Should you buy now, or wait?
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Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman predicts the future, 1998. Feel free to give my own prognostication the same weight
If you’re determined not to “over pay”, and who isn’t, I’d wait. It pains me to suggest that, since most of my business is devoted to representing buyers, and I hate to discourage their patronage. There are certainly houses available at decent value-to-market prices, and if you need to or want to move, it’s possible to sort through the chaff and find them, but bargains? Few and far between. For at least the past 12 years I’ve been able to find houses that, because they were originally overpriced, had languished on the market and acquired a loser stigma that made them susceptible to lowball offers. Most of those are gone now, swept up by the wave of New York refugee buyers whose primary concern is shelter, not value, and those price-compromised homes that are left are in what I’d consider inferior locations and unwise “investments”.
This assumes that we’re in a temporary market boomlet and not at the foot of a new plateau, and I could well be wrong, and maybe that pessimism misses the picture. I cautioned clients back in the early 2000s during that era’s sellers’ market, “the price may not be what the house is ‘worth’, but it’s what it will take to buy it.” Looking back, those who did buy then haven’t seen a huge increase in their home’s value, and some, especially those in the back country have seen some serious paper losses, but they have also enjoyed their house, raised a family in it, made friends with their neighbors, and, all-in-all, done alright. If they didn’t strike it rich in real estate well, there’s always the pink sheets.
So, rent vs buy is probably close to equal, but if your horizon if five-years-plus, it can still make sense to buy, giving care not to be swept away in this market enthusiasm, But don’t expect to find a bargain right now.
Get 'em while you're hot
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Forget BLM, blackouts suck
As Greenwich’s power outage extends towards week two, readers who still don’t have a generator may want to rethink that omission and call my friend Louis Van Leeuwen at Greenwich Power Systems, the best Generac and Koehler dealer around. They’re expensive: $15-$20,000 and up, depending, but with Eversource being forced to divert your electrical fees to green energy subsidies, and the ongoing drive to destroy the power grid by shutting down oil and natural gas pipelines, and blocking new transmission lines, what wind storms won’t accomplish, our coming New Green Eel program will. Call Lou.
Full disclosure, Louis is a close friend of mine, so you might want to take this recommendation with a grain of salt, but I know him, his work as a custom builder, and his prowess as a fisherman (okay, that’s pretty slim, but he’s got a great boat, and as long as his piscatorial betters are aboard, he can catch fish); in short, I know the man, and he’s more than okay, (Can a goy call a Jew a mensch? Who cares? He’s a mensch.) A brief prenatal history telling how a Dutch Jew came to be born in Jamaica during WW II can be found in an earlier post of mine, Jews for Bobsledders. Certain types may want to overlook his politics — I certainly try to — but you’re not looking for perfection, just a solution to the food rotting in your refrigerator, and this is it.
Defund NASA
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I’m so sorry
“Certain cosmic nicknames are actively harmful and will be reexamined”
NASA will “reexamine” its colloquial names for galaxies, stars, planets, and other cosmic systems to cut down on “insensitive” space terminology.
NASA announced on Wednesday that it would begin reviewing unofficial names, and change the way researchers refer to certain “cosmic objects” by either using the scientific name or finding a fitting new nickname.
“As the scientific community works to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the field, it has become clear that certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful,” the space agency said in a statement. “NASA is examining its use of unofficial terminology for cosmic objects as part of its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
NASA continued:
NASA will no longer refer to planetary nebula NGC 2392, the glowing remains of a Sun-like star that is blowing off its outer layers at the end of its life, as the “Eskimo Nebula.” “Eskimo” is widely viewed as a colonial term with a racist history, imposed on the indigenous people of Arctic regions. Most official documents have moved away from its use. NASA will also no longer use the term “Siamese Twins Galaxy” to refer to NGC 4567 and NGC 4568, a pair of spiral galaxies found in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Moving forward, NASA will use only the official, International Astronomical Union designations in cases where nicknames are inappropriate.
NASA said the new names would further its mission and keep the focus of its work on science. “Often seemingly innocuous nicknames can be harmful and detract from the science,” the agency said.
“I support our ongoing reevaluation of the names by which we refer to astronomical objects,” NASA associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen said in a statement. “Our goal is that all names are aligned with our values of diversity and inclusion, and we’ll proactively work with the scientific community to help ensure that. Science is for everyone, and every facet of our work needs to reflect that value.”
