! Whaddid I win? I’d like a nice long vacation in an alternate timeline, please, Jack!
(Just kidding. Your compliments are more than reward enough.)
“everyone … will have to name the suspects or die.
I daresay the choice is, more precisely: either accept the yoke of bio-digital interface with the Global Brain Hivemind…or die.
Death is, by far, the preferable option, compared to existence as a mind-wiped Bio-Slave meat-puppet, manipulated by the invisible strings of a carnivorous supercomputer.
Just heard of another mysterious fire at a chicken facility.
Those chicks sure are flammable!! Who knew?
World war 3 has started, it’s us against the “elite”. We need to start fighting back if we want a real life.
I live in a triple masked Blue New England state and desperately began searching for rural properties out West in Wyoming/Idaho/Utah when The Madness began(I will never call the terrible lie a pandemic). I was meeting with unmasked realtors by July of 2020.
I was certain I’d beat the crowds. Nope. Inventory was gone and prices were parabolic. And the same strange corporate involvement was echoed by several of the Realtors who had been in the local markets for 20-30+ years. They had never seen these oddly structured corporations outbidding little ‘ol me by 50k just ’cause. The actual people the Realtors were dealing with often never saw or wanted to inspect the homes. They were almost all shell corporations supposedly going to “rent” the homes out but often never would when I’d follow up a year later.
And these weren’t typical vacation or scenic spots either. Places like Casper Wy and Idaho Falls, ID, and Cody Wy.
Fuckery is afoot.
Hi David,
That’s me sense of things as well. I have never seen or even heard of anything like this before and I’ve been following real estate as a side interest for most of my adult life. Fuckery, indeed.
I agree that something sinister is afoot. If Fed money is (almost) free and housing is going up 10-20% per year then corporations can buy up the entire US real estate market and rent it back to us.
If you can not afford the rent, sorry, go live in a ditch and we’ll have our cops beat on you making your life a living hell.
The United States is becoming a really evil shithole of rich getting richer (by fraud) and poor getting stomped on by big government and corporate cronies.
I have a coworker whose rent went up 27% from last year to this.
Needless to say no one got a 27% raise.
Someone is making a lot of dough.
Not you, though. Not me, either.
David,
Part of the “fuckery afoot” was dealing with and listening to a realtor. WY and ID realtors are the people God wasted skin on when he put it on them.
I know last year there was no inventory on the market because the people that live in Idaho Falls area and are planning to stay weren’t selling because of the time it took to replace what you had. For 2 years, existing homes were more expensive than new ones.
I can’t really speak to whether or not blackrock was/is buying homes in this area. I do know that there aren’t vaccant homes sitting until you get to the more scenic places up north where they were purchased for Airbnb’s. They were chuck full for 20 and 21. Now, they sit vacant most of the time, presumably because many can’t afford to travel any more. Memorial weekend was the lightest travel I have seen in recent memory.
No one is buying now. The inventory of single family homes in east Idaho has gone up by 10X in the past 10-12 weeks. If blackrock was buying, they stopped, along with everyone else. The economy is imploding so fast it’s like I’m watching it in real time. But most people are in total denial.
Fiat currencies, like FIAT cars, are effectively worthless. Stock up on guns, small-arms ammo, MREs, and root-suits in order to make it through these coming hard times – BTW, my two bros live in Casper, WY wherein everybody’s armed to the teeth and the inhabitants ain’t about to turn in their guns, whatever the foppish and faggotistic feds say.
Eric, you should be able to go on the county auditors website and see who bought the house.
I believe you are spot-on, Eric.
Although the estimate of my home price is the highest it’s ever been, estimates of FUTURE value have waned, and thus companies such as Opendoor have cut their offers significantly. Though, those offers still aren’t bad!
I FINALLY finished my sewer line, and can finally back-fill and move. I’m now a plumber as well as a scientist and programmer! So very prestigious.
I think the Fed’s increase in interest rates, and the subsequent increase in mortgage rates, is all about pricing the “little guy” out of the market and consequently capping housing prices. This, as is surmised in this article, allows the big corporations to buy up all the houses and make renters (serfs) out of everyone.
