Good Time to Buy?

• Is now still a good time to buy?

Market Watch

• 90% of real estate agents polled agree that exterior features significantly impact a house’s merit, with 30% saying they can increase overall value by 20% or more. 90% also said a deteriorating landscape hurts market value by the same percentage or even more. Along with these eye-opening statistics, a staggering 74% of agents reported having clients pass on a home without so much as a tour because of the outside presentation.

• Prices DROPPING? Yup Tesla’s prices have been lowered another $1,000 -5,000…..more proof that when supply/competition grows, prices come down. The exact opposite of what the FED is doing to housing….?

• Last year in February and March about 1.3 million jobs were added in the US…..this year in the same period 57% fewer were: about 550,000. (BARRONS)

• Made in America? Yup! Manufacturing is returning to the USA: Construction spending related to manufacturing was $108 billion in 2022, 36% higher than 2021 and more than double that of 2008….much of it a response to the awakening of supply-chain challenges experienced during and after the pandemic. Lots of new manufacturing is related to the growing Green Energy sector: Tesla alone has built close to 20 MILLION square feet of manufacturing facilities in the US in the past decade, the biggest driver of conversion from fossil fuel vehicles (over 2 million sold). The biggest challenge? Staffing! About 800,000 jobs await. What might take 50-75 employees to manufacture outside the US is being built by 10-12 in the US via automation…to keep costs down. (WSJ)

• Property taxes increased twice as fast last year than in 2021 in the US, with many areas in the South and West increasing by more than the national average. Even after the gains, single-family-home property taxes remain much lower in the Sun Belt than in the Northeast. (ATTOM)

• Hedge funds made more than $7 BILLION in profits by betting against bank shares during the recent crisis that rocked the sector, their biggest such haul since the 2008 financial crisis. (FT)

• Greedflation? When costs go up, profits should decline but for over a year now, consumers and businesses globally have struggled with high inflation. These soaring costs haven’t prevented corporations from raking in record profits: in 2022 the Fortune 500 companies alone generated an all-time high $1.8 trillion in profit on $16.1 trillion in revenue….Albert Edwards, a global strategist (and capitalist) at the 159-year-old bank Société Générale calls this Greedflation. Corporations, particularly in developed economies like the U.S. and U.K., have used rising raw material costs amid the pandemic and the war in Ukraine as an “excuse” to raise prices and expand profit margins to new heights…..further fueling inflation. (Fortune)

• A recent study said nearly 15 million U.S. properties face a 1% annual likelihood of flooding, with expected annual damages to residential properties forecast to exceed $32 billion. It also warned the increasing frequency and severity of flooding amid the deepening climate emergency could see the number of U.S. properties exposed to flooding increase by 11% and average annual losses jump by at least 26% by 2050. (CNBC)

• Luxury real estate boomed in Dubai as the rich got richer during the Covid-19 pandemic and as Russians looked for safe havens for money after their country’s invasion of Ukraine. Prime real estate soared 89% in October from the previous year—a swift recovery from a slump that lasted from 2014 to 2020. The market turned higher so quickly it caught many off guard. Branded residences appear to fetch a 30% premium. (Bloomberg)

• And then after the floods and storms came the …..SUPERBLOOM! Yes, California is about to experience an explosion of wildflowers after the heavy rains not seen since 2019! (WSJ)

• While the FED tries to kill strong employment, some are rooting for another bank failure as that is a certainty to bring down inflation…..(CNBC)

• We went from supply chain disruptions to now……excess inventory, an expensive proposition with costly warehousing. Industry passed along all the costs related to shortages with some because-you-can- pricing on top of that…..so now they will be passing on the costs of warehousing. Can we please bring back BORING??? (WSJ)

• More than 50% of the $2.9 trillion in commercial mortgages need to be renegotiated in the next 24 months when new lending rates are likely to be up by 350-450 basis points…unless rates come down…? Cohen & Steers estimates commercial real estate at a more than $20 trillion market in the U.S….the mortgage market underlying it is around $4.5 trillion. (Yahoo Finance)

• JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said there are only two ways of mending the “frayed American dream.” Raising wages (the opposite of what the Fed is attempting) and bridging the skills gap, neither of them have to do with banking. Then again, Chase is not known for paying high interest rates on deposits….about 0.01 – 0.02%? (Fortune)

• The dollar has weakened by over 10% in the past few months after soaring to highs in October, 2022. Attention foreign buyers!

