October 23, 2025 • 33 mins
Soaring food costs, rising labor, rent, and insurance are squeezing small businesses — and why diners are pushing back against luxury-priced basics like egg sandwiches. Plus, Foreclosure Fever is spreading as more homeowners feel the financial squeeze. With filings climbing and the housing market stuck in neutral, Chris breaks down what’s really driving the slowdown — and whether America’s economic stress is just a phase or the start of something bigger.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
So have you gone out to eat lately? Could be
the last time? Could be the last time. Restaurant owners
across the country bracing for the brutal reality that inflation
is squeezing them, and not in a fun way.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Customers pushing back.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Food costs are soaring, eateries are considering menu price hikes
as much as thirty one percent just to stay afloat.
So remember when you were complaining about inflation in like
twenty two and twenty three and you went, wow, I
can't believe that a big mac meal is now up
to eighteen dollars or whatever thet complaint was at the time,
And then you were like, well, this is because of wages.
(00:43):
Wages are a component of it. Wages are component, very
small component, but they are a component of it absolutely.
But come to find out, it has everything else to
do with otherwise inflation. Operators of restaurants say that inflation
is the biggest issue.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Marketing costs have gone up. Mark, that's uh.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
They're complaining because you got a raise, Remember that big
raise you got. Remember you're gonna have to refresh me
on that because well, marketing because they you know, it
costs more to market, which which must mean that we're
charging way more. And if we're charging way more, it
must be in order to pay these exorbitant costs.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I'm looking forward to this raise.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I think I was doing math on this because somebody said, uh,
you know, I was telling him I was doing the
show again tonight, and they said, you make a lot
of money doing that, and I go, no, like, what
are you doing. I mean, I get to I get
to be on KFI. It's great, and uh, and I
realized I'm making the same amount now I was, I
think in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
For every show I.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Do, when people ask me that, I just give the
same answer Johnny Carson used to give, which was I
have no other skills.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Oh my gosh did he say that? Yes, because I
get people are like, oh, why do you do? And
I have no other employable job skills? I have none,
you're channeling Johnny none.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
It's true though. My father is the worst at this.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
My father goes because I was, you know, I was
on the beach for a while, and uh, my father's like, you.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Need to go a job, and I go, I'm doing
some fill in work. You know.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Here, I was doing some stuff in San Francisco. I
did some stuff in Dallas, and so I was doing
filling work.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And it was I mean it was.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
It wasn't steady, but it was often enough that I
was it was contributing to the household income.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
But my father, you need to do something. I think
you could be a great product demonstrator.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You could travel around to all the shows telling people
about the great products.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Oh, I'd like to see you hanging out free samples
at Costco. You'd be great at that, exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, And I got you know how much I would
just start yelling at people.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
I go move it, Ethel. They kind of already do
that at closing time. Oh how many sausages.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Are you gonna eat? Walter? Get moving, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
So, No, I'd be terrible at it. I think I
could do product demonstration. That's great, but it doesn't pay anything.
My father seems to think that the peopeople who are
standing there next to you know, new Ford trucks are
making a killing because they know the stats and they
can answer questions. No, they're not.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
They're not making a killing.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Not they're sleeping in Two people in a crappy hotel
room every night is what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And then the other operatory hiring is another big issue
that they've got. So what's happening is a number of
restaurants have to hike things up. Some are blaming the
president's tariff strategy. Price hikes tied to President Trump's tariff
aggressive tariff strategy. And while tariffs can be enacted with
(03:38):
a penstroke, it takes years to rewhite to rewrite excuse me,
global supply chains. This according to a supply chain expert.
They say, so go ahead and savor that fourteen dollars burger.
It might be the cheapest one that you're going to
see for a while. But this is a restaurant owner
who's trying to figure out how he's going to survive.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
I think hot Pasta is a family affair for Sunday
Gravy in Inglewood, California. Owner Soul Basherian's family has operated
an Italian restaurant in the same spot for decades.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
My dad put an offer together and grabbed all his
savings and bought this place, and here we are now,
like what almost fifty years later.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
But the legacy could go stale Vasherian says he is
spending thousands more a month on imported ingredients.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Well Sunday Gravy.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
Has seen a thirty percent bump in sales since last year.
Tariffs and inflation are eating into his profit.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Oh how dare you? You can't say that. It sounds
like you're trying to blame the president for his economic strategies,
which has generated a tremendous amount of new tax dollars.
Those tax dollars are simply coming from oh, tariffs.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, that's oh, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
So you're barely breaking even.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Yeah, we're definitely barely breaking even. It's just the reality
of where the food industry is at.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
R Ja Hannevey with placer Ai advises restaurants across the country.
He says, the eatery hear.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
That mark, that's an AI guy, that's restaurants. How could
you go wrong? I know that makes you happy always.
They're infallible, So you have to listen, yay, I told me.
And how could it go wrong?
Speaker 5 (05:12):
Is that catered to lower and middle income consumers are
hurting financially, and so are their customers.
Speaker 7 (05:19):
That group is facing cost pressures on a number of fronts,
not just food, but are the things like rent and inflation.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, Now keep this in mind, it's not just when
he talks about inflation. So you've got Yeah, your rent
is going up. The inflation also hits not just the foods.
And we do have a beef shortage. But good news.
We sent forty billion dollars to Argentina to get more
beef from them. So make Argentina great again. Argentina first,
(05:45):
good agenda. So now you have food costs are up.
Egg prices are still high. They've come down from their peak,
but they're still high. You have a number of restaurants
that are going okay, buying the food is high. What
happens when that refrigerator breaks. Happens when the deep prior
is no longer operable. Your steam jackets aren't working, Your
(06:06):
convection evens are toast.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Even if you have to have it, you're got to
pay to have it fixed.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
The repair costs have gone up because parts have got
more more expensive because the parts are manufactured elsewhere, and
if you have to replace the item in general, even
if it's manufacturing in the United States. The metals that
are being used, the aluminums, the steels, those are going
up in costs because we've added tariffs. Everything is going up,
and it takes a while for the tariffs to trickle
(06:35):
into the economy, and it takes a while for it
to trickle down to to those of us who are
paying for it.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
But it's happening, and so what do we do.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
A new report out by cloud based management company Toast
shows that nearly half of the restaurants surveyed planned to
raise menu prices if costs continue to rise.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Be honest, do you think costs are not going to
continue to rise?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I have no faith in that.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I don't see inflation plateauing. It has been steadily climbing
over the last six months, ever since we put the terrace.
It's slowly, slowly climbing. Now we didn't have some sort
of a terrible fall off of a cliff. Some economists
we're talking about how this would push us into an
instant recession that would be tough to dig out of.
(07:25):
It could be worse than that. It could be a long,
slow stagflation where you've got high unemployment and high inflation,
and then the FED is basically paralyzed.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
The National Restaurant Association says menu prices would need to
increase by more than thirty percent just to maintain a
thin profit margin.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
It sounds easy, but there's such a process behind it.
It's reprinting a menu and the printing costs associated with that.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Do you think that sticker shock would drive away people
from even walking into the door.
