the "Headline That Caught My Attention or the WTF" thread

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said this year it’s expecting 145 million electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide by 2030. Although EVs do not release carbon dioxide during their use, their production exerts the same toll on the environment as that of conventional cars, while the recycling of lithium-ion batteries poses unique challenges. Lithium-ion batteries are bulkier and take more space than their traditional counterpart, lead-acid batteries.

www.marketwatch.com

Electric vehicles certainly are dirty — their battery packs are poised to be one of the biggest new sources of pollution

The industry crucially needs regulation over recycling.
www.marketwatch.com www.marketwatch.com
 
Well I guess George Washington will be next...

Jefferson Statue Will Be Removed From N.Y.C. Council Chambers​

After a debate over Jefferson’s legacy and his history as a slaveholder, city officials delayed deciding on where to display the statue.

For more than 100 years, a 7-foot-tall statue of Thomas Jefferson has towered over members of the New York City Council in their chamber at City Hall, a testament to his role as one of the nation’s founding fathers and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.

But for the last two decades, some Black and Latino Council members, citing Jefferson’s history as a slaveholder, called for the statue to be banished — a push that gained significant momentum in the last year, as the nation has broadly reconsidered public monuments that can be viewed as symbols of systemic racism.

On Monday, city officials voted unanimously to remove the statue from Council chambers, but delayed a decision on where to put it.
 
jpd said:
Welcome to today's society...

www.yahoo.com

Train riders held up phones as woman was raped, police say

A man charged with raping a woman on a commuter train just outside of Philadelphia harassed her for more than 40 minutes while multiple people held up their phones to seemingly record the assault without intervening, authorities said. More than two dozen train stops passed as the man harassed...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com
Click to expand...
every one of them should be charged with adding & abetting a crime
 
Neat new way to augment C14 dating!!

Vikings Were in the Americas Exactly 1,000 Years Ago​

By studying tree rings and using a dash of astrophysics, researchers have pinned down a precise year that settlers from Europe were on land that would come to be known as Newfoundland.

A reconstruction of a Viking-age church at Norstead, Newfoundland, near the L’Anse aux Meadows, site of a settlement of Vikings who were present in 1021.

A reconstruction of a Viking-age church at Norstead, Newfoundland, near the L’Anse aux Meadows, site of a settlement of Vikings who were present in 1021.Credit...Glenn Nagel Photography


By Katherine Kornei
Oct. 20, 2021 Updated 1:46 p.m. ET

Six decades ago, a husband-and-wife team of archaeologists discovered the remains of a settlement on the windswept northern tip of Newfoundland. The site’s eight timber-framed structures resemble Viking buildings in Greenland, and archaeological artifacts found there — including a bronze cloak pin — are decidedly Norse in style.

Scientists now believe that this site, known as L’Anse aux Meadows, was inhabited by Vikings who came from Greenland. To this day, it remains the only conclusively identified Viking site in the Americas outside of Greenland.

But many questions remain about L’Anse aux Meadows: Who exactly settled it? Why? And, perhaps most importantly, when was the site occupied? Pinning down the settlement’s age has been a challenge — radiocarbon measurements of artifacts from L’Anse aux Meadows span the entire Viking Age, from the late eighth through the 11th centuries.

But in results published Wednesday in Nature, scientists presented what they think are new answers to this mystery. By analyzing the imprint of a rare solar storm in tree rings from wood found at the Canadian site, scientists have decisively pinned down when Norse explorers were in Newfoundland: the year A.D. 1021, or exactly 1,000 years ago.

Getting a more precise handle on when the Vikings inhabited L’Anse aux Meadows is important, said Michael Dee, a geoscientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and an author of the study.

“It was the first time the Atlantic Ocean was crossed,” he said, adding that establishing exact dates helps mark a turning point in the history of human movement around the planet.

To determine when the site was occupied with greater precision, Dr. Dee and his colleagues analyzed three pieces of wood collected from L’Anse aux Meadows in the 1970s. Each piece, originating from a different tree and still bearing its outer bark, had been cleanly cut with a metal tool, perhaps an ax. That’s a giveaway this wood was cleaved by Vikings, said Margot Kuitems, an archaeologist at the University of Groningen, and a member of the team.

