Archive for the ‘Real Estate’ Category
Tea Leaves and Such
Flying back from Milwaukee to Seattle last night, I sat next to a fellow who owns several big truck dealerships in the mid-west. (Seattle, famed for Boeing and Microsoft, is the lesser-recognized headquarters of Paccar, the world’s third largest maker of heavy trucks, after Daimler and Volvo. Last year, they made and sold over $16 Billion worth of Kenworths and Peterbilts.)
ANYWAY, after the usual “how’s business?” question, I got an earful. Turns out no one’s buying heavy trucks right now, even though financing is historically affordable, and customers have cash. Why? Simply put, his customers are scared of the fiscal cliff. (We also talked about customers deferring potential acquisitions until after/if tax rates go up, but he said that this wasn’t a big issue in his surveys of customer sentiments.) He noted that demand for long-haul trucking was down, and noted that his trucking-company customers were reporting a lower volume of hauling for consumer retailers.
Now, if this was an isolated incident, we could write it off. However, the danger of the fiscal cliff isn’t just what will happen after January 1. Much like an impending hurricane, people are already packing their bags and getting out of the way or hunkering down and bolting the doors.
What is the impact on real estate? While it’s too early to completely quantify, clearly there is reluctance right now to make new investments in office, industrial, and retail. Add to this the realization that the apartment boom may have leveled off, and we have a fairly flat new development market on the horizon. This doesn’t bode well for real estate private equity firms that are focused on development profits or capital gains, but it does mean that income-oriented real estate (publicly traded REITs for example) may exhibit some buying opportunities due to both their tax advantaged nature. The most recent Current Market Commentary from NAREIT shows slight downward trends in apartment, office, and retail vacancy, with all three sectors showing positive rental rate growth (albeit at lower levels than earlier this year). The three-year moving average for renter household formation continues to trend upward, while the owner-occupied household formation is in negative territory (despite recent gains in home sales and housing starts).
Notwithstanding the dangers of the fiscal cliff, changes in non-farm payrolls have been strong and positive every month since mid-2010, and even though unemployment is higher than anyone wants to see it, the trend has been solidly downward since the peak of late 2009. As such, the fiscal cliff is the most significant economic problem on the horizon today. Fix it, and we continue on the track to full recovery. Let us drive off the cliff, and…. well, that’s a pretty good mental picture, eh?
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“5 Economic Trends to be Thankful For”
First, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! For those of you who in countries that don’t share our festival of thanks, I hope you had a great Thursday!
Kuddos to Neil Irwin, writing in the Washington Post yesterday. I agree 100% with his list, and wanted to reproduce it here:
1. Household debt is way down. Neil lists this as his first item, but I would suggest it has plusses and minuses to it. On the plus column, we really WERE over-debted as a society. On the minus side, changes household debt carries with it complex implications for the consumption side of GDP, as well as corporate investment (see my prior blog post) and even trade relationships. Nonetheless, this is, on net, a good thing.
2. The cost of servicing that debt is way down — as Neil points out, from 14% of disposable income in 2007 to 10.7% today. Of course, remember that one person’s interest EXPENSE is another person’s interest INCOME. Nonetheless, this constitutes a significant wealth transfer from people who HAVE money back to people who NEED TO BORROW money.
3. Electricity and natural gas prices are falling. It’s hard to find a downside to this one. From last year, consumer natural gas prices are down 8.4%, and electric rates are down 1.2%. I would add to Neil’s analysis that more of this money is staying at home — the U.S. is well on its way to being import-neutral on energy. Of course, this has some geopolitical implications, which we’ll deal with on another day.
4. Businesses aren’t firing people. While unemployment remains high at 7.9%, at least the arrows are pointed in the right direction.
5. Housing is dramatically more affordable. Neil points out that in 2006, the typical homebuyer faced a payment equal to 41% of the average wage of a private-sector worker. Today that’s 26%. This is a combination of both lower house prices (which proportionally lowers down payment requirements) and lower mortgage interest rates.
