National Association of Real Estate Editors Conference Highlights With Aaron Norris #651

Norris Bruce

Bruce Norris is an active investor, hard money lender, and real estate educator with over 30 years experience. Bruce has been involved in over 2,000 real estate transactions as a buyer, seller, builder and money partner.

Norris Bruce
July 12, 2019

File type: MP3 --- File: Download --- Date: 12/7/2019 --- Size: 34.3M
Find show on: iTunes, Google Play, Tunein, SoundCloud, PlayerFM

Array

This week’s radio show features Aaron Norris of The Norris Group. For the last couple of months, they’ve really beat up accessory dwelling units. He doesn’t expect to touch on that again until SB 13 has some movement. It did move forward as of July 1st, so we’ll see what’s next. It’s still in the house, and we’ll wait to see what happens. However, it was covered from so many different angles, and last week they covered AirDNA. If you’re doing vacation rentals or thinking about doing vacation rentals, it’s going to be a really important tool for you.

Episode Highlights

What are the top 10 issues facing residential and commercial real estate?
How is the hotel sector of the market fairing?
What big changes are coming to the retail sector?
Where does investor buying activity stand?
How are home builders feeling about the market?
What are the numbers for the iBuyers in terms of their number of home transactions?
What are some upcoming events The Norris Group has planned?

Episode Notes

At the very end of June, Aaron was part of a conference by the National Association of Real Estate Editors. As a creator in the real estate space, he was recommended to join. Every year they put on the spring conference that’s really interesting. It’s basically three days, and it’s built for journalists, international journalists, that cover real estate. So there’s a panel on iBuyers, commercial real estate, industrial, you name it. There’s about an hour session on any real estate topic that you can imagine crammed into three completely packed days. This is his second one and.

In today’s radio show, Aaron will share some of the highlights because it was so content rich and really fascinating. It started out with the panel, and it was moderated by Beth Decarbo, who does real estate for the Wall Street Journal. She was interviewing Julie Millander, and they were covering the top 10 issues facing residential and commercial real estate. The first was infrastructure. In a survey that they did to their members, more than 50 percent of the responding survey takers of the counselors ranked infrastructure as one of the top three issues affecting the real estate industry. This includes everything from roads to bridges, tunnels, railways, flooding, and the natural disasters. They’re just really worried about crumbling infrastructure thwarting economic growth and daily lifestyle and quality of life issues overall. So it’s really interesting to watch markets like Austin, Colorado, and markets that have really boomed since the downturn. Things like transportation have take a lot of thought and leadership, and a lot of those markets have not been investing in mass transit. The last time Aaron was in Denver and Austin talking to people about traffic, it’s just exploded. Their answer to it hasn’t been anything, so no light rail or subways. We’re getting behind.

Number two was housing in America. The range of population facing difficulties in securing an appropriate place to live extends from those who are homeless in big cities, small towns, and rural areas to Millennials and Generation Z members entering the workforce and thriving cities where apartment rents have soared. There’s just no way that they’re going to be able to afford a property. Income is definitely not keeping up. So access to housing in America has definitely shifted.

Number three on their list was weather and climate related risks. The National Center for Environmental Information says that there was something like the average insured loss between 1980 to 2018 is 19.3 for major major weather events. We’ve had lots of big hurricanes. In 2018, the losses from California topped $12 billion because of all the wildfires. More than 13,000 insured homes and businesses were destroyed. Aaron’s still expecting to see some pretty ugly insurance bills come out of that, but they’re worried about weather and climate risk.

Fourth on the list was technology effect. Technology is going to drive the capital markets use of space, leasing, brokerage, valuation, and building operations and technology, maybe making the actual location of a business less important. So everything from Internet of Things, or IOT, Big Data, analytics, artificial intelligence, robotics, Blockchain. He thinks it’s going to catch a lot of people off guard. 5G has been really interesting to follow. At the Consumer Electronics Show he got to go to in January, he was really excited to learn about 5G and when it was going to be rolled out just to realize that what’s rolling out right now is not true 5G. It’s just an elevated 4E plus. But when it does roll out, when you’re talking about Internet connection that’s ten to a hundred times faster than what we’re experiencing now, it’s going to be game changing for a lot of things. We won’t just be cutting the cord on cable TV as we know it. It just changes a lot of things.

