Midland TX is going through a change…

People have a tendency to overuse terms around west Texas, especially the B words: Boom and Bust. Midland is currently in neither.

What? Huh? What? Yes. And hard as that will be to accept, Midland is not necessarily in a boom. We are doing something called “Growing.” And it hasn’t stopped yet. Won’t for years, so just get comfortable with that. Most evident will be the roads, but they are pretty obvious aren’t they? 7-10 years worth of infrastructure is currently underway. And no, we are not in a bust. Yes, several companies are having a round of layoffs, Midland is hosting a job fair, there’s a lot of buzz in the oil patch about the price of crude going down or up or whatever they think it’s going to do. It still amazes me how some geek on Wall Street gets a hair brained idea, starts telling all his buddies to buy/sell some stocks, and suddenly Oil is either King or it sucks and it’s the end of all things? Don’t listen to speculators. What they have to say, and maybe 5 bucks will buy you a cup of coffee at your favorite java shop.

SO! Things are changing in Midland! Shocker.

Oh dear… what ever are we going to do? You now what I’m going to do? I’m going to bed tonight about 10pm. Wake up, take the kids to school and go back to work.

Your home, like many commodities (and it is a commodity), will go up in value and down in value. And given enough time… will usually end up higher rather than lower. I present exhibit A: Gold, or Oil, or Corn, or any other commodity you care to name. Thankfully, real estate is more stable than those others. And with Oil lower than it was 6 months ago, everyone is panicking. With buyouts having just occurred, layoffs inevitably follow and thus, some panic. And oil is down and XYZ Corp didn’t make their mark and thus the all-powerful gurus of Wall Street panic.

Have you ever gone back and looked at the Trend graph of the Dow Industrial average? Remember the “great” stock market crash of the 1920’s? If you look at it now on the graph, it’s barely a blip.

SO! Getting back to Midland, TX. Just what the heck IS going on. Concho’s stock took a hit because their profits weren’t as high as last year. Aww shucks. Did you see all that construction going on downtown? They are digging in for, what I like to call: The Long Haul. Concho ain’t going anywhere. They’re just fine, thank you very much. Same can be said for Pioneer. (Welcome back, Mr. S!). Same can be said for Apache, and Oxy, and Chevron… who by the way started leading this long-term trend back in the days when XTO built a building in the middle of nowhere by a couple stadiums that no one understood. Look at them now! Crazy… like a fox. That whole area of town is looking more like Dallas than middle of nowhere.

So the real estate market is going through a correction. This will be news to many out there. And if you doubt me? Then that just goes to prove how far behind You REALLY are. The correction is here. And the Holidays are just a couple months away so the correction will continue into next year. And next year is 2020, which is an election year, so the correction will continue until THAT is over. So boys and girls… hang on to your hat for the next 12-18 months, because God only knows what else is going to happen. My guess is? A whole lot of guessing… from everyone. Opinions are like stop signs: one on every corner.

But for those of us who have been here? Done that? No. We’re not worried. This is called Wednesday. Time to get back to work.