Luxury home sales drive market higher
Heated activity fed by shortage of stock and low interest rates
Houston home sales reached new highs in June as a surge at the upper end of the market pushed prices to record levels.
The median home price rose 20 percent over the year to $314,500, according to the Houston Association of Realtors’ monthly report. The average price shot up 23.7 percent to $395,316, also a record.
Home sales rose for the 13th straight month with buyers closing on 10,638 single-family homes in June, up 13.6 percent from June 2020’s level of 9,362 homes.
At the same time, sales have been happening at a torrid pace. Sellers shaved nearly a month off the time from listing to closing compared with the year-ago period, with the average time on market falling to 29 days in June, down from 57 days in June 2020 and the lowest on record.
In Bay Oaks, a community ranging from patio homes to estate homes along the golf course in Clear Lake, homes sold in an average of just six days in June, according to Dan McCarver of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Gary Greene.
Although homes are getting multiple offers, particularly those in the $450,000 to $650,000 range, sellers are hesitant.
“A lot of sellers realize that if they sell, they become a buyer, and it’s a market that they’re a little bit afraid of making a move in,” McCarver said.
The heated activity has been fed by a shortage of available stock and low mortgage interest
posing big changes during this decade. To force the issue, Brussels has committed in law to reducing its emissions of greenhouse gases 55 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.
The negotiations over the legislative package will be closely scrutinized well beyond Europe as a glimpse into whether and how a diverse set of countries, with democratically elected leaders from across the political spectrum, can pivot an economy away from fossil fuels — and provide cushions for those most affected.
The European proposal, which some environmental activists say still does not go far enough, raises the bar for the United States and China. President Joe Biden has said that he wants the United States to be a leader in efforts to address climate change, but has not come up with a clear plan.
A White House official said Wednesday afternoon that it was “reviewing” the European Commission’s proposals and broadly welcomed the idea of a carbon border tax.
The U.S. has promised to reduce emissions 40 percent to 43 percent by 2030. Scientists have said the world needs to halve emissions by then, which would require history’s biggest polluters, namely the U.S. and Europe, to make the sharpest, swiftest cuts.
Britain, which will host
COP-26, the international climate talks, in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, has pledged a 68 percent reduction. China, currently the world’s largest emitter of carbon, has said only that it aims for emissions to peak by 2030, and it is under pressure to set a more ambitious target before the Glasgow talks.
The detailed proposals from the EU mark only the start of what promises to be a difficult and bruising twoyear negotiation among industry, 27 countries and the European Parliament on
how to reach the 55 percent reduction.
But coming before the talks in Glasgow, the proposals represent an effort by the EU to assert global leadership in what must be a multilateral effort to reduce global emissions sufficiently to avert the worst effects of climate change.
“The EU’s policy package for stabilizing our climate is the most comprehensive of its kind to date,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “Weather extremes
around the world clearly illustrate that strong action is key now if we want to limit costs and risks, and secure a safe future for all.”
At the heart of the European road map is increased prices for carbon. Nearly every sector of the economy would have to pay a price for the emissions it produces, affecting things like the cement used in construction and the fuel used by cruise ships. Proposed taxes on imports of goods made outside the EU, in countries with less stringent climate policies, could
potentially invite disputes at the World Trade Organization.
There are geopolitical implications. The cross-border carbon tax proposal could have the greatest impact on goods from Russia and Turkey, mainly iron, steel and aluminum, according to data analyzed by the Centre for European Reform. The impact on U.S. exports to Europe would be far smaller, according to the analysis.
The proposals, if passed, would see the last gasoline or diesel cars sold in the EU by 2035; require that 38.5 percent of all energy be from renewables by 2030; increase the price charged for carbon emitted to make the use of fossil fuels increasingly expensive; and financially assist those most affected by potential price increases.
The carbon border tax could not only shake up global trade and invite disputes over protectionism, but it could also create new diplomatic fault lines before the Glasgow talks.
The gathering is an important moment for big polluting nations to show what they will do to address the emissions of greenhouse gases that have set the world on a path to dangerous warming. All eyes are on targets set by the United States and China, which currently produce the largest share of greenhouse gases.
Although the European Union produces only about 8 percent of current global carbon emissions, its cumulative emissions since the start of the industrial age are among the world’s highest. But as a huge market, it also sees itself as an important regulatory power for the world and hopes to set an example, invent technologies that it can sell and provide new global standards that can lead to a carbonneutral economy.
“Europe was the first continent to declare to be climate neutral in 2050, and now we are the very first ones to put a concrete road map on the table,” von der Leyen said.