Recent Posts by Xander Snyder
Xander Snyder is the senior commercial real estate economist for First American Financial Corporation, the premier provider of title, settlement and risk solutions for real estate transactions and the leader in the digital transformation of its industry. In his role, he provides analysis, commentary and forecasts on commercial real estate trends. Snyder's research focuses on economic trends impacting commercial real estate, such as demographics, fundraising, investment, and commercial lending. He monitors, analyzes and reports on economic data and surveys related to commercial real estate, and develops models and forecasts to better understand the forces that influence commercial real estate markets. Before joining First American, Snyder developed data-driven models to guide real estate investment strategies, co-founded a proptech startup, and worked as a global risk analyst analyzing geopolitical risk around the world and consulting international companies on supply chain risk. Snyder graduated from Cornell University with a double degree in economics and classical music composition, earning the title of Summa Cum Laude. He is currently completing a master's degree in data science from UC Berkeley. Snyder, a native Angeleno, lives and works in Los Angeles.
CRE X-Factor – Assessing the State of the CRE Reset
By
Xander Snyder on July 12, 2023
The commercial real estate (CRE) market is in a reset. Deal activity is down, and property prices are declining. We recently examined what clues history can provide about the potential length and depth of CRE price declines. Today, let’s examine what current CRE fundamentals can tell us about where we are in the process of resetting.
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CRE X-Factor - When Will Commercial Property Prices Recover?
By
Xander Snyder on July 10, 2023
The data is clear – commercial real estate (CRE) property prices are undergoing an adjustment. With that in mind, many industry professionals and investors are asking the next logical questions – how far will prices fall and when will prices bottom out and recover. Examining historical CRE data offers some clues, but, as the old adage goes, ...
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Have Investors Lost Interest in the Single-Family Rental Market?
By
Xander Snyder on July 6, 2023
From February 2020 to May 2022, investor purchases of single-family homes grew nationwide, increasing from an average share[1] of 12.4 percent of homes purchased across the largest 50 metropolitan markets to 20.4 percent. Over the past year, however, as interest rates rose and house prices declined, investors pulled back from many single-family ...
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You Can’t Build What You Can’t Fund
By
Xander Snyder on June 19, 2023
Securing commercial real estate (CRE) financing in today’s market is no easy task. After the three bank failures this year, which triggered increased regulatory scrutiny of bank-held CRE loans, banks have pulled back on lending. This is especially true for riskier varieties of lending, such as construction loans, which involve assets that are not ...
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Bank Pull Back Creates Construction Lending Opportunity for Debt Investors
By
Xander Snyder on June 12, 2023
Building a property from the ground up entails substantially more risk than purchasing an existing building that is already generating income. Likewise, financing construction is riskier than lending against existing structures since development projects don’t generate income to pay loan interest until they are completed. For this reason, most ...
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Uncertain Economic Outlook Keeps Renters Where They Are, Pushing Cap Rates Up
By
Xander Snyder on May 23, 2023
In times of economic uncertainty, people tend to stay put. After all, why take on new financial obligations, like an apartment lease, when the future is less certain? Today, though unemployment remains low, inflation remains high, and the recent slew of layoffs at tech companies has many worried about their own financial position. The recent, ...
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CRE X-Factor: For Commercial Real Estate, Banks Aren’t the Only Lender in Town
By
Xander Snyder on May 9, 2023
When most people think of a loan, they think of a bank. Banks take deposits from customers in return for interest payments or other services. The bank then invests those deposits in loans, such as commercial real estate (CRE) loans, and securities that pay a higher interest rate than the bank is paying on the deposits. However, a bank is not the ...
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Where is the Risk Exposure to Commercial Real Estate?
By
Xander Snyder on May 5, 2023
After the recent bank failures, a good deal of attention has been paid to commercial real estate (CRE) debt held by banks of different sizes. But banks aren’t the only CRE lenders. Insurance companies, mortgage REITs, and private debt funds that lend investors’ money also regularly make CRE loans. Taken together, banks of all sizes only account ...
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Why it’s So Hard to Convert Offices into Housing
By
Xander Snyder on April 13, 2023
At first glance, converting old office buildings into apartments seems like an obvious solution to two pressing real estate challenges. There’s a national housing shortage of several millions of housing units, and office space is substantially underutilized due to the adoption of remote work. Declining office use is a significant risk to office ...
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CRE X-Factor: Retail’s Tailwinds Turn to Headwinds
By
Xander Snyder on April 10, 2023
Retail real estate remains a challenged asset class, although locations catering to experiential services so far appear to be more resilient than others. Even before the onset of the pandemic, the rise of eCommerce and the shift away from mall culture created an uncertain outlook for many types of retail locations. In this month’s X-Factor, let’s ...
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