What I'm Reading Unfinished Business: A new ruling in a Georgia lawsuit between a landlord and tenant found that that by accepting reduced and irregular payments for an extended period, plaintiff Atlanta Life Financial group had created a quasi-new agreement. It ruled that by accepting 16 months of initially reduced...
March 8th – Gorging
What I'm Reading Gorging: Homebuilders are buying up undeveloped lots at a frantic pace in an effort to meet today's incredibly strong demand. However, that demand isn't permanent and the land grab could lead to pain for those participating. Ivy Zelman sums it up perfectly: “The biggest concern I have...
March 5th – Wild West
What I'm Reading Wild West: The non-fungible token (NFT) trend is coming to commercial real estate as platforms look to tokenize assets via blockchain technology in order to provide more flexibility to investors. This segment of the market is fascinating to me but there a ton of potential major pitfalls. ...
March 4th – Balancing Act
What I'm Reading Balancing Act: With home prices up 14.8% YOY in January and mortgage rates rising of late as well, fewer households are able to qualify for a mortgage. The beneficiary of this will likely be rental housing, both apartments and SFR. Marcus and Millichap Leverage: The Massachusetts Superior...
March 3rd – Short Term Bet
What I'm Reading Short Term Bet: As thousands of retail leases come up for renewal, their duration is increasingly shrinking, as businesses grapple with an unpredictable future and look for ways to slash costs, stay flexible and maintain leverage over their landlords, even after the health crisis abates. If the...
March 2nd – Backroom Deal
What I'm Reading Locked and Loaded: Private Equity firms’ global real estate funds are now sitting on more than $300 billion of unspent cash, according to Preqin data. Their attention is now turned to what happens when government support and bank forbearance expires. Most of this capital is looking for...
March 1st – Fuel on the Fire
What I'm Reading Fuel on the Fire: With long rates rising, investors in the mortgage bond market had to sell treasury positions in order to hedge their holdings, accelerating last week's bond market selloff. Christopher Maloney of Bloomberg explains what is happening perfectly: The forced sellers are investors in the...
February 26th – Mind the Gap
One Big Thing Treasury yields are soaring of late so of course a lot of the conversation around commercial real estate in general and multi-family in particular is when cap rates will begin to reflect this. I have a bit of a contrarian take that I outlined on a Twitter...
February 25th – Swamped
What I'm Reading Swamped: As the nation begins to climb out of the depths of the COVID-19 crisis, landlords will be forced to fight for office tenants, creating a tenant’s market unlike any other over the past few decades with availability rising 15-20% in some markets. Vestian Hot Spots: Boise,...
February 24th – Slim Pickings
What I'm Reading Slim Pickins: Despite increasing mortgage rates, housing inventory is still at a record low. One thing to watch here as the vaccine rolls out: COVID exposure has been given as one reason that people are reluctant to list their homes. While that was undoubtedly true last spring,...