It's a show.
Video allegedly shows a gaping hole in the Texas border wall less than half a mile from where armed guards and media are present
byu/redeemer404 inPublicFreakout
Jan 29, 2024
Today's Reddit
Chickens And Roosts
It was pretty for Trump last week. Judge Engeron could make it worse any day now.
Last Week Was Bad for Trump. This Week Could Be Four, Five Times Worse.
The former president’s trials are starting to take a toll—and Judge Engoron could be poised to deal another savage blow possibly by Wednesday.
Think $83.3 million is a lot of money? Well, hold onto your hat, buster, because this week, New York Judge Arthur Engoron is supposed to announce the penalty he’s slapping on Donald J. Trump in the Trump Organization fraud case.
The case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2022, accuses Trump of lying to bankers and insurers about the value of his properties. Last September, Engoron declared in a summary judgment that the evidence clearly said Trump had done so. He wrote in his ruling: “In defendants’ world: Rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies. That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”
Last month, Engoron said he was aiming to announce the fine amount by January 31. That’s Wednesday. James is seeking $370 million.
Last week’s damage award in the E. Jean Carroll case was staggering. We had a little office pool going (well, just three of us, and we didn’t actually bet money). I came in highest at $40 million, so under traditional Price Is Right rules, I was the closest, but nevertheless light-years off. That rigged, deep-state jury took all of three hours to award Carroll more than three times what lawyer Roberta Kaplan was asking.
Is there a precedent there for a larger reward than was even being sought? Signs are promising. Engoron, you’ll recall, showed little patience for Trump’s courtroom antics. Earlier this month, he nixed Trump’s attempt to make a closing argument. “Not having heard from you by the third extended deadline (noon today), I assume that Mr. Trump will not agree to the reasonable, lawful limits I have imposed as a precondition to giving a closing statement above and beyond those given by his attorneys, and that, therefore, he will not be speaking in court tomorrow,” the judge wrote. Trump nevertheless managed to blurt out a few sentences of petulant nonsense. “Please control your client,” Engoron advised his counsel.
Bad? Yep. But the knife took another twist into Trump’s flesh last Friday, the same day the Carroll jury threw all that buckshot in Trump’s face. Barbara Jones was appointed last fall by Engoron to monitor some of the Trump Organization’s transactions. On Friday, Jones wrote Engoron a 12-page letter saying, in part: “I have identified certain deficiencies in the financial information that I have reviewed, including disclosures that are either incomplete, present results inconsistently, and/or contain errors.” So—what’s your bet? Maybe $400 million? What about $500? Who knows?
The money isn’t even the main factor in play, especially considering that Trump probably doesn’t have it and wouldn’t pay it even if he did. No—the nuclear bomb here, the real psychological waterboarding of Donald John Trump, will come if Engoron strips him and his company of the ability to do business in New York state. This option is on the table because Trump was prosecuted under a 1956 law that allows courts the ability to issue a “permanent and plenary ban” on a company if the behavior is egregious enough to warrant it.
Sounds heavy, right? No question it would be a crushing blow to Trump’s ego. But guess what? Trump is such an accomplished con man that this isn’t even the first time the law has been used to prosecute him. Trump University set that precedent. One of Trump’s lawyers whined last week that the law was overbroad and unfair: “This is not just about President Trump. Every major bank CEO and every Wall Street participant should speak out now before the Attorney General’s shocking and tyrannical interference in the capital markets places all New York business transactions at risk.”
Quick … does that statement remind you of anything? It should. To me it sounds an awful lot like Trump’s own blubbering about presidential immunity—that all presidents need blanket immunity because someone is bound to sue them after they leave office over something they did.
Well—no: Somehow or another, we’ve had 46 presidents, and only one of them has faced this kind of legal scrutiny after he left office. That’s because only one president, so far as we know, spent his entire adult life in and out of office flagrantly ignoring the law (one other kind of did, but he resigned and retreated to a mostly quiet life of writing books, and society decided to leave him more or less alone).
So no, presidents don’t need blanket immunity. Trump keeps inventing examples—maybe an ex-president will be sued for having bombed some country. I guess any jerk can file any kind of nuisance lawsuit, but all Congress has to do is pass a law (if indeed one is not already on the books) protecting ex-presidents from legal action arising from policymaking decisions. Ex-presidents—and major bank CEOs and Wall Street “participants”—who obey the law don’t need blanket immunity!
