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Investors Snap Up Metaverse Real Estate in a Virtual Land Boom
Justin Bieber performed at a live concert this month, but the show wasn’t in a stadium or an arena. Like recent performances from Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Travis Scott, this concert was held in the metaverse, the online world that stretches the corners of the internet into immersive, four-dimensional experiences. Fans from all over the globe watched Mr. Bieber’s avatar sing songs from his hit album “Justice.” Investors were watching, too. Preparing for a digital land boom that appears just months away, they are snapping up concert venues, shopping malls and other properties in the metaverse. Interest in this digital universe skyrocketed last month when Mark Zuckerberg announced that…
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How the Real Estate Boom Left Black Neighborhoods Behind
As Martavius Jones, a Memphis city councilman, points out, construction outside the city limits was heavily subsidized by city-owned Memphis Light, Gas & Water, which provided new power and gas lines to areas that didn’t pay city taxes, generously underwriting the eastward march of wealthy whites fleeing integrated schools. “My maternal grandmother lived in a little old house on Josephine Street,” Jones says, referring to an Orange Mound address. “I think about all the little old ladies and little old men who constantly paid their taxes, and those taxes went to build up the infrastructure outside the city limits of Memphis.” Americans aren’t accustomed to thinking of utilities and other…
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Real estate bubble or demand boom?
In just two years, the ratio of employees working remotely in the world’s richest countries has increased from 15% to 25%-30%. This situation, in addition to the rapidly increasing demand for housing, has multiplied the interest in housing models that have features that better suit working from home, have larger balconies or even a small garden. Amid the new normal since the coronavirus, 26% of employees in the U.S. are working from home, around one in four. According to institutions that closely monitor the U.S. employment market, at least 22% of the working population (36.2 million) will continue to work remotely from home in 2025, even if the global pandemic…
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Housing boom is over as new home sales fall to pandemic low
Sales of newly built homes dropped in June to the lowest level since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in April 2020, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Monday. Sales of new single family homes fell to an annualized rate of 676,000, 6.6% below May’s rate of 724,000 and 19.4% below the June 2020 level of 839,000. Analysts were expecting new home sales to increase by 3.4% in June. After a year of frenzied buying and price gains in the double digits, newly built homes are now out of reach for much of the demand that remains in the market. The median price of a…
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The Other Side of the Housing Boom Is Here: Home Improvement
The other side of the housing boom is here: home-renovation projects. As Americans were left with more time on their hands and more time in their houses, they began fulfilling their wildest HGTV fantasies. Home improvement and repair spending grew by nearly 3{28ab41d673507bfe0daf970418d2e81f9476b3e139564442359ad7402c370b16} to $420 billion in 2020, per a recent study by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS). It’s only the beginning of the home improvement boom. Abbe Will, one of the report’s researchers, told Insider they expect the home remodeling market to expand even further in 2021 — by 4{28ab41d673507bfe0daf970418d2e81f9476b3e139564442359ad7402c370b16} — as homeowners complete discretionary and deferred projects. When the pandemic hit, the remodeling market crashed before…
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Electrolux beats views amid home-improvement boom
STOCKHOLM–Electrolux AB on Wednesday posted a forecast-beating first-quarter net profit as customers continued to spend more on home improvements and said that, despite producing at almost full capacity, the company couldn’t fully meet the strong demand in the quarter. The Swedish home-appliance manufacturer posted a net profit of 1.56 billion Swedish kronor ($186.4 million) in the quarter, down from SEK2.51 billion last year, as sales rose 9.2{28ab41d673507bfe0daf970418d2e81f9476b3e139564442359ad7402c370b16} to SEK29.03 billion. Earnings last year were boosted by a SEK2.6 billion gain from separating its professional business. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected net profit of SEK970 million on sales of SEK27.64 billion. Electrolux said the supply chain remained strained in many…
