What I’m Reading Checked Out: Buyers are spending more time than ever in their vacation homes. Mansion Global See Also: A new homes.com survey found that 45% of respondents would move if they could work remotely. Forbes Soaring: Home equity reached a record high in 2020 as American homeowners gained a whopping $1 trillion. Core Logic See...
December 10th – Downdraft
What I’m Reading Downdraft: The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 75.4 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by December 6. While that is a whopping 780 basis point drop from 2019, it should be noted that December 5th and 6th both fell...
December 2nd – The End is in Sight
What I’m Reading The End is in Sight: The Federal Reserve has told banks that they should stop writing contracts using LIBOR by the end of 2021, after which the rate no longer will be published. The current plan is that LIBOR will be fully phased out by June 30, 2023. ...
December 1st – Bargain Bin
What I’m Reading Bargain Bin: Cross border transactions are way down this year. However, the US commercial real estate market is starting to look very cheap to foreign investors, who find their currency hedging costs – driven by interest rate differentials between two currencies – aligning nicely with the direction of...
November 30th – Steady and Slow
What I’m Reading Slow and Steady: While the CMBS issuance volume has been consistently inching upward, 2020 issuance will close at roughly half of what was predicted a year ago, according to Kroll Bond Rating Agency. Kroll estimates this year’s total CMBS issuance will be $55 million while $95 billion was...
November 23rd – Its Going Down
What I’m Reading Its Going Down: The MBA is out with its 2021 market outlook for housing. The big news here is that they are projecting a major slowdown for the mortgage lending industry with refinances falling a whopping $1 trillion – from $1.97 trillion to $971 billion – thanks to...
November 19th – Ringing the Bell
One Big Thing The Fed is now in a tricky spot when it comes to their massive mortgage bond buying program (emphasis mine): All of this serves to squeeze mortgage-bond investors in higher-rate securities. Most of them bought the debt at a premium, and the constant reduction in lending rates leaves...
November 18th – Back in Line
First, Some Corporate News: RanchHarbor closed on our second deal since launching. This one is a sale-leaseback industrial portfolio in San Diego that was purchased in a joint venture with Stos Partners. Really excited to get another one in the books that will provide a solid yield for our investors. ...
November 11th – Changing of the Guard
What I’m Reading Changing of the Guard: Office, hospitality and retail, three of real estate’s most institutionalized sectors, are facing long-term structural headwinds. At the same time, formerly-niche sectors like cold storage, self-storage, medical office and data centers are getting more institutional attention thanks to their resiliency in the face of...
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...