And speaking of immunity: Where’s the ruling on that? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard arguments on January 9, and a lot of people are wondering what’s taking so long. This was the hearing where one of the judges, Florence Pan, noted that under Trump’s theory, a president could order Seal Team 6 to kill a political opponent and face no consequences. It’s widely expected that the court will rule against Trump, and he will appeal.
What a way to start a year! Maybe about a half-a-billion dollars in fines, and a court ruling that is expected to torch his ridiculous immunity theory and allow other prosecutions to proceed. Speaking of which, Jack Smith is looming right around the corner. All while Trump is going to be crowned the Republican nominee. You have to believe that at least some normie Americans are going to see that something’s wrong with this picture.
Last Week Was Bad for Trump. This Week Could Be Four, Five Times Worse.
The former president’s trials are starting to take a toll—and Judge Engoron could be poised to deal another savage blow possibly by Wednesday.
Think $83.3 million is a lot of money? Well, hold onto your hat, buster, because this week, New York Judge Arthur Engoron is supposed to announce the penalty he’s slapping on Donald J. Trump in the Trump Organization fraud case.
The case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2022, accuses Trump of lying to bankers and insurers about the value of his properties. Last September, Engoron declared in a summary judgment that the evidence clearly said Trump had done so. He wrote in his ruling: “In defendants’ world: Rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies. That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”
Last month, Engoron said he was aiming to announce the fine amount by January 31. That’s Wednesday. James is seeking $370 million.
Last week’s damage award in the E. Jean Carroll case was staggering. We had a little office pool going (well, just three of us, and we didn’t actually bet money). I came in highest at $40 million, so under traditional Price Is Right rules, I was the closest, but nevertheless light-years off. That rigged, deep-state jury took all of three hours to award Carroll more than three times what lawyer Roberta Kaplan was asking.
Is there a precedent there for a larger reward than was even being sought? Signs are promising. Engoron, you’ll recall, showed little patience for Trump’s courtroom antics. Earlier this month, he nixed Trump’s attempt to make a closing argument. “Not having heard from you by the third extended deadline (noon today), I assume that Mr. Trump will not agree to the reasonable, lawful limits I have imposed as a precondition to giving a closing statement above and beyond those given by his attorneys, and that, therefore, he will not be speaking in court tomorrow,” the judge wrote. Trump nevertheless managed to blurt out a few sentences of petulant nonsense. “Please control your client,” Engoron advised his counsel.
Bad? Yep. But the knife took another twist into Trump’s flesh last Friday, the same day the Carroll jury threw all that buckshot in Trump’s face. Barbara Jones was appointed last fall by Engoron to monitor some of the Trump Organization’s transactions. On Friday, Jones wrote Engoron a 12-page letter saying, in part: “I have identified certain deficiencies in the financial information that I have reviewed, including disclosures that are either incomplete, present results inconsistently, and/or contain errors.” So—what’s your bet? Maybe $400 million? What about $500? Who knows?
The money isn’t even the main factor in play, especially considering that Trump probably doesn’t have it and wouldn’t pay it even if he did. No—the nuclear bomb here, the real psychological waterboarding of Donald John Trump, will come if Engoron strips him and his company of the ability to do business in New York state. This option is on the table because Trump was prosecuted under a 1956 law that allows courts the ability to issue a “permanent and plenary ban” on a company if the behavior is egregious enough to warrant it.
Sounds heavy, right? No question it would be a crushing blow to Trump’s ego. But guess what? Trump is such an accomplished con man that this isn’t even the first time the law has been used to prosecute him. Trump University set that precedent. One of Trump’s lawyers whined last week that the law was overbroad and unfair: “This is not just about President Trump. Every major bank CEO and every Wall Street participant should speak out now before the Attorney General’s shocking and tyrannical interference in the capital markets places all New York business transactions at risk.”
Quick … does that statement remind you of anything? It should. To me it sounds an awful lot like Trump’s own blubbering about presidential immunity—that all presidents need blanket immunity because someone is bound to sue them after they leave office over something they did.
Well—no: Somehow or another, we’ve had 46 presidents, and only one of them has faced this kind of legal scrutiny after he left office. That’s because only one president, so far as we know, spent his entire adult life in and out of office flagrantly ignoring the law (one other kind of did, but he resigned and retreated to a mostly quiet life of writing books, and society decided to leave him more or less alone).