Bad,
I hate to burst your bubble, but having Mater Plumber licenses in three major cities, replacing a sewer service does not make you a plumber. That work is most often done by semi skilled workers under the direction of a plumber.
Otherwise, good for you. Now you know how to actually work.
Mr. Kable,
RE: “…How to actually work.”: I’ve had to bust my ass my entire life. That not only includes earning scientific credentials, which came a bit later. I began by doing landscaping, then came factory/warehouse work, and I had to do plenty of “day labor”, even during my college years, to get by.
So please… I may not be a “Master Plumber”, it’s true, but I dug and installed the whole new sewer line, myself, which, if I’d hired said Master Plumber, would’ve cost me about $40,000. It cost me under $1,000 for materials and tools.
Bad,
I didn’t mean to offend. Didn’t mean to imply you didn’t know how to work before, only that now you most assuredly do.
Mr. Kable, (Assuming it’s you, haha)
It’s alright. Perhaps I get a little flustered by some people these days who seem to think I cruised through life after taking my Gen-Chem and Basket-Weaving classes. There has been no cruising.
Now, I do hope for a TINY bit of cruising after selling this house, but getting it sellable has been quite a mission.
This is just “you’ll own nothing and be happy” in action, the destruction of the middle class. Most everyone’s most valuable asset is their house, so if the PTB can eventually own all the housing it will complete the transition back to the middle ages they so desperately want. We’ll be serfs forever paying rent to the overlords with nothing left to pass onto your children.
Chyna also has a problem with real estate speculation. Whole cities are built and sold but never occupied. This is what happens when theres too much money floating around with no sane or safe place to invest it.
Sounds like an opportunity to go shopping for cheap materials and appliances. Or if you’re forced to be homeless and really have to go feral pull a north pond hermit or barefoot bandit on these places.
Stick a fork in it, this place is done.
Normally I’d say that Blackrock is going the way of Zillow, -i.e. hastily buying up RE at top dollar and then having nowhere to go- but….what with Blackrock almost being a defacto government agency, I’d say they not only know what they are doing (Something nefarious is in the works, in which these houses will be put to use)- and the cost is likely being borne by tax slaves).
Bad thing about your area too, Eric, is that you are close to I-81, which means that it is prime territory for escapees from the NY-DC corridor. When those people ‘bug out’ (the ones who have bought second homes there, for future use) the whole character of that area will quickly change.
Larry Summers just published a paper under the auspices of the NBER. The National Bureau of Economic Research is a group of egghead PhD Econs, who officially decide when recessions started and ended — usually about a year after the fact.
Here’s Larry’s conclusion:
‘In its pre-1983 form, shelter inflation would decline mechanically as interest rate increases
subsided, adding fuel to rapid disinflations.
‘[But] with private sector rent growth currently still at 16 percent, residential inflation is likely to move toward 7 percent by the end of 2022, contributing almost 3 percentage points to core CPI inflation.
‘Compared to previous inflationary cycles, housing will thus serve as a significant hindrance to rapid disinflation, whereas it used to move the official series substantially lower.’
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30116/w30116.pdf
What’s this mean for us?
By using an unresponsive measure of housing cost called OER (Owners Equivalent Rent), the Federal Reserve will be obliged to tighten longer and harder to quell inflation (as now measured), compared to the pre-1983 definition of inflation.
This increases the likelihood that the Fed, using a delayed-reaction speedometer, will brake too hard and send the eclownomy plunging into recession.
Geniuses, I tell ya!
Why is all of this happening?
Received three phone calls yesterday from Harriet. She wanted to know if there was interest in rent to own. We own our home, why would we sell to rent to own? Besides, as soon as you sign the papers, you are then subject to eviction. So you lose your home after you sell to rent to own. Makes no sense. Nobody is that dumb.
I get so many scam calls on the land line, it is an indication that something is up. I say hello, no answer, click. I am going to answer and say ‘Acme Tools’ from now on.
Looks like homeowners are being targeted for some reason.
BlackRock is 680 USD per share. In 1999, BlackRock was 17 USD per share. The dividend is 19.72 USD per share. 2.9 percent return on your invested dollars is okay, but not great.
If you own 1000 shares and paid 17,000 dollars to buy the shares in 1999, you receive 19 grand each year in dividends, unearned income.