Speaker 6 (08:00):
Absolutely, it's pasta, and pasta is not supposed to be
crazy expensive, right.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
The atmosphere, of course, is expensive.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Never could figure out how Olive Garden got away with
charging their prices, but they do for now.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Senney Gravy is adding a five percent surcharge on the
bill to offset tariffs. Restaurant owners in California are allowed
to add an extra fee if it's clearly and conspicuously
displayed on menus. Hottavey says that charge could turn away customers.
Speaker 8 (08:30):
Yeah, is price fatigue.
Speaker 7 (08:32):
I think consumers have been paying higher prices for many
years and there's a breaking point for a lot of
these consumers.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Boyd did he hit the nail on the head when
he said we've been seeing it go on for many years.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
He called it price fatigue.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Economists have another term for it, and it has everything
to do with how our brains process it. You'll find
out what that is and why these price changes are
about way more than just tariffs. Tariffs are a big one,
way more than just teriffs. That is next.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I'm Chris MERYLD.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
After marks eight thirty news. We got foreclosure fever happening
all over southern California. It is such a great time
to go broke. It is not number of restaurants are struggling.
They're on the struggle bus, and for good reason. Inflation
is hitting them. Tariffs have hit them, whether it's imported
(09:27):
foods or that is, the materials that they need in
order to function. Things are getting more and more expensive.
Few big reasons. CBS News did a report on just
this very thing.
Speaker 9 (09:41):
It's no secret that your trip to the supermarket is
costing more compared to last year. Overall grocery prices have
risen nearly three percent. Food prices went up by half
a percent from July to August. That's the fastest monthly
increase since fall of twenty twenty two. It was driven,
in part I commonly imported groceries.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
What you mean, imports are dropp Wait a minute, we're
seeing grocery prices increase as quickly as they were since
the middle of the Biden administration.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
What could possibly be causing this? It's weird.
Speaker 10 (10:16):
Tariffs have a huge impact on grocery prices.
Speaker 9 (10:19):
Food industry analyst Phil Lumpert is known as the supermarket Guru.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Why are we seeing these increases?
Speaker 10 (10:25):
Number one is climate change? We can't grow our food
where we used to grow it. Now it's had to
move to Central and Latin America.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Okay, well, that's woke answer number one.
Speaker 10 (10:36):
Number two is a labor shortage, and then third is.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
What's causing the labor shortage when it comes to fresh vegetables.
All right, it's me completely unexplainable. They're tariffs, tariffs, more
woke nonsense.
Speaker 9 (10:50):
Among the biggest price jumps, coffee prices have shot up
more than twenty percent compared to a year ago.
Speaker 10 (10:56):
We got fifty percent tariffs on coffee from Brazil, and
we import about thirty five percent of our coffee beans
unroasted from Brazil.
Speaker 8 (11:05):
Coffee is gonna get more expensive?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Okay, No, that's just.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
No, no, no, don't make coffee more expensive because I'm
not gonna stop drinking it.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
But I'm gonna have to give something else up, like
a child.
Speaker 9 (11:25):
Unfert also says brace for something called a shrink free s.
Speaker 10 (11:28):
What they're doing is they're trying to put less in
the package, hoping that you and I are not gonna
observe that and keep that price either stable.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Or just slightly increased.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, and that's gonna start happening at the restaurants too.
The restaurants are gonna start shrink flating things because they've
got increased prices for beef and poultry and dairy and
produce and all of these other things. And as a
result of that, eggs are going up. I mean, eggs
are still high. We have the bird flu outbreaks and
had that spike things that wasn't tariff related.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
But you're still expensive.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So what ends up happening is they go, we got
to either raise our menu prices or our three egg
ama just became three small eggs.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
No longer are we selling a quarter pounder, Now we're
selling a standard burger. That's how it's going to start
shaking out. This is going to be shrink flation.
Speaker 9 (12:23):
Higher prices are changing consumer behavior too. More shoppers are
choosing less expensive store brands, going to multiple stores and
buying in bulk.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Now what happens when we've already done that. So I'm
a big fan of the store brands. I don't buy
the brand name stuff very often. And there's some coffee
creamers you know that's name brand because honestly, the store
brand is not any cheaper. But for the most part,
(12:53):
stuff I get is off brand, and I do buy
in bulk when I can. So if prices are still
going up and I'm still filling, squeeze, what's next?
Speaker 9 (13:07):
What's your advice on how to save?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Number one?
Speaker 10 (13:10):
Always have a shopping list, don't waste food, take doggy
bags from restaurants, use leftovers.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
God, I wish I could teach my kids this stuff.
Wait to took my mother in law out for her birthday.
She wanted to go someplace fancy Texas Roadhouse, so we
went and had steak there and she she then gets
the whatever the Texas Roadhouse equivalent is of the bloomin
onion that they have it out back, but she picks
the onions out, so she just eats the.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Mother in law special.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So she she pulls the onions out of the deep
fried onion and just eats the deep fried, crispy part whatever,
and then she orders, of course I'm buying, so she
orders what, you know, more than she needs?
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Took you to the cleaners?
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Did she?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
She always does? But you know it's my wife's mother.
What am I gonna do? Tell her that she can't
have it? You know, so I'll take the onion away
from her at the very least. That's obscene, isn't that crazy?
She just throws onion on her plate, and you're like,
what are you doing with what are you doing? We
can't have that, thank you. You and I are on
the same page on this one for once. But then
(14:18):
then she's got steak leftover, and she goes, you won't
take this home? And I said, no, it's your stea.
Why don't you take it home? She I don't eat leftovers.
What do you mean you don't eat leftover? She I
don't eat leftovers? Out like them. By the way, it's
a running gag in my house that my mother in
law is always out like that, out like that, out
(14:39):
like that. She's the pickiest eater you will ever out
like that, out like I ain't eating that, I ain't
eating it. So anyway, when we go out to eat.
We figure, okay, she can order whatever she wants and
she's gonna want it. And then she orders.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
It, she doesn't like it, put salt on her salad.
It's goofiest person.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
But then she's got leftover steak and she wants to
throw it away. I ain't eating that, you can just
throw it away, And I'm thinking, I just paid for
your stake. Prices are up, and you're gonna throw it away.
And I said, why, I've never been rich enough to
not eat leftovers out like that. So what happens when
(15:16):
I'm eating my leftovers. I'm buying in bulk. I'm buying
the store brands, part of, part of And we heard
this in the last segment of the restaurant Owner that
said people are getting sticker shock when they come in
and they see the menus because their the minds are
affixed to a price from before. Experts call that price anchoring.
So we and you'll hear this. Maybe you've done it.
(15:38):
Older people do it, of course all the time. They
go I remember when it used to be, I remember
when a gallon of gas was only sixty four cents,
you know whatever. So that's called price anchoring. And our
perceived value seems to freeze at a certain point in time,
and so no longer do we say, well, I suppose
(15:59):
of you ad just fornation over the course of the
last five years, when we've seen some high inflation numbers,
that is in line with what the price would have
been back in twenty nineteen. But we don't think that way.