Congrats to Neil Irwin and the Washington Post for an insightful and timely article!
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Corporate Investment — Much ado about…. something
I can’t believe it’s been a month since I posted — I’ve been traveling almost constantly the past few weeks, and between that and the elections, my dance card has been fairly full.
The trigger for day’s post was an article in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, “Investment Falls off a Cliff”, with obvious homage to the impending fiscal cliff. I don’t want to minimize the danger of the “FC”, and in fact all bets are really off if the worst case scenarios come to pass. Here at Greenfield, we don’t really believe Congress and the White House will both fail to blink. Nonetheless, “keeping your powder dry” is always good advise in perilous times.
I’d like to comment on two things, though. First, while direction of corporate investment isn’t good, it’s not quite “double dipping” just yet. Indeed, one might argue that the current downswing in investment is nothing more than seasonal backing-and-filling.
courtesy, Wall Street Journal
Note that after coming out of the recession, overall investment spending took a brief respite in early 2011, as well. Of course, equipment and software appear to continue healthy, but structures are dragging the overall index down. Part of this can be explained by the relaxation of the apartment construction surge that we saw over the past several quarters. Many analysts now believe the demand-overhand in apartments is close to saturation (or at least satisfaction) and this sort of slow-down is neither unusual nor unhealthy. Note that the NFIB optimism survey is still trending upward, although the Business Roundtable CEO survey (which surveys heads of larger firms than the NFIB does) had turned downward. I suspect that’s a rebound effect — small businesses are still clawing their way out of the recession, and are less affected by what may happen if the FC becomes reality. The larger firms were the first to enjoy the fruits of the recovery, and would be the worst hurt by tax increases and the FC cutbacks (particularly in defense). Nonetheless, both of these sentiment measures are well off their 2009 bottoms. Consumer sentiment, which ultimately drives much of this, is as good as its been since before the recession.
Second, I’m concerned about the negativity spreading to real estate. Note that real estate investment comes in three flavors — development, capital gains, and income. The downturn in investment has SOMEWHAT negative implications for the first. Real estate developers will have to be more careful in a slow-down environment, but that’s been true throughout this recovery. Financing is difficult, even in the “hot” apartment market, and so admittedly the commercial real estate developers may be in for a tough run. (Residential development, on the other hand, is rebounding nicely.) Capital gains is a “long game” anyway. Certainly the tax changes which seem inevitable in 2013 and beyond have negative implications for the buy-and-sell crowd, but the returns to those who can hold thru cyclical downturns have always been healthy even after tax considerations.
Real estate income (primarily REITs) may actually be benefitted by a slight retrenchment in development. If and as the economy continues to rebound, offices, warehouses, and shopping malls continue to fill up. Lack of new supply (from a cyclical downturn in development) benefits the sort of existing structures which are typically part of a REIT portfolio. As always, investors will be benefitted from looking at good managers with top-drawer properties and a history of increasing FFO.
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European Real Estate Funding Gap
Property Investor Europe sent me a report today about the shortfall in real estate funding in Europe. The implications are a bit nerve wracking.
First, some background — European commercial real estate investors place significantly more emphasis on “traditional” bank lending than Americans. As such, the sort of private-debt network that exists in the U.S. has not grown in Europe.
According to a report by the research firm Swisslake, central bank liquidity flows gave been directed at small and diversified loans, which are in high demand. However, commercial lending in Europe is actually facing cuts of €500 Billion or so. In addition, banks are increasing equity requirements, leaving real estate with large financing gaps, Swisslake calculates that only about $3.8 Billion headed towards Europe in the last year from non-bank lenders.
However, this is creating a market opportunity for private debt funds. Reportedly, 30 new funds have been launched in 2012, adding to the 20 new funds created in 2011. These funds have increased their market share to 20%, up from 15% at the beginning of 2012. Intriguingly, many former equity fund managers are now shifting to private debt funding.
