John T. Reed’s news blog

Today's WSJ gives a strong "You got that right!" to the title of my most recent book The American Principal Residence is the Most Advantaged Investment on earth: Maximize Yours!.Is WSJ reporter Nicole Friedman finally ending her anti-investment in homes crusade? No. It's a James Glynn column about interest rates on home mortgages in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the three foreign countries where I have bank accounts. I wish I could have bank accounts in Europe too, but it is essentially impossible for an American..Home appreciation has been higher in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand than here..BUT—they do not...

Housing starts are way down. But home renovation is up. . Is that contradictory? . Yes. . Why is it happening? . Home builders or most them are competent businessmen. They know that under present conditions, the sale price of a new home is less than the cost---unprofitable. . Are home owners incompetent? Yes. Remodeling Magazine does an annual article showing how much profit the most common renovations make in resale value increase. . ALL Aare unprofitable. The best, like just exterior painting. may clear 90% of their cost, but still means they lose the other 10%. And that's in...

Today’s WSJ attack on home values is about Austin, TX which they say, “cool[ed] way, way down.” . Really, I thought, and I searched for the most recent last 12 months appreciation rate—in vain in an unusually long article: 1 2/3 pages. Never mentioned. . Rather they do their normal misleading touting of unit sales and weeks on market and such other metrics that are of interest only to Realtors® and home builders. . None of that matters if your home in Austin sold for 13.9% more than it was worth a year ago. Six months ago the market nationwide...

Another WSJ Nicole Friedman homes are down article today. The lead is buried in the last paragraph. home prices rose 13.9% in the last 12 months. The rest of the article is all “____________ is DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!” Insert various irrelevant statistics like mortgage interest rates, housing starts, units sales—whatever housing related number is less than before is touted, touted, touted as THE story that you should be looking at. . THE story should be graphs of each investment category for the year to date movement in 2022. That would show stocks, bonds, crypto, gold, you name it, DOWN and...

Home market hater Nicole Friedman's negative spin of the day in the WSJ is "Price Rise For Homes Eased In August." . Here is the neutral headline if she were not a Russian disinformation machine or had some other motive for this ignore your lying eyes campaign: double-digit home appreciation rates continue in August. . This is the CoreLogic data. 15.6% appreciation for the 12 months ended July 2022; 13% for the 12 months ended August 2022. . "The second straight month-over-month decline," she spins. "Housing market has slowed abruptly," she laments. "Rapid increase in mortgage rates," she explains. "Pushed...