Here Comes the Inventory of Vacant Homes: With Buyers on Strike despite Lower Mortgage Rates, Supply Spikes to Highest in 4 Years. Sales Drop Further except at High End

A game-changer is underway. Even the NAR concedes this “shift from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market.”

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Mortgage rates have dropped to about 6.8%, down by a full percentage point from October last year, and yet sales of existing homes have plunged, and vacant homes for sale are coming out of the woodwork, the same vacant homes that the industry said didn’t exist, the second and third homes that people had moved out of but didn’t sell when they bought a new home over the past few years in order to ride the price spike all the way to the top. So now it’s time to sell those vacant homes. And supply in June spiked to the highest level in four years.

Sales of existing homes of all types – single-family houses, townhomes, condos, and co-ops – fell 5.4% in June from May on a seasonally adjusted basis, and also by 5.4% year-over-year to an annual rate of 3.89 million homes, the third-lowest sales volume since the depth of the Housing Bust in 2010, behind only October and December 2023, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) today.

Jamie Dimon Goes Missing from Earnings Call, After Dumping $183 Million of His JPMorgan Chase Stock Earlier this Year

By Pam and Russ Martens July 17, 2024

We can’t remember a time when the Chairman and CEO of the largest, most complex and scandal-ridden bank in the United States, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, was too busy to squeeze in an appearance at the company’s heavily-scrutinized quarterly earnings call with analysts. That happened last Friday.

When something happens for the first time at a bank that has racked up five felony counts, has been doled out non-prosecution and deferred-prosecution agreements by the U.S. Department of Justice in a steady drumbeat since 2014, and spent most of last year in the headlines for a decade of sluicing tens of thousands of dollars per month in hard cash to the international sex trafficker of children, Jeffrey Epstein, it pays to sit up and pay attention.

Reuters’ reporter John Foley also found it “unusual” that Dimon had missed the earnings call last Friday, writing that “neither throat cancer nor an aortic dissection” had stopped Dimon from being present at earnings calls in the past.

The Benefits of DIY Investing

By Brad Thomas

Editor’s note: Today, you’ll hear from colleague and former real estate developer Brad Thomas…

When he lost almost everything in the 2008 housing crash, Brad successfully rebuilt his fortune using his “sleep well at night” investment strategy focusing on building reliable income streams via the stock market.

And he’s made it his mission to help his readers do the same…

So, in today’s issue, he shares some of the key benefits of taking a more hands-on approach to your investments rather than relying exclusively on others to help you build your portfolio.

Read on for the details from Brad…

Here’s an interesting statistic: Between June and August 2020, internet searches for home improvement projects increased by 50% compared to the prior year.

That’s according to Porch.com, a company that hosts a platform for homeowners to find contractors in their area.