LuxuryBlurb
Posts Tagged ‘Home Depot’
Monday, March 4th, 2013
Posted by Leonard Steinberg on March 4th, 2013
Corporate profits have grown strongly over the past few years, yet job growth has not. We are in a golden age for corporate profits, especially among multinational giants that are also benefiting from faster growth in emerging economies like China and India. These factors, along with the Federal Reserve’s efforts to keep interest rates ultralow and encourage investors to put more money into riskier assets, prompted traders to send the Dow past 14,000 to within 75 points of a record high last week. So everyone keeps asking why no great job growth? DUH! Corporations have become more efficient, utilizing technologies to replace human beings. I call it the HOME DEPOT FACTOR…..I am certain you have noticed how 10 self-checkout machines replaced what was once 10 human beings (often with really bad attitude)…..So those 10 Home Depot workers who lost their jobs to machines are aided by government…..with our tax dollars. They consume, but they consume far less. They cannot buy a home unemployed…..so they canot go shopping at Home Depot to buy anything for home repairs either. This same thinking is being applied across the board to make companies more effective and efficient. Government is doing the same with the size of government which is the smallest its been in 20 years.
If no laws are enacted to entice corporations to hire, they simply won’t. Corporations do to not have to bear the bulk of the costs of our welfare system that provides for the unemployed. Is this short-sighted? Surely it would be in the interests of large corporations to hire, thereby increasing the consumer base…..surely higher consumption would be better for profits? The recession forced companies to trim and become lean and mean in their operations….now that those companies are lean and mean, why hire more people if fewer people can do the same work and the result is even higher profits?
So what is holding companies back from hiring? Medical costs? Unrealistic union demands? Lack of consumer demand? If it is the latter, then hiring would be the logical solution: hire more people, create more consumers. In a world where little or nothing makes sense anymore, logic is becoming useless….
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on February 22nd, 2012
Is unseasonable good weather fueling this strong market? Home resales rose to a 1-1/2-year high in January, pushing the supply of properties on the market to the lowest level in almost seven years in a hopeful sign for the housing sector.
The NAR said today existing home sales increased 4.3 percent to an annual rate of 4.57 million units last month, the fastest pace since May 2010. This is the latest indication the housing market may be fully deflated and rising. Even some economists attributed some of the rise to the warmer winter weather, but also said it signaled genuine improvement. The jobs market has improved. Sales at HOME DEPOT are up. Builders are digging again.
Sales were up across all four regions of the country, with the West recording the biggest gain — an 8.8 percent increase. Sales in New York are very strong this month, and if our theory is correct to-day’s glorious weather should boost Manhattan sales for the month of February for sure.
Tuesday, July 19th, 2011
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on July 19, 2011
The traffic clogged heart of Manhattan is getting a state-of-the-art bypass operation — with city engineers now directing Midtown traffic flow by typing a few keys in a Queens control room. Mayor Bloomberg yesterday launched the first-of-its-kind, real-time, congestion-busting system, which allows the engineers to control traffic lights remotely.
He hailed it as the greatest traffic innovation since the city’s grid system, saying engineers with the city Department of Transportation will use data from live street feeds to battle gridlock at the very moment motorists are leaning on their horns and giving each other the one-fingered salute.
I agree this is an amazing addition to the City and of course only time will tell how effective the system is. The bigger message about this system is how it impacts employment: again we witness how high tech jobs are created at the expense of low-tech jobs…..here, the jobs of many traffic police will be replaced by technology and a few tech-savvy employees. We have seen this with self check-out at Home Depot, self check-in at the airports, and the list goes on. Indifferent, inefficient human beings are being replaced by machines that are 100% focused on the task at hand. The human touch is vanishing. And its making companies (and even governments) more efficient…..and profitable! The bigger message is that the key to unlocking the high unemployment rate may lie in our ability to train and educate the unemployed in new careers, equipping them with the skills our changing world truly needs instead of whining about which party or president is to blame. Lets face it, sooner or later we will all be directly linked to technology in our jobs…..we may be there already.
The next wave may be how to re-introduce the human touch to technology, after acknowledging that us humans became spoiled and complacent, and now have to embrace technology. We see this in real estate: at first many scorned the web, e-mails, websites, cellphones: the Streeteasy’s, Curbed’s and Zillow’s of this world changed that forever. Now there is an over-supply of information and technology and (highly informed and educated) humans have to step in to become the editors.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/city_gets_street_smart_gmTC2PaRgJdmjZFSwpv9EI#ixzz1SYEUu13g
Saturday, October 23rd, 2010
 Is Downtown Manhattan the new New York SUBURB?
With 200 Eleventh Avenue, you have a garage attached to your own apartment……many full-full service buildings are becoming similar to suburban ‘gated communities’ affording even more conveniences than their suburban counterparts….think 101 Warren Street with its own Whole Foods, Bed Bath and Beyond and Barnes and Noble IN the building….in the suburbs you have to drive to those chains. Bicycle use has doubled in the past few years. Millions of trees have been planted, and parks are sprouting on every corner.
New York is becoming more suburbanized. You’ve got Home Depot, Costco, all the amenities that used to be reserved for the suburbs. The younger generation wants to live in Brooklyn, Hoboken, Chelsea, Tribeca, Soho and the Lower East Side, not in Westchester and Connecticut. Transportation from these areas to downtown is actually easier than to midtown. So when the decision makers are the next generations, it is likely that the importance of Grand Central to the decision makers will decrease relative to today. Advantage, downtown. It is fashionable to live and work Downtown….think VOGUE moving from Times Square to the Wall Street area.
“Convenience is the new luxury,” says Leonard Steinberg, publisher of LUXURYLETTER and managing director of Prudential Douglas Elliman, New York’s leading real estate brokerage. “Downtown dwellers love being able to walk to work. Walking is the one thing suburbs don’t allow. Downtown used to be all about manufacturing and finance offices: gentrification has changed that forever. A walk down a typical downtown street will include commercial lofts transformed into elegant homes, a doorman greeting guests…..tree lined streets, sidewalks with Mom’s or nannies with strollers, several Starbuck’s, only Downtown there is a strong infusion of unique boutiques and restaurants with an edgier flavor than Uptown,and certainly more interesting than the mix offered in Greenwich, Alpine or White Plains.”
Walk up Tenth Avenue from 14th Street and spot new condominiums and rental buildings by the dozen mixed in with hip, cool offices. Hudson Square surrounded by Tribeca and Soho features a substantial volume of media company office. Cross the street from Goldman Sachs and you land in Tribeca….stay on that side of the highway and you’re already in Battery Park City, and area that has grown tremendously in desirability. And all of this comes with greenery once only promised in suburban life.
Cut a commute from 1 hour a day to 30 minutes, and that adds up to more than a 5 day vacation per year…..
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010
 When is this clever idea coming to the USA with its MILLIONS of square feet of parking spaces in sunbelt areas?
Imagine every Wallmart and Home Depot, not only providing shade to all its parked cars to reduce their need for that initial AC blast, but also producing enough power from the overhead SOLAR PANELS that act as the roof to power the entire building, not to mention produce surplus energy for the grid?
“In Manhattan, we have so much roof space that is going to waste: these solar panels combined with wind turbines, could probably cater to at least 15-20% of our power needs,” says Leonard Steinberg, managing director of Prudential Douglas Elliman and publisher of LUXURYLETTER. “We will need this extra power soon as more cars convert to electrical use.”
Above is a version currently in use in Italy at a highway rest stop……
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