Overbuilt And Overpriced
A report from the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. “Homebuyers aren’t the only ones combing central Ohio for real-estate deals. In the past three years, investment firms searching for bargains outside the nation’s largest cities have paid more than $1.2 billion for 145 central Ohio complexes containing 30,000 apartments, according to Yardi Matrix. ‘Interest from investors is incredibly strong,’ said D.J. Effler, senior vice president of Bellwether Enterprise’s Columbus office. ‘There’s no limit to the amount of capital in search of good multifamily properties in Columbus.’”
“Investor interest has pushed prices for apartments to record highs in recent years: Last year, investors paid an average of $53,422 per Columbus-area apartment, up from $29,373 just five years earlier, according to Yardi. Complexes built in the 1970s and 1980s account for most of the recent sales, but a growing number of newer complexes also have sold. Investors paid more than $100,000 last year for each apartment in the comparably sized boom markets of Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; and Charlotte, North Carolina — more than twice what they paid for a Columbus apartment, Marcus & Millichap found. On the extreme high end, apartment buildings in New York, San Francisco and San Jose cost more than $300,000 per unit.”
“‘I see two distinct markets,’ said Matthew Sharp, co-founder of Hamilton Point Investments, a Connecticut company that bought four central Ohio apartment complexes in recent years. ‘One is what I would call tier-one luxury apartment markets, the trendy ones, the Charlottes, Denvers and Buckheads (Atlanta) — truly Class A. That stuff has been overbuilt and is overpriced. But middle-income to upper-income units in secondary growth markets like Columbus are a phenomenal deal.’”
The Dallas Morning News in Texas. “Dallas-Fort Worth was already the top apartment building market in the country before starts increased by more than 95 percent in the first two months of 2017. Almost 30,000 new apartments will open their doors here in 2017. ‘That’s a lot of new product coming on line at once,’ said Greg Willett, economist with Richardson-based apartment analyst RealPage. ‘Right now we have 50,000 units under construction - that is a lot even by historical standards.’”
“Encore CEO Bradley Miller said he’s being more cautious about development. ‘At this stage of the cycle, the one thing you don’t want to be is stupid,’ he said. ‘We’ve had the mentality of ‘build it and they will come,’ and they have come. But what happens when they don’t?’”
“With rents in North Texas rising on average more than a third in the last 10 years, apartment developers and operators worry that incomes aren’t keeping up. ‘How do everyday people - even those making pretty good money - continue to elevate the percentage of their income going to rent?’ said Rick Graf, president of Pinnacle Living. ‘At the end of the day you have to have people who can afford and are willing to pay that much rent.’”
The Arizona Republic. “Renters in metro Phoenix are getting a bit of a break these days. The Valley is in a midst of an apartment building boom. So many projects are popping up so fast, it’s getting tough to keep track. In central Phoenix, about 4,000 apartments are in progress or planned in the area. Demand was so high for apartments in downtown Phoenix at the end of 2015, the area had the highest average rent in the Valley.”
“But that’s already shifting a bit. Many apartment developers are already building in some rent deals because of the number of new complexes going up, according to real estate analysts. In Scottsdale, another popular spot for new apartment development, the average rent fell almost 1 percent last month, according to ApartmentList.”
From MarketWatch. “Rental costs continued to be one of the priciest things Americans pay for in March, but there are signs some relief may be in sight. The annual growth in rental costs has outpaced annual inflation by more than a full percentage point for 34 months in a row, the longest such streak since the early 1950s. But that may soon ease. ‘We think the recent slowdown is more than just noise,’ Goldman Sachs economists wrote. ‘We believe the lagged impact of elevated multifamily construction activity in the last two years is exerting upward pressures on vacancy rates and downward pressure on prices.’”
“In the five years since the recession ended, multi-family housing starts have run at a pace nearly 30% higher than they did throughout the 1990s. Now that’s starting to bear fruit, particularly in the higher-end areas of the market. According to Zillow data from February, rents were down 9% in Chicago, 5% in San Francisco, and 3% in Miami.”
