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Tag Archives: unfinished
In China, home buyers occupy their ‘rotting’, unfinished properties
By Eduardo Baptista and Xiaoyu Yin
GUILIN, China (Reuters) – For six months, home for Ms. Xu has been a room in a high-rise apartment in the southern Chinese city of Guilin that she bought three years ago, attracted by brochures touting its riverfront views and the city’s clean air.
Her living conditions, however, are far from those promised: unpainted walls, holes where electric sockets should be and no gas or running water. Every day she climbs up and down several flights of stairs carrying heavy water bottles filled with a hose outside.
“All the family’s savings were invested in this house,” Xu, 55, told Reuters from the Xiulan County Mansion complex, her room bare except for a mosquito net-covered bed, a few necessities and empty bottles on the floor. She declined to give her full name, citing the sensitivity of the matter.
Xu and about 20 other buyers living in Xiulan County Mansion share a makeshift outdoor toilet and gather during the day at a table and benches in the central courtyard area.
They are part of a movement of home buyers around China who have moved into what they call “rotting” apartments, either to pressure developers and authorities to complete them or out of financial necessity, as numerous cash-strapped builders halt construction amid the country’s deep real estate slump.
Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute estimated in July that stalled projects accounted for 3.85% of China’s housing market in the first half of 2022, equivalent to an area of 231 million square metres.
While some local governments have taken steps to prop up the property market by setting up bailout funds, buyers like Xu, who paid deposits in advance and are on the hook for mortgages, remain in limbo.
MORTGAGE STRIKES
The proliferation of unfinished apartments has sparked unprecedented collective disobedience, fuelled by social media: in late June, thousands of home buyers in at least 100 cities threatened to halt mortgage payments to protest stalled construction.
The overall property market is highly sensitive to cases of unfinished apartments because 90% of new houses bought in China are purchased “off plans” while still under construction, said Yan Yuejin, research director at Shanghai E-House.
“If this issue is not resolved, it will affect property transactions, the government’s credibility, and it could exacerbate the developers’ debt problems,” he said.
China’s deep property slump, along with disruptions caused by strict anti-COVID measures, are dragging on the world’s second largest economy just as the ruling Communist Party gears up for its once-in-five-years Congress next month.
‘CRASHING FROM PARADISE’
Xu bought her two-bedroom, 70 square metre flat in early 2019, about a year after its developer, Jiadengbao Real Estate, started construction and began marketing apartments for around 6,000 yuan ($851) per square metre, which they said would come with facilities such as floor heating and a shared swimming pool.
Work progressed quickly at first, with blocks in the planned 34 tower complex going up one after another.
But in June 2020, Jiadengbao Real Estate hit the headlines after a court accused its parent company of illegal fund-raising and seized 340 million yuan worth of its properties, including a number of flats in Xiulan County Mansion.
Construction stopped in mid-2020, which Xu found out months later, describing her feelings at the time as “crashing from paradise”.
Jiadengbao Real Estate did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Since the debt crisis erupted in 2021, thousands more home buyers have been caught in similar predicaments as cash-strapped developers went into bankruptcy or abandoned struggling projects.
FENCING AND UNDERGROWTH
On a recent day, the main block of buildings at Xiulan County Mansion was surrounded by a tall blue fence while the clubhouse, touted in promotional materials, was covered in a dense undergrowth. Cement mixers, iron poles, and piles of debris lay strewn around.
Xu, who is unemployed, said she bought the apartment for her only son, with the hope that he would be able to raise a family there. She said her son and her husband, who live far away in the northern province of Hebei, blame her for their financial predicament, and no longer speak to her.
“We don’t know how long we will have to live here because the government has not said anything officially,” she said.
She hopes the Guilin government will step in to help.
The city government did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Housing authorities in Baoding, the northern city where Xu is from and where Jiadengbao Real Estate’s parent company is registered, said last November the city government and Communist Party committee had set up a group to resolve the issue.
“If the government really wants to protect people’s livelihoods, and resume construction, we will go back home,” Xu said.
($1 = 7.0508 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(This story corrects name of expert in paragraph 9 to Yuejin)
(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista and Xiaoyu Yin; Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom and Xihao Jiang; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
Ford stock drops more than 4% as supply costs to jump by $1 billion, parts shortages to leave more cars unfinished
Ford Motor Co. shares dropped more than 4% in the extended session Monday after the company said inflation and parts shortages will leave it with more unfinished vehicles than it had expected, reminding Wall Street supply-chain snags are far from over for auto makers.
Ford
F,
+1.43%
said it expects to have between 40,000 and 45,000 vehicles in inventory at the end of the third quarter “lacking certain parts presently in short supply.”
The auto maker also said that based on its recent negotiations, payments to suppliers will run about $1 billion higher than expected for the quarter, thanks to inflation. The company reaffirmed its outlook for the year, however.
Ford’s warning “is evidence that auto parts shortages and supply-chain issues are still ongoing,” CFRA analyst Garrett Nelson told MarketWatch.
