Election Day is over, folks. Schedule the funeral. We are used to it around these parts, but other parts of the country have begun the destruction of “the day” to do our civic duty. Instead, the day has been morphed into an “election season” where people vote online, by mail and who knows how else. Just a matter of time before it weaves its way into our lives in the Midwest.
The funniest part of the cry for online and mail-in votes always seems to be made by the people that appear to me to have the most time available to actually go vote on election day or through more traditional absentee voting. Somehow that has become too much effort for some and here we are, watching the slow death of another tradition that is reveled by many, but just too hard for others among us.
I got a kick out of some recent “save the earth from the climate” front. OPEC has made their decades forward demand for oil planning predictions. They have predicted increases in demand going forward as their experts predict that developing countries’ consumption of gas and oil use will outweigh any reductions that are made by developed countries that are tying to go “green.” Just made me laugh out loud. Let me type this slowly. There is no way humans are capable or even wiling to cooperate in any meaningful way to change climate. That does not make me a climate denier, as I agree that climate is changing, but it makes me a realist. All the chatter about saving the world is fool’s talk.
I’ve promised myself to not complain about winter this year. Probably going to disappoint myself. Calling for snow this week. Should be pretty.
Let’s talk housing for a moment. Many national experts say that the housing recession began in June. The data always lags in housing because of the time transactions take and the data trails.
That includes values. Current values are being calculated from many of the sales prior to the brakes being applied to the housing market. Real estate is uber local, so it is going to vary, but values are likely going to go down in the short term because of the fewer sales and because people have less buying power because the interest is nearly double what it was a year ago.
The brakes applied by the interest rate hikes are being seen in the Platte County data. March and April had nearly the same number of sales in 2022 as in 2021 and there was a rush of activity in June when there were 28 more sales than 2021, and then the slowdown started. July had 195 sales in 2022 in comparison to 203 in 2021, August had 182 compared to 247, September 157 compared to 203, October 136 sales compared to 181 and November has 49 currently, on pace for 113 as opposed to 180 in 2021.
The median sales price in Platte County has fallen from an April high of $388,500 to the November number of $350,000. The good news is that the median sales price in January of 2022 was $330,000 and then it shot upward and has now been in the $350 –360K range in July, August, September, October and so far in November.
That’s almost stable, in my opinion, which might be the best-case scenario to go through winter and then establish normal seasonal patterns in the spring.
(Guy Speckman can be found attending the funeral of Election Day)