The attention economy. We currently live in the most attention-scarce market in history. This requires people who serve products and services to that market to adapt at an accelerating pace. Things follow this rule in a variety of industries, even ones that operate on longer cycles, including politics, as we've learned.  The most epitomic illustration of this can be found in Netflix's documentary called "The Big Hack". When I look at this solely from the perspective... [read more]

[read more]

It seems like we've pretty progressively found a temporary new normal, with little change in most major metrics. The big one to watch for now is going to be price, which could be gradually dragged down by excess supply. In the microeconomic outlook, it appears we're already seeing opportunism propping up the market on a transactional basis, as we've bounced off fundamentals without rebounding from suppressed capitalization rates we saw in the past few years. It seems like... [read more]

Long-distance calling costs once played a role in purchase decisions. A few days ago, I was preparing a bit of a commentary on Rogers’ introduction of unlimited data. I was trying to conclude how unlimited data may play a role in making rural living a little bit more attractive. As an example, I can now stream Netflix at the cottage in Dwight, where Season 3 of Stranger Things would’ve previously cost me $250. Completely independent of my thought-gathering... [read more]

Last week I started increasing my real estate market reporting to include weekly updates. Reverse engineering: My secondary objective for this increased coverage is to learn what a recovery scenario might look like, and to be able to understand the shape it will take. Until that happens, I'll likely continue this practice. My primary objective for this increased coverage is to monitor the important indicators that we can use in an attempt to determine whether nor not we... [read more]