Loss of American values and America In general Series

[Do-or-Die]

Let's post articles that illustrate how America is bought and paid for by the corporate world and that most of our woes are created by these nasty vultures.

Corporate landlords are gobbling up mobile home parks and quickly driving up rents — here’s why the space is so attractive to them

The hunt for yield has pushed private equity firms and professional investors into new segments of the real estate market.In recent years, sophisticated investors have snapped up multi-family units and single-family homes. Now, corporate landlords are targeting the most cost-effective segment of the real estate market: mobile home parks.


You could be the landlord of Walmart, Whole Foods and Kroger (and collect fat grocery store-anchored income on a quarterly basis)

What do Ashton Kutcher and a Nobel Prize-winning economist have in common? An investing app that turns spare change into a diversified portfolio

The most affordable U.S. housing option
Manufactured homes or mobile homes are considered the most affordable non-subsidized housing option in America. That’s because the owners own only the prefabricated unit and not the land under the home. The land is usually leased from the landlord of a trailer park.

The average monthly rent for a mobile home in 2021 was $593. That’s significantly lower than the average one-bedroom condo rental rate of $1,450. The mobile park rental also often includes utilities and insurance.

Rents typically rise 4% to 6% annually and renters have the flexibility to move their housing unit to another park. These factors make the manufactured home highly attractive to low-income households.

As of 2020, nearly 22 million Americans lived in mobile homes. That’s 6.7% of the total population or about one in 15 people across the country. However, the economic inefficiencies that make these manufactured homes affordable also make them attractive to professional investors.

Investing in mobile home parks
Factors such as below-market rents and disrepair make mobile home parks attractive for investors seeking to add value. The typical mobile home park lot costs $10,000, which means 80 lots would be worth $800,000 on average.

Put simply, the entry price for these parks is much lower than multi-family apartments and condo buildings across the country.

Professional investors can also raise rents significantly to improve the valuation of the property. Attracting tenants with higher incomes or improving the park’s amenities and infrastructure are other value-add strategies that make this asset class appealing.

The fact that moving a typical mobile home costs between $3,000 to $10,000 also means that most tenants are unable to afford the move. This gives landlords immense pricing power.

Meanwhile, the yield is much higher. The capitalization rate (the ratio of net operating income to market price) could be as high as 9%, according to real estate partners Dave Reynolds and Frank Rolfe, who together are the fifth-largest owner of mobile home parks in the U.S.

The largest mobile park landlord is real estate veteran Sam Zell. Zell’s Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS) owns 165,000 units across the country and the asset is a key element of his $5.4 billion fortune.

In recent years, larger investors such as Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and private equity firms such as The Carlyle Group, Brookfield, Blackstone, and Apollo have also added exposure to this asset class.

Even Warren Buffett is involved. His firm’s subsidiary, Clayton Homes, is the largest manufacturer of mobile homes in the U.S., and also operates two of the biggest mobile home lenders, 21st Mortgage Corp. and Vanderbilt Mortgage.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/corporat ... 00760.html

They should ban these vultures from feeding of the blood of these individuals. This is only going to add to the homeless situation in this country. However Jackass Brandon has no problem ferrying in more illegals and putting them up in hotels while Americans are left to rot.

[Yodean]

They should ban these vultures from feeding of the blood of these individuals. This is only going to add to the homeless situation in this country.

All true.

So what are possible ways to profit from this trend?

[SOL]

Visa to apply new code identifying sales at U.S. gun stores

Visa Inc, the world's largest payments processor, on Saturday said it will implement a new merchant category code for U.S. gun retailers, which will identify transactions at firearms stores.

The International Organization for Standardization on Friday approved creation of the merchant code following pressure from gun-control activists who say it will help track suspicious weapons purchases.

"Following ISO's decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules," Visa said in a statement.

Credit card processors use codes to identify sales by sector such as grocery stores, restaurants and more. Gun stores have been included in a broader retail category.

The code will show where an individual spends money but not what items were purchased.

Several top U.S. pension funds including those for government workers in New York City and California had submitted shareholder resolutions asking payment companies to weigh in on the issue.

Visa's move to adopt the new code will pressure other payment processors like Mastercard In and American Express Co to follow suit.

Some gun-rights activists have worried the new code could lead to unauthorized surveillance.

Mass shootings this year, including at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 children and two teachers, have added to the long-running U.S. debate over gun control.

U.S. President Joe Biden has called for Congress to pass an assault weapons ban as well as $37 billion for crime prevention programs, with $13 billion to hire and train an additional 100,000 police officers over the next five years. (Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/visa-app ... 30565.html
1984 on turbo here we come

[outof thebox]

[Budge]

I've had a go at updating #24 of Rush Limbaugh's Undeniable Truths. It read:

"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to
the mainstream of society."

My totally sensitive alternative:

"LGBTQIA+/non judgmentalism was established so as to allow unattractive fuckers access to
the mainstream of society."

[Yodean]

"LGBTQIA+/non judgmentalism was established so as to allow unattractive fuckers access to
the mainstream of society."

https://youtu.be/ff8eWXrxwbM

The Kung Flu is strong in this one ...

