Loading summary
Transcript84 lines
- [00:00]
Barry
This is an Iheart podcast.
- [00:06]
Amex Business
When you're with Amex Business Platinum, you have the card that helps businesses dream bigger, get a flexible spending limit that adapts with your business and earn 1.5 times Membership Rewards points on select business purchases so you can stock up on what you need to take your business further and get rewarded for growing bigger. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Not all purchases will be approved. Terms apply. Learn more@americanexpress.com.
- [00:35]
Verizon Business
Switch to Verizon Business and get more from your Internet without paying more for your Internet. Get LTE Business Internet starting at $39 a month when paired with select Business Mobile plans. That's unlimited data and with it unlimited possibilities. Start saving today with Verizon Business Ranked number one in Small Business Internet Customer Satisfaction by J.D. power. Starting price for 25 Mbps LTE Internet Plan with Smartphone Plan Savings plus Taxes, Fees and Economic Adjustment Charge. Terms apply for J.D. power 2024 Award Information. Visit JDPower.com Awards Thrivent can help you.
- [01:06]
Jonathan Miller
Plan your finances for the people, causes and community you love. What makes Thrivent? Different financial services and generosity programs are combined to help you build a financial roadmap for the future while also creating opportunities to give back along the way. Visit thrivent.com to learn more.
- [01:23]
Amex Business
Thrivent Where Money Means More.
- [01:28]
Barry
Sweet Home Alab.
- [01:35]
Jonathan Miller
Have you thought about owning or buying a vacation property? Would you like a place to take the family to on a lake near the beach or up in the mountains? I have and I know a lot of our listeners have. Also, let's bring in Jonathan Miller, CEO and founder of Miller Samuel, a highly rated data analytics and research firm covering the housing market. He has written a number of pieces on vacation homes, second property, luxury properties and what's happening in that market. So Jonathan, let's just talk a little bit about what's going on in the second home market, whether it's the luxury market or not. Tell us a little bit about what's going on out there.
- [02:24]
Barry
Well, you know we had coming out of the pandemic we probably had the biggest second home purchase boom in history as people were coming, you know, sort of re engaging with the outdoors again after the pandemic. And then in the last couple of years we've actually seen a big drop off in second home purchases. Now it's I would describe it as more normalized where it's where more consistent with seven or eight years ago before the pandemic and comparisons against the last few years are probably unfair to the market.
- [03:02]
Jonathan Miller
So what's going on then with the supply of homes for sale? Obviously 20, 21, 22, a lot of supply got sucked up as a percentage of average home numbers for sale. That number seems to have plummeted. Has that normalized yet?
- [03:20]
Barry
It depends on location. The way I think of it is we are seeing a big uptick in supply, but it depends on where the uptick began. You know, did it become. Begin at a record low number? And now it's, you know, we have some markets, a lot of markets that are still behind pre pandemic inventory levels, but we have a growing number of markets that are sort of catching up or exceeding. But it is very location specific. The one thing.
- [03:55]
Jonathan Miller
Yes, let me take a few guesses. I'm going to guess that we're seeing a big uptick in supply in, in southern Florida and not as much supply in, let's say the Hamptons or Jersey shore off of New York or Newport or any of the vacation destinations off of Boston. That's just my instinct. I'm curious what your data shows.
- [04:18]
Barry
It shows exactly that. You know, and another way to really look at this simplistically is I think of Sunbelt versus everybody else. A sun belt. You know, we, it's new product can be built faster. You know, the whole moving away, you know, to something cheaper, you know, a cheaper housing market which tends to be to the south was sort of overdone and, and now there's a big difference even within South Florida. You look at Miami Dade is really seeing a lot of supply come in significant about 50% over the last year up and. But then two counties to the north go Broward and then go Palm Beach County. Palm beach county is seeing declining inventory. So I don't think there's a correlation with the further south you go, the more inventory is rising. But that seems to be what's actually happening in Florida.