“Another, less-discussed reason for national rents to be nudging down: massive declines in the oil patch.”
From the last link:
Change from February 2016
Midland, Texas -25%
Casper, Wyoming -24%
Cheyenne, Wyoming -15%
Odessa, Texas -14%
Helena, Montana -10%
‘According to Zillow data from February, rents were down 9% in Chicago, 5% in San Francisco, and 3% in Miami.’
The Ohio article talks about these markets earning a 2 or 3% cap rate. Anyone who paid these prices, and it’s probably most of them, are losing money hand over fist.
Yes, anyone who bought anything in oil country in the few years just before the 2014 oil crash made a bad decision.
That’s simply not true. Rents always go up.
The cap rate doesn’t include the cost of financing. These guys are hemorrhaging cash.
Well, at least the San Diego bubble is still flying high.
‘What’s up with the controversial housing development at 2269 Ebers St. in Ocean Beach? The structure hasn’t been worked on in months, and its exposed wood appears to be deteriorating. Ocean Beach Community Planning Board chair architect John Ambert said he knows some of what’s going on with the stalled development.’
“The contractor for the project had his contractor’s license suspended for failing to comply with an arbitration award,” said Ambert, who added, “The loan/mortgage for the project appears to have gone into default, and currently is in pre-foreclosure.”
I would think Miami would be down more than 3%
It is. When you factor in vacancies and free-bees (effective rents), Denver was down 14% months ago. The effective rents can be down double or triple the official number the REIC puts out. And one NC apartment guy mentioned owners/property managers lie about vacancies so lenders don’t get nervous.
‘Last year, investors paid an average of $53,422 per Columbus-area apartment, up from $29,373 just five years earlier…‘There’s no limit to the amount of capital in search of good multifamily properties in Columbus.’
These idiots have fanned out to every little burg across the country. The reports goes on to expalin how they slap a little paint on them and, “glory be! We can get an extra 50 bucks a month, we’re geniuses!”
How long will it take for that 50 bucks to be returned after you just paid double for a 40 year old complex? The increasing maintenance alone will eat that up every year.
And the funny thing is, they refer to 40-year-old apartments in these little burgs as being “middle to upper income units”. Huh?
“‘I see two distinct markets,’ said Matthew Sharp, co-founder of Hamilton Point Investments, a Connecticut company that bought four central Ohio apartment complexes in recent years. ‘One is what I would call tier-one luxury apartment markets, the trendy ones, the Charlottes, Denvers and Buckheads (Atlanta) — truly Class A. That stuff has been overbuilt and is overpriced. But middle-income to upper-income units in secondary growth markets like Columbus are a phenomenal deal.’”
‘There’s no limit to the amount of
capitalYellen bucks in search of good multifamily properties in Columbus.’‘Sutton Cos. Chairman Mac Pike can summarize all of Austin’s population growth statistics in three words: Austin got discovered. Multifamily experts at Bisnow’s Austin State of the Market event agree that because of its explosive growth, multifamily development has gotten tougher to build affordably.’
“We’ve seen such an influx of product for $2 or more per square foot. That’s not affordable, though we kid ourselves that it is,” Aspen Heights vice president of development Ryan Fetgatter said.’
It’s a good thing those loans are non-recourse, huh Ryan? Cuz you were just kidding when you said you’d pay them back.
New Braunfels, TX Housing Prices Crater 10% YoY
https://www.zillow.com/new-braunfels-tx/home-values/
Interesting read:
Who Will Buy Baby Boomers’ Homes?
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/04/who-will-buy-baby-boomers-homes/522912/
“It’s not that Boomers are going to ‘age in place,’” says Nelson. “They’re going to be stuck in place.” “The Boomers in the exurbs are going to be in a real pickle.”
