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U.S. customs officials have seized $25 million worth of aluminum linked to a Chinese billionaire accused of stockpiling the metal across the world, according to people familiar with the matter.
The move is the most potent action yet by federal authorities probing whether U.S. companies connected to Chinese aluminum magnate Liu Zhongtian illegally avoided punitive tariffs by routing their metal through other countries.
The Wall...
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In 2012, Jon Wheatley bought a $40,000 apartment in Las Vegas so that he could rent it out on Airbnb .
“I was surprised by just how cheap real estate was in Las Vegas,” says the British-born Wheatley. “I didn’t want to live in Vegas, and I wasn’t planning on being there very much. So when I looked at Airbnb, it looked almost too good to be true.”
Wheatley looked at the rates of similar apartments on Airbnb, and he decided that the apartment could pay for itself. He bought the flat and spent 3 weeks and $10,000 on furniture and renovations. After a year of remotely renting out the apartment, he says , he’d made $13,000 in profit.
When we ask if he recommends doing this, he replies, “One hundred percent. The model definitely works.”
In only 8 years, Airbnb’s premise—to allow someone to host a business traveler in a spare bedroom, or a family to rent their apartment to tourists while they’re out of town—has made it a $25 billion company . Co-founder Brian Chesky often talks about how anyone can turn extra space in their home into an asset that helps them pay their rent.
But the economics of short term rental sites Airbnb and VRBO also appeal to people who do not live in the house or apartment they rent out. This includes go-getters like Wheatley, as well as professional real estate investors.
Outside the real estate scene, however, this development has not been met with a positive reaction. In cities like San Francisco and New York, where housing is a scarce, politicized resource, the prevalence of property owners renting out multiple apartments has inspired protests, critical press, and the attention of regulators and lawmakers.
Photo via Airbnb
What’s missing from the already fractious debate over Airbnb, however, is the fact that the big players in the real estate market aren’t involved. At least, they aren’t involved yet .
Companies like AvalonBay and Camden Property Trust own tens or hundreds of thousands of units, and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying and constructing residential buildings. These companies normally rent out apartments to people who sign year-long leases. But they could instead rent them out on sites like Airbnb. We partnered with Priceonomics to investigate whether this real estate investing trend could spread to these big players.
At this point, we’re seeing that the uncertainty created by municipal debates over how to regulate Airbnb is keeping major investors out of the short-term rental game. For individual investors, however, the door is more or less wide open.
The Rise of the Professional Airbnb Investor
The financial benefit of an Airbnb property is clear to investors. They can make more money from short term rentals for the same reason you typically spend more on lodging while you’re traveling than you do on rent.
So how many professional real estate investors list apartments on Airbnb? And how large are their businesses?
The best way to see whether there is a big trend of professional investors using Airbnb would be to see how many hosts rent out multiple properties on the site. (After all, most people don’t have that many homes.) That kind of data, however, is hard to come by. The presence of professionals is a matter of controversy, which has made Airbnb selective about the information it shares.
But we can see how many professional investors used Airbnb in New York City by looking at a report—which is based on 4 years of subpoenaed data—released in late 2014 by the New York Attorney General.
According to the report , 94% of Airbnb hosts in New York city rented out 2 units or fewer. This supports the Airbnb company line that the majority of users are average joes renting out their homes. The other 6% of hosts, however, listed from 3 to 272 units. They earned a collective $168 million and were responsible for over a third of all bookings and revenue in the city.
Table from the New York State Attorney General’s report “Airbnb in the City”
During this time period, over 100 users had 10 or more properties. So at least in New York City prior to recent legislation , major, million-dollar real estate businesses use Airbnb. It’s possible that these apartments are pieces of larger real estate empires. But this data suggests that mostly small-scale investors use Airbnb—not billion dollar real estate companies.
To gauge how many real estate professionals use short term rental sites, we also talked with the founders of companies that help people rent out properties on Airbnb. These founders confirmed that most professionals on Airbnb are personal investors, but they also offered evidence that major real estate companies are interested.
