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Strategies & Market Trends : Galapagos Islands -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (48351)	10/24/2003 5:52:35 AM
From: X Y Zebra	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 57110

you think that we are in the same secondary bubble (RE) as was Japan? there is real estate and then there is real estate... I personally do not think we are in a bubble. The demand for residential real estate has been strong due to people buying homes to live in them not to merely speculate, or to place money that otherwise would be eaten away by inflation (a la 70's style) Obviously the low interest rates has helped people that otherwise could not be buying at all. Commercial real estate (as in office buildings) has not been particularly strong and there are areas where only the government is expanding its use. The tech bust has certainly helped cool down any new demand for office space. Industrial real estate i.e. office/warehouse (for example in Seattle), has been cool since Boeing leaving for greener pastures left a healthy supply of available warehouse space that would make a developer of spec. space seriously think it twice before building. --not to mention the morons at city hall that their sole purpose in their existence is to make the developer's life impossible ... ah and let's not forget wet-lands .... Therefore, any new warehouse has to be thoroughly researched and must have a purpose... or the investor must be well heeled to put up with 18 months of bullshit. Latest report is.... leasing market is beginning to inmprove... but only a little. I do not believe that builders are building to see if there are greater fools that would buy the homes in question, they are merely satisfying a demand based on need rather than speculative buying. Smaller communities seem to be growing and doing so quietly and strongly. It is a little bit of a puzzle to me since it appears that there has not been a serious number of new jobs being created, yet people keep moving from larger cities to smaller communities.... and somehow, they seem to hold jobs.... do not ask me how that happens.... A specific example... I know of a distribution company that moved in a new warehouse using approximately 70,000 s.f. of space and had an additional 36,000 s.f. available. For a while they were offering for lease this additional space and not exactly at a fire-sale price... well... this month they decided (ahead of original plans), to use it all up... that is over 100,000 s.f. of new tilt-up warehouse expansion... and this seems to be repeating over and over in other businesses... Markets like Las Vegas have enjoyed a tremendous run but in this instance there has been a lot of jobs created there, or at least so it seems. The government of Nevada is without question the friendliest to business and so, many businesses are moving there and with them the jobs that have helped fuel the boom in the Las Vegas market. I do not believe that there can be any parallels drawn between the Japanese RE and the US markets. For one, the population in the US is growing and if you take the immigration "segment" of the population alone it is growing faster than what people think.... all this fuels demand for housing (not to mention the fact that size of household is getting smaller, which will also help demand for new housing) I do not believe that Japan's population is growing and the last time I checked not many "foreigners" were moving to Japan. Think about this... John Tempelton considers that the US Dollar will lose 40 % of its value... where should money be placed in financial assets or in hard assets...? particularly when interest rates are low... and more importantly, demand for housing seems to be relentless. Is that a bubble or simply money looking for a safe "home" -g I am not implying that there are no more real estate cycles, they will continue, but a bubble right now, I do not believe there is one at all. Besides... no one can "short" houses so... -ggg as for IQ tests... i think all the people with low iq reside at the planning commissions of every city... -ggg [or they get a job in the wetlands office... -lol]