Author: Bob Fraser

Author note: As a real estate fund manager myself, this is not just an academic exercise for me like it might be for others. One of the things that both my business partner Jim and I have really tried to design into our funds is timing. For example, if you bought a dot com investment in 1995, it was a good time. But if you bought a dot com investment in 2000, it was not a good time. So, what time is it?

We always want to know what time it is because we want to have the benefit of the “wind at our backs,” so to speak. We pay attention to what we call the economic tides, or bigger waves affecting the economic story, and that’s what we cover in our economic updates. So let’s dive in.

Where the Economy is at Currently

A hot-button topic circulating through the press and dinner table conversation alike is inflation. A lot of people are concerned about inflation with the Fed printing a lot of money over the last year as part of its stimulus measures. Is this something we should be worried about?

Let’s look at the data.

How is the average US citizen faring financially?

Personal Income per Capita Hit All-Time High

I’ve never seen anything like this in my decades of studying economics. You can see in 2020 there was a hocky-stick rise to a new personal income record. In looking at the underlying data, this increase is purely because of the stimulus.

While there were many, many people suffering financially from the pandemic, data shows that the US population on average is seeing record levels of income. The debt service chart below shows this from another angle.

Debt Service Payments at 4-Decade Low

Look at 2020. As soon as Covid-19 hit, we see an immediately drop in debt service payments. Debt service refers to what percentage of disposable income is used toward debt payments. So, with the stimulus payments in 2020, US residents had extra cash. And because of the pandemic, they weren’t traveling or going out to eat. Instead, they paid down debt and saved money. Debt service payments are lower now than they’ve been for 30 years.

Refinances at Record-High

In this chart looking at refinances, in 2020 there was a record 9 million mortgage refinances, many of which were cash-out refinances. So not only are personal income increasing and debt payments dropping, but people are putting more and more cash into their pockets by taking out equity in their properties. 

Household Net Worth at New Record

Household net worth is another metric that experienced a hockey stick-rise in 2020. The large increase is primarily due to paying off debt, gains in home prices, and gains in the stock market, all of which improves net worth.

This rise in net worth produces what is called the wealth effect, where people feel like they have resources. This, in turn, creates consumer confidence. Consumer confidence has recovered back to where it was in 2017, meaning people are becoming optimistic again. This is an important metric because 70% of the US economy is driven by consumer spending.  The chart below shows consumer’s confidence levels.

Consensus GDP

GDP growth expectations are shown in the chart below, with an expected 8.1% growth in Q2 2021 and 7.0% growth in Q3. This is based on an annualized basis, meaning they expect a fourth of that to occur each quarter. This level of growth is incredible. Normal growth for a mature economy like the US is between 2 and 4% each year.

So what’s happening now? In 2020 we had a massive dip in GDP because of the pandemic, hitting a depression-era low. Now in 2021, we’re seeing the recovery. After the big jump this quarter, it will start to taper off back to normal growth levels.

Economic Bottom Line

But my opinion is that the GDP growth will exceed everybody’s expectations. I think we’ll see blistering growth. Why? Because of a combination of all the things I mentioned: record per capita income, record savings, record net worth, record cash-out refis, record low debt service, consumer sentiment surge, and cash/profit from stimulus payments. Combine this with freedom from cabin fever as more local and international economies open to tourists, and I believe we’ll see lots of consumer spending.

Inflation

So what about inflation? Let’s take a look at lumber, agriculture, used vehicles, and copper. Copper is a very good predictor of economic growth because it is used in almost every kind of industrial application, like electronics and plumbing.

As you can see, everything is soaring. Prices are spiking, and there is a large amount of supply chain disruptions and worker shortages underlying this.

Small Businesses See Growth, Expect Pressures in 2021

A Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City report in April showed that 70% of firms indicated selling prices are higher compared to pre-pandemic levels, mostly due to increasing materials prices. And 50% of firms reported higher new orders compared to before the pandemic. That means 50% of firms are saying their sales are higher than before the pandemic.

The below chart taken from that report showed that 60% of these companies consider a lack of qualified workers to be their biggest risk for future business over the next year, tied with supply chain issues. 

Over half of businesses are saying they’re having trouble finding workers to fill job openings.

These comments from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City report shows that stimulus measures are affecting the labor pool.

“Stimulus and increased unemployment money are wrecking the labor pool. Lower-level employees are quitting to make just as much not working.”

“Unemployed workers have no incentive to return to work given the COVID bonus payments.”

“Entry level pay will need to be increased. This will create pressure on all other positions.”

“It is very difficult to handle the increased business with supply chain issues across all materials and finding anyone who wants to work. The federal government has incentivized people to stay home and not be productive.”

“The labor shortage is driving up the price of most proteins in food manufacturing.”

“Liquidity is the BIGGEST issue. Ramp up of production is stressing cash more than usual since we depleted cash during the downturn more than what would have been typical.”

“We are facing significant supply chain problems due to COVID-19 issues, tariff issues, and the weather problems in Texas earlier his year.”

What about Interest Rates?

