When I was a child, our next-door neighbor, Ann, had already lived a long and full life. Born at the tail end of the 1800s, Ann had seen it all in her lifetime. She had lived through the roaring 20s, the Great Depression, both World Wars, and so many other points in history. We always thought it was odd how frugal she was. She made popcorn balls for Halloween and she folded and saved her used aluminum foil. To us at the time it was odd, but she remembered times when she had nothing and had to conserve.
In contrast, I lived through times of plenty. I was born at the height of the Vietnam War. I graduated high school in the mid-1980s and really didn’t known tough times. As a Gen-Xer, however, remember the 1970s when gas was in short supply and unions went on strike. The following generation never really saw a time that wasn’t a time of plenty. Most Americans don’t remember times where items were in short supply.
Recent events surrounding the spread of the Covid 19 Virus have given us a small taste of what it is like to live without. Grocery store shelves are barren with people fighting over toilet paper and hand sanitizer. For the first time in years, we are living with economic uncertainty as businesses are being forced to shut down to contain the spread of the virus. People are beginning to live their lives like my childhood neighbor, Ann.
We are seeing fewer buyers, but the buyers that are out there are serious about buying. Capital markets that fund many lenders are volatile and we have heard instances where a couple of lenders have refused to fund. Larger institutional funds that fund deals for fix-n-flippers have been altering their terms a bit. The world, however, continues to spin. As people panic, there is still great opportunity in the real estate, note, and private lending arenas. We’re all tightening our belts due to the prevailing economic uncertainty that we are experiencing.
We are going to start doing Zoom conferences on “The State of the Industry” on a weekly basis for all…not just members. Please go to the contact page at www.nilre.com and send us your name, email address, and state that you live in so we can get you added to the invitation list for the Zoom web conferences. You do not have to be a member of the Institute for these web conferences. They will be relatively short and we’ll keep everyone up to date with the goings on in the markets. Let us know of specific questions that you might have. We’ll do our best to answer them. We do not have a date for our first conference call, but we’ll be doing our first call the first week of April and continue as long as we need to. We at the Institute are here to help.