The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index® rose 3.9% year-over-year in January (non-seasonally adjusted), up from 3.7% in December. Annual growth was also up from December in the smaller 10-city index (to 2.6%, from 2.3%) and 20-city index (to 3.1%, from 2.8%).
Phoenix (+6.9%), Seattle (+5.1%) and Tampa (+5.1%) reported the highest year-over-year gains among markets in the 20-city index.
It may have been only two months ago, but in many ways it might as well be ancient history. Today's Case-Shiller release captures data through January, so we have a way to go before we see the more-recent developments represented that have flipped the housing market, and the world, on its head.
The national Case-Shiller Home Price Index rose 3.9% year-over-year in January. The smaller 10- and 20-city composite indices grew more slowly, at 2.6% and 3.1% year-over-year, respectively. The annual rate of growth was higher in January than in December in all three indices. On a monthly (seasonally adjusted) basis, the 10- and 20-city indices were each up 0.3% from December to January; the national index was up 0.5% month-over-month.
Index
Zillow Forecast, Released 2/25/20
Actual Case-Shiller Indices,
Released 3/31/20
Historical Median Absolute Error*
10-City Composite,
Month-Over-Month (SA)
0.4%
0.3%
0.2%
10-City Composite,
Year-Over-Year (NSA)
2.8%
2.6%
0.2%
20-City Composite,
Month-Over-Month (SA)
0.4%
0.3%
0.2%
20-City Composite,
Year-Over-Year (NSA)
3.2%
3.1%
0.1%
U.S. National
Month-Over-Month (SA)
0.4%
0.5%
0.1%
U.S. National
Year-Over-Year (NSA)
4%
3.9%
0.1%
*Calculation of Median Absolute Errors are based on Zillow’s forecasts dating to 2011. The national Case-Shiller forecasts began in 2014.
Before the coronavirus outbreak reached U.S. soil en masse, the housing market was on stable footing and appeared to be gathering steam, as evidenced by today's release. The combination of a tight labor market and low mortgage rates dialed up the competition for the relatively few homes that were listed for sale, pushing home prices up in the process. Indeed, the world is a very different place than it was in January, but today's Case-Shiller release is sure to offer some fond memories of the not-so-distant past, and some hope that the industry can continue the growing momentum it was riding to begin the year once this crisis passes.
Annual growth in February as reported by Case-Shiller is expected to accelerate in all three major indices. S&P Dow Jones Indices is expected to release data for the February S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices on Tuesday, April 28.
Index
Actual January
Case-Shiller Change
Zillow’s Forecast for the Case-Shiller February Indices
10-City Composite,
Month-Over-Month (SA)
0.3%
0.2%
10-City Composite,
Year-Over-Year (NSA)
2.6%
2.7%
20-City Composite,
Month-Over-Month (SA)
0.3%
0.3%
20-City Composite,
Year-Over-Year (NSA)
3.1%
3.2%
U.S. National
Month-Over-Month (SA)
0.5%
0.4%
U.S. National
Year-Over-Year (NSA)
3.9%
4.0%
Note: Case-Shiller and Case-Shiller Index are registered trademarks of CoreLogic Solutions, LLC. The statements herein are not endorsed by or provided in association or connection with CoreLogic, LLC.
Concerns about the coronavirus have made leaving the house to go grocery shopping, surrounded by other people, feel downright dangerous. But one can’t exist on rice and spaghetti alone. If you’re concerned about a shortage of fresh vegetables in your fridge, you might be a prime candidate for the victory garden trend.
Victory gardens first became a thing about a hundred years ago during World War I, when Americans at home, away from the battlefield, were urged to contribute to the cause by growing vegetables in every flowerpot and patch of land available. These victory gardens resurged during World War II, and they’re enjoying yet another rebirth today due to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the New York Times, seed companies are currently inundated with requests, and some are reporting a shipping backlog of close to a month.
“Even with a small amount of acreage, homeowners are able to grow large gardens—and these assets can reduce the number of trips to the grocery store and reduce your odds of contracting the COVID-19 virus,” says Tim MacWelch, owner and lead instructor at Advanced Survival Training in Northern Virginia.
Here’s more about the history of victory gardens, plus some advice for planting your own little patch of edible foliage fast.
Food rationing was a part of life during both world wars, so the government urged Americans to pitch in by tending home garden plots.
“There were also labor and transportation shortages during these periods, which made it difficult to move large harvests to stores, so everyday Americans helped out by planting fruits and vegetables at home—and millions participated by creating victory gardens,” explains Susan Brandt, president of Blooming Secrets.
Empty lots, front lawns, rooftops, and random pots—all were worthy spaces for sowing these wartime seeds.
“Neighbors grew different vegetables and shared their produce with each other, and according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 20 million American homes had a victory garden,” says Brandt. The result? This program made a significant difference in food production.
“Harvests from private homes were estimated to be 9 or 10 million tons,” Brandt adds. Some estimates say that at one point, victory gardens produced 40% of the country’s fresh fruits and vegetables.
And even before the novel coronavirus came along, home gardens have actually been taking off, thanks to the farm-to-table trend that has people interested in growing their own fresh food.
“For a few years now we’ve seen a heightened interest in edible gardens as the concepts of living a net-zero life, avoiding GMOs, and eating organically appeals to so many people,” says Isara Ongwiseth, lead designer at FormLA Landscaping.
So while there aren’t any breakdowns in our national food chain, since grocery shopping has become stressful, you could start digging in the dirt with the goal of reducing your number of store trips.
Plus, since we’re supposed to stay close to home for the coming weeks, tending a mini plot is a fun task to tackle right in your backyard.
“And gardening is a real workout since planting and weed-pulling strengthens your back, arms, and legs,” Brandt adds.
