The economy feels unsettled. Unemployment is negatively impacting white collar jobs. Consumer sentiment is down. The Federal Reserve is holding rates flat, with no clear timeline for cuts. Costs remain high, and uncertainty is a constant in conversation.
We’ve long talked about a bimodal economy, the haves and the have-nots. Presently that wealth and income gap is widening faster than ever, and it is unsustainable.
Last quarter, I introduced the LandVest Economic Index, as a measure of how well our economy was performing. The index is a scaled measure of unemployment, GDP growth, and inflation. I plotted the index against the University of Michigans survey on consumer sentiment and found that at the end of this year's firstquarter,
We measure our economy in many ways, such as employment, inflation and GDP. We also measure consumer sentiment. In theory, there should be some correlation between the two, and there is. However, the relationship is surprisingly low when it comes to periods of inflection. Recently Ive become curious about how we feel, as consumers in the [...]
As the exclusive New England affiliate of Christie's International Real Estate, as well as the largest manager of commercial forestland in the Northeast, LandVest has a unique perspective on the timberland and housing lifecycle. From my present perch, the spring home construction market has [...]
Home sales are lagging. Although economists (as did I) predicted around 4.60 million existing home sales for 2024, that number is now expected to end the year at 3.84 million units [according to NAR September report]. This represents a 6.1% decline from 2023, which was already the worst year we had seen since 1995. Bear in mind that the US [...]
In the first half of 2024, the most common question I have been asked is whether housing is overpriced. Although my instincts told me no, I wanted to take a deep dive into the numbers to see what the data was telling us. Based on my analysis, the answer is yes and [...]
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