Peter Abualzolof of Mashvisor , a real estate analytics startup focused on short term rentals, works mostly with amateur investors. Abualzolof says that he and his co-founders started Mashvisor at a Startup Weekend where they met many tech workers who wanted to buy Airbnb properties. The company helps some full-time investors, but most people are in the mold of Jon Wheatley.
Jim Breese says he works with people renting out spare rooms, personal investors, and some large ventures. He is the co-founder of LearnAirbnb , a young company that helps hosts “start, grow, and optimize [their] Airbnb business like a professional.” The chart below shows the results of a LearnAirbnb survey. As co-founder Jim Breese points out, almost one third of these hosts view Airbnb as a business.
Data via LearnAirbnb . The survey asked questions of 836 hosts who’ve worked with LearnAirbnb or one of its partners.
Breese has worked with a client who owns a 30-unit complex. He knows of groups of friends pooling a few hundred thousand dollars to purchase properties to Airbnb, as well as people raising funds from investors to do the same. But he hasn’t worked with really large real estate companies. “I don’t personally know anyone making $2 million a year,” he says.
Sean Conway of Pillow offered us some of the best evidence that big companies are interested in Airbnb properties. Pillow manages short term rentals—its staff will take care of listing your apartment, confirming guests, and everything else. Conway says that Pillow rents out families’ vacation homes and apartments that belong to consultants who travel 5 days a week. But he has also been approached by major investors.
“We’ve had investors with 500 units come to us and say, ‘We want you to take all of them,’” says Conway, “and we say, ‘No way, we’re a start up!’”
The Obstacles to Airbnb-ing at Scale
From looking at the report on Airbnb’s New York City data and talking with people in real estate, we can conclude that some significant commercial business happens on Airbnb.
But we’ve yet to find evidence that real estate companies with tens of thousands of units do short term rentals on Airbnb. Those companies declined our requests for comment, and even Pillow, Conway says, despite getting requests to manage hundreds of properties, has not talked with the major players.
They could just be keeping their plans quiet, but there are many reasons why short term rentals could remain the purview of average joes and smaller-scale investors.
At RealtyShares, our reasoning for not accepting investments for Airbnb properties is simple: they’re too new. Investors want to see a track record when evaluating a deal, and since Airbnb is only 8 years old, there’s less data and the market is immature.
Renting out an Airbnb also has elements of the hospitality industry that are foreign to the real estate business. Sure, you can find out the average price and occupancy rates in a neighborhood. But if you do a poor job promoting your Airbnb listing and satisfying your guests, you’ll never make the revenue you anticipated.
Another problem for big real estate investors is that they can’t benefit from economies of scale with Airbnb. Usually a company like AvalonBay owns entire buildings, which saves on the costs of upkeep for each unit. The company can hire on-site repair staff, make upgrades to the entire building in one go, and so on. That’s not the case when you have 200 units scattered around town.
This isn’t necessarily a crippling problem. Several companies that rent out individual houses, which have the same scaling problems, have recently had billion dollar IPOs . Other tools, like Pillow’s management service and Nest thermostats, make managing many Airbnbs easier and more efficient. Investors could also rent out an entire complex on Airbnb, although at that point they’re really in the hotel business.
Apartment photo by Axel Tregoning
A more paralyzing obstacle is that Airbnb dominates the short term rental market for apartments, which means that investors would be at the mercy of a single company. If Airbnb decided to cap its prices or demand a bigger cut of the profits, every real estate company’s short term rental investments would go to hell.
But the biggest deterrent, the uncertain and hostile regulatory environment, supersedes all of these. Voters and governments in some of the biggest cities in the short-term rental market are taking action to reduce their impact and ward off professional hosts. For people living in these cities, this backlash is hard to miss.
In order to prevent investors from renting out apartments full-time on Airbnb, San Francisco limits the number of days a unit can be occupied by short term renters to 90 days. Last November, 45% of voters supported a ballot measure that, if it passed, would have reduced that cap to 75 days.