You may have seen some of the articles Aaron’s written for ThinkRealty Magazine on education, technology, and where that’s going. He thinks education is ripe for disruption. If you haven’t played around with LinkedIn Learning yet, for basically three hundred dollars a year you have access to thought leaders on almost any topic you can imagine. You take a course, and after you’re done, you get a certificate that’s attached to your profile on LinkedIn, and recruiters can search against it. So why not be able to take some of the best training from the thought leaders in any category? If they produce it once at a very high professional level and it’s evergreen, meaning it will last and it’s not so timely it would go out of date quickly, that could be a game changer, especially when it comes to the university market.

Number five on their list of concerns is the end of cycle economics. We’re now in our longest boom market; so everyone at the event was talking about a recession, but it was interesting to hear nobody was really saying when. He has seen charts from a few different events this year where the majority of economists think that by the first quarter of 2020, we will have one. But it’s sort of a wait and see thing right now.

Number six is political division. This includes political gridlock and infighting. This isn’t helping anything get done. From climate change to population, migration, infrastructure, and housing, it’s just really hard to get people focused, especially with the way politics work. This is especially true on issues that really have to have a long-term leadership in place to really make it happen. We’re seeing that in California with the bullet train. It’s frustrating to watch other countries install this needed infrastructure, and we just can’t get it done. The cost overruns are absolutely insane, and we might end up pulling the plug on something we’ve already spent billions on. It’s really frustrating to watch.

Number seven is capital market risk. As risk tolerance, perception of the market’s position in the cycle and tastes and preferences for space change, so does pricing and demand. There’s a tremendous amount of liquidity in the market. There’s almost too much money, and banks are competing with unregulated debt funds. Private equity transactions are down, an indication we’re nearing the end of a cycle.

Number eight is population migration. People move because of business conditions, tax policies, technologies, disasters including floods and extreme weather events. In the very big picture the census record shows that since the first population tally is 1790, the population centroid, or the imaginary spot on the map that represents the spot at which the American population is perfectly centered, has shifted to the west and to the south. A look at demographics change since 2010 suggests this long range trend will continue uninterrupted when the 2020 census is tallied. Another good book on that ,as we’ve said a lot of different times, is Big Shifts Ahead, and it’s one of the reasons that The Norris Group is in Florida. They are doing a second Florida trip, and chances are they have already sent an email out about it. If you were interested in tagging along, it’s going to be August 15th and 16th, and information will be on the calendar.

Big cities are prospering like California. The Pacific Northwest, Florida, and major Texas metros are part of this equation. Secondary cities are also adding populations, so areas like Denver, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Nashville, Minneapoli,s Charlotte, Raleigh, Kansas City, and Greenville and many of the latter areas renewal of suburbanization is complementing the downtown revivals. Downtown is being a core asset in the way boomers and millennials are wanting to live, and in the book Big Shifts Ahead, he talks about the surban environment. It’s access to those downtown cores but with a suburban fill around the edges such as access to jobs and shopping and all that good stuff. Up until a decade ago, the consensus projections had the U.S. population as growing to about 440 million by 2050. That has been pushed back by as much as 30 million, a very significant deceleration. Partly the reason for slowing anticipated growth is constraint on immigration. That’s always an interesting thing. We’re just not having kids as often and as many these days. So that’s gonna be something very interesting to watch over the next decade. Capital is gravitating disproportionately to major market, so the top 10 metro MSAs tallied $266 billion of real estate invested in 2018 though they had just 33% of the U.S. population. Interesting things to watch on population shifts, money, and where it goes.

