Urbanexus Update - Issue #134

It is almost a half a century since the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo on America, turning a modest inflation problem into a protracted bout of soaring prices and economic misery. But the stagflation of the 1970s is back on economists’ minds today, as they confront strengthening inflation and disappointing economic activity. 

According to the Urban Land Institute’s semi-annual real estate forecast, a building consensus of 40 of the nation’s economists and industry analysts sees light at the end of the tunnel for the U.S. commercial sector through 2023.

The knock-on effects of slower Chinese growth would be felt around the world, though so far financial fallout seems likely to be contained.

The Evergrande story is bigger than just one company. It’s about China’s unsustainable model of economic growth, which has relied on endless investment and a mad, debt-fueled development frenzy in recent years. That model helped China soar, but the country is now experiencing some turbulence.

A conversation with Chris Herd, who foresees a future in which most companies are remote-first.

While office space across all classes (A, B and C) are seeing higher-than-normal vacancy rates, Class B or C space is making up a growing share of what’s vacant in many markets. But not all.

The M student housing tower in Seattle’s University District recently sold for $138 million — which at $1,007 per net square foot is the most expensive price per square foot for a multifamily building in the city’s history, according to Colliers. 

It beat out the previous record holder, Tower 12 in Belltown, which sold for $825 per square foot in 2017.

Headwaters Economics shines a light on record-breaking costs in the West of the USA.

Nine factors that are influencing purchasing.

Having survived a recall vote, Governor Newsom is free to focus on the state’s homeless population and housing shortage. He has more room to maneuver than he did when he first took office. And the extent to which housing prices and purchase transactions have gone nuts in California is highlighted in this article.

As the housing crisis in the West deepens, more unhoused people are making a home outside.

The company follows the same principle in each of its projects: “You buy the best corners of the city you can. We think long term and are conservatively leveraged or have no leverage,” says Dan Blatteis. Some of Blatteis & Schnur’s biggest projects to date include At Mateo in the Arts District in downtown L.A. as well as a $500 million project in the works in San Francisco’s iconic Union Square. It also has a number of properties in areas such as Santa Monica and Venice, betting big on upscale retail zones.

High-street retail — stores located on main streets — has fared better than some other sectors, especially professional services and fitness, which are taking longer to bounce back from the pandemic’s impact on business and retail foot traffic. “Since the start of 2021 and the shift in the presidential election and the rollout of the vaccine, everything has been fantastic in the high-street retail markets,” Greg Briest, a vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle and added that vacancies in posh retail districts such as the Golden Triangle, Abbot Kinney, and Melrose Place have filled up, and “opportunities have become limited.”

Master-planned communities provide an attractive option to a variety of buyer groups. In fact, Zonda data shows that in many states across the country, neighborhoods within a planned community generally sell at a faster rate than other neighborhoods. What makes these locations so attractive to prospective buyers? Zonda Advisory principal Mollie Carmichael and senior vice president Kristine Smale recently shared insights on a few of the top “make me move” trends within planned communities—along with examples of places executing them well—most of which are interconnected on some level and all of which don’t seem as though they’ll be going away any time soon.

Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation, by Harvard University economists Edward Glaeser and David Cutler characterizes the pandemic as a serious “existential threat to the urban world, because the human proximity that enables contagion is the defining characteristic of the city”.

As Aaron Renn points out, the Green Mountain State, with its natural beauty, small towns and traditional lifestyle, sometimes seems too good to be true. Vermont illustrates many of the cultural contradictions of place in America. It reveals that the preferred environments of many on the left and right actually overlap. Don’t be fooled by their rhetoric; leftist whites also prefer largely white environments. Portland, Ore.; Boulder, Colo.; and Austin (the whitest major city in Texas) are hot destinations for white progressives. There’s also long been a rural component in the modern American left, recalling the “back to the land movement” of the 1960s and 1970s. This left-right overlap in Vermont was humorously pointed out in a Saturday Night Live skit in which a neo-confederate group in Virginia decided to have their annual retreat there.  

In their new book, Harvard economists Edward Glaeser and David Cutler characterize COVID and related issues as an “existential threat to the urban world, because the human proximity that enables contagion is the defining characteristic of the city” Fatality rates data continue to show an association between higher county urban densities and their fatality rates. Urban density is used as a surrogate for the overcrowding that increases exposure density. The issue is not density per se, however, but consistent with crowding which is often found in dense urban areas.

Epic droughts, wildfires and ever-strengthening hurricanes. As weather events become more extreme, some experts are regarding them as “a new normal.” This video focuses on what is happening focused on the west of the USA, which is experiencing the combined effects of a severe drought cycle and warming temperatures

In their new book, Harvard economists Edward Glaeser and David Cutler characterize COVID and related issues as an “existential threat to the urban world, because the human proximity that enables contagion is the defining characteristic of the city”

Realizing he could make good money in real estate, Laryy Johnson dropped out of law school after one year to pursue his newfound career in the summer of 1962. It was also the year NASA began to construct the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston. Seeing an opportunity, Johnson moved to Houston and started working for a commercial real estate brokerage firm.

Johnson Development’s first planned community was Steeplechase, a 1,000-acre infill development on the northwest edge of Houston. Johnson acquired the property in 1979, set up a MUD, and developed it with a swimming pool, a clubhouse, and a trail network. In the late ’70s, Johnson was also hired by Georgia businessman J.B. Fuqua to manage a 10,500-acre former plantation south of Houston, now referred to as Sienna. Johnson set up a Levee Improvement District, similar to a MUD, raising $20 million to build a levee and manmade lake system that would protect Sienna from periodic flooding by the nearby Brazos River.