We think, I remember when, and I do the same
thing when it comes to buying a house. So I
look at houses in the area and I go, wow,
Orange County median home values a million dollars, and I
(16:20):
think it should be closer to like five point fifty,
because when I moved to California thirteen years ago, it
was we were we were coming off of a little
mini recession in twenty eleven, and the four bedroom house
still blew my mind. That was five hundred and fifty
thousand or six hundred thousand dollars. Okay, right, sounds cheap
(16:41):
all of a sudden, doesn't it. But I was coming
from the Midwest, where I sold my house for two
eighty five, right, So all of a sudden, I'm seeing
a house that was smaller than what I just sold.
It's more than double the price. But now median value
is over a million dollars. But my mind is anchored.
Thirteen years ago at five fifty or six, says price anchoring.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
I didn't know there was a term for that. So
all those times when my grandparents were telling me, you know,
we used to be able to buy a whole side
of beef for two bits, and I was like, they
don't measure money in bits anymore, Grandpa, price anchoring is
what that was called?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Price anchoring, Okay, although if they're using bits, it was
probably price anchoring. Roy.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
No, they weren't cockney. I did not have cocky grandparents.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Two bits, two bits and sa.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
I hate to break this to you, but I am
not all over twist. That's not my childhood. But thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
In this life, one thing counts in the bank, large amounts. Yeah,
I'm afraid these don't grow on trees.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
You've got to pick a.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Pocket, talk Tony, hit the prey for God's sake, not
to pick a pocket. Talto boys, You've got to pick
a pocket.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Talt, my god, what have I started? Your mortgage is
actually eating you alive.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Experts are saying, though, don't pandic, which is exactly what
they say, right before you should pay. You're gonna find
out why you got to keep the panic button at
least close. Next Chris Merrill, I am six forty Live
Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app More don't nobody asks for more.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
You're listening to KFI AM sixty on demand.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Richie's producing today, and he and I are just talking
during the break, and he's laughing about my mother in law.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Out like that, out like that.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Oh, my mother in law is amazing in small doses.
I really I got lucky with my mother in law.
She's great, but she is nuts. And so we're just
sharing some stories about her. So my mother in law
wants accidentally trafficked people, she wants accidentally robbed the bank,
(18:46):
she wants accidentally drowned someone.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
She wants let me think.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Oh, she doesn't like pain medication because she's convinced she's
gonna be addicted. She's never she's never had any reason
to think that. But she won't even take tailand all.
So she sits in a dark.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Room and she has a headache. You might be in
the house. You know, she lives with my sister in law.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
So we'll visit my sister in law, Hey, where's uh,
where's Verna? And they go, oh, she's not feeling well,
she's in the other room. Then you just hear h.
Speaker 8 (19:22):
O o.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Verna. Okay, yeah, I'm fine.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Is that what she sounds like? Out like that?
Speaker 4 (19:38):
You kind of sound like a Southern version of mister Hanky,
the Christmas poof from Sunday.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Well, she's from Uh, she's from a very small town.
She grew up in one of those like one room houses,
you know, in uh, in the forties, in very rural
southern Illinois.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
So she got basically Kentucky. So she's got I don't
like that.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Oh oh, she broke her leg one time she was
at she was at some like a touristy type train
thing right where they like take you around a little park.
And so she's there with one of her friends, and
all of her friends that I have all these different medical maladies,
and our friend was having trouble getting on her off
(20:21):
the train. So my mother in law was helping this friend,
and she stepped backward and stepped between the train and
the platform, which is it's got a big yellow stripe
on it, right, Yeah, not recommended, No, So she stepped
back and she she broke her leg really.
Speaker 10 (20:38):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
It was a bad break, you know, bone sticking out
of that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
So oh, you know, and we're oh my gosh, you okay,
so you know, we all rush and we're out.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Visiting her at my sister in laws. Are you okay?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
She's sitting there with her leg up, and she's got
one of those giant contraptions with the pins sticking out,
you know, so her legs stays straight.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Oh yeah, yeah, those are festive.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Yeah. So she's lying there on the couch, verna, what
do you do it hurts? Well?
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Here, take something the doctor gave you. I ain't taking that, why,
I don't want to get addicted. Okay, yeah, but she's
the one suffering.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
What am I gonna do? Make her do it? But
then we all suffer too, oh all night long? You know.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
The more you do that, the more I think that
make a killer ring tone. I kind of want that now.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Very good, very good. She's uh. I have so many
stories about her.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
She's fantastic, she's she's just a nut.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
At some point, I'll tell you about how she accidentally
became a human trafficker, or accidentally robbed a bank and
didn't know she was a bank robber until she saw
on the news that her husband was wanted in the
bank robbery.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Well, don't be a tease, okay. So she's at home
with her friends and she's very, very social. She's always
had friends, and so she's at home with her friends
and she doesn't know where her husband is.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
He hasn't come come back.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
This is before she met my my wife's father, So
she doesn't know where the husband is.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
And her friend's there and they got the TV on.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
One thing about my mother in law, she's always got
the TV on, always always.
Speaker 11 (22:27):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
So she's got the TV on and they're talking about
authorities are looking for this. You know, a bank was
robbed in whatever this city was. Authorities are looking for suspects.
They say fled in a maroon station wagon. This was
in the seventies, and they said the police had like
a sketch or something.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And her friend goes, Verda, that's your husband. She goes,
know it, I ain't And she says, yeah it is.
You don't know where he is.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
She goes, well, I don't know what. He wanted me
to take him to the bank. So I took him
to the bank. He told me to wait in the
car and he'd be right out. So him and his
buddy go in there, and then they come out and
they said, well, get us out of here. So I
drove him off and dropped him off at his buddy's house.
You realize you drove the getaway car, right.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Yeah, When they tell you to keep the engine running,
that's a warning, little red flag.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
She's like, no, I didn't, and so we give her,
We give a grieful with that like a verna.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Remember when he robbed a bank. No I didn't.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
No, I didn't rob no bank. I didn't do that.
My husband did. He got caught for it and he
went to prison for it. She divorced him. She drove
the getaway car, still says, no I didn't. He just
told me to turn it around and be ready for
him when he come out.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
He was an hurry. Took him over to his friend's house.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
You drove the getaway car and the bank robbery, it
was just a withdrawal.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, Now she's nuts. She is nuts.
I got the so many of these stories too.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I need to start writting them down because there's there's
there's those few that I just mentioned that that are
always at the top of my mind. But every time
I'm around there's another one. There's always it's just wild,
just wild, just terrified of water. So when she saw
body floating in the water, she was like, I ain't
getting it.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Between that and kyl and all she found a body
of the water. It was like, did you.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Check to see if they had a pulse? She goes, No,
I ain't getting in there. I'm fred water.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
They may have you may have been able to save
somebody from drowning. She goes, I don't. I ain't going
in there.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
You know, weigh that against getting your hair wet. If
that was it, the math.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Is in there. I don't like that water. I ain't
going in Okay, nuts, nuts, all right, I t s.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I told you I would tell you about a great
time to be foreclosed on. Indeed it is. I don't
like being foreclosed down. But there may be a place
that you don't have to get foreclosed on. You can
just buy up all the foreclosures.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
You could be You.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Could be a slumlord in no time. I'll tell you
where next time, Chris.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Merril, you're listening to KFI AM six on demand.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Poor Richie is being regaled with more Verda stories. She's nuts.