The top blue line in the chart above is the inflation expectations, called the 10-year breakeven rate. It’s basically a formula that calculates how much inflation premium is built into the price of a bond. They calculated it by measuring the difference between the yield of a nominal bond and an inflation-linked bond of the same maturity. It is essentially investors’ expectations on inflation, mathematically speaking.

The red line is the nominal interest rate, and the different between those two is the green line, or “real” interest rate, which measures what you’re actually earning on your money after adjusting for inflation. The black line being zero, you can see that real rates are still expected to be negative. During the period in the yellow box, inflation expectations stayed fairly flat, but the real rate went up. The real rate went up because investors were moving out of pandemic-era defensive bond positions. This indicates is an expectation of a return to pre-pandemic regular economic growth, rather than an expectation of future inflation.

Will We See Inflation Coming in a Big Way?

I’ve gone into this is great depth before, but there are 4 systemic deflationary forces that are still in place today. Systemic forces means they are widespread and will not easily change. The first is wages.

Wages

Wage growth is highly capped because of automation. McKinsey projects that in the next 10 years, a third to almost a half of jobs will disappear because job hours are being automated. Think about the kiosk at McDonald’s that takes your order now instead of a person. This automation eliminates jobs and creates a downward pressure on wages.

Globalization is another wage deflator. Many US jobs can be replaced overseas for less, so essentially, every US worker competes with an overseas worker at far less money. As long as this is true, wages are capped.

Food

This chart looks at world grain production since 1950. You can see the amount of grain land harvested drop dramatically, while the grain yields per hectare increase at the same pace.

Less and less land is producing more and more grain. This is largely the result of advances in biotechnology. Tech growth is massively improving productivity and yields, and this trend is not going to change anytime soon.

Energy

Data from the US government shows that primary energy production has risen sharply, again due to advances in technology. But if you look at consumption, it’s flattened. This is primarily due to conservation efforts like electric vehicles, renewable energy, etc. For the first time, we’ve recently seen energy production overtake consumption in America.

Energy is a long-term deflationary force because of technology advances, like fracking, for instance, that hasn’t yet been deployed in other high-energy-producing countries like Russia, Siberia and Saudi Arabia. The higher oil runs in price, the more producers will be incentivized to deploy these new technologies. This will cap prices.

Demographics

An aging population and declining labor force growth rate acts as another cap on inflation rates. Inflation is highly correlated to the age of the workforce, as you can see from the chart below showing the consumer price index (CPI) and labor force growth rates. As the workforce ages and retires, they are not contributing to GDP anymore and consumer prices stay steady. 

These are big inflationary components that are in a systemic deflationary cycle. The one anomaly is housing, which makes up about one third of the CPI. Housing is a large inflationary component, and it does continue to grow, but I believe that generally inflation will not be as big a problem as many are thinking because of these dramatic, long-term deflationary forces in place.

What about the Fed printing money?

The chart below is a snapshot of the Federal Reserves’ total assets over the last 10 years, the period of greatest monetary expansion in history.

The sharp inclines are when the Fed prints more money, which has increased steadily over the last 10 years. But take a look at the same chart with gold, CPI, and inflation included.

Asset prices rose, but the real economy did not. Inflation did not hit consumer prices, but it did raise asset prices. All the liquidity that the Fed printed does not go into buying more consumer goods, but rather into buying assets.

Now, that may shift a little bit with the new stimulus package methodology of direct-to-consumer. Historically, government stimulus measures were in the form of tax breaks (for corporations among other things), and you would see a trickle down to the end consumer. But in this case, a consumer with $1,000 in his pocket, may go to the Apple store and spend it.

Basically, I believe we will see increasing inflation primarily due to supply and demand shortages because of supply chain change, disruptions, and labor shortages. But I expect that inflation pressure to ease in 6-9 months as supply chain disruptions are solved and expanded unemployment benefits end. So, workers get back to work and supply chain kinks are worked out.

Inflation Bottom Line

• We will see increasing inflation primarily due to increased demand and supply shortages (supply chain disruptions and labor shortages) in the short term
• We expect to see inflation pressures ease as supply chain disruptions are solved and expanded unemployment benefits end
• Consumer Price Inflation will be boosted by stimulus – direct payments (a first) have a more immediate effect than other stimulus measures
• Unemployment rates will continue to be higher until benefits expire
• Higher unemployment may cause Fed to keep rates low

Bob Fraser

Mr. Fraser has 20+ years’ experience as a finance and technology executive and is a former E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner. In 2012 Fraser co-founded Aspen Funds, a fund management company focused on mortgage investments. Fraser is responsible for financial management, portfolio modeling, as well as systems and processes, designing and deploying Aspen’s scalable state-of-the-art back-end platform.

UPDATE: To see more recent economic forecasts, check out the summer 2021 Housing Market Projections update and the Inflation economic impact update.

Part 5 of our series on 2021 economic predictions covers the stock market. Topics include the business valuations in the S&P 500, P/E ratios and subsequent historical and projected earnings, and our predictions of who will be the 2021 winners.

S&P 500 Overweights Tech Giants – And Their P/E Ratios are Insanely High

When people go to invest in the stock market, it’s very popular to simply invest in an index like the S&P 500. But a very important element to know is that all the indices like the S&P 500 are overweighting a few tech giants, and their PE ratios are extremely high.