Obsolescence meets demographics…
“homeowners are hanging on to properties significantly longer—nine to ten years—because they owe more on their houses than they can get for them,”
The end result of paying a 300% premium for a rapidly depreciating asset.
If you can’t find a buyer today for the amount you paid yesterday, you made a very costly error. (And no…. Housing prices don’t go up)
Muslim refugees who are engineers and doctors?
Osama bin Laden was a Civil Engineer, IIRC.
I liked this from the comments:
Which is why home values should be a calculation based on tangible things not “comps”, whimsical flippers bloating the market and corrupt banks holding onto inventory like diamond cartels keeping the prices high.
http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/2017/04/new-421a-may-not-help-housing-market.html
The common theme seems to be that builders have misjudged the incomes of the millennials who have flooded to big cities for jobs in the so-called creative economy
Data point on economic policy going forward. Seems plausible, don’t know if it’s true though. FYI.
Wall Street banker Cohn moving Trump toward moderate policies
By James Oliphant and Svea Herbst-Bayliss
Reuters
April 16, 2017
In a White House marked by infighting, top economic aide Gary Cohn, a Democrat and former Goldman Sachs banker, is muscling aside some of President Donald Trump’s hard-right advisers to push more moderate, business-friendly economic policies.
Cohn, 56, did not work on Republican Trump’s campaign and only got to know him after the November election, but he has emerged as one of the administration’s most powerful players in an ascent that rankles conservatives.
Trump refers to his director of the National Economic Council (NEC), as “one of my geniuses,” according to one source close to Cohn.
More than half a dozen sources on Wall Street and in the White House said Cohn has gained the upper hand over Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, the former head of the right-wing website Breitbart News and a champion of protectionist trade opposed by moderate Republicans and many big companies.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-cohn-idUSKBN17I0RD?il=0
“Wall Street banker Cohn moving Trump toward moderate policies”
Why are globalist policies considered “moderate”? Or “centrist”, that’s another term I’ve seen. Since when is war, the global warming scam, the utter ruin of millions of lives through finance and banking considered “moderate” or “centrist”?
I’ve read enough bs for several lifetimes about who is in favor and who is out of favor at the WH. In fact I just finished the Vanity Fair hit piece and nearly laughed myself silly. The writer used a reality show producer as her main source and device for the story and showed herself to be nothing more than another clueless twit.
“one of my geniuses,” according to one source close to Cohn. LMAO! I, too, have friends who gave me glowing references.
Another Cohn by the name of Roy once advised Trump. You might want to read a little about that. Very interesting.
Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer.
‘Since when is war, the global warming scam, the utter ruin of millions of lives through finance and banking considered “moderate” or “centrist”?’
Pottery Barn rules:
You broke it, you bought it.
“You broke it, you bought it.”
Elaborate. And BTW, did you ever solve your employee difficulty?
Why are globalist policies considered “moderate”?
Moderate = maintaining the status quo.
Fair enough. I guess they couldn’t say “establishment”. I am, however, getting a kick out of this recent “centrist” media meme that’s being bandied about.
“Business-friendly” has, and always will be, at odds with “Trump-voter friendly.” I suspect Trump will go back and forth on this as long as he’s President.
“Business-friendly” has, and always will be, at odds with “Trump-voter friendly.”
It doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve worked for two small businesses where the owners did well and so did I, in a mutually beneficial relationship. And, most importantly, the customers were happy as well.
This is a movement. With or without Trump, there is a movement that has been gathering steam for a while. Ben with his blog has been part of that movement, you know. And others like him. In different ways. There’s groups like Judicial Watch, for example. People like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. And millions of individuals you’ve never heard of, slogging away in their personal and professional lives to reverse the downward spiral of corruption and perversion. Long before Trump ever declared for the Presidency, there has been a movement. And it will continue, long after Trump. Reversing a downward spiral isn’t easy. And it isn’t often done, and especially not with nations and civilizations. And yet, I feel there’s a chance the US may be the first nation to ever do so.
