Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 88. Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:36 PM for 15h 14m 55s of daytime. The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Independence Holiday events continue today at the Cravath Lakefront with a carnival.
On this day in 1863, the third and final day of the Battle of Gettysburg ends in Union victory.
Joe Schulz reports Wisconsin home prices have more than doubled over the last decade
(‘UW Report: State went from second-lowest prices among neighbors to second-highest’):
The median home price in Wisconsin has more than doubled over the last decade, as supply has failed to keep up with demand after homebuilding slowed during the Great Recession.
That’s according to new data from the Wisconsin Realtors Association, or WRA, and a new report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
Median home prices in Wisconsin have risen from $144,000 in May 2013 to $294,000 in May 2023, according to realtors association data.
In fact, from February 2012 to the same month this year, Wisconsin went from having the second-lowest median home sale price among its neighbors — Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan and Iowa — to the second-highest, according to UW-Extension.
The Extension report says supply of new housing hasn’t kept up with demand, putting upward pressure on prices for both homeowners and renters.
Steven Deller, professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison, authored the report. He said many were hoping to see downward pressure on prices in response to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Deller said high mortgage rates have had a modest effect on demand for homes, but a greater influence on those who currently own a home to postpone older couples from downsizing or young families upsizing, keeping some homes off the market.
“The normal churn in the housing market, the new supply of housing or the increase of existing homes going on the market is actually dropping a little bit more than the decline in demand,” he said.
There are few communities where policymakers (public officials and private special interests) have understood less about the significance of the Great Recession (2007-2009) than Old Whitewater’s policymakers during that recession and throughout the Teens. In the decade after the Great Recession, among bankers, landlords, public relations men, and their local government dogsbodies in office there was below-average policy and above-average grandiosity.
Whitewater turns to these types yet again, or puts them back into appointed positions, only because this ilk has left the community in a condition others are discouraged to take on.
While this libertarian blogger understands the concerns of others, there is no reason to be discouraged. Now is the time to continue and intensify one’s efforts, picking a few particular topics from among a general list of concerns and solutions, and seeing a campaign through.
Whitewater is, after all, the work — and the adventure — of a lifetime.
Do octopuses dream? Brain recordings provide the first clues: