Josh Maher's Blog » RealEstate
The importance of context
Tweet Great thoughts by Brian Crouch on the importance of context. As a writer, this resonated with me as there is an incredible difference in consuming content that has no framework as to why it is relevant. The story of the violinist here is an interesting one as the only reason anyone recognizes that he is one of the best is because there are experts that deem him to be one of the best. Listening to him on a subway though may or may not be a great experience for the listener. The difference is that once the listener knows that experts agree his skills are superb, the listener is willing to appreciate the sounds more than if their ears were delighted on the subway. For investors, finding and paying for the song on the subway … Read entire article »
Filed under: blogging, Investing, RealEstate
Commercial real estate outlook
Tweet For those of you interested in commercial real estate, here is some good analysis from CoStar to kick of 2013… Highly recommended to review. The short analysis is that the commercial recovery is up essentially ~287% since 2009 vs. the S&P 500’s ~142%. You’ll notice most of that gain is from multifamily transactions in prime markets. Office/Retail being the laggards and especially office/retail in non-prime markets. Thinking through what this means… there are still plenty of people who have a need to live somewhere – new household development has returned to pre-2009 levels (during the 2009 timeframe new household creation dropped significantly). This also means that the small business growth that drives the Office/Retail transactions has not caught back up yet (and perhaps is a place to still find value). I have also … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing, Profit, RealEstate
Affordable housing is closer than you think
Tweet Despite most of the talk about home prices and whether or not they have recovered, most of the conversation is around the improving picture of housing inventory/starts or only focus on using things like the Case-Shiller index. These are all important aspects of housing and in fact the outstanding inventory seems to be going down as homes are sold and banks turn foreclosures into rentals instead of selling them. This is happening at a time when builders are rapidly ramping up and turning the housing situation into a full recovery (especially in locations like Houston). This is all good news but doesn’t really indicate if homes are more or less affordable. Bill McBride runs a great series on his blog Calculated Risk that tracks the Price-to-Rent ratio as the housing numbers continue to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing, RealEstate
Renting, Buying, or something like it
Tweet Renting and buying have been the only real options for getting a place to live in the US. With the 2008 housing bubble these limited options scared about everyone, but didn’t shake many people to think that the problem needed some imagination. I came across thinktrio which does just that – thinks about living in homes from a new perspective and allows you to buy into ownership of a home while still allowing you to move to another city (into a ThinkTrio property). They don’t exactly describe it this way, but it looks a lot like a time share for permanent residences. You own the right to live there; however, you aren’t stuck in a single location, don’t own the underlying real property, and pay a price in between renting and … Read entire article »
Filed under: RealEstate, Technology
WA State Economic Forecast Q3 2012
Tweet Steve Lerch recently presented the WA State Economic forecast from the Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council. It was an interesting insight into where the local economy sits within the local business cycle and in relation to the country. It is important for local business owners and investors to recognize what is happening locally. All in all, we are still in recovery mode locally with an 83k job gap from the business cycle peak after 55 months. This is drastically longer than the 1990 cycle where we were above the peak after 5 months and the 2001 cycle where we were above the peak after around 45 months. We definitely have room to grow, but the data does show that it has been steady growth. The good news about that is … Read entire article »
Filed under: Economics, RealEstate
Advancing in Careers and Life
Tweet I came across this slide show from Bob Pritchett the other day in conjunction with the review cycle at Microsoft. Keep in mind that living in Seattle the review cycle over at Microsoft is what helps to raise potential real estate and angel investors and turn away potential entrepreneurs or other startup employees. That made this deck ring true even more as the principles here are important for corporate employees as much as they are for startup employees, students, and people trying to lead a great life in general. What are you doing that will advance your career, make you more money, or make you happy in life? Some of the points infer that things like a great degree doesn’t matter – e.g. there are 323k living Harvard Alumni – to put … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship, Microsoft, RealEstate
Real Estate in Q4 of 2012
Tweet Looking at the latest numbers there is a lot of evidence that the picture for real estate in general continues to improve. Some of this evidence includes the continual monthly decline in foreclosures, prices being back to 1990-2000 levels when looking at price-rent ratios, bank REO down 18%, and the continued speculation that the bottom is in. There has even been a lot of evidence that commercial real estate is crawling back. Despite the improvement, I think that this is going to continue to be somewhat slow, there is a lot of new real estate projects that are going to get completed in the next year or two adding apartments, commercial space, and little to no condos. These are where all the people with big pools of capital are putting there money (or … Read entire article »
Filed under: RealEstate
It Takes Two to Tango
Tweet I get a lot of feedback about my Covered Call ESPP strategy from efficient market theorists. They tell me that I will make and lose money on the trades based on the efficiency of the market. They commonly forget that markets are composed of people and when it comes to individual transactions there is a buyer and a seller. Howard Marks ranted about this in a recent letter (see below). The fact that transactions have buyers and sellers means that while the market may display efficiencies, each transaction Understanding who is on both sides of the transaction is important. If you are looking to make a new investment of any kind, an Angel investment, a Real Estate Investment, or purchasing shares of a business on a public market you need to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, RealEstate, stocks