The cheapskates can’t even pay a dividend of 40 dollars per share or even more. There are many REITS that pay good dividends at prices much less than BlackRock’s. It is more or less a REIT, BlackRock buys REIT stocks.
BlackRock must think people are willing to be duped.
Joe lives in the White House and doesn’t have to pay to stay there. BlackRock should buy the White House and make Joe pay rent. Larry Fink could then evict the bum and leave the White House sit empty. What really needs to be done like right now.
Larry Fink would evict his own mother.
Larry Fink has a perfect name. Fink: “An unpleasant or contemptible person.”
I think what happened was very logical – the Fed is buying trillions of Mortgage Backed Securities and wealthy investors are looking to park their money somewhere beside a bank savings account or short term treasuries (mutual money market also) that pay far less than 1%, like 0.05%.
In some countries interest rates went negative.
So what to do? Where does capital go when the Federal Reserve is buying private mortgages and driving rates down to histerical lows of 3%? The stock market for one, and real estate is another and third is gold.
Blackrock – like other maligned ETF’s – often come late in the feeding frenzy and are now getting their asses handed to them. Zillow had been overpaying for thousands of homes – because the damn fools believed their own rosy forecasts – as if those geniuses never heard of a real estate cycle. Like 1929 they were convinced we were in a new era, prices could not go down.
“Genius” stock pickers have daily Youtube shows like this clown Cathy Woods who got lucky because she bought meme stocks. Meme stocks went up – and her ARKK fund full of them went up too – and everyone got one their knees to worship the goddess of stock pickers. But now her luck has run out, the high tech goldies like Tesla are getting hammered and ARKK keeps going down, see this chart:
https://bigcharts.marketwatch.com enter ticker symbol ARKK and go to 3 year chart
I would remind the readers that the Wall Street Journal would pick stocks at the beginning of each new year with the stock section pasted to the wall and throwing darts. Those random picks beat the professional fund managers every single time.
At the end of the mania it was an elevator ride up then the cables got cut – and the ARKK fund is now freefalling. Stocks lead housing. Housing takes longer to respond and this young Youtuber has the finger on the pulse:
https://www.youtube.com/c/ReventureConsulting/videos
So if you study real estate, the sure sign of a coming crash is rapidly building inventory which is happening now. And since the upwave was so huge from Fed insanity – you can expect an equally large crash.
The magnitude of what the Fed does is truly mind staggering, they bought $2,800,000,000,000 of home mortgages – and now those fools are stuck with them.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WSHOMCB
IMO the bust could be epic on a Biblical level event.
Good stuff ,Brother.
I hadn’t seen a for sale on a home, around here ,for about two years. That changed about three months ago. I now see them popping up everywhere now.
I also agree about this shit show becoming potentially biblical.
hi Eric
Here is a blog where they talk about the housing bubble…..
peak house was when the snow and FOMO were flying in February. Below is a sampling of the toll since then – in only a dozen weeks.
And within those large and oft-heavily-populated areas, the blood is flowing. These stats also came before the outsized Bank of Canada rate hike on Wednesday – with many more surprises to come. Here are the percentage price declines from peak (Feb) to the end of May, for example, in Halton:
Brampton -16% (from 1.6m to 1.355m)
Mississauga – 12.6% (from 1.92m to 1.67m)
Oakville -18.7% (from $2.37m to 1.93m)
Burlington -13% (from 1.8m) to 1.58m)
Milton -15% (from 1.7m to 1.4m)
.
To the east, average sale prices in Durham Region have tanked by at least $200,000, and in some cases by more than $400,000 in this brief period of time. It means someone who (for example) bought in Whitby in February for $1.55 million and closed the deal last month now lives in a house worth $1.1 million. If they put 15% down ($232,000 plus closing costs) they have a mortgage that exceeds the value of the home by a staggering $200,000. In other words, all equity was erased and they owe more than they own. Disaster.
https://www.greaterfool.ca/2022/06/03/the-surrender/
Once owned a beach house on Galveston Island and the rule of thumb was the more expensive the property the less it was occupied. Million dollar properties that never were used. Maybe investments or corporate money, but the corrosive environment of gulf coast is not a place where properties can sit and not turn shit. Add in taxes, insurance and the occasional hurricane that wipes the coast clean, and it adds up to a hole in the sand where you shovel in money. Never could figure it out.