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Economic outlook — fundamentals and shocks
I love boating, I really do. To quote from Grahame’s famous The Wind in the Willow, “…there is NOTHING–absolute nothing–half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” However, any experienced sailor has had one of those days when the water was perfect, the wind was with you, but off on the horizon a storm cloud lurked. “Will it head our way, or pass us by?” is the key to whether the fun cruise continues or not.
Today, and for the next few weeks, the economy is like that. The wind is definitely at our backs, and things are generally looking up. That having been said, the fiscal cliff continues to loom on the not-too-distant horizon.
First, the good news, and there’s plenty of it. I’m on the Board of an investment fund (and in fact just got named chairman of the board this month, for a two-year stint). We had a great briefing yesterday from our lead fund manager, and macroeconomic news was as good as I’ve seen it in a while. Corporate profits are at near-record levels as a percentage of GDP, and non-financial interest expense as a percentage of profits is at a near-record low. Lending is back up, although corporate lending isn’t quite as robust as consumer lending, and current stock market price-earnings ratios (measured on a 12-month trailing basis) are at levels usually associated with strong intermediate-term (5-year) market returns. Equity risk premia tell the same story.
On the real estate side, everyone’s seen the news that the S&P Case Shiller index is trending back up, and this morning’s news report puts current housing starts above an 800,000 annualized level (note that we’re hoping for a million, and at the trough of the recession we were at a record low 300,000-ish). Manufacturing has added about a half-million jobs since the trough of the recession (early 2010), and is about 300,000 above where it stood in July, 2009.
The implications for real estate investment are clear, and as I reported earlier this week, the total return on U.S. REITs has exceeded 30% in the past year, besting the S&P 500.
With that in mind, though, the fiscal cliff continues to trouble us all. If you’re not familiar, on January 1, the Bush Tax Cuts will expire and mandated federal spending cuts are scheduled. Together, these two will hit the economy to the tune of about 4% of GDP (yes, driving us into a second recession). Sadly, the solution is political, and this is all coming at a time when Congress and the White House are totally focused on the impending election.
We’ll keep you posted, and we’re preparing some private white papers on this subject for our clients as the season moves forward.
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REITs — good news trumps “iffy” news
The “headline” in Erika Morphy’s piece in GlobeSt.Com this morning was that was that REITs underperformed the S&P 500 for August and September. Specifically, REITs were up 1.85% in the 3rd quarter this year, compared to 6.35% for the S&P 500. You have to dig a little deeper to get to the heart of the matter, though.
First, let’s remember that investors by-and-large buy REITs as an income vehicle with equity up-side. The current average REIT yield is 3.88% — not bad, compared to corporate bonds or preferred stocks, and more targeted income seekers can go after single tenant retail with a yield of 5.9%. (For a great review of this, see a piece by Brad Thomas in Forbes.com from September 10). Couple those sorts of dividend yields with any upside equity potential, and you have a real investment powerhouse in today’s market. For comparison, the current yield on the S&P 500 is 1.97%.
But, the news gets better. For the 12-months ending September 30, the NAREIT index was up 33.81%, compared to 30.2% for the S&P. Do the math — the total return for a portfolio of REIT shares for the past year would have been (33.81% + 3.88% = ) 37.69%. The total yield for the S&P 500 would have been (30.2% + 1.97% = ) 32.17%. Thus, slightly more than a 500 basis point return advantage to REITs.
Of course, (and this goes without saying), past performance doesn’t translate into future returns…..
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Comments to the Appraisal Foundation Strategic Plan
Appraisal standards and licensure qualification in the U.S. are promulgated by the Appraisal Foundation in Washington, D.C., a private organization which receives oversight from the Congressionally-established, inter-agency Appraisal Subcommittee.
This summer the Foundation issued a request for comments on a sweeping update to their strategic plan. I, along with many others, have submitted comments to the proposed updates, and my comments will soon be published on the Foundation’s website. I’m also presenting my comments here, verbatim, for discussion and input from colleagues and friends (see below).
