Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stenovic on Bloomberg Radio. Hey Katie and
Speaker 1: if you saw this, a story caught our attention. Um,
Speaker 1: it's about Greenwich home listings plunging to a record low
Speaker 1: in the fourth quarter. So we've seen kind of a
Speaker 1: buying frenzy in Greenwich, but apparently it's slowing down big time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to finally see some of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to wonder, um, if it comes back to
Speaker 1: supply because I mean that has been a theme in
Speaker 1: the housing market that demands there there's just not enough
Speaker 1: houses to tell. Well, let's see what our next guest
Speaker 1: has to say whether her she's running out of supply.
Speaker 1: She has been involved in selling homes for three decades
Speaker 1: and apparently spent some time in a flight with our
Speaker 1: co host Tim Stenovic and his one year old son
Speaker 1: at the time. I believe it was a red Eye
Speaker 1: and Tim says she was a gem. Uh, I made
Speaker 1: the flight so much easier. Let's bring in Louise Phillips
Speaker 1: Forbes real estate broker at Brown Steven's excuse me, Brown,
Speaker 1: Harris Stevens. She has achieved than four and a half
Speaker 1: billion in sales over her career and closing as many
Speaker 1: as two hundred deals in a single year. She judge
Speaker 1: us on the phone in New York City, H Louise,
Speaker 1: so nice to have you here with Katie and myself.
Speaker 1: And Tim does send his regards and was very sorry
Speaker 1: that he couldn't be here. Well, it is all good.
Speaker 1: I am grateful to have a little girl gang today. Him.
Speaker 1: Deal deal deal. Hey, listen, you have seen a lot
Speaker 1: of real estate cycles highs lows. How would you describe
Speaker 1: the cycle that we are in right now? What are
Speaker 1: you seeing specifically from your client base? And and do
Speaker 1: you have enough inventory? Absolutely not in you know, in
Speaker 1: the middle of the pandemic. Uh, nobody ever thought that
Speaker 1: we would be saying that, whether it's a rental townhouse
Speaker 1: or development project. Um, and I will say that it is.
Speaker 1: It is, you know, exciting to sort of watch this
Speaker 1: fast moving market because of lack of inventory. And at
Speaker 1: what point does this turn into almost a buyer's strike
Speaker 1: that Okay, there's not an an inventory. You're seeing prices
Speaker 1: skyrocket one. Does demand simply cooled down because prices on
Speaker 1: these homes are too high? Well, even you made an
Speaker 1: observation earlier and you're you know, talking about the prices
Speaker 1: plummeting and primage and you know, honestly, I think that
Speaker 1: is a very UM, I would be careful to to
Speaker 1: to be reporting. The numbers are the numbers. But also
Speaker 1: you have to remember sometimes you get things picked over
Speaker 1: and the cream of the you know, the best of
Speaker 1: the best is selected. And when you have something that's
Speaker 1: been dormant or not on the market, you bring it
Speaker 1: on and you try to capture your next door neighbor's price,
Speaker 1: which is a very different asset. Well, it's interesting, all right,
Speaker 1: So talk to us about you said you don't have
Speaker 1: enough inventory. Um, it's kind of exciting to watch this
Speaker 1: fast moving market. Um. Because of that, So who's buying?
Speaker 1: What's the movement we're seeing? What kind of properties are
Speaker 1: you seeing being bought? So tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about it. Well, I think, what's of the thing that
Speaker 1: is so exciting? And again, in three decades, I've had
Speaker 1: my seatbelt fastened. After September eleventh, after the financial crisis,
Speaker 1: a global health crisis is a very different recovery, and
Speaker 1: nobody knows psychologically or financially what that's going to look like.
Speaker 1: So my experience is that we are witnessing across almost
Speaker 1: every sector, whether it's a fifty seven million dollar deal
Speaker 1: at Central Park South, two of first time buyers purchasing
Speaker 1: and can afford to actually own cheaper than what it
Speaker 1: costs for them to rent. Is it spectacular thing to
Speaker 1: experience the buyers who are go ahead, no, you go
Speaker 1: ahead please? Well, I was just going to say that.
