I feel really, really sorry for anyone buying a house in Montana right now.
Imagine paying $500,000 or more for a home right now. Then imagine a year from now, when that home will be worth $250,000, probably less.
We have a cyclical economy, so crashes and corrections and panics are inevitable. The only thing keeping that from happening right now is the Federal Reserve.
How long can you print money? How long can you keep interest rates at zero?
Not forever, and when the ‘correction’ comes, my God, it’ll be brutal.
I’ve got a downstairs neighbor in my 3-plex apartment building. They moved in last summer, now they’re moving out.
I can’t tell you how happy I am about this. These folks support terrorism (Black Lives Matter sign in their window).
They bought a house on the northside. I don’t know for how much, but I imagine it’s some shit shack built in the 1950s. So they go from paying $1,000 a month in rent to probably more for their mortgage, plus insurance, constant repairs, taxes, and God knows what else. Is that really a good deal, and for whom?
I have two years left in Missoula before my landlord sells the building I’m living in.
Will we have corrected the housing situation by then? I doubt it. I'll be forced to move, like so many are now.
Housing won't be better by then. Look at how far we’ve come on the homeless problem in 10 years. We wanted to end that problem, but we actually doubled it.
Here’s what some other people think, mainly from Reddit.
And on top of the housing crunch, we have a worker shortage.
One downtown restaurant recently ‘poached’ a cook from another restaurant. They offered him $15 an hour, a $500 signing bonus, and they don’t really give a shit how often he goes out for a smoke...marijuana or otherwise.
They’re desperate, and they know if they don’t have people producing the product, they can’t make money.
I talked with a hotel worker last night. He’s full-time and the owner wants him to get overtime. The guy makes $10 an hour and he’s burned-out, as is the owner.
So last night the guy is supposed to end his shift around midnight and the other worker is supposed to come in and relieve him.
But there is no other worker. So the guy says ‘fuck it,’ tapes a sign on the window saying the lobby is closed until 7 AM, and locks the door and leaves.
I asked him why he didn’t just call the owner and have him come in, and he told me it’s because the owner is too busy trying to manage the hotel he owns in Helena.
Seems like one of those two hotels is about to close.
And then there’s this general consensus downtown that we really don’t want these ‘new’ workers that will start applying when unemployment finally ends in a couple weeks.
If they haven’t gone back to work by now, it’s clear they don’t want to work. They want to sit their lazy asses down on the couch and let the Netflix wash all over them.
They have no work ethic.
When they do go back, they’ll be more hassle than they’re worth. First you train ‘em, then you realize they’re twice as slow as you, probably more. On top of this, they do everything wrong, or poorly, or substandard. Then you just hope they’ll eventually quit.
48% of American small businesses can’t find enough workers right now, and I hear this everyday I go to work, from people in the industry.
The level of burnout right now is immense. The stress levels are immense. The worries over housing are immense.
I don’t know how we’re gonna make it through summer.
