John T. Reed’s news blog

Profitable rehabThe vast majority of real estate rehab do NOT make money. They lose money. But the amount of time that lapses is so great that marketwide appreciation that would have happened withOUT the rehab is the actual source of the profit, but the rehabber incorrectly claims it was his rehab that caused the value increase..What types of rehab ARE profitable? • Adding a bedroom to a one-bedroom house or apartment (Adding a third bedroom is less likely to be profitable)• Cleaning dirty property by power wash, scrubbing, brass polish brass, etc. is rehab, not just painting or carpeting which...

The spin war on home prices gets more comical by the day. Today’s WSJ has a front-page graph showing median home prices set a new record at $416,000 (NAR existing homes) in June. . But the printed headline said “Record Home Prices Hit Sales.” . Do you know who cares about home “Sales?” Realtors®. I used to be one in the 1970s. They get commissions—one per sale. Fewer home sales means fewer commissions. . It used to be that mass media reported on home sale prices because every homeowner and would-be homeowner cares greatly about home values. For most Americans,...

I just learned of an important blog about my undergraduate alma mater West Point. It is called https://usmadata.com/. . A more complete title might be . • The Unofficial Web Site of the United States Military Academy at West Point • The West Point Loyal Opposition • What You Need To Know About West Point that West Point Won’t Tell You • The Inconvenient Truth About West Point . The blog extensively researches West Point policies and results through Freedom of Information Act requests and scrutinizing pertinent laws and regulations and reports. . In recent years, West Point appears to...

I recently wrote here that the increases in interest rates now going on will soon consume prohibitive amounts of the US budget. In Today’s WSJ, Red Jahncke, head of Townsend Group LLC says what I said in more detail. . I used the phrase “death spiral” of the USD. Jahncke uses the phrase “vicious circle.” . If you look at the pie chart of the budget, the biggest slices are health care, pensions, and defense, in that order—all over a trillion each. Then comes interest at a paltry $357B. Not for long. . Jahncke says with the new higher interest...

The WSJ finally stopped trying to talk home prices down and reported on them accurately. Today’s headline is “Home-Price Growth Stays Strong Despite Mortgage-Rate Rise.” . Isn’t that nice? They even accompany that headline with an honest graph. Those have a zero on the Y axis at the bottom left. If they had not done that, like making the bottom left 15%, the drop in the last twelve months appreciation from 20.6% to 20.4% would have looked bigger. Nicole Friedman wrote this story. I do not know who decided on the honest-for-a-change headline. . And they graph the Case-Shiller home...