Number nine in CRE issues are volatility and confidence. The levels of commercial property investment appear to be reflecting some uncertainty concerns on the market. Overall investment volume has been down year over year, and there is an underlying trend of decelerating rent gains in income-producing property. This is gonna be really interesting to follow in the commercial space, especially in retail, because there is a lot of conversation about malls. We have too many of them, we’ve overbuilt, and the role of the mall is shifting. Year-over-year, single-family housing construction is down 9.4% As of April 2019 and down 5% for all residential construction in the U.S. The U.S. Census Bureau also reported that non-residential construction volume is down 8.5% for commercial properties in April. The National Association of Realtors’ survey of members confidence has also mirrored the Conference Board’s poll. So most states, 39 of the 50, expect price appreciation of less than 3% with 14 of those anticipating value growth of less than 2%. Apparently, we’re just really spoiled, and we just really expect high rates of appreciation, which is partly the reason why we’re having affordability issues.

Finally on the list of CRT issues is public and private indebtedness at number 10. So long story short, just the ease of access to credit and lots of money chasing yield has some people concerned because people have pulled too much at high risk. Aaron has definitely seen that in the hard money lending world with people creating programs that just don’t make a lot of sense. He’s watching iBuyers make a lot of very interesting decisions after raising billions of dollars. The things that they’re buying in California is interesting to say the least. The CRE actually has a report where they spell it out, and it’s on their Web site if you’re interested in reading more on that.

The hotel sector featured Jon Keeling of the Valencia Hotel Group, and the moderator was from the Las Vegas Journal. Overall, the hotel sector is doing well. They said despite AirBNB, they just can’t get as much as they want during peak periods because of Airbnb. At CES, Aaron scored a huge deal on an Airbnb because the hotel rooms at the time were going for $800 a night. These were the Circus Circus rooms, like two star hotels. It’s so crowded, and they have an influx of around 150 to 200,000 people. Airbnb’s definitely put a suppression on those, so it’s really scary to think where those hotel prices could have been. Lots of our hotel construction has really gone up, so it’s it’s getting harder to build. Consumers are gravitating towards new construction hotels. Land materials and labor are increasing, so it’s getting harder for hotels to pencil overall. It was really interesting to hear that more hotels are building in condos into the mix on the top floors. This is building in some income there to make these projects pencil, and the condos in those cases are really on the luxury side of the market.

The next thing that they covered was a retail Armageddon, and it had Herb Weitzman with the Weitzman Group, and it was moderated by The Dallas Morning News. This just fascinated me. 35 percent of malls will be retrofitted or torn down because of e-commerce. Back when he was in the construction industry in the lighting design field, they were talking about a lot of lifestyle centers right before the downturn. So he thought it was interesting that they were calling the trend open air centers. They’re not just not indoor malls. We’re putting the service stores out in the front. Herb says we put the bigger boxes in the back. It’s repositioned how these centers really work. Retail companies are slowing down and trying to retrofit their operations to merge digital into brick and mortar. We saw that with Amazon buying Whole Foods and figuring out that mix. It’s been really interesting to watch Walmart and Amazon. Wal-Mart obviously had all the brick and mortar, but they spent several billion dollars buying Jet.com, which is a really cool Amazon competitor. If you’ve never tried it, you have to check it out. They have a very cool app.

Online stores and Amazon are integrating their online businesses with brick and mortar to various degrees of success. He hasn’t seen Amazon roll out a lot of their specialized brick and mortar with those top things that you can buy. It’ll be interesting to see how that precedes. Empty spaces from department stores that closed pose a challenge to retrofit because they’re multi-story. Aaron wants them to create senior housing. Last year at this event, they talked about building more housing into the mix on these retail centers. He thought senior housing would be a shoo-in simply because you have all the entertainment there. He’s been seeing gyms at malls more often. This really creates an experience where you show up, and almost everything you need is there. That would be good.