The dark blue line in the chart below shows the top five companies in the S&P 500: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google. You can see how much they are affecting the S&P 500. And you can see the other 495 stocks down below with the light blue line. The tech guys are on fire.

P/E Ratios of The Tech Giants

What is a P/E ratio? P/E ratio is the price per share divided by the earnings per share. Essentially, it’s how much you’re paying for a stock relative to its earnings. Here’s an example. Amazon is at a 93 P/E ratio. That is like paying $93,000 for a business that earns $1,000 per year. That’s in essence what you’re doing if you’re buying a share of Amazon stock. These tech giants are very pricey on any basis you evaluate.

Tesla, which was just added to the index, is actually just above a 1300 P/E. Following our same example, when buying Tesla shares, you are essentially paying $1.3 million for a business that’s earning $1,000 a year. It sounds extreme; would you pay that much for a business with $1,000 in earnings? Well, the answer is yes if it’s Tesla. So clearly the valuations are just insane right now.

Valuation is the Bigger Issue

The total stock market price to earnings ratio is at 33, which means on average, investors are paying $33,000 for $1,000 of earnings. The entire reason for buying a business is to earn money, so this is definitely a caution zone. 

You can see previous peaks in 1929 and the 2000 dotcom bubble. We’re currently higher than a lot of people are comfortable with. Why does it matter? Well, it makes sense that the more you pay for something, the less likely you’re going to profit from it when you sell  it, right? The bottom line is price to earnings ratio matters. You want to buy when stocks are cheap and sell when they’re high, not buy when they’re expensive.

This is a scatterplot chart, and each dot is one month in history since 1950. The chart plots the P/E ratio at that time along the X axis, and shows historical returns annualized over the following 10-years. So had you bought on January 1st of 2000 at a 40 P/E ratio, your returns over the next 10 years were -5%. This is historical fact. Had you bought the stock market at that point and at that 40 P/E, you would have lost 5% per year over the next 10 years.

You can see, this is not a random chart, but there is actually a correlation between P/E ratio and future gains. So contrary to what modern portfolio theory asserts, that one should always be in the stock market, it matters what time you are in the stock market. History shows that valuation and timing greatly affect returns. You can time the stock market, and it’s best to invest when the stock market is cheap.

So where are we now? Well, at a 33 P/E, that puts us where the star is, right on the trend line. You can see right there that we’ll likely see returns in the -1% to 5% range over the next 10 years if history is any indication of the future. So, not great. The P/E ratio has been a very good predictor of future stock market returns.

The “Buffett Indicator” – Total Stock Market Value / GDP

The “Buffett Indicator” is what Warren Buffett claims is the best single measure of where valuations stand at any moment. Buffett is the most successful investor of all time. He started with very little and has created billions of dollars in wealth. He has said that what he looks at is the total stock market value relative to the size of the economy. If the stock market is valued more than the entire economy, it’s probably overpriced since it derives its value from the economy. And if it’s a fraction of the economy, then it’s probably a good price. And so you can see in 1999, it was not a good time to invest in the stock market. You would have had some losses.

The green line in the above graph is the mean, the long-term average. This chart only goes back to 1990, but you can see we’re at a record high. So again, it shows the stock market is high. 

A quick note, why is the stock market so high? This is the result of liquidity and of the massive stimulus programs. Some of that liquidity flows into the stock market. As an example, if you could borrow $1 billion at a 1% interest rate, what would you do with it? Well, you might buy stocks, and then stocks go up. And not based on value necessarily, but based on the fact that you think someone else is going to pay a higher price than you will pay, regardless of what the actual earnings are.

Crashes & Drawdowns

One of the things that is underestimated in the stock market is the risk versus reward. It always amazes me that financial advisors tell people to be in the “safe” investment of the stock market versus alternative investments, which is our space. Many alternative investments do not have nearly the volatility of the stock market.

Let’s look at the historical data since 2000. The above chart shows the yield and max price drawdowns of many popular investment stocks. With KYN, there have been 6 drawdowns of 20% or more, some as high as 70%. This means one morning you could have woken up and lost 70% of your investment. There have been 6 of these just since 2000. With EQR, which is an office REIT, there have been 7 drawdowns of 20% or more. 

These drawdowns are significant. In order to get a 3% yield, investors take a 60-70% risk. And it’s the same in the S&P 500. In the stock market, people are stretching for income unaware of the volatility risk. 

Why Volatility Matters

Without volatility, we can see the magic of compounding. It was Einstein who said, “compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world.” 

Let’s take a look at a couple scenarios. 

Scenario 1. You invest $100,000 and hold it for 30 years, and your average yield is a consistent 9%. At the end of 30 years at 9% growth, you have $1.3 million. That’s the power of compounding. 

But here’s a comparative scenario. Scenario 2. You again invest $100,000 over 30 years, and your average yield is 10%. But in this case, you gain 50% one year, lose 30% the next year, and so on, but your average is still 10%. At the end of 30 years, you end up with just over $200,000, a fraction of what you earned with a consistent 9%. 

