Weekly News Roundup New Home Sales Rules Click Here for YouTube Video Commentary New rules for the residential real estate market mean that since Saturday, anyone in the market to buy or sell a home will encounter unfamiliar processes, and possibly a bit of confusion. The “practice changes” stem from a 2023 legal decision over…
Weekly News Roundup San Francisco Hotel Distress Click Here for YouTube Video Commentary San Francisco’s hospitality business imploded during the pandemic. Now, its hotel owners are drowning in bad debt as never before. In the city’s metropolitan area, the delinquency rate among commercial mortgage-backed security loans for the lodging sector skyrocketed to 41.6% in June…
Weekly News Roundup Dying Department Stores Department stores are bleeding customers, and landlords no longer view them as magnets for shoppers. Discounters are underpricing them. Specialty stores are outmaneuvering them. And luxury brands are sometimes bypassing department stores to open their own shops. The surviving operators are making big moves in hopes of turning things…
Weekly News Roundup Will Housing Market Crash? The U.S. housing market had finally started slowing in late 2022, and home prices seemed poised for a correction. But a strange thing happened on the way to the housing market crash: Home values started rising again. So much for the now-quaint notion that the post-pandemic “housing recession”…
Weekly News Roundup Shrinking Apartments Developers are thinking small when it comes to studio apartments. The average size of studio units has shrunk by 54 square feet to 445 square feet since 2014, making them 10% smaller today than they were a decade ago, according to a new report from RentCafe. Smaller studios, which are…
Weekly News Roundup Migration Driving Real Estate Many homeowners have decided to relocate, with a Stateline analysis of U.S. Census Bureau finding this month that a growing number of Americans are ditching cities for suburbs in search of lower taxes and more affordable real estate prices. There are places around the country where a home…
Weekly News Roundup Suburban Offices Outperform Downtown Properties After years in the shade, humble suburban offices are faring much better than glamorous city-center towers as home working continues to upend the property world. Downtown-office valuations have halved from their peak in early 2022, based on MSCI Real Assets data. For suburban offices, the drop is…
Weekly News Roundup Signs of House Prices Topping Houses are really expensive, and getting more so. Prices jumped 1.2% in April from March, and are now up about 50% from the end of 2019, according to one prominent index. For prospective buyers, it’s a crisis. For owners, it’s a windfall: Rising housing prices are a…