Tema: PPCC-Pisitófilos Creditófagos-Invierno 2022

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/mercados/2023/01/11/63bde359e5fdeacf658b45fe.html

Saludos.

[Derby]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64232184

Cost of living: Uniqlo to raise pay in Japan by up to 40%

The owner of Japanese fashion chain Uniqlo says it will raise the pay of staff in its home country by up to 40%.

Fast Retailing says the new pay policy will apply to full-time employees at its headquarters and company stores in Japan from the beginning of March.

Last week Japan's prime minister called on firms to put up wages to help people struggling with rising prices.

It comes as salaries in the country remain flat even as inflation is going up at its fastest rate in decades.

The company said it made the move "in order to remunerate each and every employee appropriately for their ambition and talents, as well as increase the company's growth potential and competitiveness in line with global standards."

"In Japan especially, where remuneration levels have remained low, the company is significantly increasing the remuneration table," it added.

Under the new policy the monthly salary of recent university graduates will rise from ¥255,000 ($1,926, £1,585) to ¥300,000, an increase of almost 18%.

At the same time new store managers in their first or second year in the role will see their pay go up by about 35%.

The company's hourly-paid employees received salary increases in September last year.

Wednesday's announcement came just days after Prime Minister Kishida urged companies to fast track wage hikes.

"There are alarm bells warning that stagflation emerges if wage growth lags behind price hikes," he said in a New Year address to business leaders.

Stagflation is when an economy does not grow but prices continue to rise.

Official figures published in November showed that Japan's economy unexpectedly shrank for the first time in a year as gross domestic product fell by an annualised 1.2% in the three months to the end of September.

Meanwhile, Japan's core consumer prices rose by 3.7% in November, the fastest pace since the Middle East oil crisis in 1981.

Recent research in Japan showed that more than three quarters of firms surveyed raised wages last year but the the majority of the increases were well below 10%.

Fast Retailing's chief executive Tadashi Yanai is often cited as a trailblazer in Japanese business circles.

For example, in 2009 Mr Yanai told the BBC that he would diversify production out of China and start making clothes in Cambodia to lower costs.

The decision, which was seen as a major gamble at the time, has since paid off for the firm.

In recent months Mr Yanai has been critical of the Japanese government's economic policies, especially when the yen weakened against other major economies late last year.

He has also called for fundamental reforms to Japan's economy to help protect ordinary people from the impact of rising prices.

Shares in Fast Retailing rose by 1.4% in Tokyo trading on Wednesday.

[pollo]

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/expansion-nacional/20230111/page/29/textview

La oferta de vivienda en venta cae más de un 10% en 20 capitales

Saludos.

"La reducción del stock evitará una caída del precio."

¡Qué bien! ¿Verdad, señores de Expansión?

Y por supuesto esto será así porque es como el tiempo, unos días llueve y otros hace sol.

[sudden and sharp]

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/expansion-nacional/20230111/page/29/textview

La oferta de vivienda en venta cae más de un 10% en 20 capitales

Saludos.

"La reducción del stock evitará una caída del precio."

¡Qué bien! ¿Verdad, señores de Expansión?

Y por supuesto esto será así porque es como el tiempo, unos días llueve y otros hace sol.

Y lo mejor es de dónde sacan los datos del stock --serán horteras--; del portal inmobiliario Idealista... según reza en el artículo, y se quedan tan panchos.



No notarios, no Banco de España o INE, no nada... del portal web. Va a misa, señores.   

[senslev]

Sólo titular pero indicador claro del pensamiento único imperante.

Bono y su hija Amelia compran 5 casas en Toledo desde la oficina de un proveedor de Defensa

El exministro de Defensa y su hija Amelia han incrementado el abultado patrimonio familiar con la compra de varios inmuebles a través de dos mercantiles vinculadas a un contratista habitual de la Administración pública

https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2023-01-11/bono-amelia-compran-casas-toledo-proveedor-defensa_3555294/

[Benzino Napaloni]

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/expansion-nacional/20230111/page/29/textview

La oferta de vivienda en venta cae más de un 10% en 20 capitales

Saludos.

"La reducción del stock evitará una caída del precio."

¡Qué bien! ¿Verdad, señores de Expansión?

