Bank Earnings, Why Consumers Are 'Roughed Up' & Real Estate Trends

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1:08This is the Bloomberg Money Podcast. I'm Tom Keen with Scarlet Fu. Join us each week for a smart look at the forces shaping your financial life on personal finance, on retirement, and wealth management. We will explore how people are earning, investing, and building wealth. We are live Fridays at noon Eastern on Bloomberg Television. Subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. And as always, on the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business App.

1:50Good noon, everyone. Bloomberg Money. It's on personal finance. It's on retirement. Wealth management. We're going to talk about that today after those bank earnings. This week, Tom Keen, Scarlet Fu. Good afternoon. I mean, my head is swirling here. And it just is a grounding center. Gloom, fear, that. Apple is still, as we go to air here, a$5 trillion company. Well, thanks to the Foldable phone, if you want to order that. Are you getting one? No, I'm not. I'm going to wait. I'm not a first adopter. We stop right now. We halt the show because the first person I know that will get the foldable iPhone is Sreena Narajan.

2:21Come on, Sreena. Are you going to get the foldable iPhone? If it was a flip phone, yes, not the Foldable. There we go. Okay. Well, there we're in. Sri will join us here on Wealth Management here in a moment. It's a wonderful show. Scarlett's going to tell you the important part of the show on real estate. Thomas Purcelli will join us. He's chief economist at Wells Fargo. He is the number one guy I know on wage growth or lack thereof. Tom Purcelli will tell us about the state of the American worker. And in the age of 7.5 % mortgages, we take aim at the challenges of home purchases. With a one-two punch, we've got Jonathan Miller, who co-founded his own appraisal and valuation firm and best friedman CEO of Brown Harris Stevens.

3:00Do you think they're on speaking terms? I hope so. I hope so. We'll have to see a wonderful Bloomberg set of conversations after a busy week. Sri Natharajan, wonderful to have him for the first time on the show. Yes, the banks, the big banks, but we're going to talk wealth management with Sri. Stacey Vanek-Smith will join us. She's done the math on your next Social Security check, or will you get one out there? I guess Jack Lew says like 2032. Well, for people, yeah, who are going to get Social Security after 2030, that's a big question. But if you get it down, you're good. I want to give you a vignette into how Bloomberg works.

3:33We're going to air. The control room is all steeled up. And we're talking flag football between the Chargers and the Eagles. That's right. Prospect Park this weekend. It's been rained out weekend after weekend. Do you have orange slices? There'll be orange slices. There'll be orange slices. Gatorade, cooler of Gatorade. We'll be ready. Let's jump into it right now, Sri. I want to focus on what Bloomberg Money does, which is wealth management. It's usually underplayed when the earnings come out. It's a boom economy, isn't it? Yes, but right now you've got me feeling nostalgic about my old Motorola flip phone, Tom, I have to say.

4:04John Tucker's still using that one. That's a different story. Tell me about wealth management. Tell me about Morgan Stanley leading the way. That's the big story for me through this quarter. You know, you look at the numbers. If you go back to the summer, you talk about the SpaceX IPO back in June. And we talked about the$500 million in fees for the banks that were leading that IPO offering. But that was just the start. This quarter, Morgan Stanley reported$232 billion in net new assets. What was the analyst estimate? $111 billion, more than double what analysts had been expecting. And that was largely driven from flows coming from these IPOs as people were getting this public stock.

4:42That got deposited in account. That's a big deal for a firm like Morgan Stanley. Is wealth management in the future out five years, out 10 years, is it like the money machine? Is it a profit machine or is it narrow margins like, say, ETF fees? At Morgan Stanley, the pre-tax margin is 30%. 3-0. 3-0. On wealth management. On wealth management. We're in the wrong business. And it's steady revenue, too. That's the other thing. Steady revenue. You don't have to think about the future. It is. We're already there. If you think about the transformation of Morgan Stanley, what has happened to that bank since the depth of the financial crisis in 2008?

5:14how James Gorman transformed it and how Tetpik is carrying it forward. Wealth management is certainly a big piece of that bank. And it's an integrated operation that works very closely with the success of its investment bank. All right. So that's one side of the economy and what people are seeing. This week, we also got indication that inflation continues to run pretty hot, meaning it's rising faster than expected, Stacey. And I know you've been looking at different angles of this. Yes. So obviously, we've got inflation numbers, inflation up 3.7 percent across the economy. But in a lot of places, much higher.

5:46Gas prices up 34 % over last year. Now, Social Security payments did get a bump. So starting on December 31st, payments will be up by about 3.6%. So almost keeping up with inflation, but just not quite. That'll be an average of$75 per month. So people are going to be getting a little extra money if they're on Social Security, but not keeping up with expenses. Scarlett, this brilliantly shows the two Americas. is he's talking fancy people buying 6 ,000 square feet on Fifth Avenue. We'll do that in the back half of the show. And Stacey's talking about people waiting for the check because that's all they got.

