Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles That May Help You This Week
/August 20th, 2018
Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners:" corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles.
Do Millennials Prefer Cities or Suburbs? Maybe Both.
With all that people get wrong about these people, maybe it should be no surprise that nobody can say for sure where they really want to live. Researchers have arrived at two different conclusions. One is the back-to-the-city thesis, which asserts that young adults prefer the bustle and diversity of the urban landscape to the fading suburban dream. The other argument holds that, secretly, Millennials prefer the suburbs; they just haven’t made it there yet, or they’re being overlooked. It’s the Laurel vs. Yanny debate tearing geography apart. www.citylab.com[tweet_box design="box_09" float="none"]Millennials prefer the suburbs; they just haven’t made it there yet, or they’re being overlooked[/tweet_box]
"The Democratic former president decided not to join corporate boards or give speeches for big money because, he says, he didn’t want to “capitalize financially on being in the White House.”
Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said that Gerald Ford, Carter’s predecessor and close friend, was the first to fully take advantage of those high-paid post-presidential opportunities, but that “Carter did the opposite.”Since Ford, other former presidents, and sometimes their spouses, routinely earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech.“I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it,” Carter says over dinner. “It just never had been my ambition to be rich." www.washingtonpost.com[tweet_box design="box_09" float="none"]“I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it (ex presidents making money),” Carter says over dinner. “It just never had been my ambition to be rich."[/tweet_box]
Where Even Walmart Won't Go: How Dollar General Took Over rural America
"Dollar General is opening stores at the rate of three a day across the US. It moves into places not even Walmart will go, targeting rural towns and damaged inner-city neighbourhoods with basic goods at basic prices – a strategy described by a former chief executive of the chain as “we went where they ain’t”.The chain now has more outlets across the country than McDonald’s has restaurants, and its profits have surged past some of the grand old names of American retail. The company estimates that three-quarters of the population lives within five miles of one of its stores, which stock everything from groceries and household cleaners to clothes and tool." www.theguardian.com
The Cognitive Biases Tricking Our Brains
"Present bias shows up not just in experiments, of course, but in the real world. Especially in the United States, people egregiously undersave for retirement—even when they make enough money to not spend their whole paycheck on expenses, and even when they work for a company that will kick in additional funds to retirement plans when they contribute.That state of affairs led a scholar named Hal Hershfield to play around with photographs. Hershfield is a marketing professor at UCLA whose research starts from the idea that people are “estranged” from their future self. As a result, he explained in a 2011 paper, “saving is like a choice between spending money today or giving it to a stranger years from now.” The paper described an attemptby Hershfield and several colleagues to modify that state of mind in their students. They had the students observe, for a minute or so, virtual-reality avatars showing what they would look like at age 70. Then they asked the students what they would do if they unexpectedly came into $1,000. The students who had looked their older self in the eye said they would put an average of $172 into a retirement account. That’s more than double the amount that would have been invested by members of the control group, who were willing to sock away an average of only $80...." www.theatlantic.comTech Workers Call the Shots for Space“With unemployment below 4%, companies are focusing on making smart decisions about their space– decisions that keep their employees happy and engaged,” said Revathi Greenwood, Americas head of research at Cushman & Wakefield. “Landlords are playing a critical role as well–ensuring their buildings stay competitive with a good mix of amenities and affordable parking, and of course concessions where necessary to attract top tenants.”And not surprisingly, Millennials are driving a bulk of those decisions. Now the largest generation in the workforce, Millennials are driving the agendas of how companies operate, what workplaces look like and what technology is expected.” www.globest.comYour success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!
