Happy New Year! The cold weather could cost you.

Summary

Marketplace: Episode Summary – "Happy New Year! The Cold Weather Could Cost You"

Release Date: January 1, 2025
Host: Kristen Schwab (in place of Kai Ryssdal)
Podcast: Marketplace

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1. Welcoming the New Year and Setting the Stage

Kristen Schwab kicks off the episode by extending New Year greetings and expressing gratitude to Marketplace investors for their support. She emphasizes the importance of sustained backing to keep the public service newsroom operational.

2. The Surge in Natural Gas Prices Amidst a Harsh Winter

As the nation braces for a severe winter, natural gas prices have soared, marking their largest single-day increase in three years.

• Tom Singh, Energy Finance Professor at Texas Christian University, attributes the spike primarily to weather conditions:

  "Natural gas really and truly is driven by weather more than anything else." (01:34)

• The prolonged cold front has led to increased consumption, depleting gas storage levels:

  "High demand, lower supply, that means higher prices." – Tom Singh (01:51)

• Grant Walk, Geology Professor from Dalhousie University, adds that geopolitical uncertainties, including the war in Ukraine and instability in the Baltic, compound the market’s nervousness:

  "Uncertainty makes people nervous." (02:14)

• Randy Albert of Shale Advisory Group highlights the sluggish response in supply increase:

  "It can take 18 months to bring a new gas well online." (02:24)

• The Biden administration's cautious stance on fossil fuel expansion exacerbates supply constraints:

  "We don't have the infrastructure to move the gas from those wells to where it's needed." (02:46)

Looking ahead, Grant Walk warns of potential price spikes during hotter months when the demand for natural gas for electricity generation surges:

"Later this year... utilities will want natural gas to create the electricity to power all of those air conditioners that will be cranked up." (03:09)

3. Boeing’s Tumultuous Year and Road to Recovery

The episode delves into Boeing's challenging 2024, marked by safety incidents, leadership changes, labor strikes, and significant job cuts.

• A mid-flight door plug explosion in a 737 Max led to the CEO's resignation and a new leader taking charge. Subsequently, over 30,000 workers struck, halting production for nearly two months, prompting Boeing to cut around 17,000 jobs to reduce costs.

• Henry Epp reports on Boeing's need for cultural transformation:

  "Boeing needs... a fundamental culture change." (05:07)

• Richard Aboulafia from Aerodynamic Advisory emphasizes restoring connections between jet builders, supervisors, and the supply chain:

  "Boeing needs to restore those connections." (05:33)

• Meghna Maharishi, an airlines reporter at Skift, notes the persistent high demand for Boeing's aircraft:

  "Right now they're seeing a ton of travel demand, a huge boom in travel demand that is continuing to last." (06:08)

• Despite production struggles and a growing Airbus backlog, David Slotnick concurs that the market's preference hinges on Boeing's ability to maintain consistent production:

  "What really matters is that they're able to just make these planes consistently." (06:34)

Boeing's future success in 2025 largely depends on resolving supply chain issues and fostering a robust workforce culture to meet the soaring demand.

4. Small Business Spotlight: Garty Goodies’ Strategic Pivot

Maddie Gartman, owner of Garty Goodies in St. Paul, Minnesota, shares her journey of transitioning from a home bakery to a content creation business amidst changing economic landscapes.

• Initially focused on selling custom-decorated cookies, Maddie observed a decline in sales and rising ingredient costs, prompting her to pivot:

  "It just made sense to pivot and go a different direction with my business." (08:55)

• Partnering with a local gardening center, she began hosting sold-out cookie-making classes, ensuring a stable revenue stream.

• In response to potential threats like a TikTok ban, Maddie diversified her online presence across multiple platforms, mitigating reliance on a single social media channel:

  "I'm grateful that I've had other things to fall back on." (11:22)

Her adaptability underscores the importance of resilience and diversification for small businesses navigating uncertain economic times.

5. 2024 Entertainment Business Highlights: Blockbusters and Concert Tours

Despite the markets being closed on New Year's Day, Kristen Schwab provides a recap of the top-performing films and concert tours of the previous year.