“The local people didn’t use metal tools,” she said.

Back in the laboratory, Dr. Kuitems cut a tiny amount of wood from each tree ring of each piece. It was like splitting hairs, she said. “I used a scalpel, but sometimes that was even too thick.”

A microscope image of one of the wood fragments examined by the researchers from L’Anse aux Meadows.

A microscope image of one of the wood fragments examined by the researchers from L’Anse aux Meadows. Credit...Petra Doeve

Working those samples — each representing one year of tree growth — the team isolated the carbon within the wood. All that carbon originally came from Earth’s atmosphere.

“It’s taken up with photosynthesis,” Dr. Dee said.

The vast majority of the carbon in the atmosphere is carbon 12, a stable atom with six protons and six neutrons. Only a fleeting fraction is radioactive carbon 14, also called radiocarbon. That isotope of carbon is produced when cosmic rays — high-energy particles from the sun or beyond the solar system — interact with atoms in Earth’s atmosphere.

Scientists who study cosmic rays used to think that these particles arrived in a relatively constant barrage, meaning that the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in the atmosphere has largely remained steady over time. But then in 2012, researchers found two cedar trees in Japan that recorded inexplicably high levels of radiocarbon in their rings dating A.D. 774 to 775. That spike is now known as a Miyake event for its discoverer, Fusa Miyake, a cosmic ray physicist at Nagoya University in Japan. Other Miyake events have since been spotted in tree ring records, but they remain exceedingly rare.

“At the moment we only have three or four in all of the last 10,000 years,” Dr. Dee said.

But it just so happened that another Miyake event occurred during the Viking Age, in A.D. 992 to 993. Trees found worldwide record an uptick in carbon 14 around that time, and wood found at L’Anse aux Meadows should be no exception. In the hopes of pinning down the age of the Americas’ only confirmed Viking settlement, Dr. Dee and his colleagues turned to the unlikely marriage of dendrochronology — the study of tree rings — and astrophysics.

“We realized that this could change the game,” Dr. Dee said.

The researchers found that their three pieces of wood all exhibited a pronounced increase in radiocarbon that began 28 rings before their outer bark. Ring 28 must correspond to the year A.D. 993, the team concluded. They ruled out earlier and later Miyake events based on the carbon 14 to carbon 12 ratios measured in the wood, which vary in known ways over centuries.

With a date now pinned to an inner tree ring, “all you need to do is count to when you get to the cutting edge,” Dr. Dee said. The three pieces of wood the team analyzed were all felled in 1021, the researchers calculated.

Until now, estimates of when L’Anse aux Meadows was occupied have very much been “guesstimates,” said Sturt Manning, an archaeologist at Cornell University and the director of the Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory, who was not involved in the research. “Here’s hard, specific evidence that ties to one year.”

But L’Anse aux Meadows hasn’t given up all of its secrets just yet, and more remains to be understood about its Viking inhabitants, said Mathias Nordvig, a historian specializing in Old Norse literature and culture at the University of Colorado, Boulder, also not involved in the study.

“What was its significance?” he asked about the site. “And where did they go from there?”
 
www.yahoo.com

DC Comics artist quits over Superman ditching 'American way' motto: 'I’m tired of this s***'

A DC Comics artist quit his job over the company changing Superman's decades-old slogan to remove the "American way" portion as well as making the classic character bisexual.
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com


"What really pissed me off was saying, 'Truth, justice, and a better world,'" he added. "F*** that. It was, 'Truth, justice, and the American way.' My grandpa almost died in World War II — we don't have a right to destroy s*** that people died for to give us. It's a bunch of f****** nonsense."
 
Interesting option, especially for retirees that have sold the ancestral home, and reaped the significant capital gain from long-term ownership...

The Market for Single-Family Rentals Grows as Homeownership Wanes​

House hunters are attracted to the hassle-free living and lack of down payments, but there’s a trade-off: They give up the investment of owning a home.

By Debra Kamin
Oct. 22, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

The lawns are manicured. The swimming pools sparkle in the sun. And the homes, all of them turnkey and smelling of fresh paint, are lined up in tidy rows, an army of cookie-cutter porches standing at attention.
Covid-19 inflamed the real estate market, pushed Americans toward the suburbs and changed our relationship with where we live, work and play. It also accelerated interest in built-to-rent housing, which even before the pandemic was expanding at a breakneck pace.

