Coming to America, For Real Estate

Plus: Every step Zuck takes in the metaverse, they’re watching ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

March 3, 2023

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TOGETHER WITH

Good morning and happy Friday.

Getting your hands on the latest Girl Scout cookie is a little like trying to score a roll of toilet paper at the start of the pandemic.

The newly-added Raspberry Rally — sort of a fruity cousin of the Thin Mint — has sold out nationwide, a Girl Scout national rep confirmed to Axios. The cookies have hit the secondary market, with some boxes reportedly selling for $100. If you happen to know a lucky soul who scored a box of the new stuff, we kindly ask if we could… tagalong… whenever you get around to opening them.

Morning Brief

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They’re coming to America.

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Lawmakers are all over the infant metaverse.

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The IEA says we’re moving in the wrong direction.

Real Estate

Foreign Buyers Return to US Real Estate Market with Full Steam

Answer: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Brazil’s political turmoil, and China reopening.

Question: What’s the good news for America’s high-end real estate market?

A report from The Wall Street Journal found that foreign buyers, who all but disappeared during the COVID pandemic, are returning to the US and buying up a storm, keeping the cost of the US’ priciest homes just where realtors want them.

Got a Dream to Take Them There

Start with South America’s biggest economy. Stop us if you heard this one before: After a heated presidential election that saw the incumbent lose, thousands of his supporters stormed the capitol. Two years after it happened in the US, the same fate befell Brazil. But even months before the attempted palace coup in the name of former president Jair Bolsonaro, tensions were rife and some Brazlians wanted out. One Miami condo developer told the WSJ they’ve seen a 30% increase in Brazilian buyers since October.

In another part of the world, the ongoing Russian-Ukraine War and subsequent energy and food crises are prompting Europeans to look to America for a new start. That brings us to China. The Xi Jinping regime finally lifted its zero COVID policy after roughly three years of prodigiously zealous lockdowns, which limited the travel of Chinese nationals to the US, effectively shutting them out of the property market.

Keep in mind, we’re not talking about your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. These are fat cats. Prior to the pandemic, they planned to fill their real estate portfolios with second homes and pied-à-terres. The easing of COVID restrictions and socio-political affairs in their respective countries are just lighting a new fire underneath them:

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The Happening star Mark Wahlberg recently sold his gigantic Los Angeles mansion to a Chinese billionaire, the WSJ reported. In November, the property was listed for $87.5 million but sold for 37% less at $55 million — that’s what we’d call Marky Mark-to-market.

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Sebastian Steinau of the Corcoran Group told the WSJ he sold two Manhattan apartments priced at $3.975 million and $6.5 million at the Ritz-Carlton Residences in Nomad to buyers from Austria and Germany. He said the Austrian client feared the war but also just wanted to own more diverse properties.

“NYC condos trade at a lower price per foot compared to other major global cities like Hong Kong, Dubai, London, etc. Foreign buyers will always find NYC appealing,” Douglas Elliman broker Jessica Levine told The Daily Upside.

Test of Strength: The Corcoran Group reported a 25% increase in foreign visitors – mostly Chinese and Middle Eastern – to their properties in January 2023 compared to the same time last year. Levine said the increased interest among international buyers in the US is partly because of a relatively weak dollar compared to the fourth quarter. Last year, the USD reached a 20-year high, but now investors are saying this could be the start of a multi-year-decline for the currency as Federal Reserve rate hikes slow.

– Griffin Kelly

Tech

Lawmakers Are Circling the Metaverse

(Photo credit: Maurizio Pesce/Flickr)

When Mark Zuckerberg built his $450 billion social media empire, he got to do it his way. The metaverse will be different.

Two US Senators sent a letter to Meta on Thursday demanding the tech giant scrap its plans to throw its metaverse app Horizon Worlds open to children 13 and upwards. Simultaneously, EU Big Tech antitrust hawk Margrethe Vestager announced she’s keeping her Danish eye on the metaverse from the get-go.

The Zuckerberg Cinematic Metaverse

In other words, Meta won’t be building the metaverse away from prying eyes, as was the case with Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. And lawmakers will be quick to pounce. Don’t be surprised if Zuck ends up sending just his avatar the next time Congress summons him.

Meta actually won its first bout with antitrust regulators, fending off a 2022 lawsuit from FTC chair Lina Khan to block its acquisition of VR exercise startup Within. But today hating on Meta is one of the few things politicians on both sides of the aisle can agree on:

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In their letter to Meta senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal said Meta holds a “record of failure to protect children and teens.”

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This casts a dark cloud over a major growth strategy for Meta: The Wall Street Journal reported in February the company was turning to teens in an effort to boost Horizon Worlds’ lackluster user numbers.

Meta also can’t afford to tune out antitrust regulators just because it’s won one battle. Vestager said at a conference on Thursday regulators must be swift to act so new technologies don’t race ahead of enforcement. “Sometimes we should allow ourselves to be bold, in order to be sure that we are up to the challenge,” she said.

Clouds Over Africa: Nor are Meta’s antitrust problems limited to the US and Europe. An international coalition of competition regulators from over 21 African countries came together on Thursday to announce they’ll collaborate on investigating a broad swathe of business practices by Big Tech companies on the continent. For Meta, which recently tried and failed to extricate itself from a court case in Nairobi brought by a former moderator over working conditions, the hits keep coming.

– Isobel Asher Hamilton

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Energy

Carbon Emissions Increased Last Year, But Only Barely

We won’t sugarcoat it: carbon emissions didn’t just increase last year, they hit a record high. That’s bad.

The less-bad news is that emissions didn’t reach the noxious heights many experts had expected, according to the latest report from the International Energy Agency.

It’s Getting Easier Being Green

There was plenty of reason to expect a much higher output of planet-choking emissions last year, given the ripe conditions for not-so-clean energy consumption spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the attendant energy crisis rippling out from Europe. Notably, nations all across the Old World continent were forced to return to the dirtiest, most Dickensian fuel source of them all: coal. That ignited an all-too-literal smoke signal for climate experts that 2022 would mark a significant step in the wrong direction for global efforts to reduce emissions.

And emissions did indeed inch up, to 36.7 billion tons last year, around a 1% increase from 2021. But concurrent with the coal revival was a massive investment in green energy, cushioning the blow of the high carbon output:

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Despite the increased reliance on coal last year in the EU (at one point reaching 22% of all energy use), the region actually saw a 2.5% decrease in emissions thanks to record levels of renewable energy, according to the IEA.

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The 1% growth rate of the bad stuff is far lower than 2021’s 6%, while renewable energy sources were behind 90% of the year’s increase in electricity generation. Solar and wind power also hit record highs, the IEA found.

We’re Number Two: China held its annual top spot as the world’s top polluter, though (likely due to lockdown), emissions decreased slightly last year. Meanwhile the US, the second-largest emitter, saw emissions rise nearly 1% — likely due to extreme weather conditions driven by climate change. We’re still looking for the silver lining in those frighteningly frequent hundred-year storm clouds.

– Brian Boyle

Extra Upside

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Big Brother: Amazon truck surveillance won’t let drivers sip coffee on the road.

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Human Battery: Father of the cell phone says people will one day have phones under our skin.

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