New landlords and cutting-edge investors was moderated by Palm Beach Post, and it featured David Hicks of HomeVestors, Colin Wilde with Mynd, which is a property management company, and Ralph McLaughlin of CoreLogic. He’s been on our radio show before when he was a economist at Trulia. It was a really interesting panel. When Aaron was coming in from New York City, he lost his luggage. After the event, he went up and introduced himself. David Hicks of Home Busters, and he told him he was a hard money lender. Aaron was in shorts because they lost his luggage, so he was told he didn’t look like a hard money lender. It was so awkward.

Investor buying activity in the U.S. is at record highs, and the smaller guys are leading the increase. They’re mostly buying starter homes. IBuyers came up in this conversation, and Aaron thinks it’s being downplayed a little bit because they have only raised the billions of dollars as of the last 12 months, and now you have new entrants like Zillow and Keller Williams that are getting into the mix. Aaron just finished doing the research for California alone for an upcoming newsletter that will probably be released by the time this is out or next week for our subscribers. He looked at every single transaction from the four that are very active in California, including OpenDoor, Redfin, Zillow, and OfferPad. They looke at what they’re buying, where they’re buying, and the buy box came up quite a bit at this event. This is exactly what these iBuyers are after. It’s not the big investors and institutions that’s driving the market right now, but this can definately change considering the kind of money that’s pouring into this market. Most investors are going east of the Mississippi and avoiding states like California because the numbers just simply don’t work.

David Hicks was really interesting to hear. He says that there’s only about a 10 to 15 percent crossover with the iBuyers at the moment, and on average his franchise is now at 1100, having gone from around 165 in 2009 to over 1100 different franchisees across the country. They’re spending about $7 million per month in marketing, and 50% of those that are flipped actually go to other investors. So they’re really just a marketing arm, and they’re wholesaling those to other real estate investors that are either going to fix and flip them or hold them as rentals.

Next up was Colin with Mynd. They are a property management company. The Norris Group has worked with a similar company out in southwest Florida called the Great Jones. They have their roots in the big institutional buyers, the buy to rent landlords. They’re really just introducing a lot of technology into the property management space. Right now Aaron hasn’t seen a lot of discounts, but the technology is pretty cool. We’ll have to see if the customer service remains there. Some of the other things talked about in this panel was flipper data and to watch out for this. Aaron spoken to ATTOM Data and CoreLogic in hopes that they will consider bifurcating the data on Wall Street purchases versus Main Street. The reason why is that Wall Street, like in Phoenix, up to 7 percent of the sales right now have to do with iBuyers. So as this model grows, their model is on really thin margins, and not all of these iBuyers are fixing the property. They’re just offering speed, flexibility, and what real estate investors do. But, they’re not going after the heavy fixtures, so there’s a really quick turnaround. Those will show up in those models because it shows up as a flip because of the time that it resells. Aaron brought it up and was hoping that they’ll consider doing that because it will be very interesting to watch since they’re operating on such tight margins. If there’s a recession, it’s gonna be ugly.

Next on the agenda was office space and the future of work involving office towers. It featured Chris Harmon with Woodbine Development, John with Hines and Brian Harrington with Hannah. It’s interesting to note that they’re struggling to create an environment where the workforce is very competitive. People who go into office spaces to lease are trying to attract top talent and keep them there. Office towers are one of the ways. It’s ammenities in those office towers. It was interesting and funny to hear that maybe they’ve gone a little bit too far trying to mimic the startup environment with the ping pong tables, so distraction is becoming an issue. So maybe they’re going to get rid of the ping pong tables, but across the board they’re looking for variety and flexibility in the workspace and trying to build in green space. One of the developers on the panel was talking about a tire swing in one of the developments. They’re mixing hospitality services within the office space and really making an environment where you can eat, play, and work all within the same building.

There was also interesting discussion about parking. A lot of these developers are frustrated they’re going to be developing parking knowing that parking isn’t going to be as needed just because of a function of being in these urban environments. Driving will get less popular because of driverless cars or mass transit or just less people driving overall because of ridesharing. They just know that they’re going to have to convert it, and building a parking structure is very different than preparing a space that’s going to have a build-out for tenants improvements. Whether or not you invest now is still up in the air. They’re just going to have to answer that later. Disrupters in the real estate space were discussed by Todd with ATTOM Data, Raylen with the Wave Group, Chung Ming Chang with Move Inc, and Glenn Phillips with Lake homes Realty.

