Builders are on track to finish more new apartments
in 2020 than in any year since the 1980s, a new study shows, with developers
across the U.S. chasing after the more affluent tenants.
An additional 371,000 new rental units are expected
to hit the U.S. market this year, which is a 50% increase over the number of
new units completed in 2019, according to an analysis from real-estate
analytics firm RealPage.
State and local governments are grappling with how to
create more rentals to combat the rising cost of housing for middle- and
lower-income families. But as much as 80% of new supply this year will come
from luxury developments, or what the real-estate industry calls “Class A”
properties, said RealPage chief economist Greg Willett.
This year’s surge signals that projects planned
around the 2015 peak of the rental market are reaching completion.
The lack of single-family houses available for sale,
and the rising price to buy them, has been one major boost to the luxury rental
market, Mr. Bahrami said.
And although rental supply this year is the highest
in more than 30 years, the construction of single-family homes for sale is well
below historic norms, sending more people in search of apartments, said Calvin
Schnure, chief economist for the National Association of Real Estate Investment
Trusts, a trade group.
“Americans’ finances are in the best shape they have been in years. As a group, U.S. households’ debt-to-income and debt-to-asset ratios in the first quarter fell to their lowest levels since the early 2000s. A prolonged period of low rates have made that debt easier to bear: The Federal Reserve this week reported that households’ overall debt-service ratio—the share of after-tax income going toward debt payments—are near historic lows.”
“But Americans face financial obligations beyond debt payments, such as rents and auto leases, and these are taking a bigger bite out of pay. Indeed, the Fed report shows the share of income going toward non-debt financial obligations is sitting near its highest level since the 1980s. It is a development that particularly for households at lower income levels may be crimping spending.”
“Commerce Department figures show the homeownership rate fell to its lowest levels in over a half-century in the years since the financial crisis, and it doesn’t look likely to recover anytime soon. That has tightened the supply of rental units, pushing rents up 18% over the past five years, according to the Labor Department, even as inflation away from housing has been nearly nonexistent.”
“So while many people who own their homes have benefited from rock-bottom mortgage rates, renters’ monthly nut has risen. Those renters tend to be poorer: The Fed’s most recent survey of consumer finances, conducted in 2013, showed the median annual income of families that rented was $27,800 versus $63,400 for families that owned.”
“Then there are the payments that aren’t included in the Fed’s data on financial obligations, but that consumers are nevertheless obliged to pay. Mobile phone and internet plans, for example, have moved to the essential spending bucket for most households, and they come with a monthly bill. The Labor Department estimates that spending on information and information processing services—a category that includes mobile telephone, landline telephone and internet services—now counts for 3.2% of the average consumer’s spending versus 2.3% in 2000.”
WSJ – Daily Shot: WHO – Global Smoking use under age of 15 6/23
WSJ – Daily Shot: Axios – Number of US Payphones 6/23
“A corporate governance minefield awaits fund managers who will be obliged to pour billions of US dollars into Chinese equities after MSCI, the most influential indexer of emerging market equities, decided to include domestic Chinese A-shares in its main global indices.”
“Murky or undisclosed ownership structures, regular corruption scandals, exposure to unregulated shadow finance and a predominance of behind-the-scenes state influence over corporate decisions are just some of the governance challenges that global investors in the Chinese A-shares are set to encounter, analysts say.”
“A crucial feature of stock market governance is that investors exert influence over the board of directors, who in turn run the company to serve the interests of investors. But for state-owned companies in China, almost the opposite applies. Directors are appointed by the state to run the company for the benefit of state stakeholders who often shy away from engagement with portfolio investors.”
“Although the 222 A-shares slated for inclusion a year from now will represent only 0.73% of MSCI’s flagship emerging markets index, the cohort is far from insignificant. UBS, an investment bank, estimates that passive and active investors who track the index will be obliged to invest about $15bn in the Chinese shares.”
“There is, really, no price discovery. And if there’s no price discovery, is there really a market?” – Steven Bregman, co-founder of Horizon Kinetics
“It seems algos are programmed with a bias to buy. Individual stocks have risen to ludicrous levels that leave rational humans scratching their heads. But since everything always goes up, and even small dips are big buying opportunities for these algos, machine learning teaches algos precisely that, and it becomes a self-propagating machine, until something trips a limit somewhere.” – Wolf Richter
“J.P. Morgan estimated this week that passive and quantitative investors now account for 60% of equity assets, which compares to less than 30% a decade ago. Moreover, they estimate that only 10% of trading volumes now originate from fundamental discretionary traders. This unprecedented rate of change no doubt opens the door to unaccountability, miscalculation and in turn, unforeseen consequence.”
Data, data, data. The more I know about your customers, the more you’re willing to pay me to broker transactions. And the more I know about you (consumer), the better able I am to match you (sell you) with products you’d want.
“This is a game changer for Chinese M&A and could pretty much stop all outbound deal making in its tracks.” – Keith Pogson, EY’s senior partner for financial services in Asia.
“Chinese regulators have ordered three major internet platforms to halt all video and audio streaming services, as the country ramps up its control over online content.”
“Microblogging site Sina Weibo was one of the three slapped with the streaming ban. Popular news portal site iFeng and video streaming platform ACFUN have also been ordered to stop streaming.”
“The three companies did not possess the necessary license to stream audio and visual content and were ‘not in line with national audiovisual regulations and propagating negative speech,’ according to an announcement posted on Thursday night on the website of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT), China’s media oversight body.”
“Users would now have to apply for a license to continue video or audio streaming, according to a statement issued by the company.”
“The abrupt halt on video and audio streaming comes as China steps up its policing of internet content, particularly content it deems salacious. Earlier this month, more than 60 social media accounts, some on Weibo and including many celebrity gossip channels, were shut down for disseminating ‘vulgar content’ and ‘negatively impacting society’.”