Many investors had started to believe “these problems were in the rearview mirror with inventories starting to recover from the record lows of the last year or so,” Nelson said.
The unfinished vehicles include high-demand, high-margin models of popular trucks and SUVs, Ford said. That will cause some shipments and revenue to shift to the fourth quarter.
“Ironically, Ford may have become a victim of its own success in that its recent U.S. sales growth has outperformed peers by a wide margin,” Nelson said. Its third-quarter production “apparently wasn’t able to keep pace with demand.”
Ford reiterated expectations of full-year 2022 adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of between $11.5 billion and $12.5 billion, despite the shortages and the higher payments to suppliers, it said.
Ford called for third-quarter adjusted EBIT of between $1.4 billion and $1.7 billion.
Shares of Ford ended the regular trading day up 1.4%. The company has embarked on a reorganization to pivot to electric vehicles, and last month confirmed layoffs in connection with its new structure.
Ford is slated to report third-quarter financial results on Oct. 26, when it said it expects to “provide more dimension about expectations for full-year performance.”
Analysts polled by FactSet expect the auto maker to report adjusted earnings of 51 cents a share, which would match the third-quarter 2021 adjusted EPS, on revenue of $38.8 billion.
The quarterly sales would compare with $35.7 billion in revenue in the year-ago period.
Shares of Ford slid 4.4% after hours, and have lost 28% so far this year, compared with losses of 18% for the S&P 500 index
SPX,
+0.69%.
The news comes a week after FedEx Corp.
FDX,
+1.17%
roiled markets and raised fears of an economic slowdown by withdrawing its outlook for the year and warning that the year was likely to become worse for the business.
Scrubbed Artemis 1 Launch Prompts Concerns About Unfinished Rehearsals
On Monday, NASA failed in its first attempt to launch the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, with engineers struggling to resolve an engine cooling issue. It’s a wholly unsurprising result, given that NASA was unable to complete a single wet dress rehearsal, of which four were attempted earlier in the year. The space agency appears to be winging it, with the botched launch attempt effectively serving as the fifth wet dress rehearsal, in what is a troubling sign.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) was supposed to take flight on Monday morning, but instead we’re left wondering about the state of the program as a whole. NASA will provide more updates about the rocket later this evening, including whether a launch on Friday or Monday might be possible, or whether the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket will have to make its now-familiar 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) trek back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs.
The unflown SLS megarocket is critical to NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks a permanent and sustainable return to the Moon. For the Artemis 1 mission, an uncrewed Orion rocket will be sent on a multi-week mission to the Moon and back. A successful integrated test of SLS and Orion would set the stage for a crewed Artemis 2 mission in roughly two years, and a crewed mission to land on the lunar surface later this decade.
A launch on Friday seems unlikely, and not just because of the grim weather forecast. NASA’s launch attempt on Monday came nowhere near to succeeding, with the countdown clock proceeding no further than T-40 minutes. An “engine bleed” issue prevented one of the rocket’s four RS-25 engines from reaching the required ultra-cold temperature for liftoff, resulting in the scrub.
Thousands of spectators had gathered near the launch site, as did hundreds of reporters. Vice President Kamala Harris was also in attendance at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Everyone left disappointed, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to admit that a launch on Monday was always going to be unlikely. With ground teams failing to complete a single full-fledged wet dress rehearsal, it seemed a stretch to believe that NASA would somehow get everything right during the first attempt at launching the Artemis 1 mission.
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Indeed, the problems started almost immediately on early Monday morning, with the threat of lightning delaying tanking operations by nearly an hour. Working under an accelerated timeline, ground teams proceeded with the six-hour fueling process. A problem emerged when the team transitioned from slow to fast tanking, with a leaky 8-inch inlet valve causing elevated hydrogen readings. The leak was resolved by reverting back to slow fill and going through the process again, allowing the core stage hydrogen tank to be fully topped off.
When using the propellant to chill the four RS-25 engines, however, the team found that one of the engines—engine number three—refused to cool down to the ultra-low temperatures required. Engineers worked their way through previously established troubleshooting guidelines in an attempt to coax more liquid hydrogen into the engine. They tried to increase the pressure in the tank, but this led to the detection of another problem: an apparently leaky vent valve positioned between the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager at NASA, said engineers “wanted to increase the pressure in the tank in order to establish the hydrogen bleed,” but the “vent valve wasn’t cooperating.” That was the final straw, and the team “decided that it was appropriate to declare the scrub because we just weren’t going to make the two-hour window,” Sarafin said, adding that it was “one of those situations where we just knew we needed more time.” He insisted that the problem is not with the engine itself, but rather the “bleed system that thermally conditions the engine.”
