Thursday, September 26, 2019

I'd say this is jumping the gun a little.

Pending Home Sales Confirm Housing Market Rebound.

Meanwhile in the Bay Area.....

Bay Area home sales fall steeply.

High prices lead to lowest home sales in nearly a decade.

"Prospective Bay Area home buyers abandoned the market in August, as home sales dipped to a nine-year, monthly low despite falling interest rates and more choices.

Sales of existing and new homes fell 5.3 percent from the previous August, and were off more than 20 percent from the historic norms for the month, according to a report released Thursday by real estate data firm CoreLogic. Residential real estate transactions have dropped 13 straight months.."

I guess the media has figured out that some of us are getting freaked out by the comparisons to 2009, so all of a sudden they have vaguely been writing "lowest in a decade". That doesn't fool us! We can do backwardised math.

Also, if the rest of the country doesn't know - all of a sudden gas prices here are set to go over 4 bucks a gallon. We have four refineries down and the spike is rumored to be 30 cents in a week. This is not going to help consumer sentiment which is already taking a hit (I believe) because of falling house prices.

2 comments:

  1. "Also, if the rest of the country doesn't know - all of a sudden gas prices here are set to go over 4 bucks a gallon."

    I blame Jimmy Carter.

    If it weren't for diagonal drilling and the developments from that, we'd be absolutely screwed when it comes to fuel, and the chicanery he pulled back in the 1970s would have laid the foundation for that. Instead, we're lucky it's only this bad despite what his shitstorm of regulations.

    The price increases aren't as bad in the Gulf states: $3 for 93 octane, about $2.50 for 87 octane.

    Yeah, we don't have that shitty 85 octane California gas here.

    When I was in California for a while, I used to have to feed my vehicle a "103+ octane booster" every time I filled up. The manufacturer stated flat out that you shouldn't run it on anything less than 91 octane and that 93 octane was preferable.

    I drove around with a case of fuel additives until I was finally out of California.

    Flushing the last remnants of boosted California gas somewhere around Eugene, Oregon was a great moment out on the road. :-)

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  2. I actually blame the State of California. Every time the economy has a soft spot they jack up the gas taxes. No one notices because in real terms the price came down, but California makes it so they never see that reduction because they jack up the tax.

    Then all fo a sudden when the price gets high again everyone freaks out and the somewhat attractive Bernie Sanders(Gavin Newsome) says - wey don't know why the gas taxes are so high.

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