6:22And the Beige Book, which is the Fed's regional assessment of how things are going, indicates that businesses report consumers also holding back, too. Yeah, that was really interesting. I like the Beige Book. It's a lot of stories from different business owners. We like stories. It's a great—I love the Beige Book. But there were just a lot of shop owners reporting that people, they had the same number of customers, but people were buying less. They were cutting back. They were flinching at prices. And so far, the American consumers held out so admirably. But if that starts to crack, that could really be trouble.

6:53And, of course, that all plays into how people feel as we head closer to the midterm elections, David. There's a lot of, I don't want to call it interference, but it feels like it's a normal thing now, of Russia using bots to push these fake election videos to get people angry. I know. Well, it was expected, Stephanie Baker, our colleague in London, has done amazing reporting here, looking at what is being pushed out by these Russian bot farms. And what we're seeing this time around are videos that look like they're legitimate from an American news agency, but using AI, are saying really outlandish and off-the-wall things.

7:24And on top of that, we're seeing these bot farms kind of pushing them out so that it seems like they're getting a lot of views as well. Look, we've heard many members of the intelligence community in this administration and from before warning that this might happen. And I think as we get to two weeks out from these midterms, the fear is what influence, what is this going to do to elect the soil? Where do we see those bots? Where do I see those? On Instagram, on TikTok. I mean, they're cropping up in the same places. Twitter as well. And so there's a lot of happy talk from Twitter's current leadership.

7:49They're trying to cull it. But it's a very difficult thing to fight. Do the Democrats have an Elon Musk? No, not in the same way. But you look at the money that we've seen Elon Musk spending here. It dwarfs what George Soros, for instance, other big Democratic donors have spent. So we're seeing it go in one direction. That is more and more money in each of these election cycles. Elon Musk, far and away, the biggest donor here. Yes, there are Democratic donors who spend a lot of money, but they are outmatched, broadly speaking, when you compare Democrats to Republicans. Democrats are still very much lagging Republicans.

8:17The bots spread all kinds of speculation and rumors about where James Tallarico had been prior to showing up. Yes, he made five payments to OnlyFans that he had been. Anyway, all of this stuff is, to somebody who follows the news closely, patently false. But again, this kind of veneer, this patina of legitimacy makes it seem like, indeed, maybe this is a report from ABC News. What's your biggest mystery to Election Day right now? Is it Senate, House, governors? Is it in the game that you live? What's the biggest mystery? I think it's the Senate, because you detect the enthusiasm among many Democrats that there is a possibility that it could change in terms of leadership.

8:51Right. Obviously, that's going to be a harder hill for Democrats to climb here. But that's the mystery. The House seems like a foregone conclusion because of how few seats Democrats need to win. it would be a sea change were they to get control of the Senate as well. A sea change here coming out of COVID, and this is to the leadership of Srinath Rajan with Bloomberg News. The profitability of the banks as a whole. Do we understand just how big they are? I'm not quite sure we do because I just ran the numbers in the last 10 years. 10 years ago, the big six U.S. banks' combined profitability was$86 billion.

9:23At the end of 2026, we're going to get within kissing distance of$200 billion. That has been massive growth. They've been able to expand their margins. Revenue growth has been there. And at the end of the day, the banks are not really the drivers of anything on their own. They are a proxy for consumer health. They're a proxy for corporate health. And they're a proxy for market activity. And all those three fronts have been going great for the banks. In the grind that you do, where will we be in five years between the traditional asset gatherers, Schwab, Fidelity, and Vanguard, the rest of them, and those big banks?

9:58Where do you see that mix in five years? You have to wonder and you have to assume that there's going to be a shift because as we were coming out of 2020, that was the grand period of envy when you talked to bankers and you talked about what they were looking at. and they were looking at that golden era for private market firms, the private investment giants. Now we move back to the Wall Street circle. We've got to stop the show here. I feel like I'm dealing with Francine Lacroix. Gurry shows up with an espresso at 12 noon. Give us a close-up. It's just too much. It is. It's very London. I don't know.

10:33I've had a latte already. I've too much milk. You've been up early. I've been up early. I've got to be ready for this show. I'm on my third Sanka. I just got amped up by watching the Tesla Road. roadster do aerial flips. That was my thing. When cars fly. What are you going to do with a car that does a backflip? Well, don't worry. We're not going to have access. It's only in that very contained environment. There you go. All right. Thank you to everyone joining us today. We want to thank our chief Wall Street correspondent, Srinatharajan, Stacey Vanek-Smith, host of the Everybody's Business podcast, and of course, David Gura, co-host of Bloomberg this weekend.

