BiggerPockets Daily BiggerPockets

HBO’s seminal series The Wire put Baltimore’s plight on the map, with crime and urban blight running amok. Now, 16 years after that show ended, it seems little has changed from the city it depicted. The situation has become so desperate that the city is selling off dilapidated buildings for f $1. However, before you dig out the loose change in your pocket to snag a townhouse, remember there are caveats.
There were almost 15,000 abandoned homes in Baltimore as of 2022, blighting the landscape, and Mayor Brandon Scott—as first reported in Bloomberg—is offering up 200 of them virtually free to encourage investors to help transform the beleaguered city. It echoes an initiative that helped change Baltimore in the 1970s. 
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Why rent when you can buy? Luxury retailers are booming and using their extra cash to buy up highly coveted retail spaces across the U.S. and Europe. 
Prada bought the building where its Fifth Avenue store is located for $425 million, while LVMH is said to be in talks to purchase the building where Bergdorf Goodman, a men’s store, is located. 
Meanwhile, Gucci and Balenciaga’s parent company, Kering, bought a property on Fifth Avenue for $963 million, expanding its real estate portfolio, which already includes landmark properties in Paris and Tokyo.
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Home foreclosures are on the rise. Is this the start of a housing collapse and the buying bonanza for real estate investors touted for the last two years, or a mere blip? 
Foreclosure rates have steadily risen since interest rates increased in conjunction with the home affordability crisis. According to Redfin, only 15.5% of U.S. home listings were accessible financially to U.S. households in 2023. This has led to an 8% increase in foreclosure filings, according to a new report by data company ATTOM.
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On any given day, depending on who you ask, we are either years away from the faintest possibility of a recession or about to enter one. Economists have made several dizzying U-turns in their predictions over the past couple of years, with the latest narrative claiming a recession is highly unlikely in 2024 and subsequent years. 
That’s a stark change in tone from only a year ago. A poll of 70 economists by The Wall Street Journal in January 2023 put the odds of a recession at 61%.
Yet at least one independent economist, James F. Smith, dissented and put the odds of a recession at a minuscule 1%. We already know who was right in 2023, but what was the reasoning behind the confident 1% prognosis?
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The location (city) where you invest is your most important investment decision, not the properties themselves.
Why?
The goal of real estate investing is financial independence. But financial independence isn’t just replacing your current income. It’s about having the necessary funds to maintain your present lifestyle throughout your lifetime. 
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After multiple lawsuits, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has agreed to a settlement with home sellers amounting to a payment of $418 million and a few monumental rule changes for multiple listing services (MLS) and how real estate agents conduct business. The changes will go into effect in July. This has led to an array of responses within the real estate industry, from panic and complete reworking of real estate practices to others claiming it’s no big deal and business as usual. 

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