The engine bleed issue is one of an unknown number of items that were not tested during the wet dress rehearsals. Upon the conclusion of the final wet dress held in June, NASA officials said 90% of all test objectives were met, while not disclosing any details about the remaining 10%. The final wet dress was not completed due to an unresolved hydrogen leak linked to a faulty quick-connect fitting. For that rehearsal, NASA officials had hoped to run the countdown clock to T-10 seconds, but it never got past T-29 seconds, leaving much about the final launch stage in doubt.
Upon the partial completion of the third wet dress in April, SLS was sent back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs, returning to Launch Pad 39B in early June. Across the four rehearsals, engineers recorded a slew of apparently minor issues, a list that includes faulty ventilation fans on the mobile launcher, a misconfigured manual vent valve, overly cold temperatures and frost during propellant loading, a small hydrogen leak on the tail service mast umbilical, issues with the supplier of gaseous nitrogen, and a faulty helium check valve that needed to be replaced.
That said, it was during the fourth wet dress that SLS was finally loaded fully with propellants, with upwards of 755,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen added to the rocket’s two stages. Despite not achieving 10% of test objectives, Tom Whitmeyer, NASA’s exploration systems manager, said “we think that we had a really successful rehearsal,” and that there were risks to running a fifth trial run.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Jim Free, NASA associate administrator for exploration systems development, echoed this earlier sentiment, saying another wet dress rehearsal wasn’t necessary. “We would have taken another cycle of rolling out and back,” he said, and that would’ve introduced further risks, including wear-and-tear. “We won’t know until we know, but we also won’t know until we try,” Free added. “We felt like we were in the best position to try.”
Keith Cowing, editor of NASAWatch.com and a former rocket scientist at NASA, said the space agency treated the first Artemis 1 launch attempt as essentially the fifth wet dress rehearsal. Cowing, who spoke to me by phone, said NASA should’ve done all the required testing up front to avoid these new problems.
“These things happen,” Cowing said. “But this is heritage hardware, with different pieces of rockets that have flown before.” By heritage hardware, Cowing is referring to the fact that the current SLS configuration “utilizes existing hardware from the Space Shuttle inventory, as much as possible, to save cost and expedite the schedule,” according to NASA. These elements include the core stage boosters and engines, along with the Integrated Spacecraft and Payload Element. “NASA shouldn’t expect that it’s all going to work as expected, as there’s going to be problems with the integration,” Cowing told me. To which he added: “Testing is good, and it needs to be done methodically, so when you finally attempt to launch you know what you’ve tested out—instead of using launch attempts as de facto wet dresses.”
Cowing is worried about the state of the program and the already-archaic nature of SLS. Unlike SpaceX rockets, which can be tweaked and repaired on the launch pad, SLS must return to the Vehicle Assembly Building for hardware adjustments (this might be the case with the aforementioned leaky vent valve, but we’ll have to wait for the official word from NASA). And at an estimated cost of $4.1 billion per launch, Cowing predicts that SLS launches will be rare events, citing NASA’s inspector general Paul Martin, who earlier this year described the price tag as “unsustainable.”
NASA officials are likely feeling the pressure, hence the desire to finally get SLS off the ground. It’s making for some awkward theater, however, with Monday’s scrub being a good example. The odds of a launch were exceptionally low (at least that’s how I assessed it), yet NASA had no qualms about publicizing the event and inviting a host of dignitaries and celebrity guests.
The megarocket doesn’t seem ready for launch, yet NASA is doing its best to convince us that it is. Sadly, the “pretend” launch attempt from earlier this week likely won’t be the last.
Our $3M dream home is unfinished thanks to COVID price surge
What does it really cost to build a dream home? These days, it’s a lot of time, major headaches and many dollars above the initial budget — all thanks to forces out of the homeowners’ control.
In 2018, couple Carrie and Nate LaChance — the former of whom is an Instagram model with 1.1 million followers — moved to the Dallas area from Orlando and purchased a lakefront lot of land for $260,000. Their goal: to build a $3 million “Castle” home whose construction began in 2020, and whose process Carrie documented on Instagram — such as its groundbreaking and the selection of a dazzling 24-karat gold sink. They even hoped to fit a gym and a movie theater inside.
The Washington Post reports that four years since its inception, the couple’s home still isn’t finished. Thanks to a bevy of challenges, including pandemic-era labor shortages and supply-chain snafus — and not to mention Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — the home neither has its sheath of “Silver Mist” blue sandstone nor its windows, and the costs have swelled by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wood and nails, for instance, cost more than anyone had anticipated. What’s more, they took out an extra $100,000 last fall for unexpected costs; by the end of the year, those funds ran dry.
“It was like a chain reaction,” Joshua Correa, the LaChances’ builder and owner of Divino Homes, told the outlet. “Everybody started charging more — for everything.”
Correa added that building a basic home used to take five months — now it’s at least double that — and he needs to book workers weeks ahead, among other reasons, to pour concrete. Another nuisance: he told the Washington Post that the couple’s lumber planks needed for the Castle’s wooden framing required the wood to be ordered three months in advance.