How to grow a victory garden
“Planting your own garden is perfect timing right now because the weather is getting better all over the country, and you can even sow some seeds inside and then transplant them to the ground later on,” says Brandt.
Plus, you don’t need an actual yard to plant seeds.
“You can definitely use containers, a windowsill, or even grow bags, which is another type of container, if your space is limited—and if you have a balcony or access to a roof, try growing them there,” says Brandt. All you really need, beyond potting soil, is a sunny location so the seeds can germinate.
“Depending on what you plant, a 3-by-6-foot garden can meet much of a family’s need,” says Oscar Ortega, maintenance care manager at FormLA Landscaping.
Community gardens also have space where you can sign up to garden, though you’ll have to keep social distancing in mind when you enter.
Many of the healthiest veggies are also easy (and quick) to grow, including leafy greens like arugula, bok choy, and Swiss chard.
“Other good candidates are zucchini and cucumbers, and herbs are probably the fastest ones, such as thyme, oregano, chives, and parsley,” says Brandt.
“It’s easier to grow plants from small 4-inch starters, which can be obtained from some grocery stores and farmers markets, but if you’re going the seed route, lettuce is a great place to start,” says Ortega.
Consumer sentiment fell the most in one month since the height of the Great Recession. Oil prices continued to tumble, shuttering some U.S. wells and adding still more layoffs to the growing national total. And the just-passed U.S. stimulus package now presents some logistical challenges.
Consumer sentiment reading fell to its lowest level in more than 3 years
The University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index fell to 89.1 in March, down from 101 in February.
The 11.9-point drop was the largest one-month decline since October 2008.
Oil prices continue to plummet, further pressuring U.S. well operators
The price of West Texas Intermediate Crude oil – the benchmark oil price on Wall Street – has fallen more than 65% since early January.
So far, 9% of the nation's oil rigs have been shut down in the wake of the crisis.
Government agencies may be ill-equipped to distribute billions of dollars in federal aid
The Small business Administration (SBA) – a group now responsible for quickly allocating about $350 billion – approved about 58,000 loans in all of 2019.
Estimates suggest some 6 million small businesses nationwide may be in immediate need of assistance.
So what?
Today's overall read on consumer sentiment was in line with most experts' expectations, but that doesn't make the news any easier to digest. The March release offered a stark shift from February, when a strong job market pushed the Michigan index to its second-highest level since 2004; today, the gauge is at its lowest since October 2016. The overall survey of consumer expectations – the forward-looking portion of the release – fell 12.4 points to 79.7 in March, suggesting that consumers' outlook for the economy in the coming months has recently taken a big hit. The decline in consumer sentiment will almost certainly result in a pullback in consumer spending — which accounts for about two-thirds of overall U.S. economic output — in the coming months. But consumers' outlook on the year to come declined only slightly, suggesting that most still anticipate the negative impacts from the coronavirus outbreak to be short-lived.
Meanwhile, oil prices have plummeted in recent weeks in the face of three strong headwinds: Waning consumer demand because of ongoing stay-at-home orders, a glut of supply after some nations neglected to scale back production and a sudden shortage of space in which to store the excess oil. Benchmark oil prices have fallen 65% since early January, with prices of some niche physical oils even turning negative in recent days. The S&P 500 energy index, a broad measure of the energy sector's performance, recently hit a record low and has fallen 85% from its all-time high set in July 2008. Impacts of the price drop are beginning to be felt throughout the industry and in oil-job-dependent communities. U.S. oil companies suspended production at 40 rigs just this week, with more than half of the shutdowns occurring in the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico. Almost one in ten U.S. rigs has now been shut down, at least temporarily, and the news might not get much better in the short-term. U.S. oil field production slid to its lowest level in at least four years, according to a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and worsening conditions among oilfield services firms are likely. Meanwhile, Rystad Energy, an industry consultant based in Norway, estimates that the industry's slowdown may eliminate 1 million jobs, with the North American shale sector bearing the largest brunt. The U.S. has become the world's largest oil producer in recent years, largely on the back of the shale (fracking) industry.
After some last-minute uncertainty, the $2 trillion U.S. stimulus bill was signed into law on Friday. The bill includes hundreds of billions of dollars allocated to support qualified individuals, families and small businesses. But the passage of the bill now presents some logistical challenges for the parties in charge of actually distributing the capital, and early indications suggest the current system may not yet be up to the challenge. For example, the Small Business Administration (SBA) – a group now responsible for quickly allocating about $350 billion – approved about 58,000 loans in all of 2019. But estimates suggest about 20% (~6 million) of the nation's small business wouldn't survive a month of missed revenue — strongly suggesting the SBA is ill-equipped to tackle the challenge on its own. The Treasury Department has said it will assist in the distribution process, but it's clear that a number of logistical hurdles remain before U.S. households and companies receive some much-needed relief.
While Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West reside mainly in a swanky gated community in Hidden Hills, CA, there are apparently big plans afoot for their property in Wyoming, the western branch of the Kimye real estate empire.
According to the Wall Street Journal, West has been meeting with designers and architects to come up with a plan for an eco-friendly compound on one of his properties.
While it’s unclear which property will undergo these upgrades, West has two massive parcels to choose from. In September, he acquired Monster Lake Ranch near Cody, which was on the market for $14 million. Then mere weeks later, he added another property nearby listed for $14.5 million called Bighorn Mountain Ranch.
Among his ambitious plans, which are being attended to by the architect Claudio Silvestrin and light artist James Turrell, are a series of dome-shaped rooms that feature closed-loop ecology to capture and save energy and water.
Also on deck: a vegetable garden, skate park, orchards, a bio pool, and a urine garden.
Yup, you read that right—urine, in the garden, where peas and carrots take root. West’s plan is to install a system that converts human waste into plant food, which is actually an ancient gardening practice used all over the world.
