Most and Least Expensive
Here are the 50 Largest U.S. Cities Household Spend, which breaks down comparative household bill costs across the fifty largest cities in the country. If you wanted to save money, where would you move?
Single Agency Coming Soon
The gradual phasing out of buyer-agents is underway, and it shouldn’t be long now.
Zillow’s new format features the listing agent’s phone number under the main photo!
The three-headed agent display was removed and now when a reader clicks on the right side for Request a tour or Contact agent, they are linked to the Zillow call center instead. There they get processed/qualified on the phone by Zillow employees, sent to Zillow Mortgage, and then get assigned to an agent who is paying big money to Zillow for the privledge.
Buyers will figure it out pretty quick. By clicking on the right side, you get a 3rd party agent who isn’t the listing agent and has never been to the home. With the listing agent’s phone number now prominently displayed, it is inevitable that buyers will call the listing agent next time.
If they need a prompt, they will get one when they start clicking on the photos – which every viewer does immediately. This is what they will see now:
Yep – the listing agent is in the upper-left corner of every photo!
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2533-Camulos-St-San-Diego-CA-92107/16966353_zpid/
With the threat of buyers having to pay a buyer-agent a hefty commission out of pocket, it will be irresistible for them to contact the listing agent to see what they have to offer – in hopes of avoiding a separate payment due to a buyer-agent. The listing agents will be happy to oblige because they will already have their full fee packed into the listing side.
By the time the realtor lawsuits get resolved, it will be too late – there won’t be any need for a buyer-agent.
Zillow is offering a full marketing package to listing agents too.
Package Includes:
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- Listing Placement Boost on Zillow
- HD Photography
- Aerial Photography
- Social Media Reel
- 3D Tour
- “NEW” AI Generated Interactive Floor Plan
- Listing Website
- Enhanced Listing Agent Branding
- Capture New Leads From Your Zillow Profile
The Listing Placement Boost on Zillow?
Listing agents who purchase a marketing package will have their new listings displayed first in the home’s area for seven days – a very nice feature for agents looking to capture buyers for their listings.
While the rest of the industry was grumbling about lawsuits over the last few months, Zillow created a new format that will solve everything. But nobody knows what fee the listing agent charges because it is never disclosed to anyone but the seller – the person who just wants to hurry up and get their money.
Terramar $10,750,000 Closed Dec 1st
Shane McGowan, RIP
A good old Irish Christmas song this week, in honor of Shane McGowan – who was born on December 25, 1957!
Hat tip Richard!
The Pogues were an English or Anglo-Irish Celtic punk band fronted by Shane MacGowan and others, founded in King’s Cross, London, in 1982, as Pogue Mahone—an anglicisation by James Joyce of the Irish phrase póg mo thóin, meaning “kiss my arse”. Fusing punk influences with instruments such as the tin whistle, banjo, cittern, mandolin and accordion, the Pogues were initially poorly received in traditional Irish music circles—the noted musician Tommy Makem called them “the greatest disaster ever to hit Irish music”—but were subsequently credited with reinvigorating the genre. The band later incorporated influences from other musical traditions, including jazz, flamenco, and Middle Eastern music.
The band started off playing in London pubs and clubs, and became known for their energetic, raucous live shows. After gaining wider attention as an opening act for The Clash on their 1984 tour, and shortening their name to the Pogues—to circumvent BBC censorship, following complaints from Scottish Gaelic speakers—they released their first studio album, Red Roses for Me, in October 1984.
In 1987, the Pogues’ arrangement of the folk song “The Irish Rover”, a collaboration with the Dubliners, reached number one in Ireland and number eight in the UK; the two bands performed the song on Ireland’s The Late Late Show and the UK’s Top of the Pops. Later in 1987, the Pogues released the Christmas single “Fairytale of New York”, co-written by MacGowan and Jem Finer and recorded as a duet between MacGowan and Kirsty McColl, which reached number one in Ireland and number two in the UK. The song remains a perennial Christmas favourite in the UK and Ireland; in December 2022, it was certified quintuple platinum in the UK, having achieved three million combined sales.
It was reported in July 2023 that MacGowan was hospitalised in an intensive care unit. Following treatment for an infection, he was discharged from St. Vincent’s University Hospital in November 2023. On 30 November 2023, after receiving last rites, MacGowan died from pneumonia at his home in Dublin with his wife by his side; he was 65.
