What I'm Reading Back to School: The first half of 2020 was all about a shortage of demand for goods and services. The experience of 2021 has been exactly the opposite - demand is booming, yet supply is limited. The current labor shortage that American businesses are facing is playing...
April 8th – Deflating
What I'm Reading Deflating: A new study by data firm VTS, which tracks tens of thousands of negotiations across the U.S. between landlords and tenants found that big companies are sticking with their city-center office buildings. However, they are also cutting back on space, likely driving down rent for years...
April 1st – Rebound
What I'm Reading Rebound: Apartment List's rent index posted its largest monthly increase since 2017 in March. The markets that saw the fastest declines in 2020 led the way. Globe Street Wiped Out: More than 10% of restaurants in the United States have closed permanently since the coronavirus pandemic began...
March 26th – Recycled
What I'm Reading Recycled: In a sign of how valuable logistics real estate has become, some developers are taking old, unused golf courses and building warehouses on them. Imagine trying to explain this to someone who time traveled to 2021 from 2002. Bloomberg En Fuego: Austin has become America's hottest...
March 24th – Deep Cuts
What I'm Reading Flush: Lenders who are desperate to generate yield are pouring capital into financing the white-hot home flipping market. This is not really a concern for now as competition is pushing rates down at a time when profits are near all-time highs. However, it could become problematic when...
March 23rd – Overflow Conditions
What I'm Reading Overflow: The red hot housing market coupled with stubbornly high unemployment has ignited a boom in new realtors. However, housing supply - which was already low before 2020 - has been dropping like a rock and there are now more realtors than homes for sale in the...
March 18th – Liquid Diet
One Big Thing Interesting story in Globe Street early this week about ReadyCap providing $104MM in construction-to-bridge financing on a new 200 unit apartment building in San Francisco. The project had apparently been behind on leasing thanks to COVID and therefore not able to obtain permanent financing when the construction...
March 17th – Lifeline
What I'm Reading Lifeline: Of the three relief bills passed by Congress over the past year, the latest is probably the most beneficial to the CRE industry. Here's a summary of what the bill contains that will help the industry: $40 billion for rental assistance $25 billion in restaurant industry...
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 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...