How Inflation Affects Commercial Real Estate

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How Inflation Affects Commercial Real Estate

Multifamily, retail, office, industrial. How do you see each one of these being affected in this high inflationary environment with low credit and hard financing?

eXp Commercial Economist KC Conway Offers Insight and Tips on How to Pivot During Strong Economic Headwinds

As the U.S. confronts inflation and, increasingly, signs of a recession, eXp Commercial called on economist and futurist KC Conway for his take on what’s ahead. With 2022 Q4 in the headlights, and instability forecasted for 2023 and beyond, Conway delivers a master class on current and coming market conditions. His advice serves as a blueprint for all real estate agents – commercial and residential – on signs to look for and steps to take to navigate strong economic headwinds. 

The following are key excerpts from this dynamic Q&A between eXp Commercial President James Huang and KC Conway: 

There’s No Sugar-Coating It: A Challenging Period Is Ahead

The Federal Reserve is in panic mode on inflation. The inflation metrics are all coming in hotter and indicators for inflation are double the expectation at 8.5%. It would be a lot worse if we hadn't tapped the strategic petroleum reserve to bring gas prices down. 

But inflation is not abating, mortgage rates have risen to 7%, throwing cold water on the residential real estate market. On the commercial side, banks are essentially being told by the Federal Reserve to quit lending. So you’re starting to see deals being canceled. 

“I think we face a very, very challenging fourth quarter ahead of 2023. We're going to have to dust off some skills that take us back to the 1980’s. How do you finance and get the market moving in a high inflationary market? 

“This is only about the fifth time since post-World War II that the global GDP is down to the 2% range. Each of those times have been very serious times not only for the global economy but for us here in the U.S. So the kind word to say is ‘it is not great.’ ”

Inflation Impacts Urban Retail Most, Multi-family Least

Residential real estate leads in a recession and commercial real estate follows because they are dependent. And right now “the rooftops” of residential real estate are telling us their problems. 

So commercial lags. We're just starting to see all of the commercial property price indices starting to turn downward. In fact, they essentially were about 0% in the latest month. Other takeaways:

• Urban areas that have not gone back to work at 50% post-pandemic are being hit harder. That’s the barometer for a better urban commercial retail market: Workers back to the office at over 50%. 
• The office is healthy in the suburbs. Smaller chunks of office space and adaptive re-use of a branch bank to an office building, for example. Smaller chunks of about 4,000 to 6,000 square feet where employees can come in, meet with a client, it’s in and out.
• Big pension funds are starting to sell their office assets. They've already lost 15 to 20%. They don't want to lose 40% so they're moving aggressively to try to sell. That will be interesting to see how that plays out. 

Suburban Commercial Markets Can Better Sustain Inflationary Forces

There is a term influence density. It’s where you have density of housing in the suburbs where the houses are actually occupied, and you have households that have good jobs. People can work and they’re doing pretty well. It’s in those pockets where you can do quite well in retail.

Supply Chain Rebuild Helps Defy Inflation in Certain Corridors

A shift is taking place from a West Coast-centric model to a supply chain that moved to Chicago and the East, and to a more North-South concentration. The Port of Savannah and other East Coast, Gulf Coast and South Atlantic ports are seeing great expansion of ships and goods. 

Long Beach and Los Angeles used to dominate but that’s not the case now. We’re seeing shippers use the Panama Canal and come into Savannah and Charleston. We’ve also seen New York overtake California ports as the busiest container port in North America.

Additionally, those container ships are leaving East Coast ports loaded with grains, agricultural goods, durable goods and manufactured goods. That mitigates shipping costs vs. 60% of ships leaving California ports empty. 

Highlights of Commercial Sectors That Can Do Well in 2023

• The efficiency of e-commerce facilities as big as 1 million square feet can close a 100 stores. That’s the metric that moves the needle as they build more of these. 
• Multifamily is going to stay strong. The reason being, it now costs over $300,000 a unit to build a new stick-built apartment. Three years ago, that was the median price of a single-family home in the United States.

Housing Shortage + Young Workforce = Need for Housing Innovation

The young workforce – the Millennial workforce, the Gen Z – cannot buy housing. They have student loan debt. They don't have the credit. They don't have the cash savings, and they can't afford a 7% mortgage. 

We're going to have to see some innovation on the mortgage side to bring them into housing. The supply will add maybe 450,000 to 470,000 new apartments this year, and that'll be a record since the 1980. 