In New York, it’s illegal to rent out an apartment in a residential building if the owner is not home. Meanwhile, a number of resort towns have banned short term rentals outright, and critics question whether the decentralized short term rental model can ensure safety without the regulations that exist for hotels.
Scott Shatford has been tracking the profitability of investments in Airbnb properties, which can be dependent on the regulatory environment of a given city. As the CEO of Airdna, an Airbnb data and analytics company, Shatford explains, "One of the interesting trends that we see with the short-term rental investments is a shift towards secondary markets, where there is less regulation and more untapped opportunities."
Not every city wants to ward off Airbnb. Peter Abualzolof of Mashvisor cites Philadelphia and Seattle as cities passing laws to legitimize short term rentals. Still, the situation is uncertain and in flux. “ I’m even confused,” says Abualzolof. “I try to do the research and provide information, but I’m very hesitant, because it’s very vague.” There’s no city where a property owner can know exactly how Airbnb will be regulated—or even if it will be legal—ten years down the line.
If you’re an investor at a company deciding where to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, that’s not what you want to hear.
Airbnb’s White Whales?
Major real estate companies are unlikely to get involved in short term rentals until the regulatory situation is more clear. But there is another way they could get involved: as landlords partnering with tenants who host Airbnb travelers.
In December 2015, Bloomberg reported that Airbnb is in talks with billion dollar, multi-home real estate companies. In the past, landlords have clashed with tenants who they suspect break their lease by listing their apartment on Airbnb. These multi-home real estate companies are—indirectly through property management companies—the nation’s biggest landlords. Airbnb is reportedly offering to share profits with these companies if they bless their tenants’ use of short term rentals.
The companies are not offering updates or details on the talks. A representative of Camden Property Trust told us that it would be “premature” to comment.
Photo via VRBO
We did, however, get a glimpse of how this might work by talking to a local landlord and real estate investor. As he chose to remain anonymous, we’ll call him John Smith.
Smith has experimented with the type of arrangement Airbnb is proposing to major real estate investors. He partnered with a tenant, modified the tenant’s lease so he could rent out extra rooms in his apartment, and helped him register with the city.
When we ask how the experiment went, Smith responds, “There is absolutely something there.” The market rental rate for the apartment is around $6,000 a month, and Smith and the tenant made about that much from just one bedroom by putting bunkbeds in it, hostel-style.
Still, Smith is not sure whether it’s a good arrangement for landlords. Short term rentals come with extra costs—more wear and tear, higher electric bills, more expensive insurance—and he’s unsure whether the increased profit is worth the occasional headaches involved with the hospitality industry.
The most interesting takeaway from the experiment, though, has nothing to do with profits and everything to do with the ethos Airbnb tries to communicate. To counter critics and regulators who say Airbnb makes housing more expensive, Airbnb reps talk about how it helps hosts make money to pay their rent, and the company’s narrative centers around creating a sense of belonging that is absent when you stay in a hotel.
Smith’s experience echoes these talking points. He says that one of his tenants who rented out spare rooms on Airbnb used the extra money to quit his job and pursue artistic interests—and that he’s enjoyed hosting travelers, because he’s a big fan of hostels.
For this reason, Airbnb may eschew professional investors who want to rent out entire apartments in favor of working with real estate companies through landlord-tenant partnerships.
Who Rents the Future?
Airbnb is the posterchild of the sharing economy. By giving people a way to monetize an underutilized asset—a spare bedroom, Americans’ 7 million second homes, apartments that belong to people who are on vacation—the company created a huge, new industry.
But as business reporter Will Alden has written , decentralized services tend to become reliant on a small number of professional users. Anyone can run an auction on eBay, but full-time “power sellers” dominate the site. Similarly, professionals and “ad-hoc temp agencies” claim a large share of the work on TaskRabbit.
Now, this is happening on Airbnb. The appealing economics of short term rentals has attracted professional investors, and services that manage properties, use data to identify promising properties, and provide concierge services are popping up to support them.
Apartment photo by AIMCO/Architecturist
But in Airbnb’s case, the rise of professional investors has contributed to a backlash—from residents and regulators who believe it raises rents, and from tenants and co-op boards who dislike seeing strangers with suitcases in their building every night.