The paper notes that lumber in particular has faced awful supply-chain issues during the bulk of COVID, with Correa saying prices for lumber have nearly doubled since 2020. Adding insult to injury, higher gas prices, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Garret Cockrell, whose Big D Lumber supplied the couple’s wood, told the outlet that during COVID he got 100 calls each day from contractors trying to get a hold of wood products. He was forced to turn new clients away — and his costs have doubled, especially with regard to fuel costs.
The prices have trickled down to the LaChances. Their initial budget for lumber was $105,000; as of June 2022, that sum has soared to $177,000.
Meanwhile, the cost of the Silver Mist stone was originally projected at $27,500 — in June, the cost grew to $39,000. But with delays, the stone, which was sourced from a quarry in Oklahoma that’s struggled with labor shortages itself, still hasn’t been installed along the outside of the structure.
Appliances have added an extra dose of bother, due in part to vendors dealing with chip shortages making household staples more difficult to get. For instance, the couple ordered their refrigerator in September 2021 — and it won’t reach them until March 2023. They had a total initial budget of $65,000 for their needed appliances, whose sum reached $78,000 two months ago.
There’s no word on when construction will wrap on the home, whose structure is marked by several turrets, but the couple stays hopeful — and the construction remains ongoing. Carrie herself noted that, after so much time in construction, design plans have changed. That includes going to a gold color scheme from a white one.
“The longer you think of stuff you think, ‘maybe I want this inside,’” she told the paper.
Still, the couple told the paper they already know what they’ll do their first night there: a “Game of Thrones” marathon in their home theater.
Agent’s Take: Deshaun Watson’s suspension decision headlines unfinished business ahead of NFL training camps
The NFL typically goes on hiatus when mandatory minicamps end in the middle of June. Things don’t start picking back up until the week following the fourth of July. There isn’t much NFL business conducted during the lull.
Here’s a look at some key outstanding offseason business matters, some of which should be completed prior to training camps opening later this month.
A three-day disciplinary hearing to determine whether Watson violated the NFL’s Personal Conduct Policy because of alleged inappropriate sexual conduct during numerous massage sessions was held in late June. Post-hearing briefs were due July 12. A ruling from disciplinary officer Sue L. Robinson, a retired U.S. District Court judge, could come at any time but is expected before the Browns open training camp on July 27.
Conventional wisdom suggests the Browns quarterback will be suspended for as much as one year. As long as Robinson finds a policy violation, both sides have three business days to file an appeal because of the discipline imposed. Commissioner Roger Goodell or someone he appoints as his designee would preside over the appeal, with the latitude to increase, decrease or affirm Robinson’s punishment.
The fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract Watson signed as a part of his March trade from the Texans will toll with a suspension that causes him to miss the 2022 regular season or is longer. Essentially, Watson’s contract would be frozen and resume in 2023 with tolling. This means his 2022 contract year would become his 2023 contract year and additional years in the contract would also get pushed back one year. Instead of Watson’s contract expiring after the 2026 season, it would end after the 2027 season.
There wouldn’t be tolling with a shorter suspension. Since Watson’s 2022 base salary is $1.035 million, he will lose $57,500 (or one-eighteenth of the $1.035 million) for each week he is suspended. Suspensions are without pay, but that pertains to base salary.
In either scenario, the $44.965 million signing bonus Watson got in the deal won’t be in jeopardy because of the way the contract is structured. Watson’s salary guarantees won’t void in either case as well.
Jackson has played his cards close to vest publicly when it comes to a new contract. He is scheduled to play the 2022 season under a $23.016 million fifth year option. Jackson was a little more forthcoming at his annual Funday with LJ event in South Florida over the weekend. He told USA Today’s Safid Deen he was hopeful for a new deal before training camp and that a holdout wasn’t on his mind.
Jackson, who represents himself, raised eyebrows by adding an image to his social media accounts with the words “I need $.” He denied it was a message to the Ravens about his contract. Instead, he indicated it was from the movie “How High,” which he likes, and thought the picture was funny.
Regardless, Jackson would be justified in insisting on a fully guaranteed contract comparable to Watson’s. Jackson is more accomplished than Watson. He established a new single-season quarterback rushing record with 1,206 yards on the ground and led the NFL with 36 touchdown passes in 2019 when he was league MVP. Watson has never been a first-team All-Pro, let alone NFL MVP. There also aren’t any concerns about Jackson’s behavior off-the-field.
Jackson is the greatest dual-threat quarterback in NFL history. He was the first player to have at least 3,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in the same season when he won MVP.
A franchise tag in 2023 is a certainty if Jackson plays this season on his fifth-year option. The exclusive franchise designation is most likely because Jackson would be prohibited from soliciting an offer sheet from other teams. It currently projects to $45.648 million. This number is subject to change depending on new quarterback deals, contract restructures, pay cuts and/or releases between now and then.