But does that mean having a urine garden is a good idea?
Can urine be used as fertilizer?
As strange as it sounds, urine does contain certain components that make it great fertilizer for certain plants.
According to Cassy Aoyagi, president of FormLA Landscaping, urea (the main substance found in urine) helps with nitrogen uptake in plants.
“Synthetic urea is a major component in commercial-grade chemical fertilizers,” she says, “and organic fertilizers contain urea of animal origin.”
Could you skip purchasing fertilizer and sprinkle your own free pee on your veggie rows? No! There’s a good reason you see signs that say “Curb your dog” around flower beds.
“As with dog urine, human urine can kill plants when applied directly,” Aoyagi says.
Concentration problems aside, “another drawback is the possibility of cross-contamination with fecal matter, which is a big health risk,” explains Susan Brandt, the green thumb at Blooming Secrets. Because you should never, ever consider human feces as fertilizer. Got that?
“While chicken waste is useful in compost, we do not recommend composting with human or pet feces since many horrible diseases have fecal-oral transmission,” Brandt adds.
The only way to avoid such cross-contamination is to shell out for a new toilet designed specifically for the purpose of recycling urine (which is likely what West is doing).
“You’d need separating toilets, where a divided bowl and independent set of pipes separate urine from other waste,” says Brandt. “And this could end up being expensive.”
But even if you could ensure your urine weren’t contaminated by fecal matter, there are other potential problems. For one, medications and urinary tract infections can mess with your urine quality.
A far easier bet is to buy organic fertilizer, which has urine in the right amounts.
How to use urine in a garden
Still, if you are truly determined to use urine in your garden, there are ways to give it a go that are relatively safe if you take the right precautions.
“There are several ways to use urine in the garden, including adding it to your compost pile, applying it to mulch, or diluting it to make a fertilizing solution,” says Brandt.
The first step is to collect your output carefully. While West probably isn’t peeing into a cup for his romaine rows (he likely has his own pipes that store and process his DIY fertilizer), homeowners can catch their own in a plastic or glass container and then transfer it to a watering can.
Next, you’ll need to dilute your urine with water.
“For corn, the water to urine ratio is 4-to-1, and you can use this solution every two weeks,” says Brandt. As for other veggies, such as peppers, cabbage, spinach, and eggplant, a 10-to-1 ratio is recommended every two weeks or as needed.
When watering with this mixture, fertilize vegetables only at their roots—not on any part of the plant you plan to consume. And in case you’re wondering, no, that pee smell and taste won’t transfer to your plants!
How to use urine on compost
If you’re tending to an outdoor compost pile of leaves and paper at your house, these can benefit from occasional direct applications of urine. (The nitrogen in pee helps to speed the breakdown process, according to the Cornell Waste Management Institute.)
“Undiluted urine is also a weed killer, and the uric acid in urine may deter or eliminate fungus on plants,” says Brandt.
Want to keep rabbits, fox, and feral cats away from your garden? Just add pee around the perimeter, particularly early-morning pee.
“Apparently the scent of human urine, especially the most pungent batch you’ve created first thing in the morning, can keep these animals from digging in your plants,” says Brandt. “And if deer are an issue where you live, you can put early-morning pee in a spray bottle and mist the trees to keep them away.”
Just about everyone has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic—and the crisis, according to most experts, is only beginning to play out in many parts of the U.S. America now has the most confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world. And beyond the devastating human toll, an economic one is looming. The unemployment numbers are staggering, and the economy appears to be headed for a recession, if it’s not already in one.
That’s bound to affect just about every housing market in the country, some worse than others. But which are the most vulnerable? The realtor.com® data team found the counties that could be most at risk in the worsening financial crisis.
Tourism and vacation-home hot spots could be affected more than others, at least initially. These places that depend on visitors to frequent local hotels, restaurants, and attractions to keep their local economies afloat are starting to see big job losses. And when local economies suffer and people aren’t working, housing markets hurt.
“The biggest initial coronavirus hit will be felt in the tourism and hospitality industries,” says realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale. These are the same places where folks tend to buy vacation homes.
“Second-home markets tend to be hit a bit harder in a recession. … When people are cutting back, that’s where they’ll cut back,” says Hale.
The luxury home market is also expected to feel the pain.
“Luxury buyers [typically] have a lot of their money in the stock market, and the stock market has taken a huge hit,” says Ali Wolf, chief economist at Meyers Research, a national real estate consultancy. “They’re saying, ‘Let’s wait. Let’s ride this thing out.’ Buying a luxury, new home right now is something that can wait.”
Popular retiree destinations may also experience a slowdown. Older Americans, who are more vulnerable to the virus, are increasingly reluctant (or unable) to visit potential forever homes in warmer-weather states. Many of these retirees and soon-to-be retirees hail from the Northeast, the epicenter of the crisis, and the Midwest. And most already have homes, so moving to a retirement community or a sunny, new locale isn’t urgent—it can be put off until the crisis has passed.
But real estate professionals are optimistic that these near-term vulnerable markets, like the rest of the nation, will likely bounce back once the virus is contained.
“Most housing markets in the country will take a significant short-term hit due to COVID-19,” says Wolf. “[But] ultimately the housing market is going to come back.”
To come up with our list, we looked at the counties with the highest percentage of workers in the industries that are most likely to be affected by this coronavirus-fueled crisis. These included a wide range of tourism, hospitality, retail, and other face-to-face fields, ranging from personal fitness, restaurant, and performing arts workers to those employed at car dealerships, casinos, and cruise lines. The data came from the 2017 County Business Patterns data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The manufacturing industry was not included in our analysis. We counted only the counties with at least 100,000 workers and included one county per state to add some geographic diversity to our list.
We broke out the different trends affecting these markets, and took a deeper dive into each. All of the places on our list fall into more than one of these buckets; a few of them fall into each of them.