• Box Office Top Earners:

  • Inside Out 2 leads with just under $1.7 billion.
  • Deadpool and Wolverine follow with over $1.3 billion each.
  • Despicable Me 4 secures the bronze position with nearly $1 billion worldwide. (07:09)

• Concert Tour Revenues:

  • Taylor Swift's Eras Tour tops the list with over $1 billion.
  • Coldplay's Music of the Spheres Tour garners approximately $420 million.
  • Pink's Summer Carnival Tour earns nearly $370 million. (08:07)

These figures highlight the continued robust consumer appetite for both cinematic and live music experiences.

6. Women’s Growing Share of Wealth: Economic Implications

A significant shift is underway in the American economy, with women's control over financial assets expanding dramatically.

• According to McKinsey, women are projected to control $34 trillion (38% of investable assets) by 2030, a substantial increase from $7 trillion a decade prior.

• Claire Ballantyne, Bloomberg reporter, attributes this growth to increased workforce participation, narrowing wage gaps, and demographic trends where women inherit wealth from the baby boomer generation due to longer life expectancies:

  "Women typically outlive men by five years on average... there's this transfer of wealth... from men to women." (15:44)

• In investment behaviors, women tend to adopt more conservative strategies, favoring stock holdings with a significant rise from 44% in 2018 to 71% in 2024:

  "Women work really hard to make money and save it, but they're sort of hesitant to risk it." (16:56)

• In philanthropy, women are more inclined to donate, driven by empathy and varying motivations across generations:

  "Women... are more likely to donate money to charity than their male counterparts." (17:58)

• Claire Ballantyne discusses how the wealth management industry is adapting by hiring more women and fostering relationships that align with women's values and life goals:

  "They want to have a conversation, think about their life goals, their values, and sort of how investing can align with that." (18:09)

While this trend aids in bridging the wealth gap, challenges remain, particularly in leadership representation:

"There's still only 12% of C suite positions... and only 41 out of all the CEOs at S&P 500 companies are women." (18:56)

7. One-Dollar Homes: A Mixed Blessing for Urban Regeneration

The ambitious initiative to sell homes at minimal prices, such as Liverpool's £1 ($1.25) homes, aims to rejuvenate neglected urban areas but comes with substantial challenges.

• Grant Walk, providing insights from Liverpool's experience, recounts the initial overwhelming response to the program:

  "We got something like 750 enquiries and then we rolled out the full scheme and had 2,500 applications." (21:12)

• Early buyers faced extensive renovation needs, often exceeding the symbolic purchase price:

  "I had a tree growing out the front bay... just crumbling bricks." – Maxine Sharples (21:22)

• Despite the low-cost purchase, buyers like Steve Engle and Maxine Sharples invested tens of thousands in repairs, finding value in homeownership and community rebuilding:

  "Having the security of your own home that no one can take away from you means that it opens up my life to other possibilities." (24:11)

• Tony Mosdale from Liverpool City Council acknowledges ongoing challenges despite increased home occupancy:

  "Regeneration never finishes, does it? There's always more to do." (23:40)

The initiative has fostered a sense of community and increased occupancy, yet significant urban blight issues persist.

8. SEC's Struggle with Collections Amidst High Fines

In closing, the Wall Street Journal highlights the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) difficulties in collecting fines from fraudulent schemes.

• Over the past decade, the SEC has written off approximately $10 billion in fines due to non-payment after two years. Efforts like wage garnishment have proven ineffective against defendants with means to evade collection, such as relocating to the Caribbean.

This underscores the complexities regulatory bodies face in enforcing financial penalties against sophisticated fraudsters.

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the multifaceted discussions from Marketplace's January 1, 2025 episode, offering insights into energy economics, corporate recoveries, small business adaptability, entertainment industry successes, wealth dynamics, urban regeneration challenges, and regulatory enforcement issues.