A second franchise tag in 2024 at a NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement mandated 20% increase over Jackson’s projected 2023 exclusive number would be just over $54.775 million. Baltimore designating Jackson as a franchise player in 2025 for a third consecutive year would be cost prohibitive. A third and final franchise tag with a 44% increase over the 2024 figure would be just under $79 million.
Jackson would be positioned to test the open market in 2025 after making a little more than $100 million on two franchise tags. If things get to this point, Jackson’s expectation that he’ll play his entire career in Baltimore could go out the window.
Franchise Player Negotiating Deadline
Eight players were designated as franchise players this year. Four of the eight have already signed long-term deals (wide receiver Davante Adams, wide receiver Chris Godwin, tight end David Njoku and offensive tackle Cam Robinson).
Bengals safety Jessie Bates III, Chiefs offensive tackle Orlando Brown, Jr., Dolphins tight end Mike Gesicki and Cowboys tight end Dalton Schultz have until 4 pm eastern time on Friday, July 15 to sign multi-year contracts. After the deadline passes, these players are prohibited from signing long-term deals until the end of the regular season on Jan. 8, 2022.
A long-term deal with Bates, who hasn’t signed his $12.911 million franchise tender, is extremely unlikely. Bates reportedly has no intention of playing under his franchise tag. It’s probably just an idle threat. Franchise players rarely sit out a season. The last time it happened before Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell in 2018 was with Chiefs defensive lineman Dan Williams in 1998.
The tight ends quickly signed their respective $10.931 million tenders in March after being made franchise players. The Dolphins and Gesicki reportedly haven’t really engaged in contract talks. Negotiations between Schultz and the Cowboys haven’t been fruitful. The two sides reportedly aren’t close to reaching a deal. Any deal for the tight ends would undoubtedly top the four-year deal averaging $13,687,650 per year the Browns gave Njoku in June. Both players have easily outperformed Njoku over the last couple of seasons.
Brown had expressed optimism about his signing, but the sides are reportedly nowhere close on a long-term deal. That’s probably because Brown is looking for a top-of-the-market deal. Trent Williams, David Bakhtiari and Laremy Tunsil are the NFL’s three highest-paid offensive tackles on deals averaging $23.01 million, $23 million and $22 million per year, respectively, with the 49ers, Packers and Texans.
Garoppolo’s days in San Francisco have seemed numbered ever since the 49ers moved up to the third-overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft to select quarterback Trey Lance. San Francisco’s plan to trade Garoppolo this offseason was thrown for a loop because an injury to his throwing shoulder during the NFC Championship required surgery in March.
No team was going to trade for Garoppolo while he was rehabbing his right shoulder. Garoppolo started throwing a football within the last couple of the weeks. The problem is the team with the most obvious need for a starting quarterback after the Browns dealt Baker Mayfield to the Panthers is the Seahawks, who are also in the NFC West with the 49ers. Typically, teams don’t trade starting-caliber quarterbacks to division rivals. A lengthy suspension for Watson might spur some interest from the Browns.
Garoppolo is scheduled to make $25.6 million on a $26.95 million salary cap number this year. There won’t be any takers at this point without Garoppolo taking or pay cut and/or the 49ers absorbing some of his salary to help facilitate a trade. Some NFL team executives are anticipating that Garoppolo will eventually be released. The 49ers would pick up $25.55 million of cap space by cutting him.
There’s been some speculation that the 49ers could keep Garoppolo if a trade market doesn’t materialize. It’s hard to imagine Garoppolo remaining in San Francisco without accepting a pay cut. The 49ers would easily have the NFL’s most awkward quarterback scenario with Garoppolo, who has been San Francisco’s starting quarterback since acquiring him from the Patriots in a 2017 midseason trade, still around given the intention to play Lance.
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Other Veteran Contract Extensions
Every year, signings during the summer and leading up to the start of the regular season change the complexion of the following year’s free agency. There are other potential notable contract extensions besides Jackson’s.
First-round picks receiving new deals after three NFL seasons is a rarity. On average, three such players won’t play a fourth season under a rookie contract because of signing an extension. So far, none of the 2019 first-round picks have gotten new deals.
2019 first-overall pick Kyler Murray has been angling for a new deal practically ever since the Cardinals lost to the Rams in the wild card playoff round. A new contract for the two-time Pro Bowl quarterback is definitely on the Cardinals’ radar screen.
Murray should be the beneficiary of the Cardinals not operating on his timetable. There were only three quarterbacks (Josh Allen-Bills, Patrick Mahomes-Chiefs and Dak Prescott-Cowboys) making at least $40 million per year when the offseason began. The number has grown to seven after Derek Carr, Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford and Deshaun Watson’s respective deals with the Raiders, Packers, Rams and Browns. Nobody envisioned Watson getting a fully guaranteed five-year contract averaging $46 million per year.
A fully guaranteed contract could be problematic because of the NFL’s archaic funding rules, and the Cardinals aren’t considered a cash rich team. Teams are required to put into an escrow account the amount of any guarantees in a contract other than those just for injury, including ones in future contract years. The Cardinals didn’t pay Murray’s signing bonus in a lump like 2019 second-overall pick Nick Bosa got from the 49ers. Nonetheless, Murray should be the next member of the $40 million per year quarterback club.
