Go depopulated. Almost twenty percent of Minneapolis real estate has gone on the market in the last week. Though, to be fair, this could just be a combination of a summer uptick, and pent-up supply from months of shutdown in which it was hard to do a real-estate transaction.
But if it’s due to rioting, I suspect this will be the fate of a lot of cities in the coming months and years, including Seattle. I suspect our home value will hold up, though. Always going to be demand to live near the beach in LA County.
There is definitely a de-urbanization thing going on. It’s not just the rioting either. High population densities are also a great vector for communicable diseases. Add to that the experience office workers now have with working from home, and you have ample reason not to live in a city if you don’t want to.
Funny how the urban architects keep missing these key phase changes. I think of Maslow’s hierarchy here. You aren’t going to get people living in the Big City, if their homes and businesses are burned down and looted every few years.
Hopefully, this is just a once in a generation (or longer) thing, but even so, insurance rates are going up and it’s going to cost everyone more, just because the urban authorities couldn’t do their jobs on several levels.
Remote work inevitably leads to off shore outsourcing.
I agree. If it doesn’t matter where you work, then it doesn’t matter where that work is performed. You’re no longer competing with others in your local area and are now competing on a world market.
I’m already competing in a world market. The person that hired me lives and works from home in Scotland.
So does stay in the office work.
I see lots of people mis-interpreting that number. It’s not that 18% of real estate in Minneapolis is suddenly for sale. It’s that of what is listed for sale, 18% of it got listed in the last week. That’s a notable figure, but not nearly as astonishing as if suddenly 1 in 5 properties were for sale. What percentage of total real estate is currently listed is not stated, but I would be astonished if it’s even 0.1%.
But who will buy? Real estate values must have taken a huge hit. Many more who want to leave won’t be able to afford to do so.
Funnily enough, people continue to rebuild on the east coast beaches between hurricanes, so maybe LA beach property is a safe bet in between riots?
People buy, and rebuild, because of two reasons: Beachfront locations are desirable, and natural disasters are acts of G-D and unpredictable.
Minneapolis doesn’t have much beachfront property, and people are betting that future riots are not unpredictable.
How long did it take (say) Detroit to recover from the Summer of ’68? (Hint, we don’t know yet).
Even in somewhat desirable Los Angeles, it took decades for Watts to recover from ’65.
Dunno about Minneapolis. Do know that portions of Chicago have not been rebuilt since the 1968 riots. Data point? Yes. Predictive of the future? Perhaps. Cheers –
Seattlle is used to this. They frequently have riots and protests that draw small to large crowds. The Democrats support this, as should be obvious as they organize, fund, and staff these things.
A good place to start Defunding the Police(TM) is to require politicians to get and pay for their own security details.
And with all the lowered tax revenues of the last few months, what else gets defunded as the whine for higher taxes and bailouts starts.
“Who will buy?” People expecting to get bailed out or subsidized or who need some losses to offset gains elsewhere. And the usual set of chumps and useful idiots.