1. Popular second-home destinations are beginning to slow
All of the counties on our list, most of them on the water, are popular with tourists and vacation home buyers for a reason. They tend to offer lots of natural beauty, plenty of local, unique attractions, and a plethora of places to grab a bite and a drink. And those are the same things that make them more vulnerable to a downturn.
After the housing bust that triggered the Great Recession, home values in resort areas plunged about 25% to 50% depending on where they were located, Jack McCabe of McCabe Research & Consulting, previously told realtor.com. Meanwhile, nationally home prices fell only 17.5% from 2006 to 2011, according to McCabe’s analysis.
Myrtle Beach, in the most vulnerable county of our analysis, could take a double hit since it’s both a popular vacation home market as well as a major lure for retirees. (Median home prices in Horry County, at $239,050, are the lowest of our list.) About two-thirds of sales in the area are vacation and investment homes. And those sales slowed in mid-March after President Donald Trump first addressed the nation on the pandemic, says Laura Crowther, CEO of the Coastal Carolinas Association of Realtors®, based in Myrtle Beach.
Myrtle Beach, SC
Kruck20/Getty Images
Many second-home buyers come from out of state, and now they can’t physically travel to South Carolina to view properties.
But Crowther is seeing an increase in virtual tours of Myrtle Beach listings, and for now, locals are still buying properties, buoying the market.
“It’s a very difficult time right now for Myrtle Beach and other areas like it,” says Robert Salvino, director of the Grant Center for Real Estate and Economics at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC. “Transactions will decline. There’s simply a real difficulty showing and looking at homes.”
The area, like all of the others in our analysis, relies on lots of visitors to eat at its restaurants, stay at its hotels, and visit its attractions—basically pump money into its economy.
Some of these markets were also badly affected by last decade’s housing bust. Single-family home sale prices in the Myrtle Beach metro area peaked at $242,310 in July 2006, according to multiple listing service data provided by Salvino. Prices bottomed out to $160,000 in November 2012. They’ve since rose to $241,900 for the full year of 2019—still short of the previous high nearly 14 years ago.
“Second-home markets are the first to be affected” by a recession, says Salvino. “People are going to hold off on buying until they know they’re secure and prioritize affording the first home.”
The crisis is also likely to hurt the short-term rentals market, like Airbnb. Investors may hold off on buying properties in tourist areas until the crisis passes.
After the housing crash, prices for Honolulu’s short-term rentals, mostly condos rented out to visitors, fell by more than 50% in some cases, says local real estate broker George Krischke of Hawaii Living. This could happen again as most Americans are hunkering down instead of jetting off to the tropics during a global pandemic.
In Atlantic County, home to Atlantic City, NJ (No.3 on our list), folks struggling to pay their bills may sell their vacation homes to help alleviate some of their expenses.
“Some people rent [out] during the summer season to help alleviate some of the expenses,” says David Fiorenza, an economics professor at Villanova University in the Philadelphia suburbs. “It’s going to be harder for people if they have two mortgages, one at their primary residence and one at their secondary residence.”
And while this is likely more of a short-term crisis, it could have some serious long-term effects.
Once the virus is under control, vacation home buyers and retirees may want to buy property closer to their primary homes and family, says Sudesh Mujumdar, dean of the College of Business Administration at Savannah State University in Georgia.
They may fear another pandemic or crisis. And that could hurt markets like Savannah, which has a growing retiree and second-home market.
“This might have a longer-term impact on our social fabric,” says Mujumdar.
2. Retirees may put home purchases—and relocations—on hold
Retirees tend to be attracted to many of the warmer-weather, tourist, and vacation home areas on our list. But those hailing from the particularly hard-hit Northeast as well as the Midwest aren’t likely forgoing social distancing to head to South Carolina, Florida, and Hawaii to tour homes. Older individuals are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, with some of the highest mortality rates.
So many of them are holding off on their home searches.
“Right now people are adopting a wait-and-see attitude,” says Brad O’Connor, chief economist of Florida Realtors®, the state’s Orlando-based trade group. “Everyone’s going to put some stuff on pause right now temporarily while we get a handle on things.”
3. Luxury markets could see slumps
Luxury markets won’t be exempt from the distress. With the stock market in turmoil and the economy in a downturn, many buyers are more likely to hold off on big-ticket purchases. A pair of such markets likely to be affected are ultrapricey Honolulu County (No. 6) and Monterey County (No. 8).
After the housing bust and the Great Recession, home prices in Honolulu County fell about 10%, says Honolulu broker Krischke. He believes the price declines this time around will be much milder.
“We will always be paradise, but right now we’re having tough times just like everybody else,” says Krischke.
The market in Monterey, CA, an affluent, seaside county just south of Silicon Valley, is already beginning to stall. The market is split between primary and vacation homes.
Carmel-by-the-Sea
chinaface/Getty Images
There has been only 12 closings for Monterey County homes costing $1.5 million and more as of March 18—typically, that number would have been closer to 30, says real estate broker Andrew Oldham of Compass, who’s based in Carmel-by-the-Sea. But now he’s seeing extensions, cancellations, and mortgages that are taking longer to process. Some sellers are pulling their properties off the market or even dropping prices. Few new listings are appearing.
However, his team is still seeing multiple offers on less expensive fixer-uppers that are priced right.
They’re also seeing buyers make offers on homes they’ve viewed online with contingencies that would allow them to back out of the deal—just in case problems with the properties crop up once they’re finally able to see the homes in person.
Prices plunged 33% to 40% during and after the Great Recession, but he doesn’t expect anything that drastic this time around. He anticipates there could be a 5% to 10% dip.
“So far we’re not seeing too much of a correction right now,” says Oldham. “If you go in thinking you’re going to get a good deal, you’re probably not.”
