Housing market may be "softening"

No one is predicting a crash in the housing market yet, but there are signs of a slow-down. Mostly due to raising mortgage rates and a change in the tax law, in my opinion. Realtor.com has a analysis via the link below.

Then there are the smaller cities, like Austin, TX, and Nashville, TN, that burst onto the national scene just a few years ago—poster children for the supercharged housing recovery. Home prices rose to meteoric heights as builders raced to put up new abodes and transplants from even higher-priced metros flooded the cities. At the same time, their populations shot up 18.5% and 10.6% respectively from April 1, 2010, to July 1, 2017, according to U.S. Census data.

And then, despite all the hype, list prices did the unthinkable—they began to fall. Austin is a particular eye-opener: List prices dipped about 3%, to a median of $362,000 in August compared with the previous year, according to our realtor.com analysis. The year before that they dipped 2%. And while median sales prices (what these abodes actually fetched) actually rose4.2% for the year, according to CoreLogic, it's the slowest rate of growth since 2010.

"Home prices have just gone up too fast," ATTOM's Blomquist says of Austin. "It doesn't mean that all of a sudden it's a market that's going to crash. But it does mean there are limits to what people can afford."

Housing Slowdown? Softening? Whatever You Call It, It's Real and It's Here

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What happened when a Trump Supporter Challenged Me About the Wall

Vicky Alvear Schecter wrote in Medium | Poltics on Dec. 27, 2018 using her headline above. I thought it was pretty well written -- at least she made an attempt to keep her liberal bias out of it -- regardless of a few illogical fallacies.

But she does make an attempt, in an effort to avoid her liberal bias, as she ponders "...in order not to be accused by bias, I explained that I would only use conservative sources to prove my point."

To me, that's bias to start out with that premise. And I believe her premise is that she is against the wall. That's her stance. But she makes some good points, but some are skewed, even though she attempt to take a "conservative" approach, even by citing some "conservative" sources in her footnotes.

Here's the first problem: if she wanted to avoid bias, why not just stick to the the historical facts as written (when you can find them without bias), and not concern oneself with bias. "I must reject that becau…

Weekly wrap for Nov 9

After Thursday and Friday, it might seem the markets are down, but the weekly numbers tell a different story, with the three major indices up for the week. The Nasdaq, with its tech exposure, had the smallest increase. The tech sector is obviously under recent pressure.

IndexNov 2Nov 9+/-%S&P 5002,723.062,781.01+ 57.95+ 2.12%Nasdaq7,356.997,406.90+ 49.91+ 0.67%DOW 3025,270.8325,989.30+ 718.47+ 2.84%
Over the last 12 months, the Dow is up 10.77 percent, the SP 500 up 7.6 percent, and the Nasdaq up 9.7 percent.

The weekly chart of the SPY still indicates a long position in the broader market. (The blue line is the 34-week moving average; the red is the 13-week moving average).

While the U.S. economy still seems to be just fine from most reports, investors seemed to worry about a couple of things on Thursday and Friday: 1) The Eurozone, 2) trade with China, and 3) the Fed and interest rates. Another topic of interest has been oil.

First, it seems that the Fed has really not indicated …

U.S. Top Oil Producer, Thanks to Obama

\ You read that right.

The U.S. is now the largest oil producer in the world, according to the EIA, producing some 15 million BOE per day, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. (Remember back when Jimmy Carter said in 1979 the answer to our energy problems was to wear a warmer sweater...but you probably don't. He actually said this on national TV).

The United States is the top oil-producing country in the world, with an average of 14.86 million b/d, which accounts for 15.3% of the world's production. This is down from 15.12 million b/d in 2015, but it was enough to land the United States in the No. 1 spot, which it has held for the past four years running. (Source: Investopedia.)

Guess who takes credit for it? Granted, this increase in production began in 2012, but only because of private industry and the fact that the price of oil was at nearly all-time highs. And it dipped in 2016 because of Obama's anti-oil policies!

But here he is again:

Former President Barack Obama sure l…

personal economics 101

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