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One Big Thing Whenever we tip into crisis mode, people tend to focus on the big, almost-always temporary numbers. For example, at one point OpenTable restaurant bookings dropped to zero in the US and TSA checkpoint data fell to almost nothing as did hotel revenue. These numbers are all at some stage of recovery now, […]
What I’m Reading Mixed Signals: Reviewing rent collection data has become a pandemic pastime for apartment investors, but these reports have varied significantly between outlets, tending to be higher for more institutional surveys like NMHC and lower for services that focus more on mom and pop operators like Apartment List. In addition, some surveys don’t […]
What I’m Reading King of the Road: Over the last decade, urban markets with good mass transit options were at the forefront of economic growth. However, as the economy reopens, the car has become the favored mode of commute transportation and markets that are more car-centric could become more desirable. Booster Shot: Talks in Washington […]
What I’m Reading Only Game in Town: With few properties on the market during the pandemic, large real estate investors have had turned to stocks and bonds as a way to invest in distressed real estate. Backstop: Calls for a new federally-backed insurance product to cover real estate pandemic-related losses have begun (h/t Steve Sims). […]
One Big Thing In the wake of the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve and Treasury poured trillions of dollars into the banking sector. However, this money was held on bank balance sheets as excess reserves rather than lent, meaning that it didn’t lead to high levels of inflation. Today, the Federal Reserve and Treasury are […]
One Big Thing As a result of the pandemic, California politicians predictably attempted to enact a lot of dumb shit in the name of helping citizens that would have ultimately made things much worse instead. Thankfully, one of the worst ideas, SB 939 died last week when it failed to advance from the Senate Judiciary […]
One Big Thing As the pandemic puts stress on commercial real estate, CMBS loans have been moving to special servicing at an unprecedented rate. A new report from Moody’s Analytics and loan special servicer CWCapital found that a whopping 96% of the loans transferred to special servicing from March 1 through the third week in May […]
One Big Thing The NMHC Rent Payment Tracker reported that 89% of tenants paid their June rent by the 13th, the same percentage as paid in 2019. This is clearly good news but I still think that the important date to watch is August, just after enhanced unemployment benefits are scheduled to expire. If enhanced […]
One Big Thing When the pandemic shutdowns began, most economic observers focused on the sudden collapse of demand that drove portions of the economy into a deep freeze. Now, as the economy continues to reopen and demand comes back, supply chains are as well, mostly keeping inflationary pressures in check. In most parts of the […]
One Big Thing This past weekend, White House economic director Larry Kudlow said that enhanced unemployment will end as-scheduled in July. Instead, the White House is pushing for a back-to-work bonus to incentivize people to look for jobs – which seems to me like a questionable approach in an environment where unemployment is well into […]