Global investors have bought $120 billion in Chinese stocks and bonds so far in 2021, according to the Financial Times, as investors bet on higher returns than those available elsewhere, despite the quirky and unpredictable hand of China’s regulators and government policy. Foreign investment in China’s equity and fixed-income markets totaled about $1.1 trillion as...
Droughts in the U.S. and South America have ruined coffee, corn, sugar, wheat, and other crops. China’s record purchases of grains have tightened global supplies and pushed up prices for livestock farmers and food processors. The cost of cooking oils has surged as the biofuel industry has claimed a larger share of world production. Globally,...
In 2022, inflation will leave developed nations with their lowest real interest rates in perhaps a half-century, according to calculations by the Financial Times. Real interest rates, which many economists consider an economy’s most important price, subtract the rate of inflation from posted interest rates; the difference is the actual cost of borrowing. For example,...
About a third of office businesses in New York City will reduce their needs for space in the next five years, according to a survey this month by the nonprofit Partnership for New York City. Most businesses expect workers to spend no more than three days a week in central offices, allowing companies to implement...
Median rent for an apartment in Manhattan rose 18 percent in October, year over year, reaching $3,382, the fastest yearly increase in a decade, according to a new monthly report from appraisal firm Miller Samuel and brokerage Douglas Elliman. The new median rent is just below the $3,409 median in October 2019. Renters unable to...
Surprise, surprise! Actually, no surprise. We have been forecasting this for years now and the data continues to prove it. Rents for single-family homes rose 10.2 percent in the U.S. in September year over year, as Blackstone and other Bigs keep buying up homes and renting them out to the plantation workers of Slavelandia who...
The projected risk-adjusted annual rate of return on single-family homes built to rent is about 8 percent, the best investment performance among 18 real estate sectors, according to real estate advisory service Green Street. Soaring home prices and required large cash down payments have squeezed families out of the home-buying market that would have qualified...
Since 2011, the median U.S. home price increased about 30 percent, while incomes grew only 11 percent, according to Bankrate’s analysis of data from the National Association of Home Builders / Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index. Since 1971, after factoring in inflation, the price of the average home is up 118 percent, but incomes have...
Homes listed for sale from 1 July 2020 through 30 June 2021 spent a median of one week on the market before going under contract, according to a survey released 11 November by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), a record median sales speed dating back to 1989. In the COVID War, home buyers working...
The median price for a U.S, single-family home in 2021’s third quarter reached $363,700, 16 percent higher than a year earlier and the fastest rate of increase since 1968, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported. Prices were up in 182 of the 183 metro areas the NAR monitors, the association said, with 142 of...