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Timestamp References:

• 00:00 – Introduction and New Year greetings
• 01:23 – Discussion on natural gas prices
• 02:14 – Geopolitical factors affecting gas prices
• 02:24 – Supply chain delays in energy sector
• 03:09 – Future concerns for natural gas pricing
• 04:43 – Boeing's performance issues
• 05:07 – Need for culture change at Boeing
• 05:33 – Restoring connections within Boeing's supply chain
• 06:08 – High demand for Boeing's aircraft
• 06:34 – Importance of consistent production for Boeing
• 08:07 – Entertainment business numbers
• 11:22 – Maddie Gartman on social media diversification
• 15:44 – Women’s demographic trends affecting wealth
• 16:56 – Women’s investment behaviors
• 17:58 – Women and philanthropy
• 18:09 – Wealth management adapting to women's growing wealth
• 18:56 – Remaining challenges in gender wealth gap
• 21:12 – One-dollar homes initiative response
• 21:22 – Buyer experiences in Liverpool homes
• 24:11 – Benefits of secure homeownership
• 23:40 – Ongoing urban regeneration challenges

Transcript

[Kristen Schwab]

From all of us at Marketplace, we want to say Happy New Year and a special thank you to everybody who stepped up to donate and help us plan for the year ahead. The support of our Marketplace investors is so important to keeping our public service newsroom running strong. If you didn't have a chance to donate, it's never too late to support the news you rely on, you know, give [e-mail] donate and thanks. We've got an appetizer sampler of stories for you on this first day of 2025. From Boeing to small business to women's growing share of wealth and what that means for the economy. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace in New York. I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kyra's doll. It's Wednesday, the first day of January. Happy New Year. As we enter 2025, we move as we always do, deeper into winter and this year, perhaps into steeper heating bills. Natural gas futures this week saw their biggest single day jump in three years. And prices aren't expected to go down anytime soon as the Northeast and Midwest move into a bone chilling winter. But it takes more than a cold spell to break a three year record like that. Marketplace's Kaylee Wells explains what's going on.

[Tom Singh]

Even for a three year high. The most obvious explanation is also having the biggest impact.

[Kristen Schwab]

I mean, natural gas really and truly is driven by weather more than anything else.

[Tom Singh]

Tom Singh teaches energy finance at Texas Christian University.

[Kristen Schwab]

If this becomes a deep seated, widespread, long duration cold front going to burn a lot of natural gas, which means we're going to pull a lot of natural gas out of storage.

[Tom Singh]

High demand, lower supply, that means higher prices. Also, we can't know just how cold it'll get and how long it'll last. And that uncertainty can lead the market to overreact. But that's not the only uncertainty the market's facing right now.

[Grant Walk]

But you add to that the war.

[Kristen Schwab]

In the Middle east, the uncertainty in the Baltic, the war in Ukraine.

[Tom Singh]

Geology professor Grant Walk from Dalhousie University says uncertainty makes people nervous.

[Kristen Schwab]

People could just be hedging the next few months to see what happens.

[Tom Singh]

Now Econ101 says when demand goes up, the way to keep prices stable is to increase supply along with it. Randy Albert leads a consulting firm called Shale Advisory Group, and he says that can't happen quickly. It can take 18 months to bring a new gas well online.

[Kristen Schwab]

When Trump says, well, we'll just drill, baby, drill, that's great, but we don't have enough takeaway capacity to get it to market.

[Tom Singh]

In other words, we don't have the infrastructure to move the gas from those wells to where it's needed. And the Biden administration hasn't been keen on letting the fossil fuel industry expand.

[Grant Walk]

There weren't any signals being sent to producers and people who provide capital for.

[Kristen Schwab]

Drillers to say, hey, let's go out and drill a bunch of wells and.

[Grant Walk]

And so we are where we are production wise.

[Tom Singh]

Long term forecasts have called for a mild winter in most of the country so prices could dip once the cold weather moves through. But long term Grant Walk of Dalhousie University is also worried about the price spikes that could come during a hot summer. Later this year. Utilities will want natural gas to create the electricity to power all of those air conditioners that will be cranked up. I'm Kayley Wells for Marketplace.

[Kristen Schwab]

Wall street today was closed for the holiday, but that doesn't mean the economy stops moving. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. 2024 was a tough year for Boeing. At the beginning of the year, a door plug blew out of a 737 Max plane mid flight. The company's CEO stepped down. A new one came aboard. Then in the fall, more than 30,000 workers went on strike, halting production for nearly two months. The company slashed about 17,000 jobs to cut costs. In a message to employees and shareholders this past October, Boeing's new CEO said the company has had, quote, serious lapses in performance, unquote, and acknowledged that trust in the brand has eroded. Marketplace's Henry Epp reports on how Boeing could correct its course in 2025.

