February 2019 Insider’s Report
We do our macro outlook of what's going on in the world economy and how it relates to you who are at home and the real estate market, etc. This is going to be a quick one today. I'm going to start making some shorter videos, some more bite-sized, consumable videos for everybody. I'm just looking at some sites I look at all the time. I want to give you guys some of these values that I am looking at and this is where I get a lot of my information. Zerohedge.com is an awesome place. Shadowstats.com is another unbelievable place to get any economic stats that you want. It's called shadowstats.com, but its shadowgovernmentstatistics.com and zerohedge.com is unbelievable too.
It's happening
It's really talking about what is actually going on in the economy, what is the actual unemployment rate, things like that. Right. A couple of the headlines I'm looking at right now, "US housing market and free fall as new buyers can't afford a home." Then a daily update on Shadowstats, "December New Home Sales confirmed a downturn. The 3.7% monthly game was really a drop of 5.5% net of massive downside revisions. Fourth quarter sales dropped to 10% both to year to year and the quarter to quarter. Third consecutive quarter contraction suggestive of a downside revision to fourth quarter GDP." So basically just saying, the market's in a little bit of free falling away. The market's turned real estate-wise. We're seeing that here locally. We're seeing it nationally, but especially here at the whole of Metro Detroit, we're seeing that weird undulation when it comes to the market and real homes. There are homes sitting on the market, some are selling. If you're overpriced a little bit, they're not selling it really at all. It might be getting some showings here and there, but it's just not going. There are many reasons.
Affordability is an issue
Again, like right here, "US housing market in free fall" and that's the headline. I mean, new buyers can't afford a home. And I've seen this article once, I've seen it so many times and it's what is actually going on in the market. People just can't afford a home. They're having a hard time saving for homes. And we're still at 64% or so nationally on the rental ratio, people renting. That was near 70% before the recession, probably 69%, something like that. So, we have a long way to go. We still have a lot of people that can't afford homes, can't save for homes.
The reasons
Rental rates have gone up a ton. Rents have gone up so that means you can't save for homes. Millennials having a very hard time. They got into the market when the crash was hitting and they might not have felt that effect, but they're feeling the effects now because they haven't been able to save. incomes have not gone up with inflation. And that's again, the effects of inflation that we've talked about that a ton. The Federal Reserve in 1913 it started all this mess. It's going to be interesting where we have the Fed tightening now they're talking about easing up again and printing more money or interest rates possibly going up that.
Bubbles everywhere
The fact that market trade wars, currency wars, there are so many things going on out there, obviously every single day is all time student debt bubble, all time credit card bubble. We are in a bond bubble, we have asset bubbles everywhere and it's just really mind-blowing. So with me, I think a pretty interesting year, the next few months I'm guessing are going to be kind of what we've seen not as crazy as last year, I don't think, but I think they were going to kind of keep chugging along. We'll see what happens with the government. When the government shuts down or more or less when they talk about debt ceiling stuff or funding the government that tends to spook the market's a little bit. So we'll see what happens there.
But, anyway, I don't want to go too long into this. I love the conversations that I get to have with all of you individually. I want these to be consumable. Some of these Insider's Reports we've had 30, 40, 50, 60-minute reports before and it's just not that consumable for people. I appreciate you guys more than anything. Let me know what questions you have. How it might affect your home, how it might affect you locally and I would love to chat with you about it. Like I said, if you can, we can do it in the comments here. That way we can all benefit from it. That'd be great. If you'd rather not do it in the DM's, that's fine too. So keep it private. I appreciate you guys more than anything, really do. I appreciate your time, your attention, your energy because it's the most important thing we have. So I appreciate you all and I'll see you guys soon. Have an awesome week.