What I'm Reading Don't Call it a Comeback: 2021 has been a banner year for apartment rent growth thus far with rents nationwide rents now surpassing where they would have been had the pandemic never happened. ApartmentList Inside Deal: Real-estate agents are selling more homes to select customers while bypassing...
May 28th – Risky Business
One Big Thing Real Assets Adviser / IREI published an editorial that I wrote about some of the often-unseen risks in crowdfunded real estate transactions as part of their June edition: Warren Buffet famously said, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” In recent...
May 26th – Piling On
What I'm Reading Piling On: The US Commerce Department has made a recommendation to more than double tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber in the midst of a housing affordability crisis that has been driven in part by soaring building costs. If the Biden Administration wanted to make the crisis worse,...
May 25th – Sending a Message
What I'm Reading Backlash: Ireland is trying to keep institutional investor firms from buying up its housing stock by imposing a 10% tax on a the purchase of 10 or more homes. The tax will apply to bulk purchases and cumulative acquisitions of 10 or more homes a year but...
May 24th – No Slack
What I'm Reading No Slack: Nearly every economic issue that we are currently experiencing is a result of the lack of slack in our system being a feature and not a bug. David Merkel sums the conundrum up perfectly: There's not enough slack in the system. We need more redundancy....
May 19th – Center of Gravity
What I'm Reading Center of Gravity: While the Biden tax plan roiled markets over the past few weeks, corporate executives and lobbyists and lobbyists are confident that centrist Democrats in both the Senate and House will ultimately kill almost all of the proposed increases. Politico Burn Out: Mortgage demand has...
May 14th – Safe Haven
What I'm Reading Safe Haven: Capital is flooding into Opportunity Zones as other traditional real estate tax advantages come under fire from the Biden Administration. At the moment, it looks like any revisions to the program will be minor, making it relatively more attractive to investors in the event that...
May 13th – Running on Empty
What I'm Reading Running on Empty: Construction of entry level homes has been trailing off since the mid-1970s. In the early 1980s, the percentage of new homes constructed below 1,400 sf was roughly 40%. Today it sits below 10%. The combination of low supply and high demand in the space...
May 11th – Running of the Bulls
What I'm Reading Glass Half Full: The results DLA Piper’s latest State of the Market Survey revealed no shortage of bullish sentiment about commercial real estate with 74% expressing optimism about the market in 2021 versus just 24% a year prior. Respondents were especially bullish on markets like Austin and...
May 10th – Leading Indicator
What I'm Reading Out Ahead: Zumper's National Rent Report last week showed some improvements in most, but not all of the expensive coastal cities that were hit especially hard by COVID. IMO, the big news was in some of the raw search data that wasn't in the report but rather...