In 2015, there were 600,000 more households formed in the than there were housing units built in the US. That's a tremendous gap, which explains why rents are coming up at the furious pace we've seen lately.
What's especially noteworthy about this massive gap is that both household formation and homebuilding are below long term trends. As the millenial generation gets older, earns more and moves out of their parents homes, the competition for housing will get even more intense.
Now is an opportune time to invest in residential real estate. I'm not necessarily speaking about Paradise Valley - though investing here can be fruitful, the wind is really at your back if you own real estate that is affordable for the average person. Whether single family homes or multi-residential, this imbalance is going to work in landlord's favor for quite some time.
And if you look carefully at the chart above you'll see that rents have done well even in recessions. There aren't too many businesses that were as resilient in the last major economic downturn.
To assess what type of investment properties may work for your situation, please click here. I can point you to opportunities in other states, as well as Arizona. When investing in real estate, it's even more critical to get access to unlisted properties.
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If you're invested in the stock market, pay careful attention to look at the chart below from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. It's the long-term chart of Wilshire 5000 capitalization to US GDP. In other words, its what the stock market is valuing corporate America relative to the country's output.
Stocks are in unprecedented territory. If you believe in reversion to the mean, it's time to get out of the stock market - or do some serious hedging. We are now at a valuation even higher than before the crash of 2008-09 -- and before the crash of 2000.
The stock market may of course continue to rise, but the downside looks dramatically larger than the upside. | 
