I’m here today to make the case for a unique space-saving technique I have employed in my apartment for two years: Mount your TV to the ceiling. Do it. You don’t need a bulky entertainment center taking up valuable wall space; your TV can simply float above your head, and look cool doing it. (But don’t tell Reddit, which will lambast you for placing your set above eye level. Live for yourself, not for the approval of mean people online.)
What you need to mount your TV from the ceiling
To get that “doctor’s office waiting room” look at home, you will need:
A ceiling mount (here’s the one I have, which cost about $28)
An under-shelf wire basket like this one
A drill
Four to six hefty toggle bolts
About 10 hole straps
A bunch of screws (I’m very technical)
The key to success
Follow the mounting instructions that come with your mount, and make sure you secure it well into a joist. I hired a pro for this step because I wasn’t sure of my ability to nail into a joist as well as I can a wall beam, but if you think you can do it, just make sure you follow the instructions carefully so you don’t end up tearing through your ceiling (and breaking your flatscreen).
“Buy a ceiling mount for your TV and install it” isn’t a hack, though. The hack comes in my storage solution, which is what the wire basket is for. Get the kind that can slide under a shelf, with one open side, and be sure it’s wide enough to hold whatever you need near the TV, like a video game console, streaming box, or DVD player. Remove the wires that would otherwise hold the basket under a shelf with a wire cutter and you’ll be left with a box that is open on one side and at the top.
Position the basket near the television and mark out four to six spots at the corners and in between where you will support it once it is hanging. Hold the hole straps up to the ceiling so they go around the top wires of the basket at your chosen support points and mark on the ceiling where the screws will go. For each hole strap, use one toggle bolt and one regular screw. I recommend putting the toggle bolts on the interior of the basket so it’s held up securely while you screw in the other sides. Your extra hole straps can be used to secure your wires along the ceiling and down the wall. (Here’s a handy guide for hiding wires.) Stuff your gaming console or whatever else you need in the basket and you’re good to go.
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The benefit of this setup is, to me, clear as day: You get your walls back and don’t need a bunch of shelving to hold your TV. The only thing to be wary of is if you have a low ceiling or someone in your household is super tall, but it’s not much more cumbersome than a ceiling fan or hanging light fixture you have to step around.
Income-seeking investors are looking at an opportunity to scoop up shares of real estate investment trusts. Stocks in that asset class have become more attractive as prices have fallen and cash flow is improving.
Below is a broad screen of REITs that have high dividend yields and are also expected to generate enough excess cash in 2023 to enable increases in dividend payouts.
REIT prices may turn a corner in 2023
REITs distribute most of their income to shareholders to maintain their tax-advantaged status. But the group is cyclical, with pressure on share prices when interest rates rise, as they have this year at an unprecedented scale. A slowing growth rate for the group may have also placed a drag on the stocks.
And now, with talk that the Federal Reserve may begin to temper its cycle of interest-rate increases, we may be nearing the time when REIT prices rise in anticipation of an eventual decline in interest rates. The market always looks ahead, which means long-term investors who have been waiting on the sidelines to buy higher-yielding income-oriented investments may have to make a move soon.
During an interview on Nov 28, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, discussed the central bank’s cycle of interest-rate increases meant to reduce inflation.
When asked about the potential timing of the Fed’s “terminal rate” (the peak federal funds rate for this cycle), Bullard said: “Generally speaking, I have advocated that sooner is better, that you do want to get to the right level of the policy rate for the current data and the current situation.”
Fed’s Bullard says in MarketWatch interview that markets are underpricing the chance of still-higher rates
In August we published this guide to investing in REITs for income. Since the data for that article was pulled on Aug. 24, the S&P 500
SPX,
-0.50%
has declined 4% (despite a 10% rally from its 2022 closing low on Oct. 12), but the benchmark index’s real estate sector has declined 13%.
REITs can be placed broadly into two categories. Mortgage REITs lend money to commercial or residential borrowers and/or invest in mortgage-backed securities, while equity REITs own property and lease it out.
The pressure on share prices can be greater for mortgage REITs, because the mortgage-lending business slows as interest rates rise. In this article we are focusing on equity REITs.
Industry numbers
The National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (Nareit) reported that third-quarter funds from operations (FFO) for U.S.-listed equity REITs were up 14% from a year earlier. To put that number in context, the year-over-year growth rate of quarterly FFO has been slowing — it was 35% a year ago. And the third-quarter FFO increase compares to a 23% increase in earnings per share for the S&P 500 from a year earlier, according to FactSet.
The NAREIT report breaks out numbers for 12 categories of equity REITs, and there is great variance in the growth numbers, as you can see here.
FFO is a non-GAAP measure that is commonly used to gauge REITs’ capacity for paying dividends. It adds amortization and depreciation (noncash items) back to earnings, while excluding gains on the sale of property. Adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) goes further, netting out expected capital expenditures to maintain the quality of property investments.
The slowing FFO growth numbers point to the importance of looking at REITs individually, to see if expected cash flow is sufficient to cover dividend payments.
Screen of high-yielding equity REITs
For 2022 through Nov. 28, the S&P 500 has declined 17%, while the real estate sector has fallen 27%, excluding dividends.
Over the very long term, through interest-rate cycles and the liquidity-driven bull market that ended this year, equity REITs have fared well, with an average annual return of 9.3% for 20 years, compared to an average return of 9.6% for the S&P 500, both with dividends reinvested, according to FactSet.
This performance might surprise some investors, when considering the REITs’ income focus and the S&P 500’s heavy weighting for rapidly growing technology companies.