Speaker 1: I think it's also in the last six months, I
Speaker 1: have watched the toes poking with our foreign buyers, and
Speaker 1: I think they're going to be seizing our development opportunities
Speaker 1: that have been lagging, the projects that had the last
Speaker 1: ten or of their projects. They're going to be absorbing those,
Speaker 1: and uh, I think that's something that we're I'm already
Speaker 1: experiencing that doom deals from South Korea, Mexico, London, people
Speaker 1: coming back to the market. And I want to wrap
Speaker 1: in mortgage rates to this conversation, you know about home buying,
Speaker 1: because you are seeing mortgage rates really start to move.
Speaker 1: Just in the past couple of weeks. I think a
Speaker 1: thirty year loan the average rate is now just about
Speaker 1: three point six per cent or somewhere under it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, people see mortgage rates going higher and they
Speaker 1: get a little bit nervous. Uh. Carol already knows that
Speaker 1: I am certainly not looking for a home right now.
Speaker 1: I would like to one day. I mean, for you know,
Speaker 1: potential first time home buyers looking at these rates, I mean,
Speaker 1: do they should they lock in a mortgage now? Are
Speaker 1: rates only going higher? I think that would be fair
Speaker 1: to say. I mean, I came into the business thirty
Speaker 1: two years ago in interest rates with twelve point four percent,
Speaker 1: So for me to sorrow a hundred thousand dollars, it
Speaker 1: was about twelve hundred dollars a month, and today you
Speaker 1: can get for less than four hundred dollars a month
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollar mortgage. So I think that the
Speaker 1: buying power is one of the things that you know,
Speaker 1: when you have a crisis, which we've been in. Our
Speaker 1: government has like utilized the interest rates to fuel our
Speaker 1: economy and it has done so. It's got people off
Speaker 1: who saved all this money during the pandemics. God knows,
Speaker 1: we didn't go anywhere, and we saw the refinance and
Speaker 1: the origination of the mortgage is to be one point
Speaker 1: six one trillion, and we're projecting more than that for two.
Speaker 1: But we'll see its interest rates will become those climbing
Speaker 1: if that's going to scare people off or create a
Speaker 1: sense of urgency. So as a it sounds like to
Speaker 1: blue New York, or at least you've been here for
Speaker 1: a long time, you know, in terms of the cries
Speaker 1: of okay, the big urban areas, nobody wants to live
Speaker 1: there anymore because of work from home. I talked with
Speaker 1: Chuck Robbins of Cisco. They've been hybrid pre pandemic, and
Speaker 1: you know that was he says one of the things
Speaker 1: pandemic that one of the great advantages is that you
Speaker 1: can work anywhere and you can hire employees who want
Speaker 1: to live anywhere. Um, what of the pandemic that was
Speaker 1: changing the housing market in a city like New York. Well,
Speaker 1: for for true blue New York is like myself. Those
Speaker 1: people who you know bought my house in Woodstock or
Speaker 1: tried to buy my health in mom Talk or the
Speaker 1: Hampton's in Bridge, Hamptons. You know a lot of people
Speaker 1: fled and they're like, holy moly, it's winter and what
Speaker 1: am I doing here? Nobody's here, or they really are
Speaker 1: missing the pulse of the city, and I do believe
Speaker 1: that we have been experiencing and you can see from
Speaker 1: the surge of the transactions last spring, we couldn't even
Speaker 1: process the deals fast enough me it was and those
Speaker 1: were people that were previous owners in New York or
Speaker 1: people who've been renting saved enough money and their first
Speaker 1: time buyers um the the So so I believe that
Speaker 1: we are going to And again, if we talk about
Speaker 1: work from home, I mean I'm married to a serial entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: and yes, there are a lot of people that can
Speaker 1: utilize hiring in New York, local tech firms that can
Speaker 1: hire people in other areas. Luis like Karen I were
Speaker 1: talking about commercial real estate really interesting time with this pandemic.
Speaker 1: What's the future there because you know, as we were saying,
Speaker 1: a lot of behaviors have changed when it comes to
Speaker 1: where people are working, where people are shopping. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert at commercial but what I am
Speaker 1: an expert is at people. And commercial deals are going
Speaker 1: to bring people um continuously. And if you look at
Speaker 1: venture capital money that we all invested in local tech
Speaker 1: firms in New York, including my husband's company. You know
Speaker 1: last spring they closed over twelve billion of local tech
Speaker 1: venture capital money that is going to bring people. And
Speaker 1: you look at companies like Noon, I mean, I've never
Speaker 1: heard of Noon. Three years ago, they took a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen thousand square feet from Brookfield. Take a look
Speaker 1: at the top Big four Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, they
Speaker 1: gobbled up three million square people, three million square feet.
