Free Republic

The past few years have been one of the worst periods for first-time homebuyers in America's history.Record home prices, chronically low inventory, 22-year-high mortgage rates, and bidding wars with cash- and equity-flush buyers have locked many younger buyers out of the housing market.According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), first-time homebuyers made up just 32% of all transactions last year—the fourth lowest share seen in more than 40 years.While would-be homeowners bide their time, Creditnews Research looked at America’s 50 largest metro areas to uncover housing markets that are still attractive for first-time buyers.Our ranking shows how easy it...

Former President Donald Trump predicted that there is a “100% chance of a major terror attack in the not-too-distant future” under President Joe Biden’s open border policies.Trump said that “terrorists” who were crossing into the United States made U.S. prisoners look like “very nice people” and touted the success of his “travel ban,” which blocked people from specific countries from entering the country.“Under Biden, millions of illegals are now pouring into our country, and these include terrorists,” Trump said during a speech at the National Rifle Association’s gathering in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Friday. “You have a 100% chance of a...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has requested a special meeting with the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus. The Metropolitan Mayors Caucus is made up of 25 mayors from surrounding suburbs all grappling with the growing migrant crisis. Burr Ridge Mayor Gary Grasso will be in that special meeting at 4 p.m., and he spoke with ABC7 on Monday morning. "I think all mayors want to be sure that their residents are safe and the migrants are safe, and that we have an understanding of how the process is going to work when migrants come," Grasso said. Meanwhile, a nonprofit group...

doesn’t matter which big American city you go to these days, most are in absolutely horrendous condition. The public transportation system stinks of human waste. My old friend Professor Paul Magelli from the University of Illinois told me that when he took the Amtrak from Champaign to Chicago, it smelled like “piss”. Trains in other countries didn’t smell like that. Richard Florida is a big urbanologist. He is an elite for sure. He tweeted out this article and it is worth reading. The author of the article is aware of what is happening in American cities, but like Richard Florida,...

“They want systemic lawlessness. They want high retail theft,“ says Seneca Scott, founder of Neighbors Together Oakland. It’s ”managed decline from eviction moratoriums, managed decline from defunding police, managed decline from $950 you can steal from stores, not being able to catch people.” “Mega billionaires are giving money to defend the police movements. The same individuals are the largest investors in AI autonomous security,” Mr. Scott said. He has been documenting how Oakland, California became, as he describes it, an “urban hellscape.” Once a progressive Democrat and labor organizer who represented thousands of union workers in California, he says woke...

New York City is reaching an all-time low - literally. New research reveals dramatic concern that the Big Apple, Long Island and many more Atlantic coastal regions face an inevitable risk of sinking under the weight of their buildings at an alarming rate. “It affects you and I and everyone. It may be gradual, but the impacts are real,” Virginia Tech professor and researcher Manoochehr Shirzaei said. Other metropolitan areas like Baltimore, Maryland, along with Norfolk and Virginia Beach in Virginia, were also flagged as worrisome coastal areas prone to dangerous flooding as a result of the sinking land. The...

In August, The Gateway Pundit shared a bombshell report that was taken completely by an up-to-then-buried Michigan State Police report. The report, which outlined a statewide investigation that turned into a nationwide investigation of a potentially massive voter registration scheme, was shared with us by the MIGOP Director of Election Integrity, Phil O’Halloran. After publishing the report that exposed a massive cover-up by Michigan’s Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel and Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of an explosive, statewide investigation by the MI State Police, Muskegon, MI Police Department, we began to receive tips from individuals who read our...

The following cities ranked among the top 10 most "unsafe" places in the U.S. during the holidays, according to new research from Vivint, a smart-home security company. Researchers combined "property crime data, Google search trends and other security factors" to rank the 50 largest cities in the country in order by crime risk. Those factors include data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), Google Trends searches related to holiday security, security features for Airbnb listings, registered Neighborhood Watch groups and National Insurance Crime Bureau statistics, according to Vivint. Here are the top 10 . . . .

Personal finance website MoneyGeek released lists of America’s safest and most dangerous cities and towns this week. Predictably, the most dangerous cities and towns in America are run by Democrats.According to the website, the annual analysis looks at the most recent crime statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to estimate the cost of crime in 302 cities with populations greater than 100,000 across the United States. The study also used research compiled by the University of Miami and the University of Colorado Denver to find the results.The annual study found that the cost of crime per capita in...

