June 2, 2021 • 20 mins
CA Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to face a recall vote, but the early momentum in getting the recall on the ballot has faded and Republicans are having difficulties making some of the attacks stick. The state is scheduled to reopen June 15, there is a budget surplus, and even the polls look good for Newsom right now with 57% opposing the recall. Carla Marinucci, senior writer for Politico’s CA Playbook, joins us for an update on the fight over Newsom’s political future.
Next, the housing market continues to be as crazy as ever with low inventory and sky high prices. But thousands of homes known as “whisper listings” or “pocket listings” are being reserved for certain buyers and it’s squeezing the supply even tighter. In some cases brokers may show an unlisted home to a small circle of buyers before publicly advertising that listing. Nicole Friedman, housing reporter at the WSJ, joins us for the dwindling options for home buyers.
Finally, the conversation about Covid-19 variants is changing in the hopes of avoiding confusion and stigma. The WHO has announced a new naming scheme that uses the letters of the Greek alphabet instead of numbers or a county’s name. The UK variant known as B.1.1.7 will now be Alpha and the South African variant will be Beta. Out of 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, 10 have already been assigned. Elizabeth Weise, national correspondent at USA Today, joins us for more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Wednesday, June two. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the daily Dive. California Governor Gavin Newsom
continues to face a recall vote, but the early momentum
and getting the recall on the ballot has faded and
Republicans are having difficulties making some of the attacks stick.
(00:21):
The state of schedules to reopen June fifteen. There's a
budget surplus, and even poles look good for Newsom right
now with opposing the recall. Carlo Marinucci, senior writer for
politicals California Playbook, joins us for an update on the
fight over Newsome's political future. Next, the housing market continues
to be as crazy as ever, with low inventory and
(00:43):
sky hype prices, but thousands of homes known as whisper
listings or pocket listings are being reserved for certain buyers
and it's squeezing the supply even tighter. Nicole Friedman, housing
reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for the
dwindling options for home buyer. Finally, the conversation about COVID
nineteen variants is changing in the hopes of avoiding confusion
(01:05):
and stigma. The who has announced the new naming scheme
that uses the letters of the Greek alphabet instead of
numbers or a country's name. The UK variant, known as
B one seven will now be Alpha. In the South
African variant will be Beta. Elizabeth Weis, national correspondent at
USA Today, joins us for more It's news without the noise.
(01:28):
Let's dive in on June fift all things being equal,
we continue that good work will have moved beyond that
blueprint and will be opening up this economy at business
as usual. Joining us now is Carla Marinucci, senior writer
for Politicos California Playbook. Thanks for joining us, Carla, Hey
did to be with you. I wanted to get in
(01:50):
an update on the recall effort for Governor Gavin Newsom
in California. It seems that despite Republicans best efforts, they
haven't been able to nail down just yet. The recall
effort is a go. It will be happening. But you know,
things are changing in the state. The situation with COVID
is getting better. Restaurants are reopening. I think June fifteenth
(02:11):
is the big reopening for California, and things just aren't sticking.
As much. Homelessness is probably the biggest issue that they
can nail him on. But Carlo, what are we seeing
in this recall effort so far? Yeah, I mean what
we're seeing is that the Governor Newsom really seems to
have the wind in his back right now. I mean,
he's got the pall members in his favor, with only
of California voters saying they support it. You've got the
(02:34):
state bouncing back from the COVID situation. The budget surplus
is unlike anything California has ever seen with he's claiming
about the seventies six billion dollars surplus and then twenty
seven billion dollars in federal stimulus to boot. That means
Newsome is been able to give away six hundred dollar
checks and that stimulus, and you know, on the COVID situation,
(02:58):
he's now promising those fifty dollar gift cards to anyone
who gets the vaccine to the next two million Californias
and then a huge lottery coming in the middle of
the month. So right now, Republican candidates have tried to
get traction against him. You've got one Republican candidate, John Cox,
is even taken out of a thousand pounds bear with
him on the campaign trail. Kevin Falconer is trying with,
(03:20):
you know, serious policy proposals, but it is hard to
get traction against the governor who's got the advantage of
the bully pulpit and is going around the state all
of doing a victory lap with the with the COVID recovery,
and you know, that's really what kind of you know,
the recall effort was already set in motion, but that's
the thing that really gave it some energy was business closures.
(03:42):
And at that time it was kind of a roller coaster.
