ISSUE # 62

CIC Info Bytes 03/30/23

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🏠HOUSING🏡

FWIW Good Reading: How Big Things Get Done — Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner | 2023 | Penguin Random House Books

Housing Affordability

• Tiny house villages are back in consideration, but not necessarily funded.

During recent meetings about the draft five-year plan, KCRHA implementation board members have repeatedly expressed skepticism about the scale and ambition of the plan, worrying that it proposes too many unfunded plans, too fast, and with too little prioritization to represent a real plan that can be implemented in the next five years.

Homelessness Agency Proposes Modest Changes to Ambitious Five-Year Plan — Erica C. Barnett | PublicCola | 03/20/23

Washington state's homeless population increased between 2020 and 2022. The cause of the rise is the same in the state's most populous metro as in other cities.

The number of Washingtonians who are unsheltered, in vehicles or in temporary shelter grew by 10% from 2020 to 2022, increasing by 2,288 people. Slightly more than 70% of that growth came from Seattle and King County, according to part one of HUD’s 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report.

WA’s homeless population is increasing, new HUD report shows — Anna Patrick | Seattle Times | 03/27/23

• Hotter than flapjacks on fresh asphalt: the push for MIDDLE HOUSING  – development that reaches beyond traditional single-family home construction to 2, 4, 6 or more units on a single lot – has already begun to accelerate the proliferation of common interest communities: multi-unit developments and ADUs are often sold as condominiums.

'A holy war on sprawl': States seek to shape new housing development by limiting local control — Ben Adler | Yahoo! News | 03/18/23

ADUs: Passed by the House earlier this month and under consideration by the Senate right now, HB1110 would legalize up to two, three or four housing units per lot in most neighborhoods, and up to six units in some, overriding local zoning laws that currently limit large swaths of cities to single-family homes. Other bills would ease restrictions on accessory dwelling units, authorize more lot splitting and allow denser housing near transit stations.

Should WA allow more homes per lot? Debate swirls in 3 local cities — Daniel Beekman  and David Gutman | Seattle Times | 03/26/23

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A bifurcated housing market… — Lance Lambert | Fortune; republished by Yahoo! News | 03/18/23

A Tale of Two Housing Markets: Prices Fall in the West While the East Booms — Nicole Friedman | WSJ | 03/27/23

Home Prices DOWN

The housing-market slowdown in the past year shows one of the main ways that the Fed’s aggressive interest-rate increases are rippling through the economy. Housing is one of the most rate-sensitive economic sectors, and high housing costs have been a big contributor to inflation. The Fed raises rates to fight inflation by slowing the economy through tighter financial conditions.

Home Prices Fell in February for First Time in 11 Years — Nicole Friedman | WSJ | 03/21/23

“US homeowners on average still have about $270,000 more in equity than they had at the beginning of the pandemic,” a source tells us.

These are the 4 states where home equity has actually declined — Alisa Wolfson | Marketwatch | 03/26/23

Home Sales UP

US sales of previously owned homes rose in February by the most since mid-2020, snapping a record year-long slide tied to rising interest rates and affordability constraints. — Augusta Saraiva | Bloomberg | 03/17/23

• Buyer’s remorse: Nine out of 10 homeowners who bought a home in the last three years say they were unprepared for the extra costs of maintaining and financing their property, according to a new survey of 1,000 U.S. homeowners by Real Estate Witch, a real estate education platform.

Additionally, 73% of those surveyed said they had regrets about buying their home, with expensive maintenance and hidden costs cited as the most common reasons.

Only 35% of homeowners say they had no feelings of buyer’s remorse after buying their home. In the 2019 version of this survey, 65% of respondents felt no buyer’s remorse.

90% of homeowners didn't realize how expensive it would be… — Mike Winters | CNBC | 03/17/23

The last few years have been among the most challenging for home buyers. The pandemic blew up prices as demand for single-family homes grew. Today, inflated prices, high interest rates and few active listings continue to make finding and buying a house extremely difficult…

Building was found to be cheaper than buying in 18 states. In Hawaii, the median-priced house was listed at $1,045,000, but the study found that building would cost only $551,000, about $494,000 less, the greatest savings discovered.

