big benI was in New York with colleagues recently, answering clients’ questions about investing in UK real estate. As in the US, we in the UK have ridden a sustained period of strong capital growth in real estate, which continued into 2015. However, growth has slowed recently in certain areas and former hot-spots can now only be described as lukewarm.
Continue Reading “Find Out Where the People Are Going and Buy the Land Before They Get There”*

iStock_000053495504_XXXLargeThe Great Equity Correction of 2015 that is now being enjoyed by all of us is a correction, and not the beginning, of the Great Bear Market of 2015 (from my lips to God’s ears). It reminds me of just how little we know about how all complex systems, like the global financial market (and don’t get me started on climate), function. Nonetheless, our Regulatory State behaves as if this was not true and as if wise governmental types can simply declaim new rules and regulations to get their very specifically-designed outcomes.
Continue Reading The Regulatory State: May We Have A Little Humility, Please?

euroFor want of a baker, a job was lost.  For want of a job, the economy was lost.  For want of an economy, the banking system collapsed.  For want of a banking system – well, ultimately Grexit.

Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, (China), Grexit, Grexit. The Greeks will be fine, right?  There is no such thing as contagion, right?  Your lips to God’s ear, please. As I write this, the Greek Parliament has approved the bailout and it looks like an immediate Grexit is off the table, (although the Germans are none too pleased)!  Wonderful.
Continue Reading Grexit Deferred: The End of the Beginning for Greece?

big benThis month’s decisive, if unexpected, victory for the Tories has given a boost to the UK’s real estate markets. Following an already strong 2014 and now with even higher expectations for continued growth in 2015, the UK is an interesting play.  In light of this amiable confluence of factors and the increasing difficulty of finding yield here in the States, it’s perhaps time for a rousing rendition of George M. Cohan’s “Over There.”

And hey, legally speaking, it’s a terrific place to invest.  It’s a hot bed of red in a tooth and claw capitalism (at least compared to our other European friends).  The UK has a robust and broadly understandable legal system and a respect for property rights soundly rooted in the common law; all in all, a genial environment for investment.
Continue Reading A Guide to UK Real Estate and Real Estate Finance: Why Don’t You Speak Proper English?

You know, as an economist, I am a pretty good piano player. I struggle every morning, marinating in the news cycle, to try to understand what’s happened to the US economy and what its impact will be or might be upon the business of commercial real estate finance. We apparently are inching up on the point where the Fed may or may not do something, but as we discussed in this column a while back, the Fed’s idiosyncratic love affair with transparency is creating a cacophony of voices both in and outside of government that make even that threshold question hard to answer. It would seem we ought to pay attention, but, as the fed-heads and the commentariat continuously randomly blather and bloviate it’s just all noise, so what’s the point? I have been and remain fundamentally confused and in all the chatter I don’t see much wisdom or insight.
Continue Reading Commercial Real Estate and the Broader US Economy: What Me, Worry?

I’ve written about Europe a lot over the past couple of years and not out of just a Schadenfreude enjoyment of watching a slow motion disaster far from our shores but because it seems to me that really matters, both in terms of its impact on the global financial marketplace and the probable knock-on effect on domestic U.S. finance markets. It also deserves our attention because it contains lessons for all and sundry policymakers and opinion purveyors about policy choices that simply don’t work.

Of course, the first and most portentous mistake in Europe is don’t ever get into a land war in Southeast Asia, er, I mean never sever control of fiscal and monetary policy; in other words, their big mistake, the Euro-zone currency itself.

Until now, I have shied away from the conclusion that the center could not hold, and held firmly to the notion that somehow Europe would muddle through.
Continue Reading Europe and Its Common Currency: It’s Really Over… But Not Today