The beatings will continue until morale improves

 30-year fixed mortgage rate tops 7% for the first time in over a year

There is plenty of housing available, but year over year sales in August are up only on homes priced more than $1 million

New houses are selling at an annualized rate of 607,000 in July 2026, with 488,000 available in July and supply at 9.6 months. 

Existing homes are selling at an annual rate of 3.98 million in August with 1.62 million available and supply at 4.9 months.

Highest supply in a decade for existing homes indicates sellers are asking too much.

You know what to do. 

 

 Home sales fall in August despite the highest supply in over a decade

... Sales of previously owned homes fell 2% in August from July to 3.98 million units on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis, according to the National Association of Realtors.

... Housing supply totaled 1.62 million homes for sale at the end of August, up 3.2% from July and up 5.9% from the year before. At the current sales pace, that represents a 4.9-month supply — the highest level in over a decade, according to NAR.

Despite more supply, prices continue to rise. The median price of a home sold in august was $429,100, up 1.6% from August 2025. That is a new record high for the month of August.

... Homes are sitting on the market longer, averaging 31 days in August compared with 29 days in July. ...

Golden Age NOT: Just 49.14% had a full time job in August 2026, the second lowest figure for an August in 11 years

Both Biden and Trump have had this figure above 50%, but even that has been pathetically weak.

 

Compared to the past, 50% should be the floor, not the ceiling.

 

I remain disgusted with the complacency of both political parties, as demonstrated by the complete absence of urgency about the one thing which is the very ticket to the middle class. 

 

August 2016: 49.59%

August 2017: 49.87%

August 2018: 50.36%

August 2019: 50.94%

August 2020: 47.44%

August 2021: 49.18%

August 2022: 50.58%

August 2023: 50.68%

August 2024: 49.98%

August 2025: 49.44%

August 2026: 49.14%

 

 

Bond yields and oil wars and inflation, oh my!

Global bond yields soar to multi-decade highs as Middle East turmoil reignites inflation fears

 

10-year yield hits highest since January 2025 as higher oil prices stoke inflation worries 

 

Vance suspects Antichrist 'among us'...  

 

... like I'd be not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us ... 

 

Well . . . what a coincidence!

 

👇 

 

 

VGSIX vs. SPX since May 1996

Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund Investor Shares average annual since inception 5/13/1996 through July 2026 (single-family residential REITs are just 3.35% of the current holdings):

 

9.07% (last 10 years 4.61%, 5 years 2.28%, 3 years 9.15%, 1 year 15.04%)

 

S&P 500 average per annum nominal, dividends reinvested, same period:

 

10.30% 

Oh, so you don't think real estate is a bfd

 

I remember when Japan was going to replace us, then after that it was China . . .

 

Gen Z hypocrites who ridiculed suburban inauthenticity now sad they'll never be able to have it

What Do Young People Really Want? The Suburbs.

A steady job, a simple house, and a quiet life used to sound like hell to many young people. Now the old American dream is back. 

Politicians these days cannot stop talking about “affordability,” especially for housing. And Americans’ cries for relief have grown loud enough to push lawmakers from babbling into action. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law last month with overwhelming bipartisan support within Congress. It’s encouraging to see members of both parties coming together around something other than just spending more money—and doing so in a way that helps the young more than the old.

In fact, young people are supplying most of the pressure behind this political movement. A Pew Research poll last month found that 89 percent believe buying a home will be harder for them than it was for their parents’ generation.

And it isn’t just the homes themselves. Americans still believe the American dream is worth striving for, yet less than half believe that every American has the opportunity to achieve it. Many young people are trying to find their way toward a lifestyle their parents had that they took for granted and now feel they cannot reach as adults. That includes owning a home, having a good-paying job with benefits, and being able to afford some added comforts in addition to the necessities. In a word, suburbia.

It’s an extraordinary and ironic turn that bourgeois suburban life would become the deepest desire of many young Americans. I grew up in the suburbs in a time when you had to hate the suburbs. ...

If you want to get a feel for the zeitgeist back then, check out Green Day’s 2004 American Idiot album, especially the 9-minute-long epic “Jesus of Suburbia.” Everyone’s so full of shit / Born and raised by hypocrites. It’s a spirited rejection of George W. Bush, the Iraq War, hypocritical parents, and apparently, the suburbs. ... 

Shoulda saved your pennies instead of buying a house

25 years ago copper was 65-cents a pound, today it's $6.65. 

Adjusted for inflation it should be more like $1.22. Copper is up 923%.

By contrast the median sales price of houses sold in the United States is up only 140%.

He'll be taking credit for it sooner or later

 Bipartisan housing bill automatically becomes law after Trump refuses to sign it

30-year mortgages have averaged above 6.00% since August 2022

 It will be four consecutive years in September 2026.