My mother in law is absolutely not. She is a riot.
But yeah, you just I can't look.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I can do.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I can do a week's worth of shows just on
stories of my mother in law. But let me just
trickle them in there, Okay, I'll just periodically drop you
stories about crazy Verta who almost pooped in my car.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
She's crazy. She just nuts.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I did tell you that, I tell you about foreclosures
are on the way up. Oh, that's not a great sign.
Foreclosers are upskis and what does that mean? It means
that the economy is starting to show some signs. However,
experts are not exactly freaking out right now. If I
told you that foreclosures nation wide we're up nearly twenty percent,
(26:01):
you'd go, uh, oh, that's not good, except that everything
is relative. What do they say, liars figure and figures line.
So the figures are factual. It's just that you have
to have context. Foreclosures were weighed down, and so the
fact that they're up twenty percent still means that nationally,
(26:21):
foreclosures are below where they were pre pandemic. It's not
actually a terrible situation. Still, they are coming up.
Speaker 12 (26:29):
As more homeowners in the US struggled to keep up
with mortgage payments and maintenance costs. New data shows the
number of property foreclosures is steadily rising. According to property
data from I Think I just said that from ADAM,
foreclosure filings rose for six months straight year over year,
and as of August the number of foreclosures that was
(26:49):
up eighteen percent from the same time last year. Those
numbers put the US on track to surpass the roughly
three hundred and twenty two thousand total properties that went
into foreclosure last year.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Right, but that's down.
Speaker 12 (27:04):
CBS News contributor hovey ard V joined the Stories. Is
also a business editor.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
For Skip, aad to where Hobvier starts talking about things.
Speaker 11 (27:10):
Honestly, it's not just one thing or the other, but
one big reason inflation. It's a stealth tax on everything
and when prices rise, and it evitably triggers a bunch
of series of trade offs, especially for the working in
middle class. And because housing is more than just one
monthly payment, there's all sorts of costs associated with home ownership.
The things you can't control, plumbing, maintenance, storm damage.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Great points all of those things. Everything has gone up.
Speaker 8 (27:35):
Insurance. That's a really big.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Cost, especially here. Oh did you see I think I
got the story.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
They just basically said that they're going to raise insurance
rates for everybody to pay for the wildfires. So if
you weren't a fact, it doesn't matter. Everybody's going to
get host I had the story somewhere here. Yeah, I
lost it. Anyway, everybody, everybody's gonna get screwed by the
by the wildfires and any other natural disaster. We're all
(28:03):
just gonna get hosed. All of that redistribution of pain.
Speaker 11 (28:07):
It costs money in an aero of high inflation. It
just costs more than it used to. So for example,
there's a stat of statistic that single family homeowners with
a mortgage today pay.
Speaker 8 (28:17):
On average nearly twenty four hundred.
Speaker 11 (28:19):
Dollars more a year for property coverage, nearly seventy percent
from five years ago.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, and even higher here.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
And if you're in if you're in one of the
canyons or one of the high risk areas, if you.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Can even get it. I mean, I've talked to.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
People that think our our insurance quotes are ten thousand
dollars a year.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I mean, who could do that.
Speaker 12 (28:40):
That's a huge difference for people's budgets.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
What, thank you, captain obvious.
Speaker 12 (28:44):
What are the options that people have if they're struggling
to keep up with these payments?
Speaker 3 (28:48):
You could start selling sperm?
Speaker 11 (28:52):
Yeah, they're a slew of you know, I'm believing or not.
The government, which of course is now shut down, as
a number of foreclosure assistance programs to help.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
But again, as you pointed out, it's shut down, so
good luck getting that application in.
Speaker 11 (29:05):
HUT and FHA have loss mitigation programs. It's designed to
ease financial hardships shut down. Cities and states also have
their own sort of programs.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
California We're Broke.
Speaker 11 (29:16):
Nonprofit counseling that will help cast strap borrows. And a
lot of people sort of tend to go into hiding
whenever they owe money, and that's not a good idea
because when you're behind, you can contact your bank or
your mortgage issued directly because they have their own sort
of forgiveness and grace programs to address some of these
hardship cases.
Speaker 8 (29:33):
And even if it's just temporary.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
All right, so that but if you are not facing
the hardship, might be a good time to buy, Well,
not a great time, but it's getting up to be
a better time. I see that in Orange County, forty
two percent of home prices that were for sale in
Orange County they came down. Home price is falling forty
(29:57):
two percent of OC in August. This is from John
and Landsner from the OC Register. So sales were up
in thirty eight zip codes, sales were down forty four
zip codes flat and four, and home prices coming down
in nearly half of the Orange County place, which means
if you extrapolate that out, we're probably gonna start seeing
some home prices that are at least leveling off shortly,
(30:21):
hopefully for those of us that don't own right now,
I'm just kind of hoping that the bottom falls out.
I mean, perfect situation for me would be if I
had a job and then the bottom fell out of
the market and then everything went back to being what
it was fifteen years ago. Unfortunately, I don't think I
get all three of those things without at least everyone
(30:42):
around me having incredible pain. And I don't want you
to have to suffer just because I want to buy
a house. But I mean, if you know, if it happens.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
What am I going to do? Sit it out? Mortgage
rates are down.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Thirty or mortgage rate is at the six point two
seven percent last I saw it. I know they fluctuate
a little bit day by day, but I was seeing,
you know, around sixty three, and you would think that
with the mortgage rates coming down, that that would spur
people to start buying more.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
But they're not.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
They're still not. The housing market is. We're kind of
sitting back and we're waiting. We're waiting for them to
come back and and hit a lower rate because of
that term that we talked about earlier, this hour price anchoring.
So I want to see the mortgage rates come back
down below five because they were there for so long.
(31:34):
In my mind, that's where they should be, and anything
over that means I'm overpaying.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
For my mortgage. So I'm sitting on the sidelines. And
I know a lot of people say, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
If you see the house you want, you want to
get that house in the location because that's not going
to change and you can always refinance later. That's what
a number of advisors say, and that makes perfect sense
to me, But psychologically, I'm still anchored at that four
and a half percon four and a half percent something
under five, and I don't want to feel like I'm overpaying.
(32:05):
And I had a buddy said, well, why don't you
buy down points? And I said, well, that's a great idea.
I could buy down points and that pays off after
so many years. Say I get a mortgage at at
six three, and I go, I want to buy some
points down so that my my mortgage rate is down
there closer to where I want it at that at
that five range, and maybe I put some more money
up front. So the problem is, in my mind, what
(32:25):
happens if the mortgage rate does come back down. Now
I'm just paid to buy down the mortgage rate. It
naturally came down on its own, and then I feel
like I wasted my money. Right, So, people like me,
you're just sitting on the sidelines waiting for things to
come down even further. And I don't know when that happens,
especially if we end up in a stagflation situation. I
(32:47):
just don't know how. I don't know where that balance
is out. I don't have any idea.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Right, Uh, mark right up your alley here.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I want you to crack out some of your two
B expertise, because it might be the only thing you're
going to be able to watch from now on.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Uh oh you. The FCC is floating the nuclear option.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
They want to pull broadcast licenses over differences of opinion,
which means you're about to find out why KFI could
be in the crosshairs. That's next. I'm Chris Merril I
AM six forty. We're live everywhere in the iHeartRadio
Speaker 1 (33:17):
App, KFI AM six forty on demand
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
So have you gone out to eat lately? Could be
the last time? Could be the last time. Restaurant owners
across the country bracing for the brutal reality that inflation
is squeezing them, and not in a fun way.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Customers pushing back.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Food costs are soaring, eateries are considering menu price hikes
as much as thirty one percent just to stay afloat.
