People need to chill out about SDCs. The iPhone is nearly 10 years old and it still can't reliably make a phone call in Santa Monica.

If SDCs become a thing, companies like Goodyear will benefit the most. Electric cars, especially Tesla's burn through tires like nobody's business.

We already see what good public transportation network (which SDCs/shared pods basically is) does to urban sprawl too. You still have centralized downtown locations and they actually get bigger.

See Tokyo, Paris, and LA for places where it has already happened. It's rapidly happening around Shanghai and Hong Kong too (once you include the surrending Shenzhen area).

Meanwhile back in the real world, mall REITs getting whacked again today after Macy's warns of more store closing.

I think they shipped a bunch of cars with bad alignment. That combined with the weight of the car and soft high performance tires caused premature tire wear.

All the big banks are in multi-billion dollar facilities for lol REITS that own garbage B and C malls. Not much benefit to having underwriting "discipline" at 60% LTV when the value is zero.

Shareholders get screwed first because the dividend will get stopped. The lenders will the sweep all cash to pay down debt.

It has yet to be proven they will cut gridlock, lots of people who take the bus might end up hailing self-driving cars if the uber/taxi version becomes cheap and convenient enough, which could result in even more cars clogging the street at the cost of public transportation, and most people who can afford their own car are still going to drive themselves. There are still a lot of question marks.

If you look at global consumption, the US is just remarkably outsized on discretionary spending, even comparing similar wealth countries. This indicates to me a situation that isn't sustainable. And indeed, credit card debt and student debt is climbing higher and higher, outpacing wages more and more:





What happens to shopping centers when this reaches its natural limits and either pops like 2008 and long term consumption declines? Shopping centers fall apart rapidly.

I have no idea on timing. But it seems a near certainty to happen. The US shopping landscape is set up for a consumer model that has an unnatural, unsustainable level of spending. It's going to be brutal out there.

Here's the craziness, in graphic form:



You can see how the US is amazingly outsized. Some of that is funded by unsustainable credit levels and growth. Germany, for example, has next to no credit card debt.

What happens to the these 20+ year investments, their revenue, their loans, their assumptions, the entire underpinning of their business, if US discretionary spending goes to sustainable levels?

One thing I would add about innovations in transport like SDC not really hurting metropolitan housing prices is that if people are spending less on transport in general (i.e 9k for car ownership vs 3k for ride-sharing) then a lot of that savings is going to flow into housing costs.

Unless you can hop in a rocket George Jetson style and be downtown in 5 mins then there should always be a pretty good demand for living close to and in major cities. If the innovations in transport are excellent then the rate of growth in housing prices could possibly be a bit slower. Maybe just going up at the rate of inflation rather than 2x it.

on the topic of the housing market in toronto and surrounding area. even places north of toronto, the only direction you can build, are going up in value.

i live about 1 hour north of T, the homes here are lakefront like mine or smallish cottages near the lake. in the past 5 years id say like 20% of the cottages have been replaced by giant new homes. the prices/demand have gone up a lot.

an older guy on my street just sold his home to an indian guy just driving around my town looking at houses. he had a 2nd home for sale too down the road, the indian guy bought it sight unseen. **** was listed for only a couple days like lol.

a lot of asian money coming in i guess they want investments? i heard he wants to rent them out.

i live in vancouver... so many teardowns of old houses - especially near where i live - and so many condo's going up all over the place. probably 15 sites i can think of within a couple of miles of me here in the suburbs.


what's crazy about toronto i think is how much it's gone up in such a short time. vancouver is more like 10% price increase for the last 25 years. but toronto is explosive in a short period of time... it is very suspicious that it seemed to heat up right when BC instituted its foreigner buying real estate tax.

Why does an electric car burn through tires more quickly than a conventional car?

weight

Weight, faulty factory alignment, low profile/ultra high performance tires, around town driving with AWD.

I bought one of the first Volvo XC-90s sold and it ate through the soft OEM Pirelli tires in 8,000 miles. Heavy vehicle with soft tires plus driving around town (lots of turns) with AWD all were factors.

Way more torque. Punch a tesla and your stomach will drop.

Back on topic SPG getting down to 150. The KORS news ain't helping them.

I think there's some value down in the 120-130 range. We'll see.

How do you value play a REIT that trades based on dividend yield?

that's exactly my feeling, even down to the "denominate my savings in vacations" part.

I love driving. road trips, work commutes, any time I can have the windows down and the lil uzi vert up basically. but I'm 100% ready to pod share or whatever I have to do to be able to not have to pay attention, especially in the mornings.


I'm in.

just being able to space out playing pinball on my iPad for the ~45 minute total work commute every day is worth that for me I think. but then you start considering all of the other benefits (admittedly, all of which focus on freeing up that commuting time, naps, blowjobs, hell getting my weekend alcoholism started 25 minutes earlier on a friday), $10k more for a car I'll have 6-7 years seems like a steal.

Oh I don't. I just pulled that number outta my ass to be honest.

Earlier ITT I talked about how malls can be repurposed as places for affordable housing, but the current issue of Time magazine also notes how some could turn into community colleges that would be specifically designed as places where people could learn trades. Seems doable, I guess.

Affordable housing? Community colleges? You can repurpose any real estate with enough money but that doesn't make it a good financial decision.

Real estate is the most efficient market and most obsolete real estate eventually finds a new purpose. Some are too obsolete and are just torn down to make space for modern versions.

Office space, distribution and hotels have gone through this cycle and retail is next. Not really a big deal.