A Land Advisors Company
Lead Story…. I’ve spent quite a bit of space on this blog talking about segments of the real estate market that have been struggling of late. From high end apartments and luxury condos in NY, SF and Miami to dying shopping malls in middle America, to struggling suburban office buildings, there’s been plenty to go around. […]
Lead Story/Chart of the Day… Want to know the rental boom will end? Possibly when homeownership rates stop falling. Some thoughts from the St Louis Fed’s excellent FRED Blog: For five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes each year, people have to live somewhere. And it looks like renting is becoming more popular. The graph clearly […]
Retraction: Before we get to today’s post, Leonardo DiCaprio’s rep announced that he doesn’t support the anti-density initiative that I spoke about on Friday, despite his name being all over it’s literature. Maybe he is a regular Landmark Links reader and didn’t like getting called out😉 Lead Story…. Since I began writing this blog last year, […]
Lead Story… There is little that I enjoy more than reading (or writing) about the hypocrisy of self-important celebrities. However, one of my primary rules for writing this blog is to avoid politics – unless it’s land use politics (or water politics). As such, I haven’t had the opportunity to write much about celebrity hypocrisy, despite frequent gnawing temptation […]
Lead Story…. A bit short on time this week so I’m going to outsource the lead story. Joe Bosquin of Builder Magazine wrote a wonderful summary about how California priced itself out of the market for entry-level home buyers titled The Unintended Consequences of Law. Spoiler: it has everything to do with Prop 13 and CEQA. Bosquin’s piece […]
Lead Story… A pudgy, mustachioed, red-sweater-wearing star was born during Sunday’s Presidential Debate. Kenneth Bone was selected to ask the candidates one of the final questions of the night and, his earnest question about how to balance fears of fossil fuel job loss with environmental concerns, combined with his appearance resulted in him essentially taking […]
Lead Story… As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the Obama Administration took the unprecedented action of calling on cities and counties to re-think their zoning laws. This was a concerted effort to increase affordability and fight back against NIMBY’s who have successfully stopped development in some of America’s most productive cities. The proposal is bold in […]
Lead Story… Chances are that you’ve heard tales about alligators living in the NY sewers, Coca Cola’s magical ability to dissolve teeth overnight, that Elvis Presley is still alive and in witness protection, or even the old Weekly World News standby of a bat child found living in a cave. These urban legends and others like them have spawned […]
Lead Story… When home owners take out a mortgages and can’t afford to put down 20% or more of the purchase price, the lender makes them get something called Private Mortgage Insurance or PMI which protects the lender in the event of borrower default in exchange for a monthly premium. It’s a well established insurance […]