Crime rates are falling, the mainstream press reports. Despite what it calls the “widespread national perception that law-breaking and violence are on the rise,” NBC News maintains that the opposite is true: “Americans believe crime rates are worsening, but they are mistaken.” A Washington Post column by Philip Bump echoes that assertion and opines, “This is not the narrative that has dominated on the right.” Bump adds, “Fox News coverage has consistently focused on crime in urban areas,” in part because the network’s “audience (understandably) associates cities with Democratic leadership, because cities are more heavily non-White.” The best available statistics,...

(NEXSTAR) – While violent crime has dropped to pre-pandemic levels nationwide, the FBI announced, changes weren’t the same across the board. The crime rates remained elevated in dozens of cities around the country. Personal finance site MoneyGeek used the FBI crime data to look at crime rates in 302 large cities and 1,010 small cities and towns around the country. They looked at both violent crime and property crime, and used research by the University of Miami and the University of Colorado Denver to determine the cost of crime in each area. After crunching the numbers, the large city with...

On the hotness front, here are the 10 smokin' housing markets. Strange that the hotness score is highest for generally depressed economic cities like Manchester NH, Rochester NY and Rockford IL. Hey, at least Columbus Ohio made the top 10 on the hotness list!

Ellie Owens, her husband, and three young children left Connecticut for Copenhagen in 2022. They moved for work, but have stayed partly because they've found that the experience of raising young children is superior, and cheaper, in Denmark's capital. "Daycare is astronomically cheaper here," Owens told Business Insider in October. "We were paying for my oldest to go three mornings a week to daycare in the US, and we were paying $2,600 a month. And here, I pay around $850 — maybe — for two children to get full-time care."

Travel was halted across Europe Saturday as heavy snow blanketed cities and freezing temperatures set in following a week of deadly early-season storms. Flights were grounded in Munich and Dublin Saturday after a winter storm dumped snow across southern Germany and parts of Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, disrupting travel across the continent.

Why Are People In Denial That Urban America Is A Dystopian Hellscape?The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one, and a certain species of smug urban progressive won’t admit America’s cities are falling apart.Increasingly, the news is dominated by urban crime and other catastrophes in America’s cities. Several large cities, and notably every major city on the West Coast, are deeply unsafe, and this should be a source of national shame. There’s a constant flurry of eye-popping news in this regard, yet it’s nearly always followed by a chorus of Democratic politicians and leftist urbanites telling...

As I watch former Presidential candidate and US Secretary of State John F. Kerry (although the always bitter Hillary Clinton comes to mind as well), I roll my eyes at the staggering hypocrisy of “climate envoy” John Kerry flying the globe in his private jet while entering the US into climate scams that most Americans don’t want. And lecturing us in that droning voice on why we are bad people if we drive a gas-powered car. But Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum approves of Kerry’s message. Even the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is on board with the WEF’s...

MOODY BIBLE VIDEO ON HISTORY’S Fallen City’s and Nations The city is Satan's demonic concentration camps where He through his godless and lawless minions seek to destroy, indoctrinate and corrupt the nations (Eph. 2:1-2). History testifies to this reality! As we see our cities today here in America super abounding in growing EXPONENTIAL lawlessness and godlessness we know that it cannot be too long for our nation. The City today in America is more and more dictating demonic godless ideology to the states and is supplying abundantly the votes needed to over ride the majority of the voters of their...

– Chicago continues its first-place run in the rat race, topping Orkin’s Top 50 Rattiest Cities List for the ninth year in a row. Los Angeles moved up to the #2 ranking while New York rounds out the top three spots. Jumping up 10 spots this year is Houston to #20, and Greensboro, N.C., moves up 17 spots to take #50. New this year, Orkin is celebrating Chicago’s top spot placement by releasing a limited-edition t-shirt made available for free while supplies last. The shirt will feature a Top Rattiest City design made specifically for Chicago, commemorating the dedication of...

International Man: In parts of California and other states, shoplifting under $950 has been de-facto decriminalized. The practical reality is that thieves can now walk into a store and steal whatever they can without fear of police intervening—as long as it’s under $950. The trend of de-facto legalization of shoplifting is spreading across the country. What is your take? Doug Casey: The rise in crime in general and the veritable legalization of shoplifting, in particular, are really just symptoms. The real problem is that the moral fabric of the US and many other Western countries are torn. There’s not much...

The Democratic mayors of Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles and New York say they are ready to travel to meet President Joe Biden next week as they press for $5 billion in funding to help cope with the surge in migrants arriving in their cities. In a letter released Wednesday, they say they are having to get by with little help from his administration. Such is the urgency, that they are proposing to travel to Washington, D.C., for a crisis meeting within days. In the meantime, migrants are sleeping in police station foyers in Chicago. In New York, a cruise...