Some people have money like that to BURN. I DON’T.
When I bought my house, I was up against some kind of investor, I don’t know who exactly. Well, anyway, they offered more money than I did. The house was part of an estate. Anyway they sold it to me (they didn’t even counter my offer although I was expecting them to) because I was going to actually live in it and “it’s what Dad (a Korea vet) would have wanted.”
I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten it, and I also consider it evidence that there are a lot of very decent and compassionate people out there.
I don’t know who the investor was, but I hope it was Blackrock (or equivalent). I don’t take issue with a person who buys a couple houses and rents them out for some income, but what the megacorps are doing feels criminal (even if it technically isn’t).
In the last 5-years especially the last 2-years, nothing happens in a marketplace in the new Ameria without some sort of human manipulation going on behind the scenes. Blackrock is doing this to control the marketplace. Housing is like food, everyone needs shelter. I foresee some sort of *Public-Private* deal to be made down the road and the renters better vote Blue or else.
I think that Blackrock might be in for a big surprise.
Tenants can be kind of hard on the joint. Especially Section 8 tenants. And some of them are also sufficiently familiar with the legal system that they can be very difficult to evict.
In my experience most landlords are knotheads…but when you look around there are definitely reasons why they are that way.
I lived in one complex where one of the buildings burned to the ground, apparently due to an improperly discarded cigarette (unclear what kind of cigarette). The insurance paid out, they rebuilt, but the management changed anyway…wonder why…
So many variables outside the owner’s ability to control, it isn’t funny.
Hi Publius,
My sister has a rental house in Florida; couple years back she had the typical tenants from Hell. When she finally got them out they stole the appliances (washer, dryer, fridge) on their way out. When she finally got her “day in court” for some redress the judge told her that she was lucky that’s all they did. Dirtbags always win, one of many reasons I will never invest in real estate.
No one wants to live amongst jigaboos…not even BLACK people.
In any case, a house empty is a house falling down. A simple thing goes unnoticed, like a small roof leak, and the next thing you know termites have torn the place down. Termites love wood, especially when they can get a drink on site. Or there’s storm damage. Or the basement develops a leak, or a crack. Or Rats find their way in, and proceed to turn it into an ideal rat environment. Problems don’t typically get better with age.
Perhaps Black Rock et al are not familiar with such problems. Perhaps they assume that a house is a fixed asset, that automatically maintains its value outside of market forces.
^Also this.
Regular maintenance (even little stuff like mowing the yard on a regular basis) is not optional.
They don’t give a damn about the structure; that’s a THING that is maintenance-intensive, i.e. CONSUMES money. The LAND is what they care about. AFAIK, “Gawd” isn’t making any MORE of it.
Self,
God isn’t making any more of it, but China has been for a while. But i get your point.
I’ve often said that Aspen real estate is the modern equivalent of Yap Island stone money. Rich folks pay millions of dollars for houses they might use once or twice a year, if at all. But that’s not the point. It’s a place to park money with relatively little expense. They trade houses amongst themselves as needed, and there’s a clear ledger avilable to figure out who owns what. Most of the real estate is owned by LLCs set up specifically for the property, so when looking up a deed it will show something like “123 main street LLC” as the owner. This is done to protect the other assets of the real owner and probably a tax dodge.
https://flockeo.com/en/yap-the-island-where-people-pay-in-stone-money/
Interesting that the Austrian school theory of money inflation is playing out exactly as expected. When the printing presses run, those who have first access to the newly minted money are able to outbid everyone else, driving up asset prices. Instead of fighting it out in Aspen and Vail, they’re branching out to take “second tier” properties from those of us who aren’t connected to the treasury/FED pipeline. I have to wonder if MMT includes this phenomenon into their theory?
As for Blackrock et al converting single family homes into rentals (and developing whole subdivisions as rentals), that’s just an indicator that automation and property management software has reached the point where it makes sense to run an operation nationally. Traditionally property management has been small and local because it doesn’t scale easily. By leveraging workforce automation software it becomes possible (and likely profitable, but who knows) to centralize operations. Most likely they’re able to sub out most of the maintenance with companies like ServPro and big HVAC companies, and beat them up on price better than an individual who might own a few properties.