11:09Coming up on Bloomberg Money, Tom Porcelli, chief economist at Wells Fargo. We're going to talk wages and how consumers are navigating rising prices. This is Bloomberg Money. You're listening to Bloomberg Money. Stay with us with more to come after this. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask Chat to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals.

11:49It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started at ChatGPT.com. The world of business is constantly evolving. Every day, new challenges, new opportunities, new ways of working. Comcast Business keeps you totally in step with secure AI-backed networking built to power the way modern business gets things done today in more than 100 countries around the world. That's some serious muscle. And get this, Comcast Business powers over 90 % of the Fortune 500 and millions of small businesses.

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13:02Bloomberg Money, good afternoon to you on Wealth Manager Retirement and on the wages to come. We're going to dive into it here in a moment. What was your observation this week among the different shows you do, the ETF show and such? I mean, it's a nuts week. It was a nuts week. The chip sell-off has gathered steam. And it's a ton of week for anyone who's long tech, which is basically all of us. I was understanding CoreWeave is 550 employees. The way we're talking about it, I would have thought it was 20 ,000 employees. And one analyst says the stock could go to zero. Well, we'll have to see on that.

13:34The raging debate out there. Ed Ludlow with leadership at Bloomberg Technology. This is a joy. There's a moment where economists become famous. And for Tom Purcelli years ago, it was sterling analysis of your paycheck, and it adjusted for inflation. He's chief economist at Wells Fargo. How bad is the real wage right now? I'm going to put the chart up in a minute, but just give us the update. Are we making any money here after inflation? Well, first of all, thank you for that lovely introduction. Very appreciated. And I love the format of the show. I think it's fantastic. So good luck with it. I think it looks like you guys are a question.

14:10We're not on speaking terms, but move on. Yeah, look, I think that the consumer right now, from a real wage perspective, it's obviously looking pretty rough for them at this juncture. And so whether you look at ECI, which I think you're going to pull up a chart of that, or you look at just something even more simple like, I don't know, real average hourly earnings, it doesn't really matter. We're behind inflation. I mean, the consumer is really struggling from a real earnings perspective. And the truth is, and we should talk about this more, but the truth is, I don't really see that going away imminently.

14:43Let me bring up the chart here. This is back to 2001. So it's a quarter of a century chart. And this is Porcelli. This is the ECI index, which is wages and benefits. It's a little bit fancier paycheck than hourly wages. And what's so important there, folks, is the good news before COVID. We had a positive real wage and then COVID and the noise and all that. And then there was a nice rebound. And Tom, you're saying this negative raise, the red circle could continue. Yeah. And so and what what everyone should know is what what they're looking at there in that chart. That's ECI, which includes everything.

15:19Right. It's not just wages. It's also benefits. If you just did the wages part of ECI, it looks meaningfully worse. In fact, it's in negative territory. So, again, I think that's a really important caveat to what people see, because what I would tell you is that it's actually worse than that chart. How well does anyone understand how much inflation, higher prices influence behavior like consumer spending? For instance, my 15-year-old dishwasher now leaks water when it's running a cycle. So I could either pay a plumber, like, what,$300 to diagnose and repair, or spend at least$800 to buy a new one.

15:52It makes more sense for me to buy a new one before prices go up even higher. But I may just end up not doing anything and trying to get a used one off Facebook Marketplace. I think this is a really important idea. Because as much as I can tell you that real wages are really sort of struggling here, the reality is there's still a wealth effect in place. right? The reality is people still look at their 401k statements when they come in, or their investment accounts when they come in, and they see that they're looking pretty positive. And that wealth effect, I think, is really emboldening people to basically feel comfortable dipping into saving to the extent that they are.

16:28And that, to me, is, I think, again, a really important part of the story. Because, you know, if the one side of your balance sheet is looking pretty good, right, whether you're sitting on a house, whether you're sitting on a 401k, or, or again, any investment account, the truth is for most people, that's what's encouraging them to continue to go out and spend. And that's why we actually, it's funny, when we think about like our consumption forecast, I can tell you that beneath the surface, the consumer is looking, again, a little roughed up. But it doesn't change our consumption forecast because the consumer is still feeling pretty good on wealth effect.

17:00I look here, Tom, and this is the heritage of Wells Fargo economics, Jay Bryson and John Sylvia from decades ago. Brilliant analysis of how Americans used to move around. We used to look over the horizon. The cliche go west, or at least go down to Key West. But I look, Tom, where we are in the research I've seen for years at Wells Fargo, we've become a more static America. We're not moving, right? Absolutely right. And, you know, you can see that in a, I mean, if you want to just sort of zoom out and look at it in more aggregate sense, you could look at something like the quit rate. I mean, the quit rate is one, nine, two percent.

