What I’m Reading Bounce Back: Apartment demand rebounded strongly in the third quarter outside of high-priced gateway markets. The rebound helped to stabilize the multifamily market and prevented asking rents from declining as much as would have been expected considering the historic decline in economic performance in the second quarter. Yardi...
October 30th – On the Move
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 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 16th – In the Blocks
What I’m Reading In the Blocks: Conditions are perfect for distressed debt funds – which usually perform well during certain economic conditions, including when monetary conditions have been dramatically eased and when high-yield debt issuance is high. This according to a report on crisis-era distressed debt returns by Julian Falcioni at...
October 15th – Permanent Vacation
What I’m Reading Permanent Vacation: Vacation home demand is soaring during the pandemic as people with means look for places to escape to now that they can’t travel abroad. Wall Street Journal See Also: Park City, Utah’s housing market is white hot as wealthy buyers pile in, pushing median home prices above $2MM. The Salt...
October 13th – Mind the Gap
One Big Thing Over the past couple of months, it has become fairly obvious that another round of support will not be forthcoming from the federal government – at least not until after the election. Given our recent economic struggles, conventional wisdom dictates that this sort of news would send...
October 12th – Hanging On
What I’m Reading Hanging in There: After showing signs of deterioration when enhanced UI ended, the NMHC Rent Payment Tracker is – remarkably – at exactly the same level that it was at in 2019 for the first week of October. NMHC The Great Divide: Pricing expectations between sellers and buyers have continued...
October 9th – Long Shadows
What I’m Reading Long Shadows: Office distress has yet to really materialize. However, the risk of loan maturitites and major tenant lease expirations are casting a shadow over the sector. Roughly $27.7B of the $145B CMBS office loans Trepp tracks are set to mature by 2022. What’s more, nearly 35% of...
October 2nd – Headache
What I’m Reading Headache: Percentage rents are likely to have staying power for retailers even after the pandemic subsides. However, As omnichannel sales strategies grow more popular, the breakdown between online and brick-and-mortar stores is becoming blurry, making it difficult to establish what sales should be included in the percentage rent...
September 30th – Misleading
I’m back! Spent the last week RV camping on California’s Central Coast. It was a lot of fun but good to be back in the saddle. What I’m Reading Misleading Metrics: The article from my interview with Globe Street’s Erika Morphy about sponsor overreliance on cash on cash returns as a...