Y por supuesto esto será así porque es como el tiempo, unos días llueve y otros hace sol.

De los creadores de Si no lo vendo lo alquilo, si no lo alquilo lo vendo, se presenta Si ni lo vendo ni lo alquilo lo guardo.

La pregunta no es si se van a resistir como hienas, eso lo tenemos que dar por seguro vistos los precedentes. La pregunta es si desde arriba les van a dar financiación para eso, porque dineros propios...

Pero lo que comentamos hace poco. Hace medio año escaso desde que los tipos y el Euribor empezaron a subir. No ha habido tiempo de que la subida afecte al 100%. Y ya estamos así. ¿Cómo estaremos después del verano? El raca-raca en la prensa es continuo.

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/17f5fcb0-b734-4c29-8b25-52b5597701a3

The threat of a lost decade in development Martin Wolf

A way has to be found to resolve the debt problems that are now emerging for the world’s most vulnerable

The shocks of the past three years have hit all countries, but they have hit emerging and developing countries particularly hard. As a result, according to Global Economic Prospects 2023, just out from the World Bank, the convergence of average incomes between poor and rich countries has stalled. Worse, it might not soon return, given the damage already done and likely to persist in the years ahead.

By the end of 2024, gross domestic product levels in emerging and developing economies are forecast to be 6 per cent below those expected before the pandemic. The cumulative loss in GDP of these countries between 2020 and 2024 is forecast at 30 per cent of 2019 GDP. In fragile and conflict-affected areas, real incomes per head are expected to have fallen outright by 2024. If the global economy slows more than is now forecast, as a result of tight monetary policy and perhaps other shocks, these outcomes could easily be worse.



These losses, with all they mean for the plight of the world’s most vulnerable people, show the impact of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the rise in energy and food prices, the surge in inflation and the sharp tightening of monetary policy in high-income countries, especially the US, and consequent rise in the value of the dollar. An obvious danger now is that of waves of defaults in over-indebted developing countries. Taken together, these shocks will cause long-lasting effects, perhaps lost decades, in many vulnerable places.

That has happened before. Indeed, it is what happened in Latin America after the debt crisis of 1982. This crisis, it should be recalled, also followed a surge in private lending to developing countries, then called the “recycling” of the surpluses of oil exporters. Unhappily, this surge in debt was followed by Iraq’s invasion of Iran, a second “oil shock” (the first being in 1973), a spike in inflation, a sharp tightening of US monetary policy and a stronger dollar. A disaster ensued — a debt crisis lasting a decade.

Disturbingly, the recent tightening of monetary policy by the central banks of the Group of Seven leading economies has been more similar to those in the 1970s and early 1980s than to any since then, in both speed and size. On current market-implied interest forecasts, the cumulative rise will be close to 400 basis points over 17 months. The rise from May 1979 was ultimately bigger, but it also took longer. It is true that rates start from a far lower level this time. But that may not make that much difference if people have relied on these low rates. Moreover, the appreciation of the US dollar has been particularly strong. For the countries that have substantial external debt denominated in the US currency, this will also raise debt service costs sharply.



It is helpful that borrowing this time was not so much from banks at variable rates, but in bonds, which have longer maturities and fixed rates. Nevertheless, a sudden cut off in the flow of credit will create a merciless squeeze. The World Bank shows a rise of 17 percentage points in spreads on sovereign borrowing in foreign currencies of commodity importing countries with weak credit ratings in 2022. Effectively, these countries are shut out of markets. Moreover, the external debt of Sub-Saharan Africa is high, too, at over 40 per cent of GDP. It is not surprising that there has been a huge decline in public and private bond issuance in emerging and developing countries since February 2022 compared with a year earlier.



Inevitably, highly indebted countries that have already suffered the Covid shock and a sharp deterioration in their terms of trade, as food and energy prices soared, will now be in even more serious and enduring trouble. This will also include a large number of low-income countries where the livelihoods of many are already on the margins of survival. According to the bank, the number of people suffering “food insecurity” (that is, on the borders of starvation) in low-income countries jumped from 56mn in 2019 to 105mn in 2022. When might this reverse?