17:38I mean, you have to go back to 2015 to see a lower quit rate. And what's interesting about 2015, I mean, I know that just sounds like a random number. It's not that random. I mean, think about what was happening in 2015. I mean, that was the jobless recovery. And so we're back to there. So it's not like people are feeling very comfortable. When the labor market's doing fairly well, in fact. Yeah, well, I think that that's part of the point, right? Like, I don't know how, I don't know if the labor market is doing nearly as well as, you know, something by look, if you're just simply looking at the unemployment rate, I don't think that's the right way of really capturing the sort of the underlying essence of what's happening in the labor market.

18:11I think, you know, you have to look at this sort of the degree of confidence towards labor. And you can see that there's not a ton of confidence and that shows up in the quit rate or something like the labor differential. And that is, I think, really acting as a sort of a ceiling. How much does the data reflect the reality of how people work now, which is some people have a full-time job where they get a W-2, but other people are putting together lots of gigs and hustling their way to some kind of paycheck? Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, that is a huge part of the labor backdrop today. I mean, that's an inescapable truth.

18:41And look, at the end of the day, the unemployment rate is still relatively low, right? I mean, it's between 4 % and 4.5%, which has been the case now for the last year or so. So labor is generally okay. I just don't think it's nearly as good as a lot of people would think if you're just looking at the unemployment rate. I want to get you back here. But, Tom, I want to talk about retirement, the struggle in America. We've got this huge number of halves. Best Friedman is going to be on from Brown Harris Stevens. Thanks, Luigi, for that. By Friday, my brain is just gone. I know. I hear you. Do you understand?

19:20You can bond with me on this. Absolutely. I'm glad you like that, Susan. I look, Tom, where we are, and we've got to get to retirement. Yes. Peter Orszag sitting in his chair last week. A huge body of America can't get to retirement, can they? Yeah, look, I think that that is going to be the persistent challenge, I think, for quite a number of folks. You know, the reality is, and we just did this work, actually, in a note, which hopefully you're both getting that. We'll get on the mailing list. Please, just let me know. I don't open my emails. Continue. I'll get you at it. And what we showed is that more and more people are actually relying on investment income, more so than wage income.

20:05There's this transition that's happening right now. And what that means is that you're more at the mercy of what happens from a market perspective. That's an interesting thing, particularly as you think about retirement. Especially as a record 58 % of all U.S. households are now exposed to the stock market as opposed to before. Yes, that's exactly right. Tom, I know you spend a lot of your time thinking about and writing about employment, inflation. What would surprise other people about how you approach managing your own finances? Oh, gosh. I think that they would probably be surprised to learn that I'm incredibly hands-off.

20:36I just sort of set it and leave it. I really don't touch it all that much. Do you, like, rip open your statements when they come in? I don't. I don't know what that says about me exactly, but no, I'm very comfortable knowing that my time horizon is sufficient where I'm not all that bothered by, you know, sort of market swings. If my macro view really lines up with, hey, by the way, we're about to go into a very rough patch, I'll make some adjustments. But otherwise, I'm just sort of, you know, set it and let it go. Our listeners and viewers are opening their monthly statements and they're seeing price down and fixed income.

21:09Is that something we need to get used to? Yeah. You know, we've been talking about this for quite some time now. I think the rise in yields is real. I think there's a new floor underneath yields. And I think what people have to keep in mind, because it's very easy, and this is especially true for, I think, a lot of equity investors. I think sometimes I'm really worried about this, I think, more than most. What you have to keep in mind is yields rising in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's the reason, right? It's the reason that matters. And if yields are rising for good reasons, then I think it's OK.

21:38I think most of the rise has been for good reasons, even though it's been a lot of quirks. OK, then there's all the existential crisis kind of questions about national debt. Tom, thank you so much. Tom Porcelli, chief economist at Wells Fargo. More to come on Bloomberg Money with Jonathan Miller and Bess Friedman. You're listening to Bloomberg Money. Stay with us with more to come after this.

22:27template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started at chatgpt.com. The world of business is constantly evolving. Every day, new challenges, new opportunities, new ways of working. Comcast Business keeps you totally in step with secure AI-backed networking built to power the way modern business gets things done today in more than 100 countries around the world. That's some serious muscle. And get this, Comcast business powers over 90 % of the Fortune 500 and millions of small businesses.

23:06Behind it all, network engineers, cybersecurity specialists, support teams, thousands of experts answering your call at 2am like it's 2pm. Always on, always ready. That's a lot of coffee. One partner powering how business This gets done for companies of every size all around the globe. When you add it all up, no one does business like Comcast business.

23:37Bloomberg Money, good afternoon. Yes, the fish are real. They were not fake. It's not AI. CoreWeave didn't do that or Oracle or the rest of them as well. Bloomberg Money here on a Friday after sort of like a kind of like an exhausting week. It has been. And for the tech stocks, it continues to be. I'm looking at eight straight days of losses for chip companies. Remember when they were the high flyers? Yeah, like three weeks ago. Not so long ago. Fortunately, I'm a long-term six-week record here. All right, Bloomberg Money is your new destination for personal finance. It's a cross-platform effort that extends beyond your television screen, including our new digital hub at Bloomberg.com slash money.