• Lake Mead is a huge body of water…..about 30 million acre feet of water…..and that is about the amount of the snowpack that exists in California’s mountains right now. Hopefully temperatures increase slowly so that this melts slowly too. (LA TIMES)

• Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago O’Hare airports are the 3 busiest in the US, indicating big, thriving economies too. International Airports fuel local economies. The aviation industry employs 87.7 million people globally, supports $3.5 trillion (4.1%) of the world’s GDP) and if it were a country, it would rank 17th in size by GDP. (WSJ/Aviation Benefits)

• The Longevity industry will be a $44 billion per year business by 2030 according to some estimates….so how does this impact real estate?

  • The wealthy who have the money for this may live lots longer and stay in their homes longer, and require homes that cater to the elderly.

  • Just look at the Flatiron District in Manhattan (just 10 blocks): for a long time many of the retail spaces stood empty: dozens are now filled with health-related businesses including several longevity spas….

• There is $220 billion of cash in private equity funds on standby looking to buy ‘bargains’…..”I do believe rates are going down. I think credit markets are right and Powell is wrong. He gets to lower those rates because inflation is going down. “- Barry Sternlicht, STARWOOD, owner of over 115,000 rental units in the US and over $120 billion in assets…. sees rent inflation slowing notably on average.

• $2 trillion of Commercial Real estate loans are with regional banks: less than half that is held by large banks, $800-900 billion. (CNBC)

• After a record-setting 2021 market ($115 billion in Q4 2021), sales of rental apartment buildings fell at the fastest rate since the subprime-mortgage crisis in 2009, a sign that higher interest rates, regional banking turmoil and slowing rent growth are undercutting demand for these buildings. Investors purchased $14 billion of apartment buildings in the first quarter of 2023, a 74% decline in sales from the same quarter in 2022, the largest annual sales decline for any quarter going back to a 77% drop in the first quarter of 2009 and the lowest amount for any quarter since 2012, with the exception of the second quarter of 2020 when pandemic lockdowns effectively froze the market. (COSTAR)

• Around 57% of all deals in the first quarter of Manhattan’s real estate market were all cash. (CNBC)

• While oil prices spiked as OPEC+ cut production to keep prices up – regardless of a war raging in Ukraine – natural gas prices dropped notably, now less than half the price of where it was at the start of 2023…..down to about $2.11 compared to $9.68 in August 2022. Natural gas is most important to electricity generation and heating costs which could offset some pain at the pumps….and keep rising inflation at bay The US produces the most natural gas in the world…. 934 billion cubic meters, 33% more than Russia (701.7 billion cubic meters) or Iran (256.7 billion cubic meters).

• Locals are now fighting a real estate trend known as fractional home ownership, in which multiple people, often strangers, own a small share of a luxury single-family home that they use as a vacation property. It’s a twist on timeshares that, as many locals see it, plays to wealthy out-of-towners looking for a place to party rather than live.

• Just as inflation starts trending downwards, OPEC-plus announced a cutback in production to help elevate oil prices (up 8% in one day!)…. Saudi Arabia and key allies Kuwait and the UAE said they would remove more than a combined 1 million barrels per day from global oil markets. In case you were wondering…. The NOPEC Bill— No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels—refers to proposed U.S. legislation that would open OPEC+ countries to potential antitrust legal action. There is strict law in the US preventing commission rate fixing….. (CNBC)

• The average American drove 4% fewer miles in 2022 than in 2019.