“‘Interest from investors is incredibly strong,’ said D.J. Effler, senior vice president of Bellwether Enterprise’s Columbus office. ‘There’s no limit to the amount of capital in search of good multifamily properties in Columbus.’”
Yellen bux seeking a toe tag home…
Was listening to financial “guru” Bob Brinker on the radio today. I do it mostly for the lulz, and to hear what (((they))) want us to think. He’s tapped into the fed reserve somewhat, so he makes decent calls from time to time probably based on those connections but has had some failed calls that were yuge - mainly because he tries to deny and cover them up. Anyway, today he proclaimed housing to be in good steed as according to him (faithfully quoting government statistics as gospel) NO ONE is being priced out at this time. Aint that good ta know? Bet y’all feel better now that Uncle Scam and his mouthpieces proclaim that the emperor is fully clothed and everything is just pee-chee. Really.
Paging jeff, paging jeff! Did you see this one? (Courtesy of the lively little blog in Greenwich, CT)
https://www.christopherfountain.com/blog/2017/4/14/god-save-the-state#disqus_thread
This was a good comment:
“Her moving to Stonington sounds like a self-serving rumor started by some real estate people.”
I agree. Although any real estate agent with half a brain wouldn’t start such a rumor unless they wanted to goose listings by people desperate to leave. Now, if they had said Greenwich, then I’d give some credence to the rumor. Stonington? No way.
“God save our state”
April 14, 2017 Chris Fountain
Too late
Yah. There are times I’ve considered moving back, usually during the depths of a hot, humid, Florida summer. And I had my sights set on Stonington, but the news keeps getting worse and worse.
However, Westerly, RI looks tempting, sometimes…we had some good times on the southern RI coast during the summer, back in the day.
I was near Narragansett and others
no one ever goes back to RI
Had some good times in Kingston at URHigh.
Funny. Are people in Canada suddenly waking up? Google searches shows a good spike in interest for their housing bubbles.
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/realestateeconomy/canadians-are-googling-housing-bubble-like-mad/
I was reading a discussion between a communist and a capitalist. Capitalist says, “The desire to improve one’s own life, and gain status and self-determination (power) are part of basic human nature. Most humans have no interest in working for others without compensation.” Communist replies, “There are nasty tendencies in humans, doesn’t mean we should give into them or build a system around them.”
We need to deal with the reality of human nature and build systems around that.
It made me think about regulation and the financial sector. We need to deal with the reality of human nature. If human nature is going to lead people to take the maximum profit they can now and not care if it blows up the system, we need to accept it and build simple regulation which takes that into account.
Greenspan said Wall Street will always front-run the Fed, and the Fed’s job is to go in and clean up the mess. Okay. The regulation then should focus on mitigating the blast damage, instead of trying to ineffectually micromanage Wall Street, as Dodd Frank does, in an attempt to make it look like something is being done. We need to work on making the blasts smaller and more contained.
Instead, Wall Street has consolidated and aggregated into one opaque mass, with massive counterparty risks, and with risks to consumer deposits. Wall Street needs to be disaggregated again, and interconnections between the pieces need to be cut.
In the past, with Glass Steagall, the various components of the financial sector were firewalled. Banks could not engage in trading securities, they could not grow across state lines, and savings-and-loans were separated from banks, to focus on mortgage lending. This paper (see timeline on page 1) shows a pretty good timeline of Wall Street de-regulation and consolidation. CitiGroup then formed which was the poster child of the consolidated multi-headed Wall Street hydra.
The Fed policy of letting Wall Street run, then firehosing money at Wall Street when their schemes blow up might seem like it doesn’t have any downside. But money printing is a subtle tax on the rest of the currency holders. Proponents might say there’s been no inflation. But money is sucked out of investment into levering companies up with debt and stock buybacks. Sectors into which cash has been pumped have seen massive price rises. Interest rates are the cost of money over time - firehosing printed money into the system naturally lowers that cost of money (see stocks and houses, and the cost of goods around financial centers like Manhattan to find inflation).