You’ll notice that Purple Bricks did pull out as of last week. The market is still pretty much a seller’s market, especially along the coast in many areas. It seems like a discounted fee for listing should have worked. That’s why he was really surprised to see this happen now. He would have expected that in a recession, but definitely not at this moment in time. None of these technologies discussed in this show have been recession-tested, so it’s always going to be very interesting to watch to see what happens when that occurs. Buyers believe they need agents less than sellers do, yet buyers, including the Gen Z and millennials, are still going to agents and needing them. This might change in the future. According to Glen Phillips, convenience will always win. It’s how Netflix overtook Blockbuster, and residential brokerages that missed that mark will eventually fail. So there’s just a lot of push to become technologically savvy. For example, Keller Williams invested $1 billion dollars just to keep up with the Joneses, and now they are putting their naming in the iBuyer box. It’s just something that these companies are having to do to stay on top. This includes everything from brokers offering salaries and commissions to technology being provided. It’s just a reality that we’re all going to have to deal with.

There was a wellness panel for design. Aaron said for the Norris Group’s portal, they are creating a design module. Because of iBuyers and where we’re at in California, we’re going to have to be a lot more focused on creating value in a transaction, whether it’s building an accessory dwelling unit or focusing on the design. You’re going to hear this wellness term a lot. Green was so five years ago, and it’s about wellness now. So with things like building standards for things like air quality, thermal comfort, better lighting and glare control, it’s getting really fancy. You just need to be aware that you heard it here first. Wellness is going to be a key term in your rehabs and listings.

David Mele of homes.com did some research on Generation Z, or those born between 1995 and 2012. It is the most diverse group, even more diverse than millennials with 50% being diverse. Other than white, almost 87 percent expect to buy their first home by 35, so they are starting early. There is a misconception that they have to have 11 percent down. Sixty three percent of them think that they need to have a lot more down than is necessary. So if you’re a realtor or in the mortgage industry, it’s just going to take some more education. What they’re concerned about when it comes to homeownership is making enough money to be able to afford to buy a home and saving the down payment. This means taking care of student loans, of course, and having good credit to be able to accomplish buying a home. They want to live close to work, friends, and family. As a diverse generation, they prefer to live in diverse neighborhoods that are ethnically and racially diverse. And they just want to be understood. So this is a trend we’re seeing when it comes to realtors. Gen-Z and millennials are wanting to use realtors, and they’ll start using tech. What they’re really wanting is for you to listen to what they want their lifestyle to look like and use a local expert backing them into a home in a neighborhood that’s going to meet everything on their list.

Next on the agenda was food halls, which Aaron really enjoys. We just got one in Riverside, and they’re popular in the coastal markets. If you’re buying real estate and you’ve got a food hall, it’s different than a food mall. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Joe Ritchie of Elm Restaurant Group was on the panel, and he discussed a food hall versus a food court. He he summed it up nicely. We still do it fast, but it’s not five dollars in five minutes. It’s fifteen dollars for what you’d get for thirty dollars in a sit down restaurant with a nice cocktail. This is a really good way to describe it. He estimates there’s are going to be 450 food halls opening up in the U.S. in the next few years. He also thinks that there will be failures related to operating models. He told the real estate investors that if you’re in a market that has a food hall, it’s a good sign because of the types of buyers and tenants you will have. You’re probably in good shape.

