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...
November 29th – Turnaround
What I'm Reading Back in Style: Retail store openings in 2021will exceed closings for the first time since 2017. Department stores and specialty retailers are still closing faster than they are opening but even closings in that segment have slowed. The key here is integration between ecommerce and brick and...
November 22nd – Emergency Measures
What I'm Reading Bottoms Up: Despite all the talk about burnout and reevaluating priorities, the soaring quits rate has little to do with white-collar jobs. It's more about lower-income people getting the chance to move up. Bloomberg Desperate Times: Federal lawmakers are pushing California Governor Gavin Newsome to declare a...
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 4th – Sitting Ducks
What I'm Reading Sitting Ducks: Idle cargo containers piling up in ports and storage yards have created a target-rich environment for thieves, resulting in yet another supply chain headache. Cargo theft has increased 42% YoY in California during the 3rd quarter. CargoNet Out of Their Hands: The inflationary episode of...
November 3rd – Fire Sale
What I'm Reading Fire Sale? Zillow is looking to unload 7,000 homes for $2.8 billion after royally screwing up their iBuying strategy and substantially overpaying for acquisitions. They are listing the homes at a loss. The news came after Zillow announced that they would be taking a pause from buying...
November 2nd – Sell the News
What I'm Reading Sell the News: Interest rates have increased in recent months as the Federal Reserve began signaling that they will begin tapering their bond purchasing. However, recent history suggests that yields tend to fall once actual tapering begin. US Housing and Mortgage Market Weekly Staying Close: Relocations are...
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 21st – Stacked Deck
What I'm Reading Stacked Deck: Perhaps the biggest reason for the current truck capacity shortage is the surge of goods moving west to east. Simply put, there is too much freight exiting Southern California and too little coming into the area. The problem will persist until the imbalance eases. Think...