Commercial Real Estate Sentiment vs. Reality

Owen Thomas, Boston Properties CEO says that commercial real estate sentiment is worse than the reality. He also explains the challenges of re-purposing struggling office buildings.

Evergrande: the end of China's property boom

The rapid expansion of China's property sector was powered by a great migration from the farms to the cities - and built on cheap credit. The FT tells the story of Evergrande, the most indebted property developer in the world, which now stands on the brink of collapse. It's a story that changes the outlook for China's position as the locomotive of global economic growth. But is this China's Lehman Brothers moment?

Investors Buy Up Metaverse Real Estate in Virtual Land Boom - WSJ

Real-estate transactions in the metaverse are reaching record highs. The WSJ spoke with companies investing in digital real estate to understand the economic model, and why investors are spending millions on virtual property. 

So, is the metaverse real or just some great big scam? 

Below are just a few comments on the WSJ piece.

• People are out their minds, the reason actually land in the real world has had an increase of price over time is due to it being finite and on the other hand you’ve got a digital online space where you can create as much virtual space as imaginable.
• This is just a hype. Similar concepts had happened on virtual world of various games in gaming industry since 90s and is still on going. Sure, some addicts with the money would spend to acquire virtual land, goods, items, services, and etc. However, once the honeymoon period is passed, either the developer or users leave.
• This is basically a new iteration of the Pyramid Scheme...none of these videogame real estate assets would have any value if the scheme doesnt put on a show to recruit new investors to prop up and legitimize the values...
• What stops other “Metaverse” being made. Crypto Marvel Multiverses. Why would people be stuck in the one place if it can be replicated and people move to another. Like how people jumped in early social media. People moved from Friendster to MySpace then to Facebook and so on. The same happened with online gaming. Ultimate online, RuneScape, World of War Craft. People will get bored. It will stop being the cool place to be over time. What is the draw card to lock people in?
• I love how this screams the Investor class has absolutely zero perception of quality, as long as they can sell a tall tale that makes them a new type of money they'll lie in order to sell it.
• This is never going to work. Only for rich people with nothing else to spend their money on. No one is going to go to a plot of land to see an NFT. Concerts will always be better live. And shopping at Rodeo Drive is better than shopping in a virtual Rodeo Drive, lol I still prefer amazon for my online shopping experience. Don't need headset and an avatar to go buy my wife a louis vuitton. Playstation had this yearsssss ago and it sucked. Poeple will get bored of this. This is only temporary. Want to invest in a better risk, buy BTC or ETH.

 YOU be the judge...

China Urges Evergrande Founder to Pay Debt With Personal Wealth

Chinese authorities told Hui Ka Yan, the billionaire founder of China Evergrande Group, to use his personal wealth to alleviate the deepening debt crisis of the troubled real estate developer, according to people familiar with the matter. John Liu reports on "Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia."

 

China’s Silicon Valley is Hiding a $30 Billion Fortune

Shenzhen’s urban villagers have quietly amassed a combined fortune of more than $30 billion in ways that escape most outsiders. Villages like Huanggang sit on what has become some of the most expensive real estate anywhere in the world. But as millions of people face uncertain times as they flock to China’s Silicon Valley in search of better lives, resentment is building. Allen Wan reports from Shenzhen and Stella Ko in Hong Kong.

 

Is China's economic model broken? - FT

Since the early 2000s some China watchers have been predicting that the building boom would lead to a crash. Twenty years on they may have been proven right. The FT Global China editor James Kynge and FT Beijing correspondent Sun Yu discuss what is happening in it's real estate sector, what that could do to China’s economy and means for the world.