05.03.2023
Retail’s Bright Future Lies In Brick And Mortar After All
Early in the pandemic, the future seemed clear. People would increasingly buy online because stores were closed and unsafe. Plus, it was oh, so convenient for consumers, and think of the money the retailers would…
Read More05.01.2023
One in Three Office Buildings are Ripe for Residential Conversion
Up to one in three office buildings in 14 major North American markets could be a candidate for conversion to residential use, according to a study by Avison Young. The company analyzed 26,000 office buildings,…
Read More05.01.2023
It’s CRE Benchmark Season, Here’s Why You Should Care
Benchmark data is an important tool in any industry. You can see how your performance compares to others and identify where changing practices might make you more competitive. The National Apartment Association (NAA), Institute of…
Read More05.01.2023
Institutional Investors Still Like Real Estate, But Are Waiting for Better Prices
Institutional investors are sitting on the sidelines of the commercial real estate investment market, but they are not backing away from the asset class entirely. Instead, they are waiting for the investment sales climate to…
Read More04.24.2023
Bankrupt Bed Bath & Beyond to Vacate Stores by June
This weekend Bed Bath & Beyond filed for bankruptcy protection, a long-awaited event that retail landlords have been preparing for for months. The retailer’s 360 Bed Bath & Beyond and 120 Buy Buy Baby stores…
Read More04.24.2023
More People are Losing Jobs and More of Them are High-Earners
Ongoing economic struggles, increased by the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes to battle inflation, are taking a toll. The Fed’s latest projections suggest that unemployment will be 4.5% in 2023 and 4.6% both next year and the…
Read More04.21.2023
Alternative CRE Assets Took a Bigger Hit Than Traditional Ones in Q1
MSCI recently covered overall CRE activity in Q1: deal activity down 56%, cap rates up 30 basis points. In addition to more detail by property type, the firm also looked at alterative CRE sectors, including medical…
Read More04.20.2023
Target Shopping Center proposed for 22-acre site on Westside
A new Target store could be headed to the Westside, according to documents filed with the City's Environmental Planning Commission. The documents, which include a traffic scoping form, detail plans for a nearly 150,000-square-foot "Target…
Read More04.20.2023
Cannabis Companies Say It’s Better to Lease Than to Buy
Cannabis companies are buying commercial real estate for their businesses to a lesser degree and are choosing to lease space to a greater degree, according to a new report from National Association of Realtors. Since…
Read More04.20.2023
Life Insurance Lenders: No Lifeline for Office Owners
As a first-in-line alternative to banks, life insurance companies have for years been a steady source of capital for office building owners—until now. That’s right, insurance companies have joined banks and issuers of commercial mortgage…
Read More04.18.2023
Multifamily Development Faces Disruptions, But Many Projects Push Ahead
Eager to invest in new apartment developments, wealth managers and high-net worth individuals are still making deals work, despite high financing and construction costs, worries about overbuilding and even more worries about a potential recession.…
Read More04.17.2023
US industrial market seeing rise in sublease space
Sublease inventory in the national industrial market grew more than 50% in the first quarter of 2023 from Q1 2022. That's according to research by Savills PLC, which also found less than 0.5% of the…
Read More04.17.2023
To Resurrect Certain Downtowns It May Take More Than Workers Returning to the Office
A recently updated study out of the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies has some bad news for CRE property owners in traditional downtown areas: pandemic recoveries are taking a longer time than…
Read More04.14.2023
Recourse And Non-Recourse Debt In The Commercial Real Estate Context
The coming banking crisis, and suggestions of an incoming bust in commercial real estate, has given rise to some questions about recourse versus non-recourse debt and what impact the differences in those types of debt…
Read More04.13.2023
Institutional Investors Remain Interested in Data Centers. But They Are Waiting for the Right Moment.
Investment sales of data centers slowed dramatically toward the end of 2022 and through the first quarter of 2023, as rising interest rates and capital constraints impacted acquisition activity. However, the asset class has not…
Read More04.13.2023
The Tax Consequences of Handing the Keys Back to Your Lender
With remote work models prevailing and many tenants gravitating to Class A buildings with amenities, there are more than a few Class B and Class C property owners with high vacancy rates and significant imminent…
Read More04.13.2023
A Breakdown of Lenders That Hold CRE Debt
As Moody’s Analytics said last week, estimates by some sources that 70% to 80% of CRE loans were made by lenders with less than $250 billion in assets were, well, wrong. “However, the 135 US regional banks (generally…
Read More04.12.2023
Is Apartment Construction at a 50-Year High or Not?