24:13And, Tom, this week we had a story about how 7 % mortgage rates have hit the U.S. housing market. It's actually more than 7 % now. And those rates have sent pending home sales tumbling to near 12-year lows. So it's having an impact on the numbers. The housing market has really slowed down. It's really slowed down, but I wonder after talking to Sreena Adarajan about it, how it's slowed down in certain climes of Wall Street as well. Eight ways to go with Jonathan Miller. He's co-founder of Miller Samuel. Far more than that in this nation, he is the definitive statistical voice on what's happening to your renting, what's happening to your home ownership.

24:51I was going to start with Seattle, but I got to rip up the script after Srinath Arajan was with us here. How do you see in real estate the Wall Street boom that's out there right now? Is it simplistically just the Hamptons? Is it Bess Friedman coming up in a bit? Her Fifth Avenue? Where does all that Wall Street money go in the Jonathan Miller world? Well, it goes to the upper half or upper third of the housing market. The lower you go in price, the more dependent consumers are on mortgage rates. Equity drawdowns are fueling a tremendous strength in the luxury market. New York Metro, the West Coast, certain markets really is the story.

25:31And I think we're overly obsessed with mortgage rates as sort of the determinant of health of the housing market. I think the biggest issue with mortgage rates is if they stabilize, I think that there's a lot of people, I call it, they're basically procrastinating to make a decision because they can't get their arms around the current rate because five minutes later it's going up or changing. Consumers need time to sort of get comfortable and there's been sort of too much information flowing out. What I love about your work is you not only show San Francisco's mental up-up, AI, and all that. I mean, the starter homes are like half a million to a million dollars.

26:14You can't get a starter home. Yeah, there's no starter home. That's right. But just north, Seattle's really struggling. Jonathan Miller and Miller Samuel here on Seattle. Seattle is not San Francisco. There's tech unemployment, uncertainty. There's layoffs, fewer job-driven relocations, and less confidence among workers who still have jobs. And then you list the name of the companies as well. Are there a lot of Seattles out there? There are. It's starting to, you're starting to break out and see that. What's really interesting is that you can't sort of pigeonhole a tech location as sort of with the AI boom as being sort of safe.

26:55You look at San Francisco was this dire, you know, downturn. You know, the tech sector was really weak. Housing prices were falling. Now we have the tech sector in the last couple of years switching to AI, but that's not happening in Seattle. So it's very market dependent. Now we're seeing housing prices in San Francisco up about 20 percent over the last year, which is incredible. San Francisco or San Francisco suburbs by Silicon Valley? Both. And what's really interesting is that Oakland across the Bay Bridge is sort of, I see that as the Brooklyn of San Francisco, really saw declining housing prices for two or three years.

27:37Now we're starting, I think, seeing a San Francisco spillover where the jobs, the suit for affordable housing is pushing prices up again. So our understanding of all these different specific markets, a lot of it comes from social media, from whatever people who live there or who talk about places there portrayed in the narrative that they tell. How has social media, the TikToks, Instagrams, YouTube shorts, changed the way people think about how to transact in this housing market? Well, I think social media, at least my feed, when I look at the information coming at me, you get the impression that every market in America is flooded with supply.

28:14And if you really look at it regionally, the Northeast, the Midwest is devoid of supply. You look at the Sunbelt actually has the most supply, but it's not as much as, you know, that sort of has stopped the inventory growth. And the West is somewhere in between. So it's a really mixed bag. But inventory is the most important metric in housing right now and has been coming out of the pandemic. There seems to be, Jonathan Miller, in the arc of your career, a society, cross-generation, giving up on home ownership. Are we becoming like Europe, where there's just a dominant idea we're going to rent and never own?

28:55I guess the short answer to that is absolutely not. I don't think that. I think the problem is we're in a sort of a short-term environment where we have this heavy burden caused by higher rates, which largely is an economic unforced error. And I think, you know, this sort of ends. The problem is the chaos. It's less about the rate itself. Rates are 7.5%. That's not some crazy high number. It's just relative to the pandemic, where I believe the Fed kept rates too low for too long. Let's talk about the costs of housing ownership overall, because it's not just high mortgage rates. It's not just high prices for the homes overall.

29:39You also have high property taxes and high insurance costs. And a lot of cities and states are now looking into cutting property taxes because they know that that's a pain point for a lot of people. Especially Florida. Especially Florida. How does that all play out? Because something's got to give, and services are going to go by the wayside. You're not going to get your garbage picked up. How do you get that idea across to people? Yeah, first of all, it's very weird to cut or remove property taxes when they pay for police and fire and EMT, maybe a little bit of school. That's all going to be paid out of some other location.