[Henry Epp]

Many of the problems Boeing faced in 2024 did not begin in 2024. David Slotnick, a contributing editor at the Points Guy, says the issues took root over 25 years ago when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas.

[Kristen Schwab]

The argument goes that Boeing sort of adopted this accounting first culture that existed at McDonnell Douglas, which similarly hurt that airplane maker.

[Henry Epp]

For years, Boeing leaders prioritized the company's stock price, he says, more than the quality of its aircraft. Now the company's facing criminal charges over two fatal crashes of its planes, an investigation of the recent crash in South Korea, and months of fallout from that door plug incident. The the company's CEO said in October Boeing needs, quote, a fundamental culture change. Richard Aboulafia with Aerodynamic Advisory agrees they.

[Kristen Schwab]

Need to restore those connections between people who build the jets and supervise the people who build the jets and the people at the top supply chain.

[Henry Epp]

Delays, he says, have hampered the company's ability to deliver planes. So it also needs to work better with its thousands of suppliers, Abulafia argues.

[Kristen Schwab]

Basically, Boeing needs to go to these companies and say, hey, what will it take to get you to perform? And if we have to give you additional resources, so be it.

[Henry Epp]

There's no shortage of demand for Boeing's products from airlines, says Meghna Maharishi, an airlines reporter at skift.

[Kristen Schwab]

Right now they're seeing a ton of travel demand, a huge boom in travel demand that is continuing to last.

[Maddie Gartman]

And they obviously want more airplanes, but they're just not getting them at a.

[Henry Epp]

Fast enough rate because there's really only one other company that makes big commercial jets, Airbus. As Boeing has struggled in recent years, Airbus backlog of orders has grown. So now Boeing might have an opportunity to make up some ground on its competitor. Again, David Slotnick at the points guy.

[Kristen Schwab]

What really matters is that they're able to just make these planes consistently.

[Henry Epp]

After a year full of stops and starts in production, he says Boeing wants to start delivering planes at a faster clip, and that's obviously helpful if they can do it.

[Kristen Schwab]

But if they can't do that in a consistent way, then it's really going to be all for nothing.

[Henry Epp]

Which makes getting its supply chain and workforce culture in order all the more important if Boeing wants to have a better year. I'm Henry Yap for Marketplace.

[Kristen Schwab]

If you want to learn more about what's driving business news, check out our Econ 101 course. It walks you through all the fundamentals in a way that's easy to follow. Learn more and sign [e-mail] econ owning a small business means you gotta be nimble with things like hiring supply chains and customer needs. Sometimes, though, being nimble means flipping your business on its head, transforming your work so much it almost feels like you've made a career pivot. That's where Maddie Gartman's at. She's owner of garty goodies in St. Paul, Minnesota, which started as a home bakery and has grown into something else. Maddie, welcome back to the show.

[Maddie Gartman]

Thanks for having me.

[Kristen Schwab]

So I think the last time we talked. Right. Was about a year ago, and you were selling cookies through your business and doing some content creation. What's happened in the last year?

[Maddie Gartman]

Yeah, so pretty much for the start of 2024, I decided that I was going to go all in on being a content creator. And there were a couple things that sort of inspired that. One is that I was starting to see that I was making more money that route. And Another was that I was starting to see that I was making a lot less money by selling cookies. So it seemed like the right time for me to pivot just because I think people just weren't buying custom hand decorated cookies like they used to.

[Kristen Schwab]

Yeah. Why do you think that is?

[Maddie Gartman]

I think it had a really big boom during the pandemic simply because so many people were on social media and so many people were seeing my business all the time because they were on their phones. And then, you know, I can only speculate, but I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with the economy, the price of ingredients. It continues to go up. And to make it worth my time, I have to charge quite a bit for a cookie. And I don't blame people if that's not where they're putting their money, you know, is towards a fancy cookie. So to me, it just made sense to pivot and go a different direction with my business.

