Market Conditions: Median Price Declines 10.6% in Chicago in September
The September monthly sales and price stats for Chicago were released late last week.
Sales declined less than August- falling “only” 16% compared with a year-over-year decline of 30.8% the month before.
From Crain’s:
In the city, a total of just 1,770 single-family homes and condominiums were sold in September, compared with 2,108 during the same month a year ago.
In the entire Chicago area, sales last month dropped 6.2%, to 6,371 homes, compared with September 2007.
But prices are falling more sharply now.
In August, the Chicago median price was $295,750, down 3% from August 2007 which saw a median of $305,000.
In September, prices fell 10.6% year-over-year to $267,750.
City home sales dive 16%; median price tumbles 13% [Crain’s Chicago Business, Oct 24, 2008]
(Editor’s Note: This Crain’s headline is somewhat misleading as the median price fell 13% in the entire Chicago-area, not in the city itself. Prices fell 10.6% in the city.)
Look out below!
But, but, but there was no housing bubble in Chicago.
Don’t worry, the Olympics are coming in 8 years, everything will be fine. Now is a great time to buy and/or sell.
John
look out… winter is coming!
to all the realtors out there:
what % of realtors have decided to call it quits and/or have picked up a “second job”? Just curious.
Article about HENRYs (High Income Earners Not Rich Yet) who would seem to be the ones who could buy these expensive homes and condos….but taxes are going to increase on them….that is on top of 40% stock declines, currency erosion, home price declines, wage stagnation….. the additional taxes are going to hit these people hard (I’m one of them) and suck away the incentives to work so darn hard…
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0810/gallery.tully_henrys.fortune/index.html
John,
as a capitalist HENRY you earned your money off the backs of the others and by stealing/exploiting the poor. Now it’s fair time that you give back what you wrongfully took. You don’t deserve what you earned, you deserve to share it with the backs of those you trampled.
homedelete…..been watching Obama commercials? LOL I know you’re joking, but wanted to mention that the backs that people supposedly trampled on are those who were too lazy to bother to get a high school degree or GED. We can’t help those that don’t help themselves….time for responsibility, not socialism! 🙂 If or whatever reason, someone didn’t get their H.S. degree, then there are legit programs to get your GED….just do it!
There will be a tipping point.
It always cracks me up that people neglect to realize that it is often (not always) the achievement of few that brings success to many. Microsoft for instance.
I am somewhere that I see opportunity around every corner and believe I could easily build a business to hire thousands but the tax structure is so absurd it is better for me to just chill out on the beach and collect interest.
There is your macro and micro example.
That said I’d still take a few years of Communism over being the worlds pariah.
Ummm, IB, you won’t like what you will get….is this what you meant?
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/27/radio-interview-obama-laments-lack-supreme-court-ruling-redistributing-wealth/
“The interview — conducted by Chicago Public Radio in 2001, while Obama was an Illinois state senator and a law professor at the University of Chicago — delves into whether the civil rights movement should have gone further than it did, so that when “dispossessed peoples” appealed to the high court on the right to sit at the lunch counter, they should have also appealed for the right to have someone else pay for the meal.”
– Don’t we already have food stamps and tons of obese people in poverty?
I’m hungry. What’s that you got on your place? Gimme some of that.
I agree.. Not going to like it. But I took most everything out of the US the past 2 years. Now I can come back and have other people take care of me while I just smoke my weed and go bike riding 🙂 Best of both worlds… You HENRY guys are now mine!!!! So shut up and get back to work and pay for me.
Could be worse, could be in California…see foreclosure chart below if you have the stomach…
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QMoXJ8fOgo4/SQXII4YGaOI/AAAAAAAAD5s/C1RnW53YuMQ/s1600-h/foreclosure08q3.png
Click above for a shocking CA foreclosure chart….makes Chicago look nice!
That is, click on my name to view. Shocking.
The problem is that our tax code taxes only income. It doesn’t tax wealth. Penny P. who is worth billions pays relatively little tax because she doesn’t have much income per se, while the HENRYs in the article above are worth less than a couple hundred thousand but have high taxable income. If I were Obama I could declare a wealth tax, whereby I would tax the wealthy i.e. over $250k net worth (not including primary residence or retirement protected accounts) at a rate of 5% per year. That’s the way to raise real money to redistribute. You can force compliance upon the stock brokers and banks. For example, every year on April 15 if you haven’t paid your taxes already then the banks will automatically put out a sell order for 5% of your assets in whatever accounts you have, and the funds would be tendered directly to the government. People couldn’t lie about thier assets and the banks would just sell it. When one’s combined account value reaches less than $250,000 the taxing would stop. OF course the 5% tax would be *in addition* to regular tax rates.
Just something to think about …
“I’d still take a few years of Communism over being the worlds pariah.”
A few years?! Weren’t the toll roads only supposed to be around a few years. Anythime you cede anything to the government good luck getting it back.
“…every year on April 15 if you haven’t paid your taxes already then the banks will automatically put out a sell order for 5% of your assets in whatever accounts you have…”
So every April 15th we would have a 10-20% crash in the stock market. That’s a good plan.
“So every April 15th we would have a 10-20% crash in the stock market. That’s a good plan.”
