My friends daughter works for a big firm that does commercial real-estate loans, and I asked her during Christmas if the commercial loans in trouble.
Don't give my wife any ideas.
I work the business end of things - it has been trending downward since spring of 2023.
Commercial Real Estate or (CRE) as we call it was actually on Pause for lending at a good amount of banks for 2022-2024 as the risk was too high - these portfolios saw a ton of issues. Mainly from the investment side (tenants). Owner occupied fared well.
I was referring to commercial like small apartment buildings, brick and mortar retail and office buildings. Brick and Mortar have been slow for years and office space a lot of people still working from home.
I look at day trading more as a paycheck then an investment for retirement. My wife is the bread winner, and I only work one or two days a week when they need me. If I'm not working, I trade futures. I made almost as much day trading as I did working for the year (together, about 75% what I'd make if I worked full time), with consistency getting better as time goes on. So it's like income. I do with that the same thing I do with paycheck money, pay bills and throw some into long term portfolio. It's a way to make money, not an investment. Though I guess you can argue that it's an investment in yourself. If you can learn to do it successfully, getting laid off from your real job isn't as scary when you have another means of making money. Especially nowadays with all the different paper trading programs, you can learn without any risk and decide yourself when or if you're willing to put your own money on the line. And when you are ready, you can start with micros or prop firms and the risk is minimal.
to the great beyond? My wife's parents are both passed and left the house to the kids. While they were pondering whether to keep it as a place to vacation (on the gulf side), AirBNB it or sell it, hurricane Milton came in, laid down a foot of water and wiped out the yard and linai and left the pool looking like something a gator would be chilling in. No flood ins means its all out of pocket and renewing homeowners ins is somewhere between insane or impossible with companies pulling out and premiums skyrocketing. No recourse left but to do a basic remediation and sell and the list of work orders from contractors is so deep, they weren't even done with the prior hurricane repairs before this one hit.
I don't know how any of that works but with this being a block house on grade with slab floors, is that even do-able? I remember when The hurricane hit here in NJ in like 2012 and we got a little water on the street but nothing in the house (I lived in the bayshore area at the time). I just cleaned up the yard and moved on but my next door neighbor had her house raised by fema. Now these were stick framed and so it seemed like jacking it up was a no big deal to get under the crawl space and brace it up but it sure took a helluva long time to complete.
