Wednesday, October 16, 2024

July August 2024

In President Biden’s press conference on July 11, he mentioned his plan to impose rent control with a 5 percent rent increase cap on corporate landlords as part of his second term agenda if reelected.

Biden calls for rent control

President Biden formally announced his national rent control plan at a campaign event in Nevada July 16. The president intends to limit rent increases to...

The price of disorder

I was once pitched a deal in the heart of the Amazon—Manaus, Brazil. What was I buying? Firstly, a commercial asset. But I couldn’t...
High-income millennials and Gen Zers are choosing Class A apartments over home ownership. Is it a lifestyle choice or the economy?

INFOGRAPHIC: A luxury vibe

High-income millennials and Gen Zers are choosing Class A apartments over home ownership. Is it a lifestyle choice or the economy? National Class A rents...
Job openings at small businesses fire on all cylinders—despite Federal interest rate increases

INFOGRAPHIC: Small businesses keep labor market flying

Job openings at small businesses fire on all cylinders—despite Federal interest rate increases (up) 50 percent more job openings in April were by small/midsized employers...

INFOGRAPHIC: Have CRE foreclosures hit bottom? Probably not.

Office demand is not returning. Owners working with lenders on short sales aren’t counted as foreclosures muffling the numbers. The volume of commercial property...

INFOGRAPHIC: Battle of will

Launching from the bestselling 2008 book, Nudge, by Thayer and Sunstein, nudging became a cultural phenomenon. The concept assumes that behavior is better persuaded...
Often considered the slowest growing region in the U.S., the Midwest has recently shown surprising improvements, both in the performance of its multifamily markets and in the resilience of the region’s economy. The outperformance comes amid a volatile economic backdrop—the Midwest’s relative stability is one of the region’s defining features and highlights its importance in any multifamily portfolio.

New metrics make Midwest investment attractive

  Recently, the Midwest has shown surprising growth and economic resilience, making this region an attractive candidate for multifamily development, investment and general interest. Often considered...
Avenue South Residences—56-story residential towers located on the western edge of Singapore’s urban core—will be the tallest buildings created with prefabricated prefinished volumetric construction (PPVC). The 988-unit multifamily housing towers will include 2,984 modules (ADDP Architects).

Mod, mod world

Some of the busiest apartment developers in the U.S. are still trying to use three-dimensional “modules” created in factories to reduce the cost of...
Texas-based property management software provider RealPage and California-based Yardi Systems and the clients who use their RM software are named as defendants in class-action lawsuits. The companies have drawn the additional scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, both of which are investigating for alleged price fixing in violation of antitrust laws.

Revenue management’s data dilemma

The first multifamily housing property went live on revenue management (RM) 23 years ago in February. That system was the first iteration of Lease...
Despite broader economic inflation cooling significantly from pandemic peaks, the shelter inflation index has remained elevated, largely due to how the BLS calculates housing costs.

Why housing costs remain a major hurdle for lowering inflation

Housing inflation continues to be a stubborn impediment to the consumer price index (CPI) falling back to the Federal Reserve’s target. Despite broader economic inflation...
Apartmentalize roundup: Maintenance as cost saver, operations help close deals

Apartmentalize roundup: Maintenance as cost saver, operations help close deals

The quest for savings at multifamily properties kicked up a notch at June’s National Apartment Association’s Apartmentalize conference in Philadelphia. Managing expectations: maintenance Maintenance, an essential...
Persistently high interest rates are restricting the ability of businesses to borrow money to invest in real estate construction.

Building permits for apartments declined nearly 30 percent since pandemic

Persistently high interest rates are restricting the ability of businesses to borrow money to invest in real estate construction. Fewer builders are seeking building permits...
The simple answer is that the labor market is rather anemic, and people are being honest about their feelings about the economy.

Labor Department quietly cuts employment growth in half

The labor market increasingly resembles the imposing visage of the Wizard of Oz, with disappointment behind the curtain. Just look at the latest job...
The median household net worth of older millennials, born in the 1980s, rose to $130,000 in 2022 from $60,000 in 2019, according to inflation-adjusted data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Median wealth more than quadrupled to $41,000 for Americans born in the 1990s, which includes the generation’s youngest members, born in 1996.