No, if you haven’t paid your taxes by April 15th then the sell order would go out. The whole point would be to pay taxes early so as to avoid the crash all together.
homedelete – Have you been smoking with IB again? Seriously, chasing wealth from the US would be counter productive….hit them on inheritance taxes….so the trust fund babies have to become HENRYs too.
HD, like wile coyote I think you need to go back to the drawing board on that one.
See I would purposely not pay my taxes and then go short the week before 🙂
Ken… nothing could be worse than the past few years. I said it before.. just because taxes have not been literally raised your 1/300,000,000 liability of the US balance sheet has been accruing that payment for you very nicely.
Or in Joe the Plumber terms… Your taxes have gone up considerably already, you just haven’t received the bill in the mail yet.
Just take a cash advance from your children’s credit cards. They will have to pay it back eventually.
Nice close today in the market, but I did the math and even dropping 3% a day we still never technically get to 0, so there is hope.
Grab your helmets!
“If I were Obama I could declare a wealth tax” [sic]**
And you (implicitly) complain about Obama being a socialist?
**I assume you mean “would”, as I also assume you know that he “could” not “declare” a wealth tax.
Legalize weed and tax it like cigarettes. All problems solved! Of course income would drop since no one would go to work but I’m thinking this through as I go. Now what was I trying to figure out again?
Think of a wealth tax at 5%. If you retired and half your wealth was in illiquid assets you would be out of cash in less than 10 years.
Why not look at it another way….. cut government spending.
The government needs to tighten its belt like all americans will have to.
I’m just kidding about the 5% wealth tax, it’s a joke. Of course it’s counter-intuitive and makes no sense from our American standpoint but plenty of places around the world have instituted a wealth tax….often not at 5% but at 100% and it’s called nationalization or revolution i.e. see Venezula. (Chavez speaking to the press about his policies once said, “The people elected a socialist, what did they think I was going to do?”)
But the point of my story and the point of the article that discusses the topic, is that taxing the HENRYs isn’t like taxing the wealthy. If you want take money from the so-called rich (see the HENRYs) and redistribute it, you’re looking at the wrong bunch of people.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising he most money from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
– Alexander Tyler, 1778
HD.. What is interesting is that if you look at who pays the bills in the country, the higher earners pay well above their share already. When you look at it by wealth it is almost perfectly distributed. Your point is valid.
My only point is when the hell will someone talk about cutting expenses!!! Oh but then the obese person who refuses to be responsible for their own health cant be promised the little cart to ride around in and have their diabetes medicine paid for. My bad!
the top 0.1% of taxpayers by income pay 17.4% (earning 9.1% of the income), the top 1% with gross income pay 36.9% (earning 19%), the top 5% 57.1% (earning 33.4%), and the bottom 50% with gross income of $30,122 or less pay 3.3% (earning 13.4%)
If the federal taxation rate is compared with the wealth distribution rate, the net wealth (not only income but also including real estate, cars, house, stocks, etc) distribution of the United States does almost coincide with the share of income tax – the top 1% pay 36.9% of federal tax (wealth 32.7%), the top 5% pay 57.1% (wealth 57.2%), top 10% pay 68% (wealth 69.8%), and the bottom 50% pay 3.3% (wealth 2.8%).
So much for the rich not paying taxes.
“when the hell will someone talk about cutting expenses”
No options there–McCain proposes more spending, too. May as well vote for Bob Barr, if you want to make a point.
I have really had it with both parties…. we need start cutting government spending….. NOW! If government keeps spending on it merry way this country is done for. At some point the Chinese will not continue to buy our bad debt. When when this happen its going to be ugly..
The next shoe to drop could very well be Morgan Stanley. It appears the bank that bought a stake, MUFJ, not only paid a price well in excess of the market price of MS stock, but they’ve also made some other poor investments. Like injecting $3.5 billion in a California bank (UnionBanCal) and now MUFJ needs to raise capital. Other Japanese banks are expected to follow suit.
If the Japanese banks are successful in raising capital maybe the worst is behind is and MS lives. If they can’t: Lehman was nothing compared to the cascading effect on credit markets Morgan Stanley will have.
“…hit them on inheritance taxes…”
That’s flawed too. My parents, both retired (Dad was a construction working, Mom worked some part time jobs for 15+ years), have done everything right. Paid off their house, had little debt and built a big nest egg, that I’m sure is well into the six figures when you add everything up. When they pass on, hopefuly a long time from now, and I inherit that all their wealth, which has already been taxed over their lifetime, will be taxed again when I get it. Because, at that point, I’ll be the evil rich.
Why can’t parents “redistribute” their wealth to their kids without it being taxed through the roof?
“I’m sure is well into the six figures when you add everything up”
Do you have any idea what the exemption from the inheritence tax is (and was before 2000)? Look it up–it’s been well in excess of $1mm for decades.
There is a potential problem for succesful farmers and small business owners, but they are treated separately in other aspects of federal law (income taxation and bankruptcy being two obvious examples) so why not in inheritence tax, too? There’s no need to allow someone with $50mm in financial assets (i.e., stocks, bonds & cash) to avoid a tax just to protect a family business that could be appraised at $5mm.