So remember when you were complaining about inflation in like
twenty two and twenty three and you went, wow, I
can't believe that a big mac meal is now up
to eighteen dollars or whatever thet complaint was at the time,
And then you were like, well, this is because of wages.
(00:43):
Wages are a component of it. Wages are component, very
small component, but they are a component of it absolutely.
But come to find out, it has everything else to
do with otherwise inflation. Operators of restaurants say that inflation
is the biggest issue.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Marketing costs have gone up. Mark, that's uh.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
They're complaining because you got a raise, Remember that big
raise you got. Remember you're gonna have to refresh me
on that because well, marketing because they you know, it
costs more to market, which which must mean that we're
charging way more. And if we're charging way more, it
must be in order to pay these exorbitant costs.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I'm looking forward to this raise.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I think I was doing math on this because somebody said, uh,
you know, I was telling him I was doing the
show again tonight, and they said, you make a lot
of money doing that, and I go, no, like, what
are you doing. I mean, I get to I get
to be on KFI. It's great, and uh, and I
realized I'm making the same amount now I was, I
think in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
For every show I.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Do, when people ask me that, I just give the
same answer Johnny Carson used to give, which was I
have no other skills.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Oh my gosh did he say that? Yes, because I
get people are like, oh, why do you do? And
I have no other employable job skills? I have none,
you're channeling Johnny none.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
It's true though. My father is the worst at this.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
My father goes because I was, you know, I was
on the beach for a while, and uh, my father's like, you.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Need to go a job, and I go, I'm doing
some fill in work. You know.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Here, I was doing some stuff in San Francisco. I
did some stuff in Dallas, and so I was doing
filling work.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And it was I mean it was.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
It wasn't steady, but it was often enough that I
was it was contributing to the household income.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
But my father, you need to do something. I think
you could be a great product demonstrator.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You could travel around to all the shows telling people
about the great products.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Oh, I'd like to see you hanging out free samples
at Costco. You'd be great at that, exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, And I got you know how much I would
just start yelling at people.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
I go move it, Ethel. They kind of already do
that at closing time. Oh how many sausages.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Are you gonna eat? Walter? Get moving, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
So, No, I'd be terrible at it. I think I
could do product demonstration. That's great, but it doesn't pay anything.
My father seems to think that the peopeople who are
standing there next to you know, new Ford trucks are
making a killing because they know the stats and they
can answer questions. No, they're not.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
They're not making a killing.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Not they're sleeping in Two people in a crappy hotel
room every night is what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And then the other operatory hiring is another big issue
that they've got. So what's happening is a number of
restaurants have to hike things up. Some are blaming the
president's tariff strategy. Price hikes tied to President Trump's tariff
aggressive tariff strategy. And while tariffs can be enacted with
(03:38):
a penstroke, it takes years to rewhite to rewrite excuse me,
global supply chains. This according to a supply chain expert.
They say, so go ahead and savor that fourteen dollars burger.
It might be the cheapest one that you're going to
see for a while. But this is a restaurant owner
who's trying to figure out how he's going to survive.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
I think hot Pasta is a family affair for Sunday
Gravy in Inglewood, California. Owner Soul Basherian's family has operated
an Italian restaurant in the same spot for decades.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
My dad put an offer together and grabbed all his
savings and bought this place, and here we are now,
like what almost fifty years later.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
But the legacy could go stale Vasherian says he is
spending thousands more a month on imported ingredients.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Well Sunday Gravy.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
Has seen a thirty percent bump in sales since last year.
Tariffs and inflation are eating into his profit.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Oh how dare you? You can't say that. It sounds
like you're trying to blame the president for his economic strategies,
which has generated a tremendous amount of new tax dollars.
Those tax dollars are simply coming from oh, tariffs.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, that's oh, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
So you're barely breaking even.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Yeah, we're definitely barely breaking even. It's just the reality
of where the food industry is at.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
R Ja Hannevey with placer Ai advises restaurants across the country.
He says, the eatery hear.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
That mark, that's an AI guy, that's restaurants. How could
you go wrong? I know that makes you happy always.
They're infallible, So you have to listen, yay, I told me.
And how could it go wrong?
Speaker 5 (05:12):
Is that catered to lower and middle income consumers are
hurting financially, and so are their customers.
Speaker 7 (05:19):
That group is facing cost pressures on a number of fronts,
not just food, but are the things like rent and inflation.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, Now keep this in mind, it's not just when
he talks about inflation. So you've got Yeah, your rent
is going up. The inflation also hits not just the foods.
And we do have a beef shortage. But good news.
We sent forty billion dollars to Argentina to get more
beef from them. So make Argentina great again. Argentina first,
(05:45):
good agenda. So now you have food costs are up.
Egg prices are still high. They've come down from their peak,
but they're still high. You have a number of restaurants
that are going okay, buying the food is high. What
happens when that refrigerator breaks. Happens when the deep prior
is no longer operable. Your steam jackets aren't working, Your
(06:06):
convection evens are toast.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Even if you have to have it, you're got to
pay to have it fixed.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
The repair costs have gone up because parts have got
more more expensive because the parts are manufactured elsewhere, and
if you have to replace the item in general, even
if it's manufacturing in the United States. The metals that
are being used, the aluminums, the steels, those are going
up in costs because we've added tariffs. Everything is going up,
and it takes a while for the tariffs to trickle
(06:35):
into the economy, and it takes a while for it
to trickle down to to those of us who are
paying for it.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
But it's happening, and so what do we do.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
A new report out by cloud based management company Toast
shows that nearly half of the restaurants surveyed planned to
raise menu prices if costs continue to rise.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Be honest, do you think costs are not going to
continue to rise?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I have no faith in that.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I don't see inflation plateauing. It has been steadily climbing
over the last six months, ever since we put the terrace.
It's slowly, slowly climbing. Now we didn't have some sort
of a terrible fall off of a cliff. Some economists
we're talking about how this would push us into an
instant recession that would be tough to dig out of.
(07:25):
It could be worse than that. It could be a long,
slow stagflation where you've got high unemployment and high inflation,
and then the FED is basically paralyzed.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
The National Restaurant Association says menu prices would need to
increase by more than thirty percent just to maintain a
thin profit margin.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
It sounds easy, but there's such a process behind it.
It's reprinting a menu and the printing costs associated with that.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Do you think that sticker shock would drive away people
from even walking into the door.
Speaker 6 (08:00):
Absolutely, it's pasta, and pasta is not supposed to be
crazy expensive, right.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
The atmosphere, of course, is expensive.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Never could figure out how Olive Garden got away with
charging their prices, but they do for now.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Senney Gravy is adding a five percent surcharge on the
bill to offset tariffs. Restaurant owners in California are allowed
to add an extra fee if it's clearly and conspicuously
displayed on menus. Hottavey says that charge could turn away customers.