4. Gambling meccas will likely be hard-hit
Las Vegas Strip after the statewide closure of nonessential businesses
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Two of the counties on our list, Clark County’s Las Vegas (No. 2) and Atlantic County’s Atlantic City, were clobbered by the financial meltdown in the mid-aughts. Both had struggled to recover and were finally on the upswing—that is until the spread of COVID-19 forced the casinos, hardly centers for social distancing, to close tight.
Just last month, median home prices in the greater Las Vegas area surpassed their height-of-market highs, just before the crash, according to Las Vegas Realtors®, the local trade group. (This was for single-family, existing homes.) Home prices in Southern Nevada reached $316,000 in February compared with $315,000 in June 2006.
“That’s kind of ironic,” says longtime real estate agent Bryan Kyle of First Serve Realty. “It had been a long time coming.”
The recovery had taken much longer because the city’s real estate market had fallen much further than in other parts of the country. So it had more lost ground to make up.
But unlike last time, Las Vegas is better positioned to weather this storm as there hasn’t been rampant overbuilding, says Stephen Miller, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. There is no longer a vast supply of empty homes.
The problem is the city hasn’t diversified its industries to protect it from a downturn. About 29% of Clark County’s employment is in leisure and hospitality, says Miller. And 1 in 7 visitors is coming to the city for a convention, most of which have been postponed or cancelled.
“We’re so heavily reliant on leisure and hospitality,” says Miller. “The problem is we don’t know how long this is going to last.”
And if it doesn’t end soon, that could spell trouble. In Atlantic City, May through September are the make-or-break months.
“If we’re not able to get the casinos running by May, we’re not going to see any good economic impact this summer at the Jersey Shore,” says Villanova University’s Fiorenza.
An unfathomably large number of Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, shattering all-time records. Central banks across the world continued to take unprecedented measures to support the economy. And China began to show some signs of recovery, though risks remain.
Almost 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week
The job losses erased about a year and a half of job growth in one week.
The number of applications was roughly five times more than any other week on record. Just two weeks ago, there were only 211,000 applications for jobless benefits nationwide.
Central banks continued to flex their muscles
The European Central Bank announced a new bond-buying program, with a focus on particularly at-risk economies in the European Union.
The massive U.S. stimulus bill – largely agreed upon, but not yet law – opens up trillions more dollars that the Fed can extend to borrowers big and small.
The U.S. economic slowdown widened
46% of builders said they have noticed a "major" slowdown in buyer traffic due to the coronavirus, according to a National Association of Home Builders survey.
The Kansas City Fed Manufacturing index fell to -17, its lowest reading since April 2009.
So what?
The huge increase in people filing for unemployment benefits last week was unlike anything the labor market has ever seen, and provided one of the first real signs of the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus outbreak. The 3.28 million jobless claims last week shattered the previous all-time record (695,000 in October 1982) and represented the highest reading reached since the financial crisis (665,000 in March 2009). Even more unsettling? These numbers are likely understated. Many people – including independent contractors and workers in the gig economy – don't qualify for unemployment benefits, and many that do might not realize it and thus fail to apply. The surge in applications has wreaked havoc on states' abilities to handle these requests, causing delays and errors that also likely discouraged or even prevented some people from filing their application in time. Looking ahead, it's likely that continuing claims (a count of those who are continuing to receive benefits) will rise next week in the same way that initial claims did today – easily surpassing record levels not seen since the depths of the Great Recession.
Central banks across the world have been very busy in the last couple weeks, taking unprecedented actions in order to stimulate and inject liquidity into financial markets that have been showing severe signs of strain and dysfunction. Following a similar path taken by the Federal Reserve earlier this week, the European Central Bank removed previous limits on its bond-buying program and signaled that it would focus its financial support on Italy and other E.U. countries which have seen their debt obligations swell in the wake of the coronavirus. The move caught investors by surprise and was generally well-received by leaders across Europe, some of whom had been considering more-controversial measures in a desperate attempt to raise capital and ease markets. Meanwhile, the massive U.S. spending bill, which was finally agreed upon in the Senate last night but has not yet been signed into law, includes $454 billion that would backstop any loans the Federal Reserve extends to a wide array of U.S. borrowers. In a rare, nationally televised interview this morning, Fed Chair Jerome Powell stated that "one dollar of…backstop from the Treasury is enough to support $10 worth of loans." So if/when the bill is signed into law, the Fed will have trillions of dollars available to lend on a short-term basis, which many believe they will first be directed towards smaller businesses and state governments on the front lines of the fight.
Several months after initially facing the first widespread coronavirus outbreak, China is showing early signs of improvement and a slow return to some semblance of normal. The daily rate of new coronavirus cases is slowing, and the country now has its lowest total in two months. Reports suggest that people are increasingly encouraged to venture outside, and some industries (factories and stores) are slowly resuming operations. Additional measures of Chinese economic activity – coal consumption and auto sales – are also showing signs of gradual improvement. But waning demand for Chinese goods from markets worldwide has limited China's ability to swiftly recover, forcing firms to cut payroll endangering their ability to offload inventory. These gradual improvements in China invite both optimism and pessimism for recovery efforts in the U.S. and Europe, which have taken more aggressive monetary and fiscal responses but have been less strict in imposing immediate measures aimed at containing the virus's spread. A closer look at upcoming data out of China in coming weeks will provide crucial context for how to evaluate the efficacy of our own efforts thus far, and could inform what our own recovery might look like – and when it may arrive.
As the coronavirus epidemic roils American society, it is totally upending the world of real estate. The realtor.com editorial team is tirelessly covering the impact of the pandemic on trends in the housing market, where mortgage rates are heading, and the outlook for home buyers and sellers. We’re also full of suggestions on what to do with your home if you end up cloistered indoors, whether it’s self-quarantine or sheltering in place.