Enjoy!
Comments to Appraisal Foundation Strategic Plan
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REIT Research — Real Estate in Volatile Times
The National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) recently commissioned Morningstar to study the role of securitized real estate in the well-balanced portfolio, with a particular eye to the investor attitudes regarding risk, as well as the actual performance of markets. Both of these two concepts — risk and investor attitudes — are less well understood than researchers seem to think. In the first, market models assume a degree of normalcy in the distribution of market returns. However, empirical evidence seems to contradict this, and in fact market volatility is significantly greater (and of greater magnitude) than models would predict.
In the second case — investor attitudes — traditional models suggest that rational investors react to “up” markets in the same way as “down” markets. More recent behavioral models recognize the fallacy in this — rational investors relish “up” volatility, but loathe down markets.
The results of the research were published in an excellent new research piece from NAREIT titled “The Role of Real Estate in Weathering the Storm” (click on the title for a copy of the paper). Some high-points from the study:
- Since 1929, the S&P 500 has had 10 months with declines of 15.74% or more — which is eight more than would be predicted by a normal distribution.
- Recent studies by James Xiong of Ibbotson Research show that the log-normal distribution fails to account for this down-side volatility.
- From 2000 – 2009 (often called the “lost decade”), the cumulative return on large-cap stocks was negative 0.95%.
Morningstar then crafted portfolios under the “theoretical” model (normal distribution) versus a more realistic model of volatility, with alternative structures for risk-averse investors and more risk-tolerant investors. Investment returns were measured over the period 1990 – 2009, which notably included the recent market melt-down.
Under normal distribution assumptions, an optimum risk-averse portfolio would allocate about 6% to securitized real estate and theoretically enjoy a return of 7.6%. Under more realistic volatility assumptions, the risk-averse portfolio would allocate 14% to securitized real estate and would have returned 8.2%.
A more risk-tolerant investor would have allocated 18% to 20% in securitized real estate, and would have enjoyed a return of 9.7%, with volatility (standard deviation of portfolio returns) of 10%.
The most striking finding of the study was the consistent role played by securitized real estate in all four of the models (normal versus non-normal, risk-averse versus risk-tolerant) and particularly thru the market melt-down. While this may seem counter-intuitive, given the roller-coaster ride of REIT prices, investors need to realize that REIT shares paid relatively high dividends through this period, thus ameliorating the downward price movements. In short, the gains from real estate holdings pre-meltdown, coupled with the dividends, more than made up for the price bounce over the past few years. Further, REIT prices have rebounded better post-recession than have other S&P shares.
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Sustainability — Follow the Money
Sustainability seems to be the real estate buzz word du jour. A “google” of “sustainable real estate” brings me slightly over 56 million hits. Number two on the list is the Journal of Sustainable Real Estate, (a more-or-less joint presentation of the American Real Estate Society and CoStar) of which I’m apparently on the editorial committee. Go figure.
I don’t want to sound too cynical here, but as a “finance guy” in the real estate field, I tend to follow the money. A lot of what’s going on in real estate, particularly at the individual building-level, has a lot to do with sustainable energy (e.g. — LEED Certification, Energy Star) or sustainable architecture. There was a nice paper out of Clemson University by David Heuber and Elaine Worzala recently on sustainable golf course development (click here for a link) which begins with the irony that no one is building golf courses today. Scott Muldavin has a great book on underwriting and evaluation sustainable financing (reviewed here) which gets close to the heart of the matter.
However, Ben Johnson, writing for the current issue of Real Estate Forum, seems to have caught the scent, to use a hunting dog analogy. In his article, “When CalPERS Talks, People Listen”, he notes that this mega-pension fund n($228 billion) has about 8% of its total invested in real estate. (My own estimate is a bit higher and more current than that — see here for details.) The noteworthy thing, however, is that CalPERS just made a $100 million stake in Bentall Kennedy outt of Toronto. B-K is one of North America’s largest real estate investment advisors, resulting from the 2010 merger of the Canadian firm Bentall with Seattle’s own Kennedy Associates.
