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A Narrative of The Housing Economy

2025 Luxury Housing Sellers Need To Buckle Up: Consumers Have Record Optimism Over The Stock Market

Consumer Optimism About The Stock Market Is The Highest Ever Recorded Participants In The Stock Market Tend To Be More Affluent Overall Mortgage Rates Not Expected To Fall Sharply So Equity Withdrawals Are Favorable To Luxury Home Buyers I've been appraising Manhattan properties since 1986, and it is natural for its residents to see the financial markets as a proxy for the local economy. After...

Droning On About Data Cancer In Your Comps

Appraisal Waivers Are No Free Lunch Data Cancer Is A Serious Problem Fannie Mae Is Going Rogue The ability to do an appraisal for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac is getting rarer these days now that the GSEs are waiving appraisals on the majority of transactions. Despite drones being everywhere and the GSEs being in receivership, the latter is desperate for higher loan volumes to feed their origination...

Renters Love Urban Markets And Other Ramblings

While Renters Drove The Suburban Housing Boom During The Pandemic, They Still Love Urban Markets NYC Rents Have Begun To Rise Again As Mortgage Rates Remain Elevated Sun Belt Housing Supply Grew Faster Than Its Massive Population Growth The initial thinking during the market frenzy of the pandemic era was that consumers would seek space over location and in NYC's case move to the suburbs. After...

Messaging About The New York Commercial Office Distress Remains Opaque So Look At The Second City

Chicago Has The SecondHighest CMBS Commercial Office Distress Office Leasing Price Trends Are Rarely Discussed Media Coverage Office Remains The Highest Distressed Commercial Asset Class Our first jobs out of college in 1982 were in Chicagoland and my wife and I loved living there. One of the first things I did was learn where the name "Chicago" came from and have yet to meet a local who knows...

New York City Is Having Second Thoughts About A Tough Stance On Airbnb

Airbnb Battled NYC For Years But Lost With A 2023 Law That Crushed The Market New Bill Exempting 12 Family Properties From Significant Restrictions Being Proposed In Reality, NYC Is A Rental Market, Dominated By Rentals Don't get me wrong. I love New York. However, I have found that economic market forces have always been a tough topic for both New York State and New York City to grapple with...

Taking Inventory Of 2025: Despite High Mortgage Rates, Housing Prices (And Sales) Expected To Rise

Most Housing Analysts Think Home Prices Are Going Up In 2025 Big Banks And Wall Street Are The Most Bullish On Housing Prices Inventory Continues To Be A More Powerful Price Influencer Than Mortgage Rates Lance Lambert of ResiClub one of the best residential housing market analysts around dug in and found a bunch of housing price forecasts for 2025. The bottom line is that all major economic...

Tiny Homes Are Affordable When The Land Is Free

Tiny Home Solutions Gloss Over The Need For Land Land Appreciates While Buildings Depreciate Amazon Is Taking Over The Tiny Home Torch From Sears When we think about the genre of tiny homes, as shown on television reality shows, no one speaks about the cost of land. Housing is experiencing a perfect storm. The median U.S. existing home costs $407,200. Rocket Mortgage suggests that tiny homes cost...

The Cult Of WeWork And The FOMO Of Flow

Adam Neuman Is Personally Worth 110 Times The Value Of WeWork His 2022 Miami Startup Flow Is Backed By a16z, A Leading VC His Investors Seem Driven By FOMO, Not The Potential Upside Adam Neumann, the wellknown founder of WeWork and his new startup, Flow, has a personal net worth of about $2.3B. His former company is now only worth about $21 million. While I've been involved in several startup...

Fannie And Freddie’s Regulator Loves Moral Hazard Like I Love Cranberry Sauce

Fannie & Freddie Are Essential For The Homebuying Process By Expanding Capital For Mortgage Lending The GSEs Did Not Learn Their Lessons From The Moral Hazard Of The Financial Crisis The GSEs Maintain A Cultural Arrogance That Will Get Them Into Trouble If Freed From Conservatorship First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers! Early in my career, I learned that certain costs never go...

You Can Get Anything You Want At Alice’s Restaurant, Starbucks, and Whole Foods Because It Makes Housing Grow

Remembering The Alice Of Alice's Restaurant Fame Premium Grocery Brands Like Whole Foods, Drive Apartment Rents Higher The "Third Place" In A Neighborhood Such As Starbucks Fosters Entrepreneurialism The woman who owned the restaurant made famous by Brooklyn's Arlo Guthrie in his 1967 song Alice's Restaurant Massacree just [gift link>] passed away. It's a tradition that this fun song always gets...