They were open, then they had a close back down,
then they was kind of open and limit capacity. That's
the thing that really gave it energy. And now we're
reopening the state. So that's a tough one to nail
on right there. Absolutely, And if you saw over the
Memorial Day weekend, boy, things were packed out there. That
parks were packed, the beaches are packed. There's no question
(04:03):
that California is recovering from this COVID pandemic. And the
governor is using that terminology California roaring back as he's
describing these new programs, the stimulus payments, the economic recovery,
and it's showing, you know, as we said, in his
polls right now, the latest Public Policy Institute of California
poll showed two thirds of California residents now say they
(04:26):
back his handling of the pandemic. And you mentioned that's
where this recall began. Is the anger, the frustration at
those businesses closing down, at the school's closing down. Well,
right now most of the California is behind Newsom and
the way he's reopening up again. So how do the
Republicans get traction here? That is the big issue and
it's going to be their challenge, especially if Democrats move
(04:49):
up the date of the recall as is being talked
about now, that gives Republicans even less time to make
an argument against Gavin Newsom. You mentioned John Cox coming
out there with that huge where you know, I live
in California. That day, I saw all the news. I
was kind of laughing it was it was kind of
a funny stunt. Yeah, well, I was face to face
with the bear on the campaign trail to we tell
(05:10):
you it wasn't that funny because there was nothing separating
the bear from the press. Score. I wasn't sure which
I was going to go. You know, other candidates like
Caitlyn Jenner, who was getting a lot of national coverage,
was interesting, but really I have not seen her do
anything local, which is where you really need to be
because those are the people that are going to be voting. Yeah,
(05:31):
forty days into her campaign, we haven't seen a single
press conferences, single public event. She's gone to the East
Coast to do a couple of very short interviews. Mostly
she's selling T shirts and hats on her website. We
haven't seen a lot of policy positions from her, so
she's gonna have to, I think, either come up with
some really detailed positions very soon and do some state media,
(05:53):
which she had done none of. Other thanwise, I think
she's already considered sort of a fourth place contender in
the polls all me at six percent, and I think
Mary carry the porn stars somewhere in that range as well.
What are supporters of the recall effort have to do?
They need some energy in this As I mentioned at
the beginning, you know, the homeless issue in California, especially
(06:13):
in southern California so huge right now. That could be
something to pin Gavin Newsomon. What do they need for
their effort. Yeah, right now. I mean you do have
some serious Republicans who are starting to focus on that.
Kevin Kylie, an assemblyment from the Sacramento area, saying, look,
you need to have somebody really go down the list
of the governor's failures this year, particularly on taxation issues
(06:35):
and other issues that have caused major businesses to leave
the state. He believes in. Other Republicans believe that dos
is vulnerable also on crime issues, law and order issues,
defunding the police, some of the more progressive Democrats calling
for that, and many Republicans are saying that is an
issue that's going to hit with voters. And you mentioned homelessness.
(06:56):
It is still it's sort of at pandemic levels a
lot of cities here in California. Oakland, Venice Beach is
another area where people are complaining about this and a
right scale, and the feeling is that Newsom has not
done enough at least Republicans are making that case that
that is an area also where he's vulnerable. So, yes,
there are issues that resonate with not only Republicans but
(07:20):
independent voters here in California. And the cost of housing
is another big one. That's another issue that's causing some
California to leave the state and go elsewhere, and Republicans
are saying they have the opportunity to maybe bring along
some of those independents and discriminal Republicans and get them together.
The bottom line is Republicans are much more energized to
(07:42):
vote in this recall than Democrats are. In a Berkeley
poll showed that seventyent of Republicans have a high interest
in the recall. That's more than double the share of Democrats.
So Democrats are little worried that they may not kind
of turn out on this election. That's the Republican hope
here that they can turn out their voters and get
across that fifty plus one percent of the vote that
they need. On that first question on the recall about
(08:05):
which should Gavin Newsom be recalled? They want to get
fifty plus one percent. If they do, then it's a
Katie bar the door. You've got already sixty three candidates
for governor out there. Carla Marinucci, senior writer at politicos
California Playbook, thank you very much for joining us. Good
to be with you. Thanks for what that also means
(08:30):
is that a buyer who is looking for a house
to buy and going on these websites every day trying
to find new houses on the market might hear, oh wow,
this house that completely fits my criteria just sold and
I didn't even know it was for sale. I didn't
even get a chance to look or to make an offer.