So no, presidents don’t need blanket immunity. Trump keeps inventing examples—maybe an ex-president will be sued for having bombed some country. I guess any jerk can file any kind of nuisance lawsuit, but all Congress has to do is pass a law (if indeed one is not already on the books) protecting ex-presidents from legal action arising from policymaking decisions. Ex-presidents—and major bank CEOs and Wall Street “participants”—who obey the law don’t need blanket immunity!
And speaking of immunity: Where’s the ruling on that? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard arguments on January 9, and a lot of people are wondering what’s taking so long. This was the hearing where one of the judges, Florence Pan, noted that under Trump’s theory, a president could order Seal Team 6 to kill a political opponent and face no consequences. It’s widely expected that the court will rule against Trump, and he will appeal.
What a way to start a year! Maybe about a half-a-billion dollars in fines, and a court ruling that is expected to torch his ridiculous immunity theory and allow other prosecutions to proceed. Speaking of which, Jack Smith is looming right around the corner. All while Trump is going to be crowned the Republican nominee. You have to believe that at least some normie Americans are going to see that something’s wrong with this picture.
More Trump Fuckery
I don't even know what to call this or how to characterize it. Is it Kiting Checks On Yourself? Is it a kind of Circular Churn?
Whatever it turns out to be called by the lawyers, it's gotta be some kind of fraud.
When do we come to our senses and put this prick behind bars?
Jan 28, 2024
Three From Politico
‘Preposterous’: Federal judge decries efforts to downplay Jan. 6 violence, label perpetrators ‘hostages’
Judge Royce Lamberth, who has handled dozens of Jan. 6 cases, lamented the false rhetoric spread by Donald Trump and his allies.
Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee to the bench, said the “destructive” misinformation, spread by political leaders who have downplayed and misrepresented the attack, had become pervasive.
“In my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream,” Lamberth lamented in a seven-page public court filing.
- more -
The Trump defense industrial complex goes a bit quiet after Carroll verdict
‘Trump chaos is baked in the cake at this point,’ one Republican strategist said.
The most notable thing about the Republican call-and-response following the E. Jean Carroll verdict was that there was barely any response at all.
On Friday night and into the weekend, the story of former President Donald Trump being ordered to pay the writer $83.3 million in damages stemming from her defamation case against him didn’t lead Fox News, which was consumed instead with the immigration crisis on the Southern border. The Daily Caller was busy flogging Hunter Biden. And on the right-wing network Newsmax’s pages, the verdict ran beneath reporting on a bathroom bill in Utah, Israel and Vince McMahon.
“Everyone is just trying to pretend it didn’t happen,” said Jason Roe, the former executive director of the state Republican Party in Michigan.
In the past, when prosecutors or the courts have smacked Trump, the former president fumed and the GOP rage machine spun itself into overdrive, framing the court developments as acts of political persecution. In the Carroll case, the first part happened, but not the second.
That most Republicans were not talking about $83 million in damages reflects both a discomfort with, and an uncertainty about, the political implications of the verdict. It also hints at a latent fear: that the ruling may prove to be a turnoff for some independent or conservative-leaning women in the suburbs.
- more -
Amy Berman Jackson blasts former Attorney General William Barr’s spin on the Mueller report as “disingenuous.”
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued that ruling in a withering opinion that accused Barr of being “disingenuous” when describing Mueller’s findings and found that the Justice Department was not candid with the court about the purpose and role of the 2019 memo prepared by Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Justice Department attorneys argued that the memo was part of the process of advising Barr on whether Trump should be prosecuted, but Jackson said the analysis consisted of a post hoc rationalization of a decision already made.
“The review of the document reveals that the Attorney General was not then engaged in making a decision about whether the President should be charged with obstruction of justice; the fact that he would not be prosecuted was a given,” wrote Jackson, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
Jackson linked Justice Department’s effort to keep the memo secret to Barr’s initial descriptions of Mueller’s conclusions, declaring both efforts misleading.
“Not only was the Attorney General being disingenuous then, but DOJ has been disingenuous to this Court with respect to the existence of a decision-making process that should be shielded by the deliberative process privilege,” she wrote. “The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time.”
- more -
10 Counts - Obstruction Of Justice
Today's Beau
Are they mad because Comer hasn't produced the evidence? No - they're mad because he wanted to get the evidence before he went forward with impeachment.
As weird as it seems, given his endless insinuations on DumFux news, Comer wanted real evidence, and that makes him the bad guy in the eyes of the MAGA Clown Caucus in the US Congress.