Few people are going to see these linkages, and those that suspect will immediately be told by economics Nobel (equivalent) laureates that it’s not true. But those who think that printing money and guaranteeing Wall Street profits has no unintended consequences are fooling themselves. Financial alchemy, getting something for nothing, simply does not exist. The economy is a competition for resources. To think that those resources, in the form of money, can be diluted and firehosed to favored sectors engaging in socially destructive behavior will have no consequence is folly.
We know what is able to provide a stable financial system. However, with the growth of computers, and their ability to represent and manipulate logical constructs, which is what Wall Street deals in, led to a heady period of experimentation.
However, the underlying realities did not change.
I’m very much a believer in letting people be creative. If portions of the financial sector wish to engage in experimentation, in using computers to create and manipulate and sell new, exotic logical constructs, they should be allowed. Who knows what they can come up with. However, that experimental section should be wholly firewalled from the rest of the financial sector, and it should most assuredly be risky, i.e. not receive taxpayer guarantees.
Keynes famously said “In the long run, we are all dead.” But that’s not true. The next generation will face the consequences of what we do today. And generations after that.
Another maxim, contradicting Keynes’ statement, is: “A society grows great when men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.”
The latter seems to be a more industrious and wealth-generating, and less hedonistic approach to the economy.
“A society grows great when men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.”
That is a great quote, thank you. And so true. A person can never go wrong trying to make things better in the future, even if they think they’ll never see it. In fact, that just might be the essence of a successful life, when you think about it.
It depends on what the definition of “we” is.
That said, for whatever reasonable definition of “we” you choose, in the very long run “we” are all dead.
Thousand Oaks, CA Housing Prices Crater 15% YoY
http://www.movoto.com/thousand-oaks-ca/market-trends/
Conduct genocide against Christians…
Enjoy the the increase in property price and investment opportunities…
—
Ruined Aegean houses going for premium prices
İZMİR – Anadolu Agency
Growing demand for İzmir’s old stone houses among those looking to escape the stress of the city has resulted in a rapid increase in housing prices, making many run-down houses in seaside villages now worth as much as a luxurious villa.
İzmir’s rural areas have become a drawing card thanks to a temperate climate, clean air, lack of traffic, easy transportation as well as developed health and education infrastructure.
Stone houses that have been abandoned by their owners in the villages are now fetching prices starting at 300,000 Turkish Liras.
She said most of her customers came from Istanbul and bought land and houses with the expectation that prices would increase even more.
April/07/2017
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ruined-aegean-houses-going-for-premium-prices-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=111691&NewsCatID=379
Bubbly night in Asia Minor
Bubbly night in Asia Minor
I believe it’s bubbling all over the world…
http://www.tbo.com/news/plan-to-shell-out-more-if-youre-renting-in-tampa-bay-20170407/
which member of the PPT is gonna be wheeled out this week?
OT, but how many people do you suppose cancelled their Facefark accounts in protest over the fact that the platform live streams snuff films, among other nasty stuff?
There are things people can do about violence, war and that sort of thing. Cancel your FB account. Now. A small gesture, indeed, but an effective one. Surely you don’t want to be part of and an unpaid asset of a company that allows this?
Already in the last 24 hours I’ve had this conversation with a family member and a buddy. And I am completely stunned how they justify why they won’t cancel their account. “I only go there two minutes a day”. “I can only communicate with so and so through FB, that’s the only way I can find out what’s going on with him” “I only go there for information on my breed of dog”.
Yes, Facebook is single-handedly responsible for what their users stream. What they should do is moderate even more, every live stream requires scheduling and approval by Palmetto and the ladies of the Parent Teacher Association. Your family member and buddy are probably even more stunned that you are a clueless doofus. Heil Herr palmetto!
We have a weiner! A Facefark-owned, unpaid asset of Mark the Z. Congratulations, dingus!