Joining was Nicole Friedman, housing reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
Thanks for joining us, Nicole, Thank you for having me. Nicole.
(08:53):
We've talked about how tight the housing market is right now.
Home prices are at record highs. The demand is there
where there's just not enough supply and uh and you're
one of your recent articles you talked about how there's
thousands of homes that are being reserved for certain buyers
that sometimes people call them pocket listings whisper listings, and
they're not being put out on the market at large.
(09:16):
You know, some of these agents and brokerages are kind
of just giving the heads up to a select few people.
And you know what that does is really tightened the
supply even more. And even those for those people that
are selling those homes, they might not be getting the
highest prices that they could be getting. So Nicole tell
us a little bit about it. So normally, to buy
or sell a home, the seller will list their house publicly,
(09:38):
so they'll put it on multiple listing service kind of
a local database that has all of the house listings,
and then from there it will go on to you know, Zilo,
Reds and realtor dot com, all of these websites so
that any buyer can see the home. They're also being
a force sales sign out front, lots of marketing, and
the idea is to get you know, as many buyers
as possible who want to tour the home and make offers.
(09:58):
And especially in this market, it is super competitive out
there for buyers. Buyers are desperate to buy homes and
there just aren't enough on the market. So any home
that does go on the market these days is likely
to sell very quickly and get multiple offers. But in
some cases, brokeragees are not putting listings on those public databases,
(10:19):
but they're keeping them kind of in house. It's called
an office exclusive, also called a pocket listing, where a
brokerage might have a house that they only market to
other agents inside that brokerage. And there are various reasons
that sellers might want to do this. It's a little
bit more common in high end markets. If a seller is,
say a celebrity or somebody who has a lot of
(10:39):
privacy or safety concerns, they might not want all of
these people touring their house. They might not want photos
of their house on the internet. So sometimes sellers prefer
these kind of more private listing options. And that means
that the house is kind of only advertised within a
certain brokerage, and so only clients of that brokerage get
access to these listings. But what that also means is
(11:00):
that a buyer who is looking for a house to
buy and going on these websites every day trying to
find new houses on the market, might hear, oh, wow,
this house that completely fits my criteria just sold and
I didn't even know it was for sale. I didn't
even get a chance to look or to make an offer.
Let's put some numbers to it, because these popular listings
accounted for about three of sales on average for the
(11:22):
past year that ended in March. Is not that much,
but that's about a hundred and sixty nine thou homes.
That's a lot of homes, right, So it is not
to be clear the entirety of the inventory problem. Right
there really is a shortage of houses. And it is
not only that if all of these houses were listed
publicly there would be enough houses. There is a long
standing shortage of homes and this is just kind of
(11:44):
one small corner of the market. That is these houses
that are being sold kind of more privately, But it
does account, as you said, for about three percent of
the market, So that's not a huge proportion, but it
is up from the year before and the year before that,
so it is kind of rising in this more competitive market.
I guess that was Freddie mac estimated that the housing
market is short nearly four million homes. That is a
(12:07):
ton of homes that people are looking for right now, absolutely,
and so really the bigger issue is that for the
past decade, home builders have not really kept up with
long term demand and so there's this big deficit of
houses that people are ready to buy that just haven't
been built yet. So what is this all doing? You know?
I mentioned also that you know, the home prices are
(12:28):
at record highs right now. We kind of saw the
first slowing of the pace of these purchases, but it's
because house prices are so high and it's pushing some
buyers out. Yeah, so definitely, affordability is a growing problem
right now in the market that house prices are being
pushed to record highs because there's so many buyers competing
for so few houses, and so buyers are just outbidding
(12:50):
each other, and it's getting really difficult for first time buyers,
buyers at the lower end of the market to afford homes.
People are getting priced out, So that's a growing problem
right now. The demand is just so strong that even
if some people are getting priced out of the market,
there's still more buyers they're ready to take their place.
What do we do about this issue of supply? Is
(13:12):
there going to be new home construction on the horizon?
Are we just kind of stuck in this rut for
right now? Is there anything being done to address that?
Or are are what are people looking forward to? At least?