BTW, this does not make Comer some kinda hero. He hasn't suddenly come down with a case of good conscience - the guy has no integrity, and no honor. But he's in with a buncha dickheads who have figured out how to have even less than none.
Jan 27, 2024
Today's Tweet
Until the subject is Russia: "You know Russians better than I do..."
.
— Trump’s Noble Peace Prize (@LaBoomer68) January 27, 2024
Nobody knows...... pic.twitter.com/IsVjH60861
Workin' For A Livin'
I was never a fan of unions. Growing up in the 60s, there was always the perception that unions were mobbed up, and there was just something kinda dirty about the whole thing.
Then in the 70s, when things started to come apart, unions were seen as being a big part of the problem. They weren't really, but the prevailing narrative was that we were paying too much for everything because the unions were feather-bedding the crap out of American manufacturing, so the noble capitalists had no choice but to say 'fuck this shit, we're moving it all to Indonesia'.
Working people have been always been the targets of cynical manipulators who tell us the wrong thing is the problem, and that we need to blame the wrong people for it.
Maybe we're finally start to get wise, and maybe the pendulum has started to swing back in the other direction.
Union membership is growing in the state after years of declines.
Employee walkouts, work stoppages and union drives seemed like a big part of 2023. But you may not know it from national data released earlier this week. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said union membership was “little changed” last year, comprising 10% of the national workforce. In 2022, it was an iota higher, 10.1%.
“I can say that both phenomena are true: There has been a lot of union activity over the past year and the unionization rate hasn’t changed much,” said Johnnie Kallas, director of the Labor Action Tracker, which tracks work stoppages and other labor actions nationwide. The tracker, which Kallas helped develop while at Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, documented 451 labor actions in the U.S. last year, 414 in the prior year and 270 in 2021.
A key explanation? “There were nearly 200,000 more union members in 2023 than 2022, but those increases did not keep pace with considerable job growth last year, hence a stagnant or very slightly decreasing unionization rate,” said Kallas, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations.
While there have been worries of a recession for the past couple of years, there was no recession in 2023. The nation’s economy grew 3.3% annually in the fourth quarter and 3.1% for the year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department update Friday. And overall job growth continued to surprise economists.
Colorado experiencing more union activity
But Colorado was different. The state’s union membership rate ticked up, at least from a low point in 2021. Last year, the number of union members increased 6.2% to 189,000 workers. Union members make up 6.9% of the state’s employed population. A year earlier it was at 6.7%, which is below the national average.
The state added 11,000 union members last year, and 13,000 in the prior year. Those included baristas at Starbucks and staff at Urban Peak, the first unionized shelter for unhoused people in Colorado. Momentum, especially among service workers, continued this month with more filing with the National Labor Relations Board to start a union, including 238 employees at the Denver Art Museum, about 180 workers from Alamo Drafthouse Cinema locations in Westminster and Denver and five at the CobbleStone Car Wash in Lakewood.
But few, if any, actually have a contract.
“It takes a tremendous amount of new organizing to translate into increased union density,” Kallas said. “In some cases, workers have made important organizing gains, but have had difficulty achieving a first contract.”
Membership has thrived at the Service Employees International Union Local 105, which has increased membership by 50% in 10 years. About 70% was new growth of workers at companies seeking representation, said Stephanie Felix-Sowy, who helped 3,000 Kaiser Permanente health workers in Colorado get a new contract after a three-day strike in October. Local 105 also represents janitors, security staff and other service workers, including more recently, about 2,000 who work at Denver International Airport.
“Colorado historically is not a super union-dense state,” Felix-Sowy said. “Being able to do that work within those particular industries has been really game changing for our members and their ability to move their priorities forward.”
After COVID, the union saw even more interest in collective bargaining. It’s currently working with home care workers and expanding its reach into airport workers. Last month, it helped organize a walkout of dozens of Denver airport cargo workers seeking safer working conditions from their employer, Swissport International.
“It’s starting to come to light and workers in these industries are fed up with seeing record profits,” Felix-Sowy said. “Even through COVID, we saw airports getting millions and millions of dollars from the government and workers not seeing that, and then a few years later, seeing record profits again. It’s just like all of these pieces, specifically in Colorado, have really led to folks looking for an outlet. I think it’s the same way that we saw generations ago.”
