What I'm Reading Spooked: With $300 billion in outstanding debt, troubled mega-developer Evergrande has been dubbed the "Chinese Lehman." After expanding for years, the company has been scrambling to pay suppliers, and warned investors twice in as many weeks that it could default on its debts. If this were to occur,...
September 21st – Logjam
What I'm Reading Logjam: The Los Angeles / Long Beach port logjam has enough containers to cross half of the US if laid end-to-end. Amazingly, the problem is getting worse. The average wait is currently 8.7 days compared with 6.2 in mid-August, according to L.A. gCaptain Respite: The producer price...
September 17th – Locals Only
What I'm Reading Locals Only: The greater Phoenix area has record demand for new rental housing. However, cities are pushing back, leading to higher prices. AZ Big Media Looks like California has exported its shitty land use politics as more Golden State residents move to the desert. Cooling: August's CPI...
September 13th – Safe Harbor
What I'm Reading Safe Harbor: There is a growing interest in marina investment where cap rates have stayed relatively constant over the past year while demand for slip space has soared along with new boat sales. This fits in nicely with RanchHarbor's thesis that real estate used to store discretionary...
September 8th – 800 LB Gorilla
What I'm Reading 800 LB Gorilla: Amazon is on pace to absorb nearly 120 million square feet of commercial space this year and accounts for eight of the ten largest industrial projects underway in the United States. The ecommerce giant is having a massive impact on everything from pricing and...
September 7th – Not So Fast
What I'm Reading Not So Fast: The Biden Administration's $3.5 trillion budget proposal is in limbo after West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin came out strongly against it in a Wall Street Journal OpEd, raising inflationary concerns. Wall Street Journal Speed Bump: The US construction industry's recovery from the lows of...
September 3rd – More Help Wanted
What I'm Reading Help Wanted: Labor shortages are helping to keep more homes from being built, making housing even less affordable. The problem does not appear to be going away anytime soon. The Economist Surprising Result: About half of US states ended enhanced federal unemployment benefits early. So far, they...
August 31st – Double Edged Sword
What I'm Reading Double Edged Sword: Almost everyone claims to want more affordable housing but there is little will to actually achieve it. In reality there is no widespread affordable housing without a decline in property values and no politician gets elected to statewide office by promising to slash real...
August 27th – Failure to Launch
What I'm Reading Failure to Launch: Yesterday, the Supreme Court overturned the eviction ban in a 6-3 vote, as expected. New York Times The real story here should be how poor of a job we have been doing with rent relief. Only $4.7 billion of almost $47 billion appropriated by...
August 25th – Back to the Future
What I'm Reading Back to the Future: With investors craving yield, Wall Street firms are once again diving into the private-label mortgage market, originating and packaging loans outside of the GSE framework. Despite the recent surge in volume, private level securitizations still make up a mere 4% of the market. ...