30:14So, you know, maybe property taxes go down, but essentially local governments lose control of how the property taxes are spent and it becomes centralized where, you know, a municipality has to go to, say, Tallahassee in Florida and sort of beg for their share of the pie as opposed to a local government actually. The mayor of Tallahassee or the mayor of New York City, what's your number one advice to them to fix, solve this national headache? Well, I think we're actually seeing some of that here in New York. There's been a lot of fear-mongering about New York and people fleeing the city, you know, taxes.

30:54Are we? No. We're actually not seeing it in the data at all. We're not seeing people fleeing the city. And I guess, you know, as my grandfather told me when I was a kid growing up in D.C., if you're not working in New York, then you're just camping out. Scarlett, is this another reason that Jalen is God? We're not leaving. Jalen's God for so many reasons. We can't even begin to list them. Let's talk a little bit about the Northeast, because I think about extreme weather as well and how that's become, I don't know, makes certain places uninhabitable in many ways. You think about, for instance, the northern coast of Long Island or Connecticut, where they had a lot of extreme flooding.

31:35How does that change evaluation of what used to be fairly desirable regions that were always in demand? So right now, there's no recognition of sort of flood zone risk. And, you know, that's going to be a problem in 30 years, maybe not immediately. But actually, what you're seeing is in areas that are sort of constantly threatened by flooding, we're actually seeing in these markets like in Long Island, especially the south shore of Long Island, that these locations that were formerly middle-class waterfront type locations, the lots are being doubled down, and it's luxury housing. John, I need advice.

32:16Bess Friedman's coming on. She has$36 million up Fifth Avenue. The monthly maintenance fee for the guy standing out front is$24 ,396. That's almost like a Knicks ticket. I think that's real money, right? That's real money. That's a month's salary. I mean, someone's annual salary. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure. Really appreciate it. Jonathan Miller is co-founder of Miller Samuel.

32:49This hour on Bloomberg Money, we are talking about real estate. Bess Friedman, CEO Brown Harris-Stevens, is with us. Bess, how is business right now? Are people actually going in and wanting to buy or sell, or are they just kind of forever looking? Well, the market is actually really strong in New York City, particularly at the high end of the market. That business is really good, stronger than last year. But if you look at Wall Street, it's supposed to make something like$90 billion this year, and bonuses are going to be something like$60 billion approximately. So, you know, the rich keep getting richer, and we have this sort of tale of two different markets where discretionary spending is up, and then we're in an affordability crisis on the other front, which you guys talked about a little bit with Jonathan Miller.

33:31So when you look at mortgage rates at these current levels, almost 7.5%, and mortgage rates affects the high-income buyer and the low-income buyer just as much. What is the psychology of sellers versus buyers now when you have mortgage rates at 7.5 %? You know, it depends. So last year in New York City, 65 % of the deals were done without a mortgage. They were cash. So that's a little bit different. Most Americans get a mortgage. And so, you know, rates are still historically pretty low, but people are still adjusting. And the real issue, as Jonathan said, is supply. We are five million homes in deficit in the United States of America.

34:07My parents bought a home when they were in their 20s. I bought a home when I was in my 30s. And I bet my kids are going to buy a home when they're in their 40s. Or never buy one. Or never buy one. And the American dream is being, you know, running past us. Your magic in the grind of real estate is you started out reading real estate articles at Ithaca College a million years ago. Ithaca College, like any other college town with a number of universities, is an absolute outrage of housing non-affordability. That's right. I mean, let's take Ithaca as a microcosm of what needs to be done. Why can't we do it like our grandparents and build houses?

34:41Well, the challenge is state and local. You have to get past the legislators and you need to change the zoning. Like Mayor Adams was successful in getting the city of yes passed and we got more zoning in New York City. We need more people that are willing to communicate and work together. It shouldn't be what flag you wave. We should just vote for good policies. And we have the midterms coming up and people are thinking about the economy. But every politician should be talking about housing affordability. How do we get more supply in the market? Those are the most important things today for Americans.

35:11But they can't solve that on their own, right? That becomes something very local, and there's a lot of opponents and proponents. There's a lot of nimbyism. I mean, it's a mess, and it doesn't get solved anytime soon. No, but it gets solved if people are willing to just drop their flags and come together and talk and say, how do we solve these problems? We have to stop this sort of ridiculousness. I look best at some of the critics who say the kids aren't sacrificing. They've got to do this. They've got to do that. They're not saving their pennies to get the 20 % down payment. We're really beyond that now.

35:42way past that. I mean, their wages can't even keep up with what they would have to pay to buy a home. It's just not affordable today for them. They can't pay their rent. I mean, a lot of my daughter's friends, their parents are helping them to pay their rent today. It's a tough environment for young people today. And so we have to figure out solutions. It's our job. We're the adults. We need to come up with solutions. You talked about how your parents bought a house when they're in their 20s. There are a lot of baby boomers that have homes, multiple homes, in fact, and they have real assets that have appreciated a lot in value.