For a broad screen of equity REITs, we began with the Russell 3000 Index
RUA,
-0.18%,
which represents 98% of U.S. companies by market capitalization.
We then narrowed the list to 119 equity REITs that are followed by at least five analysts covered by FactSet for which AFFO estimates are available.
If we divide the expected 2023 AFFO by the current share price, we have an estimated AFFO yield, which can be compared with the current dividend yield to see if there is expected “headroom” for dividend increases.
For example, if we look at Vornado Realty Trust
VNO,
+1.01%,
the current dividend yield is 8.56%. Based on the consensus 2023 AFFO estimate among analysts polled by FactSet, the expected AFFO yield is only 7.25%. This doesn’t mean that Vornado will cut its dividend and it doesn’t even mean the company won’t raise its payout next year. But it might make it less likely to do so.
Among the 119 equity REITs, 104 have expected 2023 AFFO headroom of at least 1.00%.
Here are the 20 equity REITs from our screen with the highest current dividend yields that have at least 1% expected AFFO headroom:
Company
Ticker
Dividend yield
Estimated 2023 AFFO yield
Estimated “headroom”
Market cap. ($mil)
Main concentration
Brandywine Realty Trust
BDN,
+1.82%
11.52%
12.82%
1.30%
$1,132
Offices
Sabra Health Care REIT Inc.
SBRA,
+2.02%
9.70%
12.04%
2.34%
$2,857
Health care
Medical Properties Trust Inc.
MPW,
+1.90%
9.18%
11.46%
2.29%
$7,559
Health care
SL Green Realty Corp.
SLG,
+2.18%
9.16%
10.43%
1.28%
$2,619
Offices
Hudson Pacific Properties Inc.
HPP,
+1.55%
9.12%
12.69%
3.57%
$1,546
Offices
Omega Healthcare Investors Inc.
OHI,
+1.30%
9.05%
10.13%
1.08%
$6,936
Health care
Global Medical REIT Inc.
GMRE,
+2.03%
8.75%
10.59%
1.84%
$629
Health care
Uniti Group Inc.
UNIT,
+0.28%
8.30%
25.00%
16.70%
$1,715
Communications infrastructure
EPR Properties
EPR,
+0.62%
8.19%
12.24%
4.05%
$3,023
Leisure properties
CTO Realty Growth Inc.
CTO,
+1.58%
7.51%
9.34%
1.83%
$381
Retail
Highwoods Properties Inc.
HIW,
+0.76%
6.95%
8.82%
1.86%
$3,025
Offices
National Health Investors Inc.
NHI,
+1.90%
6.75%
8.32%
1.57%
$2,313
Senior housing
Douglas Emmett Inc.
DEI,
+0.33%
6.74%
10.30%
3.55%
$2,920
Offices
Outfront Media Inc.
OUT,
+0.70%
6.68%
11.74%
5.06%
$2,950
Billboards
Spirit Realty Capital Inc.
SRC,
+0.72%
6.62%
9.07%
2.45%
$5,595
Retail
Broadstone Net Lease Inc.
BNL,
-0.93%
6.61%
8.70%
2.08%
$2,879
Industial
Armada Hoffler Properties Inc.
AHH,
-0.08%
6.38%
7.78%
1.41%
$807
Offices
Innovative Industrial Properties Inc.
IIPR,
+1.09%
6.24%
7.53%
1.29%
$3,226
Health care
Simon Property Group Inc.
SPG,
+0.95%
6.22%
9.55%
3.33%
$37,847
Retail
LTC Properties Inc.
LTC,
+1.09%
5.99%
7.60%
1.60%
$1,541
Senior housing
Source: FactSet
Click on the tickers for more about each company. You should read Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information for free on the MarketWatch quote page.
The list includes each REIT’s main property investment type. However, many REITs are highly diversified. The simplified categories on the table may not cover all of their investment properties.
Knowing what a REIT invests in is part of the research you should do on your own before buying any individual stock. For arbitrary examples, some investors may wish to steer clear of exposure to certain areas of retail or hotels, or they may favor health-care properties.
Largest REITs
Several of the REITs that passed the screen have relatively small market capitalizations. You might be curious to see how the most widely held REITs fared in the screen. So here’s another list of the 20 largest U.S. REITs among the 119 that passed the first cut, sorted by market cap as of Nov. 28:
Company
Ticker
Dividend yield
Estimated 2023 AFFO yield
Estimated “headroom”
Market cap. ($mil)
Main concentration
Prologis Inc.
PLD,
+1.29%
2.84%
4.36%
1.52%
$102,886
Warehouses and logistics
American Tower Corp.
AMT,
+0.68%
2.66%
4.82%
2.16%
$99,593
Communications infrastructure
Equinix Inc.
EQIX,
+0.62%
1.87%
4.79%
2.91%
$61,317
Data centers
Crown Castle Inc.
CCI,
+1.03%
4.55%
5.42%
0.86%
$59,553
Wireless Infrastructure
Public Storage
PSA,
+0.11%
2.77%
5.35%
2.57%
$50,680
Self-storage
Realty Income Corp.
O,
+0.26%
4.82%
6.46%
1.64%
$38,720
Retail
Simon Property Group Inc.
SPG,
+0.95%
6.22%
9.55%
3.33%
$37,847
Retail
VICI Properties Inc.
VICI,
+0.41%
4.69%
6.21%
1.52%
$32,013
Leisure properties
SBA Communications Corp. Class A
SBAC,
+0.59%
0.97%
4.33%
3.36%
$31,662
Communications infrastructure
Welltower Inc.