The National Homebuilders did a forecast. Robert Dietz spoke on this. He’s been on the radio show before. At the panel, he talked about how builders are feeling. In short, they’re frustrated. Regulation costs are, on average, 24 to 25 percent of projects, and two thirds of that is directly tied to the land. Aaron later asked him via Twitter if lawsuits are counted in that. In states like California, we know it’s not 25 percent. But, in California we’ve had several radio interviews talking about how SEQA lawsuits get tied up in court. Between the lawsuits and the amount of PR they have to do to get into the city councils and deal with the NIMBYs that don’t want people to build, it’s so expensive. He said that there’s no way for us to even calculate that. When it comes to the amount of money that builders are having to spend on regulations and lawsuits in California, politicians can talk about affordability all they want, but they’re not serious about it. The only seriousness Aaron’s seen is the accessory dwelling unit conversation of why we covered it so hard and why it’s so interesting is that the state is regulating it to where the municipalities don’t have a choice. We’ve seen an SB 50 where they were going to start building mid-rise and density along transportation corridors. It didn’t pass again in California where we’re saying we’re dying for affordable housing. That would have done it. But, when it lands at the local level, nobody wants it in their neighborhood, especially the Not In My Backyarders. It’s really frustrating. Affordability is just not possible, long story short.

The iBuyer panel featured Darrin Shamo with OfferPad, Dodd Frazier with OpenDoor, and Josh Swift of Zillow Group. This was one of the main reasons he wanted to head to Austin. OpenDoor transacted 3500 homes per month between the buy and sell side. Running numbers for California, which he did last week, showed Zillow has purchased 53, Redfin 349, OpenDoor 435, and OfferPad around 100. It took Aaron a very long time to scrap all this data together, but he expects those numbers to increase. They have gone nuts in the last six months. He thinks 2019 is going to be the year that the iBuyers get taken seriously. Josh swift with Zillow Offers said this is not a fad, this is a fundamental shift. It was really interesting that Nick Bailey was on the I Survived Real Estate panel two years ago, and he said they were absolutely not going to buy real estate. When you think about it now, it’s a smart move. Aaron said Zillow and the Keller Williams of the world are the two that he’s most excited to watch because they have multiple exit strategies. Aaron is in a market and has rentals where OpenDoor is actively transacting. After seeing the letters and social media posts, they are spending millions of dollars on advertising.

Aaron said although he is in the markets, he hasn’t gotten anything from Zillow and Redfin. Their marketing is very different. When you do an address search on Google, Zillow and Redfin are typically the number one and number two spots. Realtor.com is typically number three while OpenDoor isn’t showing up. That’s why they’re having to spend so much on outside marketing and why they probably purchased openlisting.com. They just can’t compete in the search engine optimization race. If you are in a market that is taking Zillow offers or the iBuyer offers across the board for Redfin or Zillow, you’re going to notice when you click on an address the Get All Cash Offer Now button that’s displayed very prominently. These companies have raised billions over the last 24 months, and they are going in hard. OpenDoor buys homes from 100,000 to 500,000. That is not true in California. All these iBuyers are breaking all kinds of rules. Just looking at all the data of what they’re buying in California as of last week, it doesn’t make any sense. They are all over the map, everything from one bedroom, one bathroom, to six bedrooms, four bathrooms, sometimes 20 minutes apart. It’s really interesting.

Zillow said forty five percent of sellers choose a regular sale through Premier Agents. OpenDoor said 50 percent of their true sellers actually convert to their model. They didn’t really describe further what a serious seller was, but it was interesting to hear that they have such a high close rate. Their iBuyer model says it covers 70 percent of the homes in the U.S. OpenDoor is in quite a few markets at this point. Let’s see. Anything else. Aaron also really liked what Darrin of OfferPad had to say. He’s been following their work, and they’re one of the few iBuyer’s along with Redfin that seem to be a little bit more willing to dig in and do the bigger rehabs. OfferPad has the more serious numbers. They’re not operating on super thin margins. It’s still tight, but it makes a little bit more sense. They have been able to do a rental project in as little as 13 days, which is incredibly impressive because they’re doing some nice rehabs. Both them and Redfin even go as far as doing professional staging. They’re competition.