So home builders are increasing construction. They're definitely aware of
the demands. They want to be building more homes, but
they can't necessarily just churn out more homes overnight, and
(13:33):
they have some constraints in terms of the availability of land,
supply costs, the availability of skilled labor, and so builders
are building more but they are not building necessarily as
quickly as everybody wishes that they could. And really the
four million home deficit. You know, builders are right now
pushing their building over you know, a million starts a year,
(13:55):
but that's still to fill a deficit of almost four
million homes is going to take severally years. The other
issue is just that a lot of people right now
who might normally be lifting their homes on the market
have been holding off, either because concerns about the virus
or because you know, they are worried about finding a
house themselves in this competitive market. So there is some
hope that later in the year more people will list
(14:18):
their homes and that will help ease the supply issues somewhat,
but really, until the builders catch up with demand, it's
going to be a undersupplied market. Nicole Friedman, housing reporter
at the Wall Street Journal, thank you very much for
joining us. Thank you for having me. W A. Joey said, hey, listen,
(14:45):
let's get rid of the numeracle names, and let's also
stop calling them by a geographical designation and we'll just
call them ELSHA. So Alpha is because the first the
variant that we were calling you and Kingdom Billiant was
the first identified. So first literally Greek alpha is alpha.
Joining us now is Elizabeth Lee's national correspondent at USA today.
(15:07):
Thanks for joining us, Elizabeth, happy to be here. The
conversation around COVID nineteen, or at least how we talk
about it, is going to be changing. The w h
O has given a new naming scheme to these COVID
nineteen variants we keep talking about. We're gonna be using
the Greek alphabet to name them. So we had been
talking a lot about this variant that was coming from
(15:29):
the United Kingdom. That one is now going to be
called alpha, and so forth and so on. They're all
going to have names slightly changed. It's gonna be a
little confusing, I think for a bit until people start
catching on. But Elizabeth tell us what we're seeing with this. Basically,
they want to give a new set of naming conventions
to the variants because the problem is that, well, I,
when I'm writing a story would probably call the United
(15:51):
Kingdom variant. A scientists would call the B dot one
dot one dot seven variant, which means it is the
the seventh known variant of the B dot one dot
one family of the stars. Code B two virus. So
I mean, all those numbers actually mean something if you're
a scientist or a virologists. For us, they don't. And
(16:15):
you know, the South Africa variant was b dot one
dot six ones seven dot to actually know that was
the India variant. And what w h O has said, Hey, listen,
let's give it to the numerical names, and let's also
stop calling them by a geographical designation and we'll just
call them alpha. So alpha is because the first the
(16:36):
variant that we were calling the United Kingdom variant was
the first one identified. So the first letter was the
Greek alpil with it is alpha. The South African variant
was the second, it's beta, and then we'll go gamut, delta,
haves one. You know, a lot of this is to
fight stigma as well. You know, when you're labeling it,
oh well, this is coming from India, this is coming
from South Africa, this is coming from the United Kingdom.
(16:59):
I saw that too as well. You know when um
foreign President Trump was calling it the China virus, things
like that, and then these variants would come out and
the conversation was, although isn't that just as bad labeling
these variants coming from these countries where they might not
have necessarily originated from, it just kind of became more prevalent. There.
There's two things. One, you don't want anyone to think, oh,
(17:21):
anyone from India has this horrible India variant, and we
in fact don't even know if that variant which is
now Delta, is necessarily more virulent or not. But the
other thing that's really important to remember, and um I
was talking to Dr Monika Gandhi, is that UCSF And
she reminded me that it's not the SPATA which was
the South Africa variant. It's not necessarily that South Africa
(17:43):
is where this mutation occurred. It's merely that South Africa
had a pretty robust testing system, a genomic testing system
for the stars Kobe two virus, and they picked it
up first. So the original stars Kobe too virus, it's
pretty definitive that it original NADD in China, but all
these other ones, I mean you came and who knows
where it came from. It could have been a Europe.
(18:05):
There are many places it might have originally the mutation
would have occurred, and it's just who had the best
testing system and that's not really fair. But the other
concern is, as you said, you don't want to demonize
a country, you know, Brazil, India, South Africa and and
the other concern was that some countries might turn up
a variant but not want to talk about it because
(18:28):
they'd be concerned that they would then be you know,
named as Oh, you know, this is the Norwegian variant,
and suddenly people are for even people from Norway. So
there is a certain amount of racism. And this I
have to say because I was talking to another guy
who in Michigan and said, you know, it is interesting
that people get scared of disease names that come from
(18:49):
places that are less well known. But like Nora virus
and I didn't even know this, which is a nasty
it makes you throw up a lot and get it
in the summer, and it shows up at camps and stuff.
It comes from Normark, Ohio. I had no hyks or
Lacrosse and cephalitis virus comes from Lacrosse, Wisconsin, and people
do not discriminate against people from Wisconsin because of that virus.