WELL,
+2.37%
3.66%
4.76%
1.10%
$31,489
Health care
Digital Realty Trust Inc.
DLR,
+0.69%
4.54%
6.18%
1.64%
$30,903
Data centers
Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc.
ARE,
+1.38%
3.17%
4.87%
1.70%
$24,451
Offices
AvalonBay Communities Inc.
AVB,
+0.89%
3.78%
5.69%
1.90%
$23,513
Multifamily residential
Equity Residential
EQR,
+1.10%
4.02%
5.36%
1.34%
$23,503
Multifamily residential
Extra Space Storage Inc.
EXR,
+0.29%
3.93%
5.83%
1.90%
$20,430
Self-storage
Invitation Homes Inc.
INVH,
+1.58%
2.84%
5.12%
2.28%
$18,948
Single-family residental
Mid-America Apartment Communities Inc.
MAA,
+1.46%
3.16%
5.18%
2.02%
$18,260
Multifamily residential
Ventas Inc.
VTR,
+1.63%
4.07%
5.95%
1.88%
$17,660
Senior housing
Sun Communities Inc.
SUI,
+2.09%
2.51%
4.81%
2.30%
$17,346
Multifamily residential
Source: FactSet
Simon Property Group Inc.
SPG,
+0.95%
is the only REIT to make both lists.
After 50 years of playing at the famed Kauffman Stadium, the Kansas City Royals announced their intentions to move to a new stadium.
In an open letter, principal owner John Sherman updated the fanbase about the team’s ongoing search for venues across Kansas City.
“We are excited to now share that we have several leading locations under close consideration, both in downtown Kansas City and close to it,” Sherman said.
Sherman addressed the idea of renovating Kauffman Stadium, but the ballpark would need an extensive face-lift which would cost much more than building a new ballpark.
Kauffman Stadium is the sixth oldest in the MLB and last underwent renovations in 2009.
An artist rendering showing the new stadium surrounded by the ballpark district.Kansas City Royals
The new project is estimated to cost $2 billion, which would be the most expensive private-public development project in the city’s history. Sherman added the new venture would not increase taxes to the Jackson County taxpayers and would bring in $60 million in new tax revenue.
Along with the stadium itself, Sherman said a “ballpark district” would be created that would give fans a “revitalized” surrounding area.
“We envision local restaurants and shops, office spaces, hotels, and a variety of housing opportunities accessible for Kansas Citians from all walks of life,” Sherman said, adding new public transportation options would be created for the area.
The idea of surrounding a new stadium with a modern community is not new but has become increasingly popular in recent years with the Atlanta Braves’ Truist Park, Texas Rangers’ Globe Life Field, and the proposed new NYCFC stadium in Willets Point, Queens.
Artist renderings show the ballpark, fit with features taken from Kauffman Stadium including an overhang over the top of the grandstand, the popular outfield water fountain, and a crown on top of the scoreboard that has been moved to left field. High rises can be seen in the outfield with plenty of grassy seating areas.
The new stadium will feature an overhang and outfield water fountain similar to those at Kauffman Stadium pictured during a game in 2019.Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
According to the open letter, the construction of the new stadium would create 200,000 new jobs, $1.4 billion in labor income, and $2.8 billion in total economic output.
Kauffman Stadium along with GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium form the Harry S. Truman Sports Complex. The complex is approximately 8 miles southeast of downtown Kansas City, and public transit could take up to an hour to get to the stadium.
Owner John Sherman, who took over in 2019, has made it his goal to keep the Royals in Kansas City.Getty Images
The Royals become the third major league team to be actively searching for a new stadium after the Tampa Bay Rays and the Oakland Athleticsboth expressed interest in leaving their current aging ballparks.
The new ballpark and development district around the stadium still has a long way to go before the Royals’ lease at Kauffman stadium ends in 2030, including finalizing the site, design, and approval from Jackson County and the state of Missouri.
Construction workers who toiled on one of Tesla’s sprawling so-called gigafactories will file a complaint and a case referral with the federal Department of Labor on Tuesday detailing exploitative work conditions they say they experienced while building the plant.
Whistleblowers came forward to allege serious labor and employment violations during construction of the electric car manufacturer’s massive new facility in Austin, Texas, that left them vulnerable to injuries and wage theft.
Amid accusations of constant hazards and onsite accidents, one worker said his bosses at an unnamed subcontractor falsified credentials instead of actually providing him and others with required job training involving education about health, safety, and workers’ rights – including the right to refuse dangerous work.
Other whistleblowers are reporting what they describe as wage theft and say they weren’t paid at all or didn’t receive proper overtime compensation for their work on the hi-tech facility.
“Nobody deserves what happened in the gigafactory to happen to them, or their family members, or whomever,” Victor, a worker who asked the Guardian to withhold his last name out of fear of retaliation, said in an exclusive interview about working conditions, adding: “I don’t think it was humane.”
Tesla’s 2,500-acre Austin gigafactory was one of the hottest construction jobs in the US after workers broke ground on it in 2020, as multi-billionaire entrepreneur and owner of Tesla, SpaceX and now Twitter, Elon Musk, erected a central US outpost for his auto manufacturer. From outside the project, the new plant sounded like an ideal place for any builder to work.
The company chose a convenient location along the Colorado River near Austin’s airport, which Musk touted as an employment opportunity for thousands where he will manufacture the long-delayed electric pickup Cybertruck. Back in April, Musk donned sunglasses and a black cowboy hat at a “Cyber Rodeo” celebrating the venue’s initial opening.
