What I'm Reading Much Ado About Nothing: Despite wild forecasts of an eviction tsunami when the federal moratorium ended, actual eviction filings are still 40% below their pre-pandemic historical average. Five Thirty Eight Also, told ya so. Emptied Out: Omicron is upending grocery operations across the entire supply chain. Staffing...
January 5th – Stuck in Place
What I'm Reading Boxed In: Despite an incredibly tight apartment market, Los Angeles won't allow rent hikes for tenants in rent-stabilized units - which accounts for approximately 75% of inventory - until at least 2023. This despite costs rising sharply, including labor and materials for building repairs as well as...
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 15th – Delay Tactics
What I'm Reading Delay Tactics: Planning departments in California cities are going to great effort to try to comply with California's new housing mandates. Unions and environmental groups are using CEQA to stifle those efforts. Two stalled projects in my hometown of Newport Beach illustrate the problem. OC Register Latest...
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:...
December 9th – Dwindling Reserves
What I'm Reading Dwindling: American balance sheets have been historically strong during the pandemic era, thanks largely to infusions of government cash. The infusions boosted consumer spending, helped pay off debts and reduced the urgency of employment. According to Moody's Analytics, those excess savings are dwindling among many working and...
December 8th – Tailwind
What I'm Reading Tailwind: The US apartment market continues to strengthen with strong rent growth and occupancy at all time highs. RealPage FWIW, this is exactly what should logically be expected to happen in an environment with strong household formation demographics and an increasingly tight homebuying environment - Marginal buyers...
December 3rd – Tis the Season
What I'm Reading Tis the Season: Apartment rents fell in more than half of the nation’s major markets this month, suggesting a widespread cooldown in a market that’s been buoyed by pandemic-driven shifts in consumer preferences. Apartment List To put this move in context a bit, rents typically follow a seasonal...
December 1st – Seeds of Growth
What I'm Reading Creative Destruction: With workers quitting their jobs at nearly unprecedented levels, entrepreneurship is on the rise: The number of unincorporated self-employed workers has risen by 500,000 since the start of the pandemic, Labor Department data show, to 9.44 million. That is the highest total since the financial-crisis...
November 19th – Perfect Disguise
What I'm Reading Narrative Shift: Distressed debt funds are rebranding themselves as "opportunistic credit" as they come to the realization that distressed opportunities don't really exist at the moment. WealthManagement.com Turning Point? North American sublease office sector inventory declined for the first time since the pandemic began. Cushman and Wakefield...