(19:12):
So there is there's no element of racism there. Well,
there's for now a whole new set of names and
variants to learn exactly so you can keep up on
the conversation, so we'll monitor all of these. Elizabeth Wee's
national correspondent at USA Today. Thank you very much for
joining us. You're welcome. That's it for today. Join us
(19:38):
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your podcast. This episode of The Daily Divers produced by
Victor Wright and engineered by Tony Sarrantina. Hi'm Oscar Amirez,
and this was your Daily Dive DA
It's Wednesday, June two. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the daily Dive. California Governor Gavin Newsom
continues to face a recall vote, but the early momentum
and getting the recall on the ballot has faded and
Republicans are having difficulties making some of the attacks stick.
(00:21):
The state of schedules to reopen June fifteen. There's a
budget surplus, and even poles look good for Newsom right
now with opposing the recall. Carlo Marinucci, senior writer for
politicals California Playbook, joins us for an update on the
fight over Newsome's political future. Next, the housing market continues
to be as crazy as ever, with low inventory and
(00:43):
sky hype prices, but thousands of homes known as whisper
listings or pocket listings are being reserved for certain buyers
and it's squeezing the supply even tighter. Nicole Friedman, housing
reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for the
dwindling options for home buyer. Finally, the conversation about COVID
nineteen variants is changing in the hopes of avoiding confusion
(01:05):
and stigma. The who has announced the new naming scheme
that uses the letters of the Greek alphabet instead of
numbers or a country's name. The UK variant, known as
B one seven will now be Alpha. In the South
African variant will be Beta. Elizabeth Weis, national correspondent at
USA Today, joins us for more It's news without the noise.
(01:28):
Let's dive in on June fift all things being equal,
we continue that good work will have moved beyond that
blueprint and will be opening up this economy at business
as usual. Joining us now is Carla Marinucci, senior writer
for Politicos California Playbook. Thanks for joining us, Carla, Hey
did to be with you. I wanted to get in
(01:50):
an update on the recall effort for Governor Gavin Newsom
in California. It seems that despite Republicans best efforts, they
haven't been able to nail down just yet. The recall
effort is a go. It will be happening. But you know,
things are changing in the state. The situation with COVID
is getting better. Restaurants are reopening. I think June fifteenth
(02:11):
is the big reopening for California, and things just aren't sticking.
As much. Homelessness is probably the biggest issue that they
can nail him on. But Carlo, what are we seeing
in this recall effort so far? Yeah, I mean what
we're seeing is that the Governor Newsom really seems to
have the wind in his back right now. I mean,
he's got the pall members in his favor, with only
of California voters saying they support it. You've got the
(02:34):
state bouncing back from the COVID situation. The budget surplus
is unlike anything California has ever seen with he's claiming
about the seventies six billion dollars surplus and then twenty
seven billion dollars in federal stimulus to boot. That means
Newsome is been able to give away six hundred dollar
checks and that stimulus, and you know, on the COVID situation,
(02:58):
he's now promising those fifty dollar gift cards to anyone
who gets the vaccine to the next two million Californias
and then a huge lottery coming in the middle of
the month. So right now, Republican candidates have tried to
get traction against him. You've got one Republican candidate, John Cox,
is even taken out of a thousand pounds bear with
him on the campaign trail. Kevin Falconer is trying with,
(03:20):
you know, serious policy proposals, but it is hard to
get traction against the governor who's got the advantage of
the bully pulpit and is going around the state all
of doing a victory lap with the with the COVID recovery,
and you know, that's really what kind of you know,
the recall effort was already set in motion, but that's
the thing that really gave it some energy was business closures.
(03:42):
And at that time it was kind of a roller coaster.
