As part of the new home sales report released last week, the Census Bureau reported the number of homes sold by price and the average and median prices.From the Census Bureau: “The median sales price of new houses sold in August 2020 was $312,800. The average sales price was $369,000.”The following graph shows the median and average new home prices. Click on graph for larger image.During the housing bust, the builders had to build smaller and less expensive homes to compete with all the distressed sales. When housing started to recovery – with limited finished lots in recovering areas – builders moved to higher price points to maximize profits.The average price in August 2020 was $369,000, down 0.8% from July, and down 8.4% from the peak in 2017. … [Read More...]

Harvey Lester Cyphers, 53, of Austin, Texas, was arrested and charged with capital murder in the 2016 deaths of friends Sidney Taylor and Krislyn Gibson, both 35, who were visiting Houston for the 2016 Urban Music Festival. They were last seen alive on April 2, 2016. Cyphers was taken to the Travis County Jail where his bond was set at $1.5 million. The U.S. Marshals Lone Star Fugitive Task Force and the Austin Police Department are investigating. [Read More...]

The US is now mostly reporting over 700,000 tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, the percent positive needs to be well under 5% to really push down new infections, so the US still needs to increase the number of tests per day significantly (or take actions to push down the number of new infections).There were 700,898 test results reported over the last 24 hours.There were 35,289 positive tests.Over 21,000 Americans have died from COVID so far in September. See the graph on US Daily Deaths here. Click on graph for larger image.This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 5.0% (red line is 7 day average).For the status of contact tracing by state, check out testandtrace…. [Read More...]

President Trump announced Saturday that he is nominating Amy Coney Barrett, a respected jurist and conservative darling, to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. [Read More...]

This week, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron made the bombshell announcement that the cops who fatally shot Breonna Taylor would not be charged with killing her, calling their use of force in the March raid “justified to protect themselves.”In that justification, he said that one witness corroborated the three officers’ insistence that they knocked and identified themselves at Taylor’s Louisville home while executing a search warrant in connection with a narcotics investigation. It contradicted claims from Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenny Walker, and 11 other residents, who said they didn’t hear the cops announce themselves. Instead, Walker thought he was being burglarized and fired a warning shot that triggered a tragic chain of events.But, according to documents and audio obtained by VICE News on Saturday, that sole witness … [Read More...]

The US is now mostly reporting over 700,000 tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, the percent positive needs to be well under 5% to really push down new infections, so the US still needs to increase the number of tests per day significantly (or take actions to push down the number of new infections).There were 933,873 test results reported over the last 24 hours.There were 47,733 positive tests.Almost 21,000 Americans have died from COVID so far in September. See the graph on US Daily Deaths here. Click on graph for larger image.This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 5.1% (red line is 7 day average).For the status of contact tracing by state, check out testandtrace…. [Read More...]

President Trump is engaged in an ongoing campaign to erode confidence in the legitimacy of the upcoming presidential election.   [Read More...]