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Ghost Pepper Hot  Is the housing market TOO hot? Lumber up 90%, steel up 67%, labor costs within 3% of pre-pandemic levels. So here we are, median price of a new single-family residence up 20.3% to a record $381,000 (past 12 mos ending in April). How’s all that for overdosing on inflation? Used home shoppers […]

The whole thing about real estate is, where are all the people going and, what is it they buy when they get there? Go ahead, Google it. The Great Atlantic Migration. A doozy, that one. And. . . there’s one big thing about it that may surprise you (it did me): it holds the top spot […]

First, get over it.  It won’t be 2021. 2022 maybe, if we get lucky on testing and vaccine, says Bill Gates. That long?  It’s not because of the virus.  Or lack of a vaccine.  It’s human behavior. The U.S. has proven incapable of forming a unified front to stop the spread.  We hold top spot […]

Moody’s Analytics says these will be the first to make their way out of the box, listed alphabetically. Boise, ID Denver, CO Durham, NC Madison, WI Provo, UT Raleigh, NC Salt Lake City, UT San Jose, CA Tucson, AZ Washington D.C. Low population density and educational attainment are why.  So big cities hemorrhage as suburbs […]

Last week we asked power brokers across the Metroplex: “What’s working for you?”  One of the answers surprised us.  Covid-19 turned every investor’s shopping list upside down.  The first casualties were retail, office and hospitality. So we began the hunt for the best places to be for the long slog thru the pandemic. Here’s what […]

I’ve been fingered by those close to me lately for ingesting too much news. Guilty as charged, lock me up and garnish my wages. Not that I watch that much TV. TV news channels have gotten so aggravating, my channel choices have shrunk to The Science Channel, NASA Channel, Discovery Channel and an occasional dose […]

The debate rages over the vulnerability of vote-by-mail to fraud. But not in my mind, and here’s why:  though plausible, for the moment let’s set aside this notion of fraud. Three weeks ago, my trusty assistant mailed a check to a bank in Fort Worth for a mortgage payment.   The check never showed.  She ended […]

Global pandemic.  Yesterday’s news. Economic chaos.  Months of it in our rearview mirror. Amid a combative political year where insane sums are paid out to those who exacerbate our fears of existential threats.  Oh, well, 2020. Some parts of the world still work, thankfully. Suburbs. The bidding wars are insane.  One home in New Jersey […]

In a giving moment I ended up donating it to charity, but the T-shirt read: “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”  Such is the outlook for the remainder of 2020 should the “new phase” Covid-19 numbers persist. No better than we did in our response to Covid-19, I’m not too proud of being a […]