You’ve probably seen the headlines or heard the chatter: Multifamily construction is at the highest levels in 50 years. There are about 1 million multifamily units actively under construction nationally. But to say multifamily construction…
Read More04.11.2023
Ultra Low Interest Rates Will Be Back — But That’s Not Entirely A Good Thing For Real Estate
Inflation was a blip, and long-term ultra-low interest rates will return — but only because world economic growth will be anemic. That is the not entirely upbeat conclusion of the latest IMF World Economic Outlook, which portrays inflation as a blip,…
Read More04.11.2023
Short Commutes Help Reduce Office Vacancy Rates
Moody’s Analytics has been conducting a series of analyses on commercial real estate and surrounding problems with varying degrees of focus on office. So, for example, moderate changes in cap rates and cash flows could cause big…
Read More04.11.2023
Five Developments That Are Changing Cold Storage
What type of cold storage occupiers need today may result in changes for builders of the facilities, the occupiers, corporate bottom lines, and ultimately consumers when they seek the once stored cold/frozen items on their…
Read More04.07.2023
The Office Buildings Struggling the Most Share Several Characteristics
Office buildings were hit hard during the pandemic, leading to higher vacancy rates and reduced occupancy demand– trends that continue today. The 10% hit the very hardest between the first quarter of 2020 when the…
Read More04.07.2023
Experts Say Connecting Bank Collapses to CRE Loans Isn’t So Simple
Getting hit in the head by an acorn and deciding that the sky is falling, as happened in the old folk tale, is objectively silly. And yet, seeing two banks collapse within a short period…
Read More04.06.2023
Let’s Talk About Debt: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Now that nobody wants to see our vax cards anymore, maybe it’s time to issue debt cards to everyone in the CRE community. We need to know if your regional bank got its booster shot.…
Read More04.05.2023
Rent Control Won’t Make Housing More Affordable
No question, there’s a housing shortage across the U.S., and housing prices are soaring. To combat this, several states and municipalities have proposed rent control measures to make housing more affordable. But as we’ve seen,…
Read More04.05.2023
Multifamily Developers Need to Rethink Their Supply-Side Risk
Over the last three years, Covid-19 extended the timeline for residential and commercial real estate projects to be completed–and its aftereffects continue to slow momentum. The multifamily housing category has been no exception. Part of…
Read More04.04.2023
Moody’s Analytics Tries to Handicap Office Economic Vulnerability
Last week, Moody’s Analytics pointed out that moderate changes to office cap rates and cash flows could cause big problems. This week, the company digs in more to recognize that a threat for CRE isn’t uniform and…
Read More04.04.2023
Restaurants Struggle to Find Affordable Space for Their Expansion Plans
Investors in real estate with a restaurant component are finding themselves in a glass half-full, glass half-empty kind of environment. On the one hand, strong demand for retail space from the food and beverage sector…
Read More04.04.2023
Texas company to add more industrial space in Santa Teresa
A Texas development company on March 29 announced that it's started the latest development phase on a master-planned industrial park in Santa Teresa. Blue Road Investments, which is based in Dallas, broke ground at the Westpark…
Read More04.03.2023
Real Estate’s Global Emissions Are Getting Worse. Many In Industry Have No Plans To Improve
Almost half of the world’s largest real estate investors, which between them own or control more than $1.2T of property, have no target to reduce the carbon emissions from their portfolios. Real estate is responsible…
Read More04.03.2023
New Mexico to receive $40M for these three broadband projects
Growing up in a rural community called Beaverhead in southern New Mexico, John Diamond’s family used a generator for electricity and made calls using a radiophone. A broker who sells farms and ranches, Diamond ultimately…
Read More03.30.2023
Study: Vast Majority of Bank Interventions Turn Into Systemic Distress
There is a familiarity to the current banking crisis if you think back to the Great Recession or the S&L meltdown of the 1980s. There is some move of deregulation and then, within a few…
Read More03.27.2023
What Investors Should Know About Office Buildings with Subleases
Availability of office space for sublease has climbed markedly in the Tampa Bay area, where we’re based, matching a trend that is prevalent around the country. In fact, a number of large metro areas like Chicago…
Read More03.27.2023
All-Electric Building Draws Energy From 500 Feet Below the Surface of the Earth
(Bloomberg)—The key to heating an 834-unit apartment tower under construction on the Brooklyn waterfront will be a hole in the ground. Actually, it will be 322 holes, each about 4 inches (10 centimeters) across and…