Volatility is the destruction of compounded returns. People should avoid volatility wherever possible. 

Bottom Line – Where the Stock Market is Headed in 2021

• We will see a continued upward climb, but with volatility. 
  • Stocks will benefit from a global stimulus. When new money is printed, asset prices rise. Anything that can’t be printed goes up in value, including stocks, real estate, gold, Bitcoin, etc 
  • Valuations are generally unattractive 
  • Indexes are increasingly plagued by concentration risk,
  • All these factors increase volatility 
• The outsize opportunities in my opinion for 2021 are:
  • REITs with lodging and retail exposure. Currently, some are down as much as 90%. 
  • Regional banks. Again some are down 70 to 80% still, and they have not yet participated in the big gains, so they’re laggards. 
  • Entertainment shares like movie theaters, IMAX, etc. 
  • And also energy has been pummeled. Although I think caution is in order because oil prices are capped by untapped production and technology. The largest oil producer in the world is the United States, and it’s due to technology. And since this technology has not even been deployed in other oil producers like Siberia, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, oil prices are capped. As soon as prices rise, you’re going to see production increase and flood the market. So I’m not very excited about energy in general, but there will be some outsize opportunities in the 2020 laggards.

Recap & Next Article

Up to this point, we’ve covered what happened economically in 2020, where we believe the economy is headed in 2021, how Biden’s proposed tax plan with impact the economy, and where the housing and stock markets are headed.

Next article in series: Aspen Funds

Related Articles

2021 Economic Forecast – Pt. 1 – The Economy

2021 Economic Forecast – Pt. 2 – COVID19 Recovery

2021 Economic Forecast – Pt. 3 – The Biden Tax Plan

2021 Economic Forecast – Pt. 4 – Housing Market

About the Author

Bob Fraser

Mr. Fraser has 20+ years’ experience as a finance and technology executive and is a former E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner. In 2012 Fraser co-founded Aspen Funds, a fund management company focused on mortgage investments. Fraser is responsible for financial management, portfolio modeling, as well as systems and processes, designing and deploying Aspen’s scalable state-of-the-art back-end platform.

Part 4 of our series on economic predictions in 2021 will cover real estate, including trends in urban flight, single family housing, mortgage delinquencies, housing prices, and details on whether or not there’s a housing bubble.

Economic Tides vs Waves

One of the things I realized decades ago, was that when the tides come in, all boats float. Even boats that have holes in them, boats that are not that great, all boats float. So if you invest in the wrong house, but you did it the right time, you’re still going to make money. And on the other side of the coin, if you invested in the right house at the wrong time, you’re still going to lose money. So when the tides go out, it doesn’t matter how good your boat is, it’s going down. This is why we focus on really understanding economic tides, what the major forces are driving value and asset prices in our day. So let’s dive in here and take a look at the real estate market.

Trends in the Housing Market

Urban Flight

One new trend we’re seeing is urban flight. People are moving from urban centers, especially in pricier markets. According to MYMOVE, in 2020 111,000 people have exited Manhattan. Another 43,000 have left San Francisco. We’re seeing an exodus from higher cost urban areas, with many people thinking that if they can work from home, why not move? Why work in a crowded, expensive, low-quality-of-life area, when they can live somewhere else that may be more appealing.

Most People Made Full or Partial Rent Payments in 2020

According to the National Multifamily Housing Council, when it came to apartment rents, 76.4% of households made full or partial payments in September 2020, versus 82% a year ago. So we’re definitely seeing some pressure on renters, but it’s not extreme yet. The direct stimulus payments, unemployment checks, and the PPP programs all aided renters.

Where Are Housing Prices Headed in 2021?

Another amazing trend, and something that we have been tracking and forecasting for years, is a super strong single family housing market. We’re continuing an eight year trend of 5%+ year-over-year growth. 

This chart shows home price growth, and you can see we were at the zero line in 2012. But since 2012, we’ve had roughly 5% annual home price growth across the US. As of October, 2020, average homes in the United States rose 7.3% year over year. The real estate market is smoking hot. We have been forecasting this for years, and I’ll tell you in a moment what’s going on and why.

Mortgage Delinquencies Well Below Great Financial Crisis Peak

According to Black Knight who tracks mortgages, mortgage delinquencies are right now at about 6.44%. During the great financial crisis, they hit almost 11%. But of the 6.44%, only 0.33% of those are in foreclosure, well below the great financial crisis peak, but certainly concerning. 

Foreclosures are still low, helped by the stimulus payments, and thus this is unlikely to become a banking crisis like what happened in 2008 and 2009. I’ll also dive deeper into this below.

5.3% of Mortgages In COVID Forbearance Plans

According to Black Knight, 5.3% of mortgages are in COVID-19 forbearance plans, reducing or suspending rent payments for renters. You can see it spiked up in May and has been dropping off. 

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac are required to forebear and there’s really no qualification necessary. So if a renter were to say, ‘Hey, I have a COVID-19 difficulty,’ basically they would have to forebear. Many of these forbearance plans are people simply putting money in their pocket who may or may not have a real challenge. So again, I think these numbers are inflated and not very concerning right now.