We know, in addition, that many children lost parents during the pandemic and that their education was also seriously disrupted. Furthermore, physical investment has fallen sharply. Thus, for emerging and developing countries as a whole, the bank forecasts that aggregate investment in 2024 will be 8 per cent lower than expected back in 2020. If one adds the likelihood of long-lasting debt problems and so a cessation of flows of external capital, the possibility of a lost decade for convergence surely becomes highly probable for many countries. Needless to say, this will also not be an environment in which much progress will be made with the energy transition in many places.

Covid was not these countries’ fault. The lack of global co-operation in tackling it was not their fault. The lack of adequate external official funding was not their fault. The global inflation was not their fault. The war is not their fault. But if the high-income countries do not offer the help they now evidently need, it will unambiguously be their fault.



The high-income democracies wish to embark on a war of values with China. Well, here is one battle. A way has to be found to resolve the debt problems that are now emerging effectively and not, as happened in the case of Latin America, after almost a decade of pretence. A way has to be found to escape the vicious circle in which low creditworthiness begets unaffordable spreads, which beget debt crises and then even lower creditworthiness.

That is not just in the interests of poor countries. It is also in the interests of rich ones. The problems of fragile and impoverished countries will become theirs, too. It is time to do things differently. Next week, I plan to consider how.

[Derby]

https://www.vozpopuli.com/economia_y_finanzas/sangria-tejido-productivo-continua-espana-perdio-2-500-empresas-mas-2022.html

La 'sangría' del tejido productivo continúa: España perdió 2.500 empresas más en 2022

El año se cerró con 10.500 empresas menos que en diciembre de 2019 por la destrucción de micropymes

Tras la gran pérdida de tejido empresarial que sufrió España en 2020, con motivo de la pandemia, 2022 volvió a estar marcado por la destrucción de empresas. El año se cerró con 2.500 menos inscritas en la Seguridad Social que en diciembre de 2021, un ejercicio en el que, aunque no se consiguió recuperar el nivel de 2019 (el año acabó con alrededor de 8.000 empresas menos), la evolución anual fue positiva.

De esta forma, pese al crecimiento económico del país (que el Gobierno sitúa por encima del 5%), la guerra, la inflación y el fin de la moratoria concursal provocaron un deterioro adicional en el tejido productivo, con 1.329.897 empresas a finales de diciembre de 2022, frente a las 1.340.415 que había en el mismo mes de 2019, según los datos publicados este martes por el Ministerio de Seguridad Social. Es decir, 10.500 menos.

La destrucción de empresas se localiza en las micropymes, aquellas de menos de 10 trabajadores. Estas ya fueron las más perjudicadas en la crisis sanitaria, y lo siguen siendo ahora. En concreto, se han perdido 7.413 empresas de menos de 10 trabajadores respecto a diciembre de 2021. Por contra, las grandes han salido reforzadas: hay 4.920 más. El saldo entre unas y otras resulta negativo en 2.493 compañías.

De esta forma, España cerró el año con 700.932 empresas de 1 a 2 trabajadores, 297.698 de 3 a 5 empleados, 137.814 de 6 a 9 trabajadores. Ya en un rango de pequeña empresa (de 10 a 49 trabajadores) se posicionan 162.157, mientras que las medianas (entre 50 y 249 trabajadores) ascienden hasta las 26.041. Finalmente, 2.822 empresas tienen entre 250 y 499 empleados y otras 2.433 más de 499 trabajadores.

Hace unos días, la Confederación Española de la Pequeña y Mediana Empresa (Cepyme) reiteró que "existe una brecha cada vez más acentuada entre la realidad de las medianas y de las pequeñas empresas que, en general, se ven más afectadas" por "los elevados costes que tienen que afrontar, en un contexto de menores ventas y de pérdida de productividad".

Las ventas de las empresas pequeñas en el tercer trimestre son un 3,8% más bajas que las de tres años antes y 1,6% inferiores a las de hace cuatro años. En cambio, para las empresas medianas, la diferencia entre las ventas actuales y las del tercer trimestre de 2019 es negativa en solo un 0,8% y superan en un 1,5% a las de 2018.

En paralelo, los costes totales (insumos, laborales y de los servicios) también aumentan más para las pequeñas compañías (25,8%) que para las medianas (20,3%), según pone de manifiesto el Indicador CEPYME sobre la Situación de la Pyme correspondiente al tercer trimestre de este año.