Speaker 8 (08:30):
Yeah, is price fatigue.
Speaker 7 (08:32):
I think consumers have been paying higher prices for many
years and there's a breaking point for a lot of
these consumers.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Boyd did he hit the nail on the head when
he said we've been seeing it go on for many years.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
He called it price fatigue.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Economists have another term for it, and it has everything
to do with how our brains process it. You'll find
out what that is and why these price changes are
about way more than just tariffs. Tariffs are a big one,
way more than just teriffs. That is next.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I'm Chris MERYLD.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
After marks eight thirty news. We got foreclosure fever happening
all over southern California. It is such a great time
to go broke. It is not number of restaurants are struggling.
They're on the struggle bus, and for good reason. Inflation
is hitting them. Tariffs have hit them, whether it's imported
(09:27):
foods or that is, the materials that they need in
order to function. Things are getting more and more expensive.
Few big reasons. CBS News did a report on just
this very thing.
Speaker 9 (09:41):
It's no secret that your trip to the supermarket is
costing more compared to last year. Overall grocery prices have
risen nearly three percent. Food prices went up by half
a percent from July to August. That's the fastest monthly
increase since fall of twenty twenty two. It was driven,
in part I commonly imported groceries.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
What you mean, imports are dropp Wait a minute, we're
seeing grocery prices increase as quickly as they were since
the middle of the Biden administration.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
What could possibly be causing this? It's weird.
Speaker 10 (10:16):
Tariffs have a huge impact on grocery prices.
Speaker 9 (10:19):
Food industry analyst Phil Lumpert is known as the supermarket Guru.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Why are we seeing these increases?
Speaker 10 (10:25):
Number one is climate change? We can't grow our food
where we used to grow it. Now it's had to
move to Central and Latin America.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Okay, well, that's woke answer number one.
Speaker 10 (10:36):
Number two is a labor shortage, and then third is.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
What's causing the labor shortage when it comes to fresh vegetables.
All right, it's me completely unexplainable. They're tariffs, tariffs, more
woke nonsense.
Speaker 9 (10:50):
Among the biggest price jumps, coffee prices have shot up
more than twenty percent compared to a year ago.
Speaker 10 (10:56):
We got fifty percent tariffs on coffee from Brazil, and
we import about thirty five percent of our coffee beans
unroasted from Brazil.
Speaker 8 (11:05):
Coffee is gonna get more expensive?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Okay, No, that's just.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
No, no, no, don't make coffee more expensive because I'm
not gonna stop drinking it.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
But I'm gonna have to give something else up, like
a child.
Speaker 9 (11:25):
Unfert also says brace for something called a shrink free s.
Speaker 10 (11:28):
What they're doing is they're trying to put less in
the package, hoping that you and I are not gonna
observe that and keep that price either stable.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Or just slightly increased.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, and that's gonna start happening at the restaurants too.
The restaurants are gonna start shrink flating things because they've
got increased prices for beef and poultry and dairy and
produce and all of these other things. And as a
result of that, eggs are going up. I mean, eggs
are still high. We have the bird flu outbreaks and
had that spike things that wasn't tariff related.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
But you're still expensive.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So what ends up happening is they go, we got
to either raise our menu prices or our three egg
ama just became three small eggs.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
No longer are we selling a quarter pounder, Now we're
selling a standard burger. That's how it's going to start
shaking out. This is going to be shrink flation.
Speaker 9 (12:23):
Higher prices are changing consumer behavior too. More shoppers are
choosing less expensive store brands, going to multiple stores and
buying in bulk.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Now what happens when we've already done that. So I'm
a big fan of the store brands. I don't buy
the brand name stuff very often. And there's some coffee
creamers you know that's name brand because honestly, the store
brand is not any cheaper. But for the most part,
(12:53):
stuff I get is off brand, and I do buy
in bulk when I can. So if prices are still
going up and I'm still filling, squeeze, what's next?
Speaker 9 (13:07):
What's your advice on how to save?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Number one?
Speaker 10 (13:10):
Always have a shopping list, don't waste food, take doggy
bags from restaurants, use leftovers.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
God, I wish I could teach my kids this stuff.
Wait to took my mother in law out for her birthday.
She wanted to go someplace fancy Texas Roadhouse, so we
went and had steak there and she she then gets
the whatever the Texas Roadhouse equivalent is of the bloomin
onion that they have it out back, but she picks
the onions out, so she just eats the.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Mother in law special.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So she she pulls the onions out of the deep
fried onion and just eats the deep fried, crispy part whatever,
and then she orders, of course I'm buying, so she
orders what, you know, more than she needs?
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Took you to the cleaners?
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Did she?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
She always does? But you know it's my wife's mother.
What am I gonna do? Tell her that she can't
have it? You know, so I'll take the onion away
from her at the very least. That's obscene, isn't that crazy?
She just throws onion on her plate, and you're like,
what are you doing with what are you doing? We
can't have that, thank you. You and I are on
the same page on this one for once. But then
(14:18):
then she's got steak leftover, and she goes, you won't
take this home? And I said, no, it's your stea.
Why don't you take it home? She I don't eat leftovers.
What do you mean you don't eat leftover? She I
don't eat leftovers? Out like them. By the way, it's
a running gag in my house that my mother in
law is always out like that, out like that, out
(14:39):
like that. She's the pickiest eater you will ever out
like that, out like I ain't eating that, I ain't
eating it. So anyway, when we go out to eat.
We figure, okay, she can order whatever she wants and
she's gonna want it. And then she orders.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
It, she doesn't like it, put salt on her salad.
It's goofiest person.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
But then she's got leftover steak and she wants to
throw it away. I ain't eating that, you can just
throw it away, And I'm thinking, I just paid for
your stake. Prices are up, and you're gonna throw it away.
And I said, why, I've never been rich enough to
not eat leftovers out like that. So what happens when
(15:16):
I'm eating my leftovers. I'm buying in bulk. I'm buying
the store brands, part of, part of And we heard
this in the last segment of the restaurant Owner that
said people are getting sticker shock when they come in
and they see the menus because their the minds are
affixed to a price from before. Experts call that price anchoring.
So we and you'll hear this. Maybe you've done it.
(15:38):
Older people do it, of course all the time. They
go I remember when it used to be, I remember
when a gallon of gas was only sixty four cents,
you know whatever. So that's called price anchoring. And our
perceived value seems to freeze at a certain point in time,
and so no longer do we say, well, I suppose
(15:59):
of you ad just fornation over the course of the
last five years, when we've seen some high inflation numbers,
that is in line with what the price would have
been back in twenty nineteen. But we don't think that way.
We think, I remember when, and I do the same
thing when it comes to buying a house. So I
look at houses in the area and I go, wow,
Orange County median home values a million dollars, and I
(16:20):
think it should be closer to like five point fifty,
because when I moved to California thirteen years ago, it
was we were we were coming off of a little
mini recession in twenty eleven, and the four bedroom house
still blew my mind. That was five hundred and fifty
thousand or six hundred thousand dollars. Okay, right, sounds cheap
(16:41):
all of a sudden, doesn't it. But I was coming
from the Midwest, where I sold my house for two
eighty five, right, So all of a sudden, I'm seeing
a house that was smaller than what I just sold.
