Investments strategy with new administration?

[ultrarunner]

Interesting report out on how the real estate impacts might be hyper local as insurance rates shift;

Property Prices in Peril

First Street™ research is transparent, peer reviewed, and proven against real environmental events. Use the Library to access First Street Research.

firststreet.org

More here, too;

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/opinion/home-values-insurance-climate.html

Food for thought at least.

All the best,

Peter

It's on my mind and in a worse case I see a repeat of folks walking away like 2009-12

Several Bay Area cities are around 2/3 cash sales...

Of those, mortgage rates and insurance not a concern... as escrows close with neither

I was picking up some tools at a 1971 home that went pending in 9 days at 1,550,000... it's a tract home in Livermore.

Location, location, location...

Insurance and mortgage go hand in hand.

 

[two_bit_score]

Interesting report out on how the real estate impacts might be hyper local as insurance rates shift;

Property Prices in Peril

First Street™ research is transparent, peer reviewed, and proven against real environmental events. Use the Library to access First Street Research.

firststreet.org

More here, too;

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/opinion/home-values-insurance-climate.html

Food for thought at least.

All the best,

Peter

The insurance companies are gouging bad right now. between the insurance company rate hikes and the fact that they are also on a non-renewal binge property owners are being hit with a tripple whammy when you throw in escalating property taxs. Quadruple when you thrown in that many properties on the market are over priced and will never sell even close to asking.

 

[ponytug]

Interesting!

I wonder what is the reason for placing northern Nevada in the worst category?

I have no particular idea, but large amounts of housing were built out and sold at prices that made it hard for local residents to afford the homes, raising mortgage risks. Plus, Reno relies on melt water from the "dry" side of the Sierras, and that future water uncertainty may have factored into it, and perhaps the recent wildfires that burned into Reno subdivisions may have reminded the authors of the high fire risk to that population (insurance risk/pricing adding to the cost of home ownership).

My impression is that the authors have in mind something less like the US home ownership of today, and something close to the ownership patterns in much of Europe and the developed parts of the far east, where governments, or corporations, own much of the housing stock, and could afford added uncertainties around water supplies, fires, insurance, and financing.

I'm guessing. I see a lot of things through the lens of "well, if the weather is more variable, then what?" Water, crop yields, crop carryover, and general variability add to the cost of living, as does not being part of a global economy for importing food.

All the best,

Peter

 

[ultrarunner]

Much of Reno’s water originates from Lake Tahoe and historically much of that water went to AG but now less AG.

 

[JasperFrank]

Well didn't that get rough today on the markets? Just imagine if you had known beforehand the announcements... if you can affect markets like this, it isn't even insider trading. Or even illegal.

 

[ponytug]

Much of Reno’s water originates from Lake Tahoe and historically much of that water went to AG but now less AG.

I think that is rather the point, isn't it?

Lake Tahoe is close to not overflowing, which if it happened would leave Reno without both a drinking water supply, and a source of aquifer recharge. Unlike Las Vegas, or Los Angeles, Reno doesn't have a large scale water recycling system, though they are trying some small scale water recycling systems. I suspect that those are an effort to bump up the public awareness of the advantages of water recycling to then raise the funds for a full scale system. From the experience in other cities, Reno would seem to be ant least a decade or more away from that, and should probably have started at least eight years ago to my way of thinking.

If a city loses its water supply, it is not habitable. It isn't as if Reno residents could walk to Lake Tahoe and fill a bucket of water for the day's activities, is it?

Even for compassionate use, there would be many, many parties at the table negotiating for water rights and access from Lake Tahoe. Practically speaking, I would not bet that Reno could get access at the scale or timeline it might need if a drought went beyond two or three years.

If we are now in a time when weather is more variable, and it looks like we are (2F and 18" of snow in Louisiana?) then we need to build the infrastructure to generate the resilience to get through variable weather. People forget that in the 1800s we had the year without a summer, when it snowed every month of the year in Iowa. That was the loss of almost an entire harvest. Because infrastructure takes time to build, the time to start building is a decade or so before we might need it.

History suggests that real estate values in ghost towns isn't very large. I think that's why northern Nevada got tagged in the report. (To @California's post above)

All the best,

Peter

 

[ultrarunner]

I remember how low the lake was in 1992 and how it affected recreational uses at the lake and only syphons kept water flowing.

If anyone is interested this shares some history.

If things would have gone as planned Lake Tahoe water would have flowed to San Francisco taps.

Lake Tahoe Water Wars, Unending--Part 2 of 2 | Tahoetopia

Water is indeed a precious natural resource in the arid West. With that perspective it should come as no surprise that water-rights issues on Lake Tahoe and the Truckee River have triggered controversy, fights, and negotiation since pioneers first settled the region. Tahoe DamIn the late 1860s...

tahoetopia.com