The 35-acre property in Arizona built by former State Senator Bob Worsley hits market llamas included

Arizona is not only about horses! 😊

I have seen other properties in the Phoenix area with camels (see e.g. my Google account profile picture below)! 

Former Arizona senator lists 35-acre off-grid retreat for $9.5M, llamas included (behind paywall)

This off-grid Arizona mountain estate was made for making memories - Homes.com News

This 35-acre property in Heber, Arizona, is listed for the first time at $9.5 million.

Nearly 7 million U.S. homes are now worth at least $1 million

Good news! Impressive! However, how much is due to price inflation?

"Nearly 7 million U.S. homes are now worth at least $1 million, up from about 1.5 million in 2005, according to the National Association of Realtors. Those properties make up 8% of the market, and in Hawaii, roughly 40% of homes have crossed that threshold.

Meanwhile, Americans need to earn about $110,000 a year to afford even a typical home, a Redfin report found. The median household income sits at roughly $88,000, leaving a gap of more than $22,000 between what families earn and what it takes to buy.

The affordability squeeze has eased slightly, with the gap shrinking from $26,000 a year ago and $29,000 two years ago as incomes rise faster than housing costs. Redfin defines “affordable” as a buyer’s mortgage not consuming more than 30% of their income."

Sunday, August 9, 2026 - Join The Flyover

The Income Needed to Afford Typical American Home Holds Steady Near Record High of $110,000

What Housing Data Teaches Us About Mansion Taxes, Housing Markets, and Timing

Something seems to be odd with this chart by Redfin! Why that steep increase after 2021? Why not more historical data since it appears the curve was fairly flat before 2021?

Dunkle Wolken am Immobilienmarkt: Die Politik hat ganze Arbeit geleistet

Neues aus der Bananenrepublik D!

Die Mauer fiel und der Sozialismus breitete sich in ganz Deutschland aus! Dann kam noch der Klimawahn und viel zu Hohe Staatsverschuldung dazu!

"... Diese Entwicklung kommt nicht überraschend. Die deutsche Politik setzt seit Jahren auf Maßnahmen, die Renditeerwartungen bei Investoren und Bauherren in diesem Segment regelrecht zusammenschmelzen lassen.

Von Katalogen der Klimaregulierung über Mietpreisdeckel bis hin zur Anwendung des CO2-Mechanismus im Baustoffbereich: Eine ganze Liste politischer Fehlentscheidungen und ideologischer Fehlsteuerungen führt dazu, dass sich Eigentümer von ihren Projekten trennen müssen. ..."

Dunkle Wolken am Immobilienmarkt: Die Politik hat ganze Arbeit geleistet "Am deutschen Immobilienmarkt zeigen sich deutliche Risse. Real fallen die Preise in sämtlichen Marktsegmenten. Nur die dicht besiedelten urbanen Zentren halten die Preise noch hoch."

Über 60% is unvereinbar mit dem Maastricht Vertrag von 1992 (Quelle)

Rooftop solar panel tariffs to fall sharply in 2027 in Israel

Food for thought! The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!

How heavy are rooftop solar panels government subsidized in Western countries? I bet way too much!

Caveat: I did not read the article.

Rooftop solar panel tariffs to fall sharply in 2027 - Globes "The tariff paid to owners of solar roofs - NIS 0.48 to NIS 0.54 per kilowatt-hour - could fall to NIS 0.35 for those who install panels from next year."

The legal liabilities of some of America’s biggest home builders have surged in recent years as buyers increasingly sue for damages from alleged construction defects.

Bad news!

A company that uses subcontractors is responsible for the work/services/products of these subcontractors! 

"Homeowners say builders are using cheaper materials, cutting corners and hiring unqualified and undersupervised subcontractors, so their homes are shoddier.

Builders say that the claims reflect a tiny fraction of homes and that errors are typically subcontractors’ fault, not theirs. They also say plaintiffs’ lawyers are encouraging homeowners to pursue dubious claims in hopes of landing a lucrative settlement."

Wall Street Journal What's news

Report Finds Arizona Wasted Economic Opportunities Of State Trust Lands

I have noticed for many years that in the US too much land is reserved for state governments and the federal government.

Arizona is perhaps a particular example! Why so much land is dedicated to K-12 educations is strange! Or why are Arizonans paying so much state income tax?

"... Today, 9 million acres, 13% of the state’s landmass, are owned by the State Land Trust. In practice, most of this land is largely idle and undeveloped, even though CSI estimates that more than a third of it is proximate to urban areas and potentially developable. ..."

