Calling out Goofy @CRE and the rest of Wall Street Oasis. Real Estate is the worst asset class going forward.

Do you have nothing else to do but to rant on WSO all day and call out rather contributing and productive members of our site who now have to write a response to you instead of actually helping others out? Non-targets sure do have a lot of time on their hands.

Land is finite. Do you understand this?

If we had a crystal ball we would bet on it. You're basically saying BX is going bankrupt? Frankly 30 years is such an incredibly long time to forecast that many industries will be completely transformed by then. I would suggest shorting all REITs if that is your stance, and would be willing to bet many will take the other side of that trade.

You would fit in really well with the guys over at www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets.

You guys I think he's got a point. Most buildings as we know them today will be obsolete. Instead everyone will just spend 22 hours a day in economical 10x10 cubes with screens for walls experiencing life almost exclusively through VR because what is more efficient than that? Outside of that, it will just be a sea of warehouses and self driving cars ferrying people to and from entertainment venues and surgical procedures.

All real estate will be approaching value parity because let's face it, it's just a bunch of useless dirt at that point. Manhattan, NYC will be the same price as Manhattan, KS, as long as they both have their all-purpose living cubes wired for terabyte wifi.

What a bonehead

Reading angry wso posts is my hobby.

This is amusing. Unfortunately, I'm heading to the Caribbean today and can't respond. Until next time, kmkmkmoo

-"Goofus" CRE

In 3 years you will be a twink to a much older sugar daddy. Prove me wrong, goofus. Oh that's right, you can't :)

It's not real until you short it

Not a single person here can refute it. Not a single one has tried to challenge one of my points, including goofy CRE . :)

1. Malls and retail stores are dying. As CRE said, malls are either being redeveloped to support non-traditional tenants or mixed-use town centers. A quick google search shows plenty of examples and case studies of successful mall redevelopment projects. Malls in suburban areas that are rapidly dying will more than likely die along with the communities, and that is just the market correcting for consumer tastes as more people demand the option of urban living and leave the suburbs. This isn't the stock market where there is going to be a meltdown over the course of 24 hours. The changes are happening slowly, and the industry is adapting alongside. Even so, industrial seems to be booming as retail is withering. If changing consumer tastes causes certain types of assets (class B retail) in sub-par locations to lose value due to excess supply, than so be it, but a freshman in college can use basic economics to show the shifted demand curve will just lead to lower prices (lower values) and lower supply (less retail being built and more redevelopment) until equilibrium is reached. Once equilibrium is reached supply will probably either stay the same or continue to shrink until prices increase to make it feasible to build/redevelop retail again. Like I said above, this isn't happening over night, and it isn't going to be an overnight price crash. It is just as likely that Apple is worthless in 30 years than it is that retail is worthless.

2. Automation/AI, outsourcing, and virtual work stations will murder office space While automation/AI will have an effect on many industries, I'm not entirely convinced it is going to displace a large portion of white collar workers within the next 30 years. If you look at exhibit 3 in this study done by McKinsey, almost all of the jobs at the bottom of the list are white collar. According to the study, almost one-third of all time spent in the workplace involves data collection which will more than likely eventually be automated (thank god), but almost all white collar jobs involve activities that will not be easily automated such as managing others, stakeholder interactions, and apply expertise. If anything, AI will make white collar workers able to allocate more time to value creating endeavors and spend less time doing bullshit such as data collection. I believe AI/automation will have little to no effect on the value of offices in the next 30 years unless we create sentient artificial intelligence that can truly replace people.

Second, if a large portion of white collar jobs were outsourced wouldn't that just shift the asset values to other countries where there would be increased demand and therefore values? From a global perspective, that would hardly cause real estate to become worthless; if anything it will have a positive impact on real estate values as labor/materials are typically cheaper in those countries.

Virtual work stations -- come on man...this isn't even an argument. It could potentially have a slight effect on the demand for office space, but you're completely forgetting about the human factor that comes from working face-to-face on a team, and the positive effects it has on productivity. In the unlikely event that it starts to have a major impact, RE prices will adjust so that the supply/demand curves are at back at equilibrium and it is more cost effective to have people in the office. My mother works in HR where she hires people to work virtually and there is so many problems with it that it is laughable. A significant amount of people drinking/doing drugs while working, watching porn, trying to scheme the system so that they don't have to actually work, using company computers for illegal activities, lack of team cohesiveness that effects professionalism and productivity, etc. There is no way that virtual work stations will ever replace offices. We are social animals -- we aren't all on the spectrum and belong in a think tank. It will work for some industries, many which have already adopted the practice (hospitality, tech/IT, customer service), but for the vast majority it won't.