The number of built-to-rent homes — single-family homes constructed expressly for the purpose of renting — increased 30 percent from 2019 to 2020. Today, they make up about 6 percent of all new homes being built in the United States, and that number is poised to double in the next 10 years. This is the fastest-growing sector of the American housing market, and it is increasingly master-planned and built on tracts. On the fringes of America’s second-tier cities, entire villages owned by large-scale investors are popping up, offering renters who either can’t or don’t want to spring for a down payment another path to the American dream.

Many built-to-rent housing projects look like any other planned suburban communities, albeit with smaller backyards and homes squeezed a bit closer together. Houses often have luxury finishes like granite or quartz countertops and stainless steel appliances. And for tenants, the traditional hassles of homeownership are avoided: Common areas are maintained by gardeners and maintenance staff, a service for which renters often pay an additional monthly fee of around $100. If a toilet breaks or the roof leaks, management takes care of it.

“Years prior to the pandemic, we found that consumers were drawn to a housing option that combines the best of both worlds: single-family living and no-hassle, maintenance-free leased living,” said Josh E. Hartmann, the chief executive of NexMetro Communities, a developer with two dozen neighborhoods of built-to-rent homes, the majority in the American Sun Belt.

The quality of these built-to-rent homes holds up to that of traditional homes. And for consumers hesitant to put down long-term roots, they may be a better financial bet. “If you don’t think you’re going to be someplace for three years or more, the transaction costs are just too high to buy,” said Norman Miller, a professor of real estate finance at the University of San Diego. “The only downside is you’re going to lose out on the investment aspects of homeownership.”

Two months ago, Brian and Amanda Voorhees moved with their two children to 360 Communities at Shearwater, a community of 127 two-, three- and four-bedroom townhouses and single-family homes about 40 minutes from Jacksonville, Fla. They left New Jersey after selling their 3,600-square-foot home there at the top of the market, and they weren’t ready to jump into a new investment.

“We really wanted to have the flexibility to enjoy life versus having to worry about repairing the roof or cutting the grass rather than heading to the beach,” said Mr. Voorhees, a vice president of underwriting for an insurance broker. “We didn’t want to have to worry about all the potential pitfalls of homeownership.”

They rent their new home, a four-bedroom townhouse, for $2,600 a month. Mr. Voorhees, 33, now works from home, and Ms. Voorhees, 36, stays at home with Braden, 7, and Abigail, 4, taking the children for bike rides along the community’s trails and spending hours with them at the community pool.

Shearwater is an affiliate of Freehold Communities, a developer of master-planned projects in seven states across the Sun Belt. Most include parks, trails and greenbelts; Shearwater has a lazy river, tennis courts and a lagoon.

The Voorheeses, who invested the profit they made from the sale of their home in New Jersey in stocks, an I.R.A. and college funds for their children, said they may choose to buy a home in the future, but are in no hurry.

“When we tell people our plan is to long-term rent, they’re a little bit taken aback. There is still a stigma attached to renting,” Ms. Voorhees said. “But when you break it down and look at the lifestyle that being in the rental affords us, it makes a lot more sense.”

Tom and Mariko Farrelly live nearby, in the same community. Mr. Farrelly, 65, works for a small brokerage; Ms. Farrelly, 61, is a retired teacher. Mr. Farrelly’s job was transferred from Westchester County, N.Y., to Jacksonville in December 2020, and the couple, who hope to retire in Ms. Farrelly’s home country of Japan in a few years, weren’t interested in buying a home for a short period, especially in such a wild housing market.

They pay $2,300 a month for a two-bedroom townhouse, and an additional $160 in monthly fees to cover gardening, trash removal and access to amenities like fitness classes. Ms. Farrelly enjoys aqua aerobics classes and Zumba at the fitness center. “Apartment living is cheaper,” Mr. Farrelly said. “But when you’re in an apartment, you know you’re only going to be there for a year. Here, people have upkeep on the homes like it’s theirs.”

