Hope you had a good Memorial Day Weekend. And so what was the hot topic of conversation at your barbecue?
Where ever I went -- I covered about 650 miles by car, visiting with relatives from Canada, the UK and seeing friends from various parts of the Northeast -- the number one topic was the price of gas. For starters, there were all the "jeez-louise" rolling-eyes looks from anyone peering at the gas pump price signs before they swiped their credit cards. I saw a price high of $4.59 a gallon on the New York side of the Palisades Interstate and price low about 15 miles later on the (tax-low) Jersey side of $3.76. If you have a big SUV sized tank, there's about a $15 price swing per tank-fill between the states. I paid $4.09 and $4.13 a gallon for my fillups. My London cousins were a bit blase about it all. First of all they revel in the cheap dollar and back home they pay about $10 a gallon. My Canadian cousins weren't that unhappy either -- given the strong Loonie and their familiarity with higher pump prices too.
Talk shifted to the rising prices for plane tickets which has supplanted the usual hurrumphs about typical summer airways snafus.
Nobody in my circles was planning to cancel trips, but there were all sorts of pained expressions, and conversations about trading in bigger cars for smaller ones. It sounded like 1979 redux.
There were plenty of cars on the road, and some back ups at the expected bottlenecks. But on my routes it seemed there were smoother traffic flows than in recent years for a Holiday weekend. Nobody I know got caught in typical horrendous delays.
The big question no one can answer confidentially -- is this another temporary price spiral a la 1973-4 and 1979/1980, or are we ushering in a new era of more permanent price escalation.
The mood in my circles over the steak dinners was this is more permanent than fleeting. And the steak cuts were flank not sirloin.
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Jonathan D. Miller
A marketing communication strategist who turned to real estate analysis, Jonathan D. Miller is a foremost interpreter of 21st citistate futures – cities and suburbs alike – seen through the lens of lifestyles and market realities. For more than 20 years (1992-2013), Miller authored Emerging Trends in Real Estate, the leading commercial real estate industry outlook report, published annually by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute (ULI). He has lectures frequently on trends in real estate, including the future of America's major 24-hour urban centers and sprawling suburbs. He also has been author of ULI’s annual forecasts on infrastructure and its What’s Next? series of forecasts. On a weekly basis, he writes the Trendczar blog for GlobeStreet.com, the real estate news website. Outside his published forecasting work, Miller is a prominent communications/institutional investor-marketing strategist and partner in Miller Ryan LLC, helping corporate clients develop and execute branding and communications programs. He led the re-branding of GMAC Commercial Mortgage to Capmark Financial Group Inc. and he was part of the management team that helped build Equitable Real Estate Investment Management, Inc. (subsequently Lend Lease Real Estate Investments, Inc.) into the leading real estate advisor to pension funds and other real institutional investors. He joined the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S. in 1981, moving to Equitable Real Estate in 1984 as head of Corporate/Marketing Communications. In the 1980's he managed relations for several of the country's most prominent real estate developments including New York's Trump Tower and the Equitable Center. Earlier in his career, Miller was a reporter for Gannett Newspapers. He is a member of the Citistates Group and a board member of NYC Outward Bound Schools and the Center for Employment Opportunities.