"A new report from the Common Sense Institute (CSI) Arizona examines the state’s management of its state trust lands, set aside in 1912. It makes the case that the lands represent a “$140 Billion Missed Opportunity.” CSI Arizona argues that the beneficiaries of the trust, primarily K-12 education, could benefit from developing the land, while potentially addressing Arizona’s growing demand for developable space. ...

Arizona received about 10.96 million acres under The Arizona-New Mexico Enabling Act of 1910, with roughly 8 million acres dedicated to K-12 education—one of the largest such grants in the nation. As of 2024, the state retains approximately 84% of its original grant, compared to an average of 36% across other land-grant states. More than 80% of the remaining trust land is used for low-intensity purposes such as grazing or rights-of-way, generating an average annual return of $8.40 per acre for K-12 beneficiaries.

The report estimates that historical delays in selling and developing trust lands have cost beneficiaries approximately $134 billion in lost distributions over the past century. Had lands been sold early (1913–1923) and proceeds invested at market rates, the K-12 Permanent Land Endowment Trust Fund (PLETF) could be worth $163 billion today, compared to its current combined value (distributions plus assets) of approximately $19 billion. ..."

Report Finds Arizona Wasted Economic Opportunities Of State Trust Lands - AZ FREE NEWS

UAE proptech company Huspy raises $59M to expand in Europe

Good news!

Please come to the US soon! The realtors almost like a monopoly have totally messed up the household real estate market in the US for many decades.

"Over the past five years, the company has grown into one of the largest proptechs in the UAE, and has expanded into Spain, by providing digital tools for finding homes and obtaining mortgages. ..."

UAE proptech Huspy raises $59M to scale in Europe | TechCrunch

Sales of existing U.S. homes are on track for their worst year since 1995—for the second year in a row.

What impact that might have on the November elections?

The Wall Street Journal What's news

Asking price for a gigantic Los Angeles mansion $195 million, a divorce sale

Wow!

"The asking price for one of the largest homes in the U.S.: the Pritzker estate in L.A.

The roughly 50,000-square-foot mansion has 16 bedrooms, 27 bathrooms, 18 fireplaces, a theater, a flower-prep room and 180-degree views of downtown and the ocean. 

The listing comes after billionaire Tony Pritzker and philanthropist Jeanne Pritzker’s bitter divorce. L.A.’s biggest home sale on record was Jeff Bezos’s $165 million Warner Estate purchase in 2020."

The Wall Street Journal What's news

Landlord unwittingly rented a house in London to criminals who turned it into a cannabis farm

Bad news! The landlord and his family went to work abroad for an extended period so they thought to rent out their home.

Just imagine these criminals had paid rent on time instead of no payments!

"... 3ft of soil in my bedroom ... The criminals, posing as tenants, had dumped 10 tonnes of soil in the property, causing extensive damage and leaving the family devastated. ... According to experts, rental scams linked to cannabis farms are on the rise, with criminals seemingly exploiting the lengthy eviction process to complete illegal grow operations before disappearing. ...

However, the "tenants" turned out to be scammers who never paid rent and instead used the property for criminal activities. It was later discovered that the estate agent was operating a fake site, and the tenants were bogus. ...
Metropolitan Police figures show more than 1,000 cannabis farms have been discovered in London in the past few years, with a total of 1,056 found between the 2018-19 and 2022-23 financial years. However, experts believe these figures represent only a tiny proportion of the cannabis farms currently in operation. ..."

'Cannabis crooks dumped tonnes of soil in my bedroom'

Beijing Steps In: Vanke's Bailout Amid China's Real Estate Meltdown with Palki Sharma

Many other real estate developers were allowed to go bankrupt in the past without state intervention! Not this one!

Inside a Chinese Ghost Town of Abandoned Mansions

What a gigantic real estate bubble!

These Are The Billionaires Buying Hawaii

Recommendable!

Commercial Property Losses Hammer Banks on Three Continents

How about that for signs of a coming (possibly global) recession besides two major military conflicts worldwide! Obviously, China's residential and commercial real estate is in trouble!

Then there is the high interest rates, the trend to work from home or anywhere other than an office, or the death of conventional shopping malls and so on ...

"Lenders in the U.S., Japan and Switzerland announced losses tied to troubled real-estate deals. The risks are particularly acute for small and regional lenders, which have much more of their loan portfolios in commercial real estate than big banks do. While changes in office habits that have hollowed out downtowns are nearly four years old and rates began rising two years ago, landlords have been cushioned by rent from tenants on long-term leases that have been gradually burning off. ..."

Commercial Property Losses Hammer Banks on Three Continents - WSJ Banks in the U.S., Japan and Switzerland announced losses tied to troubled real-estate lending

The rise and fall of China Evergrande

Recommendable! Not so grande!

What This $100B Ghost City Reveals About China’s Property Crisis

Recommendable!

