Europe eyes shift on fossil fuels
BRUSSELS — In a seminal moment in the global effort to fight climate change, Europe on Wednesday challenged the rest of the world by laying out an ambitious blueprint to pivot away from fossil fuels over the next nine years, a plan that also has the potential to set off global trade disputes.
The most radical, and possibly contentious, proposal would impose tariffs on certain imports from countries with less stringent climate-protection rules. The proposals also include eliminating the sales of new gas- and dieselpowered cars in just 14 years, and raising the price of using fossil fuels.
“Our current fossil fuel economy has reached its limit,” President Ursula von der Leyen of the
European Commission said at a news conference in Brussels.
The effort, pushed by the European Commission, the European Union’s bureaucracy, makes the
27-country bloc’s proposal the most aggressive and detailed plan in the world to reach a carbonneutral economy by 2050, pro
rates — currently 2.9 percent.
Buyers competing for a limited supply of houses on the market drove prices above the asking price in 43 percent of the June sales, according to the association. Last June, just 9 percent of houses sold for above list price.
Inventory, which represents the time it would take to sell everything on the market at the current sales pace, dropped to 1.5 months in June. It was half the level of June 2020 but a slight improvement over the previous three months. Six months is considered a balanced market where neither the buyer or seller has the upper hand. Nationally, inventory stands at 2.5 months, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Adding to the dynamic are buyers from the more expensive West and East coasts, who don’t blink at prices that give Houstonians sticker shock.
“The Houston housing market is in overdrive right now, and we know anecdotally that out-of-town investors have contributed to the frenzy,” HAR Chairman
Richard Miranda with Keller Williams Platinum said in the report.
Sales of homes priced at $500,000 and up accounted for nearly 20 percent of the sales in June, according to the realty association. The segment accounted for 10.5 percent of sales last June.
Year over year, the volume of sales for homes priced from $750,000 and above increased by 137 percent. The number of homes sold in the $500,000 to $749,999 range was up 87 percent. And sales of homes priced from $250,000 to $499,999 increased by 35 percent.
With so few houses on the market, sales of houses in all price segments below $250,000 declined, according to the association.
Shad Bogany, an agent with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Gary Greene — Post Oak Park, said he saw no sign that the low-interest-rate, shortageof-inventory dynamic would slow in the near future.
He pointed to homes in Sunnyside, a neighborhood just outside Loop 610 in southeast Houston, that used to sell for $79,000. “People thought they were way overpriced, and now they’re selling for $300,000,” Bogany said. “Nothing’s changed other than it’s close in and the lack of inventory.”
Entry-level buyers are losing out to investors who come in with cash to buy a house, fix it up and put it on the rental market, Bogany said.
“That’s why you’re seeing rents on houses jumping up to $2,100 a month,” he said.
The average rent for single-family homes jumped 10.6 percent to a record $2,111, according to the realty association.