Archives for April 2016

Chicago, Nashville, Vegas, other metros finish strong

Our readers apparently like retail purchases with a native american or western flair.  Santa Fe, New Mexico – with its historic but chic old town and artful Canyon Road and Railyard districts – has toppled even mighty New York in votes received for Best U.S. City for Shopping.
NYC finished a strong second with shoppers, followed by other beloved American cities which offer a wealth of retail options.  #1 Santa Fe and #4 Nashville were the only smaller cities to finish in the top 10, which was flush with major metros.
The winners in the ‘Best U.S. City for Shopping’ contest category for 10Best Readers’ Choice are as follows:

1. Santa Fe, NM
2. New York City, NY
3. Chicago, IL
4. Nashville, TN
5. Las Vegas, NV
6. Atlanta, GA
7. Dallas, TX
8. Orlando, FL
9. Seattle, WA
10. Washington, DC

Congratulations to all the winners!
Photo courtesy of newmexico.org

History and commerce collide in Santa Fe, a mix of western wear, western decor, fine art and chic fashion jostling for retail space. The city has also embraced the ‘shopping local’ mantra and a wealth of local artists and artisans are well-represented.  Resorts and hotels all have amazing boutiques and gift shops, while the city’s famed historic downtown area and Canyon Road are must-dos for any avid shopper.  Savvy shoppers head to the Tesuque Flea Market northwest of the city for art, decor, rugs, jewelry and vintage western wear.

To see the contest categories which are underway, as well as all the previous winners, please visit http://www.10best.com/awards/travel/

By: USA Today 10Best

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Click image to view interactive map on source article.

With Albuquerque’s low housing prices and rising rental costs, the metro area is a great market for investors to buy rental homes.

That’s according to RealtyTrac, which ranked counties and zip codes across the U.S. for a list of the best markets for investing in single-family rentals.

Single-family rental investors typically buy up homes in cities where rental rates grow faster than median home prices. It’s a stable investment as more people don’t want to buy a home, either because they don’t have enough equity to put down on a new house or because renting equates to flexibility for them. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, renter-occupied single-family homes in the U.S. increased 14 percent in recent years, to more than 11 million people renting.

In Albuquerque, the price of a single family home hasn’t budged much, and rental prices continue to climb for both apartments and homes, which makes it a good market for investors.

Bernalillo County ranked the 256th best market out of 448 counties for single-family rentals. The report said the county’s average rent for a three-bedroom home is $1,352 per month, an 11.7 percent increase when compared to last year. The annual gross rental yield is 8.6 percent.

The real estate data company also looked at single-family rentals at the zip code level. It determined the highest rental returns in New Mexico were found in zip code 87121, Albuquerque’s far Westside and Southwest Mesa, where the annual gross rental yield is 12.8 percent. The worst in the state is in Santa Fe’s 87506, with a yield of just 2.4 percent.

RealtyTrac said the best places for single-family rental investors are Baltimore City, Maryland; pockets of the Atlanta and Detroit metro areas; and Bay County, Michigan. The worst places for investors because they had the lowest rental returns were Arlington County, Virginia, the San Francisco Bay area, the Nashville metro area and Brooklyn, New York.

To come up with its list, RealtyTrac looked at counties with sufficient home price and rental rate data, which it got from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the median sales price of homes in each county.

By: Suzanne Guzman (Albuquerque Business First)

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There exists concern among many that should another recession come soon, the government will have few, if any, tools to bring the economy back towards growth and prosperity because interest rates are already near rock bottom.  As a result, it is feared that our economy could quite possibly remain in the doldrums for some time.  Fortunately, this is simply not true.  There remain numerous tools to prevent recession at the disposal of the Fed and of the Congress.  Below are some ideas that are surely being considered should more intervention to prevent a recession become necessary.
To begin, the central bank could once again ramp up its purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) through another round of quantitative easing.  But rather than sticking to just Treasuries and MBS, this time the Fed could buy a much broader range of assets, including high-yield bonds, stocks, and even real estate to get asset prices up and markets out of the doldrums.
Another step the Fed could take is to push interest rates into negative territory, meaning it would start charging, yes charging, banks to keep money on deposit rather than paying them the current rate of 0.5%.  While this seems preposterous, at present central banks in Denmark, Japan, Sweden, and Switzerland, along with the European Central Bank are doing precisely this.  The aim would be to encourage banks to lend by penalizing them to hold cash.  In a similar vein, the Fed could alternatively pay banks to lend money to borrowers.  This policy is less harmful than using negative interest rates, as it does not reduce bank profits nor does it encourage banks to charge their depositors to keep deposits on hand to recoup the money paid to the Fed.  Paying banks is akin to using a carrot, lower rates; a stick.
In addition to the above, the Fed could also promise to keep mortgage rates at or below a certain level for an extended period of time with the explicit aim being to boost lending activity by enabling more people to qualify for a mortgage.  This would boost home sales and residential construction activity and prevent recession.
Another way to boost spending and inflation is for the government to announce a tax cut and issue bonds to finance it.  But, rather than selling the bonds to private investors (which takes money out of circulation), the Fed would buy the bonds.  This “Helicopter money” (HM) named in honor of Milton Friedman and which fuses fiscal and monetary policy, is as close as you can get to raining cash from the clear blue sky like manna down on households.  While HM is not to be rushed into, in a deep recession or global crisis, it might well make sense.  And, if it were coordinated by a group of rich countries, all the better.
Lastly, the Congress could surprise us and use fiscal policy and pass structural reforms.  Fiscal policy such as large tax cuts or spending on large infrastructure projects would give private sector firms more confidence about future demand and thus make a recovery more likely.   Structural reforms could include tax reform and increased deregulation.
In short, the government is far from being out of policies that could be employed to jump-start the economy in the event of a recession in the near future.  While some policies will undoubtedly work better than others, the key will be to implement a number of them at once.

By: Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D. (GraphsandLaughs, LLC)
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