Following MacGowan’s death, Tom Waits wrote on X: “Shane MacGowan’s torrid and mighty voice is mud and roses punched out with swaggering stagger, ancient longing that is blasted all to hell. A Bard’s bard, may he cast his spell upon us all forevermore”.[83]
Nick Cave called MacGowan “the greatest songwriter of his generation, with the most terrifyingly beautiful of voices”. Bruce Springsteen said the “passion and deep intensity of [MacGowan’s] music and lyrics is unmatched by all but the very best in the rock and roll canon… I don’t know about the rest of us, but they’ll be singing Shane’s songs 100 years from now”.
When Bob Dylan performed a concert in Dublin in 2022, he paid tribute to MacGowan while onstage, describing the former Pogues frontman as one of his “favourite artists”.
Paul Simon said MacGowan was “that kind of artist that needed to burn very brightly and intensely. Some artists are like that. They produce work that we treasure but they pay for it with their health – their bodily health and their mental health. That was Shane”.
https://www.loudersound.com/news/shane-macgowan-victoria-clarke-pogues
Hiring A Realtor
What is the best thing a consumer can do to prepare for the 2024 selling season?
Get Good Help!
To check an agent’s qualifications, go to Zillow and click on the Agent Finder at the top of their page. Zillow wants you to use one of the agents they display prominently, but all you know about them is that those agents pay the most money to be featured there.
If you have a realtor you are investigating, you’ve probably checked their business website – and noticed how they all tend to look the same. It’s why Zillow is the reliable go-to website, because they are pulling the sales data directly from the MLS so agents can’t manipulate it.
What are you looking for?
You want to hire an experienced agent who has a well-honed set of sales skills. An agent who has proven history of getting a variety of people to the finish line. An agent who can handle anything that happens, and still deliver a smooth and easy experience for you.
Things to Consider:
- A well-qualified agent should be closing at least one sale per month.
- Agents who represent sellers and buyers have a better grasp of the big picture.
- Those who successfully work a larger area have sales skills that travel.
- The agent reviews is where you can find out who is doing the actual work.
- There are agents who get 5.0 on every review, so don’t settle for less.
- Years of experience isn’t as important as number of sales in the last 12 months.
Everyone is in a hurry and wants to grab and go. But if there was ever a time to patiently investigate the choices, it’s when you’re making one of the most critical decisions of your life.
Get Good Help!
https://www.zillow.com/profile/Jim-Klinge/
Robert Reffkin on 2024
High Earners Leaving California
Another article in the LAT about the out-migration, and the current $68 billion budget deficit. If politicians raise taxes to compensate, could it drive more people away? And cause a surge in inventory? An excerpt:
In 2021 and 2022, about 750,000 more people left the state than moved in, according to recently released Census Bureau data. That was about as many as the total net loss of residents for all five years before the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.
But it’s not just the sheer numbers of people who have left. What’s different is that in each of the prior two years, more than 250,000 Californians with at least a bachelor’s degree moved out, while an average of 175,000 college graduates from other states settled in California, according to an analysis of census data by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
In prior periods over the last two decades, that balance was about even or slightly in California’s favor, even though the state consistently lost many more residents overall to other states than it gained from them. The recent out-migration has been particularly pronounced among Californians with graduate and professional degrees.
California is heavily dependent on high earners to meet government fiscal needs. Tax filers in the top 1% of income, earning around $1 million and above, have typically accounted for 40% to 45% of the state’s total personal income tax revenue, said Brian Uhler, deputy legislative analyst at California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, which estimated the $68-billion budget deficit.
But it’s not just the super rich such as Elon Musk, who moved from California to Texas in 2020 and brought his company Tesla with him a year later, or movie star Mark Wahlberg, who left Los Angeles for Vegas last year. There’s been a broader exodus of ordinary Californians in the upper-income spectrum as well.
In the tax filing years 2020 and 2021, the average gross income of taxpayers who had moved from California to another state was about $137,000. That was up from $75,000 in 2015 and 2016, according to migration and personal income data from the Internal Revenue Service.
IRS and other data show that Texas has long been, by far, the top destination for Californians. And in the years 2015-16, an individual or couple who had moved from California to Texas reported an average income of $78,000, about the same as Texans who relocated to California. But by 2020-2021, California transplants in Texas reported an average income of about $137,000, while tax returns from former Texans who moved to California showed an average income of $75,000.
The income gap between those coming into California and those going out is even bigger when it comes to Florida, which, as far away as it is, has become a top five destination for emigrating Californians. Statistics show more older Californians are likely to move there. Florida, like Texas and Nevada and Tennessee, another more recent hot spot for Californians, doesn’t have a personal income tax.
