What I’m Reading
Deluge: Office occupancy losses hit record lows in 2020, totaling 84MM square feet with more than half of the losses occurring in CBDs. Expensive markets with a high concentration of tech-and energy-companies were the most impacted. The only relative bright spots were secondary and tertiary markets, which still generally fell but benefitted from migration trends. JLL
Precedent: A lawsuit filed against LA County over a landlord’s inability to evict a non-paying auto repair tenant could have massive implications for commercial eviction bans. Commercial Observer
Evolution: Some well-positioned retail is thriving during the COVID and contactless services like curbside pickup – which are an increasingly large percentage of sales – are likely to remain robust long after the pandemic has ended. Footwear News
Confidence Game: Homebuilder confidence in January was still quite high but dropped a bit thanks mostly to rising material costs and an uptick in COVID cases. Calculated Risk
Life Preserver: Commercial real estate debt has largely been propped up by central bank bond buying but there is concern that the policy is obscuring potential long-term pain in sectors most impacted by by Covid-19 lockdowns. Wall Street Journal
Pain Point: Two new California legislative proposals aim to streamline conversions of commercial to residential use easier. This could have a big impact on developers trying to re-purpose dying shopping centers and underutilized offices. Bloomberg
Chart of the Day
Looks as though we are about to break out the (really) big guns when it comes to COVID relief.
Source: Moody’s Analytics
WTF
Out in the Open: A South Carolina couple was arrested for filming sex acts on a Myrtle Beach Ferris wheel and a public pool after uploaded the videos to a porn site. ABC News 4
Pit Stop: A man who was arrested for breaking into the US Capitol during the riots a few weeks back claimed that he was only there to use the restroom because Florida. The Daytona Beach News-Journal
Basis Points – A candid look at the economy, real estate, and other things sometimes related.
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