The Washington Post finally realized on Monday that cities might be hurting economically, as evidenced by an article they published about ongoing real estate concerns.
Within fifteen minutes of the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, anyone with a mild understanding of how human activity and the economy works knew that real estate was going to fall into pandemonium until a sense of normality and sustainability returned to our day-to-day lives. As it’s almost the fourth quarter of 2023 and that normality has yet to be found, our real estate industry is now in “apocalypse” mode, the Post reported.
“All across the country, downtowns, office spaces and shopping centers are at risk of becoming ground zero for a new economic hazard: the urban doom loop,” WaPo writer Rachel Siegel wrote. “The fear is that a commercial real estate apocalypse could spiral out and slow commerce, wrecking local tax revenue in the process.”
Banks keep getting crushed https://t.co/Tt5AJKkuEB
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 14, 2023
Am I the only person thinking, “Well duh, babe, where you been at these last three years?” This whole situation was predictable. (RELATED: You’re Not Poor. You’re Financially Illiterate, And That’s Your Fault)
As soon as people realized they could do their jobs from home, and be happier and better off financially, they stayed that way. Why go backwards? Business owners who thought that in-work lifestyle would come back have just shown how sociologically ignorant they really are. And now, the snowball effect of their poor decision-making could literally destroy cities once and for all.
Major cities like Charlotte, North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta, San Antonio and more are seeing some of the highest rates of office loan repayment delinquencies, essentially pushing us toward another version of the 2008 financial crisis as more and more people fail to pay their mortgages.
Even Goldman Sachs said in January that New York, Phoenix, San Diego, Austin and San Jose would suffer a 2008-sized crash in the housing market. (RELATED: Charles Schwab To Cut Jobs, Close Offices To Save $500 Million)
The same thing will hit residential real estate in the next few years as the economy continues to spin out of control. With so many greedy millennials buying overpriced homes with interest-only mortgages for the first five years, it’s only a matter of time before reality catches up and the defaults start to pack a punch. But WaPo probably won’t even mention it until the apocalypse is well underway. Idiots.