Key Points: The recovery will not just be an interest rate story, but also a price story. As property prices stem declines and stabilize, transaction activity will gradually follow. In the refinance markets, this rebound appears to already be occurring. Distress in debt markets will take longer to work out and will likely last beyond 2025. The ...

This Valentine’s Day, while couples nationwide enjoy romantic dinners, exchange chocolates and flowers, or cozy up at home with a nicer-than-average bottle of wine, economists will instead be focusing on something slightly less romantic: how much money people are spending on retail goods and services. While the retail sales report that comes out ...

Nationally, a substantial amount of new apartment supply will be delivered in 2024. Increased supply empowers renters with more choices, prompting landlords to compete through pricing. Some cities have a lot more supply coming to market than others, and each market’s ability to absorb new units, as well as how many vacant units are left over after ...

In a recent article, we juxtaposed the Federal Reserve’s projections with the “wisdom of the crowd” to consider possible interest rate outcomes in 2024. In this X-Factor, we explore the uncertainty surrounding interest rate expectations more broadly. For example, if there is a soft landing, there’s still a chance, according to the Fed’s own ...

A new, albeit not particularly comforting refrain has become popular in the commercial real estate (CRE) world -- stay alive until 2025. Many are hoping that by 2025 inflation will be demonstrably tamed and the Federal Reserve will have lowered interest rates. But getting to 2025, as the catchphrase suggests, means that 2024 will be a year of ...

The recent rise in long-term interest rates suppresses commercial real estate (CRE) transaction volume in two primary ways. First, higher long-term interest rates typically lead to higher CRE mortgage rates, which make CRE deals less profitable. Lower prospective returns on CRE deals incentivize buyers to wait on the sidelines until prices fall ...

Slowing demand to lease apartments is now reducing demand to own multifamily properties. Declining rent growth, as well as higher interest rates, has limited the prices that prospective buyers can afford to pay for a property, opening a gap in price expectations between buyers and sellers. As a result, multifamily transaction volumes in the fourth ...

Since Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) are actively traded, their prices fluctuate more than other types of commercial debt as interest rates move. Given this interest rate sensitivity, CMBS provide insight into what trends may evolve in private lending markets, which are larger but less transparent, so they are less likely to quickly ...

As the Federal Reserve further tightens monetary policy by raising interest rates, existing borrowers of fixed-rate debt will be impacted when that debt matures. At that point, borrowers will likely need to refinance at higher interest rates, raising the question of whether or not they can afford costlier debt service. Understanding the quantity ...

Several commercial real estate (CRE) fundamentals continued to soften in October. It was the second consecutive month where prices for multifamily, retail, and central business district (CBD) office sectors all declined on a month-over-month basis, though prices remain higher for all asset classes compared to October 2021.