36:14When they're passing, what happens to that portfolio of houses? I mean, do they get left to the kids, left to the grandkids? I mean, obviously it's very circumstantial depending on, but many times they'll sell them and make a lot of money or it'll go to the family and the family will sell it. It just depends on the person's circumstances, but they made enormous sums of money and having a home was a big part of it. It's a commitment to your future and economic security for people. For people that rent, they have to get into a mindset of saying, I'm not going to get home appreciation. I've got to rent and I've also got to save, whether it's retirement plan, 401k, or frankly, accounts outside that.

36:53Do you see that happening? I don't see that enough happening. And I think, I wish that more people were buying versus renting because you're literally, unfortunately, throwing your money out the window. Now, if you're testing a market and you're going to be there temporarily, I totally get it. But if you plan to live in a place, if you can, ideally, you want to buy something and build equity. So many people can. I know, but that is the very issue that we have today in front of us. For those who do have the means to buy a place, they go to a broker and they look at the listings to see what's available.

37:27There's a thing called private listings. How big of a deal is this where you don't have access to the houses that are available, those apartments are available that other people do? I mean, I think it's a huge issue. I mean, if we think about fair housing, we don't want to dismantle fair housing laws. And fair housing is not about the intent of the policy. It's about the impact. And if people can't get access to homes, it's going to have a very bad impact on minorities. Derek Johnson, the president of the NAACP, spoke specifically about this in his piece in Time. And I think access to housing is crucial.

37:59We just talked about having a housing affordability crisis. This is a real problem. And let me ask you, if you were buying a home, would you want to know how many days the home was on the market? Absolutely. Well, that's what they're doing. They are hiding that information with the private listing networks. They're saying that the days on market... I'm going to interrupt. This is so important. I look at other countries' real estate, and we're heading back to the opaqueness of those other countries. Thank you. And that's what some of these workers want, right? We're retreating back to what I see in other nations.

38:31100%. And that's why we've been raising alarm bells and saying, look, this is not helpful. I mean, there are investigations going on, but this is a policy or platform that is super dangerous to fair housing, to affordability, to everything that matters. And we should not allow these private listing networks to exist. We've got our books today and we did it on real estate for Bess. We've been here. Scarlett, why don't you start with your piercingly wonderful book? Well, Bess mentioned zoning and how that's a big deal. No, no, no. It's not boring because my book is called... It is a little boring, but your book isn't.

39:04No, no, no. I'm going to connect it. Okay. Okay. My book is Paved Paradise, How Parking Explains the World by Henry Graybar. And full disclosure, this book is on my reading list, so I have not yet started it. But the basic thesis here is that Americans expect parking to be convenient, available, and free. So that That leaves the U.S. over parked, lots of parking, and under housed. That's another contributing factor to the fact that we have limited supply. Yeah, a lot of economists and people talk about this, that that could help if we could build more housing in those areas near MTA state, where people can get to public transportation.

39:35We don't need to have so many cars and so much parking. We need more homes. There are rules in certain cities that require new housing developments to build a minimum number of parking spaces. And so this simultaneously raises the cost of construction and then gives NIMBY people a reason to object to new developments. And that's one of the ideas that they're working with, trying to get a little more done. Because Bess Friedman is here. Mine is on home design. Can you see me on a ladder? Like a threat to society. What do you do if you're dealing with the Upper East Side and Bess? Farrow and Ball recipes for decorating.

40:10Bess has been in their, I think it's the 70th Street office. so many times and I'm sorry what it's about it's about the calore I mean you look the calore you each calore tells a story at fairwood ball oh l-o-u-r oh calore okay this is a new vocabulary it is John Farrow told me that you know it's not Saturday Night Live John Farrow I said John's British and fairwood ball is very British I said John I said how do you pronounce it John said calore I said okay I mean everybody has to redecorate right the fancy people yeah they The fancy, yes, and they have to say color instead of color. Apparently.

40:47That's the way it works. Yes. So this book treats paint and color choices like cooking recipes. Like a formula you can follow. It started in Dorset, and their magic was they didn't use chemicals. They used soil, dirt. They would charcoal it and all that. And it used to be reasonably priced. Over the years, thank you to Mr. Trump's tariffs as well, to the Saturday Night Live spoof, it's outrageously expensive. that the only people that can use this stuff are people that deal with Bess Friedman. I mean, that's it. Bess Friedman deals with everybody. She likes everybody. I work with everyone. Even the people who like calor.