But if you look at the top 50 markets, that's a thousand units that does not make a dent in the supply shortage. So rents are going to continue to rise 6-8% and 10-12%, especially in markets like Texas and Florida and other inland markets where the workforce is going.

The Home-Building Industry Is In a Full-Out Recession

“They are shut down. They can't sell the homes because of the mortgage rates. They can't build them at the cost and the price point that work. So housing is completely shutting down. Look at the big public builders, especially with a lot of speculation inventory. They're in a lot more trouble.”

Foreign Money Will Continue to Flow to the U.S. 

The United Arab Emirates, Israel, South Korea continue to look to the U.S. for cash, 401K and other asset investments. They are in a position to buy for cash deals that are falling out of escrow here. 

“What's happening is that with our stronger dollar and because we're raising interest rates … our 4% looks very attractive to other parts of the world paying 1% or less. So we're seeing more of that money go into U.S. dollar denomination, and that further drives the demand for U.S. assets with such a strong dollar.’’

The Fed Needs to Be Careful With Europe

Conway on Europe’s woes: Europe is going to be very, very challenged. They're looking. Where can they go to a safe haven? They're going to have a tough winter this year with the energy issues and companies having to idle plants. 

“The Fed has put the UK in the same position that we were in in 2008 and Lehman Brothers. They've locked up the capital market side, so we better be careful because Europe is a very important customer and ally for us. The Fed needs to take on a third mandate, which is do not destroy Europe.” 

There Will Be No Soft Landing 

There’s a lot of talk about a soft landing, about whether or not we’re already in a recession. There’s talk about two more quarters before some of these measures start to unwind inflation and housing costs. That’s not going to be the end of it. 

“I don't think a soft landing is in the cards, and anybody that keeps talking about it, I think they're being very disingenuous to be honest with you.’’

Steve Forbes in the 1970s invented a phrase called the “Misery Index.” He took unemployment and inflation and put them together and we got to a peak of about 13%. That formula has been modernized. They added the S&P 500 because now almost 60% of American households own stock in some capacity. 

“Right now, you end up with a Misery Index of 29 compared to 13 in the 1970’s.” 

What the Federal Reserve does in November and December, and depending on whether energy costs go back up after the November midterm elections, and what kind of increase there is in unemployment:

“I think there is more pain ahead. There will be no recovery in 2023. We can get a real shock in mid-2023 and see we’re now 6-8 quarters into negative GDP. We’ll see the damage we've done to the housing industry, which is 40% of our GDP. We’ll see the damage we’ve done to our retail industry and to the consumer.”

“Maybe at that point both political parties in this country will come together and say we’ve got to deal with this. Maybe they put things in place in early ‘24 or late 2023 to give us some hope. But the best case is the second half of 2024, but I honestly think we’re really at the year 2025 or 2026 before we start to see recovery.”

Conway’s Suggestions on Safe Places to Go and Opportunities

• REITS
• Workforce growth in places where companies are relocating: Tractor Supply in Little Rock, Arkansas; Hyundai going into Montgomery, Alabama.
• Florida: The rebuilding is going to be phenomenal. 
• The Carolinas continue to be strong. Toyota, EV batteries, high tech, biosciences. 
• South Korea and Vietnam are moving manufacturing away from North Korea due to threats to U.S. plants. 

What eXp Commercial Agents Can Do In the Meantime

• Clean energy: Investigate states that have passed property assessment for clean energy. These assessing authorities have capital to tap for updating HVAC and other energy-efficient improvements. 

“Those underutilized or vacant retail or restaurants that – if you had a little bit of capital and you could cloak it under a clean energy upgrading for efficiency. You can get all the capital, fix the building, never have to go to a bank and get turned down or wait six months” 

• Reassessments: Big box retailers finally realized they're not worth 200 bucks a square foot, and the assessments are now in the $50 to $75 square-foot range. They're coming after the big industrial buildings and e-commerce. They're coming after the full-rent subdivisions and self storage, which was up 60%. So that’s going to be another pivot. 
• ESG pressure: Every public company has to get an ESG score. They have to show what they’re doing. They have to deploy capital. An organization’s ESG score is a measure of how the company is perceived to be performing on a range of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria. 

