Billy Bob Hall

Last week I interviewed Catherine Cashmore — Land Cycle Investor, former President of Prosper Australia, and one of the sharpest minds on real estate cycles. We went deep into the 18-year property cycle. This isn’t opinion. This comes from centuries of data. Patterns that repeat over and over again across hundreds of years. And one part really stood out to me — the psychology at the peak: “Late in the cycle, people stop questioning prices. They assume they will keep rising. You see fear of missing out. Buyers stretch further. Risk starts to feel safe.That is when the system becomes fragile.” One of the more counterintuitive dynamics is the way interest rates behave late in the cycle. Rates often rise into the peak. But instead of immediately cooling the market, they can initially accelerate activity. People rush in before borrowing becomes more expensive. Only once that pressure builds does the system begin to crack.” This is where most people get caught. Not because they lack information but because behaviour overrides it. If you understand the cycle, you start to see it happening in real time. Link in comments

The guy just landed a spacecraft on a comet — one of the most impressive scientific achievements in years. His reward? A public struggle session because his bowling shirt had scantily clad women on it. Helen Andrews points out the quiet cost of institutional feminization: HR departments now hunt down any maverick personality and stamp it out. We’re losing innovators we’ll never even know about, all because someone focused on the shirt instead of the comet. This is how wokeness actually works. Have you seen real excellence get punished for something trivial like this?

Ex bulks, ~75% of Australia’s freight moves by truck. This 45% levy is about 2.5-5% to consumer prices, 8-15% for remote communities, 7-18% for freight intensive building materials (+20-40k/new home). And there’s a feedback loop in the supply chain.

HOLY SHIT, the Australian government has subsidised more than 48,000 non-citizen migrants to buy homes in Australia since 2023. The government is subsidising non-citizens to buy homes in Australia even if they have property overseas. The First Home Owner scheme allows non-citizens to purchase homes in Australia with a 5% deposit, regardless of whether they own a home overseas. The Australian government acts as a guarantor for the remaining 15 per cent of the deposits, allowing the first homebuyer to avoid paying lenders mortgage insurance (LMI) Last week, Housing Australia announced that since eligibility for the 5% Deposit Scheme was expanded in mid-2023 to include permanent residents and joint applicants, “more than 48,000 permanent residents have been supported, along with over 2700 family and friend group applicants purchasing a home together - demonstrating the Scheme’s responsiveness to the needs of modern households” This is actually an incomprehensible disaster, I think we can pretty much say that Australia is one of the worst run Western developed economies

$500K in Canada gets you a starter home or one bedroom condo if you live in a city, how the hell did we get to this point.