Depending on how the fight to regulate Airbnb and its peers shakes out, professional investors could be banned, welcomed, or treated differently in every city around the world. Perhaps partnering with landlords will be how the big players in real estate will get involved.
When we talked to people buying Airbnb properties and the founders of companies meant to support them, they expressed confidence that regulation would ultimately accommodate short term rentals.
“I don’t know what [the regulation] is going to be,” says Jim Breese of LearnAirbnb, “but once people start to see, ‘Hey we can co-exist,’ and once everyone sees how much money is in hospitality, everyone will want what they believe is their fair share.”
Several compared the situation to how Uber has overcome attempts to ban its ride-hailing services and how the music industry has gotten over its fear of piracy in order to profit from streaming.
Whether they are right will determine if Airbnb becomes a gold rush for investors, remains a moneymaker for millions of homeowners and renters, or does a bit of both.
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Jack Ma. WEF
DAVOS, Switzerland — Alibaba founder Jack Ma thinks America went wrong over the last 30 years when it focused too much on war and Wall Street. Speaking at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, Ma was asked about globalisation, and the reaction to it represented by the election of Donald Trump as US president.
He responded that back when Thomas Friedman published "The World Is Flat," globalisation looked like "a perfect strategy" for the US: "We just want the technology, and the IP, and the brand, and we'll leave the other jobs" to other countries like Mexico and China.
"American international companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalisation," Ma said.
As an example of just how much was available, Ma said, "When I graduated from university I tried to buy a beeper, and it cost me $250. My pay at the time was $10 a month."
"IBM, Microsoft, the profit they made was larger than the top four banks in China put together. ... But where did the money go?"
U.S. Soldiers with 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division return fire during a firefight with Taliban forces in Barawala Kalay Valley in Kunar province, Afghanistan, March 31, 2011. Pfc. Cameron Boyd / Wikimedia, CC
Ma said that 30 years ago, the American companies that people in China heard about were Ford and Boeing. Today, the companies that people in China talk about are in Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
At the same time, the US spent a lot of money on foreign conflicts. "In the past 30 years, America had 13 wars spending $2 trillion ... no matter how good your strategy is you're supposed to spend money on your own people," Ma said. "The money goes to Wall Street. Then what happened? Year 2008 wiped out $19.2 trillion in US income. .... What if the money was spent on the Midwest of the United States [instead]?"
"The other countries steal jobs from you guys — that is your strategy. You did not distribute the money in the proper way."
Ma also dropped two other pearls of wisdom. His favourite film is Forrest Gump because he sees something of Alibaba in Gump's shrimp boat. In the film, according to Ma, Gump says "'Nobody makes money catching whales, people make money catching shrimps.' That's how we make money" at Alibaba.
He also revealed that he wants to retire early: "I don't want to die in my office," he said. "I want to die on the beaches."
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http://ift.tt/2jUFnDD6-Pack TaoTronics LED Bulbs, $11 with code HL63ISTM
Still haven’t made the transition to LED? Amazon will sell you a 6-pack of highly rated TaoTronics soft white bulbs for just $11 right now with promo code HL63ISTM. These put out the brightness equivalent of a 60W incandescent, but with only 9W of electricity each. Plus, many local utility companies offer rebates when you buy these things, so they should pay for themselves in short order.
Note: These bulbs aren’t dimmable, which isn’t surprising at this price, but just make sure you’re aware.
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When a soldier is stationed at the furthest human outpost in the galaxy, he’s confronted with an incredible challenge: staying alive in a meaningless existence, hoping to one day be promoted to a better location.
Joe M. McDermott’s new short novel The Fortress at the End of Time is a thoughtful investigation of how people cope when their lives are put on hold, and a brilliant analysis of technology, faith, and the point where they meet. The Fortress at the End of Time is set in a far future in which humanity has expanded across the galaxy and battled a vicious (and unexplained) enemy. The war is long over, and humanity has secured a few hundred planets. Each planet is colonized via “ansibles” which supply and populate Earth’s growing colonies.