Is the Fed serious about plans to wind down its Unaffordable Housing program?
The Economist explains
Why America’s Federal Reserve might make money disappear
The Fed has signalled that it will soon reduce the size of its balance-sheet
The Economist explains
Apr 17th 2017
by M.J. and H.C.
BEFORE the financial crisis, America’s Federal Reserve held assets worth around $850bn. Today, the central bank’s balance-sheet is more than five times as large, at $4.5trn. It grew during and after the financial crisis as the Fed purchased vast quantities of government bonds and mortgage-backed securities using newly created money, most of it under a policy known as quantitative easing (QE). Now the Fed is preparing to sell some assets, and retire the corresponding money. Why and how will it do this?
The Fed resorted to QE to stimulate the economy after it had moved the short-term interest rate, its usual policy instrument, as low as it could go. Debate rages over how, exactly, QE worked; Ben Bernanke, the former Fed chairman, once quipped that the policy “works in practice but not in theory”. But it is clear enough that QE pushed up the price of long-term bonds. This put downward pressure on long-term interest rates (which move inversely to bond prices). Today, however, the Fed, now led by Janet Yellen (pictured), is raising short-term rates, as it tries to keep a lid on inflation. So—the logic goes—it should also shrink its balance-sheet, to push up long-term rates.
There are different ways to shrink the balance-sheet. The most aggressive approach would be to sell bonds. This would please QE’s critics, who claim a large balance-sheet distorts financial markets. But nobody is certain what the effects of unwinding QE will be, and the Fed wants its policies to be predictable. So it is more likely to let the balance sheet gradually “run off”, by ceasing to reinvest, in new securities, the money it receives when its bonds mature. That happens constantly. For example, $425bn of its Treasuries come due in 2018 and another $350bn in 2019. The Fed could stop reinvesting some proportion of this money. Or it could pick the simplest option, which is to halt reinvestments altogether.
How much will the balance-sheet shrink? Plentiful liquidity helps to keep the financial system stable. Some argue that this benefit is so large that the Fed shouldn’t shrink its balance-sheet at all, and instead should focus on holding the right mix of assets. These arguments are not yet prevailing. In any event, the balance-sheet will remain larger than it was before the financial crisis, because the economy needs more money than it did. For example, before the crisis, there was a little over $800bn of currency in circulation; today, the figure is over $1.5trn. All that cash appears as a liability on the Fed’s balance-sheet and must, therefore, be backed by assets. So, although the Fed may start to unwind QE, it will have to cling on to at least some of the securities it has bought.
…
At first I thought this was London, UK, but it is London, Ontario, suburb of Toronto.
More of the same story… the frenzy.
http://www.lfpress.com/2017/04/16/bidding-wars-shortage-of-listings-challenge-london-buyers-realtors
Who has some cashola…..wow….
http://nypost.com/2017/04/15/for-50m-you-can-own-the-last-of-manhattans-gilded-age-mansions/
Warren wants to keep the bubble going, since his companies rely on debt fueled consumer spending, it make sense:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/berkshire-broker-seeks-wealthy-chinese-buyers-for-us-houses/ar-BBzWxWl?li=BBnbfcN
In financial markets we live in a world with finite limits. The population in general believes that rent prices always rise, but that is not entirely true. It feels as if it does if you are a renter but my question is “What will you do when you are not in a position to pay? Renters get into that position sometimes and in general we live in a world of tending cycles. Our stupid government has a policy to create inflation and they are good at it it just happens at the moment they are having trouble obtaining their inflation goals. They will probably succeed and we will have rising rents until we do not. Interest rates and trends will return to the median. Rents will stop rising. home prices will fall and interest rates will go up. The cycle will change we just do not know when.
It’s a’ changin’ already my good friend….. it’s a’ changin’ already.
Florida Rental Rates Sink 4% YoY Statewide
https://www.zillow.com/fl/home-values/