The wide receiver market has exploded in a way that wasn’t anticipated. There were four $20 million per year wideouts (Keenan Allen, Amari Cooper, DeAndre Hopkins and Julio Jones) when the offseason began. Twelve wide receivers have hit the mark even with the Titans releasing Jones.
The number could continue to grow because 2019 second-round picks DK Metcalf (Seahawks) and Deebo Samuel (49ers) are in contract years. The most relevant data point in the marketplace probably is the four-year, $100 million extension containing $57,220,471 of guarantees the Eagles gave fellow 2019 second-round pick A.J. Brown in connection with his draft day trade from Titans. All three players are represented by Creative Artists Agency’s Tory Dandy.
Samuel’s situation is complicated by him asking for a trade in the weeks leading up to April’s draft. 49ers general manager John Lynch has been adamant that Samuel won’t be traded. Samuel attending San Francisco’s mandatory June minicamp has been construed as a softening of his stance.
Three positional markets (offensive guard, off-ball linebacker and safety) have the potential to be reset. It’s just a matter of time before the Colts make Quenton Nelson, 2018’s sixth-overall pick, the NFL’s highest paid offensive guard. Brandon Scherff leads the way with the three-year, $49.5 million deal averaging $16.5 million per year and worth as much as $52.5 million through incentives he received from the Jaguars in this year’s free agency.
Nelson probably has sights set a lot a higher than Scherff’s deal. The three-time first-team All-Pro is clearly Indianapolis’ best offensive lineman, if not the team’s best non-quarterback. In order to become the Colts’ highest paid non-quarterback, Nelson would have to sign a contract averaging more than the $19.7 million per year linebacker Darius Leonard, also a three-time first-team All-Pro, got last preseason. Leonard signed a five-year, $98.5 million extension with $52.5 million of guarantees where $33 million was fully guaranteed at signing.
The Leonard deal is probably the benchmark Bears linebacker Roquan Smith, 2018’s eight-overall pick, is looking to eclipse. New general manager Ryan Poles has publicly stated his intention to sign Smith to an extension.
The Chargers and Derwin James have reportedly started preliminary discussions about a long-term deal. 2018’s 17th-overall pick surely took notice of Minkah Fitzpatrick becoming the NFL’s highest-paid safety last month with a four-year extension from the Steelers averaging $18.247 million per year and containing $36 million fully guaranteed.
There are durability concerns with James, which don’t exist with Fitzpatrick. James didn’t miss a beat in 2021 after injuries limited him to five games over the previous two seasons. He regained the form that made him a Pro Bowler and first team All-Pro as a rookie. James is currently rehabbing from offseason left shoulder surgery but is expected to be ready for the start of training camp.
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J.D. McKissic flipped back to Washington Commanders for ‘unfinished business’
Washington Commanders running back J.D. McKissic said he changed his mind about signing with the Buffalo Bills because he had “unfinished business” with his former team.
McKissic had agreed to a two-year deal with the Bills during the preliminary negotiating period, only to pivot back to Washington when the team let him know it would match the offer. The Commanders had not made him an offer before this period.
There are conflicting reports about what transpired to persuade McKissic to return, and Bills general manager Brandon Beane voiced his frustration last week.
“Once you have an agreement, the agent’s supposed to say it’s over,” Beane said. “And this agent did that. And this agent told the other club it’s over. But the other club didn’t back off.”
Sources told ESPN that Washington was under the impression it would have the chance to match any offer to McKissic.
“So crazy, I don’t remember,” McKissic said of that period. “My agents called me to let me know what happened.
“You can’t ask for a better organization to be chosen by, but I had unfinished business in Washington. The way we left off, we felt we were inclining. … I had things I wanted to prove in Washington. I made my decision off where I wanted to be. Buffalo is a great organization, but I feel we can do great things here as well.”
The Commanders continue to make signings during the free-agent period, reaching a two-year, $8.2 million deal to bring back offensive tackle Cornelius Lucas, agent Dan Saffron told ESPN on Thursday.
Former special US envoy to Afghanistan sounds off on US’ ‘unfinished business’ in the country
Former special U.S. envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said the United States “still ha[s] unfinished business in Afghanistan” on “The Story with Martha MacCallum” Friday in light of the Taliban’s takeover of the country last August.
“The agreement that we made – which was condition-based under…[former President Donald] Trump[‘s] administration – some of those conditions have not materialized.,” the author of “The Envoy: From Kabul to the White House, My Journey Through a Turbulent World” said. “The Taliban have not implemented those. We want to hold the Taliban accountable for those agreements. …I advocated that rather than disengaging, we need to press the Taliban to negotiate and reach an agreement on the implementation of the remaining parts dealing with terrorism…[and] the establishment of a broad-based government.”
