What I’m Reading
Up And To The Right: Average monthly listed rents in the US increased 14.1% year over year, according to a report issued by real estate brokerage firm Redfin. Meanwhile, the national monthly mortgage payment for homebuyers climbed 21.6% year over year, also the biggest increase in Redfin’s records. Redfin
Somebody Gets It: Orion Jones at the Real Deal wrote the story that the WSJ should have – that Adam Neumann’s apartment buying binge was about avoiding taxes. Perhaps he’s a Basis Points reader. The Real Deal
Boxing Day: Shoppers love lenient return policies. However, those same policies are costing retailers billions. They also represent a potential environmental disaster with returned products that can’t be resold often ending up incinerated or dumped in landfills. Bloomberg
Rushing In? The Fed is on the verge of hiking interest rates, which has been telegraphed for months. At the same time, the five year break even inflation rate has fallen substantially. Much of the surge in inflation has been associated with supply constraints in a few sectors of the economy and not with a surge in services costs linked to soaring wages. IMHO, aggressively hiking runs the risk of triggering a recession. The Bellows
What You Missed: Here are some good insights from NMHC, from new amenities to affordability concerns. Globe Street
Chart of the Day
Currently-renting millennials are increasingly eager to enter the housing market.
Source: Zonda
WTF
Monkey Business: A truck full of monkeys escaped after a truck carrying them crashed on a Pennsylvania highway. As I write this, at least one remains at large. New York Times
Overlooked: A man stole more than $30,000 in rare coins and cashed them in for a fraction of their value at change machines at area grocery stores before being arrested because Florida. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Basis Points – A candid look at the economy, real estate, and other things sometimes related.
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