- [05:24]
Jonathan Miller
Palm beach kind of reminds me of East Hampton or Sag harbor, something like that. So it's more east end of Long Island. Is it fair to say that a lot of parts of places like south Florida just to become victims of their own success? There was such an exodus from California to Texas, from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut to Florida that it just seemed to overwhelm the infrastructure and the supply. Fair statement.
- [05:53]
Barry
That's a very fair statement. And then throw in hurricanes on the, the Gulf side. The Gulf side with, you know, has. Has seen a much faster rise in supply than the oceanside of Florida. And I won. That's part of, you know, Canadians tend to gravitate towards the Gulf side. And, you know, with the trade war that we're having right now, maybe that's playing into it as well.
- [06:22]
Jonathan Miller
So we were looking in, of all times, January 2020 on the Gulf side in places like St. Petersburg for a winter home. And then the pandemic shut everything. And when everything reopened, I wasn't as surprised about the big increase in home prices as I was the giant increase in things like insurance, taxes, HOA fees. It got to the point, wait, if I'm going to spend 60 or 80 or $100,000 a year on everything around the house, not actually buying the house, hey, that pays for a lot of nice vacations. Maybe I don't need to own a place in Florida. I could just visit. How significant is the cost structure change in southern Florida to what's going on there? And where else are we seeing that sort of spike in homeownership costs?
- [07:20]
Barry
Right. So, you know, when in the old days when you bought a house and you were worried about the interest rate and the price of the house, the. The costs of homeownership beyond that were sort of a rounding area, you weren't thinking about the cost of insurance, real estate taxes. And what we've been seeing in the last several years is a big jump in not, not just the cost, but actually getting coverage, really, in insurance. One thing, you know, when we think about other parts of the country that are sort of struggling, I would, I would characterize this as more of a national condition. Now, California is wildfires. The Midwest is tornadoes, and the Southeast and Eastern seaboard is. And inland too is flooding. So there just seems to be this sort of steady rising tide, no pun.
- [08:25]
Jonathan Miller
Intended.
- [08:27]
Barry
But of it. And actually, the one thing that, you know, in. In all my research about this over the last couple of years, the most expensive cat or insurance cost relative to home prices is the Midwest. It's not Florida. It's not, you know, wildfires in California because housing is so much less expensive in the Midwest.
- [08:55]
Jonathan Miller
But so as a percentage, it's a.
- [08:57]
Barry
Bigger chunk, it's a bigger, bigger liability.
- [09:00]
Jonathan Miller
Or so we were just in Chicago a week or two ago, and what was so interesting. So I'm in Chicago every year for Thanksgiving for forever. I always find the Midwest and Chicago in particular, a smaller, more manageable, more rational, much more affordable version of New York City. But a lot of people we spoke to there in Chicago, in Detroit, in Milwaukee, there are all the Great Lakes, like what we talk about on the east coast with beach property, Hamptons, Fire Islands, Jersey Shore, Delaware, go down the whole list. They all talk about some people have homes on Lake Michigan or if you're coming from Grand Lake streams, there's just a run of vacation properties and the prices seem almost reasonable. What are you seeing in the Midwest market for real estate prices?
- [09:56]
Barry
So it's always really dangerous to sort of make a living in the east and then go to the Midwest and, and look at housing prices and it's almost entertainment because the affordability, you know, to buy a vacation home in say Wisconsin, north of Chicago, where I used to live, you know, is, you know, reasonable. But not to locals, right.
- [10:25]
Jonathan Miller
And my head trader in the office, after this whole, we had a big event in Chicago, he's like, oh my God, I can't believe how reasonable everything is here. I'm like, you and your fiance should move there. The only catch is we have to cut your salary 40% because that's the local wage. So clearly home prices track local median income. I don't remember if it was your research note that talked about, or maybe it was Paul Krugman's talked about.
- [10:58]
Barry
New.
- [10:58]
Jonathan Miller
Jersey as one of the densest populations in the country with one of the highest home price in the country, but an even higher median income on average. And so it turns out that paying a high price for homes in New Jersey is actually cheaper than an inexpensive home in another part of the country relative to your income. So that really begs the question, how significant is local income to vacation properties, lakefront homes and beach houses?