In California, the top tax rate for personal income is 12.3%.
“They’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m working hard and the income tax is just killing me,” said Todd Litman, a longtime estate planning attorney in Tustin.
These days, Litman says he’s hearing from four to five clients every month who want to leave California, up from just one a month a few years ago. Many of his clients have $1 million or more in their retirement accounts, he said, and don’t want the extra tax burden when they make withdrawals.
But that’s not all. California’s pricey housing market is likely to keep driving more Californians elsewhere. Although trending lower in recent months, the median price of a single-family house in the state in October 2023 was $840,360, up 46% from the start of 2020, according to the California Assn. of Realtors.
Moody’s Analytics economist Mark Zandi analyzed moves in and out of California for The Times using Equifax credit data, to zero in on the age of the movers. He found that since the pandemic in early 2020, California has lost residents in every age group, but by a significant margin the biggest net out-migration came from those 35 to 44 years old.
“This is probably motivated by the severe housing affordability crisis in California,” Zandi said. “It’s all but impossible for them to become homeowners in the state.”
Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, who has written about demographic trends in migration, thinks the increased loss of higher-educated Californians to other states in recent years can be traced in significant part to the rise of remote work since the pandemic. As more employers call workers back to the office, and the share of fully remote work appears to have settled at around 10% of all employees, McGhee expects the net out-migration from California to slow.
Read the full article here:
Paying Over List Price Continues
If there was going to be a time when the local market might soften up a bit, it would be around November/December, wouldn’t it? If the majority of the recent sales closed at 10% discounts or more, then it would be nervous time, but most buyers are still paying fairly close to list – or higher.
We’ve had 47 closed sales in December so far, and pricing is holding up. Next year probably will too!
Olivenhain Estate
This is one of the best values we’ve seen all year if you don’t mind having more than two acres. See the whole Bubbleinfo TV collection here:
Boomer Wealth Transfer
One of the main reasons that the real estate market could levitate at these price points is the monumental wealth transfer between baby boomers and their kids. A major tax advantage is closing out at the end of 2025, and those with a healthy portfolio will be letting it flow – another opinion on it here:
Unless Congress acts, on Jan. 1, 2026, the estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax exemption amounts will be cut in half. A decrease in the exemption amount could result in significant additional transfer taxes for families with federally taxable estates. However, there is still ample opportunity for high-net-worth families to plan to utilize the current exemption amounts. This article will explore potential wealth transfer opportunities to capture and utilize the exemption amount before it may be lost.
In 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) doubled the existing estate and gift tax exemption amounts from $5.6 million per person (or $11.18 million per married couple) to $11.18 million per person (or $22.36 million per married couple), indexed for inflation annually. In 2023, the estate and gift tax exemption amount is $12.92 million per person (or $25.84 million per married couple).
The TCJA is set to expire at the end of 2025. Let’s assume that the estate and gift tax exemption amount has increased to $14 million by this time (due to adjustments for inflation). In that case, if Congress does not act, the exemption amount would decrease to about $7 million per person or $14 million per married couple. This loss in exemption amount could increase overall transfer taxes for certain families by millions of dollars.
We’ve been in a similar position in prior years and have seen that congressional gridlock can make reaching an agreement on preserving or increasing the exemption extremely difficult. While it is uncertain what, if any, tax-related legislation will come out of Congress in 2024 and 2025, it may be wise to explore one’s options to use the current existing exemption well before 2026.
If you can afford to use a portion or all of your existing exemption amount before Jan. 1, 2026, the amount used now cannot later be taken away from you. It has also been confirmed that if you use more exemption during life than is available at death (due to the decrease), the IRS cannot impose estate tax on those “excess” gifts as part of the taxpayer’s taxable estate when they pass. (Please note that there are some minimal exceptions to this rule for certain types of gifts made within three years of death.)
In addition, it’s important to note that when using your exemption during your life, you use it from the “bottom up.” This means that if you have $12.92 million of exemption and you use $6 million by making a gift (leaving you with $6.92 million), if the exemption amount is then cut in half, the $6 million of exemption you have used is considered to come out of the remaining amount, not the amount that was taken away.
In the above example, if you make a $6 million gift and the exemption amount is cut in half from $14 million to $7 million, you will have only $1 million remaining for future gifts or to shield assets from taxes upon your death. Consequently, locking in the exemption amount that may be taken away requires large gifts close to or at the full exemption amount before the amount potentially drops.
Read the full article here:
https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/estate-tax-law-changes-how-to-prepare