The Voorhees and Farrelly families represent a growing contingent of Americans who make relatively high salaries but are opting not to buy. In 2019, a Wall Street Journal analysis of Census Bureau data reported that the number of households with six-figure incomes who were renting had reached 19 percent, up from 12 percent in 2006.

But that sector in the rental market is eclipsed by another: adults under 35 who, according to the Census Bureau, have the nation’s lowest rate of homeownership, at 37.8 percent. Rampant credit card and student loan debt, coupled with an inflated housing market and stagnant earning potential, now means that Americans in Generation X, who are between 40 and 55, have four times the assets of America’s youngest adults. Simultaneously, the national homeownership rate continues to plummet.

Into this melee, the emergence of long-term remote work has offered younger Americans an exit route out of the nation’s most expensive urban centers. As they begin to marry and think about having children, the built-to-rent revolution is reviving the possibility of a suburban lifestyle that many felt was out of reach.

“The majority of opportunities in this country have traditionally been rooted in the Old World American dream, with a white picket fence, two and a half kids and a dog. But that is fundamentally changing,” said Paraag Sarva, chief executive of Rhino, a start-up that sells insurance renters can buy in lieu of putting down a security deposit.

“Millennials and Generation Z get painted as having preferences for things like avocado toast and $6 coffees at Starbucks,” Mr. Sarva said. “But 40 percent of Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency, let alone relocating to a new home. It’s not really about consumer preferences for expensive avocados.”

The built-to-rent movement took off in 2010, when investors like Colony Capital, Starwood Capital and Blackstone saw an opportunity in the spoils of the financial crisis and began snapping up foreclosed single-family properties. Investors next turned to developers building large-scale housing projects, offering to buy the last 10 or 15 percent of an owner-occupied project and lease the units at a profit.

“That was the on-ramp for institutions to come in and say, ‘Hey, developer, I’ll close out the project for you, and then I’ll rent these homes,’” said Gary Beasley, the chief executive of Roofstock, an online marketplace for investment in and management of single-family homes. “People saw these rental homes could coexist just fine with owner-occupied homes.”

By the time the pandemic hit, institutional landlords had shifted focus to full-on subdivisions of rental properties. In May, Redfin reported that investors had spent $77 billion on homes over the past six months. That same month, Invitation Homes, the largest single-family leasing company in the United States, announced a joint venture with the investment firm Rockpoint that involved a $1 billion shopping spree on single-family homes across the country, which will be renovated and leased.

As the housing crunch grows tighter, the cash continues to pour in — and some in the real estate industry predict that the trend will have damning consequences.

“The single-family home market has become an inevitable asset class for institutional money,” said Aaron Graf, the chief executive of the New York City real estate brokerage LG Fairmont. “A normal buyer can’t compete with an all-cash offer from an institution, especially if it comes in high. Young people are thus being priced out of the starter single-family home.”

It’s a vicious circle, Mr. Graf said, in which a shortage of homes perpetuates a shift toward renting, which will exacerbate the housing crisis.

“There is a narrative being pushed on young people that it is better to rent than to own,” he said. “This trend will be devastating for young people’s ability to build wealth, as housing is the No. 1 wealth builder.”

The supply of owner-occupied housing in the United States has grown by 10 percent over the past five years, while rental housing has increased just 1 percent. Freddie Mac estimates the housing undersupply in the United States to be more than 275,000 homes.

“There is as much a shortage of homes in the rental market as there is in the home purchase market,” said David Howard, the executive director of the National Rental Home Council. “Demand for single-family rental housing has been on the rise, partly in response to the Covid pandemic, but also because of strong underlying demographic factors.”

The shift appeals to landlords, as well, as renters in single-family homes tend to stay longer and have lower delinquency rates. NexMetro Communities, whose 23 neighborhoods carry the shingle Avilla Homes, has seen renter retention rates increase 20 percent since early 2020. For investors and landlords, built-to-rent properties increasingly offer a higher return, one that continues to pay dividends year over year. “With so many landlords stuck with nonperforming tenants, built-to-rent offers a higher capitalization rate than property development and sales,” said Justin Abdilla, a real estate lawyer. “Why slaughter the sheep when you can shear it?”

