@ianforbes
Prosperity in the information age, economics + built environment. Tinkering @btchpiuk
No relay list published yet.
Recent Notes
London flats are trending on the bird app.
In 2023 I wrote an article exploring the defects of investment property as a store of value.
I referenced a 2 bed in Old Street, EC1V. Asking price £1.4m.
Three years on, it's still listed on The Modern House.
Asking price now £985k - down ~30%. 😬
In 2023 I wrote an article exploring the defects of investment property as a store of value.
I referenced a 2 bed in Old Street, EC1V. Asking price £1.4m.
Three years on, it's still listed on The Modern House.
Asking price now £985k - down ~30%. 😬
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"Buy land. They're not making it anymore."
A mantra that has been circling for over a century.
The Earth's surface is finite; title to land is a claim on a fixed physical stock.
Debt-based currency is a claim on a mutable ledger; the supply can be increased, and in practice it grows as new loans are made.
The mantra is silent on a productive use for the land. It's just a trade: abundant credit for scarce ground. That mindset, ingrained across generations, has built a monetary premium into property.
How large is hard to measure, but land, and everything built on it, costs more because it plays two roles at once: a store of wealth and a place of use.
Savills values global real estate at $393 trillion and calls it the world’s largest store of wealth.
That valuation doesn't sit in the abstract. Think about our cities: trillions are baked into the places that we live and work. As long as the built environment is a savings vault as well as the setting for human activity, we have an incentive problem.
Real estate as a store of wealth needs scarcity, rising prices, and more credit chasing the same places. Nearly every balance sheet — from individuals and organisations to governments — is aligned with sustaining that monetary premium.
The housing crisis is debated as a supply problem, a shortage of homes. The answer, we're told, is to plan, permit, and build more. Supply matters. What gets less airtime is demand for a store of wealth. Credit created against property is demand, and it grows faster than the supply of homes.
There's a structural conflict. Build enough to bring prices down and you threaten the monetary premium. How many of the people who plan, permit, and build are exposed to the very asset they're asked to make cheaper? The prosperity of those who already own is the affordability problem of those who don't.
Unless we separate store of wealth from place of use, affordability stays a permanent emergency.
A mantra that has been circling for over a century.
The Earth's surface is finite; title to land is a claim on a fixed physical stock.
Debt-based currency is a claim on a mutable ledger; the supply can be increased, and in practice it grows as new loans are made.
The mantra is silent on a productive use for the land. It's just a trade: abundant credit for scarce ground. That mindset, ingrained across generations, has built a monetary premium into property.
How large is hard to measure, but land, and everything built on it, costs more because it plays two roles at once: a store of wealth and a place of use.
Savills values global real estate at $393 trillion and calls it the world’s largest store of wealth.
That valuation doesn't sit in the abstract. Think about our cities: trillions are baked into the places that we live and work. As long as the built environment is a savings vault as well as the setting for human activity, we have an incentive problem.
Real estate as a store of wealth needs scarcity, rising prices, and more credit chasing the same places. Nearly every balance sheet — from individuals and organisations to governments — is aligned with sustaining that monetary premium.
The housing crisis is debated as a supply problem, a shortage of homes. The answer, we're told, is to plan, permit, and build more. Supply matters. What gets less airtime is demand for a store of wealth. Credit created against property is demand, and it grows faster than the supply of homes.
There's a structural conflict. Build enough to bring prices down and you threaten the monetary premium. How many of the people who plan, permit, and build are exposed to the very asset they're asked to make cheaper? The prosperity of those who already own is the affordability problem of those who don't.
Unless we separate store of wealth from place of use, affordability stays a permanent emergency.
Talk to most people about the future of money and you realise they’ve never once asked what money actually is, or how it works.
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Baker in Sheffield gets it #inflation
Seeing more and more websites and charts that feel fresh out of Claude. There’s a definite “Claude look”.
Just like how paragraphs full of em dashes used to quietly signal ChatGPT.
AI tools have fingerprints.
Just like how paragraphs full of em dashes used to quietly signal ChatGPT.
AI tools have fingerprints.
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Sunday evening sounds like
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3F278cwkRrUqsGIi3t4lGL?si=rtLNcG5lTU2netJrvttDaA&pi=PiTpm5ecRN-LC
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3F278cwkRrUqsGIi3t4lGL?si=rtLNcG5lTU2netJrvttDaA&pi=PiTpm5ecRN-LC
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Life hack for the coffee heads.
Save your V60 paper w used grinds for the shower, very nice natural exfoliant.
Save your V60 paper w used grinds for the shower, very nice natural exfoliant.
Barista knows I’m bearish
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