Hey guys! I've been thinking a lot about faith. By that, I mean, my personal relationship to the divine, within myself, and all around. I'm just wondering if you guys are believers. If so, what do you do to "cultivate" that faith of yours? Does it help you in your everyday life? And does it help you withstanding the economic stress we are being put under? Do you guys have any little "tips" to keep yourself in line with that faith, hence not drop the ball everytime a difficult situation arises. I know it is not totally linked to the economy, but I think that it helps to talk about it, and be relaxed about what's happening around us. Cheers!

Hi all - a bit off topic and curious on folks experiences out there. I've been thinking about single family home prices where the prices are strong and steadily increasing, mainly coastal cities. I've done a bit of number crunching, but really focused on looking around at the economy around me recently and talking to folks. I saw that some areas have markets that have generally gone from ~$250k in 2010, to ~$450k in 2019 to ~$800k for a typical B-Class single family home. I've had lots of conversations with people in all groups around major metro areas: young and living at home, younger millennial and stuck renting, elder millennial/young Xer home owner, boomers retiring in place et al. and one major takeaway I had was how many home owners are trapped in their homes, like Hotel California (you can check in any time you like, but you can never leave). Lots of these homeowners had steady income and bought these homes sometime between 2005-2019 and "couldn't afford their home now". I think these high price areas have a lot of people with mortgages that are significantly below current 1BDR rents in their area so they cannot leave. So it is not just the interest rate but they might not qualify for more debt if their salaries didn't rise as fast, or if they took on more debt like auto loans, credit card debt, wedding debt, etc. It seems to me the rents rose so fast and so high that it's frozen a whole generation into whatever living situation they had at the time, and I've been noticing the Cantillion observation that people do not work beyond their necessities. So they keep their day job because it pays the bills they have, and those people are getting frozen out, which in turn leads to a crash in sales. If that's the takeaway then do falling rates even matter if the potential sellers have nowhere else to go? Wont the prices be driven by the shrinking supply, and those prices rising raises rent demand, which raises rents? And if the problem is people frozen in their homes with lots of equity and growing 401ks, would mass job losses even bring the prices down or would those people continue to be frozen?

Breaking down the current events through the lens of the Credible Threat Theory

Interesting to see how dramatically different the inventory levels are across the nation. Really makes it feel like you are in a whole different experience depending on where you live. https://www.housingwire.com/articles/why-the-housing-inventory-map-is-so-startling/

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