But construction workers have painted a far less rosy portrait of the new factory, suggesting what was supposed to be a dream job turned into a nightmare.
On Tuesday, Victor is filing a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), part of the Department of Labor, over alleged fake certificates of completion for required training he says never happened.
He told the Guardian thathis team was directed to work on the metal factory roof at night with no lights, labor on top of turbines that were blowing smoke without protective masks, and otherwise put themselves at risk without basic information on how to stay safe.
In one instance, Victor said he and his colleagues were expected to keep up production on a flooded first floor – despite observing there was live wiring all over the place and cords in the water. He remembers telling his wife: “I’m going to die in this factory.”
On another occasion, Victor worked with a man who was so desperate for money he returned to the job in a brace after breaking his arm on site.
“Every day, there was a safety issue,” he told the Guardian.
Other workers sacrificed time with their loved ones to keep building the factory over Thanksgiving last year but say they never received the double-pay bonuses they had been promised, according to Tuesday’s case referral to the federal Department of Labor’s wage and hour division.
In an industry as fragmented as construction, with its vast network of contractors and subcontractors, workers’ rights advocates contend that developers like Tesla are ultimately the ones with the power and moral authority to demand fair working standards.
Yet “Tesla was not – didn’t seem – interested in using their power to ensure that everyone was able to go home at the end of the day without injuries, with all the money that they’re owed in their pockets,” said Hannah Alexander, a staff attorney for Workers Defense Project, a non-profit helping the construction workers.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Workers Defense Project did not share identifying information about the contractors and subcontractors accused of labor violations for confidentiality reasons amid a pending investigation.
This is not the first time that Musk’s car company has been linked to safety violations.
In recent years, Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California, has far outpaced other major US auto plants for Osha violations, incurring over $236,000 in fines between 2014 and 2018. Likewise, at its factory outside Reno, Nevada, workers have experienced a slew of injuries, including amputations.
By 2020, when the company set its sights on Austin for another factory, accusations of a too-casual relationship to workers’ rights had traveled far, and a broad coalition of labor groups, advocates, and county residents told local government that any deal with Tesla would need to include strong worker protections.
But amid tight competition with other cities also trying to win Tesla’s billion-dollar investment, local officials greenlit a plan to draw the electrical carmaker in with millions in tax rebates – and without the enforcement mechanisms advocates warned were necessary.
Now, some workers are dealing with the upshot.
“Everything that we’re seeing is complicated by the fact that there isn’t a whole lot of transparency or accountability because they decided not to include that independent monitoring piece,” said David Chincanchan, Workers Defense Project’s policy director.
“In general, the state of the construction industry in Texas tends to be just a race to the bottom,” Chincanchan asserted, where exploitation of many vulnerable workers, often immigrants, runs rampant.
Amid Tuesday’s filings, the Austin gigafactory is now under fire.
“Everybody’s at fault,” Victor said. “Anybody could have prevented it. Tesla could have prevented it.”
For much of the past year, China’s economy has been reeling under Xi Jinping’s dual campaigns to rein in soaring property prices and to stamp out any traces of Covid-19 within the country’s borders.
Now, as he moves to loosen pandemic restrictions, China’s leader, Mr. Xi, is signaling a reversal of his real estate crackdown, too, a tacit acknowledgment of the economic pain and public frustration that the two policies have engendered.
China’s central bank and top banking regulator issued a wide-ranging series of measures aimed at bolstering housing demand and supply, according to a notice circulated on Friday to the country’s financial institutions and officials involved in policy-making. The authenticity of the document was confirmed by people close to the central bank.
The new policies, which were signed off on by Mr. Xi, according to the officials involved in policy-making, unwind some of the previous restrictions aimed at curbing property developer debt and give lenders permission to extend loans to home builders in financial trouble.
“These property measures, on top of announcements of Covid loosening, are a clear indication that Beijing’s efforts to support growth are intensifying,” said
Michael Hirson,
head of China Research at 22V Research, a New York-based firm focused on investment strategy.
While local governments across China have taken more modest measures to ease some of the pressure facing real-estate companies, the new bundle of 16 measures represents the single biggest step yet to rescue a sector that has for decades been a key pillar of growth for the world’s second-largest economy.
The property measures had led to falling home sales, hurting overall growth in the real-estate sector.
Photo:
Cfoto/Zuma Press
Chinese home prices for decades outpaced the rate of broader economic growth.
Photo:
Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg News
The new measures are “massive in scale” and amount to “targeted credit easing for the property industry,” said
Dan Wang,
chief economist at
Hang Seng
Bank China, who drew a contrast with previous rounds of incremental support measures.
As developers face looming loan repayment deadlines, regulators are eager to avoid any systemic risks in the financial sector triggered by a wave of potential defaults, Ms. Wang said. Even so, she added, “demand for home purchase remains weak,” with any reversal in housing-market sentiment likely to depend on the longer-term outlook for the economy.
The easing of real estate and Covid restrictions comes just weeks after Mr. Xi secured another five years in power at a closely watched Communist Party congress. With Mr. Xi having consolidated political control, he now faces the prospect of a third term in office facing the country’s worst prolonged economic slowdown in decades.
Much of the economic weakness is a direct product of his campaign-style clampdowns to crush Covid and, starting last year, tame a four-decade-old property market boom that officials have warned may be a bubble.
The property measures led to increased defaults by property developers, rising bad debts for banks, falling home sales and investment—all of which have weighed heavily on overall growth in recent quarters.
China’s gross domestic product expanded just 3.0% in the first nine months of 2022, well below the government’s official full-year target of about 5.5%, set in March.