Zillow said that they’re not home flippers. He doesn’t see a lot of them going into historic areas to do major rehabs and hoarder houses. He’s talked to a few of them on being nice with real estate investors but I haven’t gotten much feedback from them. They’re so focused on creating the right brand right now and working really hard to scale and working on efficiencies while throwing investors into the mix. He thinks there’s a potential for them working with brands like HomeVestors.

Next up was in regards to what buyers really want. There was a panel talking about buyers and sellers, and the one takeaway he thought was interesting was that we keep building homes for the nuclear family of the 1950s. About 28 percent live alone, 25 are couples with no kids, 20 percent are adults living with other adults, and 7 percent are single parents. So the nuclear family is a very small portion of that, so he wonders why builders aren’t building more things than that on those different categories.

Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, was there, and he brought up a few different things. Aaron really didn’t understand the MLS until a few years ago when Bruce spoke at the MLS conference that happened to be in Orange County. There’s over 600 independent MLSs nationwide, although it’s still down quite a bit because they’ve been merging. He didn’t know the exact number, but he didn’t understand how that worked until that event. He said it’s really important for competition and information since the data business is an extremely hard business to be in, and he’s really there for it. If you’re not following the news, there’s currently a class action lawsuit. He really believes that the buyers agent commissions are going to start being disclosed at some point, and part of that is because the plaintiffs in this class action lawsuit are basically saying that because the MLS rules require commission sharing, buyers agents aren’t having to compete on their rate. This would lower the cost for consumers if those things were disclosed. In the lawsuit, it features Realogy, ReMAX, Keller Williams, Home Services of America, and also the National Association of Realtors. He gets the sense that there’s a feeling that they might lose. That’s going to be very interesting to watch.

Redfin showed that New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Chicago are the cities that lead out on outmigration, so people leaving their states and cities. Phoenix, Sacramento, Atlanta, Austin, and Miami are the top destinations with the highest in migration. Glenn said that the most liberal people in the U.S. can become up in arms as soon as multifamily project is proposed near their single-family homes. Aaron found that very interesting, and we just witnessed that in California with SB 50 and the transportation corridor construction. He was really disappointed to see that not work.

Aaron went to the International Builders Show this year, and this year at the conference in Austin they had Lawrence Yun. He is, of course, the economist with the National Association of Realtors. Frank Nothaft with CoreLogic was also there. He used to be with Freddie Mac, and somebody from Trulia was there as well as Realtor.com. He didn’t take a lot away since a lot of it was that whole “wait and see.” Lawrence Yun said that the inverted yield curve, which was typically a good recession indicator, may fail this time. He said we’re beginning to see an uplift in consumer confidence around buying. But red tape in the homebuilding is really limiting what we can build, and we’re looking at a housing shortage of five to six million units that may last more than four years. He’s trying to understand where they’re getting that data because here in California, what gets thrown around a lot is that we’re three million housing units short. He’s surprised that we’re only five to six million. Are we really half that number or more than half that number of shortage? That would be interesting to find out, so he is doing research on that.

Aaron ended with some of his biggest takeaways. He really enjoyed that event, and he’ll be creating several different articles to dig in deeper into some of those topics. Upcoming events include I Survived Real Estate on September 27. This is their 12th year, and they are finalizing the panel right now trying to create something a little bit more interesting on the technology front. They will have an event up in San Jose this year. It’s a version of the Investing in Quadrant 4, so in a booming market. It’s really gonna be focused on creating value, so they’re working on a module on design, how to do better design and compete in that space. HDTV has ruined absolutely everything. They’re going to do a mini update on accessory dwelling units. Finally, they will try to finalize a chapter on Opportunity Zones. They’re working with an attorney and a CPA, and they’ve just been waiting for the regulation to get as close to done as possible nationwide so they can give you the correct information the first time instead of changing. That’s going to be held at SJREI at the beginning of September. If you are so inclined go up there, or if you are a member or a subscriber with The Norris Gorup you’ll get access to that after. But of course, you’ll get a discount if you’d like to attend live and ask all your juicy questions. Keep an eye on our website for upcoming events, and we hope to see you and about.

The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669. For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.