[Kristen Schwab]

Yeah, well, you are teaching them how to make their own cookies. Right? Tell me a little bit more about that and what that transition was like for you because you were a teacher before this.

[Maddie Gartman]

Yeah. So I didn't want to put all of my eggs in one basket of content creation because that's a little bit scary. But I knew I could always fall back on teaching. And luckily there's always been a market for people that want to learn how to take the classes. There's a market for people that just want a fun activity to do with their friends or with their sister. And I got to partner with a local gardening center that has a great workshop area and basically been able to host a cookie class about once a month for this entire year. And they've sold out every single time. So that's been really, really great.

[Kristen Schwab]

Oh, wow. And then tell me more about content creation. How is that going? Because running a cookie business and being a content creator are very different things.

[Maddie Gartman]

Yeah, that's very true. Originally, I got my start on TikTok in 2021, and then I've kind of been able to add the other apps, Instagram and YouTube and Facebook, and have been able to improve my content creation game, you know, as far as upping the cameras and the microphones and the editing software. So I just post videos of me decorating cookies along with voiceovers. Sometimes I tell stories, sometimes I just talk about my decorating process. And I also often do mystery cookies where people help me figure out different designs for the shape that I'm decorating. And kind of it engages a lot of people and people really enjoy watching it.

[Kristen Schwab]

What are you thinking as we get closer to a potential TikTok ban? Are you worried about how that might affect your business?

[Maddie Gartman]

I'm thinking that I'm really grateful that I have this partnership to teach classes, and this is the entire reason why I never put all my eggs in the content creation basket. I also am very grateful that I took the time in 2024 to learn the other social media apps too, and to grow a pretty decent following on the other apps so that I wasn't just completely relying on TikTok just because I think it's always kind of been a whisper. We've gone wave a couple times of are they going to ban it? Are they not? This is the first time that it sounds like it's pretty serious. And so I'm just. I'm grateful that I've had other things to fall back on.

[Kristen Schwab]

So before this, you were a high school teacher, right? What did you teach?

[Maddie Gartman]

I taught high school English for eight years.

[Kristen Schwab]

I don't know if that's what you imagined you would do for the rest of your life. Did you imagine that this is where you'd end up?

[Maddie Gartman]

No, not at all. And I keep saying I don't know when it's going to end. You know, I just. I don't know if it'll just keep going, but I'm just going to keep riding this train as long as I can. But, yeah, I definitely never imagined that I would wind up here. This. This all started as a way to make a little extra income when we decided to have me stay at home when my son was born.

[Kristen Schwab]

Maddie Gartman is the owner of gardi goodies in St. Paul, Minnesota. Maddie, thanks so much for talking again.

[Maddie Gartman]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Kristen Schwab]

Coming up, there was asbestos, There was a rat infestation. I had a tree growing out the front bay. Ah, the joys of home ownership. But first, let's do the numbers. The markets were closed today for New Year's Day, so let's look back on some entertainment business numbers for the year that just ended. The top earning films of the last year, according to box Office Mojo, Despicable Me 4 grabbed the bronze medal with a gross of just under a billion dollars worldwide. Deadpool and Wolverine took Silver at a little over $1.3 billion. And the top grossing film of the year was inside out 2, which took in just shy of 1.7 billion at the box office. How about the top earning concert tours? According to data compiled by Polestar. In third place, Pink's summer carnival tour grossed almost $370 million. And second, Coldplay's Music of the Spheres tour raked in just over 420 million. And no surprise in this reveal, the top grossing concert tour of the year year was Taylor Swift's eras tour, just over $1 billion. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kristen Schwab. One of the big shifts happening in the American economy over this decade is that the share of financial assets held by women is growing. According to data from McKinsey, women are expected to control $34 trillion, or 38% of investable assets by the year 2030. For comparison, that figure, $34 trillion, was 7 trillion a decade ago. And that transfer of wealth, it'll change the economy most immediately this piece of it, the financial field. Here to chat with us about what this means is Claire Ballantyne, a reporter for Bloomberg. Claire, welcome to the program.

[Claire Ballantine]

Thanks for having me.

[Kristen Schwab]

So what's behind the expectation that women will increasingly hold a larger share of American wealth?