It's more than double the price. But now median value
is over a million dollars. But my mind is anchored.
Thirteen years ago at five fifty or six, says price anchoring.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
I didn't know there was a term for that. So
all those times when my grandparents were telling me, you know,
we used to be able to buy a whole side
of beef for two bits, and I was like, they
don't measure money in bits anymore, Grandpa, price anchoring is
what that was called?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Price anchoring, Okay, although if they're using bits, it was
probably price anchoring. Roy.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
No, they weren't cockney. I did not have cocky grandparents.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Two bits, two bits and sa.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
I hate to break this to you, but I am
not all over twist. That's not my childhood. But thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
In this life, one thing counts in the bank, large amounts. Yeah,
I'm afraid these don't grow on trees.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
You've got to pick a.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Pocket, talk Tony, hit the prey for God's sake, not
to pick a pocket. Talto boys, You've got to pick
a pocket.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Talt, my god, what have I started? Your mortgage is
actually eating you alive.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Experts are saying, though, don't pandic, which is exactly what
they say, right before you should pay. You're gonna find
out why you got to keep the panic button at
least close. Next Chris Merrill, I am six forty Live
Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app More don't nobody asks for more.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
You're listening to KFI AM sixty on demand.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Richie's producing today, and he and I are just talking
during the break, and he's laughing about my mother in law.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Out like that, out like that.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Oh, my mother in law is amazing in small doses.
I really I got lucky with my mother in law.
She's great, but she is nuts. And so we're just
sharing some stories about her. So my mother in law
wants accidentally trafficked people, she wants accidentally robbed the bank,
(18:46):
she wants accidentally drowned someone.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
She wants let me think.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Oh, she doesn't like pain medication because she's convinced she's
gonna be addicted. She's never she's never had any reason
to think that. But she won't even take tailand all.
So she sits in a dark.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Room and she has a headache. You might be in
the house. You know, she lives with my sister in law.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
So we'll visit my sister in law, Hey, where's uh,
where's Verna? And they go, oh, she's not feeling well,
she's in the other room. Then you just hear h.
Speaker 8 (19:22):
O o.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Verna. Okay, yeah, I'm fine.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Is that what she sounds like? Out like that?
Speaker 4 (19:38):
You kind of sound like a Southern version of mister Hanky,
the Christmas poof from Sunday.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Well, she's from Uh, she's from a very small town.
She grew up in one of those like one room houses,
you know, in uh, in the forties, in very rural
southern Illinois.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
So she got basically Kentucky. So she's got I don't
like that.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Oh oh, she broke her leg one time she was
at she was at some like a touristy type train
thing right where they like take you around a little park.
And so she's there with one of her friends, and
all of her friends that I have all these different medical maladies,
and our friend was having trouble getting on her off
(20:21):
the train. So my mother in law was helping this friend,
and she stepped backward and stepped between the train and
the platform, which is it's got a big yellow stripe
on it, right, Yeah, not recommended, No, So she stepped
back and she she broke her leg really.
Speaker 10 (20:38):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
It was a bad break, you know, bone sticking out
of that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
So oh, you know, and we're oh my gosh, you okay,
so you know, we all rush and we're out.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Visiting her at my sister in laws. Are you okay?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
She's sitting there with her leg up, and she's got
one of those giant contraptions with the pins sticking out,
you know, so her legs stays straight.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Oh yeah, yeah, those are festive.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Yeah. So she's lying there on the couch, verna, what
do you do it hurts? Well?
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Here, take something the doctor gave you. I ain't taking that, why,
I don't want to get addicted. Okay, yeah, but she's
the one suffering.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
What am I gonna do? Make her do it? But
then we all suffer too, oh all night long? You know.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
The more you do that, the more I think that
make a killer ring tone. I kind of want that now.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Very good, very good. She's uh. I have so many
stories about her.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
She's fantastic, she's she's just a nut.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
At some point, I'll tell you about how she accidentally
became a human trafficker, or accidentally robbed a bank and
didn't know she was a bank robber until she saw
on the news that her husband was wanted in the
bank robbery.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Well, don't be a tease, okay. So she's at home
with her friends and she's very, very social. She's always
had friends, and so she's at home with her friends
and she doesn't know where her husband is.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
He hasn't come come back.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
This is before she met my my wife's father, So
she doesn't know where the husband is.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
And her friend's there and they got the TV on.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
One thing about my mother in law, she's always got
the TV on, always always.
Speaker 11 (22:27):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
So she's got the TV on and they're talking about
authorities are looking for this. You know, a bank was
robbed in whatever this city was. Authorities are looking for suspects.
They say fled in a maroon station wagon. This was
in the seventies, and they said the police had like
a sketch or something.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And her friend goes, Verda, that's your husband. She goes,
know it, I ain't And she says, yeah it is.
You don't know where he is.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
She goes, well, I don't know what. He wanted me
to take him to the bank. So I took him
to the bank. He told me to wait in the
car and he'd be right out. So him and his
buddy go in there, and then they come out and
they said, well, get us out of here. So I
drove him off and dropped him off at his buddy's house.
You realize you drove the getaway car, right.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Yeah, When they tell you to keep the engine running,
that's a warning, little red flag.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
She's like, no, I didn't, and so we give her,
We give a grieful with that like a verna.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Remember when he robbed a bank. No I didn't.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
No, I didn't rob no bank. I didn't do that.
My husband did. He got caught for it and he
went to prison for it. She divorced him. She drove
the getaway car, still says, no I didn't. He just
told me to turn it around and be ready for
him when he come out.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
He was an hurry. Took him over to his friend's house.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
You drove the getaway car and the bank robbery, it
was just a withdrawal.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, Now she's nuts. She is nuts.
I got the so many of these stories too.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I need to start writting them down because there's there's
there's those few that I just mentioned that that are
always at the top of my mind. But every time
I'm around there's another one. There's always it's just wild,
just wild, just terrified of water. So when she saw
body floating in the water, she was like, I ain't
getting it.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Between that and kyl and all she found a body
of the water. It was like, did you.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Check to see if they had a pulse? She goes, No,
I ain't getting in there. I'm fred water.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
They may have you may have been able to save
somebody from drowning. She goes, I don't. I ain't going
in there.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
You know, weigh that against getting your hair wet. If
that was it, the math.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Is in there. I don't like that water. I ain't
going in Okay, nuts, nuts, all right, I t s.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I told you I would tell you about a great
time to be foreclosed on. Indeed it is. I don't
like being foreclosed down. But there may be a place
that you don't have to get foreclosed on. You can
just buy up all the foreclosures.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
You could be You.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Could be a slumlord in no time. I'll tell you
where next time, Chris.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Merril, you're listening to KFI AM six on demand.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Poor Richie is being regaled with more Verda stories. She's nuts.
My mother in law is absolutely not. She is a riot.
