What I'm Reading Out of Balance: Households boosted spending in April but drew heavily on savings in order to do so. Higher-income consumers are likely healthy enough to continue funding their spending through savings for a while as their excess savings are significant. However, lower income households do not have...
June 1st – Disconnect
What I'm Reading Disconnect: US Economic data aren't adding up. Incomes indicate a very strong economy while expenditures show a somewhat weakening one. Something in the data is incorrect. The Overshoot Bullwhip: Lumber prices have shed over 50% since March and lumber yards are filling up as mills slow their...
May 31st – On the Move
What I'm Reading On the Move: The U-Haul move data is out for 2021. Unsurprisingly, RanchHarbor markets Texas, Florida, Arizona, Idaho and New Mexico all did well. California was at the bottom of the list. U-Haul See Also: Verizon data shows that Florida has been the big pandemic migration winner. ...
May 27th – Dropping the Hammer
What I'm Reading Dropping the Hammer: In a surprising decision, the First District of the California Court of Appeal upheld approval of a 43-unit residential project following years of NIMBY obstruction, government resistance and numerous court challenges. What's interesting here is that the court called out CEQA as a "formidable...
May 26th – Great Outdoors
What I'm Reading Great Outdoors: Institutional investors are turning their sights on amenity rich campgrounds and RV parks as a way to capitalize on the pandemic boom in vehicle sales and camping. Investors are looking to follow the same institutionalization playbook as single family rentals and mobile homes and see...
May 25th – The Great Unbundling
What I'm Reading The Great Unbundling: A recently published Federal Reserve analysis of household formation shows a meaningful decline in living with roommates / others since the pandemic, coupled with a rise of living alone. This happened as consumption of housing went up during the pandemic and I've referred to...
May 24th – Shock and Awe
What I'm Reading Shock and Awe: Amazon has put 10m square feet of warehouse space on the market (it could reportedly go up to 30m sf) as the ecommerce giant deals with excess supply brought online during the pandemic. However, a deeper look tells a different story. The 10m sf...
May 23rd – Whack-A-Mole
What I'm Reading Whack a Mole: Americans moved around a lot over the past two years, and those destinations also now happen to have the highest inflation rates in the U.S per new research from Redfin. Conversely, places like San Francisco that people left tend to have lower inflation. Redfin...
May 20th – Holding the Bag
What I'm Reading Holding the Bag: The Federal Reserve now owns $2.72 trillion in mortgage backed securities, up from $1.4 trillion in 2020. It has announced the intent to shrink that amount substantially in order to help tighten monetary policy. However, most of those loans are at much lower rates...
May 19th – Cash Trap
What I'm Reading Cash Trap: The rapid appreciation of the dollar this year helps boost the exports of weaker countries while alleviating inflationary pressures in the US by lowering the cost of imports. However, it also translates into higher import prices, more costly external debt servicing and greater risk of...