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NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT

Jacksonville's Hot Housing Market

Credit: Wade Austin Ellis on Unsplash

60 Minutes gave Jacksonville’s hot housing market a national spotlight during a recent segment when Leslie Stahl interviewed two locals whose landlord increased their rent by 30% this year, on account of market conditions. Their story is typical for renters in Jacksonville, who on average saw rents increase by 31% over the past year. That’s more than double the national average of 15%, which is itself double the overall rate of inflation, which, if you haven’t noticed, is at its highest rate in 40 years.

Later in the piece, Ms. Stahl interviews the CEO of Tricon Residential in front of a home they bought on Shiner Drive in Jacksonville’s northside. Soaring rents are good business for landlords. So good, in fact, that big Wall Street firms like Tricon want in on the action and have been scooping up single-family homes as soon as they hit the market to turn into rentals. These types of conversions comprise some 30% of new home purchases in places like Jacksonville.

Is Wall Street to blame for the recent spike in rent? Yes, but maybe not for the reason you think. Redfin’s chief economist Daryl Fairweather explains in an interview:

We are not building enough housing for everybody who needs a place to live. We built fewer homes in the 2010s than in any decade going back to the 1960s, and at the same time millennials are the biggest generation and they're entering into home-buying age. Millennials aren't living in their parents' basement any more or shacking up with roommates, they want a place of their own, and we didn't build any housing for them in the last decade because we are still so traumatized by the last housing crisis. We didn't put any investment into housing. In the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, construction of new housing came to a grinding halt. But even when the economy recovered, home construction didn't.

The best way to reduce housing costs is to build more housing. Thankfully, in places like Jacksonville, builders are working hard to solve this crisis—new apartment construction is projected to hit a 30-year high this year.

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HARBINGER NEWS

Redesigning the Path into Diversification

Credit: Dede Smith / Jax Daily Record

What happens when 80% of your revenue comes from one client, then that client goes away? Our CEO Steve Williams talked to Drew Dixon of the Jax Daily Record about what it was like to rapidly diversify our client and business base after a 25-year relationship with 7-Eleven.

BREAK ROOM

This guy clearly has a background in engineering and/or fabrication.

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