The polio vaccine was not rushed out in six months, and people didn't suffer vaccine injuries like an inflamed heart like they did with the covid vaccine. Oh, qand we know nowthat covid came from the Wuhan lab which was funded by Dr. Fauci. Say, anyone ever see that movie Dallas Buyers Club? About the AIDS treatments? you know who the villain was in that movie? The asshole doctor who tried to stop the sick people from getting medicine? Dr. Fauci. Yes, that's right, the one and the same.

"San Francisco police make arrest in Tesla fires, not Waymo arson"

"The San Francisco police department has arrested a man in connection with the burning of two Teslas, but he is not a suspect in the torching of a Waymo robotaxi in Chinatown last month as the department initially said.

The Standard asked the department Monday morning whether an arrest had been made in the Feb. 10 Waymo incident in Chinatown. A public information officer responded with information about the arrest of a man on Feb. 27 near Union Square.

After the story was published, the department said it had confused the two vehicle arson cases, and that no arrest has been made in the Waymo case... "

"...Editor's note: This story has been revised to include updated information from the San Francisco Police Department about the arrest of a vehicle arson suspect clarifying that the man has not been linked to the Waymo burning."

To be more specific:

If there is a limited supply of high end homes, and the market is signalling high demand (because those homes are getting bid up for whatever reason), then there is an incentive for builders (not large builders working on tract housing, but spec builders doing individual projects) to buy up cheap land in those areas (which inevitably already have a house on them - likely a starter home), tear it down, and then convert it into higher end housing.

So, a starter home which might be 400k in a different jurisdiction is now worth 1.4M because of the land value, and after $300k worth of teardown and new construction, will be worth 2M, still enough for a spec builder to make this business model pay off.

I saw this happen often during the low interest rate period in Los Angeles, when low mortgage rates were spurring bidding wars and all-cash purchases. I have no idea if this is still a thing, but this might be one mechanism by which starter homes are being removed from the market and converted to homes which are "more valuable" - especially from a property tax perspective.

Or to put it another way - we might say that we value more affordable starter homes, but that's not how the current incentives are aligned in many places.

On the slightly less (or more, depending on which side of the fence you're on) pessimistic POV, I've also seen single neighborhoods (and former industrial/commercial sites) bought up and razed to produce higher density housing (1-4 condos on 1-2 lots, or apartment/condo complexes on blocks near a Metro station) - still on the high end, but at least there's theoretically more housing supply being produced at the end of the process. Some even have mixed use built in, which is encouraging.

Again, I don't know with the current interest rates if those projects are still being started. It could be that the buildings I'm currently seeing were all started before the current wave of rate hikes and/or covid-related issues with rent stabilization and eviction, and that investors have soured on building more high density housing with the possibility of dealing with those risks in the future.

In the meantime, collapsing financing from Chinese developers means we have several perfectly good (if unfinished) residential towers in LA!

https://www.cbsnews.com/losang...

Time to hold a tax lien sale?

Oof. The "homestead exemption" in California worth about $77 off your property tax bill each year (1.1% * the exempted value of $7000). I guess it is worth doing if you plan on staying in your place for a long time... you can save $770 after 10 years?

https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptax...

"I'd be very interested in downsizing but even if I buy a smaller house, my property tax is likely to go up so I'm not going anywhere."

So three assumptions I could infer from that under the old Prop 60/90 rules:

1. Not old enough to bring your current property tax with you. (https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/prop60-90_55over.htm)
2. Doesn't matter if you bring your current property tax with you, a smaller place would cost more than your current place, thereby negating some (all?) of the benefits of retaining your current tax assessment.
3. You want to buy in an area where this rule does not apply (in a county in California that does not have this transfer approved, or outside of California.)

Apparently Prop 19 changed some of the rules...

https://www.thomashenthorne.co...

Correct. Institutional buyers use leverage. If rates are high, they can't use the cheap money conveyor belt to leverage up.

I suspect that criminals (like institutional buyers) buy where the return is higher. Instead of spreading their money out across the US, they're going to purchase in areas of high demand to make sure their "investment" doesn't go down. While I cannot give specific examples in the US real estate market, a similar market across the border in Vancouver gives one indication:

https://news.gov.bc.ca/release...

"More than $7 billion in dirty money was laundered in B.C. in 2018"

It could mean that B.C. is that more corrupt... or that Janet Yellen is dramatically underestimating how much dirty money is being moved into real estate in the US.

