Standard TV and Appliance sold

Portland retailer Standard TV and Appliance has new owners with Portland ties.

The retailer describes the new owners as local businesspeople — Chip Wallace, Barbara Bradshaw and former Standard Sales Director Jeff Jarvis, who will become the company’s president. The company did not report terms of the transaction.

Clement and Hazel Gander founded the company as Standard Refrigeration in 1947. Their son Bill Gander began managing the company in 1972 and had owned the business since 1981. He will step down as president and owner on Halloween.

Jarvis held a succession of managerial roles at Standard from 2005 until 2013 and had most recently been president of Airport Home Appliance in California. Bradshaw owns Bradshaw Advertising, which will take over Standard’s advertising.

Standard has two stores in Portland, one in Beaverton and one in Bend.

Home-sales jump lowers inventories

The supply of homes up for sale around the U.S. has fallen to its lowest level in six years, thanks to an increase in purchases.

Nationwide home inventories fell by more than 6% in September, ending a streak of rising home supplies, according to Zillow.

Consumers around the country in recent months have responded to lower home mortgage rates with an increase in buying.

Home prices were down year-over-year in the San Francisco area and San Jose, California.

Inventory fell in all but a handful of major U.S. markets.

Governor gets max farm subsidy

A farming business owned by the family of West Virginia’s billionaire governor has received $125,000 in soybean and corn subsidies, the maximum allowed from a federal program meant to help American farmers through the U.S. trade war with China.

There is no evidence Gov. Jim Justice did anything illegal. But at least one analyst said the payments to the richest man in West Virginia are unseemly, given his wealth.

It costs more to get into top 1%

Becoming a member of the nation’s richest 1% now costs a little more. The income needed to exit the bottom 99% of taxpayers hit $515,371 in 2017, according to IRS data. That’s up 7.2% from a year earlier. Since 2011 the income threshold for the top 1% is up an inflation-adjusted 33%. That outpaces all groups except those that are even wealthier. To join the top 0.1%, you would have needed to earn $2.4 million in 2017, an increase of 38% since 2011. The top 0.01% threshold has jumped 46%. The median taxpayer has seen income rise 20% since 2011.