What I'm Reading In the Cold: US real estate investors like Hines and Morgan Stanley have ridden out ruble devaluations, financial crises and the economic sanctions that followed Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea to chalk up positive returns on their Russian real estate portfolios. Now they are facing calls to...
February 9th – Round Trip
What I'm Reading Out of the Basement: The amount of negative yielding debt in the world is falling rapidly. After topping out at $17.8 trillion at the end of 2020, it has dropped to $6.1 trillion today. Expect this to continue to fall as central banks hike. Bloomberg One big...
February 8th – Fire Sale
What I'm Reading Fire Sale: Retail rents are plunging in Manhattan as a lack of office workers makes businesses less viable. On the positive side, falling rates and aggressive concessions have led to falling availability as tenants snap up prime locations at a discount. Bloomberg Decelerating: CoreLogic is projecting that...
February 4th – Road Block
What I'm Reading Roadblock: Demand for warehouses in the Inland Empire is massive, pushing new development further east. However, residents are not happy with having new industrial developments nearby and are pushing back hard, resulting in substantial delays or the outright withdrawal of applications. Globe Street This is great news...
January 26th – Blood in the Water
What I'm Reading Material Shortfall: Dealers in John Burns’ building products survey appear to be planning and buying inventory based on an inaccurate expectation of growth in 2022. If the results of the survey turn out to be accurate, materials companies are underestimating demand, which will cause more shortages and...
January 19th – In Limbo
What I'm Reading Not Out of the Woods: Trepp's overall CMBS delinquency rate increased for the first time in 18 months. The move was driven by issues in the office sector which is still facing work from home headwinds. Over the next five years, 42% of the full-term interest-only loans for office...
January 5th – Stuck in Place
What I'm Reading Boxed In: Despite an incredibly tight apartment market, Los Angeles won't allow rent hikes for tenants in rent-stabilized units - which accounts for approximately 75% of inventory - until at least 2023. This despite costs rising sharply, including labor and materials for building repairs as well as...
January 4th – End of the Line
What I'm Reading Tick Tock: The window for banks to use troubled debt restructuring (TDR) is coming to an end. TDRs have been a way for lenders to modify a loan’s terms, because of a borrower’s financial or legal difficulties, and account for an impairment of value. Under the initial...
December 20th – Full House
Programing note: I'll be posting a bit more intermittently over the next couple of weeks. Wishing you all Merry Christmas and happy holidays! What I'm Reading Full House: People are increasingly buying homes with their friends as a way to deal with high costs and gain a foothold in the...
December 17th – Spreading Out
What I'm Reading Spreading Out: There is building anecdotal evidence that a substantial portion of surging demand for housing is due to the US undergoing another episode of average household sizes shrinking, much as it did in the 1970s. Calculated Risk Whack a Mole: People are ricocheting between skyrocketing rents...