John T. Reed’s news blog
Wall Street Journal again claiming homes are in a slump when they went up 3.9%
Posted by John Reed on
More attempts to discourage home buyers in the Wall Sreet Journal today by their reporter Nicole Friedman..The usual nutty logic..Basically, principal residences are good investments because they appreciate in value, provide you with a place to live, and have two dozen structural advantages not available to owners of other assets, even an identical house across the street that is rented to a tenant.. .Nicole says "home sales have slumped this year.".Home prices?.No. .Home Sales. Unit sales. Realtors® got fewer commissions. Why is she telling us that? What the hell do people who are not collecting money at home settlements care...
The Wall Street Journal continues to mislead as to the resilience of the home as an investment.
Posted by John Reed on
Another WSJ article on the “chilled” home market today. Reporter Nicole Friedman is back to her mantra—using her usual borderline irrelevant data points like until sales of homes, mortgage interest rates (the market automatically adjusts to them) and seizing on tiny downward movements of Realtor®’s median existing home prices as proof of a bad housing market. The corporation that owns Realtor®dotcom also owns the WSJ. Realtor® home prices are the most misleading The Realtor® median existing home price figure is the most misleading one for various reasons. (only sales generating commissions, hardly any new homes, leaves out condos and townhouses...
A reverse mortgage is a great way to profit from inflation by shorting the purchasing power of the US dollar
Posted by John Reed on
Shorting USD inflation I recently wrote that your basic home with a mortgage was the world’s greatest short. You are shorting the US dollar losing purchasing power and you are doing that by borrowing a bunch of them. The way the famous Wall Street shorts work is you sell a stock or option before you buy it at the expiration date of the option in the hope that it will fall in price below what your buyer has to pay you in the future. Such shorts have a limited upside but an unlimited downside-because the stock price can only...
Wall Street Journal says China may get deflation. What is that?
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A WSJ article today says deflation looms in China..What flation?.DEflation..Is that the opposite of inflation? In some ways, yes. I actually wrote a book on deflation. But I did not use that word. Why not? Americans do not understand it..The book is titled "How to Protect Your Life Savings from Hyperinflation & Depression.". https://johntreed.com/collections/john-t-reed-s-book-on-hyperinflation-and-depression/products/how-to-protect-your-life-savings-from-hyperinflation-and-depression.Is depression deflation? Yes..So the best "answer" to the question is deflation the opposite of inflation would be is depression the opposite of hyperinflation? Was the US in 1932 the opposite of Weimar Germany in 1922?.The worst thing to own in inflation is dollar-denominated assets. The worst...
Do not buy rental property; just more and more expensive principal residences.
Posted by John Reed on
On Friday's, the WSJ has a "Mansion" section. It is what it sounds like—expensive houses. . My most recent book advocated doing all your real estate investing via your principal residences and moving up to a more expensive one whenever you can do so safely. . . Generally, that would have you end up with a $5 to $10 million dollar house. But I also said NOT to buy more than one acre of lot nor more than about 3,500 square feet of interior home. . The Mansion section has some houses that comply with those two rules, but most...