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 5th – Danger Zone
What I'm Reading Leverage: Just when you thought that the situation at west coast ports couldn't possibly get worse, contracts for 15,000 west coast dockworker union members are due to expire on July 1, 2022. Obviously, this situation gives the union a ton of negotiating leverage. As a point of...
November 1st – Disconnect
What I'm Reading Disconnect: COVID-19 has broken the longstanding connection between wage growth and employment levels. Typically, the rise in wages currently seen would have us at near full employment but that has not yet happened. Full Stack Economics Dispersed: Co-working companies are making big bets on the suburbs, including...
October 27th – Between a Rock and a Hard Place
What I'm Reading Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The pandemic has highlighted how many office buildings need to be renovated in order to fit the needs to today's workers and companies. However, the supply chain crisis and labor shortage means that it has never been more expensive to...
October 14th – Long Shot
What I'm Reading Long Shot: Zelman and Associates released a contrarian residential market call, claiming that today's tight housing market is already getting overbuilt thanks to the downward trajectory of population growth per the 2020 Census. CNBC Other analysts, like Jay Parsons of RealPage were quick to jump on this...
October 7th – Shop Shop
What I'm Reading Chop Shop: The latest investment trend is buying tiny pieces of everything from real estate and cars, to art, fine wine and memorabilia. Vox Looking Inward: Foreign investors are following in the footsteps of their domestic counterparts, focusing on secondary markets with strong fundamentals over their traditional...
October 6th – Thin Air
What I'm Reading Thin Air: Mortgage payments are getting more unaffordable as record home price growth erases savings delivered by historically low interest rates. Wall Street Journal The affordability problem will continue to get worse if / when interest rates continue to rise. Borrowers have record equity in their homes...
September 30th – Overreaction
What I'm Reading Overreaction: The feared tsunami of evictions predicted when the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on evictions in August has failed to materialize. In fact, the number of filings have dropped or remained flat since the decision. Washington Post It’s almost as if they relied on...
September 29th – Shots Fired
What I'm Reading Shots Fired: The SEC is targeting a crowdfunding portal in its first enforcement action in the space. Regulators sued the operator of a funding portal, TruCrowd Inc., for allegedly failing to heed red flags despite allegedly being told that one of the key players had a criminal...
September 23rd – Teeing Off
What I'm Reading Teeing Off: After years of languishing, demand for private golf club community amenities is at an all time high. The sport - and real estate developments centered around it - had been experiencing declines as younger generations tended to show less interest than their parents. Then the...