 

https://www.creconsult.net/market-trends/how-inflation-affects-commercial-real-estate/

Multifamily Proposal Activity Stays Hot Single-Family Flattens

Multifamily Proposal Activity Stays Hot, Single-Family Flattens

Architecture, engineering, and construction firms express a telling forecast, according to PSM

Proposal activity for single-family homes and residential developments plummeted in the third quarter but remained solid for multifamily-for-rent and senior/assisted living properties, according to PSMJ Resources’ Quarterly Market Forecast (QMF) survey of architecture, engineering, and construction (A/E/C) firm leaders.

David Burstein, PE, director and senior consultant at PSMJ, an A/E/C industry consulting and publishing firm said he’s seeing a divergence in the A/E housing markets.

“The homeownership markets – new single-family homes, condos, and subdivisions – are feeling the effects of higher interest rates and tighter lending policies,” Burstein said. “The rental markets aren’t feeling the same pinch, at least not yet.”

Even Multifamily Index Cooling Some

Burstein often highlights the influence that the housing sector has on all markets served by A/E/C firms, estimating that it directly or indirectly impacts approximately 80 percent of the industry’s total revenue.

Even though multifamily proposal activity continues to be relatively strong, the index has cooled somewhat, likely due to the rising cost of borrowing money to finance new projects, says Burstein.

PSMJ created the net plus/minus index (NPMI) to measure proposal activity and assess the A/E/C market outlook when it began its QMF survey in 2003. The NPMI is the delta between the percentage of respondents in a given category seeing an increase in proposal activity for the quarter, and those experiencing a decrease.

For several quarters after the initial rebound from the COVID-19-related downturn in late 2020, all segments of the housing market reported proposal activity at elevated levels rarely seen in the history of the QMF.

In Q1 2020, the overall housing market’s NPMI fell well into the negative (minus 19.3), but rebounded to set its record-high index score of 77.4 one year later.

Single-Family and Condo Proposal Activity Sinking

Activity remained robust across the board in the first half of 2022, but the Q3 report saw housing’s NPMI fall 33.6 index points (from 55.0 to 21.4), quarter over quarter, and 49.1 points, year over year.

More telling are the results from the five submarkets measured in the survey. While multifamily (NPMI of 44.8) and senior/assisted living (17.0) remained positive in Q3, proposal activity for single-family individual homes (-2.4), single-family developments (-3.9), and condominiums (-6.8) all sank into negative territory.

PSMJ chose proposal activity because it is among the earliest stages of the design and construction project lifecycle, thereby offering a look at the longer-term outlook for markets, submarkets, and the overall industry.

 

Source: Multifamily Proposal Activity Stays Hot Single-Family Flattens

https://www.creconsult.net/market-trends/multifamily-proposal-activity-stays-hot-single-family-flattens/

The Keys to Multifamily Transactional Success This Year

During a quick-fire session geared towards the experienced transactional investor at the GlobeSt. Multifamily national conference Monday morning, a panel of experts examined current multifamily transactions and deconstructed various challenges and opportunities given the current state of the market. 

LOS ANGELES—“We are going through a tricky time. It has never been more important to focus on the basis when looking at a transaction.” Those thoughts are according to panelist Bobby Khorshidi, president and chief credit officer at Archway Capital.

Khorshidi joined other multifamily experts during a transactions panel Monday morning at the GlobeSt. Multifamily national conference event here at the JW Marriott LA LIVE. Moderator Laurie Lustig-Bower, an EVP at CBRE, began with asking panelists what is happening with bridge debt.

Interest rates have gone up and there will be some uncomfortable conversations between lenders and their borrowers and between investment sales and their clients, explained Khorshidi. “In underwriting, we have to apply a stress test because we don’t know where things are going to go. It is hard to find deals that will pencil.”

UNDEWRITING, WHAT ARE THE METRICS?

His company is using 7% as the exit on transactions. “We are looking at construction loans that are coming due or over budget and they are looking difficult to find exit financing,” he explained. “This is a transitional period where we are going to find new footing… It will just take time to figure out the new normal.”

When underwriting deals today, James D’Argenio, senior principal of acquisitions at The Bascom Group, said that what hasn’t changed is understanding a property’s characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. “Something that has changed is maybe the metrics, but we are really trying to stick to the basics and the stuff that we can control.”

When asked at a class A building versus a B-minus fixer-upper, and what cap rates would be looked at for each, D’Argenio said that they don’t make any money off the cap rate and are return focused. “We are trying to focus on levered versus unlevered returns…not just what is our cap rate to our coupon is because then you will be waiting a long time to transact… I don’t think that is an important metric when you are looking at the total success a project can have.”