3. Netflix, amazon groceries, virtual medicine will also deplete RE demand (cinemas disappear, less grocery stores, virtual medicine replaces general doctor offices)

Okay, I could see amazon groceries having a major impact on grocery stores as nobody likes grocery shopping, but grocery stores are adapting by allowing people to order online and pick up their groceries for free. I did this today using Walmart. Ordered my groceries online yesterday, then drove to the store this morning and sat there while they loaded up my car. Took about 10 minutes. The way theaters/movie producers price movie tickets is fucky and there is plenty of room of improvement to attract patrons if they lose market share to streaming services. On opening weeks, movie producers get as much as 100% of ticket sales from theater owners, and unless the cost of streaming subscriptions increases substantially there is no way that they would be able to afford bypassing theaters to provide AAA movies to their subscribers on opening day given the way the economics of the movie industry currently works. As of the end of FY2016, Netflix has 3.6 Billion dollars in current content liabilities, while worldwide annual ticket sales were 11.2 billion. Also annual ticket sales have pretty much remained materially unchanged since 1995. So yea... sorry, Netflix isn't going to replace the box office anytime soon.

Virtual medicine isn't going to kill general doctor offices.

TL:DR The real estate market isn't the stock market where supply/demand/pricing changes happen overnight. The industry will adapt as consumer tastes/technology changes our society. The effects of AI/automation on white collar jobs will get rid of bullshit data collection work, but probably won't displace most workers. Not everyone is an antisocial autist that wants to work and play at home.

So basically the entire premise of your theory is that because there is a surplus of shitty regional malls in suburban Ohio, this devalues the real estate in Manhattan? Cool story bro. Hilarious theory from someone who clearly doesn't understand the most basic factor of real estate value.

P.S. Where do you get your bath salts?

This is a RE forum and I am an avid defender of the industry. With that being said, OP, you keep saying none of us can defend our viewpoints, but technically neither can you. Nobody knows the future. 30 years is a long time and the world is evolving very quickly.

30 years ago, Apple was a crap company with little value

30 years ago, Sears and Kodak were in the Dow Jones.

Forget about 30 years, just 15 years ago AOL was pretty much the largest internet company. Everyone was using those AOL cds.

You remember askjeeves. Well turns out Google murdered Mr. Jeeves.

Seemed like just 15 years ago, everyone had a Yahoo email account.

Facebook, a company that started in 2004, now has more than 2 billion users.

Your argument is that innovation will cause a decrease in demand in RE. Maybe your right, maybe your wrong.

However, if you believe innovation will do this, then RE won't be the only industry hit and it certainly won't be first.

Innovation will cause greater adoption of machinery produced goods and services. So by your logic everyone will be laid off. This could mean McDonald's will have robots serving you.

Innovation will cause medical advances thus resulting in the decline of the healthcare industry.

Innovation will cause the hyperloop to be built, so no more cars will be sold. So anything related to the auto industry will be bankrupt.

So these are examples of the doomsday scenario you believe are true. You say RE will be dead due to innovation, but in order for that to occur the industry in which that tenant operates must actually die off first. RE houses humans and businesses. In order for RE to fail, humans must die off and all the businesses in the world must go bankrupt.

Perhaps a lot of this space can be reverted back to tillable ground in some instances to help feed a growing world. Plus as wealth increases people like to eat more meat which is inefficient to produce from an acreage perspective.

I don't know that test tube produced meat will be an easy sell for quite some time. Eating insects is a perfectly natural source of protein and the typical US consumer will not encourage roach infestations of their property to "local source" their groceries. So you need land.

Wall street oasis is so goofy!

It's even more funny considering OP's history of asking about hedge fund recruiting opportunities when the whole industry is getting backhanded by smart beta funds. Wasn't his #2 about automation?

The name of this post reminds me of when Kim Jong-Un kept referring to HRC as "Dull Hillary".

idea: RE is going away, humans will be replaced by robots and have nowhere to live. everyone will be forced to live in tree huts or cardboard boxes as the corrugated cardboard scrambles the robots communications

since patagonia isn't publicly traded, long RKT