The ansible is a long-established science fiction fixture created by Ursula K. Le Guin in 1966, usually represented as an instantaneous communication device. But McDermott’s ansible is essentially a replicator, which allows for the instantaneous duplication of an object or person.
The story begins when Captain Ronaldo Aldo, an astro-navigational officer for Earth’s military, confesses to committing a terrible (but unnamed) crime. The rest of the novel covers the events leading up to the confession, beginning with Aldo’s graduation from War College and his assignment to a dead-end planet — or, rather, his clone is posted to this bleak dump, called the Citadel, in another corner of the galaxy.
The original Aldo remains on Earth, where he presumably has a normal life. The new Aldo has all his memories, but while he’s a new person, he’s burdened by his predecessor’s record and actions. He will remain on the Citadel forever, but he hopes by doing a commendable job, he can get a clone of himself (complete with all his memories from the Citadel) created on a more interesting planet. Aldo despairs: the Citadel is the furthest colony from Earth. If he can’t prove himself worthy of ascension, he’ll remain in this banal posting for the rest of his life. If he succeeds, he will be permitted to step into the ansible once more, and move to a new planet.
Day in and day out, he maintains a decaying space station and contends with a dysfunctional, boring crew. Suicide rates are abnormally high at the Citadel, and corruption is rampant.
This short novel hinges on the agony and anxiety of being trapped by the status quo. The desire to break free from the predictable is present not just in relationships, but settings. Earth is in a sort of pause, waiting for the return of its vague enemy. The station and planet Citadel are waiting for an ice comet to provide the next step of a centuries-long terraforming process.
Aldo himself is emotionally frozen. On the Citadel, he’s unresponsive to a potential romance with a crewmate. If he does manage to send a clone of himself somewhere interesting, he doesn’t want it yearning for someone he left behind.
The other major theme in The Fortress at the End of Time is the unexpected consequences of technology. Humanity has developed amazing tech: colonies far out in the depths of space, ansibles that teleport people across the stars, and starships that can take down unknown enemy spacecraft. Yet each advancement carries unusual problems. Ansible trips load their passengers with the burden of the past: the duplicates have to contend with their original selves’ memories and experiences, while forging their own futures.
McDermott is careful to show that science and technology don’t have all the answers. A monastery on the planet siphons off military deserters who are stuck in moralistic quandaries, questioning the role the military plays in expanding humanity’s footprint in the galaxy. The deserters are a worthy foil, posing heavy questions for the crew: when people are reborn through the ansible are their souls transported, too? Do they have hope of redemption in future lives?
The Fortress at the End of Time is an essential read, and feels like it’s a throwback to the era of classic science fiction from authors such as Frank Herbert or Ursula K. Le Guin, but never dated. McDermott takes a slow, thoughtful approach to this multilayered little book, playing out plotlines over years, and paying full attention to how the story’s events affect the characters, rather than the other way around. His hard-science details and logical explanations should satisfy more scientifically minded readers, but they are accompanied by a moral core that sticks long after the final page.
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A group of amateur investigators say a clip-on tie that was left behind on the plane that D.B. Cooper hijacked back in 1971 may lead to new details.
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The Nintendo Switch Launch Titles list features both the Nintendo Switch Games available on launch day (March 3rd, 2017) and in the launch "window" (usually meaning within the first three months following launch day).
Games might be added, moved or removed according to any new
release dateinformation. Please check this article regularly to keep yourself updated of any possible changes.
EditConfirmed Day One Titles
The following games are confirmed to be available to purchase the day that the Nintendo Switch launches in March - and whether they are retail or digital/e-shop only.
EditJapan Launch Titles
The following games below have been confirmed ONLY for Japan on March 3rd, in addition to the games listed above. While they may not be initally avaiable in the US, they can still be played thanks to and end of Nintendo's region locking
|
Game |
Developer |
| Disgaea 5 Complete |
NIS |
| I Am Setsuna |
Square Enix |
| Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence |
Koei Tecmo |
| Puyo Puyo Tetris S |
Sega |
| Romance of the Three Kingdoms 13 |
Koei Tecmo |
|
Snipperclips |
Nintendo |
EditConfirmed Launch Window Titles
This is the list of games planned to launch for the Nintendo Switch between Day 1 and the end of June – the "launch window" or until the end of the third fiscal quarter.