Stephen Shih, who heads the agency’s Diversity and Equal Opportunity office, added, “These nicknames and terms may have historical or culture connotations that are objectionable or unwelcoming, and NASA is strongly committed to addressing them.”
“Science depends on diverse contributions, and benefits everyone, so this means we must make it inclusive,” Shih said.
In June, prestigious scientific journals Cell, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), and Science Magazine published a series of editorials condemning “systemic racism” in their own publications and in the scientific community at large.
“Science has a racism problem,” the editorial board at Cell declared.
“Slavery has produced a legacy of racism, injustice, and brutality that runs from 1619 to the present, and that legacy infects medicine as it does all social institutions,” the NEJM editorial board wrote in a nod to The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” an effort to base the founding of the United States and all progress since in slavery.
The 18-year-old libertarian in me mellowed over time to a belief that there were some roles that a centralized power, rather than free market was better equipped to handle some tasks. I’m shifting back to where I was back then. Imagine that even one penny of your tax dollar, money you worked to earn, is spent paying morons to staff something at NASA called the “Diversity and Equal Opportunity Office”. Now imagine that NASA can’t even launch rockets of its own.
[Taylor] is the British project scientist for the Rosetta mission that succeeded last week in landing a module on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, some 300 million miles from Earth.
The mission took a journey of 4 billion miles and is a feat that has been compared to landing a fly on a speeding bullet. It is, in short, a thrilling triumph for human ingenuity.
But let’s not get carried away and lose sight of trivialities.
In discussing the mission on camera after the landing, Taylor wore a Hawaiian-style shirt depicting cartoonish, scantily clad, buxom women brandishing firearms. And just like that, Taylor stood for the subjugation of women and their exclusion from the world of science.
Taylor was mercilessly condemned on Twitter and the Internet until the next day he apologized in tears, for having committed the sartorial equivalent of a thought crime.
And speaking of mission creep, Doctors and hospitals are now spending their energy registering Democrat voters. They claim it’s to help poor people vote in politicians who will provide more free medical stuff, which is true enough, but guess who those politicians will pay to provide those goodies? Self-interest is fine, but the genius doctors and hospital executives don’t foresee that Cuba’s $200-a-month salaries for doctors is coming their way.
Wrong, wrong wrong
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I don’t think Trump’s executive orders are eve technically legal, and he shouldn’t oughta have done it. Our downward spiral is accelerating.
A rising temperature lifts all prices?
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87 Doubling Road is back on the market at $4.750 million after expiring in February at $4.550. That was a different market, and this new, higher price may well prove out. Nice property, move-in condition,and now, eager NY refugees. Could work, and I hope it does.
Crocodile tears. And for God's sake, please don't encourage them to move to Greenwich
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Can’t we all get along?
Upper West Side residents say three hotels that are housing hundreds of homeless men during the coronavirus pandemic have turned the area into a spectacle of public urination, cat-calling and open drug use.
Among those staying at the luxury Belleclaire on Broadway and the Lucerne on W. 79th Street, and the more down-market Belnord on W. 87th Street, are people who are mentally ill, recovering from drug addictions, and registered sex offenders.
Ten sex offenders are staying in a single hotel — the Belleclaire, which is just one block from the playground of P.S. 87.
“It doesn’t feel safe anymore,” nanny Michele McDowall, 39, told The Post.
She said she was recently offered crack by a pair of homeless men as she wheeled a toddler along Riverside Park at 79th Street.
“You want to buy crack?” she said they shouted repeatedly as she hurried past, and as the frightened 2-year-old girl in the stroller put her hands over her ears and cried, “Too loud!”
“Listen, whatever drug you can imagine is done there,” Angel Ortiz, 60, told a Post reporter of his fellow residents outside the hotel.
“They shoot up, sniff up, crack, K2, everything,” agreed a fellow resident who gave his name as “B.K.”, and his age as 43.
“You got drunks — you got violent drunks,” another Lucerne resident, William, 45, told The Post — though he kept interrupting the interview to call out to passing women.
“What’s up momma? How you doing pretty girl? Yo’ fine self,” he shouted. “How you feel baby girl? Pretty girl.”
[Funny]: When his offer to sell K2 to the reporter was rebuffed, he noted, reasonably enough, “It’s not for everyone.”
