Free Republic

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That applies not only to Newtonian physics but also to markets, even in things like housing. Doral, Florida, is a suburb of Miami, peopled heavily with Venezuelan immigrants. Some of them are citizens, some are in the country legally, and some are not in the country legally. According to a piece in Monday's Wall Street Journal, some of these people are leaving Doral, in no small part due to President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, resulting in a spike in Doral's rental housing vacancy rate. That's a good thing. Here's...

BREAKING: New NYC mayoral polls without Adams show that Cuomo is beating out Sliwa by 12-13%.It’s time for Sliwa to do the right thing and drop out. pic.twitter.com/YN6U24MtmQ— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) September 29, 2025

Sales of newly built homes rose a much larger-than-expected 20.5% in August compared with July to the highest level since January 2022, according to the U.S. Census. It is also the largest one-month gain since August 2022. Sales were 15.4% higher than August 2024. This count is based on people out shopping in August and signing deals, when the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage was higher than it is today. That rate started August at 6.63%, according to Mortgage News Daily, and didn’t really move much during the month. The sharp decline in rates began in September, when...

Those of us fortunate enough to live anywhere but New York City may take comfort from reading the news about what is arguably NYC’s biggest campaign issue in 2025 -- the lack of affordable housing in the nation’s biggest city. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we may say, shaking our heads in flyover country, where apartment rents and home prices may also be too high, but where there is at least some kind of availability. But NYC’s problem is only local in part; many of the inputs are nationwide issues, which a new mayor, regardless of...

President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated his attacks on Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., asserting that the governor was nearing completion on a plan to build low-income housing in an LA suburb ravaged by wildfires. "Shockingly, I have just learned, that Gavin Newscum, the Governor of California, is in final stages of approval to build Low Income Housing in Pacific Palisades," he posted on Truth Social. "How unfair is that to the people that have suffered so much! Newscum allowed their houses to burn by not accepting Hundreds of Millions of Gallons of Water from the Pacific Northwest, and now, the...

A once-crumbling factory in Seneca Falls just won one of New York’s top preservation honors — after being saved from the wrecking ball and transformed into a home for dozens of families and veterans. Huntington Apartments has received a 2025 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award from the Preservation League of New York State, the organization announced Monday. The building at 201 Fall Street was originally home to the National Yeast Company in the late 1800s. By the 2010s, it was deteriorating fast. A gas station proposal nearly sealed its fate — until local advocates stepped in. The Seneca Falls Historical...

“Passive income.” That’s the sales pitch for rentals. Tenants cover the mortgage, you collect the rent, the property appreciates, and you’re off sipping margaritas. Sounds dreamy… until Saturday morning shows up with a broken appliance. Ask me how I know. Here’s the reality from my own ledger: one of my rental properties in the Finger Lakes, NY area is locked at $2,200/month. That’s the ceiling. Meanwhile the expense list has no ceiling. In the last year alone I replaced the gas range, microwave and dishwasher. That’s just a tiny sample of a seemingly never-ending list of surprise expenses. “Passive” income?...

Dear Chuck, My parents are retired and have a very low interest rate on a small amount of remaining mortgage. They told me they want to sell their home and rent, thinking they will save money. I am gathering information to help them. Would you suggest they rent or keep owning their home? Retired: Rent or Buy?Dear Retired: Rent or Buy?It depends. I don’t have the full financial picture of your parents, so I don’t want to give advice based on false assumptions. Let me disclose a few assumptions from your question:They are feeling financially insecure.Their home value is...

It’s been two topsy-turvy years for Brownstone Shared Housing since the startup opened up its tiny bed “pods” for rent in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood — without the necessary permits — in 2023. The startup’s 26 to 30-pod complex in Mint Plaza has withstood complaints from city officials, outlasted the threat of debilitating fees and, recently, avoided an eviction threat. All the while, Brownstone has rented beds to a rotating cast of tech startup founders, immigrants and other new-to-the-city characters willing to stay in barely private, 4-foot-tall boxes for $700 a month. And now, CEO James Stallworth is ramping up...

PRINCETON, Texas — Princeton is growing at the fastest rate in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But just south of this Collin County city's limits, along a peninsula of Lavon Lake, lies a master-planned community of single-family homes that are, well, let's say not very "Texas sized," but becoming more popular. Miami-based builder Lennar announced in a press release it is bringing tiny homes – each at less than 700 square feet – to North Texas. The homes are available in a community called Tillage Farms. The two-story homes will start in the mid $100,000s, Lennar said....