"Esto confirma que la capacidad de resistencia de las empresas a un entorno económico adverso tiende a ser mayor cuanto más grande es el tamaño de la firma", concluye la patronal. En este sentido, las empresas pequeñas que han resistido a las crisis y continúan con su actividad, han reducido sus plantillas a una media de 5,87 trabajadores, el menor tamaño en un lustro, según revela Cepyme.

Ante esta situación, las pymes reclaman no incrementar más los costes de las empresas y cautela en la toma de medidas para no perjudicar al tejido empresarial. "En 2023 el Gobierno incrementará de nuevo las bases de cotización y los tipos por primera vez desde que se aprobara la Ley General de Seguridad Social", recuerdan.

[Derby]

Desde luego este año 2023 promete...

https://www.ft.com/content/65b96216-afc0-40c2-b763-da4f3ebd4535

The special purpose acquisition company fallout is going to be spac-tacular

Hail Mary passes coming

Craig Coben is a former senior investment banker at Bank of America, where he served most recently as co-head of global capital markets for the Asia-Pacific region. Howard Fischer, a partner at law firm Moses & Singer, is a former senior trial counsel at the US Securities & Exchange Commission.

Last year may have been an annus horribilis for the IPO market, but it was an annus calamitosas for special purpose acquisition companies, or Spacs.

Spacs are blank-cheque vehicles designed as a backdoor way for a private company to list on the stock exchange without going through the expense and uncertainty of an initial public offering. But things have gone pear-shaped.

For one thing, investors have suffered bone-crushing losses, as companies merging with Spacs (inelegantly known as a “de-Spac transaction”) have vastly underperformed the stock market. The AXS De-Spac ETF fell almost 75 per cent in 2022. Several companies have missed their forecasts, restated their financials and even gone bankrupt. SPACs have in some cases incubated a unicorn-to-penny stock lifecycle — with companies having to launch reverse splits to avoid delisting.

Meanwhile, some Spac sponsors — who typically contribute 3-7 per cent of the listing proceeds upfront to cover underwriting and operating costs — have lost their entire investment because they haven’t been able to conclude a deal. Spacs typically have to be liquidated if they can’t complete a merger within 18-24 months, and when presented with a business combination, most Spac shareholders are now redeeming their shares to get their money back with interest. The average loss for Spac founders from liquidation has been around $9mn.

To make matters worse, sponsors incurred $750mn in losses last month alone, as they rushed to wind up Spacs before year-end, believing that a new 1 per cent federal excise tax on stock buybacks would apply to liquidations of US-domiciled Spacs starting in 2023. A whopping 85 Spacs were liquidated in December, only for the Department of Treasury to say at the very end of the month that the levy wouldn’t apply to liquidations after all. These sponsors acted in (understandable) haste and will now repent at leisure.

And finally, as often happens when people lose a lot of money, lawsuits and investigations are in the offing. Aggrieved investors claim that Spac founders had a conflict of interest in pushing through a merger, and as a result skimped on due diligence, inflated forecasts and failed to disclose important business risks. Naturally, the SEC is revving its enforcement engines.

The cycle of loss, regret and recrimination arises in part due to the same factors that have buffeted financial markets more generally, such as central bank tightening, higher inflation and economic slowdowns. Companies that de-Spac’d are often in high-growth segments, and these have suffered disproportionately in the market downdraft.

However, many of the problems also stem from the way in which the Spac structure embeds a potential misalignment of interests between Spac sponsors and their shareholders. This in turn created a vulnerability that the gloomy market environment is mercilessly exposing.

Sponsors make their money from what is called the “promote” in the form of shares and warrants usually representing 20 per cent of the Spac. But they receive that promote only if they lock down a merger. Otherwise, after (typically) 24 months the Spac is liquidated, investor money is returned with interest, and the sponsors are out of pocket. The sponsors face the choice: either push through a merger (even a suboptimal one) or lose millions of dollars of paid-in capital.

This merge-or-lose dilemma creates a significant potential conflict of interest, even if the shareholder right to redeem is an important protection. Some sponsors care about their reputation and prefer to swallow the loss over pushing a bad deal, but for others there is arguably an incentive to rush due diligence, underplay the risks, and overpay. Around 300 Spacs with $700bn in trust have deadlines to invest in the first half of 2023, and the temptation is to throw a “Hail Mary” pass and hope to score a deal in time.