BUYERS AND SELLERS ADJUST

Buyers and sellers have to adjust to the new normal, say panelists. Panelist Otto Ozen, executive vice president at The Mogharebi Group, said that the rapid interest rate increase created a bit of dysfunction. “Sellers historically have been relatively slow to respond to these kinds of shifts,” he said. “That is where you have the gap between buyers and sellers.”

He continued that buyers are quick to adapt their response and continue to adjust. “What is happening though is that a year ago, assumption of debt was really not an attractive option,” Ozen said. ‘What looked unattractive a year ago is being revisited.”

David Harrington, EVP and managing director of Matthews Real Estate Investment Services added that the profile of buyers right now are the ones who are able to stomach the long-term horizon.

LENDING OPTIONS

Switching gears, Lustig–Bower asked panelists about lending and what options look like for the buyer on bridge debt. Khorshidi explained that the goalpost is shifting. “We are in the business of lending and are going to lend.”

Having said that, he explained that his company needs to anticipate where the market is going. “Fundamentals and the economy feel like business as usual other than the fact that rates have moved,” he said. “Everyone will use the same criteria and the same underwriting.”

This is eerily familiar to the beginning of Covid, he continued, but then, the issue was valuation.” It is similar now. We just need to figure out the bid/ask. That is the way that we are underwriting things. The challenge is to figure out how someone is going to refinance.”

Khorshidi noted that it is a weird transitory time and it will take some time for these conversations to flush out. The pace that rates have been going up have been really extreme and has put some uncertainty in the markets and without trust in the Fed, it is hard to know where things are going. “We were told that all of this was transitory. That is not how it has played out. As lenders, and you all out there as investors, you have to guess, and whoever guesses right wins.”

 

Source: The Keys to Multifamily Transactional Success This Year

https://www.creconsult.net/market-trends/the-keys-to-multifamily-transactional-success-this-year/

September Marked Turning Point for Multifamily Rents

September Marked Turning Point for Multifamily Rents

Year-over-year rent increases slowed but are still up 8.8 percent last month.

September apartment rents are down month-over-month, in what experts from Rent.com call “a hopeful sign” the market is stabilizing.

Year-over-year rent increases slowed but are still up 8.8 percent last month; in August, rent prices increased by 12.3 percent. September also marks the first time year-over-year changes dipped into the single digits since September 2021 and the lowest year-over-year increase since October 2021.

In addition, 61 percent of state-level markets saw decreased rents in September compared to the prior month, with New York posting the largest decrease at just over 17 percent month-over-month followed by Illinois and Massachusetts at 4.6 percent and 4.0 percent, respectively. In addition, 31 of the 50 metros analyzed by Rent.com were down month-over-month, led by Cincinnati and Columbus with increases of nearly 7 and 6 percent. Median rent is also down month over month in 60 percent of markets surveyed, in what analysts call a “promising sign of a market beginning to cool.”

New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Oregon showed year-over-year declines, with just New York and Wisconsin down by more than a full percentage point at -10.01 percent and -7.39 percent respectively.

Jeff Adler, VP of Yardi Matrix and industry principal of self-storage at Yardi, recently told GlobeSt.com that “suburbs in major gateway metros and migration market favorites have seen greater rent growth since the start of the pandemic, but that the direction going forward is more balanced.”

 

Source: September Marked Turning Point for Multifamily Rents

https://www.creconsult.net/market-trends/september-marked-turning-point-for-multifamily-rents/

Multifamily Fundamentals Are Still Fairly Strong Say Panelists

The GlobeSt. Multifamily national conference kicked off with standing room only, complete with a new agenda at a new venue as some of the most influential dealmakers in multifamily came together to discuss the state of the industry.

LOS ANGELES—The GlobeSt. Multifamily national conference kicked off this morning with a state of the industry panel that brought together the most influential dealmakers in the U.S. multifamily real estate market. The panelists discussed key trends, major market shifts, the impacts of inflation on the multifamily sector, the road to economic recovery, and their expectations for another record year in multifamily.

Moderated by John Sebree, SVP and national director of multifamily at Marcus & Millichap, the panel kicked things off by making one thing clear: while many are trying to figure out if we are in a recession yet or not, fundamentals in multifamily are “still fairly strong.”

