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...
January 14th – Locked Down
What I'm Reading Locked Down: With Covid-19 flaring up across China, major manufacturers are shutting factories, ports are clogging up and workers are in short supply as officials impose city lockdowns and mass testing on a scale unseen in nearly two years. There have even been rumors of a potential...
January 11th – Open House
What I'm Reading Open House: Supply chain issues are making it difficult for home builders to complete new houses, despite increased building activity. As a result, mostly finished units are often sitting for weeks, awaiting the delivery of items like garage doors and gutters. Wall Street Journal No End in...
December 16th – Leading the Pack
What I'm Reading Leading the Pack: Millennials were supposed to be the generation that spurned home ownership. Instead, they now make up over half of all home purchase applications as the group enters prime household formation years. The generation accounted for 67% of first-time home purchase mortgage applications and 37%...
December 10th – Stretching Out
What I'm Reading Stretching Out: Multifamily investors are increasingly stretching their holding timeframes - sometimes by 2-3x. This is being driven by both a dearth of product coming to market that makes redeployment of capital difficult and a desire to obtain fixed rate debt with inflation surging. WealthManagement.com Bubbling Over:...
November 30th – Pass Through
What I'm Reading Limited Competition: Buying real estate off market is much more about avoiding protracted bidding wars and minimizing pursuit costs than it is about buying properties at a deep discount. Globe Street Log Jam: Homebuilders are struggling with labor and material shortages. As a result, construction timelines have...
November 17th – Space Available
What I'm Reading Risk On: The board of CalPERS, the nation's largest pension fund, voted Monday to use 5% leverage and alternative assets to meet its investment-return target, even after lowering that target just a few months ago. The trustees also voted to increase riskier alternative investments, raising private-equity holdings...
November 16th – Dead End
What I'm Reading Dead End: Just a few days after St. Paul, Minnesota voters approved the nation's strictest rent control measures, developers and their lenders are halting projects due to the economic impact. Now politicians - many of whom supported the measure - are backtracking furiously as they realize that...
November 15th – Tilting the Scale
What I'm Reading Tilting the Scale: Target allocations to commercial real estate increased for the eight straight year in 2021 according to a recent survey by Hodes Weill & Associates and Cornell University. The average target allocations increased to 10.7 percent, up 10 basis points from 2020, indicating the potential...
November 12th – Baby Boom?
What I'm Reading Baby Boom? A recent Bank of America research note struck an optimistic tone compared with the poor demographic data in the 2020 Census. The report showed that birth rates are beginning to tick up and leading indicators - such as the sale of pregnancy tests - point...