Home Sales Booming, Highest in Last 15 Years

Meanwhile, existing home sales are booming, hitting the highest point in the last 15 years. Take a look at the peak in 2005 and 2006. Even in the middle of the COVID crisis, home sales are absolutely booming. 

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate is one of the main reasons for home prices skyrocketing, hitting a record low of 2.67% at the end of 2020. These rates are crazy-low for a 30-year fixed mortgage. Mortgage rates have never been this low, so it creates a massive demand and stimulative effect on home prices.

Housing Prices By Metro Area

Housing prices are now above the 2006 peak except in the largest Metro areas. In the below chart, the red line is the national average. You can see the 2006 peak, how we’re now far above it. 

The blue line shows the largest 20 Metro areas, and we’re now just above the 2006 peak. And finally, the green line depicts the largest 10 Metros, big cities like San Francisco, New York. In these metros we are not quite at the previous peak yet. So across the board, home prices have had a pretty dramatic recovery and are now close to or above the previous peak. 

But after adjusting for inflation, let’s call it “real housing prices,” prices are still well below the peak in the largest metros, and close to the peak nationally. The chart below shows inflation-adjusted housing prices, and you can see we’re actually right about at the peak nationally. And In the 10 largest metros, we’re well below the 2006 peak. So after adjusting for inflation, nationally we’re 1% below the previous peak, and between 11-15% below the previous peak in the largest metros. So prices have not recovered to where they would be with inflation.

The Demand For Housing

Price-to-Rent Ratios Mean It’s Cheaper to Buy Than Rent

One of the major factors driving housing prices up is that it’s cheaper to buy than rent. Here’s the price to rent ratio. When it’s high, it’s cheaper to rent than to buy. 

We’re still seeing prices about 20% below the peak. One of the factors we examine at Aspen Funds when we’re buying mortgages is whether the principal and interest payments of the borrower is below the equivalent rent payments. And we’re seeing sometimes the principal and interest payments are half of what you would pay if you were to rent the same house. Rents have continued to go up throughout the crisis, so it often makes it cheaper to buy than rent. If you have good credit and a down payment, it is cheaper in many metros to buy than to rent. So that’s driving up demand.

Housing Demand Driven By Supply Squeeze

The other factor at play is an acute housing supply squeeze. Today, we have only 3.3 months’ supply of houses in the US. This is an unprecedented shortage of homes on the market. 

Housing Underbuilt for the Last 15 Years

Here’s the bigger story and why we have been predicting housing price gains for the past few years, including for 2021 and the next few years. The chart below measures new housing builds. The green line shows multifamily housing (structures with 5-units or more) starts and the blue line is single-family housing starts. Pre-financial crisis, everything was fairly steady and strong. 

During the crisis, everything was crushed, and both multifamily and single family housing starts completely stopped. But notice what happened during the recovery: Multifamily builds recovered significantly, but single family builds never recovered. In fact, they’re still far below the lowest in the previous 20 years. Why is that? 

If you built a home back in 2005, you could buy land, build a house, sell it, and you would actually make a profit. But today, if you were to buy a piece of land, build a house and sell it, you would generally not make a profit (there are some exceptions to this in the luxury market, but this generally holds true, especially at the lower end of the market).

The reason for this is because inflation has continued on for the last 15 years. The housing market took a dive, but inflation did not take a dive. So the housing market has not kept pace with inflation. Today your cost of land, building materials and labor have dramatically gone up. But prices when you sell it have not kept pace. Homes are underpriced.

There are two ways to fix this: either private homes need to be cheaper to build, which is not going to happen, or prices need to go up. This means there’s a shortage of supply coming onto the market. There are no new homes competing with existing homes, because they’re not being built. Why? Because you can’t make money doing that. This has helped to create a chronic supply squeeze.

Going back to the last chart, we’re actually seeing homes are starting to be built again. Currently, we’re still just above half of the level of new home builds as in 2006. So while there’s not a lot of homes being built, we’re starting to hit the bottom of normal range. This is a good sign to me, signaling that we’re going to see some new supply hitting the market. This housing starts line has to climb higher before we start to see any relief in housing price gains. Until then we’re going to continue to see housing prices for single family homes continue to go up.

This is the same chart, except now displayed relative to population. According to this data, not only are housing starts low, but the population of the United States has continued to increase. This further illustrates the chronic undersupply of new homes being built. We will continue to see a supply squeeze until housing prices rise enough to make new homes profitable for builders.

Debt Service – Consumer is in Great Shape

Here’s another amazing chart looking at consumer debt service. The consumer is in great shape in spite of COVID. 

Look at the COVID impact in 2020. This is debt service payments as a percent of disposable income. Debt service is how much you spend on an annual basis on debt service relative to your income. We’ve seen a dramatic improvement in 2020 where people are spending less money on debt. Why is that? Well, income is going up, and interest rates are going down. So the consumer is actually in very, very good shape.