Empty Office Buildings Are Being Turned Into Vertical Farms

Yesterday, I blogged here about the negative impact high energy costs on vertical farming. Here is more about this fascinating subject! Even the McKinsey Global Institute can not resist it.

What to do with all this office space now that the home office is so convenient?  A challenge for business/management consultancies like McKinsey! Here comes the multiuse office! What a brilliant idea! 😊

The urbanization of agriculture thanks to human ingenuity! From cubicles to cucumbers! 😊 As they say, no army in the world can stop an idea whose time has come (Victor Hugo)!

"... According to data gathered in 10 major cities, office usage rates just crossed 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels in late January, and these numbers seem to be stalling only a few months later. Nearly 20 percent of office space is empty across the United States, and some projections suggest that more than 300 million square feet of U.S. office space could be obsolete by 2030. ...
when designing Area 2’s growing apparatus, Silo. Silo is a multilevel conveyor belt system that moves vertically throughout the day to replicate a plant’s natural circadian rhythm. Since the system moves automatically, Silo’s conveyor belt cuts down on some of the backbreaking work that accompanies traditional vertical farming methods, such as climbing up and down ladders. Also, Silo requires no modifications to the existing building before installation. Area 2 Farms plans on building a model of Silo in Union Station in Washington later this year to showcase its growing technology and advocate for local food systems. ...
In Calgary, Alberta, AgriPlay Ventures transformed part of underutilized office space in Calgary Tower Center into one of Canada’s largest indoor urban farms earlier this year. ...
The farm at Calgary Tower produces tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers, greens and much more for the local community, with some crops offering 30 harvests a year. Although only one floor of the approximately 262,500-square-foot building is currently being utilized for food production, AgriPlay wants to expand to another two floors in the coming months and years."

"At a glance

Hybrid work is here to stay. As a result, office attendance has stabilized at 30 percent below prepandemic norms.

... residents have left urban cores and shifted their shopping elsewhere. For example, New York City’s urban core lost 5 percent of its population from mid-2020 to mid-2022, and San Francisco’s lost 6 percent. Urban vacancy rates have shot up. Foot traffic near stores in metropolitan areas remains 10 to 20 percent below prepandemic levels. 

Demand for office and retail space ... will remain below prepandemic levels. In a moderate scenario that we modeled, demand for office space is 13 percent lower in 2030 than it was in 2019 for the median city in our study. In a severe scenario, demand falls by 38 percent in the most heavily affected city.

...

Cities and buildings can adapt and thrive by taking hybrid approaches themselves. Priorities might include developing mixed-use neighborhoods, constructing more adaptable buildings, and designing multiuse office and retail space. ..."

Empty Office Buildings Are Being Turned Into Vertical Farms | Innovation| Smithsonian Magazine With office usage hovering near 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels, cities are putting the underutilized space to new use growing food

Empty spaces and hybrid places: The pandemic’s lasting impact on real estate Real estate in the world’s superstar cities has not kept up with shifts in behavior caused by the pandemic. The cities’ vibrancy is at risk, and they will have to adapt.

Chinese bank earnings threatened by early mortgage payments

As an economist, I say this is kind of an unusual headline!

In price inflationary times, they say real estate property is like an insurance/hedge or like gold!

There have been numerous news/reports in the past few years or so about a real estate and related financing bubble in China!

"Chinese banks are facing a new earnings challenge as growing numbers of homebuyers pay off their mortgages ahead of schedule, threatening lenders with the loss of years of anticipated interest income.

"I've not heard of early repayment of similar scale before," said Ding Shuang, chief economist for greater China and North Asia at Standard Chartered. "It will certainly have a negative impact on the banks' revenue." ..."

Chinese bank earnings threatened by early mortgage payments - Nikkei Asia Borrowers selling investments, taking out business loans to clear housing debts

Deutscher Immobilienmarkt: Start-up schätzt ungefragt Immobilien

Immobilienwerte für private Wohnimmobilien sind in den USA seit Jahrzehnten öffentlich verfügbar! Was soll das Geschrei? Allgemeine Preistransparenz ist ein wichtiges Kennzeichen für eine freie Marktwirtschaft. Ohne Preiskenntnis funktioniert es nicht oder nur schlecht! Am Anfang, nach der Einführung, gibt es gewöhnlich Schwierigkeiten oder Ungereimtheiten, die aber wahrscheinlich schnell aufgelöst werden.

Deutscher Immobilienmarkt: Start-up schätzt ungefragt Immobilien Das Unternehmen Scoperty hat ungefragt Schätzwerte für 35 Millionen Wohnhäuser veröffentlicht. Für Kaufinteressierte kann das praktisch sein. Aber manche Eigentümer sind sauer.