Here’s a quick guide to the stuff you need to know:
Not long ago, it crossed Joe and Jennifer’s minds that maybe they had made a mistake installing a 50-foot-long fortified bunker 10 feet below their property in Northern California.
Then toilet paper flew off the shelves, and gun sales skyrocketed as the U.S. edged into panic amid the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, the pandemic ushering in massive interruptions to daily life and unprecedented uncertainty.
“Four months ago my wife and I were like: ‘Why did we do this? This is stupid,’ ” said 42-year-old Joe. (He and his wife Jennifer declined to reveal their last name, fearing it would reveal the location.) “Now we’re like ‘Holy crap, it actually has a purpose!’ ”
Survival Condo, based in Glasco, Kan., offers an undisclosed number of armed security personnel
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For nearly two weeks, the married couple and their three children, ages 4, 8 and 12, have been living in their sparingly furnished steel rectangle that all in cost $240,000 2½ years ago. At the time of purchase they feared the growing divisiveness gripping the nation after the 2016 presidential election might one day spark civil unrest.
“This is the last thing we thought we’d use it for, honestly,” said Joe of the reinforced structure built from more than 3-inch thick steel and encased in a foot of rebarred concrete. Advertised as being able to withstand a nearby nuclear blast, the bunker is also outfitted with an air-filtration unit that is supposed to be able to screen biological or chemical toxins while allowing oxygen in from the outside.
Since the Cold War era of the 1950s and 1960s, distressed Americans fearing nuclear war or other cataclysmic events began constructing bomb shelters in their backyards. The movement—dubbed survivalism—evolved in the following decades and as it did, those engaging in doomsday preparations were often greeted with derision.
Survival Condo, based in Glasco, Kan., offers many leisure activities including a pool.
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There is ping-pong and a rock climbing wall.
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But now, as the coronavirus upends nearly all aspects of normal life survivalists—sometimes also called “preppers”—like Joe and his wife aren’t feeling only a sense of relief, but also pride. They plan on remaining in their bunker only until the end of this month, primarily as a precaution against the virus.
“If we’re out and about and we got it, we’d end up being fine, but I don’t want to be part of the problem and be out there as a carrier and spreading it,” he said. But the couple—each able to work from home—are also concerned about what an economic fallout might look like.
“There’s literally people fighting over toilet paper,” said Joe. “What’s going to happen when people don’t have money to buy food? What do we start fighting over then?”
Survival Condo’s fish farm and hydroponic grow room. Waste created by farmed fish helps fertilize vegetable crops, including spinach, carrots, and lettuce.
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Larry Hall has also been living in his unit with his wife, 15-year-old son, two dogs and a cat for two weeks after decamping from his primary residence in a Denver suburb.
Unlike a single residence bunker, Survival Condo is a luxury community that stretches 174 feet below the ground. Mr. Hall, the developer, built the community inside a decommissioned Atlas F missile silo in Kansas. Having achieved notoriety after completing his 54,000-square-foot development in late 2012, Mr. Hall said some of his clients have been subjects of ridicule after admitting they owned one of the luxury end-of-days shelters. “People are really opinionated about it,” he said, remembering how some of his owners suffered both social and professional repercussions after admitting they bought into the 14-unit development.
Within the 15-story underground structure, 920-square-foot condos like Mr. Hall’s list for $1.5 million, while the larger full-floor units measuring 1,840 square feet cost $3 million. Mr. Hall said there are only five units left after recently closing on a smaller unit in four days “sight unseen.”
Survival Condo’s total capacity is listed at 75 people including staff. Each residential floor has a capacity of up to 10 tenants. Residents have access to between three- and five-year supplies of food, and the settlement includes common areas for leisure and exercise. It also boasts storage space and a general store.
But not all of Survival Condo facilities are for living and recreation. In what used to be a missile control center, Mr. Hall built a fish farm stocked with three species of tilapia and an hydroponic garden where a large variety of vegetables like spinach, carrots and lettuce grow. He believes the budding garden is also calming. “The plants have a certain effect on people,” he said.
Mr. Hall said he’s expecting about a dozen additional people to show up come April. Survival Condo hasn’t yet entered into a lockdown, where coming and going is prohibited, but it does have an undisclosed number of security personnel with firearms at their disposal to protect from unwelcome visitors. The facility has three full-time employees to help with maintenance.
Dining and living area with false windows projecting an image taken from above-ground cameras in one of Survival Condo’s many luxury units.
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Spending on doomsday shelters has been booming since the coronavirus began dominating news headlines during the past few weeks, according to bunker contractors Rising S Company and Atlas Survival Shelters. Both companies say inquiries and sales have risen. Texas-based Rising S—which built Joe’s California bunker—said the number of new contracts signed in roughly the last three weeks has more than doubled. The company also said in the past it has constructed models costing as much as $15 million and as little as $39,500.
Atlas specializes in an array of structures including what it calls a “safe cellar” that functions like an underground bunker but also features an air-filtration system. CEO Ron Hubbard said in just the past week he did the same amount of business he did in all of 2019.
Not everyone expects the coronavirus to spur growth. Veteran contractor Mike Peters of Ultimate Bunker—a Utah-based builder focused on luxury shelters—dismisses the notion, adding the pandemic has had no impact on his sales.
“It takes months and months and months of planning,” said Mr. Peters. “You don’t just jump in and spend $500,000 on the spur of the moment. You’re not going to get it in time to change anything.”
Regardless of whether sales have risen amid the current turmoil, spending on residential security rose to $22.5 billion in 2019 from $12 billion in 2011, according to Freedonia Group, a market-research firm based in Cleveland. That covers everything from routine security devices to reinforced, protective structures such as panic rooms and bunkers.