Housing Affordability is Increasing

Housing affordability is increasing. Now this may be counterintuitive to a lot of people. The below chart is my version of affordability, measuring personal income per capita divided by median home interest costs. If you bought the average home in America and you got a loan at the current interest rate, what are you going to pay in interest versus what you earn? And you can see it’s actually rising dramatically. Why is that? Well personal income per capita is actually up due to stimulus payments and unemployment payments.

Housing affordability is improving because rising personal income per capita and savings from falling interest rates is currently outpacing the higher cost of housing. So again, it’s kind of surprising, but we’re seeing affordability going up and prices continue to rise as a result.

Are We in Another Housing Bubble in 2021?

There’s a lot of concern about a housing bubble. The chart below is current 2020 data from CoreLogic, who looks at mortgages. Today, mortgage underwriting is far more conservative than in the early 2000s. This is the share of conforming conventional homes purchased with the debt-to-income (DTI) ratio above 45%, meaning you’re spending more than 45% of your income paying your mortgage. 

You can see 2006, which was the peak of the previous housing bubble, was at a pretty high number. Today it’s not anywhere near that. 

And here is the share of conforming home purchases with a loan-to-value (LTV) ratio above 95%, meaning loans with a 5% down payment or less. How many homes are bought with 5% down? Well, it was a significant number back at the peak of the housing bubble. Today it’s far lower.

Perhaps even more important is this chart, also from CoreLogic, showing six factors of credit quality. What’s interesting here is the percentage of low doc/no doc loans, of which there are almost none today. These types of loans were a significant portion of loans back in the great financial crisis. With a low doc/no doc loan, you basically state your income and don’t need to provide documentation to prove it. Today these simply do not happen a significant amount.

And the second factor to look at in this same chart is the below 640 credit score loan originations. Again, very, very small relative to what was happening in 2000. 

Today we’re seeing every measure of origination loan credit quality is far, far more conservative than it was in 2000. Especially the greatest risk areas, below 640 credit score and no doc/low doc loans. So bottom line there’s no way we’re in a housing bubble right now. 

Real Estate Forecast 2021 Bottom Line

• We’re going to see record strength continue in the housing market. CoreLogic is forecasting 1.9% growth in 2021 (I don’t know how they get that number after seeing 7.3% growth in 2020). Zillow is forecasting a 10-12% growth in 2021. Our estimate is that growth will be at or above the 2020 level, so 8-10% growth in 2021. Again, this is because of all the reasons we’ve said: fewer new homes being built, low supply, low interest rates, higher affordability, low price-to-rent ratios and a consumer that is very, very healthy. Basically every fundamental we examine is strong, so we expect to see a very good year for single family homes.
• For commercial real estate, multifamily, and office, the global interest rate compression will keep cap rates low. Today global interest rates are low, zero, and negative, meaning if you put your money in a bank you would pay the bank to keep your money. Low and negative interest rates are driving cap rates down globally. So if you have $1 billion, are you going to put it in a bank and pay a bank to keep the money? No, you’ll do pretty much anything else, like buy an apartment complex, etc. This creates a massive amount of liquidity and keeps cap rates low, and cap rates determine prices. So prices are going to continue to be high for the foreseeable future.
  
  Global interest rate compression is a byproduct of stimulus. It’s also a byproduct of policy and it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Interest rates are going to continue to be extremely low and that is simply going to boost multifamily and office prices. I don’t know how much upside there is in those, but I don’t think there’s a significant downside.
• Office demand will significantly soften as working from home becomes permanent for some or many workers. Even if the current 80% of the workforce working from home becomes 20%, that’s still 20% less demand for office space. However, since most office space is on long-term leases, impact is not immediate or acute. So we’re going to see softening, but it’s not going to be a big problem.

There is a huge opportunity in distressed properties within Retail and Lodging. As we said before, 24% of hotel lodging debt was in special servicing, which means loss mitigation. This is a huge opportunity for distressed properties possibly selling for 50 cents on the dollar, for those who want to move into that area.

Recap & Next Article

Up to this point, we’ve covered what happened economically in 2020, where we believe the economy is headed in 2021, how Biden’s proposed tax plan with impact the economy, and where the housing market is headed.

Next article in series: The Stock Market

Related Articles

2021 Economic Forecast – Pt. 1 – The Economy

2021 Economic Forecast – Pt. 2 – COVID19 Recovery

2021 Economic Forecast – Pt. 3 – The Biden Tax Plan

About the Author

Bob Fraser

Mr. Fraser has 20+ years’ experience as a finance and technology executive and is a former E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner. In 2012 Fraser co-founded Aspen Funds, a fund management company focused on mortgage investments. Fraser is responsible for financial management, portfolio modeling, as well as systems and processes, designing and deploying Aspen’s scalable state-of-the-art back-end platform.

Part 3 of our 2021 economic forecast will examine Biden’s proposed tax plan and it’s effect on the US economy, including an overview of the proposed changes and their impact on investments and asset prices, as well as minimum wage increases and unemployment rates, and post-crisis stimulus and recovery.

And in case you missed them, here are part 1 and part 2 in the series.

At the time of writing, it’s unknown whether or not Biden will be able to get his plan pushed through. But for the sake of this forecast, I’m going to assume that the Biden tax plan passes and we’ll look at its potential economic effect in 2021. Let’s dive in.