- [11:42]
Barry
Well, you know, it's, it in danger of saying it depends, but it depends. You know, I think about a market that, that I lived in and cover, a market like Manhattan, which is known for lots of pita terres, you know, places in the city that people in the suburbs buy homes there. If you look at the median income in Manhattan, it has no bearing on, on the price of housing because there's such an international and also, you know, affluence that gravitates there. So, so the median income doesn't really relate. It's, you know, it's like you know, 70,000 or some, right? You know, you know, and the median home price in Manhattan is about a million two, which gets you a studio, right? Maybe a small one bedroom in a walk up.
- [12:41]
Jonathan Miller
So since you're mentioning foreign buyers, let's talk about what's going on with the public policy and in particular the dollar. We've seen the dollar fall off from its highs recently. You talked about this in a recent research note. What does the strength of the dollar mean for potential buyers of real estate from overseas and what has, let's just call the damage to America, the brand, the black eye that we sort of see Uncle Sam having, what does that mean for, for outside purchasers, at least at this point?
- [13:19]
Barry
It's an offset, in other words, that we've had periods of time where, you know, you know, if you're coming from Europe, you were, you were enjoying a 50% discount. Wow. Off the currency play for a US home. And so New York, you know, had a tremendous, would have a tremendous surge every time the dollar got weaker. We had periods, I want to say 2006, 2007, where I called it the Irish carpenter syndrome, where you had sort of, you know, people of modest means in Ireland getting 50% discounts on million dollar condos in Midtown.
- [14:02]
Jonathan Miller
What about the other coast? What about Japan, China, Korea? It's Asia buying San Francisco, La Jolla, San Diego, and even across the border, Vancouver.
- [14:14]
Barry
Well, big driver is access to, to university, high quality universities. And so the Asian demand, that's one of the amenities they're really looking for, you know, sort of over the long run. The problem with, with the weaker currency or the, the weaker dollar is that the, the state of immigration and the sort of what I call the tariff tantrums and the uncertainty that is abound at the moment has essentially, at least, you know, in my anecdotal observation at this moment is, you know, it's offsetting the benefit of a, of a discount that we're not seeing the influx of international demand that we normally would expect during this, this type of dollar environment.
- [15:11]
Jonathan Miller
Since you mentioned the tariff tantrum that seems to be keeping mortgage rates elevated, doesn't really matter to luxury properties. Three, four or five million dollars. Those are mostly cash deals, I've learned from reading your research notes. But what about, you know, younger folks in their, not in their 20s and 30s, but perhaps in their late 30s and 40s who want a vacation property? They're not spending tens of millions of dollars. They're spending something a little more reasonable. But they're probably putting 10, 20, 30% down and putting a mortgage on it. What is these elevated mortgage rates doing to that market?
- [15:55]
Barry
So it's restraining it. The way to think of rates is they're sort of, you know, stuck at sort of, you know, just below 7% on a fixed rate. When you, when you're looking at a second home purchase, you probably want to add a half to three quarters of a percent to the rate of a primary residence.
- [16:20]
Jonathan Miller
So it's More for a second home mortgage than a primary home.
- [16:25]
Barry
Yes, yes. And the underwriting is a little tougher as well. There's ratios that are a little bit tighter, you know, and that, that's the way to think of it. However, you know, you know, if you're looking for like a break in pricing, you know, pricing now with the uncertainty and the rates being stuck in an elevated level, the, the rate of price growth is starting, you know, has been really, over the last few months, start to ratchet down a bit.
- [16:57]
Jonathan Miller
So it's plateauing.
- [16:59]
Barry
Yeah, I would say plateauing is probably a fair term in some markets even slipping a bit. We still have markets that are rising, but those tend to be primary housing markets. Like if you're in New York City, metro Long island grew 10 last year.
- [17:18]
Jonathan Miller
Yeah, absolutely.
- [17:19]
Barry
You know, big numbers.