Nicolette Boxe, an investor and real estate agent in Leesburg, Va., agrees. After years of buying and renting properties one by one, she is now building a community of two-story, three-bedroom townhouses in her hometown, DeRidder, La. The homes, which each come with an electric car port and a small backyard, will rent for around $2,000 a month. They’ll stand out in DeRidder, she said, and that’s the point.

“We’re trying to give people an urban-city feel, even in Louisiana, where people aren’t accustomed to it,” she said.

In NexMetro’s communities, surrounding Phoenix, Dallas, Denver and Tampa, “residents are primarily renters by choice,” said Mr. Hartmann, the chief executive. “They have the wherewithal to buy, but are choosing to rent because of their life stage and preference. For them, it’s a lifestyle play.”

Micaela Cullender, 22, a fraud specialist for Goldman Sachs, chose the Avilla Heritage community in Grand Prairie, Texas, near Dallas, after noise from neighbors in her apartment building became intolerable while she was working from home. She and her fiancé, Tate Stavenhagen, were going to buy a home after getting married. After living at Avilla, where they have 10-foot ceilings and quartz countertops, they are planning to build a home with amenities on par with those of their rental.

“It’s brand-new here, and when we were house hunting we had higher expectations because everything at Avilla is so up-to-date,” Ms. Cullender said. “We realized we’d be downgrading the interior of our house if we bought, so we’re building.”

Matt Abdulla, 51, and his wife, Rhonda, came to Avilla Buffalo Run, near Denver, to be closer to their 10 grandchildren. Two factors sealed the deal: the privacy afforded by no shared walls, and the warm welcome offered to their two German shepherds.

The couple’s two-bedroom cottage rents for $1,600 a month. It’s smaller than their previous rental home, and Mr. Abdulla dislikes being charged $8 a month to park his car, but having a small backyard and privacy, he said, makes it worthwhile.

“You’re not attached to anyone below you, above you or on side of you,” he said. “Rent’s a little bit expensive, but it’s cozy and feels like home.”
 
Roccus7 said:
Interesting option, especially for retirees that have sold the ancestral home, and reaped the significant capital gain from long-term ownership...

The Market for Single-Family Rentals Grows as Homeownership Wanes​

House hunters are attracted to the hassle-free living and lack of down payments, but there’s a trade-off: They give up the investment of owning a home.

By Debra Kamin
Oct. 22, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

The lawns are manicured. The swimming pools sparkle in the sun. And the homes, all of them turnkey and smelling of fresh paint, are lined up in tidy rows, an army of cookie-cutter porches standing at attention.
Covid-19 inflamed the real estate market, pushed Americans toward the suburbs and changed our relationship with where we live, work and play. It also accelerated interest in built-to-rent housing, which even before the pandemic was expanding at a breakneck pace.

The number of built-to-rent homes — single-family homes constructed expressly for the purpose of renting — increased 30 percent from 2019 to 2020. Today, they make up about 6 percent of all new homes being built in the United States, and that number is poised to double in the next 10 years. This is the fastest-growing sector of the American housing market, and it is increasingly master-planned and built on tracts. On the fringes of America’s second-tier cities, entire villages owned by large-scale investors are popping up, offering renters who either can’t or don’t want to spring for a down payment another path to the American dream.

Many built-to-rent housing projects look like any other planned suburban communities, albeit with smaller backyards and homes squeezed a bit closer together. Houses often have luxury finishes like granite or quartz countertops and stainless steel appliances. And for tenants, the traditional hassles of homeownership are avoided: Common areas are maintained by gardeners and maintenance staff, a service for which renters often pay an additional monthly fee of around $100. If a toilet breaks or the roof leaks, management takes care of it.

“Years prior to the pandemic, we found that consumers were drawn to a housing option that combines the best of both worlds: single-family living and no-hassle, maintenance-free leased living,” said Josh E. Hartmann, the chief executive of NexMetro Communities, a developer with two dozen neighborhoods of built-to-rent homes, the majority in the American Sun Belt.

The quality of these built-to-rent homes holds up to that of traditional homes. And for consumers hesitant to put down long-term roots, they may be a better financial bet. “If you don’t think you’re going to be someplace for three years or more, the transaction costs are just too high to buy,” said Norman Miller, a professor of real estate finance at the University of San Diego. “The only downside is you’re going to lose out on the investment aspects of homeownership.”

