What I’m Reading On the Move: For decades, the share of Americans moving to new cities has been falling. The pandemic-induced rise of telework is turning that trend around. This is perhaps a silver lining in the chaos that is 2020. Axios Before the pandemic, the top 15 most expensive cities in the...
October 29th – Face Off
What I’m Reading Faceoff: Public employee unions (for) and commercial real estate companies (against) are spending a massive amount of money in the battle over prop 15, which would remove Prop 13 protections for most commercial real estate in California. The Sacramento Bee Lifeline: Oil demand is still struggling to recover during the...
October 28th – The Great Divide
What I’m Reading The Great Divide: A new report by Moody’s shows that the bid-ask spread between buyers and sellers of commercial real estate has continued to widen, with sellers seeking pandemic-induced discounts and buyers holding the line on pricing. This can continue for some time so long as liquidity remains...
October 27th – Stepping Down
What I’m Reading Stepping Down: One of the cornerstones of former VP Joe Biden’s tax plan is eliminating the inheritance of property at a stepped up basis. This could have substantial value implications for commercial real estate – especially if the eventual plan classifies death as an immediately taxable event –...
October 26th – Real Time
What I’m Reading Real Time: New tracking technology that allows landlords to dynamically set rental rates on a daily basis make multi-family a better inflation hedge than ever before. Globe Street Christmas is Cancelled: In yet another blow to holiday mall traffic (and gig employment), mall Santa’s are likely to lose their gigs...
October 23rd – Walking Away
What I’m Reading Walking Away: Trepp researchers parsed special servicer notes on distressed real estate backed by CMBS loans and found a substantial number of borrowers are willing to give assets back to lenders if defaults aren’t cured. As you can probably imagine, most of these are in the hotel and...
October 22nd – The Long View on Politics and CRE Investment Performance
What I’m Reading The Long View: Despite the typical election year rhetoric, a historic analysis of commercial real estate done by Cushman and Wakefield shows that the asset class tends to perform well under both Democrat and Republican administrations. To be clear, individual sectors or strategies can absolutely be impacted by...
October 21st – Low Hanging Fruit: the Confluence of ESG and Work From Home
One Big Thing Over the past few decades a battle has been raging over office layouts. Office tenants have been reducing the amount of space available for each employee for years, going from large private offices to small private offices to cubicles and eventually open office plans / hot desk...
October 20th – Out of Date
What I’m Reading Out of Date: According to JLL, 78% of all cold storage warehouses are at least 20 years old and the average age of a US cold storage facility is 42 years old. This is a problem in an industry where the technology has changed so dramatically in recent...
October 19th – Color Me Skeptical
One Big Thing A Barclay’s analyst went on CNBC last week and made the claim that converting an underperforming mall to a distribution center or residential complex could reduce the value of the property anywhere from 60% to 90%. While I believe this would be the case if a top...