Where It’s Cheaper to Build Than Buy — Michael Kolomatsky | NYT | 03/23/23

With mortgage rates high and home prices still elevated, the monthly payment for a newly purchased home — assuming a 10% down payment and a 30-year fixed rate mortgage — was $1,176 more than renting an apartment at the end 2022, according to an analysis from the National Multifamily Housing Council, a trade group that represents owners of professionally managed rental buildings.

The cost of homeownership has surged 71% over the past three years, or an average of about 20% per year, compared to average annual rent growth of 6.3% over the same period. As a result, the premium owners pay over renters is now wider than it’s been since the third quarter of 2006, the report said.

Buy-or-Rent Premium Is Highest Since 2006 Housing Bubble — Paulina Cachero | Bloomberg | 03/24/23

Indeed, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the US climbed nearly 40% from $1,770 in July 2021 to $2,106 in July 2022.  But rents are expected to soften — or even fall — this year as housing demand falls and the economy weakens.

Influencers make being a landlord with lots of rental properties seem easy. But a real-estate investor with 482 units warns newbies to not scale up too quickly. — AJ LaTrace | Business Insider | 03/25/23

The premium Americans are paying for a mortgage versus rent hasn't been this big since the housing bubble peaked 17 years ago

— Phil Rosen | Business Insider | 03/24/23

Built Environment & City Demographics

• Many urbanites take access to water for granted, but the United Nations predicts that urban water demand will increase by 80% by 2050…

Nearly 1 billion people in cities around the world face water scarcity today and the number is likely to reach between 1.7 billion and 2.4 billion within the next three decades, according to the 2023 UN World Water Development Report, published on Tuesday ahead of a vital UN summit. Urban water demand is predicted to increase by 80% by 2050.

Number of city dwellers lacking safe water to double by 2050 — Fiona Harvey | The Guardian | 03/22/23

As flooding increases, these cities are designed to work with -- not against -- the water — Laura Paddison | CNN | 03/26/23

• CIC Info Bytes’ Issue #60 included multiple articles about ‘15 minute cities.’  Carlos Moreno, the professor who coined the concept, is now under attack.

He Wanted to Unclog Cities. Now He's 'Public Enemy No. 1.' — Tiffany Hsu | NYT | 03/28/23

• 'A gas-guzzling villain's lair': welcome to LA's grotesque new high-rise — Oliver Wainwright | The Guardian | 03/17/23

• Exodus From America’s Big Cities Slowed Last Year as Pandemic Receded — Paul Overberg, John McCormick and Max Rust | WSJ | 03/30/23

• Turning empty office space into apartments is easier said than done. So the city of Seattle is holding a competition for innovations that could lead to policy changes.

$10,000 prize up for grabs in Seattle's office-to-residential competition — Marc Stiles | Puget Sound Business Journal | 03/23/23

• Timber skyscrapers and campuses are proliferating around the world. A new Bloomberg Green series looks at the rise and climate-boosting potential of an ancient material made new.

Why Wood Is the Breakout Architecture Star of the Early 21st Century — Amanda Kolson Hurley | Bloomberg | 03/23/23

Energy Updates

• View past coverage of this HOT topic:  1,  2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

When it comes to heat pumps, bigger is not always better — Alison F. Takemura | Canary Media | 03/22/23

District heating is an underground infrastructure asset where thermal energy is provided to multiple buildings from a central energy plant or plants. Steam or hot water produced at the plant is transmitted 24/7 through highly insulated underground thermal piping networks.

This award-winning apartment heat pump can fit under a kitchen sink — Michelle Lewis | Electrek | 03/25/23

Did you know that hydrocarbons have favorable thermodynamic properties?  Putting the fossil fuel into heat pumps: R-290 propane refrigerant.

Scientists back propane in heat pumps - Cooling Post — Cooling Post | 03/18/23

Bosch unveils propane heat pump for residential applications — Beatriz Santos | PV Magazine | 03/20/23

Heat Pump Efficiency Vs Temperature Graph (COP At 0°F To 60°F) — Learn Metrics HVAC Systems

• Geothermal systems cut home energy use; CT lawmakers want to make them cheaper — Vincent Gabrielle | CT Insider | 03/19/23

Adding Up The Benefits Of Geothermal — US DOE | Clean Technica | 03/21/23

The key to heating an 834-unit apartment tower under construction on the Brooklyn waterfront will be a hole in the ground.