TALIBAN-BRED TERRORISM WILL SPREAD TO US, REP. MIKE WALTZ SAYS: ‘SHAMEFUL AND HUMILIATING’
Khalilzad said he worried that “we were turning our back and not doing what we needed to do to protect the American interests still in Afghanistan.”
He argued that although President Biden’s administration is “concerned” about combatting terrorism, it will fester in an ungoverned environment if Afghanistan falls apart under the Taliban. The Biden administration is not negotiating with the Taliban because of its perception as a terrorist group, he said.
The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said the Taliban “want[s] normalcy in relations” with the U.S. and “the funds of Afghanistan and the [U.S.] to be unfrozen.”
Khalilzad confirmed MacCallum’s report that the Taliban did, in fact, allow the U.S. to “secure … Kabul as part of the [U.S.’] exit agreement.” Khalilzad revealed that Gen. Frank McKenzie said in a Doha meeting that his “mandate” was not to secure Kabul but to evacuate the approximately 2,500 American troops remaining.
Biden chose a calendar-based withdrawal over Trump’s condition-based withdrawal, Khalilzad said. He quelled concerns that al Qaeda or ISIS could attack the U.S. in the near future, saying the Taliban has so far upheld its commitment “not to allow … plotting and planning by al Qaeda and other groups against the [U.S.].”
When asked about the ISIS attack that killed 13 American troops in Kabul and the Syria attack, Khalilzad said although terrorism “remains a problem,” the U.S. has “other big challenges, such as the rise of China.”
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“When we have the [terror] information and the targets, we should respond if the locals do not do the job,” he said.
Unfinished Houses for Sale Pile Up, Total Inventory Highest since 2008, amid Material Shortages & Worst Spike in Construction Costs since 1979
Sales of new single-family houses fall 24% from a year ago. The lower end has died.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Sales of new single-family houses in August were down by 24.3% from August last year, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 740,000 houses, according to the Census Bureau this morning.
Sales of single-family houses remain far below their peak during the years of 2002 through 2007, in part due to the large-scale construction boom since then in multi-family buildings, such as condo towers and apartment towers:
Ballooning inventories: A record 90.5% of the houses for sale are either not started or unfinished, as total inventory piles up. Homebuilders are complaining about material shortages and labor shortages and surging costs and all kinds of other issues that prevent them from starting construction or completing construction.
The number of:
- Not-started houses for sale jumped to 105,000 (up from 60,000 in August 2019);
- Under-construction houses for sale jumped to 237,000 (up from 185,000 in August 2019).
- Completed houses for sale, at 36,000, were far below August 2019 (81,000).
Total inventory for sale, from not-started to completed houses, rose to 378,000, the most since October 2008:
Supply of new houses has been above 6 months for the fourth month in a row, at the top end of the pre-pandemic range except for 2018, when surging mortgage rates triggered a slowdown in sales, and therefore an increase in months’ supply:
The median price, at $390,900, was unchanged from July and May and was up 20% from a year ago.
The median price is heavily skewed by the ongoing shift in mix to more expensive homes, with the low end dying out completely:
- Almost no homes with a price of under $200,000 were sold. This category has died.
- Under-$300,000 homes accounted for only 29% of total sales, down from 35% in August 2020 and down from 42% in August 2019.
- $300,000 to $400,000 homes accounted for 19% of total sales.
- Over-$400,000 homes accounted for 51% of sales, up from 31% in August 2020, with the over-$500,000 homes, which is where the money is, accounting for 31% of sales.
Construction costs spiked the most since 1979, amid all kinds of shortages and price spikes of materials. According to separate data by the Commerce Department, construction costs for single-family houses, excluding the cost of land and other non-construction costs, spiked by 12.8% in August compared to a year ago, the fastest year-over-year surge in construction costs since 1979:
Lumber has come off its ridiculous spike, but Chicago lumber futures, now rising again and at $650 per thousand board feet, are still 70% higher than they’d been in August 2019. Steel prices have continued to surge. Futures of Polyvinyl Chloride, the material for PVC pipes, have surged 65% year-over-year. Costs have surged across the board.
There are anecdotal reports coming out of the homebuilder industry of shortages of all kinds: Shortages of windows and doors – the glass shortage is apparently behind the WOLF STREET beer mug shortage – steel beams, insulation, appliances, roofing materials, copper wiring, fasteners, plumbing fixtures…. And prices of materials are responding in the most monstrously overstimulated economy ever, and these costs are getting passed on.
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The Windows 11 insider build is surprisingly unpolished and unfinished
Enlarge / Setting Windows 11 to one of its dark themes also darkens the background of the Settings app—but not the background of most traditional apps, like Resource Monitor.
Jim Salter
Microsoft made early Windows 11 builds available via its Windows Insider program the week after its first major announcement, and we’ve spent quite a few hours kicking the tires. When Windows 11 publicly releases, it’s likely to be a fine operating system—but right now, it’s an unpolished, unfinished mess.
