I think that we’d all agree that the last couple of weeks have been brutal ones for our various markets: the stock market closed Friday at 2004 levels, Oil is at an all-time high, and the real estate market here in Michigan continues to plunge to new lows. And all I keep hearing is doom and gloom from the chicken-littles here. And it’s not just the media that’s perpetuating and worse yet – AMPLIFYING these…
These Market Returns Suck
Captain Obvious reporting. I was reading the Wall Street Journal yesterday and saw how bad things are right now in terms of available returns on investment. You can tell the bad news by just reading the headlines and some of the charts: Steep Fall for High-Flyers (China and India stock markets are down over 50%) Even Defensive Names Take Hits (Merck and Pfizer at multi-year lows) The Dow is down 10.7% this year and 11.7%…
The Credit Crunch is Hurting Commercial Real Estate
Thomson financial published a good article** on this this morning. Commercial real estate is (and has been) dead here in southeastern Michigan now for a while, except for apartments, which keep going strong. I’m seeing low vacancies, strong rental demand, and healthy rents. This combined with fantastic cap rates and upside potential make this a great time to own apartment buildings here – if you can get them financed or buy them on a land contract. (You can…
The Journey is THE Thing
Call it blinding flash of the obvious number, what? 87 or 88 for me at least? But after spending the last 25 years or so always looking out toward the future, I figured out a couple of weeks ago that the journey is really the thing.  Those of you that have already figured that out are wondering what the big deal is and why I’m writing about it.  Those that haven’t figured it…
The Sins of the Past – And the Death of Real Estate
When I first began this blog ten months or so ago I began writing about the irresponsible action that the federal reserve was taking to prop up the American stock markets. Â My point was that in the past, when the fed acted to impact the economy in one way or another they had always targeted some economic metric like inflation or interest rates, and their actions were not targeted to impact any one group…
The Building – Part III: The Endless Inspection
In the seemingly never ending interim time between the beginning and the end of the commitment letter process, the owner of the building and I finally agreed that it was time for me to do my physical inspection. It would be swinging without a net a bit for me, since I had neither the financing lined up nor the due diligence finished, but based on both the seller’s motivation and what I had seen already…