I coined the term “Era of Less” about five years ago to describe the period the U.S. would be facing economically coming out of the Great Recession and beyond. The dynamics of paying down massive debt, technology undermining formerly well-paying domestic jobs and amplifying global jobs arbitrage, and the costs related to ageing demographics, it appeared, would combine to slow growth in the overall standard of living and hamper the next generation. Well what do you think now?

Relative to the rest of the world, the U.S economy has been doing well—we have had decent jobs growth, even recent wage gains, and the benefits of new found energy sources. But that compares to sickly Europe, reeling China, moribund Japan, and Brazil in freefall. Economic advances here have been underwhelming at best compared to past recoveries and now jittery talk warns that another downturn approaches as the rest of the world drags us under. The Presidential campaign rhetoric, meanwhile, stokes fears across the political spectrum of a compromised future—immigrants taking jobs, income inequality, and various ambiguous terrorist threats.

For institutional real estate investors, the past four years have brought more not less—NCREIF Index returns have been outsized, but propelled more by large and very concentrated capital flows seeking yield in higher-grade properties, located mostly in the major 24-hour urban centers. Not surprisingly, these are the places where wealth and commerce are concentrated and where most of the people who are generating high incomes are living and working. They are the places of more.

Secondary markets and especially tertiary places as well as many commodity suburbs have languished by comparison, and pension funds and foreign investors are generally steering clear. Increasingly these are the places of less—high vacancies and slower recovery—unless they can link their fortunes into the primary 24-hour cities.

As a result, more capital chases after the people with more, leaving behind the people with less. Core returns have been skewed by cap rate compression—apartments have flourished and showed major rent gains now at record levels, but office and retail rely more on appreciation than income growth. Development is concentrated in high-end residential, threatening to overbuild some markets when more middle income and affordable housing are really what is needed. The vast majority of renters—low and middle income Americans—are getting squeezed in the process. Even Wal-Mart repositions—it closes its Express Stores in out-of-the-way and less-profitable precincts, leaving many “less” communities without basic retail.

The low interest rate environment has papered over the reality that many Americans have not recovered from their pre-recession debt binge. Consumers are not spending with their past wild abandon, because more of them realize that they can't spend what they don't have without getting into trouble. In the pre-recession period, easy credit led them into a fantasy that they had more with which to splurge, now more realize they have less just to get by. Rising housing costs, student debt, insurance and drug costs eat into wallets… And have you grocery shopped lately? Any savings at the gas pumps are getting offset on the supermarket aisles.

If you live and work in the places with more you can be lulled into complacency about the regions and people with less…

Instant Insights /

Revisiting the Era of Less

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