Actually, it will be 322 holes, each about 4 inches (10 centimeters) across and exactly 499 feet (152 meters) deep — any deeper and New York state would consider it a mining project. These holes comprise the heart of a geothermal heat-pump system that is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 53% over a comparable building using conventional heating and cooling systems. When complete in 2025, 1 Java Street will be one of the biggest US residential buildings using the technology.

All-Electric Building Draws Energy From 500 Feet Below the Surface of the Earth — Will Wade | Bloomberg | 03/25/23

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is raising the bar for energy efficiency by increasing minimum CEER (Combined Energy Efficiency Ratio) ratings for room air conditioner units AND introducing standards for air purifiers.  View draft rule-making.

Window AC units and air purifiers in the US are about to get more energy-efficient — Justine Calma | The Verge | 03/24/23

Seattle Requests Federal Help in Planning “Low-Emission Neighborhoods” — Ryan Packer | The Urbanist | 03/20/23

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Utilities and other power players are cooking up plans to decarbonize our grid -- one of the top greenhouse-gas emitters in the United States. It's a puzzle.

Seattle utilities consider massive efforts that could help green our grid — Brendan Kiley | Seattle Times | 03/22/23

N.B.   Thousands of homeowners rely on Puget Sound Energy to deliver natural gas.  Removing natural gas from the equation is much more complicated than it seems. 

Interest Rate Risk

• Understanding interest rate risk is key to investing wisely.

The latest US banking crisis reveals a surprising cause: US Treasuries.  Silicon Valley Bank found itself in a position where it needed to sell Treasury holdings, as well as mortgage bonds backed by government agencies, at steep losses — driven by the Federal Reserve’s fastest rate-hiking pace in decades — after its clients started yanking out their money. “We always refer to Treasuries as the world’s safest asset,” says Paul McCulley, the former chief economist for Pacific Investment Management Co. “That’s from the standpoint of credit quality. That’s not from the standpoint of asset price stability. There’s a huge difference.”

— Kristine Aquino | Bloomberg 5 Things to Start Your Day | 03/29/23

SVB Collapse Shows US Treasuries Aren’t a Risk-Free Asset

— Liz McCormick, Ben Holland and Edward Harrison | Bloomberg | 03/28/23

Inflation and Monetary Policy

• Central banks continue to raise their key interest rate targets.  After a further 25bps hike on March 22nd, the key US interest rate now stands at 5%.

  • Compare current rates with what they were in March 2022 before the world woke up to an inflationary nightmare.  How one year makes a difference!

• FX Empire and Investing.com both feature laudable summaries of global central bank rates and future meeting dates.  Global-Rates and Trading Economics also provide fantastic summaries of current rates sans future policy meeting information.

• Recession warning: Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said recent bank turmoil has increased the risk of a US recession. “What’s unclear for us is how much of these banking stresses are leading to a widespread credit crunch. Would that slow down the economy? This is something that we’re monitoring very, very closely,” Kashkari, a voter on monetary policy this year, said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Before this month’s bank collapses and market turmoil, Kashkari had said the Fed should lift rates to about 5.4% — from a target range of 4.75% to 5% currently — and then hold them there until inflation cooled. 

— Kristine Aquino | Bloomberg 5 Things to Start Your Day | 03/27/23

• Bond investors are piling into wagers that a US recession is around the corner amid a growing dissonance between how markets and the Fed see the economic outlook. The gap is particularly evident in the yield curve, which is headed for its steepest monthly increase since October 2008. — Alexandria Arnold | Bloomberg Risky Business | 03/26/23

The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter percentage point and indicated there may be more hikes to come. In doing so, the Fed signaled that, banking turmoil or not, its battle against inflation must go on. Forecasted rate hikes were unchanged, too. 