The Biden Tax Plan Overview

The biggest change reflected in the proposed tax plan is a rise in the long-term capital gains tax rate, which would almost double from a 20% capital gains to a 39% capital gains tax. This means that if you buy an asset, hold it over a year and then sell it, you would pay about 20% on the revenue pre-Biden. Post-Biden, you’re paying almost 40%. This is a massive increase, and we’ve never seen anything like that. 

While we can’t see the future to predict exactly what will happen as a result of this increase, we can look at past similar scenarios and what happened in those cases. 

The other big change is the corporate income tax rate. In 2018, Trump passed a 21% rate, massively reducing the corporate income tax rate. Biden proposes to increase it to 28%, a fairly significant increase, and reintroduce the alternative minimum tax. There were several other changes in the new plan as well, but I’m not going to spend time on them as they’re smaller and less impactful. We’ll focus here on the first two measures.

What’s the Impact on Businesses from the Long-Term Cap Gains Tax Rate Increase?

With the long-term cap gains tax rate increase from 20 to 39% applying to income over a million dollars, it’s primarily going to affect businesses or wealthy individuals. 

The below chart is from Goldman Sachs and they look at the impact of previous capital gains tax increases in 1987, 1988 and 2013. 

What happened in those cases is tri-fold:

1. The S&P 500 initially dropped significantly, but then recovered within six months. 
2. The household equities dropped, which is the investment of households in the stock market.
3. Momentum dropped but then recovered. 

In all three of these cases there was a felt impact, but recovery soon followed. My opinion is this is going to have a chilling effect on investment and prices, primarily in real estate and the stock market.

Combined with elimination of 1031 exchanges, the Cap Gains Tax increase could have significant depressive effect on RE liquidity and pricing

Combined with the elimination of 1031 exchanges, this tax hike is going to have a significant depressive effect on real estate, liquidity and pricing. With a 1031 exchange, you can sell an existing property, buy a new property, and in essence swap out your cost basis and defer your taxes. This has been a pretty big tax savings for real estate investors. 

Here’s Goldman’s take on the elimination of 1031 exchanges: “Eliminating 1031 exchanges would likely lead to a decrease in commercial real estate prices in many markets, less reinvestment in commercial and residential real estate, greater use of leverage to finance acquisitions, and an increase in investment holding periods that would result in a decrease in market liquidity and a slowdown in related industries.” So a lot of people will simply hold their existing property rather than sell and pay the taxes. It means fewer properties available for sale, and less liquidity in their terminology. It also means possible sell-off in stocks and commercial real estate prior to a cap gains tax increase.

Possible sell-offs in stocks and commercial real estate prior to cap gains tax increase

So again, according to Goldman, “history shows stock prices fall, equity allocations decline, and Momentum underperforms ahead of increases in capital gains tax rate. However, any potential equity selling will be short-lived and reversed in subsequent quarters.” Goldman believes it’s going to possibly create a sell-off, but there will be a quick recovery. I’m not so sure because of the sheer magnitude of the increase. I believe that because we have never seen a doubling of taxes and capital gains combined with 1031 exchanges, the effect could be more pronounced.

The other thing that’s very different from these periods that Goldman mentioned is that today’s wealthiest households are sitting on $1 trillion in unrealized equity gains. 

Let’s say you’re an investor and you have $1 billion in unrealized gains and you know the tax rate is going to double on January 1st, what are you going to do? You’re going to sell ahead of the tax change, pay your taxes, and then maybe buy it back. 

So we’re going to see a big selling crush. The unrealized equity gains is currently about 4x larger than it’s ever been, and there’s a lot of incentive to sell. If the tax plan passes in 2021 and becomes effective on January 1st of 2022, I believe we’ll see a possible market selloff in Q4 2021 in anticipation of that. And it may have a slight depressive effect on long-term prices.

We’re already seeing the beginnings of a selloff in private mergers and acquisitions, with a lot of privately owned companies looking to sell. Many wealthy business owners who are looking for exits are already moving M&As forward in order to save in taxes. So this is possibly a very significant tax increase.

The Corporate Income Tax

The factor that may have the biggest economic impact in 2021 is the corporate income tax increase from 20% to 28%. 

The Trump tax plan implemented at the beginning of his term reduced corporate taxes to global norms. Prior to this tax change, the US was one of the highest tax jurisdictions in the world for business taxation. At that point, tax law penalized US-based businesses. The US was the only country in the world that actually demanded that US corporations pay taxes on foreign earnings. So if you have a foreign subsidiary, you pay US taxes on when those earnings came home. 

And so what happened is that businesses basically didn’t pay the taxes, they just held them in those foreign entities. Trump’s tax plan allowed them to repatriate all that cash–it was trillions of dollars–and pay their taxes on it. This eliminated this very weird disparity of the US corporate taxes in the globe. My prediction at the time was that it was going to dramatically impact the economy, and it did.

How Corporate Income Tax Affects Unemployment Rates

This tax change was the single largest factor in driving pre-COVID unemployment rates to historical lows. This is the unemployment rate for black or African-Americans, which we saw literally setting a record low.

