Blog Archives

Single-Family Housing: No Bubble But There Is A “But”

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housing

It has been our belief at CWS that housing in totality has been undersupplied. This does not mean that apartments may not be over-supplied in certain metro areas, particularly in the urban core. This is the case because these properties are often very dense and result in the delivery of a lot of units at one time that can often result in rent discounts to entice people to rent at these communities so developers can expedite getting out of their construction loans and/or be in a position to sell their properties.

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Life and Death Location Decisions – Innovative Technology Sectors

Last Updated by by Posted in Apartments, Books, Economy, Investing, News, Wealth 1 Comment ↓

Decisions high tech

When we started to scale our apartment business in the mid to late 1990s our location decisions were based on investing in cities that would be highly appealing to knowledge-based workers. It was starting to become clear that economic growth would be driven by technological innovation deployed widely throughout U.S.

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Growth and Stability – Apartments Will Never Be Obsolete!

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CWS Apartment Communities - Growth

Last week we held our annual investor meeting and we had a record attendance of nearly 600 people (including employees). I told the audience that if we can grow our attendance by 7% every year that by the time we have our 100th annual meeting (this was year 49) then we should have over 11,000 in attendance.

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Long-Term Thinking & Timeless Principles for Successful Investing

Last Updated by by Posted in Advice, Apartments, Housing, Interest Rates, Investing 1 Comment ↓

We are coming up on our 2018 Annual Investor Meeting. This week’s blog is a look back at my 2017 speech focusing on the principles that have served CWS well over the years. You can enjoy the video and or read the highlights below. Here’s a modified transcript of my keynote:

Each year we do an annual report and this year the cover is timeless principles the artwork shows some of the parables that cover these timeless principles of long-term thinking.

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Doing the Math – With the Tax Overhaul What’s Best Rent or Own?

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rent or buy

With the tax overhaul now being law, I wanted to do a granular analysis of what the changes mean for those who own and those who rent in a high tax, high-cost state (California) and one residing in a low cost, low tax state (Texas).  

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How Could The New Tax Laws Impact Housing?

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Tax Housing

I typically wouldn’t discuss Tax Reform until it has passed since it would usually be speculative, I am making an exception given that many of the parameters are known and because of its potential impact on housing. The basis of the plan was to cut the corporate tax rate first and then work around the constraints that Senate rules and supposed deficit hawks impose on the process.

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Insurance and Questionable Models Managing Risk

Last Updated by by Posted in Apartments, Economy, Housing, News, Trends, Uncategorized, Wealth 1 Comment ↓

“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

― Flannery O’Connor

This blog post is pretty much just for me as insurance is not a very exciting topic but has great importance to all property owners,

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The Separation Is In The Preparation For CWS

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Preparation

It was quite a week of action for CWS, particularly for our risk management, safety, construction, operations, asset management, human resources, marketing, and maintenance teams. We have been having very early calls (at least for me on the west coast) every morning, including over the Labor Day weekend,

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Houston – We Have A Problem!

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Harvey-Hurricane-Harvey

With the extraordinary events that took place in Houston, southeast Texas, and Louisiana as a result of Hurricane Harvey I felt that it was much more relevant to discuss this catastrophe versus part two of demographics and interest rates emphasizing Japan.

Houston: Hurricane Harvey

An estimated 27 trillion gallons of water has blanketed southeast Texas and parts of Louisiana.

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It’s Got to Get Better in a Little While…Or Does it?

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better

Jamie Dimon and Ray Dalio have both come out and said that despite America being such a strong country and performing well economically, not all is right when looking under the hood.

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