Slowing home sales, falling property values, and growing unemployment are ringing alarm bells in oil-dependent Houston. Last week, the Houston Association of Realtors released a report showing that home sales are falling. In total, single-family home sales fell 2.4 percent on a year-over-year basis in 2014.
San Francisco has become the most expensive place to rent an office as tech startup cash flows to commercial landlords. While San Francisco commercial rents rose 14 percent in 2015, Manhattan saw rents increase at only half that rate, with a 7 percent climb for the once most expensive city in America.
Recently the bond rating company Moody’s Investor Service cut their ranking of Chicago to junk status. The move ticked off a lot of people in the Windy City who think Moody’s overstated the case. I agree that Moody’s is wrong… not because they went too far, but because they didn’t go far enough. Chicago is not close to bankrupt. It’s completely bankrupt. People are just afraid to say this out loud.
The Freddie Gray protests and riots rocked Baltimore for days. While this unrest has already caused considerable damage and economic harm, economists fear the long-term damage may be more devastating.
The city of Chicago usually ranks at the top for its economic potential among major cities, not just in the United States but also, across the world. However, the reality has been a poor reflection of expectations. In 2013, World Business Chicago identified over 700 new & rapidly expanding facilities that were underdeveloped or unutilized in the metro area.
For the first time since the tragic attacks of 9/11, all three of the employment hubs within Bay Area: the San Francisco metro area, the East Bay and the South Bay, have established themselves as million-job economies. These fresh statistics have begun to banish the pain of the Great Recession, and suggest that the Bay Area may be in the midst of a significant employment boom.
