Happy Friday, friends! Maven is developing into such a wonderful social butterfly, which we love because she loves it. Any time we go somewhere she gravitates towards little ones and opens with her go-to ice-breakers, “What’s ‘yo name? How old are you?” She loves the few little friends she has (COVID baby), especially her buddy, Crosby. He is the son of Scott’s long-time friend and they have been two peas in a pod since birth. She gets so excited when he comes to visit and admittedly my favorite part is when they say good-bye because she ever-so-gently moves in for a hug and a gentle kiss on the cheek. WHY CAN’T WE BOTTLE THIS?!
Nearly every day, Compass’s Leonard Steinberg puts together a handful of real estate news bits that are always so interesting I have to share some of my favorites of the week. To receive these every day from Leonard, please click [_here](mailto:ls@compass.com “”) and include your full name and email address to get on his mailing list.
* While construction spending on new U.S. homes over the same stretch has plunged, helping to support prices for existing homeowners, multifamily developers have ramped up construction spending to meet the expected need for rentals in the face of a continued affordability crisis in America for first-time homeowners. (Marketwatch)
* Moms Groups are powerful! …. we have many MAGNIFICENT Moms in the COMPASS family. Angela Swift of COMPASS, Greenwich is one of them and is friends with the nationwide founder of The Local Mom’s network. Angela would be honored to introduce COMPASS agents around the US to their local Mom’s group. Angela sponsors events and is really involved here so they recently did a spotlight on Angela that went out to over 49,000 social media and email subscribers in the Tristate area
“I hear the headlines and they generate a lot of clicks, but I don’t see the death and destruction or anything close to what we saw during the global financial crisis. This, in my estimation, will be a very modest downturn. First, as a country, we’re short between four and five million homes. We just haven’t built enough to keep up with household formation since the global financial crisis. In most markets, we’re close to record lows in terms of inventory for homebuilders.”– David O’Reilly HOWARD HUGHES
* The number of existing-home sales plunged 36.9% from January 2022 to January 2023. (WSJ)
* In some parts of the country, this spring is starting almost three weeks earlier than average, compared with the past four decades. (WSJ)
* $300 million listing? Yup, the old days of “$100 million listing” have been out-done via inflation too! A massive home in central London has been listed for $300 million….. (FT)
* As politicians fight and blame one another for the huge US debt due to rampant spending, this week proposals will emerge to raise revenues via higher taxes including a billionaire minimum tax (about 700 people, worth a combined total of $5 trillion), quadrupling of the levy on stock buybacks and higher taxes on corporations. All proposals are likely to go nowhere in a divided Congress and Senate. The biggest Federal expenditure categories are healthcare, Social Security, and defense, accounting for about 72% of all spending. Around 8% is spent on net interest….similar to what is spent on education. Roughly 86% of federal income comes from individual, social security and medicare taxes. The federal government spent $6.27 trillion in FY 2022, about 25% of the total GDP.
* BEST BUY will now help install Atrium Health health-monitoring devices in homes….. about 56 million Americans are 65 and older and many plan to age at home. About 16 million of them have diabetes and about 70% have high blood pressure while many don’t know it…..
* The UK government has brought in measures to require foreign companies that own UK property to declare their beneficial owners. (FT)