The head of consumer-product marketing at Google Inc. and a former general counsel for a travel website are seeking to transform the mortgage-finance industry. Michael Burry, the hedge-fund manager who foresaw the housing market’s nosedive, is betting they can.
Brett Crosby left his post at Google last week to join Brew Johnson, once a lawyer for a company acquired by TripAdvisor Inc., to start PeerStreet Inc., a Los Angeles-based online platform for financing real estate through a form of crowdfunding. They’re partnering with small, non-bank lenders whose short-term commercial-property loans they can fund using a throng of individual investors.
Read MoreInvestment in non-residential property in Europe’s nine biggest markets jumped 28 per cent in the year ended in June, led by a 126 per cent increase in Madrid.
Read MoreHere’s a grim forecast to consider: It may be 2021 before you make any money on investment-grade bonds again.
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management’s Jonathan Mackay predicts the securities will post annual returns of between 1 percent and 2 percent for the next seven years -- which means you’ll lose money after accounting for inflation. That’s a big shift considering the debt gained 8.7 percent annually on average in the 30 years through 2012.
Investors should “have a lower average allocation to bonds than you would have in the previous cycle because they just don’t provide the income and return,” said Mackay, senior market strategist at Morgan Stanley’s $2 trillion wealth management unit. While central-bank stimulus is supporting bond values, “the collateral damage is going to be lower portfolio returns.”
Read MoreNorges Bank Investment Management, which manages the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, bought a portfolio of real estate in Madrid and Barcelona through a joint venture with Prologis Inc.
Prologis European Logistics Partners Sarl bought more than 1.6 million square feet of logistics facilities and development land in the two Spanish cities from SABA Parques Logisticos, Prologis said in a statement today.
“Demand for logistics infrastructure in Spain is rising while construction of new facilities is at an historic low,” Philip Dunne, president of Prologis Europe, said in the statement. “We are pleased to acquire this well-located portfolio at a discount to replacement costs.”
Read MoreMarcelino Calvo Sanchez and his wife, Maria Luisa, had never heard of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. until last year, when the global investment bank bought the four-building housing estate where they live in Vallecas, on the southern outskirts of Madrid. Marcelino, a 71-year-old retired truck driver, isn’t impressed by his new landlord.
Goldman Sachs picked up the 289-unit complex in August 2013 as part of its purchase of 3,000 low-income apartments from the regional government of Madrid for 201 million euros ($269 million). With the sale, some subsidies for tenants disappeared, and, according to Sanchez, a small problem with squatters has become a larger one.
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