Speaker 1: And what that brings is people. And we're projecting. Listen,
Speaker 1: during the heart of darkness, I saw probably every appointment
Speaker 1: downtown in the East Village with somebody relocating from l
Speaker 1: A or San Francisco, um from tech firms to New
Speaker 1: York and they want a piece of the Apple. Well
Speaker 1: at the same time, Louise, what we are also seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just Dilon Musk who's moving to
Speaker 1: us in or who's moving to other places in Texas,
Speaker 1: or financial firms moving to Florida. We are seeing, you know,
Speaker 1: for a society in America that hasn't moved around a
Speaker 1: lot in the last few decades, they've kind of stayed put.
Speaker 1: We are starting to see more movement. What are you
Speaker 1: seeing along those lines when it comes to your market,
Speaker 1: your residential clients. I mean, listen, that we have been
Speaker 1: hearing about up everybody's moving to you know, it's going
Speaker 1: to be like many Miami is going to be a
Speaker 1: little New York because people are wanting to benefit from
Speaker 1: lower taxes. And I think that's going to absolutely that
Speaker 1: is going to be normal sort of uh transitions that
Speaker 1: we're going to experience. But listen, I think tech is
Speaker 1: ten point five percent of our GDP across the nation,
Speaker 1: and it's going to continue to affect and drive other cities,
Speaker 1: whether it's Portland, Oregon, Austin, Texas, Nashville, Tennessee. I mean
Speaker 1: it's had over twelve percent growth year over year. I'm
Speaker 1: from Nashville. I don't even recognize it. And I think
Speaker 1: that there's enough for all of us to continue experiencing
Speaker 1: this wave. And people are gonna look for a lifestyle.
Speaker 1: It's just gonna be what's an opportunity for one, and
Speaker 1: what's right for one might not be right for another individual.
Speaker 1: But companies are going to be looking for opportunities. You know,
Speaker 1: we could look at Amazon as a case study that
Speaker 1: we didn't get that big deal that they were trying
Speaker 1: to put together, but they still bought a big asset
Speaker 1: um in the building and they are they are bringing
Speaker 1: thousands of employees here, and Luise, We've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about buyers, but I want to talk about the other
Speaker 1: side of the deal, the sellers. I'm curious, have you
Speaker 1: seen people you know, choose to sell their their house,
Speaker 1: their property now just because the market is so hot?
Speaker 1: And I mean, we've been talking about the fact that
Speaker 1: there isn't a ton of supply of houses right now
Speaker 1: for for a while. Now, I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's really become a part of common conversation, even
Speaker 1: outside of Bloomberg h Q. So I'm I'm just wondering
Speaker 1: if that's motivated brought some sellers off the sidelines. I
Speaker 1: think about my experience and what I'm witnessing and the
Speaker 1: conversations that I've been having since the peak of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: when people were not sure should I say or should
Speaker 1: I go? Um that we are now clearly have a
Speaker 1: lack of inventory, and that they are owners that we
Speaker 1: are hoping. I'm hoping that I have them now ready
Speaker 1: emotionally financially to seize the moment because it is their market.
Speaker 1: You know, they can call the shocks a little better.
Speaker 1: They still have to be priced properly. Because the market
Speaker 1: is still incredibly efficient and those houses in Grinage might
Speaker 1: not be selling because actually they're just not worth it. Okay,
Speaker 1: hey listen, great to check in with you. Louise Phillips,
Speaker 1: Ford's real estate broker at Brown Harris Stevens joining us
Speaker 1: on the phone in New York City. Uh. Fascinating to
Speaker 1: hear that it's a pretty dynamic market and we know
Speaker 1: that they're still building going on. Oh yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems like houses they take a
Speaker 1: while to build. Uh, when at what point does we
Speaker 1: we do see this supply Kurne get alleviated. Have to
Speaker 1: think it's a couple of years. Yeah, exactly,