They were open, then they had a close back down,
then they was kind of open and limit capacity. That's
the thing that really gave it energy. And now we're
reopening the state. So that's a tough one to nail
on right there. Absolutely, And if you saw over the
Memorial Day weekend, boy, things were packed out there. That
parks were packed, the beaches are packed. There's no question
(04:03):
that California is recovering from this COVID pandemic. And the
governor is using that terminology California roaring back as he's
describing these new programs, the stimulus payments, the economic recovery,
and it's showing, you know, as we said, in his
polls right now, the latest Public Policy Institute of California
poll showed two thirds of California residents now say they
(04:26):
back his handling of the pandemic. And you mentioned that's
where this recall began. Is the anger, the frustration at
those businesses closing down, at the school's closing down. Well,
right now most of the California is behind Newsom and
the way he's reopening up again. So how do the
Republicans get traction here? That is the big issue and
it's going to be their challenge, especially if Democrats move
(04:49):
up the date of the recall as is being talked
about now, that gives Republicans even less time to make
an argument against Gavin Newsom. You mentioned John Cox coming
out there with that huge where you know, I live
in California. That day, I saw all the news. I
was kind of laughing it was it was kind of
a funny stunt. Yeah, well, I was face to face
with the bear on the campaign trail to we tell
(05:10):
you it wasn't that funny because there was nothing separating
the bear from the press. Score. I wasn't sure which
I was going to go. You know, other candidates like
Caitlyn Jenner, who was getting a lot of national coverage,
was interesting, but really I have not seen her do
anything local, which is where you really need to be
because those are the people that are going to be voting. Yeah,
(05:31):
forty days into her campaign, we haven't seen a single
press conferences, single public event. She's gone to the East
Coast to do a couple of very short interviews. Mostly
she's selling T shirts and hats on her website. We
haven't seen a lot of policy positions from her, so
she's gonna have to, I think, either come up with
some really detailed positions very soon and do some state media,
(05:53):
which she had done none of. Other thanwise, I think
she's already considered sort of a fourth place contender in
the polls all me at six percent, and I think
Mary carry the porn stars somewhere in that range as well.
What are supporters of the recall effort have to do?
They need some energy in this As I mentioned at
the beginning, you know, the homeless issue in California, especially
(06:13):
in southern California so huge right now. That could be
something to pin Gavin Newsomon. What do they need for
their effort. Yeah, right now. I mean you do have
some serious Republicans who are starting to focus on that.
Kevin Kylie, an assemblyment from the Sacramento area, saying, look,
you need to have somebody really go down the list
of the governor's failures this year, particularly on taxation issues
(06:35):
and other issues that have caused major businesses to leave
the state. He believes in. Other Republicans believe that dos
is vulnerable also on crime issues, law and order issues,
defunding the police, some of the more progressive Democrats calling
for that, and many Republicans are saying that is an
issue that's going to hit with voters. And you mentioned homelessness.
(06:56):
It is still it's sort of at pandemic levels a
lot of cities here in California. Oakland, Venice Beach is
another area where people are complaining about this and a
right scale, and the feeling is that Newsom has not
done enough at least Republicans are making that case that
that is an area also where he's vulnerable. So, yes,
there are issues that resonate with not only Republicans but
(07:20):
independent voters here in California. And the cost of housing
is another big one. That's another issue that's causing some
California to leave the state and go elsewhere, and Republicans
are saying they have the opportunity to maybe bring along
some of those independents and discriminal Republicans and get them together.
The bottom line is Republicans are much more energized to
(07:42):
vote in this recall than Democrats are. In a Berkeley
poll showed that seventyent of Republicans have a high interest
in the recall. That's more than double the share of Democrats.
So Democrats are little worried that they may not kind
of turn out on this election. That's the Republican hope
here that they can turn out their voters and get
across that fifty plus one percent of the vote that
they need. On that first question on the recall about
(08:05):
which should Gavin Newsom be recalled? They want to get
fifty plus one percent. If they do, then it's a
Katie bar the door. You've got already sixty three candidates
for governor out there. Carla Marinucci, senior writer at politicos
California Playbook, thank you very much for joining us. Good
to be with you. Thanks for what that also means
(08:30):
is that a buyer who is looking for a house
to buy and going on these websites every day trying
to find new houses on the market might hear, oh wow,
this house that completely fits my criteria just sold and
I didn't even know it was for sale. I didn't
even get a chance to look or to make an offer.
Joining was Nicole Friedman, housing reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
Thanks for joining us, Nicole, Thank you for having me. Nicole.
(08:53):
We've talked about how tight the housing market is right now.
Home prices are at record highs. The demand is there
where there's just not enough supply and uh and you're
one of your recent articles you talked about how there's
thousands of homes that are being reserved for certain buyers
that sometimes people call them pocket listings whisper listings, and
they're not being put out on the market at large.
(09:16):
You know, some of these agents and brokerages are kind
of just giving the heads up to a select few people.