➔ On the other hand … union membership has been in decline for years. During the early 1950s, about one-third of private sector workers belonged to unions. Now it’s 6%. The Associated Builders and Contractors said Friday that most construction workers employed by private companies aren’t in a union. Nationally, the industry reached an all-time high of 89.3% who are not part of a union. ABC is a trade group primarily for construction companies.
Housing: Rent or buy?
With mortgage rates still above 6%, buying a house hasn’t gotten any cheaper even as sales prices halted their spectacular rise in 2021 and 2022. Interest rates, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors, “defined the 2023 housing market.”
In 2023, potential sellers held on to their homes and “stopped the move-up market where a huge percentage of current homeowners have mortgages under 3.5% and don’t want to trade that in,” said Fort Collins Realtor Chris Hardy in a CAR update.
Last year, Colorado sellers listed 81,115 single-family homes for sale. Before the pandemic, there were 108,007, according to CAR data. Even just counting the past 12 months, the number of available houses for sale — or sold — fell by double digit rates from 2022. The median sales price in 2023? Up in some parts of the state, down in others.
But in December, prices inched up again, from a year ago, with the median price of single-family houses in Colorado at $549,950, up 3.8%. Median prices for the full year, though, were down 0.7%. The townhouse and condo market was up 3% in December to $424,995, and the annual median price was unchanged at $420,000.
Home prices are still high, though, so sellers are getting more than they paid for if they’ve owned it for more than a couple of years. But it’s become more difficult for renters to save up and qualify for a mortgage. However, interest rates are expected to fall this year, at least that’s what the body that makes that decision said it will consider.
Meanwhile, rent or buy? That’s a personal question. But even with a 20% down payment on December’s median-priced house in Denver ($593,500), the monthly mortgage is more expensive than a two-bedroom rental (at $1,914 a month), according to Realtor.com’s “Rent or buy calculator.”
Here’s how the rental numbers stack up:
“Despite all the craziness around increasing costs and increasing affordability challenges that we’ve been facing, the homeownership rate in Colorado actually continues to climb steadily since 2016. In 2022, we reached 67.4%, which is the highest level since 2010,” said Cooper Thayer, a Castle Rock Realtor at Thayer Group who presented the economic update at the Colorado Association of Realtors housing market update this week. “We’re seeing the cost of buying exceed the cost of renting right now so it’s really great to see, in Colorado specifically, our home ownership rate is still on the rise despite these challenges.”
Then in the 70s, when things started to come apart, unions were seen as being a big part of the problem. They weren't really, but the prevailing narrative was that we were paying too much for everything because the unions were feather-bedding the crap out of American manufacturing, so the noble capitalists had no choice but to say 'fuck this shit, we're moving it all to Indonesia'.
Working people have been always been the targets of cynical manipulators who tell us the wrong thing is the problem, and that we need to blame the wrong people for it.
Maybe we're finally start to get wise, and maybe the pendulum has started to swing back in the other direction.
Union membership is growing in the state after years of declines.
Employee walkouts, work stoppages and union drives seemed like a big part of 2023. But you may not know it from national data released earlier this week. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said union membership was “little changed” last year, comprising 10% of the national workforce. In 2022, it was an iota higher, 10.1%.
Rates, of course, don’t tell the whole story.
“I can say that both phenomena are true: There has been a lot of union activity over the past year and the unionization rate hasn’t changed much,” said Johnnie Kallas, director of the Labor Action Tracker, which tracks work stoppages and other labor actions nationwide. The tracker, which Kallas helped develop while at Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, documented 451 labor actions in the U.S. last year, 414 in the prior year and 270 in 2021.
A key explanation? “There were nearly 200,000 more union members in 2023 than 2022, but those increases did not keep pace with considerable job growth last year, hence a stagnant or very slightly decreasing unionization rate,” said Kallas, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations.
While there have been worries of a recession for the past couple of years, there was no recession in 2023. The nation’s economy grew 3.3% annually in the fourth quarter and 3.1% for the year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department update Friday. And overall job growth continued to surprise economists.
Colorado experiencing more union activity
But Colorado was different. The state’s union membership rate ticked up, at least from a low point in 2021. Last year, the number of union members increased 6.2% to 189,000 workers. Union members make up 6.9% of the state’s employed population. A year earlier it was at 6.7%, which is below the national average.