China Evergrande Group, long the country’s largest developer, is now its biggest debtor.
Photo:
ALY SONG/REUTERS
Chinese home prices have for decades outpaced the rate of broader economic growth, driving more credit into real estate speculation and further pushing up property values. Authorities in recent years have repeatedly tried to break the vicious cycle with various tightening measures, only to loosen them whenever growth appears threatened.
By 2019, the total value of Chinese homes and developers’ inventory was $52 trillion, according to
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.,
twice the size of the U.S. residential market.
As Beijing tightened the screws on developers last year—and then reaffirmed their commitment to the tougher rules—several private developers began to teeter on the brink of crisis. Among the most prominent was
China Evergrande Group,
long the country’s largest developer and now its biggest debtor, though the concerns have spread to other large private players.
More than 30 developers have defaulted on their dollar-denominated bonds. International investors have dumped their bonds, driving price levels to new lows and leaving even the strongest private developers struggling to sell new debt.
Shares of Chinese property developers surged on Monday following the news.
Country Garden Holdings Co.
, one of the country’s largest real-estate companies by contracted sales, jumped 40% in early trading in Hong Kong, taking its gains this month to more than 200%. A Hang Seng subindex of property stocks rose 7%.
Prices of dollar bonds of developers that haven’t defaulted on their debt—including
Agile Group Holdings Ltd.
and
Longfor Group Holdings Ltd.
—also rose sharply from deeply distressed levels, as investors placed bets on their potential recovery.
As the broader economic pain mounted this year, regulators and regional governments moved only modestly to try to avert a full-blown housing crisis, introducing limited measures such as tax rebates, cash rewards and lower down payments, as well as providing banks with window guidance to increase property lending. But those piecemeal moves have so far failed to reverse sentiment and lift the sector.
In October, sales at the country’s 100 largest property developers fell to the equivalent of $76.7 billion, down 28.4% from a year earlier and the 16th straight month of year-over-year declines, according to China Real Estate Information Corp., an industry data provider.
As foreign investors and home buyers lose confidence in China’s property market, developers are offering cars and pigs to boost sales. WSJ examines ads and policies to see how the country’s real estate turmoil could ripple out into the global economy. Photo composite: Sharon Shi
Now, with a new leadership team in place after the party congress—one packed with party members loyal to Mr. Xi—the top leader is moving toward a more concerted approach to shoring up the economy, part of a broader effort to brace for greater competition with the U.S.
“It seems that room for policy easing has widened post-party congress,” said
Larry Hu,
a Hong Kong-based economist at Macquarie. “After the impact of previous efforts turned out to be muted, policy makers are giving a big push now to get credit to flow to the property sector.”
Credit has been a particular headache for developers, since many had relied on heavy borrowing to build new projects and stay afloat. In the first nine months of this year, funds raised by China’s property developers dropped by 24.5%, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
The new notice, jointly issued by the People’s Bank of China and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, doesn’t represent a total reversal of Mr. Xi’s earlier efforts to tamp down exuberance in the sector.
“‘Policy makers are giving a big push now to get credit to flow to the property sector.’”
— Larry Hu, a Hong Kong-based economist at Macquarie
The notice, which has been billed as a package aimed at ensuring the sector’s “stable and healthy development,” still underlines the need to curb speculative real estate buying, repeating Mr. Xi’s mantra that “housing is for living in, not for speculating on.”
Under the new measures, developers’ outstanding bank loans and some types of nonbank credit due within the next six months can be extended for a year. Repayments on developers’ bonds can also be extended.
In addition, banks are encouraged to offer financing to unfinished housing projects and negotiate with home buyers on extending mortgage repayment, an apparent effort to help defuse growing resentment among those who have boycotted mortgage payments since the summer.
Banks are also encouraged to offer financing to support acquisitions of real-estate projects by financially sounder developers from weaker ones.
The new policies require financial institutions to treat state-owned developers and private developers equally, a measure that appears aimed at addressing banks’ reluctance to lend to private developers, according to
Yan Yuejin,
research director at Shanghai-based E-House China R&D Institute, a research firm.
“Regulators are making all-round efforts to target a soft landing for the property sector,” said
Bruce Pang,
chief China economist at Jones Lang LaSalle. Still, with the measures’ heavy skew toward improving liquidity for cash-strapped developers, he said, “these measures likely aren’t enough to avert the slowdown in the physical market.”
—Rebecca Feng contributed to this article.
Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com, Cao Li at li.cao@wsj.com and Stella Yifan Xie at stella.xie@wsj.com
The group building the Obama Presidential Center temporarily ceased construction Thursday after a noose was found on the site in Chicago.
Lakeside Alliance, a partnership of at least five Black-owned construction firms, said in an email that it was informed of the noose earlier that morning and reported it to the police. The group has suspended operations to provide more anti-bias training to workers and is offering a $100,000 reward aimed at finding the “individual or individuals responsible for this shameful act,” it said.
“We have zero tolerance for any form of bias or hate on our worksite,” the group said in an email. It added, “We are horrified that this would occur on our site.”
The Chicago Police Department is investigating the incident, spokesperson Sgt. Rocco Alioto said in an email. Representatives for former president Barack Obama could not immediately be reached late Thursday.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) condemned the incident, saying that “hate has no place” in the state.
Where voter turnout exceeded 2018 highs
“The noose is more than a symbol of racism, it is a heart-stopping reminder of the violence and terror inflicted on Black Americans for centuries,” he wrote on Twitter.
The space in the south side of Chicago will include a plaza, museum, library, playground and garden. The center will cost $830 million to construct, the Associated Press reported. The group first broke ground on the center in September 2021 and it is expected to be completed in 2025.