41:21Calor. What calor would you paint your north-facing room versus your south-facing room? Well, that's actually a sophisticated discussion. I mean, the fancy people in Fifth Avenue will have six shades of white. There you go. No, six shades of like eggshell, not white. That's right. It's eggshell. That's correct. Excuse me. I'm out of touch. Off-white. Off-white. Bess, thank you so much for joining us. So fun. You guys are wonderful. We'll do it again. Thanks, guys. Bess Redmond CEO of Brown Harris Stevens. And for the latest reviews and recommendations from Bloomberg, be sure to subscribe to the On Books newsletter.

41:51Bess, come back anytime. You guys are so fun. Coming up, the NBA season begins on Tuesday. Yes. The Knicks begin their title defense. Tom? $61 ,000 for two tickets where you want to sit. That's right, yes. Just by Jalen. Have we pulled the trigger yet? Are we doing it? No, we're not. We're looking. Alexis Christophorus may go. Okay. All right. Well, we'll see how it all shakes out. You're listening to Bloomberg Money. Stay with us with more to come after this. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions.

42:32ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask chat to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started at chatgpt.com. The world of business is constantly evolving. Every day, new challenges, new opportunities, new ways of working. Comcast Business keeps you totally in step with secure AI-backed networking built to power the way modern business gets things done today in more than 100 countries around the world.

43:16That's some serious muscle. And get this, Comcast Business powers over 90 % of the Fortune 500 and millions of small businesses. Behind it all, network engineers, cybersecurity specialists, support teams, thousands of experts answering your call at 2 a.m. like it's 2 p.m. Always on, always ready. That's a lot of coffee. One partner powering how business gets done for companies of every size all around the globe. When you add it all up, no one does business like Comcast business. Bloomberg Money here on personal finance, retirement, wealth management. I've got to say this again, CoreWeave. Good morning, Ed Ludlow.

43:59What a good afternoon to Ed Ludlow. What a week for him on technology. I've got to say it because I called it CrossWeave this morning. CrossWeave? CrossWeave. Yeah, I nailed it. CoreWeave here, down$7. Yeah, well, it's been a brutal week for - That's as much tech as we're doing today. That is it. Okay, let's move on to basketball because the world champion New York Knicks begin their season on Tuesday. Yay! And it's going to be huge. They're going to take on the Philadelphia 76ers, and Lisa Mateo is here with us to look ahead to all of this. She is co-host of Bloomberg this weekend. I know you've been doing a lot of reporting around this.

44:33Yes, yes, yes. I mean, it's the Sixers. It's LeBron in a Sixers jersey. The next, the same day. Titan versus Titan. Yes, and like the same day, they're hiding up that championship banner to the top of Madison Square Garden. So everybody's out there. I took a little sneak peek because a girl can dream. Okay, I went on StubHub. Courtside, you could still get$19 ,000 tickets. Oh, my God. Okay? And even at the way top$1 ,100, that's the cheapest that it's going to go. The cheap seats are$1 ,100. Cheap seats are$1 ,100. You look down at the court, it's like Jupiter in the western sky at night. It's crazy.

45:05But you know, this is what we're talking about on Bloomberg this weekend. It is all about the merch, right? And it is the growing woman sports fan. And that's kind of what we're focusing on. Because women have the buying power. They love to shop. There's more women watching. The fans are growing. So I sat down. Her name is Zara Therese Tisch, and she is the owner of this company, Therese. They're an activewear company, but she has the licensing with about 100 teams. So she does the NHL, the MLB, the NFL, all the teams. Plus, she does WNBA. She does some of the National Women's Soccer League. So she's designing it, or her team is designing it?

45:42So she is designing it. Her team is designing it, and they put out all the collection out there. Now, this is high-end merch. Just want to let you know, like a tank top will run you about 70 bucks. The bomber jacket, which I loved, is going to be about 350. And that's a New York Giants t-shirt or hoodie. And that's because her husband is David Tisch? Yeah, well, her husband is David Tisch, so he has that family history line, you know, to the Tisch family. It was his great uncle that actually bought the New York Giants way back in the day. So this is not just pink it and shrink it. This is like designed for women.

46:13This is designed for women by women. And it's not like just pink. You know how we come out and it's like either pink or in the back of the day you had to go and like wear your husband's jersey. Because they didn't have anything for a while. Or the child's ex-large. So this is a little bit different. So it's like sequence. It's all these type of different things. But because you have to go, you go to a Knicks game and you think about it. It's a fashion show. Oh, it is. Tom, I think it's time for us to check out the merch at the New York Knicks game. I've already checked it out. We have custom-made Jalen shoes.

46:42Lisa Mateo, thank you. Thank you. Be sure to catch Bloomberg this weekend, every Saturday and Sunday morning.

46:53This is the Bloomberg Money Podcast, bringing you a smart look at the forces shaping your financial life. I'm Tom Keen with Scarlet Fu. You can watch the show live on Bloomberg TV every Friday at noon Wall Street time. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And as always, on the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business app.

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