by Brian Brady
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Bloodhound Blog is two years old tonight. Congratulations to all the Bloodhounds. Here’s a little something from the archives to demonstrate my improvidence:
How can this development persist in a real estate market that all experts predict to plunge? The simple answer is that demographics are on California’s side:
1- Population still grows here statewide at a 1.5% annual clip. Now that may seem like anemic percentage growth compared to Nevada and Arizona but look at the astounding number of people moving to the Golden State. California enjoys a net gain of some 700,000 people each year.
2- There is a housing shortage in California. The affordability index may not be an applicable measure moving forward.
3- California employment is holding steady, in fact, a net gain of higher paying jobs are coming into the state. Why? California has high taxes and is hardly business friendly. Businesses want to be near the huge consumer base (the fifth largest economy in the world) that are California residents.
4- People would rather live in California than Buffalo.
Oops. I was bit early with the recovery prediction.
Congrats Greg and Cathleen.
Greg Swann says:
Congratulations to you, Brian, and to all the Bloodhounds, past and present.
I’ll have more in the morning. In the mean time, here’s an Unchained Melody I can’t embed.
June 29, 2008 — 12:32 am
Caesar Parisi says:
Congrats and Happy Birthday. Also thanks to all the great writers and contributors for their time and energy put into this blog.
June 29, 2008 — 7:47 am
David Shafer says:
Brian, you are not alone at the premature recovery, nor your reasoning. We now know in retrospect that RE could act the same as stock markets, allowing for speculation to push pricing, instead of market fundamentals. I think that this was the moment that real estate moved beyond just being local. In Florida, local, regional, and national home builders fueled the speculation by building (at least starting to build) in areas that had no infrastructure nor local economy large enough to sustain the new homes. These areas are the hardest hit by foreclosures and devaluation. This is of course an old story in Florida, but people tend to forget the bad times. Keep up the great posts, I for one really appreciate them.
June 29, 2008 — 10:00 am
Brian Brady says:
Thanks, Dave. I thought it amusing when I looked back at some of the old posts yesterday.
I appreciate the nice words. The really good stuff on BHB comes from the readers who constantly give us great ideas.
June 29, 2008 — 10:15 am
Lenore Wilkas says:
Happy Birthday Bloodhound and all of your wonderful contributors!!
Brian, I couldn’t have said it better than you! My County in California is short over 20,000 housing units! You are so right, demographics are on the side of the state and in my County, too. As an agent working the San Francisco Peninsula, with enormous housing shortages and prices that haven’t dipped much in most of the area, we are seeing a vibrant job market, and people willing to spend their income in order to live in what I call Fantasy Island.
Unless we find a way to build housing without the stupid NIBY’s stopping every project, we will have continued problems with high costs for small houses. It’s an issue that’s gone on for too a long time in our area.
June 29, 2008 — 10:35 am
Robert Kerr says:
Oops. I was bit early with the recovery prediction.
I’ll say!
Happy Terrible Twos, BHB.
June 29, 2008 — 5:33 pm
Colleen Kulikowski - Buffalo Repat says:
Just spent a four day weekend celebrating with all my Buffalo repats, those of us that left for the likes of California, Arizona, Florida and the world and decided that there is no place in the world we would rather be.
Buffalo is positioned for something greater, technology companies are taking notice, insurance and healthcare companies too. On Friday I sat and listened to twenty high-tech company CEO’s explain why they are here. Over and over I heart these CEO’s talk about what a great location, how wonderful the people are and how great it is to do business in Buffalo. Right next to that presentation was a Career Fair with over a thousand people in attendance who wanted to come back to Buffalo. The 40 companies that had positions were only presenting career level positions at this opportunity. Many are seeing the benefits of living and working here. Quality of life, sports, cultural arts, affordable housing and you are never more than twenty minutes from downtown Buffalo.
June 30, 2008 — 2:06 pm