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Eight Must Reads for the CRE Industry Today (March 10, 2022)

Commercial Observer checks in on the state of office real estate at a time when the vacancy rate in Manhattan stands at nearly 20 percent. U.S. housing wealth skewed further towards the more affluent over the past decade, reports The Wall Street Journal. These are among today’s must reads from around the commercial real estate industry.

  1. Did COVID-19 Really Change the Office Forever? We’re About to Find Out. “That is nearly one in five square feet of Manhattan office space that is available for lease, or at least it was at the end of January, according to brokerage CBRE. The number has never been higher. And, with all the talk about hybrid work and folks being less married to their workplaces, is there any reason to believe that that number is going to drop significantly anytime soon?” (Commercial Observer)
  2. U.S. Housing Wealth Skewed Even More Toward Affluent Over Past Decade “The housing-value gap between households earning more than 200% of their area’s median income and other homeowners widened significantly over the decade. In 2010, high-income homeowners held 28% of all U.S. housing wealth. By 2020, that figure rose to 42.6%.” (The Wall Street Journal)
  3. Kohl's says it's no longer a department store “Consumers were dressing down long before the pandemic hit, ditching traditional office wear for denim and sneakers, and Kohl's had been expanding its selection of activewear and casual brands in response. Remote work during the pandemic sped up this wardrobe trend. Kohl's believes it has an opportunity to reinvent itself as a leader in this growing market, and plans to add more fitness, athleisure and denim goods.” (CNN Business)
  4. Successes and setbacks emerge for fraud-linked Bay Area real estate empire deals “A federal judge has shoved Silicon Sage’s properties into receivership. The court-appointed receiver has launched a quest to salvage value from the collapsed and bankrupt real estate empire by finding buyers for the properties. This way, investors can recoup at least some small amount of their losses.” (The Mercury News)
  5. Goodbye Londongrad: Russian Oligarchs Put Pressure on U.K. Property Market “The government has introduced a raft of measures targeting the Russian elite. It has frozen all assets tied to multiple Russian oligarchs with mansions in the city, while some lawmakers have called for the government to seize and sell those homes. It shut down a visa program that gave wealthy foreigners a quick path to citizenship, and is introducing rules that make it harder for property buyers to stay anonymous, a feature that had been an attraction of London.” (The Wall Street Journal)
  6. 'Gone Are The Days Of Tchotchkes': Covid Has Changed The Office Desk Forever “Manufacturers and dealers say there has been a trifurcation in the desk design game, among larger, unassigned desks, adaptable, mobile desks that can accommodate people working in different positions in different locations, and desks in spaces designed for when they need to put their heads down and complete solo work.” (Bisnow)
  7. Macy’s CFO says the American consumer is still healthy, but lower-income shoppers could soon cut back “Mitchell said that Macy’s forecasts that lower-income families, which devote a bigger portion of their monthly paychecks toward essential goods such as groceries, will be affected more than others. As a result, the company said it is already thinking about how to communicate value to those customers differently, versus a luxury customer who has more capacity to spend, Mitchell said.” (CNBC)
  8. Why Long-Term SFR Investors Face Less Risk “SFR is now a hyper-mature industry and there is risk. We are late in the current cycle, and with so much money chasing opportunity, SFR has become a financial alchemy game for some. Many are banking on unrealistic rent increases in a market with severe upward pressure on cap rates and costs.” (Multi-Housing News)
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