And the issue goes beyond just the potential conflict. As a 2022 paper in the Yale Journal on Regulation explains, the promote, the underwriting expenses (normally 2 per cent upfront and 3.5 per cent post-merger), and the dilution from warrants and redemptions all combine to create a sizeable gap between the market cap of the Spac at $10 per share and its intrinsic cash value. Just last week the Delaware Chancery Court upheld the legal sufficiency of a complaint alleging that the Spac in question had less than $6 per share in cash to contribute to a merger.

The question, then, is: how can the merger of an operating company and a cash shell create enough additional value to bridge this gap?

One way is for Spac sponsors to deliver some kind of synergy. In some cases sponsors may claim, Liam Neeson-style, to have a “particular set of skills, skills [they] have acquired over a very long career,” and so their ongoing involvement might generate enough value to compensate for the dilution cost embedded in the Spac. But the rapid collapse in de-Spac share prices suggests that such value-adding is more often an article of faith than empirical reality.

Another way to make the numbers work is to talk up the target and its prospects and find new buyers, thereby lifting the share price. Spacs have had a key legal advantage over an IPO to facilitate the marketing: because the deal involves a merger, the company could publish forecasts under the SEC safe-harbour rules. In effect, the more lenient Spac rules gave aggressive sponsors a licence to hype.

With the economics so dependent on promotion, the Spac structure created fertile ground for embellishment and puffery, which has in turn built a growing pipeline of lawsuits. Last spring, the SEC proposed new rules to remove these legal differences between a Spac and an IPO, and the rules are expected to be adopted.

But the litigation horse bolted long before this stable door will have been shut. Last year saw a sizeable increase in the number of lawsuits filed over de-Spac transactions, and 2023 promises a busy litigation calendar. In the meantime, courts are not giving Spac founders the benefit of the doubt, ruling that if the conflicts were significant enough, they would judge deals by their “entire fairness”, instead of deferring to the “business judgment” of the sponsors.

And the likely tsunami of SEC enforcement action has only just begun to build. Already, several cases have been filed alleging due diligence failures by Spac management, and many more are under investigation. Last September the SEC charged a major bioscience hedge fund with advising its clients to invest in Spacs in which its principals had a financial interest.

Spacs had developed as a way for smaller companies to go public when the IPO market was otherwise unavailable or difficult to access. But as they exploded in popularity, Spacs evolved from a useful niche product to a widely-used but problematic pathway for taking a company public.

Investors and sponsors have been caught in the blast radius of the Spac explosion, and courts and regulators will be overseeing the clean-up.

[Derby]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/black-rock-plans-to-cut-500-workers-after-last-years-market-downturn-180004390.html

BlackRock plans to cut 500 workers after last year's market downturn

BlackRock (BLK), the world's largest asset manager, will lay off about 500 employees — or roughly 3% of its workforce — according to an internal email seen by Yahoo Finance.

The investment giant joins a growing number of Wall Street firms trimming their headcount after last year's market rout and as Corporate America ramps up hiring freezes and job cuts.

"This week, after meaningful headcount growth in recent years, we are making some changes to the size and shape of our workforce," CEO Larry Fink and BlackRock president Rob Kapito said in a memo sent to staff on Wednesday. "As a result of these steps, about 500 (or less than 3%) of our colleagues will be leaving BlackRock as we reallocate resources to our most critical growth opportunities."(...)

[sudden and sharp]

[ In a nutshell, lets say.     ]

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/861780b3-09c5-429d-bbaf-2b54d1177d65

High and dry in Manhattan: buyers and sellers in housing market stand-off

Rising mortgage rates deter buyers while even homes in New York’s most glamorous neighbourhoods struggle to sell

Charlotte, who is in her late sixties and impatient to move to Florida, has cut the price of her two-bedroom Upper East Side apartment by a fifth, to $2mn. After three months without a suitable offer, Amy Schwab Owens gave up trying to sell her Chelsea apartment — despite cutting the price by $300,000, to $3.25mn — and has started renting it out instead. Since she listed it in September, Jen Insardi has been waiting for an acceptable offer on her $7.995mn, four-bedroom condo in Tribeca, which she has spent more than two years renovating.