- [17:20]
Jonathan Miller
So, so let's, since we mentioned the non luxury second homes, let's talk demographics a little bit. What about Millennials and Gen Z? Are they, remember during the 2010s, they steered clear from the initial housing market. They were forming households at a very low rate. Along the same time as builders had kind of pivoted post crisis to multifamily and away from single family homes, not only are those generations now buying first homes, some of them, I hesitate to say many of them, but some of them are looking at second homes. How do you think about demographics and where these folks look at a vacation property?
- [18:09]
Barry
So you're right, we're absolutely seeing the Millennials first just, you know, push into homeownership, not just home ownership, but second home owner ownership. If you think about this at a top, sort of at a top level, one of the things that's been changing with the baby boomer generation is buying homes or giving what the kids would wait until their parents passed.
- [18:44]
Jonathan Miller
Right.
- [18:45]
Barry
You were seeing a lot, you know.
- [18:47]
Jonathan Miller
Like 20, 30 years is the technical term. You're making the gift while you're alive.
- [18:56]
Barry
To bask in the glow. Right?
- [18:57]
Verizon Business
Yes.
- [18:58]
Barry
And, and, and, and that's a thing. And just sort of, you know, the, the quick observation is in the 80s, when I started up my company, it was very common for, you know, in Manhattan for parents to buy like a studio apartment sort of the size of a hotel room.
- [19:22]
Jonathan Miller
Right.
- [19:23]
Barry
For their kids that were going to college in that. And, and it would become a pied, a tear for the family down the road. Now they're buying three, four, five million dollar apartments. And, and as opposed to little efficiency type places, we're seeing a much bigger price tag on this. As you Know, and I, and that is giving these, this generation sort of a jumpstart.
- [19:52]
Jonathan Miller
So you're kind of implying, I don't want to say fractional ownership or co ownership. It's multiple generations of a family using the same second property. But what about those sort of things? We've seen business models of fractional ownership, or I've heard stories of close friends, two or three families co owning a property. Is this a real trend or is this still a rounding error?
- [20:18]
Barry
I. It. To me, it's more of a rounding error. You know, it's an interesting storyline, but I, I'm not seeing that it's happening on the margin more than anything else. What's really interesting in the world of Airbnb and investor ownership, you know, lenders, there's a higher rate for that, right? A higher mortgage rate if you're financing. But you know, to my understanding, you can, as long as you, on a second home, as long as you control the house, meaning you don't have tenants in it for more than six months, you can claim it as a second residence.
- [21:02]
Jonathan Miller
What does that do for you, tax wise, if it's a second residence, as opposed to a business that.
- [21:08]
Barry
I don't know, you know, every situation is so different. But I know that with, with Airbnbs, if you're using a professional manager to manage it for you, then it's considered an investor property. It's. It's not. And you know, we've had like in the southwestern U.S. you know, there's a massive oversupply of Airbnb properties that are not sort of covering the, the monthly costs. So I'm not necessarily encouraging that there's.
- [21:38]
Jonathan Miller
Going to be some supply coming on the market. When people say, hey, this just isn't worth the headache, is that the implication?
- [21:43]
Barry
Yeah, yeah, that, that, you know, I'm not getting the returns that I, that I thought I would get, you know, because everybody had the same idea at the same time. There's certainly a place for it, but I think it's been a little bit over. Overused. And you know, the other thing is, and you know, when we think about Airbnb versus being an investor, a pure investor, and renting it out for, you know, for six months or a year is that you don't get to use the property. Right. And let, you know, and, and that's been one of the selling points of Airbnb as a, you know, as a landlord. And then the other thing is that generally, you know, when you look at their data, they generate about two and A half times the rent per square foot of a one year lease and some even generate more like one fine stay is a sort of luxury Airbnb and it's, it's like three times.
- [22:42]
Jonathan Miller
Shorter term rentals are more expensive than longer term rentals.
- [22:46]
Barry
Yes.
- [22:47]
Jonathan Miller
So let's. I think everybody knows what are the super hot destinations, but I know the super hot vacation home destinations. But I know you crunch a lot of data. What do you see as sort of up and coming? What do you see as hot that are probably going to surprise most people who pay attention to real estate?