Two months ago, Brian and Amanda Voorhees moved with their two children to 360 Communities at Shearwater, a community of 127 two-, three- and four-bedroom townhouses and single-family homes about 40 minutes from Jacksonville, Fla. They left New Jersey after selling their 3,600-square-foot home there at the top of the market, and they weren’t ready to jump into a new investment.

“We really wanted to have the flexibility to enjoy life versus having to worry about repairing the roof or cutting the grass rather than heading to the beach,” said Mr. Voorhees, a vice president of underwriting for an insurance broker. “We didn’t want to have to worry about all the potential pitfalls of homeownership.”

They rent their new home, a four-bedroom townhouse, for $2,600 a month. Mr. Voorhees, 33, now works from home, and Ms. Voorhees, 36, stays at home with Braden, 7, and Abigail, 4, taking the children for bike rides along the community’s trails and spending hours with them at the community pool.

Shearwater is an affiliate of Freehold Communities, a developer of master-planned projects in seven states across the Sun Belt. Most include parks, trails and greenbelts; Shearwater has a lazy river, tennis courts and a lagoon.

The Voorheeses, who invested the profit they made from the sale of their home in New Jersey in stocks, an I.R.A. and college funds for their children, said they may choose to buy a home in the future, but are in no hurry.

“When we tell people our plan is to long-term rent, they’re a little bit taken aback. There is still a stigma attached to renting,” Ms. Voorhees said. “But when you break it down and look at the lifestyle that being in the rental affords us, it makes a lot more sense.”

Tom and Mariko Farrelly live nearby, in the same community. Mr. Farrelly, 65, works for a small brokerage; Ms. Farrelly, 61, is a retired teacher. Mr. Farrelly’s job was transferred from Westchester County, N.Y., to Jacksonville in December 2020, and the couple, who hope to retire in Ms. Farrelly’s home country of Japan in a few years, weren’t interested in buying a home for a short period, especially in such a wild housing market.

They pay $2,300 a month for a two-bedroom townhouse, and an additional $160 in monthly fees to cover gardening, trash removal and access to amenities like fitness classes. Ms. Farrelly enjoys aqua aerobics classes and Zumba at the fitness center. “Apartment living is cheaper,” Mr. Farrelly said. “But when you’re in an apartment, you know you’re only going to be there for a year. Here, people have upkeep on the homes like it’s theirs.”

The Voorhees and Farrelly families represent a growing contingent of Americans who make relatively high salaries but are opting not to buy. In 2019, a Wall Street Journal analysis of Census Bureau data reported that the number of households with six-figure incomes who were renting had reached 19 percent, up from 12 percent in 2006.

But that sector in the rental market is eclipsed by another: adults under 35 who, according to the Census Bureau, have the nation’s lowest rate of homeownership, at 37.8 percent. Rampant credit card and student loan debt, coupled with an inflated housing market and stagnant earning potential, now means that Americans in Generation X, who are between 40 and 55, have four times the assets of America’s youngest adults. Simultaneously, the national homeownership rate continues to plummet.

Into this melee, the emergence of long-term remote work has offered younger Americans an exit route out of the nation’s most expensive urban centers. As they begin to marry and think about having children, the built-to-rent revolution is reviving the possibility of a suburban lifestyle that many felt was out of reach.

“The majority of opportunities in this country have traditionally been rooted in the Old World American dream, with a white picket fence, two and a half kids and a dog. But that is fundamentally changing,” said Paraag Sarva, chief executive of Rhino, a start-up that sells insurance renters can buy in lieu of putting down a security deposit.

“Millennials and Generation Z get painted as having preferences for things like avocado toast and $6 coffees at Starbucks,” Mr. Sarva said. “But 40 percent of Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency, let alone relocating to a new home. It’s not really about consumer preferences for expensive avocados.”

The built-to-rent movement took off in 2010, when investors like Colony Capital, Starwood Capital and Blackstone saw an opportunity in the spoils of the financial crisis and began snapping up foreclosed single-family properties. Investors next turned to developers building large-scale housing projects, offering to buy the last 10 or 15 percent of an owner-occupied project and lease the units at a profit.