Chair Jerome Powell emphasized his belief that the banking system remains resilient… Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Capitol Hill that regulators aren’t looking to provide “blanket” deposit insurance, despite calls from some quarters to raise it beyond the current level of $250,000.  — Margaret Sutherlin | Boomberg Evening Briefing | 03/22/23

Anyone out there betting the US Federal Reserve will actually cut rates this year has got it very wrong, says BlackRock. The world’s biggest money manager has taken a dim view of Wall Street wishful thinkers who expect rate cuts, given the continuing risk of recession. But BlackRock’s position runs counter to that of TD Securities and DoubleLine Capital, both of which contend the Fed is mistaken about the need to keep raising rates. The collapse of three mid-size US banks and the forced marriage of Credit Suisse to UBS may have prompted a rethink by some on monetary policy, but Fed Chair Jerome Powell made clear with a fresh rate hike that the inflation fight will go on.

— Margaret Sutherlin | Boomberg Evening Briefing | 03/28/23

SOMETHING has to give: Either the March jolt starts showing in the real economy, with tighter financial conditions flowing through to lower hiring and investing. OR the rate cut bets are going to have to go away, because right now the two don't seem consistent.

— David Goodman | Bloomberg 5 Things to Start Your Day | 03/28/23

Cashing In

• With some jittery depositors shifting their money from regional banks to large ones, at least some banks are lifting their savings account and CD rates to incentivize customers to stay put or to attract new money to replenish reserves, analysts say.

“It’s likely that concerns about maintaining deposit levels have put upward pressure on some deposit rates at some banks,” says Ken Tumin, founder of DepositAccounts.com, which tracks bank savings and CD rates. Banks, he says, want to “shore up their deposits to reduce the odds of being hurt by a bank run.”

Some online banks, in particular, have increased deposit rates because it’s easier for their customers to move money to competitors, he says.

Banks may be hiking savings rates to hold on to customers amid SVB crisis — Paul Davidson | USA Today | 03/27/23

Cashing Out

• Since the Fed began to raise interest rates a year ago, the amount of money in money market funds has increased by roughly $400 billion. 

  • [ONE major factor: the paltry interest being paid by banks]

  • inflows totaled more than $120 billion alone last week

    1. Institutional investors contributed $101 billion of that with retail investors making up the difference

  • A record $5 trillion is currently invested in money market funds

  • Goldman Sachs economists estimate that Americans could sell as much as $1.1 trillion in stocks this year and put that money into credit and money market assets instead.

  • But the more money there is invested in these funds, the greater the risk that cash could also flow out quickly, creating a money-market liquidity crisis — where funds may not have enough cash on hand to meet those redemptions.

  • Money market funds are deeply interconnected with the wider financial system, and often face the same risks as banks.

  • [Money market funds] typically invest in securities with maturities of 90 days or less, meaning they are very sensitive to changes in interest rates. They also invest heavily in commercial debt — if there’s a significant economic downturn the issuers could default on their obligations.

Americans are going all-in on cash. That could spell more trouble — Nicole Goodkind | CNN | 03/24/23

Investors are fleeing to cash in the biggest rush since the onset of the pandemic, according to Bank of America strategists. They predict equity and credit markets will slump in the coming months.  — David Rovella | Bloomberg Evening Briefing | 03/24/23

BofA Says Investor Rush to Cash Is Fastest Since Covid Hit — Farah Elbahrawy | Bloomberg | 03/24/23

Is the Global Banking System In Trouble?

• SVB showed “classic red flags for bank examination 101,” said Aaron Klein, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Finding problems late and moving slowly is a recipe for supervisory failure. It sure looks like that’s what happened here.”

“The supervisory process has not evolved for rapid decision making. It is focused on consistency over speed,” said Eric Rosengren, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “In a fast-moving situation, the system is not as well-designed to force change quickly.”

How Bank Oversight Failed: The Economy Changed, Regulators Didn’t

— Andrew Ackerman, Angel Au-Yeung and Hannah Miao | WSJ | 03/24/23

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For banks with assets between $1 billion to $10 billion, CRE loans comprised about 33% of the total held on their books, according to estimates by ratings agency Fitch. At the end of last year, CRE only made up about 6% of loans held by larger banks that had total assets of more than $250 billion, it said.

Goldman Sachs economists estimate the combined share of small and mid-sized banks, including lenders with less than $250 billion in assets, is 80% of the overall stock of commercial mortgage loans…

"Banks will be primarily exposed to CRE through bank loans on the balance sheet," … The total exposure of the U.S. banking system to CRE loans was $2.5 trillion at the end of December, Fitch said.

