The 1% Is Rolling Over…” when the only healthy part of an already-impaired system turns negative, everyone will feel the resulting pain.”
by John Rubino
DollarCollapse.com
November 17, 2015
Today’s financial world is a tough place for the average person, but paradise for rich guys. As easy money raises asset prices, the owners of those assets make effortless profits. Then they buy expensive toys and trophy properties. Hence the recent boom in fine art, high-end real estate, yachts and private jets.
But like all financial trends, this one has a limit, and that limit is now in sight. The 1%, it seems, is rolling over:
Sotheby’s Offers Employees Voluntary Buyouts to Cut Costs
(Bloomberg) – Sotheby’s is offering employees voluntary buyouts to cut costs after a drop in third-quarter revenue grabbed more attention from the company’s investors than its largest ever semiannual auction season.
The auction house told employees in an e-mail Friday that if not enough employees make use of the buyouts, it may have to resort to layoffs. Sotheby’s didn’t say how many jobs it plans to cut.
Shares of Sotheby slumped as much as 16 percent this week after the firm reported a 9 percent decline in third-quarter revenue.
“Sotheby’s costs of doing business – increased staff, more expensive catalogue production, huge marketing and promotional costs, etc. – have to be balanced against the declining revenue from commissions,” said David Nash, co-owner of Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery in New York and former head of Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby’s.
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San Francisco in housing ‘correction’
(CNBC) – San Francisco homes are still some of the priciest in the nation, but sales of those houses are showing significant weakness. September sales were down 19.5 percent in the city from a year ago, according to the California Association of Realtors.
“We’re going through a kind of correction, as we have a lot of new developments being built right now. The supply is definitely on the rise,” said Justin Fichelson, an agent at Climb Real Estate Group in San Francisco. “The market is not going to continue going up like we’ve seen in the past two years, because prices are already high.”
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London Mansion Prices Fall 11.5% as Home `Bubble’ May Have Burst
(Bloomberg) – Prices of homes valued at 5 million pounds ($7.6 million) or more fell 11.5 percent on a per square foot basis in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to Richard Barber, a director at broker W.A. Ellis LLP, a unit of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. Sales volumes across all homes in the best parts of central London dropped 14 percent in the period, the realtor said on Thursday.
“The bubble may already have burst” for the most expensive homes, Barber said. Now, “36 percent of all properties currently on the market across prime central London are being marketed at a lower price than they were originally listed at, with the average reduction in price being 8.5 percent.”
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Luxury-Jet Market Value Seen Slipping for First Time Since 2009
The Rest…HERE