The project will be built in Jackson Park, a public space named after the former president Andrew Jackson, who was an enslaver. Ownership will ultimately transfer to the city.
The Indian state government of Gujarat opened a criminal inquiry into the agency tasked with maintaining a historic cable bridge after the popular attraction collapsed on Sunday under the weight of hundreds of visitors, killing more than 130 people.
Harsh Sanghavi, the state’s home minister, told reporters that an inquiry under criminal provisions relating to manslaughter was opened into a local company. The bridge, which was built in the late 19th century, reopened to the public last week after months for repairs.
Mr. Sanghavi didn’t name the company. Several Indian news outlets reported that a local industrial company known as Oreva was in charge of the bridge’s maintenance and repairs.
Ashok Yadav, a senior official with the Gujarat state police, told reporters late Monday that nine people had been arrested in connection with the probe into the bridge’s collapse. The arrested people included two managers of the Oreva company, two ticket clerks at the bridge that collapsed, two bridge-repair contractors and three security guards tasked with regulating the entry of people on the bridge, according to Mr. Yadav.
Calls to Oreva weren’t answered on Monday and it didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.
Mr. Yadav said police could make more arrests as the inquiry continues.
“Our effort is to set a strong example through this whole process,” he said.
Rescue operations continued into Monday, with 170 people pulled from the waters of the Machchhu river that the bridge spanned, the state disaster management agency said.
Videos shared by television channels and on social media showed people in the water clinging to portions of the collapsed bridge and trying to climb out.
The death toll could continue to rise after a suspension bridge collapsed in the western Indian state of Gujarat, killing more than 130 people. The popular tourist attraction was crowded as hundreds of people visited the area to celebrate holidays including Diwali. Photo: AP Photo/Ajit Solanki
Tushar Daftary, a local member of Lions Clubs International community service group, who was among those helping with rescue operations last night, said many people were visiting family in the area due public holidays in the past week, including Diwali and Gujarati new year. That meant more people than usual visited the bridge over the weekend, according to Mr. Daftary.
A local news report said some visitors expressed concerns to ticket agents that some people were shaking the overcrowded bridge.
Videos posted on social media platform Twitter showed the bridge—which sways when people walk on it—thronged with visitors, some of whom appeared to be vigorously shaking its suspension cables. Users of
Meta Platforms Inc.’s
Facebook in India and outside the country, however, were unable to view posts with the Gujarat hashtag for several hours on Monday.
“Keeping our community safe,” a message said, when users clicked through to a page that would normally display a stream of videos, photos and news reports related to the state or the bridge collapse. It added that the posts were temporarily hidden as “some content in those posts goes against our Community Standards.”
“The hashtag was blocked in error,” a Meta spokeswoman said Tuesday, adding that it has since been restored.
She declined to say what material may have violated the platform’s standards, which don’t allow violent and graphic content, hate speech, and other types of material. India is Facebook’s largest market by users. Meanwhile, videos of Halloween revelers being crushed in South Korea over the weekend remained visible throughout Monday via a hashtag for the world Seoul.
After The Wall Street Journal sought comment from Facebook Monday, posts with the Gujarat hashtag became visible again, with the top post a video from an Indian TV network showing the moment the bridge collapsed.
The state has said it would award the equivalent of nearly $4,900 to families of those who died in the disaster, as well as give compensation to the injured. Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi,
who governed the state for more than a decade as he cemented his political rise, also unveiled compensation for victims and expressed his sorrow.
The tragedy cast a shadow over Mr. Modi’s three-day visit to the state that started Sunday, which is intended to showcase development projects ahead of elections there that are due later this year. The prime minister has been leading a renewed push to draw more factories to India and to create more jobs. In the hours before the bridge collapse, Mr. Modi presided over the start of construction on an aircraft manufacturing facility in the state in partnership with Europe’s Airbus SE, hailing it as a step forward for the country’s goal of becoming a global manufacturing hub.
But India’s efforts to attract more manufacturing and create more jobs have often faced challenges from concerns over the country’s dilapidated infrastructure and safety lapses, a worry that is likely to be made worse by Sunday’s disaster.
—Newley Purnell contributed to this article.
Write to Krishna Pokharel at krishna.pokharel@wsj.com and Tripti Lahiri at tripti.lahiri@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications Harsh Sanghavi is the home minister for India’s Gujarat state. An earlier version of this article misspelled his surname as Sanghvi on second reference. (Corrected on Nov. 1)
I was unreasonably excited to play the follow-up to PC Building Simulator. The original game taught me the finer points of building a PC and married the technical aspects with all the logistical drudgery of running your own business. Unfortunately, PC Building Simulator 2 doubles down on some of the more bothersome aspects while only adding a small handful of shallow features.
a:hover]:text-black [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black text-gray-63″>Image: Alice Newcome-Beill
As with many simulator games, PCBS2 is about appreciating the mundane. Ordinary people don’t obsess over the differences between an NVMe SSD or a 2.5-inch hard drive or fine-tuning the voltage on a GPU, but these are the details that PC-building enthusiasts crave.
Like the original game, PCBS2 has you taking charge of a run-down computer repair shop. You start with a small sum of money and a handful of jobs delivered via email. If you haven’t played the original game, PCBS2 might seem a bit surreal, as you need to walk your character over to an in-game computer to access your email and other applications. Thankfully a helpful tutorial walks you through the process step-by-step.