Analysis: Small U.S. banks imperiled by big office loans — Saeed Azhar and Matt Tracy | Reuters | 03/24/23

For much of the pandemic, buildings in central locations that feature modern amenities fared better than their less-pricey peers. Some even were able to increase rents while older, cheaper buildings saw surging vacancy rates and plummeting values. Now, these so-called class-A properties, whose rents generally fall into a city’s top quartile, are increasingly coming under pressure.

Rising interest rates have hit the entire commercial real-estate sector hard. Higher mortgage costs eat into landlords’ earnings and make it harder to refinance expiring loans. Rising yields on bonds and other securities also make real estate look less profitable in comparison, making buyers more reluctant to pay high prices and pushing down property values. Real estate analytics firm Green Street recently estimated that U.S. property values are down 15% since March 2022.

Not all commercial property sectors are suffering equally. While the values of hotels and rental-apartment buildings have fallen, these properties are also benefiting from inflation, which is pushing up room rates and apartment rents. Office buildings have seen a steeper drop in values partly because they are also grappling with weak demand from tenants who are cutting back on workspace. Green Street estimates that office values are down 25% over the past year.  Distress in Office Market Spreads to High-End Buildings — Konrad Putzier | WSJ | 03/28/23

"We're seeing tenants move out of commodity spaces and into the very best offices they can afford," David Smith, Cushman & Wakefield's head of global occupier insights, said. "It's left older spaces that haven't seen reinvestment less likely to find takers."...

Commercial real-estate financing is generally structured differently than residential mortgages. The loans often don't amortize and include only interest payments, meaning that when they expire, usually after a period of 10 years, owners must replace them with mortgages of commensurate size. In a market where building values have fallen — the National Council of Real Estate Investment estimated that average office values reported by its members fell 7.4% in 2022 — and lenders have become more cautious, that swap has become increasingly difficult…

"We are currently valuing those deals in an enormously wide band," Levy said of office loans, in particular. "50 to 90 cents on the dollar."

Office Doom Loop: Landlords Face a Reckoning As Companies Move to Fancy Offices

— Daniel Geiger | Business Insider | 03/30/23

• If half the uninsured depositors decide to withdraw their funds after the recent bank instability, it could put hundreds of billions of dollars of deposits in jeopardy.

• “If uninsured deposit withdrawals cause even small fire sales [of assets], substantially more banks are at risk”

• “Overall, these calculations suggest that recent declines in bank asset values very significantly increased the fragility of the U.S. banking system.”

• As of December 31, 2022, U.S. banks had unrealized losses of $1.7 trillion which were nearly equal to banks’ total equity of $2.1 trillion

• Of $17 trillion in total U.S. bank deposits, nearly $7 trillion are currently not insured by the FDIC

Research Paper: Why do banks invest in MBS? — Itamar Drechsler, Alexi Savov, and Philipp Schnabl* | NYU | 03/13/23

U.S. Banks are sitting on $1.7 trillion in unrealized losses. That's not a problem—until it is — Will Daniel | Fortune | 03/23/23

Inflation’s clearly a global problem right now, and everybody’s focused on containing it before it gets unhinged. Inflation in the US and in Europe is going to stay higher for longer... The unprecedented amount of fiscal spending was really what kicked that into gear, not just in the US but across the world. And if you really think about it: Are we cutting back on that? We are — but we’re not cutting back on it as quickly as we put it in. And so it’s still lingering out there and it’s still going to create inflation.

—  Que Nguyen, chief investment officer of equity strategies at Research Affiliates

As banks fail and regulators strive to arrange rescues, there’s much talk that we’ve turned back the clock 15 years to the Global Financial Crisis. I’d like to suggest that instead we are finally confronting the costs of decisions made almost exactly 25 years ago, in the first two weeks of April 1998…  No, It's Not Like 15 Years Ago. What Matters Is 25 — John Authers | Bloomberg | 03/23/23

Sacked

• Bloomberg’s analysis shows that almost half a million employees around the world have been sacked since October 1, 2022. 

Global Layoffs Extend Far Beyond Big Tech — Mathieu Benhamou, Jennah Haque, Phil Kuntz, Jo Constantz | Bloomberg | 03/21/23