Still, it is undeniable that the sector is facing some headwinds.

According to panelist Robert LaFever, managing director of development at Greystar, the company is still actively pursuing deals and are studying macro locations, he said, but is being “much more selective.”

Chad Sanderson, senior principal of business development and acquisitions at the Bascom Group, advised that the industry needs to “buckle up, because there will be pain, but you have to do what you have to do.” He also said it has never been more important than ever to study the characteristics of a particular deal because there are so many moving pieces. “A lot of things coming out on the market right now are just not trading. There are times when you can have a macro approach to markets…you have to be mindful of supply, are there specific sectors that have higher unemployment. If those things are in check, then you are looking at the specific deal… Just getting a loan right now has changed so dramatically and that is driving your underwriting.”

Sanderson added that you have to think about your strategy, think about how to mitigate risk with uncertainty and figure out how to manage your investment portfolio. “Everyone had their thoughts of how things were going to unfold. One camp said that inflation and rates will come back down but then inflation took off even further.”

Next year, the environment should stabilize, especially as interest rates are expected to level off, said panelist Jeff Adler, VP of Yardi Matrix and industry principal of self-storage at Yardi. On the rental front, panelist Adler also recently told GlobeSt.com that “Suburbs in major gateway metros and migration market favorites have seen greater rent growth since the start of the pandemic, but that the direction going forward is more balanced.”

He says that there has been a recovery in the downtown areas back to pre-pandemic levels (except for San Francisco, although rents have rebounded from their previous lows). The spread between urban and suburban living (monthly rental rates) has narrowed, as well as the spread Between Gateway and Sunbelt cities, “although it still exists,” Adler says.

We have seen an incredible shift of people to these tertiary markets, added Sanderson. “I think inflation really caught a lot of people by surprise,” added Sanderson. “We are in this new paradigm where everyone’s mood has really changed.”

We are not going back to the way things were in terms of return to office and renter profile, explained Adler. In terms of demand, it has started to tail down, as the absorption-to-completion ratio in 2022 is a sharp reversal from the strong levels of household formation a year ago. “Many of these renter suburbs belong to the Miami, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles metros… Suburban living has been rewritten throughout the past decade.”

Kitty Wallace senior executive VP at Collier's, says that while there have been many people leaving the state of California, they are now coming back. “Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, have always been top markets but during Covid, they went to bottom markets,” she said. “I look at my international investors, and they might take a lower market return with less risk to be where they want to be…while we have seen movement out of state, many have come back.” She added that “We had unfortunate legislation here in California that impeded our growth during the beginning of Covid, but some of that is coming back because it is where people want to be. We are working with about 15%-20% of buyers now as compared to before.”

 

Source: Multifamily Fundamentals Are Still Fairly Strong Say Panelists

https://www.creconsult.net/market-trends/multifamily-fundamentals-are-still-fairly-strong-say-panelists/

Rising Cost of Capital Squeezing Multifamily Cap Rates

The increasing cost of capital and mounting concerns about ex-ante exit cap rates will ultimately drive buyers’ bids lower.

The increasing cost of capital is squeezing multifamily cap rates, which have been on a steady decline throughout the course of the pandemic.

According to a new analysis from Moody’s Analytics, that will ultimately pressure property values in the sector — and “without continued unprecedented rent growth, the darling multifamily asset class likely carries the most risk of value decline while the benchmark US Treasury rate is on the rise,” analysts say.

“Although Q3 has finally started to show a slight increase for industrial, office, and retail, cap rates have remained sticky. For multifamily, cap rates have continued to decline, which, along with tremendous rent growth, has propped up multifamily values compared to equities and other investments,” Moody’s Kevin Fagan and Xiaodi Li write. “But the increasing cost of capital and mounting concerns about ex-ante exit cap rates will ultimately drive buyers’ bids lower and property yields higher for the multifamily sector. So, multifamily property values will face pressure from both the Fed pushing rates and banks following suit with loan interest rates.”

The Moody’s economists note that rising 10-year treasury rates have pushed CMBS loan interest rates much higher than in recent months, and both are predicted to continue to climb. But while industrial’s cap rate started to climb up in Q3 2022, multifamily continued to decline. As of Q3, spreads between cap rates and loan interest rates for the sector clocked in at 0.76% — and Fagan and Li say that “cap rates with tight spreads are highly likely to increase under the upward pressure of rising interest rates.” That begs the question, they say, of how much rent growth is needed to curb a decline in value.