Two things make this all very interesting. First, B-K earned the top spot this year on the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark Foundation’s ranking of fund managers in the Americas. This ranking, covering 340 of the world’s largest funds, measures social and environmental performance. (Given B-K’s Pacific Northwest and Canadian pedegrees, this doesn’t surprise me at all.)
Second — and this may be the biggie — as CalPERS goes, so goes the industry. The focus of Mr. Johnson’s article was to note that now every pension fund in the known universe will need to consider using an advisor like B-K. Johnson notes that this deal “gives the largest public institutional player in the US a deeper investment in understanding real estate as an asset class and a unique insider’s view of the industry’s dynamics.” More interestingly, I would posit, it puts a leader in sustainable real estate front-and-center in the view of the sorts of pension managers who, until now, have very little cross-pollination with the real estate industry. In short, as institutions look to find good real estate partners, sustainability will be a key element of consideration.
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The right number of new homes?
Much has been said in recent days about the Census Bureau’s August 23rd announcement about new residential home sales in July. To summarize, 372,000 new homes were sold last month, which is 25.3% above the July, 2011. This is good news for a lot of reasons — construction workers get jobs, banks get new loans, etc., etc.
Naturally, it begs the question, “what’s the right number of homes?”. Here at Greenfield, we’ve posited that the U.S. housing price “bubble” was really a demand bubble, fueled by easy money, which led to an artificial inflation of the nation’s home ownership rate. (Housing bubbles in other countries were fueled by similar problems.) We’ve also suggested that the market won’t get healthy again until several things happen, including a stabilization of the homeownership rate at long-term equilibrium levels, a restoration of “normal” conventional lending (both for home mortgages as well as for development financing) and a restoration of the housing infrastructure (development lots in the pipeline, local regulatory department staffing, hiring & training skilled construction workers, etc.) . It is highly doubtful that we’ll see housing starts and new home sales “bounce back” to normal levels anytime soon, and our own projections suggest several years before we get back to “normal”.
But this begs the question: What’s normal? (A great t-shirt from the Broadway play, “Adams Family” simply said, “Define Normal”.) Anyway, as new home sales go, it’s helpful to glance at the experience over time. It may surprise you.
One might actually expect the graph to be less erratic, but there are good explanations for the “bobbing and weaving” you see from year to year. During recessions, new home sales decline, and then bounce-back afterwards. During periods of economic overheating, the FED tightens the money supply, thus causing home starts/sales to decline. (In practice, this is a major tool in the FED’s toolkit, simply because it has a great multiplier effect on the economy.) Of course, the bubble is quite apparent, and following it the inevitable decline.
With all that in mind, though, we can see that there is a decided upward trend in the chart — that makes sense, since a growing population, coupled with a fairly consistent homeownership rate, will generally demand more new homes each year than it did the year before.
The second graphic adds a simple linear trend line for simplicity sake, which is not far removed from the actual household formation trend line during that same period. Note that from the beginning of the chart until about 2001, we had a nice cycle going, and in fact around 2001, the blue line should have turned negative to account for the recessionary impacts. However, money got very loose during the early part of the last decade, and rather than housing starts serving its normal “pressure relief” role, it was driven into a counter-cyclical path. This created the oversupply we are now trying to work through (often referred to as the “shadow inventory”) and we won’t see a healthy market until this inventory is mopped up.
Good news, though — if you glance quickly at the second chart, it becomes clear — albeit from a very simple visual perspective — that we must be close to a spot where an up-turn in the chart would give us as much negative area red line as we had during the previous cycle above the red line. In short, we’re not at the end of the tunnel yet, but this simple way of looking at things suggests we may be able to SEE the end of the tunnel in the not-too-distant future.
From a small northwestern observatory... 