Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (August 1, 2025)
The peak of the global real estate market likely happened during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021. This was an entirely unnatural and unhealthy situation from many standpoints, especially the way it was handled by governments around the world. In hindsight, social distancing, face masks, remote work from home, vaccine mandates and “stimulus” (printed money which went mainly to those in the top tier of the population) were all terrible ideas. The stimulus and the remote work from home mandates in particular made people do things they never should have done. In the case of the real estate market, people moved to places they never should have moved to in the first place.
The payback time for these bad decisions is now upon us. Nicholas Gerli of the “Reventure Consulting” channel seen on YouTube says that the first phase of the crash is with us now and he is entirely correct. The property markets I follow specifically in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, New Mexico and California have already fallen by as much as 48 percent in value. These markets include metro areas such as greater New York, Hampton Roads-Tidewater, Atlanta, Phoenix, Tucson, Santa Fe and the San Francisco Bay Area. Keep in mind that we are merely in the first phase of this asset value collapse – we have yet to experience the second phase which will obliterate whatever happens to be left over.
Understand that the many real estate investment giants who “guestimate” values (such as Zillow, Realtor, Redfin, Xome, Trulia, etc.) already have so-called values over a very broad range – from pie-in-the-sky too high to rock bottom and below for cash on the barrel. The current state of the economy (pretty much worldwide and not confined to any one country) is already not good – we are in a huge asset bubble and the bubble is in the process of deflating due to far too much debt and collapsing human demographics. And then huge economies such as China (and other countries around China) that have been driving sky high prices in the USA (especially on the Pacific Coast) are experiencing an even more ferocious downturn. Real estate prices in China have fallen by as much as 79 percent and this has a direct cause & effect on their ability (or inability) to invest money elsewhere on the planet.
Perhaps an example of the least rational part of the “real estate” market lies within the sphere of cryptocurrency. Digital currency may not be a bad idea, but all cryptocurrencies are basically backed by nothing. They all have certain technological “attributes” such as types of advertising, virtual private networks (VPNs), some are tied to the price level of various national currencies or even to certain precious metals such as the price of gold or silver – but they are still backed by nothing. Some cryptocurrencies represent “virtual real estate.” That’s right – real estate that has no real physical existence. Real estate in a virtual, make-believe world of virtual but not real reality – and incredibly, there have been real live human beings who have spent millions of real Dollars to purchase virtual real estate that does not really exist. One such cryptocurrency launched in 2017 called “Decentraland” (MANA) has already lost an incredible 91.76 percent of its historical peak value from merely a few years ago.
Other cryptocurrencies (not necessarily having anything to do with virtual real estate) have lost even more value than MANA. One example is ZCash (ZEC) created in 2016 as a “privacy-based, anonymous” alternative to Bitcoin – keeping those who own it “anonymous.” This concept of giving owners more privacy doesn’t sound bad but ZEC has lost an incredible 98.14 percent of its peak value to date.