The state added 11,000 union members last year, and 13,000 in the prior year. Those included baristas at Starbucks and staff at Urban Peak, the first unionized shelter for unhoused people in Colorado. Momentum, especially among service workers, continued this month with more filing with the National Labor Relations Board to start a union, including 238 employees at the Denver Art Museum, about 180 workers from Alamo Drafthouse Cinema locations in Westminster and Denver and five at the CobbleStone Car Wash in Lakewood.
But few, if any, actually have a contract.
“It takes a tremendous amount of new organizing to translate into increased union density,” Kallas said. “In some cases, workers have made important organizing gains, but have had difficulty achieving a first contract.”
Membership has thrived at the Service Employees International Union Local 105, which has increased membership by 50% in 10 years. About 70% was new growth of workers at companies seeking representation, said Stephanie Felix-Sowy, who helped 3,000 Kaiser Permanente health workers in Colorado get a new contract after a three-day strike in October. Local 105 also represents janitors, security staff and other service workers, including more recently, about 2,000 who work at Denver International Airport.
“Colorado historically is not a super union-dense state,” Felix-Sowy said. “Being able to do that work within those particular industries has been really game changing for our members and their ability to move their priorities forward.”
After COVID, the union saw even more interest in collective bargaining. It’s currently working with home care workers and expanding its reach into airport workers. Last month, it helped organize a walkout of dozens of Denver airport cargo workers seeking safer working conditions from their employer, Swissport International.
“It’s starting to come to light and workers in these industries are fed up with seeing record profits,” Felix-Sowy said. “Even through COVID, we saw airports getting millions and millions of dollars from the government and workers not seeing that, and then a few years later, seeing record profits again. It’s just like all of these pieces, specifically in Colorado, have really led to folks looking for an outlet. I think it’s the same way that we saw generations ago.”
➔ On the other hand … union membership has been in decline for years. During the early 1950s, about one-third of private sector workers belonged to unions. Now it’s 6%. The Associated Builders and Contractors said Friday that most construction workers employed by private companies aren’t in a union. Nationally, the industry reached an all-time high of 89.3% who are not part of a union. ABC is a trade group primarily for construction companies.
Housing: Rent or buy?
With mortgage rates still above 6%, buying a house hasn’t gotten any cheaper even as sales prices halted their spectacular rise in 2021 and 2022. Interest rates, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors, “defined the 2023 housing market.”
In 2023, potential sellers held on to their homes and “stopped the move-up market where a huge percentage of current homeowners have mortgages under 3.5% and don’t want to trade that in,” said Fort Collins Realtor Chris Hardy in a CAR update.
Last year, Colorado sellers listed 81,115 single-family homes for sale. Before the pandemic, there were 108,007, according to CAR data. Even just counting the past 12 months, the number of available houses for sale — or sold — fell by double digit rates from 2022. The median sales price in 2023? Up in some parts of the state, down in others.
But in December, prices inched up again, from a year ago, with the median price of single-family houses in Colorado at $549,950, up 3.8%. Median prices for the full year, though, were down 0.7%. The townhouse and condo market was up 3% in December to $424,995, and the annual median price was unchanged at $420,000.
Home prices are still high, though, so sellers are getting more than they paid for if they’ve owned it for more than a couple of years. But it’s become more difficult for renters to save up and qualify for a mortgage. However, interest rates are expected to fall this year, at least that’s what the body that makes that decision said it will consider.
Meanwhile, rent or buy? That’s a personal question. But even with a 20% down payment on December’s median-priced house in Denver ($593,500), the monthly mortgage is more expensive than a two-bedroom rental (at $1,914 a month), according to Realtor.com’s “Rent or buy calculator.”
Here’s how the rental numbers stack up:
“Despite all the craziness around increasing costs and increasing affordability challenges that we’ve been facing, the homeownership rate in Colorado actually continues to climb steadily since 2016. In 2022, we reached 67.4%, which is the highest level since 2010,” said Cooper Thayer, a Castle Rock Realtor at Thayer Group who presented the economic update at the Colorado Association of Realtors housing market update this week. “We’re seeing the cost of buying exceed the cost of renting right now so it’s really great to see, in Colorado specifically, our home ownership rate is still on the rise despite these challenges.”
On That $83.3 Million
Today I Learned:
- Trump has to pay some or all of the $83M into a kind of escrow thingie even as he goes for the appeal
- The appellate court can alter the lower court's decision - including the amount of the award
- One of the points in all this is: Your shit will catch up with you eventually
That last point stands out like pink shoes at a stag party. This is a really important test to see if the whole Rule Of law thing holds up.
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