- [23:09]
Barry
Well, I think of New Hampshire and Vermont really, which isn't really a.
- [23:15]
Jonathan Miller
More a ski ski location.
- [23:17]
Barry
Yeah, that's probably my, my built in bias for going north when the kids are young for every vacation and not south. But I, there just seems to be a, especially probably more New Hampshire than Vermont. A tremendous, at least in the Northeast there was a. From the pandemic through now, there was a tremendous boom in New Hampshire housing because of the second home phenomenon. What's really interesting, something that I hadn't paid much attention to until the last couple of years is with the whole push for rto, you know, return to office. Some people that are buying second homes really want to be cognizant of their employers, you know, future policies on how often you have to be in the office.
- [24:14]
Jonathan Miller
Because I know I could take a cannonball from West Hampton into Manhattan and it's marginally longer than my normal commute into the city. But it raises an interesting question. How has the rise of the remote work, work from home and the return to office, how is that impacting buyer preferences for vacation homes and where they're located?
- [24:43]
Barry
So there was a word that somebody, I was giving a presentation, you know, right after the sort of dark days of the pandemic and I remember a real estate agent, you know, I was trying to describe that, you know, people moving to a second home market because they could work remotely. I called it co primary. Basically it was a co primary residence. So what people, what I found, people coming out of the pandemic were looking for quality of schools if they had a young family, you know, they were looking at things that you normally don't consider Internet, you know, quality things that you normally don't consider when you're buying a second home, the holiday. But second home is to get away from it all. But that's been sort of co opted by the need to work or the desire to reduce commuting or you know, you know, who doesn't like to maybe work in their pajamas.
- [25:47]
Jonathan Miller
Right. So how would you recommend, given all of the apps, all of the data, all of the things that are out there, someone shopping for a vacation property, how should they be using an app like, let's say Zillow or Redfin in order to help them find a vacation property they really want to own?
- [26:08]
Barry
Right. So, you know, the apps make it all accessible. Pictures, you know, you, you can see lots of information, but it, this sounds old school, but once you have that information, you know, you have, you know, you've looked at a, you know, online, a dozen properties that sort of, you know, makes sense to you. You really need to see an agent, you know, you need to talk to a human, you know, and someone that's a local expert in a market, which is a whole nother thing, which you can, through these apps, figure out, you know, does their name pop up all over the place and have them talk you through it. If there's a moment in your life that you need handholding, even though you think you know everything, I think it's home buying you. You do. And, you know, all the sort of stories of all, they're just trying to sell you out. Yeah, they're trying to sell you a house, but they're also, they're also a wealth of information, and you can't get that online.
- [27:17]
Jonathan Miller
Really, really interesting stuff. So final question in two parts. What sort of advice would you give somebody who asks, hey, I'm looking to buy a luxury property in a hot area? And what advice would you give to a millennial, someone in their late 30s or 40s, hey, we'd love to have some reasonable vacation property. What do you tell those folks?
- [27:41]
Barry
So the first is incredibly obvious. There is so much information at your fingertips in terms of understanding the cost, the additional mortgage expense, if you're going that route, to think about the equity that you have in your existing primary residence, if you have one. You know, right now we're basically looking at record or near record home equity because of the, the price growth that we've seen over the last five, seven years. And maybe that's a financing vehicle or acquisition vehicle for your, your purchase, certainly.
- [28:20]
Jonathan Miller
Down payment, you could borrow from your home, even though it will have to be disclosed to the bank.
- [28:26]
Barry
Yes, yes. You know, and, you know, banks, you know, listen, if you have a boatload of equity in your home, you know, it's, you know, I, I see this quite a bit where people use that to buy a smaller home, a second home.
- [28:43]
Jonathan Miller
And, you know, we, as we've Seen in the past leveraging up your primary residence to buy a luxury property. How could that ever go wrong?
