A few months back, I read an article. It’s entitled “The mysterious tyranny of trendy baby names”. It was published 6-21-24 in the Washington Post. I don’t know why I chose to read it, as it is the type of subject I would generally pass over. I am really glad I did read it.
Here is a link to a pdf of the article:
Here are my favorite lines from the article:
“While expectant parents want their child’s name to stand out and be memorable, Wattenberg said, they also typically want it to fit within the boundaries of some unacknowledged – but unmistakable! – social convention.”
“Wattenberg finds ‘an incredible irony’ in this. People think they’re choosing something totally unique, but they do it in a way that winds up moving with the zeitgeist. As a result, names have actually gotten less distinctive over time, with nearly half of all baby names now following identifiable suffix trends – a phenomenon Wattenberg calls ‘lockstep individualism.’ ”
This article was seminal for me. It brought home something I had noticed and questioned in commercial real estate. Which is, how can it be that a bunch of independent actors all end up doing the same thing, at the same time? It kind of makes a mockery of our free will, agency, and empowerment. And, while all do our own thing, we often miss the larger trend and the separate dynamic it brings. Example: a bunch of developers, motivated by future profits, all bring too much product onto the market at the same time. (We haven’t experienced this here for awhile. Textbooks say this sometimes happens at the end of a usually robust growth cycle. I sure could go for this problem, just because it means to have this problem, you have to have the robust growth part first. But, each of the players doesn’t account for the collective results, and the bullish risk takers get smashed. You see this in economic bubbles as well, like the tech crash of the early 2000’s.)
To recognize these larger trends usually seems like a minor miracle and a moment of epiphany. “Wow, look at this. This is a real trend. This is the truth now, I guess. What does it mean, and what should I do, and how will this shape our strategies?”
For example, this recognition happened for me maybe two years ago, when I realized things were looking up. We were getting calls and action a lot earlier in the winter of 2021-2022. Something was up, and we developed a theory to account for it. It went something like this: “Alaska is poised. A lot of federal money is coming in. Rates are low. People are gearing up, sooner and more aggressively. The North Slope is seeing activity we haven’t seen in many years. Alaska has an important role in the Arctic and geo-politically, especially in relation to Russia and their aggression in Ukraine. The feds are building the only Arctic port in Nome. These bigger trends will play out over many years and probably decades.”
The scenario unfolding currently has been both an additive and subtractive story, like they all are. Another semi-epiphany has developed. Since winter, the calls aren’t coming in, and transactions are becoming harder to come by. It isn’t that the prior analysis is wrong. Things are still looking up, in terms of Alaska’s economic activity. But rates are high, making financing prohibitive. The buyers money (both cash and mostly borrowed) goes a lot less further. They are waiting for lower prices. Sellers are waiting it out and maintaining the higher pricing more appropriate for lower interest rates. In addition, the war between Israel and Hamas, escalating dangerously to Israel and Iran, not to mention our own national election and the stress and uncertainty it brings (and I wouldn’t want it any other way, as democracy requires it) makes the world seem like a really scary place, and that may have something to do with people’s level of optimism and action, although I doubt this is a large factor even as I write it. (I think interest rates and local, acute economic forces, which are of course related to and driven by broader forces, affect people’s choices much more than the broad political and economic milieu.)
So, all of the above are my takes. These takes dictate how I view things. From there, based on ever-changing circumstances and also our own ever-changing beliefs and opinions, we advise our clients, and we all take action informed by those positions.
The funny thing is, a bunch of other people have their own takes. Every one of them is different, and singular at a granular level. Yet, the market, the trend, the results, seem to move in unison. Transactions were up a couple of years ago, so bullishness was up. Transactions are now down, so maybe people are all just patiently waiting while remaining to be relatively bullish, or are actually just more pessimistic. The Zeitgeist is the zeitgeist, running independently of all the individual theories, and somehow making a river, channeling all of those independent actors and thoughts into a cohesive trend. Everyone is so smart, everyone is also so wrong, and somehow it creates its own dynamic.
I don’t know what to make of it, other than cohesive, collective thought and action come out of a bunch of “independent” thinkers and actors. It’s a real thing. It’s good to determine what the trend is and to adjust for it. And, to ultimately laugh at it, as it laughs at and mocks you and your ability to predict the future. It is good to understand that we all are largely a product of our environment, and our sensibilities are largely dictated by the times we live in and those around us, rather than the fantasy that we are somehow supreme operators of independent free will and infallible judgement. A lot of what we do is luck, good or bad.
Go ahead, be your bad self. Just understand that, try as you might, you are likely only as notable and exceptional as the pack you don’t know you’re hanging with.
-Hugh
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