Home prices hit record high in May

The inventory of homes for sale jumped in May, up 6.7% month to month and 18.5% higher than in May last year.

The median price of an existing home sold in May was $419,300, a record-high price in the Realtors’ recording, and up 5.8% year over year.

Sales of previously owned homes are sitting at a 30-year low and didn’t move much in May as prices hit a new record and mortgage rates remain high.

So-called existing home sales in May were essentially flat, down 0.7% from April to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 4.11 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors, or NAR. Sales fell 2.8% from May of last year.

This count of closed sales is based on contracts likely signed in March and April. The sluggish sales pace came as rates took a big leap in April.

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Hollywood’s Brat Pack Remembered

Having been born in 1967 and growing up into young adulthood in the 1980’s. I love all things from that period, especially music and movies. It was a great time to be a young adult. The entertainment industry produced most music and movies for use Gen Xers. The summer of 1985 was the pinnacle of that era and also the beginning of fabulous careers for a group of young actors that would go on to have amazing careers. Everybody wanted to be in the brat Pack, except them. One man disagreed and he had a platform to express himself. Here is a reprint of the article that coined the phrase “Brat Pack”

It was a Thursday night, and like all the Thursday nights in all the bars in all the cities in all the world where young people live, the Hard Rock Cafe brimmed over with boys and girls. This was Los Angeles, so the boys wore T-shirts and sunglasses and shorts, and the girls wore miniskirts and Madonna hairdos. Over the blare of rock music, the boys and girls were shouting jokes and stories to one another, talking about their jobs and their classes and their dreams, eating enormous cheeseburgers and washing them down with swigs from long-necked bottles of Corona beer. The waitresses were dressed in punk uniforms, and they smiled and laughed as the boys and girls floated from table to table, partying with the endless spirit of those who have no place to return to, no person waiting nervously at home, no responsibility the next day that could possibly be more important than this night, right here, right now.

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