Strome Business Minute with Dr. Jeff Tanner WHRO Public Media

The title of the band's fifth album, “Dance Fever,” refers to a 14th century ritual where groups of people burst into dance frenzies to the point of exhaustion or even death.

I’m Jeff Tanner, Dean of the Strome College of Business, and this is a Strome Business Minute. The COVID caused recession has affected the Port of Virginia but really only in a mild way. While the number of ships calling on the Port has declined every year for the last 4 years. That’s really because the ships are getting bigger and carrying more cargo, necessitating fewer ships. Import volume and value, though, have declined 12 and 15 percent due to the recession. Export value, on the other hand, has held steady though volume has declined about 5.5 percent. Coal exported from Virginia is down over 13 percent. One piece of good news in all of this, though, is that employment recovered in maritime supply chain and logistics from a dip in May and is now back to nearly 250,000 jobs. This has been a Strome Business Minute, presented by the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University.

I’m Jeff Tanner, Dean of the Strome College of Business, and this is a Strome Business Minute. We already discussed here the shrunken inventory of homes for sale in the 757, down to its lowest level in 15 years. New home construction can’t keep up with the demand due to labor shortages so the median price of homes has crept up as supply can’t keep up with demand.
Strome real estate professor Walter D’Lima’s research shows that our market is representative of the national residential market. Overall, new listings for existing homes are down across the country, as demand is shifting from apartments to houses. But his study also shows that starter home owners are also trading up. But mid-priced owners aren’t trading up. Inventory of higher priced homes is way down and those prices have actually declined so now may be the time to move up. This has been a Strome Business Minute, presented by the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University.

I’m Jeff Tanner, Dean of the Strome College of Business, and this is a Strome Business Minute. With interest rates so low, the mortgage refinance business has been going strong, up some eighty four percent. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest purchasers of mortgages, though, just slapped an additional half a percent fee on cash-out refinances, claiming the COVID-induced recession adds risk. The two government-sponsored organizations are forecasting an increase in losses on qualified loans due to recession-based defaults. Trade groups denounced the fee, which begins September 1, noting that borrowers who haven’t locked in their refinancing will have to pay the fee, expected to average fourteen hundred dollars. Still, a Zillow spokesperson told Barron’s that the refinance market is likely to remain hot and Forbes expects rates to fall even more. Lenders could choose to absorb the fee, so shop around and pay attention to the closing costs. This Strome Business Minute is presented by the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University.

I’m Jeff Tanner, Dean of the Strome College of Business, and this is a Strome Business Minute. In June, Facebook committed one hundred million dollars to advance US-based Black businesses, artists, and nonprofits. Last week, they unveiled their plan to offer Black businesses up to forty million dollars or forty percent of the original commitment, as grants. The grants, for Black-owned businesses with fewer than fifty employees, are broken into twenty five hundred dollars in cash and fifteen hundred dollars in Facebook advertising credits and the program will be administered by Accenture. Facebook’s goal is to pump the cash out in a hurry, hoping to get all of the cash released by the end of August. The grant application process opens today and they plan to support ten thousand businesses before the program concludes. With Black-owned businesses closing at twice the rate of other small businesses, every bit helps. This has been a Strome Business Minute, presented by the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University.

I’m Jeff Tanner, Dean of the Strome College of Business, and this is a Strome Business Minute. The Brookings Institute is publishing a weekly economic recovery matrix that reports a metro area’s performance across a dozen measures. For each measure, Brookings reports the actual value for that metro, color-coded by how it compares to other metros of a similar size. The measures include things like business closings, unemployment, commercial real estate vacancies, multifamily rent, and air travel. Our metro area is compared to 52 others with greater than one million in population. Compared to most in our class, we’re doing pretty well, much better than Richmond for example. We’re actually among the 5 strongest for variables like business travel, multifamily rent, and small business closings, and in the next tier for jobs change and job postings. Yes, things are down but much less than in other cities. This has been a Strome Business Minute, presented by the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University.