Each tutorial explains the finer points of running your business by slowly doling out more complicated jobs as you gain more experience. The tutorial will walk you through what to do whenever you encounter a specific job for the first time. Unfortunately, there’s no way to easily revisit these tutorials if you’ve forgotten how to do something.
a:hover]:text-black [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black text-gray-63″>Image: Alice Newcome-Beill
The jobs you take on range from cleaning the dust out of old PCs to overclocking CPUs or building desktops from scratch while keeping within your client’s budget. Eventually, just like the original game, the jobs soon become a practice in reading comprehension. Buried in each email, you’ll find optional requests that, when satisfied, net you access to higher-tier jobs. It’s just unfortunate that there isn’t more variety in the objectives, which are very similar to what we saw in the original PCBS. Some additional objectives are attached to customizing a client’s PCs with different decals and paint jobs or utilizing new components, but PCBS2 doesn’t add too many new wrinkles to the jobs seen in the original.
Customization is perhaps the biggest addition to PCBS2, letting you transform any desktop into an aesthetically offensive gaming icon. You can apply layered combinations of vinyl skins, individual stickers, and spray paint to any PC. The customization tools are clumsy, and while you’ll unlock new vinyl wraps and decals as you level up, there’s currently no way to use any custom assets, which is disappointing.
The customization features also extend to your workshop. The original game allowed you to personalize your office space, but you can get more granular this time, with the ability to swap out desk designs, decor, walls, and floors. There aren’t many personalization options, but this feature is a nice touch. While you can’t gut renovate your office, you have far more flexibility with your workspace this time around, functionally and aesthetically.
Once you’ve set up your workspace, you naturally have to build some PCs. Thankfully, PCBS2 ships with an impressive list of contemporary PC components ranging from GPUs to water cooling blocks and cases. Most of the components are from popular manufacturers and are virtually identical to the real-world counterparts made by NZXT, MSI, and Cooler Master. In the past, PCBS has done an excellent job keeping parts lists up to date with free updates, which isn’t a simple task, considering we’ve seen a host of new hardware from Nvidia and AMD, not to mention Intel’s new ARC graphics cards.
One of the other standout features that changes how you interact with hardware is the introduction of fitting custom water-cooling blocks to your motherboard, RAM or GPU. Getting into some of the more technical aspects is the right move for PCBS2, and de-lidding CPUs is a feature that’s apparently on the roadmap.
It’s clear that the developers are taking steps to streamline the overall experience of PCBS2. Some of the quality-of-life features instituted with the original game make a welcome return, namely the tablet system, which lets you access most of the functions that originally required you to run back to your office PC. Some other clever additions include linking purchased parts with your in-progress jobs, which comes in handy when juggling several open projects. Some new features specific to PCBS2 include a thermal imaging app that allows you to troubleshoot particular components and an in-game RAM voltage calculator for overclocking memory.
a:hover]:text-black [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black text-gray-63″>Image: Alice Newcome-Beill
However, considering how much time you spend in menus with PCBS2, they should be more intuitive. It’s a little confusing because many of the in-game apps you use mirror their real-world counterparts but lack any of the usability features you’d expect. Imagine navigating your desktop without the ability to resize windows or use any of the shortcuts you’re accustomed to; that’s what it feels like in PCBS2.
None of this is helped by the fact that PCBS2 is remarkably buggy. On several occasions, I encountered jobs that I couldn’t complete. Graphical glitches are less common, but I did run into instances of levitating hardware or components clipping through objects. The most irritating, however, was a bug that made it impossible to interact with the game’s on-screen GUI. A good portion of your jobs require installing apps or modifying the BIOS on a given machine, which is impossible if you can’t interact with the screen.
Even with its myriad of bugs, PCBS2 shares the same addictive qualities as its predecessor that had me saying, “just one more job”. However, there currently isn’t enough content to keep me coming back. There is a rudimentary achievement system in place, but there isn’t enough of a metagame to keep you invested for very long. The original game had a modest endgame goal of cultivating enough capital to secure ownership of your shop. Right now, there isn’t much to keep you playing over the long term other than leveling up to unlock new parts by completing progressively more complicated jobs.
Right now, the game doesn’t add enough or do things differently enough to warrant a “2” However, given how much the original PCBS has changed since its launch, I’m excited to see where PCBS will be in a year or so. But now, PCBS2 seems more interested in testing the waters with a handful of shallow features rather than diving headfirst into a single one.
PCBS2 didn’t get its hooks in me the same way as the original, but despite its bugs and overall lack of content, I can’t overlook the game’s potential as an excellent educational tool. Before playing the original PCBS, I’d never built a computer. But playing over time gave me the confidence to build several real-world desktops. And while I’m not going to be water-cooling my GPU or motherboard any time soon, PCBS2 has certainly piqued my curiosity.
PC Building Simulator 2 launched on October 12th on PC through the Epic Games Store.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — High mortgage rates and recession fears are hurting home prices, so expect growth to be flat this year, one expert says.
“Our forecast is for home-price growth moderation to continue,” Joel Kan, vice president and deputy chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said Sunday during the organization’s annual conference in Nashville, Tenn.
Home prices have already begun moderating. According to Case-Shiller, home prices fell month-over-month from June to July for the first time in 20 years. The latest numbers, which will be for August, will be reported on Tuesday morning.
With a recession likely in the cards, on top of mortgage rates near or above 7%, “we’ve already seen a pretty dramatic pullback in housing demand,” Kan said.
Also see: Mortgage industry group predicts recession next year, expects mortgage rates to come back down from 7%
The 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.94% last week as compared to 3.85% a year ago. The MBA is also expecting rates to come down to 5.4% by the end of next year.
