States set insurance rates.
Every state is raising the state cost on insurance for business owners, in particular small business owners who own commercial property. Throughout the US, rates are increasing by 50-100% by January 1st.
Insurance agents are on the phones daily with their clients telling them that their rates are going up to those amounts, which will bankrupt everyone from a hotel owner who owns the property that a Holiday Inn sits on, to a child daycare. ON the other end of the phone lines are business owners sobbing, knowing that their company is finished.
Friends of mine are business owners in Michigan and New York, and their insurance is going up from 30K to 80K per year. Yes, that's sometimes an over 100% increase. They’re being told that even other insurance companies are doing the same, so the business of “shopping around” for other insurance rates is next to impossible, regardless of how good your track record is. If you’ve never filed a claim, your rates are still going up. It’s much like a car owner who is insured and never gets in a car accident. Your rates will still go up over time, even with the best driving record on the planet. The problem is, car insurance isn’t even close to property insurance and that is a bubble that won’t only burst, it will never re-inflate.
If you thought that people’s businesses closing for the COVID lie was bad, buckle up. With less people around from the Bioweapon, and companies needing to stay afloat, their orders are to raise the rates, and if owners decide to sell, who are they going to sell to exactly? You guessed it. BlackRock.
The same is true for farmland. Farmers are dumping land by the hundreds of acres, because they can't afford the higher taxes. The buyers? Well, you know who.
This is what happens when there are less people around. The rates are set by government in an attempt to make up for the difference. Only this time the difference isn't coming back.
It’s about to get way worse in 2024.
In your original post you specifically mentioned Hotel owners and business owner friends as part of your examples, ergo, I was pointing out the flaw in your logic of applying commercial insurance rates to normal insurance rates.
So obviously you either forgot what you wrote or you only skimmed my post.
Normal insurance rates ARE going up for normal people. But nowhere near as much as you let on. For example, in the area I live (semi-rural area with a few principle cities and a metro population of over a million), our insurance has gone up a whopping $20 over the past 3 years. So a little less than $7 a year.
But we also don't have stupid high crime rates, and our district attorneys will actually prosecute criminals. Change the location to, since you were using MIchigan and New York as examples, Detroit, and yes you'll obviously see a lot higher increases because Detroit is always in the top 10 most crime ridden cities in North America, and has gotten worse since Michigan decriminalized basically everything up to a certain dollar amount of damage while refusing to prosecute any crimes.
This is why blue state cities are seeing exoduses.
So no, most people aren't millionaires, as you snarkily pointed out, but most people in the us ALSO don't live in a city. The USA is still very rural/suburban in terms of population spread.
Meaning the majority of people don't live in an area where insurance rates are going sky high because of retarded policies. They WILL see increases, some larger than others (not everyone is going to experience the $20 increase I have for example), but most aren't going to be bankrupted by it either.
Though I will admit the notable exception is california, because their state level politicians have screwed things up so bad that now most insurance companies have just opted to outright pull out of the state and won't renew policies after their current cycle.
But there again, that's not really bankrupting people, because instead of having "high insurance" payments, they have NO insurance payments. Which is also bad, but not a problem that will immediately lead to being bankrupt.
Ohio has 88 counties.
44 of those counties this upcoming tax year are having their property taxes (that's all properties, residential and commercial) increase by 37-41%.
So yes. Farmers are selling if there are people to buy it.
The major buyer is BlackRock and their subsidiaries.
Funny how you didn't deny anything I said in my rebuttal about your application of insurance logic and instead changed the topic to the farm part of things to try and get a win. But I'll bite.
First of all let's address the blatantly wrong Ohio Tax situation. I found not a single source stating that literally half of Ohio counties are going to see 37-44% tax increases on their property taxes. In fact, the ONLY thing I found was that 6 counties have seen an AVERAGE HOME VALUE INCREASE, of that amount.
https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/counties-caution-property-taxes-are-rising-because-of-hot-real-estate-market-but-not-as-much-as-you-think
And even the article points out, that doesn't mean a 37-41% increase in TAXES. If you read it, it'll point out that taxes are only increasing by an average of 9% as a result of the massive increase in home value. Market value and tax assessed value are two different things, and the massive increase is MARKET VALUE. Tax Assessed Value is ALWAYS lower than Market value. Hence, taxes, in 6, not 44, of Ohio's counties are increasing my an average of 9%.
Granted, that's still not right, but an extra $600~ a year (as pointed out in the charts in the article) is hardly bankrupting for most people .
Now let's move on to your falsehoods about the farmers.
No, no they aren't. Farmer's aren't selling out, and blackrock is most definitely NOT the "major buyer" of such land.
96% of all farms in the united states are family owned.
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/archive/2021/01-22-2021.php
Even if you go off the admitted decrease of 4% since 2012 (this is the most up to date USDA data since it's from 2021 and they do it in ten year cycles), that's .0044% decrease per year.
But even THEN, that doesn't account for the fact that in 9 out of ten cases, the farms being sold, are bought up by another nearby farmer to add to their fields. Farmer's are typically VERY close knitt and will mostly sell to another nearby farmer if they are going to close up shop because none of the kids want to get involved.
So most of those "decreases" are just local famers condensing ownership among themselves as some retire and don't have kids that want to be part of the farm life.
And finally blackrock. I WAS going to pull up a statistic to show that it's a lie that they are buying up farmland, but guess what. When I tried searching for such a statistic, I couldn't find one.
Because there isn't one. Blackrock hasn't bought ANY farmland in the United States. They only countries I've found they've bought agricultural land in are Ukraine (big surprise) and Australia (Also big surprise). Blackrock's North American Funds are focused on upstream and downstream Agricultural products instead of farms.
So things like Fertilizer, farm equipment, meat packing, processed products (like canned vegetables, juices, etc. etc.) They have literally zero direct investments in Agricultural land in North America. I even tried looking to see if they own shares in any of the few Agricultural REITS (which are few and far between because they're just not popular and only own a few 10K acers at most of the nearly Billion acres of Agricultural land in United States alone).
Nope, they don't even seem to own any shares in Agricultural REITs.
At this point, you're just making up blatant alarmism lies because you can't be bothered to control+F through a quarterly fund report on Blackrock's website.
So please, stop arguing over something that's just blatantly not true. You're not helping anyone by spreading falsehoods and creating alarmist responses.
Not arguing. It isn't worth it. It is true, you just live in an area where you can't see it or experience it. That's all.
Here in southern VA, my homeowners policy renewal just doubled. It's triple what it was in 21. My auto policy has also increased roughly 90% from '21 and 60% from last year.
To be fair, $300 a year on the homeowners was due to a claim, but it proceeded to increase another nearly $900 at the next renewal, 2 years after the claim.
No accidents or tickets or claims for me or my wife, only one of four vehicles covered beyond liability.
And my property tax valuation just went up 49.7%, (the lefty board of supervisors has yet to adjust the actual rate)