In July 2025, the U.S. unemployment rate was at 4.2% — which, historically speaking, is rather low. But that doesn’t mean that all job seekers are thriving.An NBC News analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data finds that the unemployment rate among men ages 23 to 30 with a bachelor's degree has reached 6%. By comparison, the unemployment rate among women with a bachelor's degree in that same age range is 3.5%.During the pandemic, the term “she-cession” was created to illustrate just how unfavorable the economy was for working women at the time. Now, with many young men struggling to find...

Homebuyers are backing out of property purchases last-minute at a higher rate than ever recorded due to fears that a financial crash is imminent. Just four years ago, homebuyers were bidding up house prices and waiving inspections in order to quickly secure fast-selling properties. Today's buyers are moving slowly through the process — negotiating lower prices and obsessing over property details. And they are increasingly getting cold feet and backing out, even after signing contracts. In fact, 58,000 home-purchase agreements were canceled in July alone, according to data collected by Redfin. That's 15.3 percent of all homes that went under...

Sanctuary city residents are very upset that ICE is evicting illegal residents from their neighborhoods and business complexes without warning. More show notes. A lot of illegals working at car washes. More protesters finding out that walls work.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration may declare a national housing emergency this fall as the White House looks to highlight key issues for midterm campaign voters.“We’re trying to figure out what we can do, and we don’t want to step into the business of states, counties, and municipal governments,” Bessent told the Washington Examiner. “We may declare a national housing emergency in the fall.”Bessent said housing affordability would be a critical leg of Republicans’ 2026 midterm election platform. Bessent declined to list any specific actions the president may take, but he suggested that administration officials are directly...

YES‼️Section 8 Update: Donald Trump has directed HUD, the US Housing Department, to not only remove ALL non-citizens from Section 8 but to also remove mixed non-citizen families If there is an illegal in the home YOU WILL BE REMOVED “A full fledged audit of all residents in The United States for citizenship and will begin evicting families that are mixed status” “For example, if you are a parent who is an illegal immigrant but you receive section eight through your children for housing, you can be evicted. This is part of an audit Donald Trump has instructed to Scott...

The Trump administration is putting illegal aliens on notice: taxpayer-funded housing is for AMERICANS, not for those who broke the law to come here. On Friday, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner announced that all Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) nationwide have 30 days to conduct audits verifying the legal status of every single tenant in Section 8 housing and other HUD-funded programs. The first housing authority to face scrutiny is Washington, D.C., where Turner confirmed that the DC Housing Authority has already been put on notice, according to Fox News. More than 3,000 PHAs across the nation are...

Three men have been arrested in Essex after violence erupted at the latest protest over housing asylum seekers at the Bell Hotel in Epping. Essex Police said three men were arrested on Friday on suspicion of violent disorder, assaulting a police officer and drink driving respectively.The protest coincided with the result of a legal challenge by the government, which successfully overturned a temporary injunction which would have blocked asylum seekers from being housed at the hotel. Despite the Court of Appeal decision, at least 13 other councils are considering pressing ahead with legal action over the use of asylum hotels...

**SNIP** Pulte discovered that in April 2021, Cook entered a 15-year mortgage for a condominium in Cambridge, Mass., for $361,000, and attested to the lender that the property would serve as a “second home.” Eight months later, Cook signed a government ethics form and disclosed that the Cambridge property was being used as an “investment/rental property,” according to the Trump administration official. In four subsequent disclosures, between 2022 and 2025, Cook continued to list her condo as a rental property and not as her “second home.” “Second homes receive lower mortgage costs than investment properties, because investment properties are inherently...

Canandaigua, N.Y. — A woman is charged with first-degree identity theft for a months-long scheme, according to the Ontario County Sheriff's Office. Nichelle Beale, 48, of Canandaigua, used another person's identity to rent a unit from Candlewood Apartments on County Road 28 from May 1 through Aug. 13, 2025, the sheriff's office said. She also failed to pay rent and utilities, stealing more than $6,000 worth of service from the complex. The sheriff's office said Beale was arrested Monday and taken to Ontario County Jail, where she remains in custody as she awaits arraignment in CAP court.

Geneva homeowners can now apply for repair funds through a city program that forgives loans after five years, according to the Finger Lakes Times. Geneva homeowners can now apply for repair funds through a city program that forgives loans after five years, according to the Finger Lakes Times.