Lizanne, a 63-year-old retired investor, feels safer having spent $4.5 million in 2012 to buy 1½ floors inside Survival Condo. “The whole thing is really nice, he thought of everything, the pool, the classroom, library, theater, even a dog walk park,” she said, also preferring to keep her last name confidential. The condominium’s pet-friendly policy was a big bonus for Lizanne, who owns a 75-pound golden retriever and a toy poodle.
A medical first-aid center at Survival Condo.
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While Lizanne has yet to abandon her seaside home in Rhode Island for her underground retreat, she is keeping her eye on the news and has her bags packed in case she needs to make the 23-hour drive to Kansas. “If things are really bad I’d much rather be there and protected,” she said. “I don’t necessarily want to, but it’s nice to know that I can.”
Lizanne is aware taking refuge at Survival Condo wouldn’t completely protect her from contracting the coronavirus, but said tenants could isolate themselves. But ultimately for her it would come down to what feels safest. “If things get really bad I have to weigh my options and if [going] seems like the best option, then I would take my chances,” she said. Mr. Hall said there is no guarantee people would be safe from the virus. He said the development is taking measures to sanitize, especially at the entrance, and has a wipe-down station.
Having already stayed the night at her condo several times while on vacation, Lizanne also isn’t frightened by the idea of an extended lockdown underground. “I do tend to get claustrophobic,” she said. “But because of the way he set up the windows which have cameras to the outdoors, it’s like you’re looking outdoors.”
The original owner of an $18 million Las Vegas bunker measuring 15,000 square feet also employed creative means when trying to compensate for the lack of natural light. Although constructed in the late 1970s, the visionary behind the project lacked the technology of today.
“It’s basically a cavern underground where all the exterior walls are made to look like landscapes” using murals, said real-estate agent Stephan LaForge of Berkshire Hathaway. The massive bunker—situated underneath a quaint five-bedroom home within one of Las Vegas’s humbler neighborhoods—includes a lighting system meant to simulate different times of day along with fake trees, swimming pool, barbecue, and dance floor with disco ball.
But for those who want a bunker but don’t have millions of dollars to spend, a former Army base located in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota might be the answer.
California businessman Robert Vicino, founder of the settlement christened Vivos xPoint, touts the spread of 575 cement fortresses—each tucked under thick grassland—as “the world’s largest survival community.” Mr. Vicino is repurposing the large number of bunkers once used as storage for munitions and explosives during World War II.
Mr. Vicino charges $35,000 for one of the igloo-like structures which have about 2,200 square feet to play with. A showroom version on Vivos’s website shows a fully furnished unit including a kitchen, living room and bathrooms. He also said there has been an uptick in business in recent weeks and expects Vivos will need to make room for more tenants.
Extreme remoteness and the security that offers was one of the biggest selling points for 69-year-old Tom and his wife Mary, who are both nearly retired, had already been planning to move to the Vivos bunker they bought roughly three years ago. The structure itself is plenty sturdy as well, said Tom, who also asked to keep his last name confidential.
“To get in from the outside is going to require at the very least a bulldozer or lots of really high explosives,” said Tom, who wants to get to his bunker by April. “I don’t want to get stuck here in the Atlanta area with six million other people.”
A proud “prepper” for many years, Tom said while some people may have looked at him sideways in the past as he planned for worst-case scenarios like pandemic, calamitous climate change or war, now it feels like there has been a shift.
“I don’t think we’re that much different from anybody else. People used to consider preppers to be this odd, crazy bunch of people,” said Tom. “Now a lot of the people that were ambivalent about my prepping, those people are incredibly interested in what I do now.”
Spring is the perfect time to open up the windows in your house and clean every surface inch, but there’s no reason to spend more time on this task than necessary.
Use these tips to quickly get your home spic and span.
Have a plan
When it comes to spring cleaning, the best approach is an organized approach. "I recommend having a plan, which includes an outline of the areas you plan to clean, a schedule with time slotted to do that work (for you and any family members), as well as a list of products, tools and even cleaning techniques or tips pertaining to those areas," says Melissa Maker, blogger and host of the popular YouTube show "Clean My Space."
Choose the right supplies
When you’re making your spring cleaning plan, take inventory of what supplies you need to gather to begin cleaning. Once you figure out what you need, be sure to choose the most effective and powerful cleaning supplies so that the product is doing most of the work - not you.
Clean room by room
It's easy to feel overwhelmed when you are going from room to room to complete various tasks. Choose to target one room at a time so you can see the results of your productivity quickly and not get discouraged.
Work smarter, not harder
Don't scrub any more than necessary. Simple steps like soaking pots and pans before you scrub them, waiting for cleaning products to sit before you wipe down surfaces, and using the self-cleaning setting on your oven can save you tons of time.
Clean your cleaning supplies
Did you know your cleaning supplies, such as sponges or microfiber cloths, are most likely the dirtiest items in your home? It goes without saying that you can't effectively clean your home with dirty supplies. So be sure to disinfect sponges or other cleaning supplies in a mixture of one part bleach and nine parts water for 30 seconds.
Don't forget the …
There are several items in our homes that we often forget to clean on a regular basis. Among forgotten items, Maker recommends cleaning behind the oven, bathroom exhaust fans, refrigerator coils and window coverings.
Focus on the MIAs
Spring cleaning can be a huge undertaking (especially depending on the size of your home), so Maker suggests focusing on the MIAs, or the Most Important Areas. When deciding which area to choose, think about the most visible ones, like the living room or home office.
Get rid of the clutter
You can never truly have a clean and tidy home if you are buried in your own stuff. When cleaning out your things, remember the 80/20 rule: Only 20 percent of the items we own are truly important - so 80 percent of our belongings are just getting in the way.
Figure out ways to be more efficient in the future
While you are cleaning and organizing your home, take note of all the clutter that you most often find. For example, if you are finding that most of your clutter is paper, figure out the best ways to go paperless throughout the year.
