Tag: Covid-19

White-Hot Real Estate – Pt 1

The real title this week is, “Selling Real Estate in a White-Hot Market”.

Future topics include:

  • Real Estate (in general) in a White-Hot Market
  • How to Handle Real Estate as an Asset in Any Market
  • Renting versus Buying in a White-Hot Real Estate Market

ALL of these topics have come up in conversations with friends and clients over the past year, even more so in the past five months. There is no question that real estate – especially around major cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Raleigh/Durham, and Atlanta – is sizzling hot. Even cities such as Atlanta where there are residential areas inside of a sprawling city, those “suburban feel” areas are also on fire.

Whether or not to sell their home has come up in conversations with friends and clients over the past year, even more so in the past five months.

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Get Ready for Corona Inflation

A quick post, as today’s message presents a challenging fact. Sometimes the truth hurts and better on a Friday than a Monday! Keep reading, though, for an inspiring conclusion.

Fact: Prices for discretionary (and non-discretionary) items are about to go UP. All one needs to look at is the spike in residential home prices that began in mid-2020 and is still going. Demand for suburban homes has skyrocketed due to the work-from-home and leave-big-cities trends, among other major factors. As learned in high school and college economics, as demand increases generally so do prices.

Travel and hotels will probably see the most noticeable price increases post Covid.

Photo courtesy of Sean Sullivan, https://smsullivanphotography.com/. Cruz Bay, St. John USVI.

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Looking Ahead to What’s to Come

As we approach the end of an extremely weird and difficult year, no doubt what is on lots of people’s minds: What is to come in the months and year immediately ahead?

From an economic and financial standpoint, a great deal depends on several factors very well summed up in a recent The Wall Street Journal article.*

In order to gauge how early 2021 will look, we need to understand:

  • How bad this latest surge in coronavirus cases might get?
  • What measures people and state and local governments take and the resulting effects on spending?
  • How much relief will come from the federal government?
  • How much better things will look toward the end of 1Q 2021?
As we approach the end of an extremely weird and difficult year, no doubt what is on lots of people’s minds: What is to come in the months and year immediately ahead?

Continue reading “Looking Ahead to What’s to Come”

The Biggest Winners

It is only fair that if there was an edition two weeks ago titled “Biggest Losers” there be an accompanying edition, “Biggest Winners.” Because there are A LOT of winners out there. But the financial and news media do not sell advertising talking about winners.

Here are the most obvious Winners, especially financially speaking:

Several of my clients and I painfully combed through their spending as part of the financial planning process. In most cases, these people came out with a greater awareness of who and what is most important to them.

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Biggest Losers

Upon recently personally experiencing the multiple shocks of:

  • Minimal amounts of people at rush hour in one of the typically busiest cities and train stations in the world,
  • Open parking spaces and empty parking lots at one of the busiest train lines in the world,
  • No lines at Starbucks in the typically busiest city in the world…

… I started thinking bigger-picture about who will be most deeply affected in the intermediate-term by the virus pandemic and the resulting slow-downs, shut-downs, cuts, and service eliminations. Near the top of the list of business types and job types negatively affected are (obviously),

  • Restaurants and their owners
  • Airlines
  • Commercial real estate property owners
  • Business conference managers
  • …the list goes on.
New York Penn Station at the morning “rush hour”, October 2, 2020.ation at “rush hour”

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