My best post in weeks and I wasn’t logged in!
The road to serfdom?
“Ghost houses” (Google about the phenomenon), purchased by Chinese families as investments are not uncommon on the West Coast or here in Austin, but that demographic is averse to places like The Woods since they buy into hype form the American media about people who live there as being “Deliverance” on steroids.
What are the long range plans for the toll road pushing north from Charlotte on I77? I’ve been out of that business for a few years, now, but I remember NCTA had pretty extensive plans for expansion once upon a time.
Have you heard of the “ghost cities” in China?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPwtUTrwKRI
This city is not far from where I live. Locals I’ve asked have never heard of it. In my city, population has dropped 40% in the last decade, but there are tens of thousands of brand-new unfinished apartments sitting empty, with more continually under construction. Despite that, the cost of an apartment here has tripled in 10 years and continues to rise.
Same principle. They’re counting on income from the capital gains in a few years.
Plus, in the US, there is no small amount of entertainment derived from denying a place to an American who could use a home closer to where they work. I’ve never figured out why that is so appealing. Sure, racism and schadenfreude, but Asians, particularly ethnic Chinese not born here, seem to really get off on it.
‘the Thing’s uncontrolled demolition of the economy triggered a rise in interest rates – which appears to have popped this bubbly real-estate market.’ — eric
It’s not only the doubling of mortgage rates, but also its rapidity that creates a shock to the economy. When mortgage rates were on a roller coaster during peak inflation from 1978 to 1982, we had not one but TWO back-to-back recessions.
Then there’s the simultaneous oil shock and natural gas shock:
‘Lone Star State residents signing new contracts in June 2022 are paying 18.48 cents per kilowatt hour—10.5 cents more than the average rate they were paying in June 2021, 7.98 cents.’
‘Rising power bills are primarily due to the soaring price of natural gas. About 45% of Texas’ grid is powered by natgas.’ – Houston Chronicle via ZH
How are them EVs workin’ out for y’all now?
The impact of the EVs hasn’t even begun to hit home.
My back-of-the-envelope calculation about the EV trucks is that one million F150 Lightning trucks on the roads in this state would consume about a third of Texas current power generation capacity charging nightly.
Consider a 131 kWh battery pack requiring 19.2 kW to charge for 8 hours against current generating capacity of 60,000-70,000 MW at any given moment at peak times. Add in that Texas has a grid with limited connection points to the rest of the country, and the situation could be very ugly here in a few years.
I believe the EV truck thing is going to be a tipping point (Eric probably has a better word for it), for EV’s in general. It’s going to get real, real fast.
Inflection point. Yeah.
The $40k EV truck is a myth. If you believe that the EV trucks are a vehicle for “jus’ plain folk”, go read the coverage of the individual in Michigan who took the first delivery on the F150 Lightning.
Can you say “Deep State”?
Having spent a great deal of my adult life working out of a pickup, I can think of no more useless piece of machinery than an EV truck.
And if Texas is anything like Indiana, not only does solar not work at night, the wind usually dies down, too…
Eric: Since renters never own.
If I had to pay rent, car payments, etc. I would have been unable to resist the .gov coercion to get the jab. As I’ve lived a life with more of a 19’th century approach (save, invest and be prepared for harsh times) I’ve been able to say NO!!! to their demands and live my life as much as I can get away with it. Bad times are coming and I’m hoping people get ready before it arrives.
PS- Love the Keeeeve mask.
“It should be easy”
I recall reading back in 2007 – 20012 or so that even banks didn’t know who owned certain mortgages.
As a result, some home-owers even got a free house.
Not many, but some.
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if ownership today was a little hazy & not so easy to find out. I dunno though, I stopped keeping up with the madness in that sector.
It’s this easy. Just type in the address or other identifier into this Floyd County, VA GIS map.
https://floydcova.interactivegis.com/map/
Finding out who “owns” a mortgage on that property is a totally different issue.
It should be easy to find out who owns those properties as the sales are consummated and recorded. Typically, the owners of the homes/property as well as the details of the transaction are a public record, sometimes easily searchable online, as in the case in my county. Of course the owner could be an entity such as an LLC or corporation, in which case you could dig further into the publicly available info about who owns or is involved with them.