“That was the on-ramp for institutions to come in and say, ‘Hey, developer, I’ll close out the project for you, and then I’ll rent these homes,’” said Gary Beasley, the chief executive of Roofstock, an online marketplace for investment in and management of single-family homes. “People saw these rental homes could coexist just fine with owner-occupied homes.”

By the time the pandemic hit, institutional landlords had shifted focus to full-on subdivisions of rental properties. In May, Redfin reported that investors had spent $77 billion on homes over the past six months. That same month, Invitation Homes, the largest single-family leasing company in the United States, announced a joint venture with the investment firm Rockpoint that involved a $1 billion shopping spree on single-family homes across the country, which will be renovated and leased.

As the housing crunch grows tighter, the cash continues to pour in — and some in the real estate industry predict that the trend will have damning consequences.

“The single-family home market has become an inevitable asset class for institutional money,” said Aaron Graf, the chief executive of the New York City real estate brokerage LG Fairmont. “A normal buyer can’t compete with an all-cash offer from an institution, especially if it comes in high. Young people are thus being priced out of the starter single-family home.”

It’s a vicious circle, Mr. Graf said, in which a shortage of homes perpetuates a shift toward renting, which will exacerbate the housing crisis.

“There is a narrative being pushed on young people that it is better to rent than to own,” he said. “This trend will be devastating for young people’s ability to build wealth, as housing is the No. 1 wealth builder.”

The supply of owner-occupied housing in the United States has grown by 10 percent over the past five years, while rental housing has increased just 1 percent. Freddie Mac estimates the housing undersupply in the United States to be more than 275,000 homes.

“There is as much a shortage of homes in the rental market as there is in the home purchase market,” said David Howard, the executive director of the National Rental Home Council. “Demand for single-family rental housing has been on the rise, partly in response to the Covid pandemic, but also because of strong underlying demographic factors.”

The shift appeals to landlords, as well, as renters in single-family homes tend to stay longer and have lower delinquency rates. NexMetro Communities, whose 23 neighborhoods carry the shingle Avilla Homes, has seen renter retention rates increase 20 percent since early 2020. For investors and landlords, built-to-rent properties increasingly offer a higher return, one that continues to pay dividends year over year. “With so many landlords stuck with nonperforming tenants, built-to-rent offers a higher capitalization rate than property development and sales,” said Justin Abdilla, a real estate lawyer. “Why slaughter the sheep when you can shear it?”

Nicolette Boxe, an investor and real estate agent in Leesburg, Va., agrees. After years of buying and renting properties one by one, she is now building a community of two-story, three-bedroom townhouses in her hometown, DeRidder, La. The homes, which each come with an electric car port and a small backyard, will rent for around $2,000 a month. They’ll stand out in DeRidder, she said, and that’s the point.

“We’re trying to give people an urban-city feel, even in Louisiana, where people aren’t accustomed to it,” she said.

In NexMetro’s communities, surrounding Phoenix, Dallas, Denver and Tampa, “residents are primarily renters by choice,” said Mr. Hartmann, the chief executive. “They have the wherewithal to buy, but are choosing to rent because of their life stage and preference. For them, it’s a lifestyle play.”

Micaela Cullender, 22, a fraud specialist for Goldman Sachs, chose the Avilla Heritage community in Grand Prairie, Texas, near Dallas, after noise from neighbors in her apartment building became intolerable while she was working from home. She and her fiancé, Tate Stavenhagen, were going to buy a home after getting married. After living at Avilla, where they have 10-foot ceilings and quartz countertops, they are planning to build a home with amenities on par with those of their rental.

“It’s brand-new here, and when we were house hunting we had higher expectations because everything at Avilla is so up-to-date,” Ms. Cullender said. “We realized we’d be downgrading the interior of our house if we bought, so we’re building.”

Matt Abdulla, 51, and his wife, Rhonda, came to Avilla Buffalo Run, near Denver, to be closer to their 10 grandchildren. Two factors sealed the deal: the privacy afforded by no shared walls, and the warm welcome offered to their two German shepherds.

The couple’s two-bedroom cottage rents for $1,600 a month. It’s smaller than their previous rental home, and Mr. Abdulla dislikes being charged $8 a month to park his car, but having a small backyard and privacy, he said, makes it worthwhile.