[Claire Ballantine]

There's a couple of factors going on here. So as we know, women are working more now than ever before. They're making more money. The wage gap is still there, but it's closing. But one of the really big factors is this demographic trend. The baby boomer generation in the US and around the world has a large chunk of wealth right now. And women typically outlive men by five years on average. So, so there's this, this transfer of wealth not just from one generation to the next, but intergenerationally from men to women.

[Kristen Schwab]

Hmm. And you write in your story about women coming into wealth, it affects many different industries because, I mean, generally speaking, women spend money differently or have different attitudes towards it. Can you start off by talking about how that works with investments?

[Claire Ballantine]

Yes, definitely. So, you know, we're, we're seeing their gender differences in investing, and obviously these are very high level. Each person has their own opinions on how they're going to invest. But we definitely see more women a bit more conservative in their investments. So, you know, women work really hard to, to make money and save it, but they're sort of hesitant to risk it. You know, as you know, in investing, there's, there's a balance there. You want to take a certain amount of risk at the same time. You don't want it to be too risky and put it all in crypto or something like that. But we are seeing women reporting that they're having more stockholding. So Fidelity does this great study, and they found that, that in the 2024 study, 71% of women had stock holdings. That, that's, that's up from only 44% in 2018, which is pret.

[Kristen Schwab]

One thing I thought was really interesting was women's attitudes in philanthropy. Can you talk about how that industry is sort of taking on the change of how women donate money? Yeah.

[Claire Ballantine]

So that's what I think is one of the most exciting sort of aspects of this trend. And one of the real world effects of it is that women across all income levels and all generations are more likely to donate money to charity than their, their male counterparts. So there's a lot of research that's done on sort of the motivations for why different people give. And one study has shown that women tend to give based on empathy. And it varies also based on how old the women are. Millennial women care about causes like social justice and climate change. Older women sort of skew more towards religious organizations and those focus on reducing poverty. But across the board, women in general are, are more inclined to give to charity than men.

[Kristen Schwab]

Well, I'd imagine that these changes might shape these two industries a bit. Investing in philanthropy. How are these industries preparing?

[Claire Ballantine]

Yeah, so this, it's said to be a big change. I mean, to see more women having more money, more power coming to the table more. Especially when you look at sort of how the wealth management industry is going to have to adapt to it. So a big focus is hiring more women. You know, the wealth management industry is very traditionally male, so they're stepping up efforts to that. And there's also been studies done that show women really want a relationship with their financial advisors. They don't want someone just to come in and tell them what to do. They want to have a conversation, think about their life goals, their values, and sort of how investing can align with that.

[Kristen Schwab]

How much do you think this helps close the wealth gap? And what work is there left to do?

[Claire Ballantine]

I think this is obviously a really huge positive trend. It's putting more money in the hands of women. The stat from McKinsey and co is that women will control 34 trillion by 2030, which is close to double last year's total. So that's huge. It's more money in the hands of women. And that's a great thing. Where there's more work to be done, I think, is that, you know, there's, there's still only, you know, 12% of C suite positions in the US are occupied by, by women. There's only 41 out of all the CEOs at S&P 500 companies are women. So it's a positive sign and really, really great trend. But it really does highlight that there's more work to be done.

[Kristen Schwab]

Claire Ballantine is a reporter at Bloomberg and she recently wrote about the impact of this money changing hands. Claire, thanks so much for joining us.

[Claire Ballantine]

Thank you.

[Kristen Schwab]

What if you had the chance to to buy a house for a dollar? You heard me right, a home of your own for one single George Washington. There's a catch though, because isn't there always to get the deal, you have to commit to renovations and you have to live in the house after. No renting or selling. There are programs like this in the us. The city of Baltimore relaunched an initiative like this last year. Meanwhile, decades ago overseas in Northern England, the city of Liverpool launched its own version of this project aimed at regenerating downtrodden areas. The BBC's Leanna Byrne takes stock of how it's all worked out.

[Grant Walk]

For some people in Liverpool, having the chance to buy a home for the knockdown price of just one pound or about $1.25 was irresistible. But the successful applicants to Liverpool's low cost property sales were buying more of a wreck than a house. Steve Engley was one of them.