And for Hispanics as well, also a record low we’ve never seen before. 

Contrary to politicians’ economic fantasies, jobs are created almost entirely by healthy businesses. When businesses are healthy, they hire people. And that’s exactly what happened after this tax change. As these businesses were flush with cash, they began hiring, and you see the unemployment trend continue downward in the chart.

How Will an Increased Minimum Wage Affect Businesses and the Economy?

Biden has also pledged to boost the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I understand that this move is born from the desire to create a livable working wage for all, but in actuality it has a very harmful effect. 

Raising minimum wages will have a very detrimental effect on the marginally employable and on youth looking for their first job. Think about someone coming out of high school, most of whom have no skills whatsoever, and who may not have really developed a good work ethic. What would someone pay them $15 an hour to do where it actually makes financial sense?

For part-time workers and those without deep skills and job history, a minimum wage increase is going to have a very, very negative effect. A friend of mine runs a computer recycling business where he pays those in homes for the severely mentally handicapped to disassemble computers. If he had to pay them $15 an hour for this job, he wouldn’t be able to afford to employ them. 

A minimum wage increase has a long-term effect of delaying and/or preventing the marginally employable from entering the workforce. That first job is so hard to get and raising the minimum wage, essentially increasing the high-jump bar for that first job, creates a long-term burden of support on society and will disproportionately affect the poor and people of color, unfortunately.

US workers compete for jobs with globe and automated solutions

What a lot of politicians don’t realize is US workers compete for jobs with global workers and automated solutions. We’re already seeing automated kiosks at McDonald’s and other places because it’s cheaper to spend $10,000 on a kiosk than it is to hire a worker. So a worker competes with a computer or an automated solution, but also competes with global workers (not in the case of McDonalds, but more in the manufacturing space). 

A minimum wage increase will have a depressive effect on employment, unfortunately. I appreciate the heart behind doing that, but the increase needs to be tailored so that there are exceptions to the $15 per hour rule. We’ll see what actually passes. If there are exceptions, then this will have not as detrimental an effect.

Stimulus Measures Supersede All

The bottom line is the stimulus measures supersede all. According to Goldman Sachs: “our political economists outlined roughly $7 trillion in gross fiscal expansion spread out over several years that Biden has proposed, including roughly $2 trillion of front-loaded COVID-realted stimulus as well as spending on infrastructure, healthcare and other policies.” 

Whether Biden’s stimulus ends up $1 trillion or $7 trillion, this is going to produce a massive stimulative effect. This really trumps everything else. We’ll see as Biden takes office what actually he is able to pass.

For comparison, early 2020 stimulus measures totaled $2 trillion with another $0.9 trillion in December. Even if no additional stimulus passes in 2021, we are still going to see a fairly strong economy as the stimulus that’s already been spent begins to work it’s way through the economy. But if the stimulus measures continue, we’re definitely going to see a boom, again, primarily affecting asset prices.

A lot of people are concerned about the deficit spending and the monetization of debt that the Federal Reserve is doing, which we covered in part 2 of this series if you’d like to read more.

The Biden Tax Plan Bottom Line

Obama was elected at the tail-end of the great financial crisis, and his term was marked by historical stimulus and deficit spending–both central bank and government spending–and emphasized social spending and policy. But the recession was just stubborn, and we could not get out of it. The below chart shows job losses since post-World War II recessions. Most recessions took a couple years to recover. 

But notice the blue line, the 2007 employment recession during Obama’s presidency, took six and a half years to recover. Now, it was deeper than other recessions, but it was also a much slower recovery. This was partly because it was a systemic crisis, but partly because social spending doesn’t necessarily help the economy or jobs. The historical level of spending during Obama’s term basically increased asset prices but not the economy or jobs. We saw slow job recovery, but great asset price recovery.

Biden’s economic legacy might be similar to Obama’s. Biden was elected at the tail-end of the COVID crisis, his solution is very similar to Obama’s and I expect to see the same two results: 1) massive asset price inflation and 2) a slower jobs recovery. However, job recovery during Biden’s presidency will not be as slow as during Obama’s because the COVID-19 shock is an exogenous shock versus systemic, it’s an external shock. 

If you look at the red line in the above chart mapping out the employment recession during 2020, you can see the extreme speed of the job losses. But we also have seen nothing like the speed of this recovery. So again, because policy makers and Congress acted so quickly with stimulus measures, I would expect to see unemployment continuing to improve, and I believe it will not take as long as the 2007 recession to fully recover.

Recap & Next Article

Up to this point, we’ve covered what happened economically in 2020, where we believe the economy is headed in 2021, and how Biden’s proposed tax plan with impact the economy.

Next article in series: Housing Market in 2020

About the Author

Bob Fraser

Mr. Fraser has 20+ years’ experience as a finance and technology executive and is a former E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner. In 2012 Fraser co-founded Aspen Funds, a fund management company focused on mortgage investments. Fraser is responsible for financial management, portfolio modeling, as well as systems and processes, designing and deploying Aspen’s scalable state-of-the-art back-end platform.