Of course, this isn’t a surprise—Windows 11 is still only available in the Dev channel of the Insider program. The three Insider channels are Release Preview, Beta, and Dev; Dev roughly corresponds to a software alpha, and Microsoft itself describes it as “the newest code,” with “rough edges and some instability.”
Windows 11 is upgrade only (for now)
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You can’t perform a nice, clean Windows 11 installation yet, sadly—you’ll need to use Windows Update to mangle an existing Windows 10 installation instead.
Jim Salter -
There’s something grimly appropriate about your first look at Windows 11 being the “working on updates” screen.
Jim Salter -
We have lockscreen! A very macOS-esque lockscreen, between the desert wallpaper and the choice of extra-rounded sans serif font.
Jim Salter -
Most of Windows 11’s built-in themes and wallpaper are as attractive as you’d expect. We’re not sure what happened with this “Captured Motion” theme, though…
Jim Salter -
Jaggies? JAGGIES. No, this isn’t an artifact of a bad graphics driver or something—copying the actual file out of the Windows 11 VM and onto the host, then opening it in Shotwell looks no different.
Jim Salter
The first disappointment we encountered with Windows 11 is a puzzling one—it can’t (yet) be cleanly installed as a new operating system. To install Windows 11 Build 22000.51, you must begin with a fully patched and up-to-date Windows 10 installation, then flight it into the Dev channel, then upgrade it to Windows 11 via Windows Update. (If you’re not already on Windows 10 20H2 or newer, you’ll need to get through that upgrade first.)
We had no real problems updating either a well-used Windows 10 VM or a brand-new one—but we strongly advise against upgrading to Windows 11 on a machine or VM that matters to you, unless you have a guaranteed method of recovery you both trust and are prepared to use. Although one of our test VMs is a “daily driver” we rely on, it’s sitting on top of a ZFS dataset—and we took a manual snapshot prior to the upgrade, for easy rollback.
Ironically, the first look anyone gets at Windows 11 itself right now is the dreaded BSOU (Blue Screen Of Updates)—after flighting our Windows 10 VM into the Dev channel and one very quick download, it rebooted. During the reboot, we get the usual “don’t turn off your computer” message—but it’s in a new font and possibly on a slightly different shade of blue background.
Although the initial download in Windows Update is over rather quickly, the “working on updates” phase is not. This phase took about an hour on each of the Windows 10 VMs we upgraded—one reasonably well-used, and one brand new.
Alpha means alpha
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It didn’t take long to find our first Windows 11 bug—the DNS resolver stack was weirdly broken. Nslookup works, but ping doesn’t!
Jim Salter -
The second bug didn’t take much longer—we were unable to get the “IP Settings” dialog to accept valid configuration information.
Jim Salter -
With Settings broken, the next question was whether the Control Panel—theoretically deprecated years ago by Settings—is still available. Thankfully, it’s still there—and its adapter configuration dialog still works properly!
Jim Salter -
Although Control Panel worked, changing my IP configuration didn’t fix the DNS problem. Bizarrely, changing network “card”—from VirtIO to Intel e1000—did fix the problem.
Jim Salter -
In bizarro world, you can fix problems with DNS resolution by using a DNS resolver on the other side of a WireGuard tunnel. Fun!
Jim Salter
It took almost no time to find our first and second nasty Windows 11 bugs—the DNS resolver was strangely and inconsistently broken, and the network configuration dialog under Settings was broken as well.
You can see the DNS resolver issues in the first screenshot above. We can ping 8.8.8.8—Google’s anycast DNS provider—without issue, so we know that general connectivity is fine both inside the LAN and outside of it. But attempts to ping google.com fail! The confusion only gets worse when we use nslookup to query our DNS server directly—it answers our queries just fine. Nevertheless, attempting to ping the same hostname directly fails, as do most attempts to browse with Edge or Chrome.
The second bug came while trying to troubleshoot the first—attempting to set IP address configuration directly using Windows 11’s Settings dialog fails miserably, with a cryptic message to “check one or more settings and try again.” There’s nothing actually wrong with the settings—the dialog is just broken. Next question—is Control Panel still there?
Thankfully, Control Panel hasn’t yet been done away with in Windows 11, and its tried-and-true network adapter configuration dialog works just as expected. Unfortunately, that didn’t resolve the original DNS issue—which turns out to be some conflict between Windows 11 and the VirtIO network driver we’re using.
Changing the VM’s network adapter to emulated Intel e1000 resolved the DNS issue—as does, hilariously, leaving the NIC as VirtIO and just using a DNS server on the far side of a WireGuard tunnel. (WireGuard has its own virtual NIC, so we’re technically not using our “real” network card to access the DNS server on the far side of the tunnel.)
Over the week or so we’ve been playing with Windows 11, we’ve also had the entire VM lock up and require a hard reset several times. Did we mention that this is still alpha software, and nobody should be running anything they care about on it yet?