“You’re not attached to anyone below you, above you or on side of you,” he said. “Rent’s a little bit expensive, but it’s cozy and feels like home.”
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Too long I’m not reading this
 
Seems the Feds are appropriately taking the advice of "Gotta Catch Them All"

Feds: After lying to get COVID-19 loan, man spent $57,789 on a Pokémon card​

pressherald.com/2021/10/24/feds-after-lying-to-get-covid-19-loan-man-spent-57789-on-a-pokemon-card/

By Hannah Knowles October 25, 2021

Justice Department news releases document a litany of luxury items allegedly bought with pandemic aid meant to keep struggling businesses afloat.

One man was charged with spending his loan money on strip clubs. Another pleaded guilty to using his funds for a $318,000 Lamborghini.

But Vinath Oudomsine may be the only person accused of using his small-business loan on a single Pokémon card. Prosecutors say the card cost the Georgia man $57,789 – more than two-thirds of his federal aid, which officials say was based on false information.

The wire-fraud charge brought last week against Oudomsine is part of a federal crackdown on alleged misuse of massive relief programs that threw lifelines to businesses during the pandemic but also raised concerns about scams and waste.

A federal watchdog said this month that the Small Business Administration (SBA) overpaid $4.5 billion in grants to self-employed people and that “no system of controls was in place to flag applications with flawed or illogical information” – even claims of up to 1 million employees. This year, the SBA inspector general concluded that the federal agency rushed out billions of dollars in loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) “at the expense of controls” that could have blocked inappropriate aid.

The result, according to the SBA inspector general, was “limited assurance that loans went to only eligible recipients.”

The SBA on Sunday faulted the administration of President Donald Trump and called Oudomsine’s case “another example of the fraud that resulted from their lax controls.”

In a statement, the agency said that under the Biden administration it has worked with Congress and the inspector general to add antifraud measures while speeding up its processes. Defenders of the SBA’s covid-19 programs have also argued that flagged loans and grants represented a small fraction of hundreds of billions of dollars in aid.

An attorney for Oudomsine declined to comment on the case Sunday, and the defendant has yet to enter a plea, according to court records.

Prosecutors accused Oudomsine of abusing the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) for small businesses hurting during the coronavirus pandemic, which upended the economy with shutdowns and stay-home orders. EIDL funds, officials noted, could go toward payroll, sick leave and other business costs such as rent.

The SBA said Sunday that its covid-19 EIDL program has disbursed more than $310 billion to small businesses and has been “critical” to their pandemic recovery.

On July 14, 2020, according to prosecutors, Oudomsine sought a loan for a business that he said had 10 employees and revenue of $235,000 over a year. The next month, court documents state, the SBA deposited $85,000 into a bank account in Oudomsine’s name.

Court filings give few details about the alleged Pokémon card purchase – such as which “Pocket Monster” it carried – simply stating that Oudomsine bought it “on or about” Jan. 8 of this year.

Collector’s-item gaming cards can fetch big sums – this year, one unopened box of first-edition Pokémon cards sold for more than $400,000.

Barry Paschal, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of Georgia, said Sunday that prosecutors are not commenting on the case beyond the existing public record.

Alarms about fraudsters taking advantage of business relief programs began early in the pandemic. The SBA inspector general said in July 2020 that it was “inundated” with complaints about thousands of suspected abuses of EIDL loans and grants.

In one widely covered case in spring 2020, a Georgia reality TV star was charged with using more than $1.5 million in aid for personal rather than business expenses – notably, a Rolls-Royce and $40,000 in child support.

The first person to be charged with fraudulently seeking PPP loans was recently sentenced to 56 months in prison, following a nationwide search after the man faked his death.

The SBA inspector general’s office said this month that the SBA was “taking corrective actions” after its report describing improper grants to self-employed people in 2020.

Agency officials defended the EIDL, saying it “delivered on the intent of the Cares Act,” the $2 trillion emergency aid package that Congress passed last year. They note that it processed loans and grants totaling $20 billion over 14 weeks. James E. Rivera, an associate administrator for the agency’s Office of Disaster Assistance, wrote to the inspector general last month that the SBA “does not agree with key assertions in the draft report findings.”
 
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