What I'm Reading Bidding War: Yield-chasing investors are snapping up single family homes, competing with homebuyers and driving up prices. The wave of institutional capital hitting this space is massive and has created an environment where prices are rising much quicker than incomes, prompting JBREC to issue a report concluding...
April 5th – Chugging Along
What I'm Reading Chugging Along: The Zillow-Case Shiller Housing Price Forecast showed a 12% YoY increase in February, up from 11.2% in January, with the authors of the forecast commenting that there appears to be "no end in sight." At some point, I have to imagine that rising mortgage rates...
April 2nd – Go Time
What I'm Reading Go Time: Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is pushing the Senate toward lifting the federal prohibition on marijuana with legislation that would represent the biggest overhaul of federal drug policy in decades. The plan goes beyond decriminalization and is expected to remove marijuana from the list of controlled...
April 1st – Rebound
What I'm Reading Rebound: Apartment List's rent index posted its largest monthly increase since 2017 in March. The markets that saw the fastest declines in 2020 led the way. Globe Street Wiped Out: More than 10% of restaurants in the United States have closed permanently since the coronavirus pandemic began...
March 31st – All For One
What I'm Reading Halt: As expected, the CDC extended their eviction ban residential evictions until the end of June. However, the extension makes no substantive changes to the policy, despite housing advocates pushing the administration to boost enforcement measures to prevent landlords from going around the moratorium. Politico Next Wave's...
March 30th – Game Over
What I'm Reading Game Over: Massive crowdfunding sinkhole Prodigy Network has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The company, which had raised a reported $690MM from investors was overleveraged and besieged by lawsuits when its founder died suddenly in May and investor communication ceased. This is a tragic reminder of the...
March 29th – Virtual Reality
What I'm Reading Virtual Reality: For those of you unaware, part of the burgeoning NFT craze includes platforms like Earth 2 and Metaverse that recreate earth digitally and allow people to buy up virtual property, "develop" it and trade it. Metaverse is now in the process of launching a REIT...
March 26th – Recycled
What I'm Reading Recycled: In a sign of how valuable logistics real estate has become, some developers are taking old, unused golf courses and building warehouses on them. Imagine trying to explain this to someone who time traveled to 2021 from 2002. Bloomberg En Fuego: Austin has become America's hottest...
March 25th – Compression
What I'm Reading Compression: With Class A cap rates at incredibly low levels, industrial real estate investors are increasingly targeting well-located B and C product to generate higher returns. According to a new report by Cushman and Wakefield, average cap rates for Class A properties declined by 33 basis points...
March 24th – Deep Cuts
What I'm Reading Flush: Lenders who are desperate to generate yield are pouring capital into financing the white-hot home flipping market. This is not really a concern for now as competition is pushing rates down at a time when profits are near all-time highs. However, it could become problematic when...