So expect national home-price growth to “flatten out” in 2023 and 2024, he said. This might be a “silver lining” for some, Kan added, as it brings home prices back to more “reasonable levels.”
A flattening of home-price growth should allow households to catch up, in terms of wages and savings, to afford homes that are presently too expensive.
But he also warned that some markets may actually see home prices drop. We’re already seeing home values fall in some markets, from pandemic boomtowns like Austin and Phoenix to well-known expensive ones the San Francisco Bay Area.
Still, even with price drops, don’t expect a surge of inventory as people sit on their ultra-low mortgage rates that they will likely not enjoy again in the near future.
According to June data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, nearly a quarter of homeowners have mortgage rates of less than or equal to 3%. And the vast majority of owners — 93% — have rates less than 6%.
On top of that, supply is likely to be tight too.
Sellers are said to be “striking” and not selling their homes as they see others forced to cut list prices to woo buyers. Builders are also getting spooked, signaling intent to slow new construction.
Nonetheless, demand for housing should recover eventually, given that there are a lot of people who will soon be in need of a home that they own.
MBA’s Kan estimated that there are 50 million people in the 28-to-38 age demographic, of which some — or many — are likely to become potential homeowners in the future.
For those under 35, the homeownership rate is only 39%, Kan said, while that share increases for people aged 35 to 44, to 61%.
So as people age, “we’re fairly confident if we stick to these trends, you will see a very supportive demographic driver of housing demand for a good number of years,” Kan said.
Got thoughts on the housing market? Write to MarketWatch reporter Aarthi Swaminathan at aarthi@marketwatch.com
Here’s a chart that speaks a thousand words about the state of the real-estate market right now.
The chart above, part of a new report by real-estate brokerage Redfin
RDFN,
-7.03%
on the property market, reveals how home sellers are adjusting to the new normal of 7% mortgage rates.
The chart says that 7.9% of homes for sale on the market each week had their prices slashed — and that’s a record high.
That’s compared to just 4% of homes having their prices reduced each week over the same period a year ago.
Redfin’s data goes back to 2015. The company averaged out the share of listings which saw a price cut over four weeks, to smoothen out any outliers.
Taylor Marr, deputy chief economist at Redfin, added that looking over a bigger time period, i.e. a month, the company’s data shows that a quarter of homes right now are dropping prices.
“We have never been this high,” Marr told MarketWatch in an interview.
Unlike buyers, who are much more sensitive to rising mortgage rates, “sellers are just slow to react to the changes in demand… they set prices based on where they think the market is [and] are often reluctant to set their prices too low,” Marr said.
So for sellers, prices are a little stickier, he added, and slower to come down.
But even if it took a while, it’s finally happening.
After all, mortgage rates are at multi-decade highs, with the 30-year trending steadily above 7% as of Friday afternoon, according to Mortgage News Daily. And that’s likely to go up even more, as the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
4.023%,
is trending above 4%.
Meanwhile, Redfin said that the median home on the market was listed at over $367,000, up 7% over last year.
The monthly mortgage for that home at the current interest rate of 6.92%, according to Freddie Mac, is $2,559.
A year ago, when rates were at 3.05%, that monthly payment would’ve been just $1,698.
Two tips for home buyers struggling with high mortgage rates
Sellers are dropping their prices by 4 to 5% on average, Marr said.
“You would almost expect it to be a lot worse,” he added, given how quickly rates rose and eroded buying power.
But buyers and sellers are also using two different tactics to get some relief on mortgage rates, Marr said.
One, sellers are reaching out to buyers and offering concessions to buy mortgage rates down.
In other words, sellers are asking buyers to pay the full asking price, but proposing to use part of that as a concession to get buyers a lower interest rate on their mortgage.
“Which is essentially a price drop,” Marr said, “it’s the same thing … but it doesn’t necessarily show up in the data.” And it’s hard to get a sense of the magnitude of how this is playing out, he added.
How it works is as such, Marr explained: If a buyer is putting down $100,000 for a 20% downpayment on their home at a 6.5% interest rate, they can instead allocate 10% for the downpayment, and spend the rest of the $50,000 buying down the mortgage rate to 5%.
“5% isn’t very bad, and it might seem like a lot of money, but … chances are you’re going to be incentivized to refinance [in the future] and you’ll have to pay the closing cost on that loan to refinance, which could be upwards of 15 grand,” Marr added.
Buyers are also switching to adjustable-rate mortgages, which offer lower interest rates at the start of the term. ARMs are nearly 12% of overall mortgage applications, the Mortgage Bankers Association noted on Wednesday, which is high.
Where prices are falling
As to where prices are falling, a couple of places stood out to Redfin.
They said that home prices fell 3% year-over-year in Oakland, Calif., and 2% in San Francisco. New Orleans also saw a 2% drop.
“Even in Atlanta, or Orlando, we’re seeing buyers backing out,” Marr observed.
So with the backdrop of sellers finally dropping listing prices, if you’re a buyer right now, don’t be spooked by rising rates and stop looking, he advised.
“There have been opportunities when rates really came down and gave buyers the moment to jump back in and get some good deals on homes that did drop their prices,” he said.
Plus, “it doesn’t hurt to make a low ball offer,” Marr added. “Some sellers are desperate, and that can be a good strategy … we’ve heard from some of our own agents that some buyers are getting incredible deals right now.”
But if you need to rent for a year and wait for things to calm down, then do that, Marr said, and bulk up those savings for that dream home.
Got thoughts on the housing market? Write to MarketWatch reporter Aarthi Swaminathan at aarthi@marketwatch.com
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