150 Years ago today the final ‘golden spike’ of the Transcontinental Railroad was driven by a silver hammer in Promissory Utah. Travel time for the 1,912 mile journey from New York to San Francisco shrank from 4 months to 3.5 days prompting economic expansion. Today Amtrak offers the same journey in the same amount of time?? for $193. In China a similar train line was completed last year. For $162 you can make the 1,516 mile journey from Hong Kong to Beijing in 9 hrs.
Rates – improved slightly this week dropping to to a level we haven’t seen since the end of March. In the past quarter we have developed a moderate downward trend.
In the next decade, 44.9M people (including yours truly) will turn 34 (median age of a first time home buyer) which is an increase of 7.4% or 3.11M people over the previous 10 years. Unless the pace of new construction increases to match the pace of buyer growth there will be increased demand to housenour largest section of population. This increased demand will continue to fuel appreciation of home values and rents. It’s worth noting that Portland will see less people turn 34 in the next ten years than it did the previous, apparently all the young people came here and retired.
