March 16, 2021 During the Great Recession, a little more than a decade ago — the value of real estate was hit significantly. We spent ten years recovering as values reached pre-recession levels and then some. During the COVID-induced recession of last year, home appreciation actually accelerated. Just recently, CoreLogic confirmed that house values rose […]
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March 9, 2021 What is the definition of a “K-shaped” economic recovery? A “V-shaped” is a quick and sharp recovery and a “U-shaped” recovery is more gradual. The “K-shaped” recovery is bifurcated. This means that certain segments of the recovery are happening at different speeds. In this case, the real estate sector definitely represents the […]
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March 2, 2021 Interest rates have been so low for such a long period of time that many have taken these record low rates for granted. Though we have said this many times during the past year, we must understand that these historic rates will not be with us forever. Record low rates for an […]
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February 23, 2021 Just in case you are getting nostalgic for the past few years, we began 2021 with an impeachment trial and a debate concerning the size and need for a stimulus package. Sound familiar? And because this commentary is focused upon economics and not politics, we are more concerned with the arguments for […]
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February 16, 2021 A few weeks ago, we saw the first reading of economic growth for the 4th quarter of last year. Though this number is subject to two revisions, the increase of 4.0% is not expected to change all that much. Taken by itself, a rise of 4.0% would be seen as fairly substantial. […]
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February 9, 2021 The January jobs report gives us our first look at the job market as we begin 2021. We entered 2021 knowing that the economy had lost approximately ten million jobs that we have yet to recover. We were making good progress on recovering jobs before the winter COVID spike hit. We now […]
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February 2, 2021 Last week we talked about differences with a change of administrations. We all agree that the challenges facing our nation – the economy, the pandemic, the divisiveness are not going to go away. But there are other areas where there will be no difference and these areas are positive. As a matter […]
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January 26, 2021 Well, we have a new President of the United States. Feel any different? We still have COVID raging, a vaccine-fueled recovery in the works, a bitterly divided electorate and an impeachment trial coming up. While that may not seem vastly different from last week, we might keep our eyes open to look […]
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January 19, 2021 Apologies to Steve Martin. We were hoping that 2021 would not be as wild and crazy as 2020. Yet the first few days of January was anything but calm. We started with spikes of COVID-19 as holiday gatherings and the cold weather provided ideal conditions for spreading the virus. The first trading […]
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January 12, 2021 We did get a strong stimulus bill out of Congress as an initial response to the crisis. But the second bill took excruciatingly long to negotiate. And even after it passed, there were questions about whether the bill would be signed (it was) and whether the amount of the checks sent out […]
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