What I'm Reading Stressing Out: Fitch Ratings published a stress test that concluded, in a worst case scenario, office values could fall 50% if remote work sticks. Fitch ran various stress scenarios ranging from moderate to severe to determine how telework would impact demand, rent and net cash flow on...
February 4th – Signs of Life
One Big Thing Today I'm going to focus a major investment sale broker pet peeve: yield fluffing (and yes, I made up that term). For the uninitiated, a fluffer is someone who gets a male porn actor ready to "perform" before the cameras start rolling. I'm not going to explain...
February 3rd – Normalized
What I'm Reading Normalized: Before the pandemic, the barriers to widespread remote work were as much mental as they were technological. Now those barriers have broken down completely and the implications are huge for both regional population flows and the future of the office market. The Atlantic Back to Normal:...
January 27th – Long Road Back
What I'm Reading Long Road Back: COVID-19 has resulted in a near-total halt in business travel. Beyond the blows to airlines, hotels, travel agents and rental-car companies, the sharp drop in business travel is rippling through whole ecosystems of related commerce, including airport shops, downtown bars and restaurants, construction companies...
January 13th – Digging Deeper
What I’m Reading Digging Deeper: Last week’s jobs report was ugly on the surface. However, if you look deeper past the temporary losses, it was actually fairly strong given the circumstances and reveals the underlying resilience of the economy. Tim Duy’s Fed Watch Inflection Point: With a vaccination-fueled economic turnaround expected to begin...