“Assuming the initial cap rate as 5%…if a CRE investor wants to exit in five years and the cap rate rises from 5% to 6.5%, the average annual rent growth needs to be higher than 5.4%,” they say. “Otherwise, the exit value will be lower than the current value. Though annual growth rates were 8.2% for multifamily from Q3 2021 to Q3 2022, a sustained average growth rate of 5.4% is well above any historical precedent.”

Ultimately, the pair say tight cap rate spreads and rising rates are “warning signs.”

“We will keep a close eye on those numbers,” they say.

 

Source: Rising Cost of Capital Squeezing Multifamily Cap Rates

https://www.creconsult.net/market-trends/rising-cost-of-capital-squeezing-multifamily-cap-rates/

US Economy Grew at 2.6% Annual Rate in Q3 GDP Report Shows

U.S. Economy Returned to Growth in Third Quarter

Gross domestic product increased 0.6 percent after two quarters of decline, but key components continue to show an economic slowdown.

The U.S. economy grew slowly over the summer, adding to fears of a looming recession — but also keeping alive the hope that one might be avoided.

Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, returned to growth in the third quarter after two consecutive quarterly contractions, according to government data released on Thursday. But consumer spending slowed as inflation ate away at households’ buying power, and the sharp rise in interest rates led to the steepest contraction in the housing sector since the first months of the pandemic.

The report underscored the delicate balance facing the Federal Reserve as it tries to rein in the fastest inflation in four decades. Policymakers have aggressively raised interest rates in recent months — and are expected to do so again at their meeting next week — in an effort to cool off red-hot demand, which they believe has contributed to the rapid increase in prices. But they are trying to do so without snuffing out the recovery entirely.

The third-quarter data — G.D.P. rose 0.6 percent, the Commerce Department said, a 2.6 percent annual rate of growth — suggested that the path to such a “soft landing” remained open but narrow.

“It’s just a very hard needle to thread,” said Diane Swonk, the chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG. “The cracks in the foundation have already begun to show.”

President Biden cheered the report in a statement on Thursday morning. “For months, doomsayers have been arguing that the U.S. economy is in a recession, and congressional Republicans have been rooting for a downturn,” he said. “But today we got further evidence that our economic recovery is continuing to power forward.”

By one common definition, the U.S. economy entered a recession when it experienced two straight quarters of shrinking G.D.P. at the start of the year. Officially, however, recessions are determined by a group of researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research, who look at a broader array of indicators, including employment, income and spending.

Inflation F.A.Q.

Card 1 of 5

What is inflation? Inflation is a loss of purchasing power over time, meaning your dollar will not go as far tomorrow as it did today. It is typically expressed as the annual change in prices for everyday goods and services such as food, furniture, apparel, transportation and toys.

What causes inflation? It can be the result of rising consumer demand. But inflation can also rise and fall based on developments that have little to do with economic conditions, such as limited oil production and supply chain problems.

Is inflation bad? It depends on the circumstances. Fast price increases spell trouble, but moderate price gains can lead to higher wages and job growth.

Can inflation affect the stock market? Rapid inflation typically spells trouble for stocks. Financial assets in general have historically fared badly during inflation booms, while tangible assets like houses have held their value better.

Most analysts don’t believe the economy meets that more formal definition, and the third-quarter numbers — which slightly exceeded forecasters’ expectations — provided further evidence that a recession had not yet begun.

But the overall G.D.P. figures were skewed by the international trade component, which often exhibits big swings from one period to the next. Economists tend to focus on less volatile components, which have showed the recovery steadily losing momentum as the year has progressed. One closely watched measure suggested that private-sector demand stalled out almost completely in the third quarter, and some forecasters expect G.D.P. to contract in the final three months of the year.

“Ignore the headline number — growth rates are slowing,” said Michael Gapen, the chief U.S. economist for Bank of America. “It wouldn’t take much further slowing from here to tip the economy into a recession.”

Consumer spending, the bedrock of the U.S. economy, rose 0.4 percent in the third quarter, down from a 0.5 percent increase in the quarter before. Spending on goods fell for the third consecutive quarter, while spending on services slowed but remained positive.

Consumer spending has continued to increase despite higher interest rates and rising prices, as consumers have drawn down savings to keep spending on vacations, restaurant meals and other in-person activities that many missed out on earlier in the pandemic. But it is unclear how long that can last. Americans saved 3.3 percent of their after-tax income in the third quarter, the smallest share since 2007.

