First: Stinky/bad air is moving from North Salt Lake to Reno, some of it anyway. After 33 years of folks complaining about horrible smells and toxic black smoke, the company Stericycle is closing its local office and moving to Reno.

As the Foxboro neighborhood developed with hundreds of homes, people started noticing that in a power outage, there would be ugly black smoke coming out of the Stericycle chimney there. What does Stericycle burn? Medical waste, and a whole lot of it, particularly COVID waste from hospitals and clinics.

The Utah Department of Environmental Quality has been monitoring the emissions for the past decade and fined them $2.3 million in 2014 for failure to control their pollution. The company has now stopped incinerating medical waste and is moving to Reno. Poor Reno!

Second: Homebuyers should be happy. Interest rates have dropped below 6% for 30-year mortgages. And inventory is up to pre-pandemic levels, with 150% more homes on the market than a few years ago. Surely, you've noticed "for sale" signs going up like crazy?

You have much more to choose from, and some buyers are actually being able to purchase at ask or below asking price with the market adjusting. Markets around the country are seeing huge price adjustments, to wit: Nearly half (47.8%) of homes for sale in Provo had a price drop in May, Salt Lake City saw 45.8% of listings reduce prices, and Ogden had a 42.6% drop. This isn't just in Utah—it's happening in Denver, Portland, Philadelphia, Sacramento and all over the U.S.

Third: We'll be seeing closings, firings and layoffs in the real-estate world as inflation rages and mortgage rates go up. Sprout Mortgage, often billed as one of the nation's fastest-growing lenders, shut its doors last week.

Real-estate agents pay their dues to the Salt Lake Board of Realtors this month, which will likely show fewer agents renewing membership. The ripple effect will hurt title companies and other real estate-related businesses as well before this economic mess is over.

Finally: The New City Plaza and County High Rise at 1900 South 200 East are going to get a $76 million housing renovation of the 300 apartments there. To coin a phrase from Lizzo, "It's about damned time!"

There's so little affordable housing that people get on a long waitlist through Salt Lake City's Housing Authority to hopefully get into one of these apartments. About $133,000 will be put into each unit, which will be gutted and modernized floor to ceiling. They also hope to join the two buildings with a skybridge.

Many of the renters are seniors and, from my perspective, virtually no public entity or developer is building new senior-specific housing here in the state, with the exception of assisted living. Motley Fool reports that the average Social Security beneficiary lost nearly $6,500 in annual purchasing power since 2000. So many seniors live on just their benefits and with, high housing costs, it's no wonder many are forced to live on the streets.