Anon, the worst it could be is a trip to the county recorders office. I once had reason to examine the plat map for a certain area, where the county was proposing to rebuild a bridge on an abandoned county road, as in a private bridge. I discovered there were thousands of acres of corporate owned property in the area. Looked some more and discovered the University of Missouri, a land grant college, owned MILLIONS of acres. Why is the State still funding a college that sits on enough land to finance itself?
Good morning, Mr. Kable,
The University of Texas is the largest land grant school in the country. It holds 2.1 million acres. I don’t know how much land the University of Missouri holds in it’s endowment (can’t find those numbers, hmmm?), but it’s campus sits on 1262 acres, which is a little less than 2 sections or 2 sq miles.
☮
Indeed, Adam, I was under the impression that the land grant was meant to be a source of funding. A land grant school should not have any property outside its campus, and a bit for future expansion. Especially if its getting state funding.
I get offers to buy my home from “Ella” who works for an “investor” in the area. Yeah, right. It is my rental house. When I bought this place, I had no idea that this was going on, but there is something nefarious. Complanies like Black Rock and others have an unlimited access to capital through the securities “markets.” The moment their balance sheet starts going “south,” look for them to get “bailed out,” reorganized and for them to appear under another name. Of course, they probably won’t go “south” this time as these business criminals are allowed to loot from the public, their investors (private individual stockholders and 401ks) in plain view. Only a nuke headed to Washington DC is going to solve this issue. Eric, you might want to vacate the area. It’s truly disgusting.
‘The moment their balance sheet starts going “south,” look for them to get “bailed out.”’ — swamprat
BlackRock has been called the world’s largest shadow bank — meaning a financial entity that doesn’t take checking deposits from the public, and thus isn’t regulated as a commercial bank. By the same token, neither are shadow banks directly backstopped by the Federal Reserve.
In financial crises, shadow banks run into funding problems. When investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley experienced such problems in Sep 2008 after Bear Stearns failed, the corrupt Federal Reserve promptly signed them up as “commercial banks” (despite their not offering checking accounts to the public), in order to put them on a direct Fed liquidity feed.
Real estate holdings could prove to be BlackRock’s Achilles heel in the next financial crisis. If so, count on the Federal Reserve swooping in to rescue it. After all, in March 2020 the Fed tapped BlackRock (sole source, no competitive bidding) to advise it on the Fed’s massive, illegal purchases of CMBS (commercial mortgage backed securities) and investment-grade corporate bonds.
So they’re tight, Jay Powell and Larry Fink (BlackRock CEO) — bosom buddies, doncha know.
Banking is a biz-gov partnership, and one of the more corrupt industries. Prior to the 1970s, few bank stocks were listed on the NYSE. The white-shoe WASP elite who ran things back then regarded banks as incorrigibly grubby and sleazy.
They were right.
Why should the banks get bailed out instead of homeowners?
I’m not arguing that they should throw money around like that. I’m pointing out that when they do it anyway, the money is not distributed fairly.
They knew WHO ran them and wanted nothing to do with them.
Hi Swamprat
Inflation Will Price Many Americans Out Of Housing And Into Homelessness
Massive conglomerates like Blackstone and Blackrock have been increasingly involved in the housing market since the crash of 2008.
While Blackrock claims it has no involvement with the single-family housing market, it works closely with companies that are involved, buying up multiple houses and bundles of distressed mortgages.
Blackstone has continued to buy houses in bulk for the past decade, removing properties from the market for a time. These mass purchases give the public the impression that local sales are “hot” and that the market is thriving. As you might expect, these actions force prices up even further to meet this artificial demand.
One solution to the housing problem would be a moratorium on corporate purchases of homes. That would limit hedge funds and investment banks to speculating on industrial and retail properties.
