Census Data- Over half of U.S. counties shrank in population from 2010 to 2020

 In this Wall Street Journal article from August 13th, 2021, they go through several things the latest census data (2010-2020) shows.  The article goes for the clickbait issue of "White Population declining" to get people to actually read the article.  That's mainstream writing these days, I get it, you have to grab people's attention to get people to check out the article.

Here's the data point I found most interesting in this article:

52% of U.S. counties shrank in population between 2010 and 2020. 

The financial world is in a kind of Never Never Land right now, with the Covid shutdowns and then buoyed up by trillions of new money the Federal Reserve has created in 2020.  Things are really out of whack, and now inflation is growing.  There's a ton of confusing, and often contradicting data.  So here's one solid point.  52% of counties, primarily rural and small town areas, are losing people, and the big metro areas, are gaining people, generally speaking.  That was before 2020, but it's a major, longer trend.  Real estate may be really cheap in small towns, but there's a reason for that, the majority of rural and small town areas are shrinking in population.

If you're in real estate, and looking at areas nationwide, this is big.  The major metro areas are much higher priced, but generally speaking, they are still growing.  There has been a lot of talk about people migrating to smaller towns and cities, and a number of upscale people did, during 2020.  But it looks like many are heading right back to areas like New York City, we are starting to see those reports now, even though the pandemic is still going, despite having vaccines available here in the U.S..

There are several other data points in the article, so check it out. 

The Kwak Brothers looks at The Great Reset and 3 recent events

I found the Kwak Brothers video in early 2020, I think, and have watched several of them since.  They are two really intelligent guys who own several rental properties, and make videos about trends and happenings.

This video from yesterday (8/17/2021) looks into the World Economic Forum's concept of The Great Reset, which sounds horrible for us normal people.  Is it just rich people talking crazy ideas, or will business people, particularly property owners, be adversely affected by these ideas?  Daniel Kwak talks us through three events that have happened, that could limit property owners control over their properties, over time.  This one is well worth 11 minutes of your time, if you're looking at the Big Picture of all the weird things happening in our world today concerning real estate. 

Zillow, Opendoor, Redfin? Will one of these become the "Amazon" of real estate some day?

 In this Vice article article from August 13, 2021, they dig into the "arms race" between Zillow and Opendoor to buy as many homes as possible right now.  Zillow is raising $450 million to buy homes, and Opendoor is looking for a $2 billion line of credit to do the same.  Both have bought thousands of homes in recent months.  They are still small time in the Big Picture of real estate right now, but some of you may remember the days when Amazon.com was a goofy website selling a few books, that got laughed at in the business news.  This article is a good look at the emerging "ibuyer" trend in real estate. 

Check out Big Transition Real Estate Trends on Pinterest

 Homes with backyard skate/bike ramps is just one board on the Big Transition Rea l Estate Trends Pinterest page.  I'm going Old School for this photo, this is Vision pro skateboarder Ken Park, back in 1989, and that's me sitting on the railing, Tony Hawk's mini ramp, Fallbrook, California, 1989.  My boss Don and I were shooting footage of Ken for a video that day.

Big Transition Real Estate Trends Pinterest page

Upside down homes.  Homes made out of old ships, train cars, airplanes, and even a submarine.  Homes with airplane hangars, helipads, waterfalls, slides, and fire poles.  Homes with backyard pump tracks, indoor climbing walls, BMX jumps, skateboard ramps, and even homes in space.  Hobbit homes, homes on stilts, homes in caves, underwater homes, homes with ultimate car collection garages.  

That's just some of the fun stuff on the Pinterest page.  There are a ton of more traditional ideas as well, bedrooms, patio, pools, as well as motivating quotes, design ideas from global architecture, castles, street art, and vintage items.  I'm adding more ideas to the BTRET Pinterest page nearly every day.  Check it out at the link above. 

San Diego and California SFH real estate prices drop a bit in July

 In this 7San Diego news article, prices finally dropped a bit, from 4 records months of highs.  Single family homes in San Diego dropped .6% in July, and in California overall, they dropped 1% last month.  Is the market just taking a breather?  Or have we topped out?  One month is not enough to be a trend, but it shows a bit of slowing in the race higher.  The San Diego median price is up 19.6% from a year ago.  Total escrow sales in California were down 1.6%, month over month, and down 2% from a year ago. 

Why didn't the real estate market crash in the 2020 "recession"?

 This is the "M2" money supply chart for the last few years.  Basically, this graph shows how much money is being created by the Federal Reserve (which is NOT part of the U.S. Government, we don't elect Fed leaders).  There's a simple rule I learned from former Fed chariman Alan Greenspan's 2007 book, The Age of Turbulence.  When a government, or in our case, central banks like The Fed, create more money, that creates inflation.  More money in the system means the value of each dollar (or other currency) goes down.  So prices go up.  There's a lag time, usually 12-18 months, that it takes for this to happen, because the money is given to banks and major players, and then takes a while to begin circulating through the real, everyday world.  How fast money moves around is called the "velocity" of money.  

But the basic rule is, When they make more new money, prices start going up, 12 to 18 months later.   That's inflation.  

Look at the right side of that chart, that's the biggest surge in newly created money in U.S. history.  That money has gone into stocks, real estate, and other investments, keeping those markets from correcting... crashing, like they would in a "normal" recession.  Instead, the markets surged upward.  

The Fed has done everything it can to appease Wall Street and major corporations.  That bought us time in 2020.  But it has also completely warped the financial markets, and driven prices of assets like stocks and real estate, to absurd levels.  This can't go on forever, which is why stocks are largely flat for about three months now, and real estate prices appear to be topping out.  

When the crash, which is inevitable, does come, it will be bigger and more intense, and The Fed doesn't have much it can do now.  The Fed has two basic tools to affect the economy, 1) Create new money, and 2) Lower interest rates.  It has done both of those, more than ever in U.S. history, in the last two years.  Those things are losing their effect.  So we will have another major correction, a crash in stocks and real estate and other investments, before too long.  It's inevitable.  And The Fed is stuck, whatever it does then, will add to the negative effects.

 But all the new money will also create rising prices on most other things.  So it's going to be a weird, high inflation scenario, with "assets" losing value, for a while.  When things do turn South, it will have a big effect on real estate, and other investments.  Things are so out of whack economically, it's hard to tell how things will ultimately play out.  

So on the everyday level, the real estate market is getting back to something more close to "normal."  But we have this Big Picture money supply increase that delayed the real estate correction, and prices will drop at some time.  That new money bought us time to deal with the pandemic crisis.  But it just delayed the real estate price correction that usually happens a while after a recession starts.  And technically it was a "depression" in 2020, not a recession, but that's a whole different issue. 

Here's what the world economy is doing in the next 30-60 days

Behind the scenes, the underlying world economy has been shaky since 2007.  This video of dragsters blowing up is a metaphor for what's about to happen.  Yeah, it's that bad.  I knew there was another big downturn coming, mostly because he 2020 economic downturn wasn't allowed to play out.