All Forum Posts by: Cory J Thornton

This has been a topic of conversation recently. The CFPB is working to classify these programs as credit to drive them onto credit reports. In the meantime, most UWs are checking bank statements for withdrawals to Affirm, etc., and then stipping for explanations to identify these debts. Part of my pre-approval process is to scrub the borrower's bank statements for these and find out up front what they are for proper DTI calculation - I almost had a file fall apart last year because of Affirm.

I have been thinking through housing, affordability, and the effect on what until the last few years have been dead markets. Any home with a decent commute to a decent market is not affordable. 

Over the last few years, and even now, I am seeing investors put their capital to work in areas that locals have previously ignored. 

It begs the question, in order to afford a rent, afford an investment property, or a primary home, will price start pushing people to forget the first three rules of Real Estate (location, location, location)? 

As a local example, a recent study showing the migration patterns of folks leaving Raleigh, the #6 city most likely to pick up those residents was Rocky Mount NC. Five years ago, this was not the case and even three years ago people were still highly suspect of that area (myself included). Now I'm starting to see people push much further out to 3-4 layers away from primary job markets completely sacrificing location for cost of ownership or cost of living. 

What do y'all think?

Is this something anyone else is noticing and if it is a trend, is there anything that will make it a short lived thing or is it going to continue longer term?

Anyone who works remote is probably going to loose their job in the next couple years to an AI. This is low-hanging fruit for AI, because no physical work.

If you think I am talking about something in the future, you have not kept up the last 8 weeks. Watch the presentation of the latest version of ChatGPT4o and if you don't have much time, skip to min 15 where "she" teaches him how to do math. Tell me your kid's teacher is that smooth explaining math! Link.

And if you think it is going to stop there than watch this: Figure1 robot demonstration. Remember these things are getting rapidly better. Google CEO estimates that we will see their capabilities double every 12-18 months.

Which means factory jobs are being next. Since we are talking about paradigm shifts, this will be the biggest of all. And it is happening faster than society can respond. 

Nvidia is now higher valued as Apple at $3 trillion market cap. Yes, you have read that correctly. Ask 10 random people, 8 have never heard the name, that is how fast things are changing.

In my mind the outcome is crystal clear. Literally of the population will be unemployed. Anyone who works remote or online or does low skill manual labor. Which means as a society we will have to shift to a universal basic income system, like it or not, there is no other way. People need to eat and pay rent.

some more valuable data :

several suburbs and smaller cities have seen significant population growth in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly those located in the South and West regions of the United States. Some of the most notable examples include:

1. Georgetown, Texas - This suburb of Austin was the fastest-growing large city (50,000+ population) in the U.S. for two consecutive years, with a growth rate of 14.4% from July 2021 to July 2022, reaching a population of 86,507. Georgetown's population has increased by over 19,000 since the 2020 census.
2. Leander, Texas - Another suburb of Austin, Leander had a growth rate of 10.9% from 2021-2022 and was among the top 5 fastest-growing large cities. Its population increased from 60,848 in 2020 to 74,375 in 2022.
3. Queen Creek, Arizona and other Phoenix exurbs - The Phoenix metro area surpassed 5 million residents in 2022, with much of the growth concentrated in far-flung exurban communities. Queen Creek and other suburbs like Buckeye and Maricopa were among the fastest-growing large cities with growth rates over 6%.
4. New Braunfels, Texas - Located near San Antonio, New Braunfels had a growth rate of 5.7% from 2021-2022 and a total population of 104,707.
5. Montgomery County, Texas - This suburban county north of Houston grew by 4.3% from 2021 to 2022, part of a 47.7% population increase since 2010

@Cory J Thornton at risk of being wrong, I'd say we are at the middle of the beginning of a paradigm shift. 

For generations, hell millennia, things operated on a simple system that there is some geographic feature, somewhere, that brings many together in 1 spot, that brings more, a city builds, grows, and get's to a size that a kind of "gravity" is made putting people and industry in a geographic "orbit" of that market center. 

But now.... 

COVID lockdown "crashed the system" so to say. And at exact same time forced the use of an alternative one, remote working. Dislocated staffing. And, very key, it forced it's use for an enduring time. So people and employers not only had to use it, they had to integrate it's use, get good at it, accept it into the fold. 

Than at same time we get massive social upheaval, which given population density was focused in those more dense populous areas. Social unrest, riots, lawlessness. Add to this all the social unrest and upheaval in school systems which again most prevalent in populous dense areas.... 

It's a "perfect storm" of factors all hitting together. 

Where a new paradigm seems to be coming to the front that "good old family living" is to be found in the satellite areas, a step beyond the traditional suburbs. That the "work life balance" is almost directly translating as a remote whatever working situation. 

Gov agencies keep integrating more and more with this. And the private sector fight against remote, that was a fart in the breeze for most part. People WANT remote working lifestyles. 

And this change of primary income requirements becoming transient, opens up a whole different world of how people locate themselves. 

I think we are very early in it. I think we only saw the first wave from this, and are now into consolidation and normalization, from which sustained growth will next come, if not already is here in early days of it. 

Where high speed internet exists, is now a viable living potential, and that's a LOT of places. 

before, there was a sizable cost to where one geographically located. We didn't just change that, we flipped it on it's head because if you can do a remote CA tech job, man-alive your going to be rewarded if live in a say a rural SD town. Like Living in South Africa but earning in dollars, currency conversion rich. 

This is very early to say but yes, I think one of the next "gold rush's" for investors is in the development/re-development of these communities. I don't know what to call them other than maybe a "Z-market" because it's really driving in power by the younger generations who are saying f-this to living by conventional "old" rules of things. 

MSA's still hold a gravity, but it's not what it once was, there is this force that now exists immune to such geographic gravity, if not working in reverse polarity to it.  

I don't see it changing back. I think we at the beginning. Remember when internet first came out (I just dated myself didn't I, lol). There was this big rush, then got real quiet. It's like the first "cool" rush of things, but then it took time for integration. And it was years, YEARS before it started getting to be something other then a novelty. And it's like I woke up one day and out of nowhere the internet was a requirement.... I see remote work going exact same way. And with it, housing location choice. 

Good schools, good internet, good food, good prices. I think that's the magic 4 factors. I know good food seems a bit weird, I think so, but it's what I see repeatedly in these "z-markets" forming. Apparently food is a really big deal to younger generations, I'm not sure they know stoves are for cooking not gadget storage, lol.