Across the street, Mariano Ouatu, 49, runs a restaurant, Coppola’s, where drunken arguments among the homeless are driving away his customers.
“They go to the tables, they asking for money,” he said.
“Screaming, forget about it. It’s like a jungle. They get drunk and they start fighting,” he said.
If he tells a couple of them to move along, “Already there are 20 around you. … They are now on Broadway. Everywhere. Everywhere. Sitting on the bench. Drinking. There is a liquor store. You see them go in and out, in and out, in and out and buying those liquor bottles.”
He added, of the Lucerne, “Beautiful hotel, I can’t believe it”
The newstand run by Malik Faheem, 54, at 83rd and Broadway has been robbed three times, he said.
“Usually they steal petty things like candy,” he said, adding he is forced to take the loss to avoid a fight.
“They’re not very peaceful,” he told The Post, singling out one imposing, 6′ 3” homeless man who harasses small women, demanding, “Gimme 2 dollars, I’m going to breakfast.”
“It’s not a request. He pushes you, forces you, without touching. Especially ladies. They get scared. They give it to him right away.”
It’s the wild west, complained Upper West Side parent Mira Gross — who said she knows some 20 families who have moved out or are considering moving.
Broadway is now a “halfway house,” she said. “It’s not just people loitering. They’re either passed out or they’re menacing,” she said.
“People are saying we’ve moved back to the 1970s,” she said. “But the people who were here in the 1970s say it’s much worse than it was.”
Sympathy for the devils
City spokesman: “[We’re] helping people rebuild their lives and grow through second chances as they get back on their feet. New Yorkers experiencing homelessness are our neighbors – and the notion that they are not welcome in some neighborhoods for any reason is an affront to basic decency.
“We don’t discriminate based on people’s previous experiences or backgrounds, and we will not create gated communities within our City – we extend a helping hand, no matter what.
“Now more than ever, these services and supports, this empathy and humanity, are essential, across all communities, across the five boroughs – and our commitment to providing them to those in need must be unwavering.”
Look: these Upper West Siders all voted for this, albeit with the unspoken assumption that the chickens wouldn’t be allowed to roost in their neighborhoods, and come November they’ll vote for more of the same. If they come to Greenwich they’ll pack their ideology along with them — witness the Ladies of Greenwich Invisible — and vote for more of the same here. De Blasio has implemented Checkpoint Charlies on his hellholes’ borders to check for flu carriers; we should erect ideology checkpoints of our own.
It's probably too late to cure this, but it's a good argument for letting our schools stay shut for as long as possible
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None of this is accidental
FRANK FUREDI: The humiliation of Western history. “Those who zealously seek to pollute the past are very much devoted to gaining total cultural hegemony in the present.”
Unlike previous initiatives designed to encourage people to look critically at uncomfortable truths about their past, the 1619 Project offers a ‘take it or leave it’ version of history. Its aim is not to criticise existing historical narratives about the US. It is to negate and even morally annihilate the very foundation on which the US was built. As the NYT put it: ‘Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written. Black Americans fought to make them true. Without this struggle, America would have no democracy at all.’
In rejecting the founding ideals of liberty and equality as false, the 1619 Project strips America’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, of every shred of moral authority. It also erases the profound contribution the American Revolution made to the development of the Western ideal of freedom.
The 1619 Project does not offer any new insights into the past. Rather, it seeks to contaminate the past and render it toxic. Indeed, one of the main contributors to the project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, admits that its principal objective is not to shed light on the past, but to undermine the moral authority of the present. ‘I’ve always said that the 1619 Project is not history’, she writes. ‘It is a work of journalism that explicitly seeks to challenge the national narrative and therefore national memory. The project has always been as much about the present as it is about the past.’
Our own Board of Education has permitted this rot to grow for at least fifty years, and we’ve sent our graduates on to institutions where more Marxists await them. Why are we paying for our own destruction?
Never go full Orange; it confuses your base
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And for my next act ….
May: “If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black”.
August 5, to black reporter: “Did you just do coke? You a junkie?”
August 6: “All blacks think alike”.
Quick sale
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15 Widgeon Way, $1.995 million, 14 days. Widgeon’s a nice street, parallel to Mallard but not a cut-through the way that other duck is. Two million is a surprising number, to me, but the owners fixed it up and it looks clean and, all-important today, in move-in condition.
So congratulations to those owners.