But yeah, you just I can't look.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I can do.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I can do a week's worth of shows just on
stories of my mother in law. But let me just
trickle them in there, Okay, I'll just periodically drop you
stories about crazy Verta who almost pooped in my car.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
She's crazy. She just nuts.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I did tell you that, I tell you about foreclosures
are on the way up. Oh, that's not a great sign.
Foreclosers are upskis and what does that mean? It means
that the economy is starting to show some signs. However,
experts are not exactly freaking out right now. If I
told you that foreclosures nation wide we're up nearly twenty percent,
(26:01):
you'd go, uh, oh, that's not good, except that everything
is relative. What do they say, liars figure and figures line.
So the figures are factual. It's just that you have
to have context. Foreclosures were weighed down, and so the
fact that they're up twenty percent still means that nationally,
(26:21):
foreclosures are below where they were pre pandemic. It's not
actually a terrible situation. Still, they are coming up.
Speaker 12 (26:29):
As more homeowners in the US struggled to keep up
with mortgage payments and maintenance costs. New data shows the
number of property foreclosures is steadily rising. According to property
data from I Think I just said that from ADAM,
foreclosure filings rose for six months straight year over year,
and as of August the number of foreclosures that was
(26:49):
up eighteen percent from the same time last year. Those
numbers put the US on track to surpass the roughly
three hundred and twenty two thousand total properties that went
into foreclosure last year.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Right, but that's down.
Speaker 12 (27:04):
CBS News contributor hovey ard V joined the Stories. Is
also a business editor.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
For Skip, aad to where Hobvier starts talking about things.
Speaker 11 (27:10):
Honestly, it's not just one thing or the other, but
one big reason inflation. It's a stealth tax on everything
and when prices rise, and it evitably triggers a bunch
of series of trade offs, especially for the working in
middle class. And because housing is more than just one
monthly payment, there's all sorts of costs associated with home ownership.
The things you can't control, plumbing, maintenance, storm damage.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Great points all of those things. Everything has gone up.
Speaker 8 (27:35):
Insurance. That's a really big.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Cost, especially here. Oh did you see I think I
got the story.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
They just basically said that they're going to raise insurance
rates for everybody to pay for the wildfires. So if
you weren't a fact, it doesn't matter. Everybody's going to
get host I had the story somewhere here. Yeah, I
lost it. Anyway, everybody, everybody's gonna get screwed by the
by the wildfires and any other natural disaster. We're all
(28:03):
just gonna get hosed. All of that redistribution of pain.
Speaker 11 (28:07):
It costs money in an aero of high inflation. It
just costs more than it used to. So for example,
there's a stat of statistic that single family homeowners with
a mortgage today pay.
Speaker 8 (28:17):
On average nearly twenty four hundred.
Speaker 11 (28:19):
Dollars more a year for property coverage, nearly seventy percent
from five years ago.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, and even higher here.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
And if you're in if you're in one of the
canyons or one of the high risk areas, if you.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Can even get it. I mean, I've talked to.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
People that think our our insurance quotes are ten thousand
dollars a year.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I mean, who could do that.
Speaker 12 (28:40):
That's a huge difference for people's budgets.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
What, thank you, captain obvious.
Speaker 12 (28:44):
What are the options that people have if they're struggling
to keep up with these payments?
Speaker 3 (28:48):
You could start selling sperm?
Speaker 11 (28:52):
Yeah, they're a slew of you know, I'm believing or not.
The government, which of course is now shut down, as
a number of foreclosure assistance programs to help.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
But again, as you pointed out, it's shut down, so
good luck getting that application in.
Speaker 11 (29:05):
HUT and FHA have loss mitigation programs. It's designed to
ease financial hardships shut down. Cities and states also have
their own sort of programs.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
California We're Broke.
Speaker 11 (29:16):
Nonprofit counseling that will help cast strap borrows. And a
lot of people sort of tend to go into hiding
whenever they owe money, and that's not a good idea
because when you're behind, you can contact your bank or
your mortgage issued directly because they have their own sort
of forgiveness and grace programs to address some of these
hardship cases.
Speaker 8 (29:33):
And even if it's just temporary.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
All right, so that but if you are not facing
the hardship, might be a good time to buy, Well,
not a great time, but it's getting up to be
a better time. I see that in Orange County, forty
two percent of home prices that were for sale in
Orange County they came down. Home price is falling forty
(29:57):
two percent of OC in August. This is from John
and Landsner from the OC Register. So sales were up
in thirty eight zip codes, sales were down forty four
zip codes flat and four, and home prices coming down
in nearly half of the Orange County place, which means
if you extrapolate that out, we're probably gonna start seeing
some home prices that are at least leveling off shortly,
(30:21):
hopefully for those of us that don't own right now,
I'm just kind of hoping that the bottom falls out.
I mean, perfect situation for me would be if I
had a job and then the bottom fell out of
the market and then everything went back to being what
it was fifteen years ago. Unfortunately, I don't think I
get all three of those things without at least everyone
(30:42):
around me having incredible pain. And I don't want you
to have to suffer just because I want to buy
a house. But I mean, if you know, if it happens.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
What am I going to do? Sit it out? Mortgage
rates are down.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Thirty or mortgage rate is at the six point two
seven percent last I saw it. I know they fluctuate
a little bit day by day, but I was seeing,
you know, around sixty three, and you would think that
with the mortgage rates coming down, that that would spur
people to start buying more.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
But they're not.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
They're still not. The housing market is. We're kind of
sitting back and we're waiting. We're waiting for them to
come back and and hit a lower rate because of
that term that we talked about earlier, this hour price anchoring.
So I want to see the mortgage rates come back
down below five because they were there for so long.
(31:34):
In my mind, that's where they should be, and anything
over that means I'm overpaying.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
For my mortgage. So I'm sitting on the sidelines. And
I know a lot of people say, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
If you see the house you want, you want to
get that house in the location because that's not going
to change and you can always refinance later. That's what
a number of advisors say, and that makes perfect sense
to me, But psychologically, I'm still anchored at that four
and a half percon four and a half percent something
under five, and I don't want to feel like I'm overpaying.
(32:05):
And I had a buddy said, well, why don't you
buy down points? And I said, well, that's a great idea.
I could buy down points and that pays off after
so many years. Say I get a mortgage at at
six three, and I go, I want to buy some
points down so that my my mortgage rate is down
there closer to where I want it at that at
that five range, and maybe I put some more money
up front. So the problem is, in my mind, what
(32:25):
happens if the mortgage rate does come back down. Now
I'm just paid to buy down the mortgage rate. It
naturally came down on its own, and then I feel
like I wasted my money. Right, So, people like me,
you're just sitting on the sidelines waiting for things to
come down even further. And I don't know when that happens,
especially if we end up in a stagflation situation. I
(32:47):
just don't know how. I don't know where that balance
is out. I don't have any idea.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Right, Uh, mark right up your alley here.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I want you to crack out some of your two
B expertise, because it might be the only thing you're
going to be able to watch from now on.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Uh oh you. The FCC is floating the nuclear option.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
They want to pull broadcast licenses over differences of opinion,
which means you're about to find out why KFI could
be in the crosshairs. That's next. I'm Chris Merril I
AM six forty. We're live everywhere in the iHeartRadio
Speaker 1 (33:17):
App, KFI AM six forty on demand
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