Where are the new Guitar Heroes?

The cigarette smoke slowly wafts above the heads of a few hundred teenagers in a shady bar off Beale Street in Memphis, TN. They are mesmerized by the hard blue's licks of the progenitor of Rock N Roll himself Chuck Berry. Your grandfather is one the in awe of Berry as he moves up and down the stage with his Gibson ES-335 and plays his way into Rock N Roll immortality. Chuck Berry Begot Clapton, Richards, Paige, and Hendrix. Men who seemed to have the ability of Berry, but on horse steroids. In the present day, some of the best guitarists of the present are slightly disappointing. One is some young punk named John Mayer and a guy in a knit cap named "the edge" who looks like a garbage man not a guitar hero. Needless to say it looks like we peaked musically.

Some would say our real estate has followed a similar arc. During the middle to late part of the 20th century, we had strong and steady growth in the United States. During the late 1990's and 2000's, our real estate industry started bulking up on the "juice". Easy money, bad loan standards, ridiculous home values . Now we've come down off that unsustainable high and are facing the hard facts. Things have changed a bit, and probably permanently. At the peak of the bubble there was nearly a 70 % home ownership rate. We will never be there again, and we probably wont even be within 200 basis points for a long time.

The problem with the recession is the idea that we will fill all the inventory and shadow inventory that is out there and it will be "allll good". There are millions of homes all over this country sitting vacant. With those homes, came millions of non performing loans and many more teething on the edge of that due to continuing tight economic times. The "high speed" among us in the industry and talking heads who actually know have figured it out. They've realized the "renting" class amongst us (the 20-34 year demographic) are running to apartments and are tepid about homeownership and not coming back for a long while. I have and many other have seen close relatives taking a beating of a lifetime on in their 401 k's and home values. The days of month after month of record home starts, easy to find equity, and generous mortgage officers is over.

Very pedestrian home starts, difficult financing, no sure things, and ever present threats of recession:we need to realize this is the "new normal" for residential and probably even office sectors--or, more eloquently put by one of my friends in the Marine Corps "Welcome to the Suck!"

I've realized this guy(yeah the guy eating the cell phone) may be the best guitarist of my generation and years to come. I'm not going to lie-- I still check out YouTube videos of zeppelin and The Stones... The good 'ol days indeed

-The Inside Associate