All are caught up in Manhattan’s housing market slowdown. As rising US mortgage rates curb what buyers can afford — or are willing to pay — many sellers of high-value homes are making large discounts to achieve a sale. Others are sticking fast to what they think their homes are worth — or taking them off the market entirely.

The combination of intransigent sellers and wary buyers means the number of agreed sales in Manhattan between October and December last year was about half what it was in the same period the year before, says New York estate agent Serhant.

“It’s never been difficult to sell a home around here,” says Charlotte, who has lived in her Upper East Side neighbourhood for more than 20 years and declined to give her real name. “People used to stop me and say, ‘If you’re ever moving, let me know’; they were desperate to live here. But this time everyone who comes to visit the home is quibbling about such little things.”



Prices started falling at the beginning of last year. Last month, the median price for an agreed sale in Manhattan was $1.199mn, 17 per cent lower than in December 2021.

The slowdown is part of a national trend, with home sales and price falls most pronounced in cities that had been popular among pandemic-era buyers — notably in Florida and California. US home sales fell every month last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. This year, it expects sales of previously owned homes to fall to their lowest annual total since 2012, when the housing market was still recovering from the subprime mortgage crisis.

In New York, Garrett Derderian, head of research at the Serhant estate agency, says: “Home sales have fallen most sharply for the largest, most expensive homes — exactly those that were most popular following the Covid outbreak.” In September, a home in Hudson Yards sold for $35mn; it was first listed for sale for $59mn.

But many sellers are willing to wait for prices to improve before selling.

Insardi left New York with her family for Nashville in June 2021. But she has continued to plough time and money — roughly $2.2mn in total — into a wholesale renovation of her Manhattan apartment, which she completed in the autumn. The finished home is illustrated with elegant photographs on her agent’s website — unusually, featuring Insardi herself, a successful jewellery designer, blending the roles of influencer and high-end realtor.

“It doesn’t seem necessary to drop the price: the home is too good,” she says.

“I just wasn’t getting anywhere near what I had hoped for,” says Schwab Owens. She and her husband split their time between Colorado and Maryland so have little use for the two-bedroom home, but she is receiving a good rental rate for it and believes buyer demand will recover eventually.

“It makes sense just to wait it out: I imagine we’ll put it back on the market in two years,” she says.

So what will it take to get the market moving again? While sellers are waiting for prices to climb, buyers are reluctant to complete home purchases despite price cuts, since this would mean giving up low-rate mortgages.



In the UK, buyers can port mortgages with them from one home to the next, but most US products lapse when a home is sold and a new one bought, forcing the buyer to take out a new mortgage, at a higher interest rate.

In the year to January 5 2023, the average rate on a 30-year US fixed-rate mortgage increased from 3.22 per cent to 6.48 per cent, according to mortgage company Freddie Mac. For a $1mn home with a 20 per cent down payment, this could mean typical monthly principal and interest payments jumping from $3,468 to $5,046.

Josh, 31, who works for a major US bank, and his wife bought their first home — a one-bedroom flat in Midtown — in 2019, borrowing at 2.25 per cent.

The couple are expecting their first child in April and would like to move to somewhere larger. “But if we sold now, I would give up my mortgage rate and have to borrow again at over 6 per cent until rates fall and I can refinance,” says Josh, who declined to give his real name. (Redemption penalties on mortgages are rare in the US, meaning buyers can typically refinance when rates fall, with little cost.)

So Josh will only move if a good deal on a new home compensates him for the higher mortgage payments he will face — an unlikely prospect, he says. “We are going to stay where we are unless a real bargain presents itself. Everyone says you can make it work for the first six months [of the baby’s life], and we have our parents nearby.”

“The primary reason for the slowdown is that anyone who refinanced or purchased in the last four years is wedded to their mortgage rate,” says Jonathan Miller, professor of residential real estate at Columbia University in New York.

In markets such as the UK, few mortgages have rates fixed for more than five years, but in the US the typical fixed-rate mortgage is for 30 years, making buyers reluctant to give them up by moving.

