Definitely, although it shows up more along the lines of the usual price drop over time not occurring. Usually, a CPU like mine (Ryzen 3600X) would be considerably less than when I bought it, but its price is tracking about the same as it was last year.
But GPUs are out of control; I’ve never seen ones that were a year out of date triple in price like this.
Is that new though? The housing market has been on fire for several years now, since about 2016-ish, I thought. It’s just weird that it hasn’t calmed down yet.
Extremely low mortgage rates helped feed the upturn in real estate demand, too.
I don’t collect them myself but someone I know has mentioned comic books have become more valuable in the last year.
Webcams were really hard to get throughout 2020; we had placed orders in April or May that were unfulfilled six months later. These were Logitech or Microsoft webcams. Later we were able to get webcams from unfamiliar Chinese brands. (And if you look on Amazon, some of the Chinese branded hardware looks exactly like the Logitech hardware.) Other work-from-home hardware like headsets, Jabra speakerphones, and notebook computers were hard to get.
I’ll add to the chorus of webcam difficulties. We ended up with some unknown brands because the bigger names weren’t in stock. And even what we bought was in the $40-$50 range. Fortunately, they work well.
Yeah, looks like I got in post-rush. And I do have some sort of Chinese knock-off brand – have no idea what it is – but it works well enough for $15, and nobody on the other end seems to have complained about the sound quality (the video quality I could see well enough myself.)
Yep, there is a huge can shortage. Ball was estimating in October a 10 billion can shortage. My brewery clients are getting killed right now and it is almost impossible to buy anything but bright cans and the price has risen from 4-5 cents per can to over 10 now.
Schools have been a big contributor to the webcam shortage. Our district bought several hundred cams last March for all the faculty that needed one for remote teaching. I’m quite sure we weren’t the only ones.
I’m surprised at how seemingly universal the real estate surge is. Real estate in this area has been super hot for years, to the point that for the last few years the inevitable correction has been widely predicted. I would have fully expected the pandemic to precipitate that correction, especially with all the advice for everyone to stay home and the difficulty of arranging showings. Instead, the market has gone crazy and become even hotter than before. I have no idea where all these buyers are coming from.
I’m not sure but seeing how global billionaires wealth went up 4 trillion during the pandemic it could be wealthy investors buying up property.
What is weird is that if working from home becomes more common after the pandemic, there won’t be as much demand for central housing in large urban areas you’d assume.
Yeah, we didn’t buy a new house, but we refinanced our already low interest rate to an even lower one, took some cash out and made (and are still making) some improvements. I wonder if that is included in home sales figures.
Yeah, I’ve filled out mortgage refinance verification of employment forms for everybody in my workplace - some of them twice now!
It’s not included in home resale figures per se, but it helps explain the high demand due to low turnover as everybody remodels with cheap money.
In places where real estate is going up, is that detached homes? Are condos going up too? What about apartment rents?
I think a lot of resl estate demand is coming from people abandoning dense urban apartment living and trying to find larger homes. Quarantining in an apartment sucks. Not being able to store a lot of food during a pandemic, forcing you to go out shopping more, sucks. Living in a building where you are forced to ride elevators and navigate shared spaces just to get food, also sucks.
And if you are a couple and both are working and eating at home, that little apartment that used to be fine when you spent most of your time outside of it now feels really small.
Add to that the closure of the restaurants and bars and museums and nightlife that are the attraction of downtown living, and sitting in that little apartmentbstarts to feel pretty dismal. Places like Manhattan, where people live in really small, really expensive apartments but routinely eat their meals out and live there because of the now-closed amenities, are being hit hardest.
Pandemic aside, we are still living in the mother of all asset bubbles. And people are flush with cash, and inflation worries are ticking up. Hard durable assets are a hedge against inflation. Real estate especially.
Finally, Florida and Texas in particular are seeing not just those effects, but a large influx of new residents fleeing the increasingly intolerable big cities in California, New York, etc.
In 2020, annual rental prices dropped by more than 20% in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Oakland, New York City, Boston, and Washington DC. I imagine demand was down so much because people are choosing to live elsewhere (rents were up in many small cities), or because they are choosing to buy houses instead of renting apartments.
When you can work from home, why live in an expensive apartment close to work when you can sprawl out in a big home in a small city for the same money without losing your job?
Rents are now stabilizing or even going up again in some of these places, probably because vaccinations being available has given people hope for a return to normalcy soon.
If I didn’t have a house I’d be looking to buy one. As it is, we are thinking of buying another property in a smaller city partly as a hedge against inflation, and partly as a hedge against the new urbanist insanity our city council is following, which promises to wreck the quality of life here.
Speakng of that… One other reason people are fleeing the icity cores for the burbs or smaller cities are the insane policies of some cities which are chasing out the middle class.
Steel prices have shot through the roof. I work for a small steel fabricator, and prices for steel on jobs that we bid two years ago have risen in the neighborhood of 60%, at the point where we’re ready to actually buy the steel for the project.
Wait times have gone crazy as well - we’re looking for a particular new plasma cutter, our supplier found one for us, estimated ship date, if we order it today, is May 26th.
Can shortages are real - was looking for caffeine-free Coke for my wife the other day, could only find it in the diet version. Checked on Coke’s website, because of the can shortage, they’ve nixed their less-popular varieties for the time being.
In this area, the hottest real estate has been both detached houses and similar properties – semi-detached and freehold townhouses. High-rise condominiums and condominium townhouses (managed complexes where there is a monthly maintenance fee) have also risen dramatically on a decadal scale but well below the rate of the first two. I don’t specifically know about rentals but I would imagine they have at least kept pace and probably outpaced the underlying property values.
Had a bid done on a black chain-link fence last year. It was 8 grand and we didn’t go for it. Looking now it would be probably 12. The fence place said their wholesalers we’re only guaranteeing their prices three days ahead. Our other option was wood and T-post field fence which we’re building now but materials are expensive.
where looking to buy a house in California’s antelope valley area and there hasn’t been a boom like this since 2004/5 houses that go for 200k or so are getting bid up to 350/400 k …
International airfare to/from Australia has doubled - what few flights are available, that is.
Until last year, I could figure the highest roundtrip fare to and from (say) LA would be ~1500AUD per person (like around Thanksgiving). Now, it’s 3000AUD minimum.
I am not in the business but I have read that steel prices in the US are currently up 70% from last August. It isn’t that high worldwide (thanks Trump) but still quite a bit higher. The article said that when COVID hit many mills around the world shut down, along with demand. Turns out it is difficult and expensive to restart a steel mill. Demand ramps up much more quickly. In some cases new more efficient mills are already under construction. Once they come on line the older mills will be closed. Owners are deciding to just enjoy the high prices and not spend the money to bring those old mills back. As demand continues to increase so will prices.