And you know what that does is really tightened the
supply even more. And even those for those people that
are selling those homes, they might not be getting the
highest prices that they could be getting. So Nicole tell
us a little bit about it. So normally, to buy
or sell a home, the seller will list their house publicly,
(09:38):
so they'll put it on multiple listing service kind of
a local database that has all of the house listings,
and then from there it will go on to you know, Zilo,
Reds and realtor dot com, all of these websites so
that any buyer can see the home. They're also being
a force sales sign out front, lots of marketing, and
the idea is to get you know, as many buyers
as possible who want to tour the home and make offers.
(09:58):
And especially in this market, it is super competitive out
there for buyers. Buyers are desperate to buy homes and
there just aren't enough on the market. So any home
that does go on the market these days is likely
to sell very quickly and get multiple offers. But in
some cases, brokeragees are not putting listings on those public databases,
(10:19):
but they're keeping them kind of in house. It's called
an office exclusive, also called a pocket listing, where a
brokerage might have a house that they only market to
other agents inside that brokerage. And there are various reasons
that sellers might want to do this. It's a little
bit more common in high end markets. If a seller is,
say a celebrity or somebody who has a lot of
(10:39):
privacy or safety concerns, they might not want all of
these people touring their house. They might not want photos
of their house on the internet. So sometimes sellers prefer
these kind of more private listing options. And that means
that the house is kind of only advertised within a
certain brokerage, and so only clients of that brokerage get
access to these listings. But what that also means is
(11:00):
that a buyer who is looking for a house to
buy and going on these websites every day trying to
find new houses on the market, might hear, oh, wow,
this house that completely fits my criteria just sold and
I didn't even know it was for sale. I didn't
even get a chance to look or to make an offer.
Let's put some numbers to it, because these popular listings
accounted for about three of sales on average for the
(11:22):
past year that ended in March. Is not that much,
but that's about a hundred and sixty nine thou homes.
That's a lot of homes, right, So it is not
to be clear the entirety of the inventory problem. Right
there really is a shortage of houses. And it is
not only that if all of these houses were listed
publicly there would be enough houses. There is a long
standing shortage of homes and this is just kind of
(11:44):
one small corner of the market. That is these houses
that are being sold kind of more privately, But it
does account, as you said, for about three percent of
the market, So that's not a huge proportion, but it
is up from the year before and the year before that,
so it is kind of rising in this more competitive market.
I guess that was Freddie mac estimated that the housing
market is short nearly four million homes. That is a
(12:07):
ton of homes that people are looking for right now, absolutely,
and so really the bigger issue is that for the
past decade, home builders have not really kept up with
long term demand and so there's this big deficit of
houses that people are ready to buy that just haven't
been built yet. So what is this all doing? You know?
I mentioned also that you know, the home prices are
(12:28):
at record highs right now. We kind of saw the
first slowing of the pace of these purchases, but it's
because house prices are so high and it's pushing some
buyers out. Yeah, so definitely, affordability is a growing problem
right now in the market that house prices are being
pushed to record highs because there's so many buyers competing
for so few houses, and so buyers are just outbidding
(12:50):
each other, and it's getting really difficult for first time buyers,
buyers at the lower end of the market to afford homes.
People are getting priced out, So that's a growing problem
right now. The demand is just so strong that even
if some people are getting priced out of the market,
there's still more buyers they're ready to take their place.
What do we do about this issue of supply? Is
(13:12):
there going to be new home construction on the horizon?
Are we just kind of stuck in this rut for
right now? Is there anything being done to address that?
Or are are what are people looking forward to? At least?
So home builders are increasing construction. They're definitely aware of
the demands. They want to be building more homes, but
they can't necessarily just churn out more homes overnight, and
(13:33):
they have some constraints in terms of the availability of land,
supply costs, the availability of skilled labor, and so builders
are building more but they are not building necessarily as
quickly as everybody wishes that they could. And really the
four million home deficit. You know, builders are right now
pushing their building over you know, a million starts a year,
(13:55):
but that's still to fill a deficit of almost four
million homes is going to take severally years. The other
issue is just that a lot of people right now
who might normally be lifting their homes on the market
have been holding off, either because concerns about the virus
or because you know, they are worried about finding a
house themselves in this competitive market. So there is some
hope that later in the year more people will list
(14:18):
their homes and that will help ease the supply issues somewhat,
but really, until the builders catch up with demand, it's
going to be a undersupplied market. Nicole Friedman, housing reporter
at the Wall Street Journal, thank you very much for
joining us. Thank you for having me. W A. Joey said, hey, listen,
(14:45):
let's get rid of the numeracle names, and let's also
stop calling them by a geographical designation and we'll just
call them ELSHA. So Alpha is because the first the
variant that we were calling you and Kingdom Billiant was
the first identified. So first literally Greek alpha is alpha.