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So much for fears of Donald Trump's presidency hurting tech stocks.
While the Dow continues its flirtation with 20,000 (will it EVER get there?) the Nasdaq keeps hitting new record highs. And it's being led by four prominent tech companies that collectively are known by the acronym of FANG.
Facebook. Amazon. Netflix. Google -- whose parent company is now technically Alphabet, but its ticker symbol still starts with a G.
Facebook (FB, Tech30) is the hottest of these Fab Four stocks. Shares of the social network are already up nearly 12% in just the first two weeks of the year. Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) and Netflix (NFLX, Tech30) are each up more than 8%. Google's (GOOGL, Tech30) shares have gained 5%.
What makes Facebook's performance even more astonishing is that it has come despite criticism about fake news proliferating on Facebook, concerns about some of its metrics being wrong and speculation that CEO Mark Zuckerberg may seek public office.
But investors are looking past that and focusing on the fact that Facebook is expected to keep posting impressive levels of growth.
Analysts are predicting that Facebook will report a year-over-year revenue increase of 45% for the fourth quarter and 65% surge in earnings per share. Facebook will report its results on February 1.
Wall Street is bullish about the earnings prospects for the other FANG stocks too. Netflix, which will kick off tech earnings season when it reports its results Wednesday, is expected to post sales and earnings increases of more than 30% from a year ago.
Related: Netflix at all-time high? Stranger things have happened
Analysts are forecasting a 25% jump in sales for Amazon and more than 35% increase in profits. And Google is expected to report earnings growth of 11% and a revenue increase of nearly 20%.
It seems that these strong fundamentals are trumping Trump fears. Tech investors were worried in the immediate aftermath of Trump's win over Hillary Clinton for several reasons.
Concerns about a crackdown on immigration, most notably on H1-B visas that allow many foreign workers to come to Silicon Valley, hurt the stocks of big tech companies.
Trump's protectionist rhetoric wasn't helping either since most large tech companies do big business overseas.
But sentiment has shifted in the past few weeks. Investors are focusing more on some of the potential positives of a Trump administration.
The meeting that Trump held with leaders of several big tech companies in New York last month seemed to help allay some of the concerns investors had about Trump.
Investors also seem to recognize that corporate tax reform, particularly changes that could allow companies to bring back cash being held overseas at lower rates, could be good for the tech sector.
Google said in its most recent earnings report in October that it had $50 billion in cash and investments, 60% of its overall cash hoard, outside of the U.S. Apple (AAPL, Tech30) and Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) hold an even bigger percentage of their cash overseas.
Related: Apple gets bump from Trump and profits from Samsung's woes
Eric Ervin, CEO of Reality Shares, an investment firm that runs several ETFs focused on dividends, said Monday that assuming Trump follows through on his tax reform promise, more tech companies may consider paying dividends.
Ervin highlighted Google, Amazon and Facebook as three that have enough cash to easily afford a dividend.
"It's reasonable to assume most of those companies will want to put that cash to work," he said.
Tech stocks are also rallying on the hopes of broader economic stimulus from Trump and the Republican Congress.
It stands to reason that if $1 trillion is spent on the nation's roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure, that could boost overall economic growth. That would be good for tech companies too, especially if stimulus lifts consumer spending.
But are investors too optimistic?
Terri Spath, chief investment officer of Sierra Investment Management, wrote in a recent report to clients that she's worried that the market rally is about to stall.
"Stimulative policy should turbocharge growth and boost corporate profits, but stocks are ahead of themselves," she wrote.
"The anticipation of changes in tax and regulatory policy are ahead of the reality right now. We like the improved optimism in corporations and consumers," she added. "Proceed with caution. The sugar high is wearing off."
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