- [28:51]
Barry
Right, right, right, right, exactly. You know, and, and, and the, the sort of saving grace to that, unlike during the financial crisis, is that credit conditions remain tight. So lenders aren't just giving away loans. If you have a pulse or fog and mirror like we, we had during the financial crisis, it's actually a thing, you know, they're, they're actually doing their due diligence and they're doing their jobs.
- [29:25]
Jonathan Miller
Go figure. That's a crazy concept.
- [29:28]
Barry
It's kind of a crazy concept.
- [29:29]
Jonathan Miller
Let me refer you, let me refocus you on the luxury question because I know you bought a property not too long ago. I bought a property not too long ago and I was, I learned from your experience. I was completely frustrated by people making all cash offers for over the asking price. And I'm like, I can't believe we lost another house I thought we were in. So someone comes to you and says, I'm doing pretty well, I got a nice bonus this year. We'd love to get a vacation property. And we're not, we're looking over $2 million. We're not going to go crazy, but we have a decent budget. What advice do you give somebody like that?
- [30:10]
Barry
Well, the first thing is, you know, if you're in a housing market with limited inventory, New York metro, the share of bidding wars of transactions is in the 40ish percent rate, meaning that 40% of the closings the buyer paid over ask.
- [30:31]
Jonathan Miller
Wow, that's a reality still 2025 that's going on.
- [30:34]
Barry
Absolutely. It is not what it was six months ago. It was 50% more than 50% in the new York metro area. You know, outside of the city, the city isn't seeing that city is a much lower number. But, but that's sort of the reality. But then you know, if you go to other markets like we were talking about the Sun Belt, you know, that that's almost non existent. I just still think that the sellers are embedded with sort of a bravado that you know, is still, you know, was built up during the pandemic. And I also think that buyers are sort of have a bravado that they're going to get the most amazing deal and so that the gap between them, you know, is a lesson. And it takes the parties a while to, you know, to, to sort of meet halfway. Both have to sort of capitulate to the actual market conditions. And part of what's happened, things have happened so quickly, just with the tariffs and the confusion, I had this sort of cockamamie theory that came up out of, you know, the, you know, when we think about tariff policy having flip flopped at least 50 times. Yeah. There's this uncertainty that we're sort of all living with. And in some ways that sort of chaos or uncertainty as it relates to housing becomes a constant as opposed to this new thing. It's sort of, you know, it's, it's a reality. And, and if you're in the housing market, you have to be sort of aware that there is a chaos to it still and don't be afraid of it.
- [32:25]
Jonathan Miller
So to wrap up for those people searching for a vacation property, a lake house, a beach house, a mountain house, we've seen some uptick in the amount of supply and perhaps in some areas prices have stopped going up, at least not going up as aggressively as, as they have been. But be aware it's very regional, it's very geographic specific. There is a demand for more of these properties, especially from millennials and soon Gen Z. Keep your eye on what's going on. Get informed and work with a local expert to help find your dream vacation property. I'm Barry with Holtz. You're listening to Bloomberg's at the money.
- [33:17]
Verizon Business
Switch to Verizon business and get more from your Internet without paying more for your Internet. Get LTE Business Internet starting at $39 a month when paired with select business mobile plans. That's unlimited data and with it unlimited possibilities. Start saving today with Verizon business ranked number one in small business Internet customer satisfaction by J.D. power. Starting price for 25 Mbps LTE Internet plan with smartphone plan savings plus taxes fees and economic adjustment charge terms apply for J.D. power 2024 award information. Visit J.D. power.com awards the data that matters for your investments.
- [33:50]
Barry
The entire auto sector is higher today and analysis on the companies making news on Wall Street. Tesla has been a stock that's been in focus Years have really been all.
- [33:58]
Amex Business
Over the map this morning.
- [33:59]
Barry
Listen to the stock movers report from Bloomberg. Let's talk about some other decliners. It's your short audio report on the day's winners and losers in the stock market.
- [34:08]
Jonathan Miller
Second biggest driver in terms of points.
- [34:10]
Barry
For the S&P 500. Subscribe to the stock movers report on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
- [34:17]
Amex Business
This is an I heart podcast.