“Meanwhile, a new cyber security law that took effect in June now mandates that any data relating to national security must be held on Chinese servers and large data transfers abroad must first be reviewed.”
“When banks fail and regulators decide to liquidate them, it happens on Friday evening so that there is a weekend to clean up the mess. And this is what happened in Italy – with two banks!”
“It’s over for the two banks that have been prominent zombies in the Italian banking crisis: Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza, in northeastern Italy.”
“The banks have combined assets of €60 billion, a good part of which are toxic and no one wanted to touch them. They already received a bailout but more would have been required, and given the uncertainty and the messiness of their books, nothing was forthcoming, and the ECB which regulates them lost its patience.”
“In a tersely worded statement, the ECB’s office of Banking Supervision ordered the banks to be wound up because they ‘were failing or likely to fail as the two banks repeatedly breached supervisory capital requirements.’”
“’Failing or likely to fail’ is the key phrase that banking supervisors use for banks that ‘should be put in resolution or wound up under normal insolvency proceedings,’ the statement said. This is the first Italian bank liquidation under Europe’s new Single Resolution Mechanism Regulation.”
“Turkey has removed the concept of evolution from its high school curriculum, in what critics fear is the latest attempt by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to erode the country’s secular character.”
What does one do when there is an inconvenient truth… deny its existence and keep future generations in the dark.
“The housing market’s comeback after the financial crisis has turned out to be a mixed bag.”
“Prices have recovered to pre-housing-crisis levels. But with slow wage growth, that means there are fewer affordable houses available to buyers, especially in bigger cities.”
“On the surface, the price trend ought to be good news for existing homeowners looking to sell. However, the likely rise in mortgage rates from historic lows means that there will be less incentive to move, according to Mark Fleming, the chief economist at First American.”
“‘You do become a prisoner in your home because of rates,’ he told Business Insider.”
“‘There’s going to be a growing challenge of an increasing financial penalty caused by the rate lock-in effect over time.'”
“Since the 1980s, the long-term drop in interest rates created a built-in incentive to move, Fleming said. Even if a seller’s income was unchanged, it was possible to effectively move into a lower mortgage rate, and so be able to even afford a slightly bigger home.”
“Now, the likelihood that rates will rise from historic lows has spurred the so-called rate lock-in effect: homeowners don’t sell because of the perceived or actual difference in their monthly mortgage payments if they swap their old rate for a new, higher one, Fleming said.”
“In a market with tight inventory, the decision to sell depends on whether homeowners want to risk selling and then not being able to find a new home.”
“‘The existing homeowner is trapped in this prisoner’s dilemma of the cooperative outcome,’ Fleming said. ‘If we all acted simultaneously, it would solve the problem. But we can’t take the risk of being the one that acts when everyone else doesn’t.'”
“At first glance, it’s a persuasive argument. Poorly performing and expensive active managers have lingered in the system for too long, eroding returns for investors.”
“Yet on deeper reflection, index-tracking products are no miracle remedy. They’re more like antibiotics: valuable when deployed in moderation, but likely to do more harm than good should their use become widespread.”
“Indeed, if passive equity funds were to continue their present growth trajectory, they would own all listed stocks by 2030. That could threaten the free-market economy.”
“Essentially, the industry is an oligopoly, dominated by just three giants of asset management, who between them control almost three quarters of all passively-managed investment in stocks.”
“As demand for index products grows, a greater proportion of the world’s listed companies will fall under the control of the three largest investment management groups. Already, these firms collectively own close to 20% of US large-cap companies.”
“Passive dominance won’t happen overnight. Yet, left unchecked, the growth of index-trackers has the potential to erode the market-based economy, one industry at a time.”
“There is also a geopolitical dimension. If the passive giants end up owning large swaths of the capital market, they will also have a big say on the composition of stock and bond indices. Effectively able to decide which country or company should be included or excluded from those benchmarks, they would wield enormous influence over international capital flows. Note BlackRock’s recent call for China to be included in MSCI’s global equity indices.”
“Some might see that as an excessive concentration of power.”
“None of this relieves the pressure on active managers to perform and offer better value to their clients. Nor does it deny the utility of passive investment. Index products offer benefits to investors. The problem is that if the majority of us embrace them, index-trackers threaten to sabotage the entire economic system. Much like antibiotics, if passive funds are overused, they will create more problems than they solve.”
The knock-on effect: diesel engine cars now have a bad taint to them making inventories of auto manufacturers with large diesel production less valuable and hurting the resale value of existing diesel vehicles.
“Excess parking facilities and underused retail space could be redeveloped into small-scale last-mile delivery or pickup facilities, according to Fitch Ratings.”
“Oil prices took a further hit on Tuesday, reflecting disappointment among traders that Opec and its allies agreed to only extend, but not deepen, production cuts to drain the market of excess inventories.”
“…Australian asset manager Altair Asset Management made the extraordinary decision to liquidate its Australian shares funds and return ‘hundreds of millions’ of dollars to its clients according to the Sydney Morning Herald, citing an impending property market ‘calamity’ and the ‘overvalued and dangerous time in this cycle.'”
Bottom line as Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, Latin American specialist at Northwestern University, puts it “[The government] has gone to great lengths to keep the military on its side through cash bonuses, wage hikes and the doling out of lucrative governorships and ministries,.”
“Having profited from ‘smuggling, arbitrage and narco-trafficking schemes,’ many within the military worry that if the president falls they will end up in court and then jail, he said.”
Other Links
WSJ – Daily Shot: FiveThirtyEight – Sleep Patterns by U.S. State 5/30
WSJ – Daily Shot: World Economic Forum – World’s Most Crowded Cities 5/30