Many economists predict US interest rates are likely to peak next year, but Miller believe mortgage rates are very unlikely to fall below 4 per cent in the next five years.

Manhattan sales volumes will therefore remain stuck at historically low levels for several years, he adds. “Lower sales are the story as long as mortgage rates remain elevated.”

Patrice Derrington, Holliday associate professor of real estate at Columbia University, disagrees. “Reduced bonuses early this year for technology and finance workers could be a trigger for price falls because many will have to sell their homes as a consequence.”

[img]https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net%2Fprod%2Fda5e1900-91c8-11ed-9ad3-5f7aedb2529e-standard.png?dpr=1&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=700[img]

She points to the high proportion of Manhattan homes owned by financial and tech workers, many of whom rely on their bonuses to pay down portions of the principal loan amount each year and reduce subsequent interest payments.

Goldman Sachs, which announced redundancies this week, will slash investment banker bonuses by at least 40 per cent; recent job cuts at Morgan Stanley and Citigroup suggest these companies could do the same. Large tech companies, including Meta, Amazon, Netflix and Twitter, have all made large-scale job cuts in recent months.

Miller says that rules introduced following the financial crisis to limit bonuses as a share of total pay and defer them over several years will mean low bonuses this year would have only a small impact on prices. “Bonuses are not the bellwether for the strength of the Manhattan market that they were before 2008.”

As revenues from house sales fall, agents are turning to the rental market for income. Ken Johnson, a real estate economist at Florida Atlantic University and a one-time agent, predicts one in five of America’s 1.5mn real estate agents will lose their jobs over the next two years.

Mortgage brokers, valuers and construction groups are also reporting sharp falls to revenues since the US Federal Reserve began increasing interest rates in March.

Prices in Manhattan’s rental market have increased in the past year: the average monthly rent of leases signed in 2022 was $5,345 per month, up from $4,460 in 2021, according to Serhant.

For those who don’t have to sell, high rental prices facilitate delaying a home sale until prices increase.

Within 24 hours of instructing her agent to market her two-bedroom Chelsea home in November, Schwab Owens had two offers. Eventually, she rented it for $11,000 per month, up from the $8,000 she was charging a year ago when she took the home off the market to prepare it for sale. “The rental market means we don’t have to rush,” she says.

For those seeking a decent rental home, the search continues to be tough and the fruits expensive. Entrepreneur Pat Phelan, 57, searched for seven months after arriving from his native Ireland to set up a series of cosmetic Botox clinics, staying in Airbnbs and hotel rooms in the meantime.

“I was going to open houses, and it was shocking: these were boxes and there were 50 people in a queue waiting to see them,” he says. “I was combing the websites, asking friends, [looking for] anything. I’m not fussy: if there’s a bed and a sofa I’m happy. But it was impossible.”

Eventually, in mid-December, Phelan, who had up to that point refused to employ an estate agent because of the fees they charge, relented. The agent found him a 750 sq ft, two-bedroom apartment in Kip’s Bay, on the east side of Manhattan, for $5,250 per month.

“In reality, it’s a one bedroom: the second is separated from the front room with a flimsy partition,” he laments. “And I’ve just parted with $5,600 to pay the agent.”

Since November, rents have started to level out, says Miller. But those hoping for them to fall may be disappointed. “They have reached some sort of affordability threshold. But the only thing that can bring them down is a recession that causes widespread job losses.”

At a glance

Between October and December last year, 2,191 home sales were agreed in Manhattan, down from 4,045 in the same period in 2021.

In total, nearly one in three sales recorded between October and December had discounts of 10 per cent or more, according to Serhant estate agents.

[asustadísimos]

¿Y SI ES EL PSOE EL QUE LE HACE EL ZAPATERO AL PP, PERO EN 2024?.—

Donde las dan las toman.

Con un cierre de 2022 tan bueno en materia de inflación —para las indexaciones—, la Contabilidad Nacional de España tiene fuelle relativo de sobra para aguantar 2023, como mínimo, por muy interesantes que los impresoritas se pongan hoy con el PIB, la deuda pública y el nivel de tipos de interés.

