4/26/21 Dallas Mastermind Group Meeting Copy

Dallas April 2021 – Key Take Aways

• Laila Assanie with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas shared the following:
  • Things seem to be looking a lot brighter than two months ago.  The employment numbers are extremely strong, showing a big rebound since February.
  • A lot of progress has been made because data shows that 22% of Texans are already fully vaccinated and 1/3 have received their 1^st vaccine.
  • The most recent Manufacturing Survey indicates April as being “very positive” in terms of the manufacturing sector.  The overall sentiment is showing much improvement in the industry.
• Lumber prices continue to increase and there seems to be no end in sight.  To quote Steve Bruszer of Spring Valley Construction Company, “lumber prices have increased 10% weekly; went up 40% in one month” and it doesn’t appear that the prices will be dropping any time soon.
• Mike Moore with London & Norfolk, out of Norfolk, Virginia, told the Group that FEMA is coming out with a brand new flood rating model called “Rating 2.0” which will have a different angle on how they price flood insurance for people in high risk flood zones.  He warned everyone to take a closer look at that because the new pricing should take effect early next year.
• Kimber Davison with Griffith Davison shared the following suggestions regarding the ability of employers to require employees to be fully vaccinated prior to returning to the office:
  • An option for those employees who refuse to be vaccinated would be to require they be tested for COVID-19 on a regular basis and to show proof of the negative test.
  • Temperature checks upon entering the building/office space.
  • She suggested setting a business policy based upon the current pandemic levels and county guidelines and require the employee abide by the policy.
  • You cannot require that anybody tell you if they have or have not been vaccinated due to HIPAA laws.
• Jim Smith with Smith, Jackson, Boyer & Bovard, shared some updated tax information with the group:
  • The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts of the State of Texas announced that regardless of what the federal government had done, he was taking the position saying that PPP loan forgiveness would have to be added back into revenue for Texas’ March and tax purposes which means Texas business that were forgiven PPP loans would have to pay taxes.  Congress over-rode the IRS, the legislature in Texas, BOTH houses, have unanimously passed a bill that states PPP forgiveness amounts will NOT be included in income and that is expected to go to the Governor for signature.
  • With regards to real estate CARES Act got around to correcting the error in the classification of qualified improvement property for commercial real estate.  That was a drafting error in the TCJA and said that such improvements had to be depreciated over 39 years.  The IRS basically said, “you passed the law so you need to fix it” so it has since been corrected’.
• Guest speaker, Bob Young, Executive Managing Director of the Weitzman Group, shared some interesting insight with the group:
  • The pandemic accelerated changes to their space at a faster pace then they ever thought possible.  New concepts that were not even “in the game” all the sudden they were presenting various opportunities to a changing market.
  • The Dallas market is “absolutely, unequivocally blessed”!  Bob shared that Weitzman has had job growth, population growth, that land is “so hot right now it’s unbelievable” and they had 45,000 new single family starts.
  • The main goal was to keep all tenants in place during the pandemic.  Not only did they focus on curb appeal, which was “critically important”, they turned their tenants on to ‘digital aspects of keeping tenants in business”.  Their marketing team helped their tenants create websites if they did not already have one in place, helped to update current websites, and helped optimize search engines.  Also, curb appeal is “critically important” such as better lighting, adding pergolas any other obvious needed improvements.
  • Bob enthusiastically shared that the “hottest real estate software in the planet today is Placer.ai”.   He went on to explain that Placer.ai provides retailers with actionable insights and location analytics into their audience and competition. With unprecedented visibility into humanity-in-action, every retailer can be brilliant at running their business.  Also, Placer.ai provides instant access to location analytics derived from the foot traffic of millions of consumers, delivering visibility into offline behavior.  We shed light into churn, trade areas, untapped audiences, out-of-store behavior, and competitive benchmarking.

With regards to the restaurant industry, Bob explained that when the pandemic hit, they suggested to all of their restaurant tenants to build patios for outside seating and that has not stopped and will not stop in the foreseeable future.