Leah Mennies

This past fall, after becoming roommate-free for the first time, I looked at my life and my choices. Also, I looked at the makeshift pantry in the kitchen of my rental apartment. At the age of 32, I could no longer rationalize using a decade-old shoe organizer to store my rolled oats and canned chickpeas — it was time for something grown-up. I wanted whatever would replace it to be aesthetically pleasing enough to appear in a Food 52 article on pantry-storage tips; but with limited upper body strength, zero will to mount anything onto a wall, and too much social anxiety to enlist help from Task Rabbit, I didn’t want to work for it.
My heart lies with the simple, modern look of Floyd’s modular shelving system, but I’m not ready to commit to investment furniture — a.k.a. the “starts at $425” price point — at the moment. So I headed in the direction of a utilitarian wire-style unit, inspired by the look of a pro chef friend’s home kitchen shelves, and promptly got overwhe ...

Some Highlights

According to Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist at NAR, home prices are forecasted to rise.
Results from the Existing Home Sales Report note that home sales declined in March due to the coronavirus, but prices are still strong.
Let’s connect so you can better understand your home’s value today.



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There are two crises in this country right now: a health crisis that has forced everyone into their homes and a financial crisis caused by our inability to move around as we normally would. Over 20 million people in the U.S. became instantly unemployed when it was determined that the only way to defeat this horrific virus was to shut down businesses across the nation. One second a person was gainfully employed, a switch was turned, and then the room went dark on their livelihood.
The financial pain so many families are facing right now is deep.
How deep will the pain cut?
Major institutions are forecasting unemployment rates last seen during the Great Depression. Here are a few projections:

Goldman Sachs – 15%
Merrill Lynch – 10.6%
Wells Fargo – 7.3%

How long will the pain last?
As horrific as those numbers are, there is some good news. The pain will be deep, but it won’t last as long as it did after previous crises. Taking the direst projection from Goldman Sachs, we can see that 15 ...

Few homes look their best in the dirty grays of late winter, which is, in part, why homebuying season coincides with the arrival of spring. This year, however, the crocuses that can make a house look that much nicer are showing up alongside the less reassuring news of a virus circling the globe.
The spread of COVID-19—the disease caused by the novel coronavirus—was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11. It’s already claimed more than 44,000 lives in the United States. Shelter-in-place orders have been issued for cities across the country and 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment since the outbreak of the pandemic.
If you’re already in the market for a house, all the uncertainty might have you worried about the housing market. Will COVID-19 cause housing to collapse, as it did during the financial crisis in 2008?
Historically low inventory and rock-bottom mortgage rates would normally set the stage for a highly competitive homebuying seas ...

Earlier this week, we discussed how most projections from financial institutions are calling for a quick V-shaped recovery from this economic downturn, and there’s research on previous post-pandemic recoveries to support that expectation.
In addition, we noted how there are some in the business community who believe we may instead be headed for a U-shaped recovery, where the return to previous levels of economic success won’t occur until the middle of next year. Yesterday, Reuters released a poll of U.S. and European economists which revealed that most surveyed are now leaning more toward a U-shaped recovery.
Here are the results of that poll:
Why the disparity in thinking among different groups of economic experts?
The current situation makes it extremely difficult to project the future of the economy. Analysts normally look at economic data and compare it to previous slowdowns to create their projections. This situation, however, is anything but normal.
Today, analysts must incorpora ...