Banks have been stuffing MBS into CMBS for years.With Blackrock,Blackstone and others buying up whole neighborhoods.These homes were packaged into MBS then stuffed into CMBS and sold. The MBS stuffed CMBS are called Private Label CMBS. And the CMBS market is sick
https://alt-market.us/inflation-will-price-many-americans-out-of-housing-and-into-homelessness/
from zh comments
“By 2030 you will own nothing and you will be happy” -Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum
This is all being forced through ESG scores under the direction of BlackRock and other major hedge funds and banks. This explosion of WOKE corporate virtue signaling and the buzzwords Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are the result of ESG. It is the financial mechanism for ushering in this new Globalist Technocracy. It transcends nations. It is an international corporate fascistic power grab branded under the flowery language and marketing of clever tyrants who learned from the failures of the soviet union and Nazi Germany.
Blackstone IS buying up suburbia and it’s part of their Green ESG ideology – people won’t move voluntarily to urban areas where Dem are in control and where Green infrastructure like subways and trains are almost financially viable – they would have long ago done that.
But that’s their goal so if they eliminate all suburban housing stock, their thinking is everyone will be forced to move to dense urban living. And that will be Green.
Except the masses probably won’t and largely haven’t. Lockdowns from COVID have done the opposite for anyone with a bit of money and brains.
The other problem: the Green New Deal was what was doing to pay to upgrade these urban centers, and that wasn’t likely viable but it’s definitely not happened nor will it happen at this point. But like good little NPCs, they stick to the plan even if a critical part of it has failed.
The democrat economic agenda is a ceaseless war against prosperity and the pursuit of happiness. Their goal is to shrink the middle class and expand welfare dependence.
None of the damage they do is accidental.
The plan is for the bigs to buy up housing at unaffordable levels and rent them out to slaves. Of course it won’t be every house but they will try their best.
Americans discovered that they could get hundreds of thousands more for their houses than what they paid for them and the millions of FOMO victims bought into the scheme. The FED aided and abetted the new house-price economy with essentially free money. If the free money comes to an end and the houses cost more than average Americans make in 2 or 3 lifetimes, only BlackRock, BlackStone, and Vanguard will be the buyers.
Plus they are given free money from the Fed to buy them. That is why they don’t care about pricing.
And then they can transform every American suburb into their own version of “The Prisoner”. go buy a super 7…lol…
The WEF will raise rates until people with debt lose everything, the remaining won’t be able to afford buying on credit with the new rates either. But we will be happy…. subscription homes, won’t be able to build your own, subscription food delivery, can’t grow your own….
Property rights and ownership are a primary pillar supporting a free society. When ownership is relegated to the upper-middle class and the wealthy the result is an inevitable social decline into various forms of feudalism or socialism.
For those with authoritarian ambitions, housing inflation is a boon. Homelessness feeds the kind of desperation that drives the public to support totalitarian actions. They might provide you with housing eventually, but it will be at a terrible cost. requirements: masked, injected, leftist vote,
The last thing anyone with common sense would want is for the government to become their landlord by default. It’s very hard to defy the trespasses of government overreach when that government controls the roof over your head.
guns and gold (real money) too….
When you think about it, it all comes down to control. In a system where currency is backed by gold and citizens have the individual right to own firearms, what do those two things give us, the peons? They give us power and control on a par with government – they level the playing field to some degree.
Very interesting Eric – this has been a phenomenon in London for over a decade now – central london (and even parts of Greater London now ) is full of shiny new tower blocks where even studios are over half a mil. But drive by the tower after dark and less than 10% of the lights are on. We were told it was black money from Asia, Africa and Russia, people looking for a place to park black money. But why rural America….
RE: “But why rural America….”
Everywhere, is fair game, to speculators both large & small.
Although, there’s nothing “fair” about The Easy Money Spigot those speculators access.
For decades now, Ben Jones has written extensively & in detail on his website about just that.
http://housingbubble.blog/
“Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.”
While his focus is usually the USA, his posts cover the whole world. Plus, as I recall, he’s a Libertarian.
A chart he linked to once has always stuck with me, it showed the price increases of houses in some of Western Europe & (I think) some of the New England area, from the 1500’s to the 1990’s or so. For most of that time period (hundreds of years!) the price level increase was a – straight – flat – line.
That, says something.
Add a dash of, “deferred maintenance” and you have the workings of disaster.
Martin Armstrong says the Austrians are wrong about the trigger for a Crack-Up-Boom. He says the trigger is when a large enough amount of people loose confidence in their goobermint. …I wonder at what point we are on that graph?