[Kristen Schwab]

There was a huge hole in the.

[Grant Walk]

Roof above the bay window on the first floor collapsed while we were actually working on it. Another buyer, Maxine Sharples, also found herself having to take on heavy renovations.

[Kristen Schwab]

There was asbestos, there was a rat infestation. I had a tree growing out the front bay. There wasn't much apart from crumbling bricks.

[Grant Walk]

Liverpool City Council offered people the chance to own a house for just over $1 in 2013 and 2015. It was part of a regeneration policy to bring abandoned properties back into use. With the average house price in Liverpool between $160,000 and $170,000. At the time, the prospect of owning a home for a fraction of that caught people's attention. Tony Mosdale from Liverpool City Council was behind the initiative.

[Kristen Schwab]

We started off with a small pilot scheme of 20 properties and we got something like 750 enquiries and then we rolled out the full scheme and had 2,500 applications.

[Grant Walk]

Liverpool is one of the UK's biggest cities with almost half a million residents. But in recent decades, industrial decline has hit the economy, increasing poverty and leading to some areas falling into disrepair. There were other challenges. Here's Steve Engli again on the house he bought.

[Kristen Schwab]

It was completely boarded up.

[Grant Walk]

There was just kids everywhere messing around, as you'd imagine, because there's no repercussions for anyone if there's no one living there.

[Kristen Schwab]

So it was fairly grim.

[Grant Walk]

In total, 120 homes were sold in 2013 and 2015, and anyone buying had to fund the repairs themselves and agreed to live there for five years. Victoria Brennan, a student in Liverpool at the time, was one of the first people to secure a house through the program.

[Kristen Schwab]

I've been watching the house renovation shows and obviously it looks so easy. I learned so much looking back, but at the time it was absolutely stressful. I remember being in the midst of it and thinking, is it worth it?

[Grant Walk]

The scheme was a much needed step onto the housing ladder for Victoria, but after a few years she decided to leave.

[Kristen Schwab]

We'd get random kids like banging on the window, and for me, I just accepted it as part and parcel of the area, whereas my partner, it did upset him more. I think that was a factor into us moving.

[Grant Walk]

While the initiative to sell the homes at low cost did lessen some of the challenges that blighted the city streets, Tony Mosdale from Liverpool City Council admits those problems haven't gone away.

[Kristen Schwab]

I would say those incidents are not as frequent as they used to be. There is still a way to go and I think in, in some ways, regeneration never finishes, does it? There's always more to do.

[Grant Walk]

The council says it's got no plans to revisit the One Pound Home initiative, but it has now moved into offering commercial premises for the same amount. The home buyers like Steve Engle and Maxine Sharples, have spent tens of thousands more renovating their homes than that headline figure. But Sharples says that despite all the challenges, it's been worth it.

[Kristen Schwab]

Having the security of your own home that no one can take away from you means that it opens up my life to other possibilities.

[Grant Walk]

English says it's been transformational. We absolutely love living here, the people in the neighbourhood, because we've all been through the same thing. It's a really nice place to be.

[Kristen Schwab]

We all look out for each other.

[Grant Walk]

Liverpool still faces challenges of blight and some of its urban residential areas. But the initiative has increased home occupation in the areas where it operated and residents say it succeeded in rebuilding some of the sense of community lost in the City. I'm the BBC's Liana Byrne from Marketplace.

[Kristen Schwab]

This final note on the way out today saw this. The Wall Street Journal. The securities and Exchange Commission has been taking credit for hefty judgments against people running scams like Ponzi schemes that it'll likely never be able to collect on. The Journal reports that over the past 10 years, the SEC has written off a whopping $10 billion in fines. Write offs happen when penalties go unpaid for two years. Its collections office uses tactics like garnishing wages to collect fines, a tactic that doesn't work so well when a defendant has the means to pick up and move to a Caribbean island. Our media production team includes Brian Allison, Jake Cherry, Jessind Dueler, Drew Jostad, Gary O'Keefe, Charlton Thorpe, Juan Carlos Tirado, and Becca Weinman. Jeff Peters is the manager of media production, and I'm Kristen Schwab. We'll be back here tomorrow. This is apm.