The coronavirus has already caused so much destruction nationwide—not only among the many who have fallen ill, but also among those who are suffering from businesses closing and those who are struggling financially. While the news cycle has been filled with reports of fearful people panicking and hoarding necessities, countless stories have emerged of mutual love and care—especially between neighbors.
Would you like to reach out to your local community? If you’re not sure how to, consider these recent news stories a perfect source of inspiration. Let these good deeds serve as a reminder that even during this period of social distancing, people have found a variety of creative ways to reach out—or even just to lighten the mood of others during these dark times.
1. Do door-side drop-offs and check-ins
Like many others, Amy McDonald decided to help her elderly neighbors in Fishers, IN, by dropping off groceries for them. She knew that could help lower their levels of exposure to the coronavirus, but what she didn’t realize was that she could in fact be saving someone’s life.
As USA Today reports, McDonald’s 89-year-old neighbor, Jo Trimble, was having strange, flulike symptoms when McDonald arrived at her home to drop off some provisions she’d asked for. Not wanting to leave her alone, McDonald stayed with her neighbor as they waited for paramedics.
It turned out that Trimble didn’t have the flu, or the coronavirus—she was having a heart attack. Luckily, she was able to get to the hospital in time to have a life-saving surgery.
It’s a good reminder that our neighbors may need someone to check in on them, whether for groceries, illness, or whatever reason.
2. Make the best of canceled events
During this epidemic, many people have had to postpone vacations, weddings, and other celebrations. But when one young New Yorker named Jordana Shmidman had to postpone her bat mitzvah, she decided to turn this unfortunate situation into an opportunity to help others.
According to Insider, the food for the event had already been prepared, but Shmidman and her family didn’t want it to go to waste. So they asked the caterers to divide the food into boxes so they could deliver it to families in quarantine in the area.
This proves that while so many events have been postponed or canceled, thoughtfulness and kindness are definitely still on the schedule. And in the end, Shmidman still managed to share her special day with loved ones, livestreaming her bat mitzvah online.
3. Give an impromptu performance
In Italy, many amazing operatic performances have been canceled during the countrywide lockdown. That didn’t stop one tenor, Maurizio Marchini, however, from stepping onto his balcony and serenading his neighbors with Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma.”
And he isn’t the only one treating his neighbors to some tunes. One DJ in Palermo, Italy, lit up the night with some beats.
In Barcelona, Spain, a pianist on his balcony was joined by a nearby saxophonist for an ad hoc duet of “My Heart Will Go On.” It might not be classic opera, but the healing powers of music apply to all kinds of tastes.
As Marchini explained to Fox News, “Music can lift spirits, and now there are many people who are suffering.”
4. Write letters to your local nursing home
In an effort to combat the coronavirus, nursing homes across the nation are putting heavy restrictions on visits from family and friends. This may be saving residents from being infected, but it’s leaving many seniors feeling isolated.
Meanwhile, with many public schools closed, kids are stuck at home, bored and with little to do. That’s why one family with four young siblings in Westminster, MA—Madilyn, 10, Olivia, 9, Cameron, 7 and Jack, 4—decided to start writing letters and drawing pictures to nursing home residents across the state.
“The kids love to do anything arts and crafts, and thinking about how stressed everybody is, [we] thought, ‘What can we do to make everybody happy? How can we help?'” their mother, Vanessa France, told Good Morning America.
My girls are being creative today! They made cards for the nursing home and senior apartments to let the elderly know we are thinking about them. Hope others do the same thing. Just put them in a plastic bag outside the building and they will deliver them for you. pic.twitter.com/FGGQZgicUV
The idea has since spread far and wide, embraced by old and young alike. At a nursing home in Sterling Village, MA, Michele Morin explains, “Letters from the children will bring them joy and will hopefully comfort them during this difficult time. … We will also be encouraging our residents to write the children back.”
5. Become a virtual volunteer
When Kathy Green, a resident of Birmingham, AL, heard that a hospital was asking neighbors to help sew face masks, she decided to rally the troops. Green started a Facebook group to organize local residents who were up to the task of sewing and distributing their homemade masks to those who needed them.
“I felt like I thought there was going to be a need and that it was probably too big for me to manage through email, so I started a Facebook group,” Green told Fox 8. The group soon grew to a community of 1,300 volunteers, proving that helping out can be as simple as finding a way to contribute from the comfort of your couch.
While kids can no longer go to school, they can still do school assignments, and one project in particular has taken off.
“We did not want it all to be doom and gloom for the children,” Shona Richardson, head teacher at a school in Rosewell, Scotland, told the BBC. That’s why her school launched a campaign to encourage students to paint rainbows to display in their windows.
“We thought this would be a really visual way of bringing hope at a time when there is not much out there.”
The trend has since spread to windows across England—a colorful message for neighbors passing by—showing that even kids can do their part.
7. Hold a different kind of block party
While most of the country has been holed up inside, the residents of Greiner Street in Eugene, OR, are making special accommodations to visit with their neighbors. One night, the neighbors arranged to have a dinner party, all from their individual front yards.
Some ordered pizza to enjoy on their front steps, and others went all out, marking the occasion by setting up a dining table complete with a tablecloth.
“We just wanted a way to communicate with one another when we can’t give each other hugs,” Mary Lou Vignola told the Register-Guard. “Just to be social when we’re being isolated.”
People may be keeping their social distance, but that doesn’t mean we have to skip celebrating together.
Case in point: One inspiring Spanish video taken in Madrid shows neighbors singing happy birthday to a woman named Charo on her 80th birthday. The neighbors had placed a cake at her door and told her to look outside for a surprise.
When Charo found the cake, she began to cry as her neighbors started to sing her “Happy Birthday.” Talk about a sweet surprise!