[Do-or-Die]

https://youtu.be/GH7cnmGHNxw

Everything just looks darn right peachy, at this rate, we won't have to worry too much about how much money we have to retire as you might not be able to step out of your home, unless you are armed and happen to live in a state that allows firearms

[Do-or-Die]

I had to buy a pair of pinhole glasses to restore the vision i lost after looking at the right picture for less than 30 seconds.

[SOL]

Tsunami' of shutoffs looms as 1 in 6 households can't pay their utility bills — try these 3 simple methods to save hundreds per year

The U.S. consumer price index rose 8.3% in August from a year ago — down from a 40-year high of 9.1% in June. But hot inflation continues to hit consumers hard.

According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, roughly 20 million households in the U.S. — one out of six homes — are behind on their utility bills.

The consequences could be dire.

“I expect a tsunami of shutoffs,” Jean Su, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, tells Bloomberg.

Electricity prices have spiked due to the skyrocketing cost of natural gas. According to the Energy Information Administration, natural gas is the biggest source of electricity generation in the U.S.

A year ago, natural gas traded at $5.46 per metric million British thermal unit. Today, it’s at $8.84 per MMBtu.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that August prices for electricity jumped 15.8% from a year ago, marking the biggest 12-month increase since the period ending August 1981.

While you can’t control electricity prices, there are small things you can do to lower your energy bill. Every bit counts.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tsunami- ... 00251.html

[Yodean]

*****

There is no stopping this trend ...

[symbios]

*****

There is no stopping this trend ...

Can someone identify himself as this person’s dad and give them a good spanking? Does it work that way?

[harryg]

*****

There is no stopping this trend ...

Can someone identify himself as this person’s dad and give them a good spanking? Does it work that way?

My dad had a sex change then we never saw him again.

He became trans-parent.



I'm quite pleased with that one.

[Yodean]

I'm quite pleased with that one.

I am cis-bastard, but trans-ninjedi.

[SOL]

Young workers don't know how to use office printers, scanners, ancient desktop PCs

n Kate Beaton's excellent autobiographical comic Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands(opens in new tab), there's a moment where an older worker asks for help with his emails. They're all coming out with weird gaps in them, so he turns to Beaton, a tech-savvy young person, for help. She explains the problem: he's been adding breaks by pressing enter at the end of each line because he's used to typewriters and doesn't realize the computer handles line breaks on its own. It's a touching moment of bonding in an otherwise pretty grim story.

It's not the kind of thing that happens in the offices of today, according to a report by The Guardian(opens in new tab). In fact, it's sometimes the other way around, with one 25-year-old publicist saying he turned to older workers who were veterans of the copy room for help. "Things like scanners and copy machines are complicated," Garrett Bemiller said, explaining that his first time using the photocopier in his New York office, "It kept coming out as a blank page, and took me a couple times to realize that I had to place the paper upside-down in the machine for it to work."

According to a survey of adults aged 18–26 by Dell(opens in new tab), "More than 1/3 of Gen Z feel that their school education did not prepare them with the technology skills needed for their planned career. 56% received either very basic or no digital skills training."

While the popular image of young people is digital natives who know how all technology works, it's a narrow stereotype. A generation who grew up using apps on their phones and owning laptops aren't going to magically know how to use the scanner, printer, or workhorse desktop PC in the office, which is why we end up with posts on the Sysadminhumor subreddit(opens in new tab) about having to label the power button. It reminds me of the time, while doing work experience in high school, I was asked to send a fax—something I'd never done in my life.

https://www.pcgamer.com/young-workers-d ... sktop-pcs/

[SOL]

‘It really shouldn’t be this way’: Top economist Mohamed El-Erian blames the Fed for bad messaging and stock volatility

Economists are unhappy with persistently high inflation and how the Federal Reserve is addressing it. Since the start of 2022, the Fed has hiked interest rates eight times, most recently in February. At that time, the Fed’s chief, Jerome Powell, sounded cautiously optimistic by saying that a “disinflationary process” had started, although there was a long way to go and that smaller hikes could be expected in the coming months. Investors were excited by the news. Fast forward to a month later on Tuesday: Powell signaled that further increases are on the horizon. That news rattled investors, who sent key stock indexes down, as they braced for tighter economic conditions.

A leading economist who has repeatedly said the Fed’s goal of reducing inflation to 2% is unrealistic now thinks the central bank’s mixed messaging threatens financial and economic stability.

“It really shouldn’t be this way, and it doesn’t need to be,” Mohamed El-Erian, president of Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge, wrote Tuesday in an op-ed for Bloomberg. “Yet once again remarks by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell fueled considerable volatility in markets that could risk both economic well-being and financial stability.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/really-s ... 30666.html

Jonny, I recall you expressing some strong opinions about Powell recently. It seems that more and more people share the view that his speeches lack planning and he tends to act impulsively without considering the consequences of his words. In fact, many consider him to be one of the least effective Fed chairs regarding communication. It's as if he suffers from verbal diarrhea and can't control his impulses to speak out without considering the impact of his statements. Alternatively, some speculate that he may intentionally provoke reactions to achieve his desired effect. Regardless, his behaviour is contributing to market volatility.