A Land Advisors Company
Must Read Mortgage rates have plunged, yet the residential housing market continues to slow. Economy Desperate Search for Yield: Two years ago, Austria issued a 100-year bond with a 2.1% yield. Today, that same bond is trading at only 1.2%. Broken Correlation: In our increasingly bizarre labor market, unemployment is at generational lows yet wage gains […]
Must Read: As discussed here previously, pension funds are allocating more capital to alternative investments – the category under which real estate falls – in an effort to generate higher returns for their beneficiaries. However, core and core plus returns have fallen in this long recovery, leading pension funds to allocate a growing amount of capital […]
Must Read: Google is attempting to aim a bazooka at the Bay Area’s housing crisis by committing $1 billion to develop 20,000 homes, much of it on company owned land. I’ve always thought that it would be interesting to see what would happen if a developer/land owner had unlimited capital and was determined to use […]
Must Read: The construction sector has been a massive drag on US GDP for decades as development activity slows over time. Economy Trending Downward: The soft CPI numbers for April throw some cold water on the Fed’s expectation that recent weak inflation data will prove to be transitory. Hitting the Wall: The world’s population is projected […]
Must Read: Regulators are alarmed by rapid growth in the $1.3 trillion leveraged lending market but don’t really know who holds the paper. This passage in particular has echoes of the mid-aughts: Signs of excessive risk-taking have emerged in any number of markets. But leveraged lending has raised eyebrows partly because of how lightly it’s regulated. […]
Must Read: As golf struggles and clubs fall further into the red, some affluent home owners are taking matters into their own hands and self-funding courses in their communities to keep them from going bankrupt. Economy Stinker: The May non-farm payroll report was weak with only 75k jobs created, versus economist projections of 180k. April’s report […]
Must Read The recent plunge in bond yields has resulted in the lowest mortgage rates in a year and a half. While they haven’t impacted homebuyers much yet, refinance activity is picking up again. Economy It’s Different: Today’s primary recession risk comes from a negative supply shock (trade leading to reduced buying power), whereas the past two […]
Must Read: Most of the housing-friendly California bills that had been proposed died in committee this legislative session. However, a bill to cap rent increases state-wide is advancing in the State Legislature because, apparently the best way to reign in out-of-control housing costs in the midst of an epic shortage is to ensure that almost nothing […]