“‘Borrowed time’ is how I would describe the consumer right now,” said Tim Quinlan, a senior economist at Wells Fargo. “Credit card borrowing is up, saving is down, our costs are rising faster than our paychecks are.”

Inflation slowed in the third quarter, as oil prices fell. That led to an increase in inflation-adjusted personal income, after a decline in the second quarter. But oil prices have since rebounded somewhat, and prices for food, rent and other essentials continue to rise.

The impact of rising interest rates is clear in the housing market, where home building and sales have both slowed sharply in recent months. The housing sector shrank 7.4 percent in the third quarter, subtracting 1.4 percentage points from the annualized growth rate in overall G.D.P. Businesses also cut investments in commercial and industrial buildings, and separate data released on Thursday showed that a key measure of business investment fell in September.

The slowdown in housing is likely to lead to a further pullback in consumer spending as homeowners feel poorer and as fewer people buy homes and need to fill them with furniture and appliances. Mortgage rates passed 7 percent on Thursday, their highest level since 2002.

“Housing is just the single largest trigger to additional spending, and it’s not there anymore; it’s going in reverse,” Ms. Swonk of KPMG said. “This has been a stunning turnaround in housing, and when things start to go really quickly, you start to wonder, what are the knock-on effects, what are the spillover effects?”

Thor Kitchen, a seller of stainless-steel kitchen appliances, saw strong demand early in the pandemic as families, stuck at home, were eager to upgrade their living spaces. Meeting that demand was a bigger challenge: Snarled supply chains made it hard for the company to get its products from its factories in China to its customers in the United States.

Understand Inflation and How It Affects You

Now, those trends are reversing. Supply chains are beginning to return to normal, and Thor Kitchen’s warehouses are beginning to fill up with inventory that the company ordered months ago. Demand, however, is falling: The steep drop in home sales means that fewer people need new stoves and refrigerators, while fear of a possible recession is leading people to pull back their spending.

“A lot of companies are going to be sitting on a lot of products that are now not moving,” said Timothy Lee, the company’s marketing manager. “We made those orders when demand was really high and continuing to increase in June.”

The company, which is based outside Riverside, Calif., has been cutting spending on advertising, among other areas, and has scaled back hiring, moves that Mr. Lee said were made early in expectation of a slowdown. It also recently began offering a 10 percent promotional discount, even as costs continued to rise.

So far, however, the discount has failed to do much to increase sales. A recession, Mr. Lee said, is “already here in our eyes.”

Many Americans share that pessimistic outlook. After gasoline prices shot up this year, measures of consumer confidence plunged, and they have remained low. Companies have begun preparing for a recession, pulling back spending on advertising and discussing contingency plans with investors.

Still, the economy still has important areas of strength. The job market is strong, and although hiring has slowed somewhat, layoffs remain low in most industries. Many households were able to build up a cash cushion early in the pandemic — a result of reduced spending and increased government aid — which could help them keep spending even if their incomes stagnate.

Those factors give the recovery a bit of a cushion, but they also make the Fed’s job harder by making the economy less responsive to higher interest rates. At the same time, the Fed can do little to control the prices of oil and food, which are influenced by global events such as the war in Ukraine.

“The problem is that there are many forces that are pushing for high inflation right now,” said Carola Frydman, an economist at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “Not everything is easy to address with monetary policy.”

The third quarter was in some sense a mirror image of the first quarter, when G.D.P. shrank but consumer spending was strong. In both cases, the swings were driven by international trade. Imports, which don’t count toward domestic production figures, soared early this year as the strong economic recovery led Americans to buy more goods from overseas. Exports slumped as the rest of the world recovered more slowly from the pandemic.

Both trends have begun to reverse as American consumers have shifted more of their spending toward services and away from imported goods, and as foreign demand for American-made goods has recovered. Supply-chain disruptions have added to the volatility, leading to big swings in the data from quarter to quarter.

Few economists expect the strong trade figures from the third quarter to continue, especially because the strong dollar will make American goods less attractive overseas.

 

Source: US Economy Grew at 2.6% Annual Rate in Q3 GDP Report Shows

https://www.creconsult.net/market-trends/us-economy-grew-at-2-6-annual-rate-in-q3-gdp-report-shows/