 

 

The Trump clown show now says the housing bill is so unimportant, you know, the bill he urged Congress to pass in a White House proclamation on June 12th lol

 

I was confidently told House Speaker Mike Johnson would never go against Trump by sending him the housing bill lol

 Exclusive: Johnson says housing bill will become law, with or without Trump

... "He won't veto the bill. We already know that. He'll either allow it to just go into law, or he'll put his signature on it and take partial ownership, and I hope he does the latter." ... 

House Speaker Mike Johnson sends housing bill to Trump, starting 10-day clock

 

Well guess what, Speaker Mike Johnson apparently never presented the housing bill to the president, so the 10-day clock is not ticking for it to become law

 Trump halts bipartisan victory lap on housing 

... One potential wrinkle in that 10-day clock is that it doesn’t start until the enrolled bill has been officially “presented” to the president.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether that had happened yet as of Trump’s social media post at 10:26 a.m. But as the day went on it became apparent the bill still hadn’t been presented to the president, according to a top Democrat.

House Minority Whip Katherine M. Clark, D-Mass., laid the blame at Johnson’s feet.

“Mike Johnson could, right now, at any time, formally present this bill to the president and make the president choose: Will he veto it or will it become law in ten days?” Clark said at a news conference. “But Mike Johnson is not choosing that path. That is a betrayal of duty.”

Aides to Johnson didn’t respond to requests for comment. ...

 

President Applesauce Brains II forgot that he urged Congress 12 days ago to pass the bill which he refused to sign today lol

 

As long as Trump doesn't veto the damn thing, the Uniparty's housing bill will become law in 10 days without his signature

 But he will be remembered negatively for it in November either way.

Democrats who want to impeach the president will include it prominently in their campaigns against him. 

Throwing a fit over this is about as smart as attacking Iran without a plan to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. 

He has learned nothing

 

Trump cancels signing of bipartisan housing bill, demanding voter-ID provision

This housing bill will not help people become homeowners by freeing up existing supply

 House passes affordable housing bill, sends it to Trump’s desk

The U.S. House voted Tuesday night 358-32 in favor of a sprawling housing package designed to lower costs for homebuyers and increase supply. ...                                       

The broad bi-partisan support for the bill tells you it won't do much for very many people anytime soon.

But expect the politicians to brag on it as silly season ramps up. 

A key provision of the bill caps institutional investor ownership of single family homes at 350 from here on out.

Investors already owning single family homes, however, at whatever level, are grandfathered in. Blackstone, for example, owns approximately 58k such homes. It is thus prevented from buying number 58,001 under the bill.

That means that the approximately 530k+ homes currently owned by institutions, which is only about 4% of the single family housing rental pie, will not be forcibly sold into the market.

About 87% of the pie is individual investors who own in the neighborhood of 1-5 homes. There will be no change mandated there either, which is where most of the available single family housing stock is. 

There are 46.4 million renter-occupied housing units in the United States in the first quarter. Of those, approximately 11.3 million are single family homes. That means that the number of owners of those rental homes ranges roughly between 9.8 million and 2 million individual investors, probably living in a rich suburb right near you.   

The bill does prevent umbrella companies from owning multiple small entities created by individual investors to beat the 350 cap, with stiff penalties, so that is good.

The problem is this bill entrenches the status quo of the rich preying on both ends of the housing spectrum.

Mobile homes in parks are not considered single family homes under the bill. They are considered multi-unit commercial real estate. Private equity investors are notorious for buying up these parks full of affordable housing and jacking up lot rents on approximately 4.3 million homesites to the moon. Up to 12 million mostly low income Americans live in such parks.

The bill eliminates the mobile chassis rule for new manufactured homes, marginally reducing their cost. But imagine parking one in one of those parks and being unable to move it while the landlord holds a rent gun to your head. There are other provisions in the bill to help these existing park owners, and the mobile home owners who live there to borrow more to pay the greedy bastards.

11.3 million hostages to the rich on the front end, 12 million on the ass end. 

The bill had passed in the U.S. Senate 85-5 on Monday. 

Since the beginning of the 21st century in the United States, growth of renter-occupied housing continues in the ascendant while growth of owner-occupied housing continues south.

We still live with the deleterious effects of the Great Recession, when more than 6 million residences were completely foreclosed in the United States, and this is the best our elected representatives can do almost two decades on. 

Congress is already getting Mamdanied as this goes to Trump for his signature.

 

 

 

The homeownership rate soared to 68.8% in 2006 after nearly twenty years of Alan Greenspan at the Fed

 The rate when he began as Fed chairman was 64% in 1987, and again in 1990 and 1994, before taking off during the Clinton-Gingrich era.

Supporting the high homeownership rate was full time employment on an average annual basis north of 50% of population for twenty-three consecutive years 1986-2008. 

We call it The Lost World.