Either way, I think the impact on real estate prices is not negligible, but that's just my opinion.

Asset acquisition is a side effect of ultra-low interest rates. People borrow money cheaply, use it to buy assets, and then borrow against the assets as they appreciate to buy more assets.

https://fortune.com/2023/05/05...

"...But it isn't just about home prices: Interest rates on âoefloatingâ loans offered to firms like Yieldstreet are still in the 7% to 8% range, Joshi says. Those high interest rates, coupled with frothy home prices, mean that buying new single-family rentals doesnâ(TM)t make a lot of sense right now for some institutional investors.

Joshi says Yieldstreet is waiting for either house prices to take another leg down or interest rates to come back down. Or both.

âoeIf short-term [interest] rates came down around 4%, and if home prices were about 15% lower than the peak last year, that is a valuation that supports the equity return that investors need to make,â Joshi tells Fortune...."

I mean, you could specifically come out and say, it is against the best interests of public policy for hedge funds to purchase starter homes, and build in penalties/subsidies to help re-balance the distribution of homes. However, you'd probably get push back from existing homeowners who want to sell for a higher price, if such policies dampened investor demand, and thus real estate appreciation. You'd also probably get push back from states and local governments who want the higher property assessments so they can collect more in property taxes...

I mean, seriously, there's a reason that real estate traditionally turned a blind eye to dirty money and the use of real estate for money laundering. If the criminals stop buying real estate... the prices don't rise as fast, and realtors/brokers stop getting fat commission checks.

https://www.reuters.com/world/...

"If finalized, the new rule would replace a patchwork system that anti-corruption advocates have said has allowed bad actors to hide the proceeds of illicit activity by buying homes through legal entities or trusts, without financing.
Last year, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that criminals for decades have anonymously hidden such ill-gotten gains in real estate, estimating $2.3 billion was laundered through U.S. real estate between 2015 and 2020.
Financial institutions have long been expected to flag suspicious activity to regulators, but cash real estate transactions generally have not been subject to such rules. The new requirements would demand real estate professionals involved in such transactions collect and report data to FinCEN about the property being sold, the seller and the beneficial owner of any legal entity receiving the property."

This would have been a great visa to have during covid.

The majors are explicitly cutting liability ties with the state.

Kind of like how Verizon sold off all the landline assets to Frontier when they went wireless only.

So the assets are there, but they're pretty much guaranteed to be stranded due to prevailing public policy. So the people taking them over won't have deep pockets to sue later if California gets unhappy with the arrangement (for whatever reason.)

So I think divorce is probably a very apt analogy. Cut ties with the crazy person and let someone else deal with them.

They've also made a strange habit of basically encouraging refineries to shut down, discouraging the construction of new refineries, and then blaming said (remaining) refineries shutting down (for needed maintenance) for higher fuel prices and calling it industry greed.

The disconnect is real.

https://ktla.com/news/local-ne...

"âoeCalifornia has made it very difficult to be a refinery here. In fact, the number of refineries here has fallen by more than half since 1991,â he says. âoeItâ(TM)s a spectacular level of policy failures from pushing renewable fuels, which cut the amount of output at refineries, to [emissions regulations] that require special blends in special areas at special times of the year.â

Caught in the middle, of course, are drivers who have no option but to dig deeper into their pocketbooks just to stay on the road."

BTW, for gasoline, California for the most part, consumes gasoline that it refines for itself, because the lower-emission summer blends needed are not produced elsewhere. This pretty much guarantees that our gasoline is more expensive because there isn't an alternative.

https://www.kcra.com/article/c...

""Thereâ(TM)s a lot thatâ(TM)s going wrong. First, the rising price of oil, but the lack of refining capacity, a special blend thatâ(TM)s only required in California, high taxes, a cap-and-trade program all of that. When prices are running normally, California is still about a dollar a gallon above everyone else," said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy."

Wow... new attack vectors using GPS spoofing.

GPS spoofing to speed (fool your own car.)

GPS spoofing to cause traffic jams (force cars to suddenly decelerate when previously traveling at freeway speeds.)

Actually, depending on how this is implemented, you won't even need to spoof GPS. Are you using an onboard database or an external one to determine speeds? If an onboard one, that has to be able to be updated on a regular basis. If an external one... you might be able to man in the middle that.

Until they go and talk to Bombardier and/or Embraer and ask them to build bigger jets, there's not much in the way of other options. Airbus is booked solid.