Millennials rising

Millennials are now wealthier than previous generations were at their age. They can’t believe it either. The median household net worth of older millennials, born...
Despite inflation cooling to the lowest level in more than three years in July, there’s no way around the fact that consumer prices in the United States have risen sharply over the past three years, as several factors came together to form a perfect storm of inflationary pressures.

Categories hit hardest by inflation

Despite inflation cooling to the lowest level in more than three years in July, there’s no way around the fact that consumer prices in...
bootstrap: Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps is the idea that a person can succeed “without help from others and as a result of one’s own hard work.” Ironically, this metaphor is widely used to represent the American dream of social and economic mobility through self-reliance. When first coined it described an absurd, impossible feat. How did bootstrap-pulling go from a ridiculous idea to an American ideal? Bootstraps are a loop attached to the back of a boot to help the wearer pull it on. The idiom dates back to 1834 when Mr. Murphee satirically described being “enabled to hand himself over a barn yard fence by the straps of his boots.” It appears throughout the 19th century, often in the company of other metaphors for ludicrous impossibilities such as “sitting in a wheelbarrow and trying to wheel yourself” and “getting rich by taking money from one pocket and putting it in another.”

Has capitalism come at the expense of the poor?

Perhaps the most amazing fact in all economic history is the unprecedented rise in wealth per person that has taken place in the last...
The council just approved a ban on websites that offer data about local rental markets and help landlords set their rents. The council blames these tools for exploding housing costs.

San Francisco city council targets free speech to cover up its own housing failures

The San Francisco city council is smashing the mirror because it doesn’t like the face staring back at it. The council just approved a ban...
If this debate eventually does come to a boil, the Supreme Court may need to further clarify its position on Skidmore jurisprudence. But for now, appellate litigators would be wise to steer clear of deference-based argumentation.

New game post-Chevron

For decades, the judicial doctrine called “Chevron deference” dominated American administrative law. In the aftermath of Chevron’s demise in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, however, a...
According to a 2021 study by the University of California, Los Angeles and U.C. Berkeley, over one-third of public school employees are “rent-burdened,” meaning housing costs consume more than 30 percent of their income. The issue is particularly severe for food service workers, more than half of whom are affected.

California to turn unused school land into millions of housing units

In an effort to address a lack of housing that officials say has contributed to a shrinking teaching workforce, the California Department of Education...
Absorption rates have notably risen from 118,000 units in the first quarter to 166,000 in the second, fostering optimism among industry experts about a potential shift from decelerating fundamentals to a growth phase.

Market set for recovery

The multifamily housing market is showing promising signs of recovery, with recent data from CoStar Group revealing a significant increase in demand and stabilization...
Would a YIMBY building boom rejuvenate urban family life or produce sterile, megacity hellscapes?

The housing theory of childless cat ladies

Would a YIMBY building boom rejuvenate urban family life or produce sterile, megacity hellscapes? Housing Boom = Baby Bust? America’s low birth rate is in the...
Insider fraud in this game could negatively affect investment funds, pension accounts, 401Ks, employee livelihoods, access to capital and even personal safety for residents.

Insider fraud in multifamily leasing: Is it happening under your nose?

A few years ago, the reputations of some of the world’s most prestigious universities came under serious question when the U.S. Department of Justice...
Stricter land-use regulations force builders to spread their efforts over a large number of relatively small projects, limiting the number of homes they’re able to build. This, in turn, limits their ability to invest in better homebuilding technology or otherwise take advantage of economies of scale.

Is land-use regulation holding back construction productivity?

Ed Glaeser is perhaps the pre-eminent urban economist working today, and I’ve cited his work repeatedly when looking at land-use restrictions and burdens on...

“Sitting empty:” Vast expanse of federal land eyed for new housing

The White House and the Republican National Committee agree on one thing at least: The sale of surplus federal land could help alleviate a...

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