No sería tan malo para la Transición Estructural que España tuviera un gobierno débil de místicos puritanos de derecha apegados a una cosa que no es suya, el modelo popularcapitalista, modelito que el sistema no quiere. Ya se encargarían de retorcerle el brazo los ascetas al mando en la UE (los socialdemócratas Scholz y Macron, e incluso el propio Sánchez, como como presidente de la Internacional Socialista).

¿Acaso ven ustedes que haya insumisión inmobiliaria alguna? Aunque hay miedo, estamos en las antípodas. Seguimos en modo soberbia 'on', aunque empieza a resquebrajarse. Sorprende la docilidad hacia el ladrillo. Todos, lampando pero honrando religiosamente hipotecas y alquileres, y siguiendo en la creencia delirante de que el ladrillo es el único dios verdadero capitalista.

Desde luego, qué cierto es que hay burbujas de ricos y burbujas de pobres. Y las reburbujas, no digamos.

Para librar al PSOE de este cáliz, trago amargo del hundimiento final, la mayoría natural electoral habría de votar más a Vox que al PP. En general, para facilitar las cosas en el último suspiro de la Transición Estructural y la suelta del modelo de sustitución, la mayoría natural debiera votar con el mismo espíritu con que ve fútbol. Desde que España ganó su primera estrellita (¡Iniesta de mi vida), se trata de que otras selecciones que tienen también solo una estrella no ganen la segunda. Con otras palabras, es funcional que siga el castigo al PP por su corrupción —paradójicamente, la no renovación del Poder Judicial es contraria a la redención del PP como partido—.

Además, sería bueno que hubiera un castigo electoral a Podemos, pero un castigo importante, que lo convierta en irrelevante, de modo que la única opción de Gobierno del PSOE no en solitario fuera con los nacioncitas, para que el PP y Vox se vean obligados a retratar su patriotismo.

Aquí no va a haber asustadísimos disfrazados de chamanes asaltacapitolios o de futboleros asaltaniemeyers: derecha antiestatalista poniéndose dramática, pidiendo ser salvada —de sí misma— por horteras. Aquí gustan la tradición, el Estado liberal y el Estado del Bienestar. La derecha española es poco o nada heterodoxa.

En su caso, solo debiera estar permitido que el PSOE se aliara con el comunismo ortodoxo: Marx 1818-1883, Lenin 1870-1924, Mao 1893-1976 y el camarada Enver Hoxha 1908-1985. Nada de nacioncitas ni, por supuesto, Trotsky 1879-1940 ni de revisionistas ni pop-caps ni chaletitos ni antimasculinismo.

En suma, para lo poco que queda de Transición Estructural, un nuevo Gobierno razonable del PSOE —en sintonía con la UE— depende del PP, bien porque tenga que abstenerse en la investidura de Sánchez —Vox jamás lo hará—, bien porque opte por suicidarse con Vox, suicidio porque esta vez no hay herencia envenenada que administrar.

Admitimos a Hoxha sobre todo por Dua Lipa. Por cierto, no se pierdan su 'tiny desk concert', pero intenten imaginarlo sin caja de ritmos. A Dua Lipa le funciona todo: el acústico —solo voz y guitarra— y la incursión en el soul y el jazz. El año de la suelta de la Era Cero cumplirá 30 años, el muro biológico femenino. Soraya Arnelas, con dos hijos, cumplirá 43, otra excelente intérprete que mejoró los originales de 'Dolce Vita', 'Self Control' y 'Call Me'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v45wzSN7ymo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjEqEHTgXLk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZN4Rvb8EuU

Soraya y Dua Lipa son atemporales. Maricel Troitiño no se da cuenta de que el feminismo de cuarta ola y sus reaccionarios son hijos del modelito popularcapitalista:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV8saWgtGxQ

Nosotros a lo nuestro, que es prever qué va a pasar, labor colectiva que no se nos da nada mal.

Ahora el enemigo está con que hay respiro. ¡Dulce sueño de enfermo terminal! Y ustedes siguen sin decir qué hay que entender por oxígeno inmobiliario, porque el nivel de tipos de interés no es —la correlación es DSP, de la señorita Pepis—.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2023/01/10/mercados/1673376423_051335.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://lectura.kioskoymas.com/cinco-dias/20230111/page/21/textview

Solo dos de cada diez asalariados con convenio mantienen el poder adquisitivo

Saludos.