What I’m Reading
Great Outdoors: Institutional investors are turning their sights on amenity rich campgrounds and RV parks as a way to capitalize on the pandemic boom in vehicle sales and camping. Investors are looking to follow the same institutionalization playbook as single family rentals and mobile homes and see hotels as a good operational comp. Business Insider I’m a little skeptical of this space, especially coming off a period of record RV sales with sky high fuel prices this summer. As written here many times, I think that the better way to play the growth in RV (and boat) ownership is storage – or long term stay parks that tend to function more like affordable housing. These two sectors are far less reliant on continued utilization of vehicles to maintain profitability
Threading the Needle: The Fed is walking a fine line by trying to slow the white hot housing market without triggering a painful recession. Low supply and almost no housing vacancy make this feat incredibly challenging. Wall Street Journal
Chipping Away: The amount of retail space per person in the United States has fallen to where it was roughly two decades ago, a sign of a stabilizing market as malls around the country are knocked down or redeveloped into other uses. Bisnow
Pinched: Investors who own single family rental properties have seen their margins compressed over the last year as home prices have risen even faster than rental rates per new data from ATTOM. Globe Street
Winter is Coming: VC giant Sequoia Capital has issued a 52-slide presentation to its portfolio companies warning that the current downturn will impact consumer behavior substantially and recovery will be long and slow. The presentation pointed out that, as opposed to recent years, startups should be focused on profitability rather than growth as the fundraising environment continues to deteriorate. Yahoo!
Chart of the Day
This is really bad (although better than most of the rest of the developed world). Short of a miracle, the only way to fix this is more immigration.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
WTF
Overkill: Food brands for things as benign as mayonnaise are increasingly trying to court consumers with mission statements. So far, signs are that no one really cares. (h/t Steve Sims) Wall Street Journal
Basis Points – A candid look at the economy, real estate, and other things sometimes related.
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