Joining us now is Elizabeth Lee's national correspondent at USA today.
(15:07):
Thanks for joining us, Elizabeth, happy to be here. The
conversation around COVID nineteen, or at least how we talk
about it, is going to be changing. The w h
O has given a new naming scheme to these COVID
nineteen variants we keep talking about. We're gonna be using
the Greek alphabet to name them. So we had been
talking a lot about this variant that was coming from
(15:29):
the United Kingdom. That one is now going to be
called alpha, and so forth and so on. They're all
going to have names slightly changed. It's gonna be a
little confusing, I think for a bit until people start
catching on. But Elizabeth tell us what we're seeing with this. Basically,
they want to give a new set of naming conventions
to the variants because the problem is that, well, I,
when I'm writing a story would probably call the United
(15:51):
Kingdom variant. A scientists would call the B dot one
dot one dot seven variant, which means it is the
the seventh known variant of the B dot one dot
one family of the stars. Code B two virus. So
I mean, all those numbers actually mean something if you're
a scientist or a virologists. For us, they don't. And
(16:15):
you know, the South Africa variant was b dot one
dot six ones seven dot to actually know that was
the India variant. And what w h O has said, Hey, listen,
let's give it to the numerical names, and let's also
stop calling them by a geographical designation and we'll just
call them alpha. So alpha is because the first the
(16:36):
variant that we were calling the United Kingdom variant was
the first one identified. So the first letter was the
Greek alpil with it is alpha. The South African variant
was the second, it's beta, and then we'll go gamut, delta,
haves one. You know, a lot of this is to
fight stigma as well. You know, when you're labeling it,
oh well, this is coming from India, this is coming
from South Africa, this is coming from the United Kingdom.
(16:59):
I saw that too as well. You know when um
foreign President Trump was calling it the China virus, things
like that, and then these variants would come out and
the conversation was, although isn't that just as bad labeling
these variants coming from these countries where they might not
have necessarily originated from, it just kind of became more prevalent. There.
There's two things. One, you don't want anyone to think, oh,
(17:21):
anyone from India has this horrible India variant, and we
in fact don't even know if that variant which is
now Delta, is necessarily more virulent or not. But the
other thing that's really important to remember, and um I
was talking to Dr Monika Gandhi, is that UCSF And
she reminded me that it's not the SPATA which was
the South Africa variant. It's not necessarily that South Africa
(17:43):
is where this mutation occurred. It's merely that South Africa
had a pretty robust testing system, a genomic testing system
for the stars Kobe two virus, and they picked it
up first. So the original stars Kobe too virus, it's
pretty definitive that it original NADD in China, but all
these other ones, I mean you came and who knows
where it came from. It could have been a Europe.
(18:05):
There are many places it might have originally the mutation
would have occurred, and it's just who had the best
testing system and that's not really fair. But the other
concern is, as you said, you don't want to demonize
a country, you know, Brazil, India, South Africa and and
the other concern was that some countries might turn up
a variant but not want to talk about it because
(18:28):
they'd be concerned that they would then be you know,
named as Oh, you know, this is the Norwegian variant,
and suddenly people are for even people from Norway. So
there is a certain amount of racism. And this I
have to say because I was talking to another guy
who in Michigan and said, you know, it is interesting
that people get scared of disease names that come from
(18:49):
places that are less well known. But like Nora virus
and I didn't even know this, which is a nasty
it makes you throw up a lot and get it
in the summer, and it shows up at camps and stuff.
It comes from Normark, Ohio. I had no hyks or
Lacrosse and cephalitis virus comes from Lacrosse, Wisconsin, and people
do not discriminate against people from Wisconsin because of that virus.
(19:12):
So there is there's no element of racism there. Well,
there's for now a whole new set of names and
variants to learn exactly so you can keep up on
the conversation, so we'll monitor all of these. Elizabeth Wee's
national correspondent at USA Today. Thank you very much for
joining us. You're welcome. That's it for today. Join us
(19:38):
on social media at Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter
and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on I Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get
your podcast. This episode of The Daily Divers produced by
Victor Wright and engineered by Tony Sarrantina. Hi'm Oscar Amirez,
and this was your Daily Dive DA
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