Read More03.27.2023
What Investors Should Know About Office Buildings with Subleases
Availability of office space for sublease has climbed markedly in the Tampa Bay area, where we’re based, matching a trend that is prevalent around the country. In fact, a number of large metro areas like Chicago…
Read More03.27.2023
Federal Reserve Sees a Colder Economic Wind Coming
The economic projections from the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Bank presidents have taken a turn downward and it’s looking like a tacit admission of recession without using the R-word. In December, the Fed…
Read More03.24.2023
The Delinquencies and Distress Are Here
People in CRE have been wondering when the impact of macroeconomics and financial realities would mark the arrival of distressed properties. An analysis by CRED iQ of the close to 400 metropolitan statistical areas in the…
Read More03.24.2023
Industrial Space Serving Manufacturing Gets a Closer Look
Investors seeking higher cap rates are finding them in industrial spaces that serve manufacturing, according to a new report from CBRE. Although e-commerce-fueled bulk logistics space is the darling of the current cycle, manufacturing stimulates…
Read More03.23.2023
New Fed Forecasts Suggest Central Bank Is Bracing for Recession
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues are expecting a sharp dropoff in economic activity through the rest of 2023 — at least, that’s the implication from new economic projections they published this week.…
Read More03.22.2023
Bank Jitters Could Cause a Real Estate Bond Mess
The roiling of banking has generated shockwaves that are hitting other industries, like CRE. At first, it was a question of whether rent payments would come in from the tech startups doing business with Silicon Valley Bank.…
Read More03.22.2023
US retail sector leads corporate defaults: S&P Global
Dive Brief: The tally of corporate defaults this year through Feb. 28 was at its highest since 2009. Retail led the way, with seven out of 23 defaults, or 30% of the global tally, through…
Read More03.22.2023
Forging New Paths
Beginning in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, a generously funded federal highway program carved large swaths through countless neighborhoods and cities across the country. In Rochester, N.Y., an extension of the national highway…
Read More03.22.2023
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO RETRO-COMMISSIONING IN THE AGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Sustainability in the built environment is an expansive industry and currently enjoying its time in the spotlight due to increased pressures from communities and governmental bodies to combat climate change. From building design initiatives such…
Read More03.22.2023
Homeward Bound
More than half of American CEOs (55%) whose companies rely on manufacturing to produce and deliver their products recently reported plans to reshore some operations. Of those, 95% said they would do so in 2023,…
Read More03.21.2023
2023’s States with the Best & Worst Taxpayer ROI
Tax Day can be a painful reminder of how much we have to invest in federal, state and local governments, though many of us are unaware of exactly what they give us in return. As…
Read More03.21.2023
Real Estate Roundtable Calls for a CRE Troubled Debt Restructuring Program
The Real Estate Roundtable called on regulators to reinstitute a “troubled debt restructuring (TDR) program for commercial real estate that would give financial institutions increased flexibility to refinance loans with borrowers and lenders.” Worry about liquidity in…
Read More03.20.2023
Is Now a Good Time to Buy Office? Experts Weigh In
Colliers wonders if the “next great buying cycle” for office could be now. It points to research by Revolution that notes that when lenders tighten, the four-year forward price change vastly outperforms. “Think back to…
Read More03.20.2023
Real Estate Investors Brace for a Liquidity Squeeze Amid Bank Sector Turmoil
A firestorm among the banking sector, including the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and New York’s Signature and infusions of capital into First Republic Bank and Credit Suisse, has real estate investors scrambling to figure out what this…
Read More03.20.2023
The Rise of the “Moneyball Era” of Commercial Real Estate
In 1997, Billy Beane, the former general manager of the Oakland A’s, applied Bill James’ sabermetric analytical concepts to the team’s scouting and player evaluation practices. This exercise, while not particularly complex, was innovative, and…
Read More03.17.2023
Multifamily Plays the Rent Growth Waiting Game
The pandemic set off an unusual time in multifamily. The sector became part of the short game. Rents drove upward, responding to increased prices, and things moved very fast. But with the shifts of the…
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