Housing starts declined 5.1% month over month in August, while forward-looking building permits held steady with a slight decline of .9%, the Commerce Department reported on Thursday. This brings the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts to 1.4 million and permits to nearly 1.5 million. Fueled by low interest rates and the recent migration to ... READ MORE >
Chart of the Day: New home sales rise as housing stays hot
Sales of new homes continue to soar, increasing by 13.9% to a seasonally adjusted rate of 901,000 for the month of July, and up 36.3% from the same period a year earlier, according to data released this week from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau. New home sales are up 8% year over year. We expect this trend ... READ MORE >
An SOS for commercial real estate
As the length and severity of the coronavirus pandemic continue to wreak havoc on the economy, real estate deals are at best being reworked and at worst falling apart altogether. The data tells a clear story: Transactions are down almost 70% in the second quarter, according to Real Capital Analytics (RCA), a commercial real estate research firm, ... READ MORE >
Real estate investors seen as primary funding source for “the caring economy” plan
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled a 10-year, $775-billion plan to support what he deemed “the caring economy,” which is comprised of jobs that provide care for children and the elderly. In order to finance this proposal, Biden is looking to the real estate investment community. Like most proposals announced on the campaign ... READ MORE >
Miles away: U.S. airports face heavy lift and slow recovery
The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shelter-in-place protocols have devastated the airline industry. Along with it, airports across the country, rife with retail, have suffered significant losses. As cancellations of business trips and vacations mounted beginning with the onset of the outbreak in mid-March, traffic from travelers plummeted. The ... READ MORE >
Home construction collapses under coronavirus lockdown
Housing starts plummeted 30.5% to an annualized rate of 891,000 in April as the full weight of the coronavirus lockdowns hit the sector, the Commerce Department reported on Tuesday. The plunge extended to permits to build, which dropped to an annualized rate of 1,074,000, representing a 20.8% decline. Many hoped that the designation of residential ... READ MORE >
Is brick and mortar dead? This time, we’re talking about office buildings.
As the human toll of the coronavirus pandemic has mounted, companies have limited non-essential business travel and told employees to work from home. The effect on cities has been profound, and unsettling, with a cityscape characterized by empty office buildings, quiet streets and shuttered stores. Now, as many middle market companies have shown that ... READ MORE >
Existing home sales declined 8.5% in March as headwinds grew
Existing home sales fell to 5.27 million in March, down 8.5% from the 12-month high set in February of 5.76 million. While most economists expected a decline as the economic toll of the coronavirus set in, March was still a strong month. For comparison, existing home sales in March 2019 were 5.23 million as interest rates were rising and affordability was a ... READ MORE >
Housing market follows the severe contraction of the broader economy
The residential construction and home improvement industries, which were so promising heading into 2020, now will be among those sectors hardest hit by the coronavirus. The National Association of Home Builders’ monthly confidence index was in free fall in April, plunging 42 points month over month to a rating of 30 – the largest decline ever in the 30 ... READ MORE >
With lifeline from Paycheck Protection Program cut short, real estate turns to bankers for liquidity
The Paycheck Protection Program, a $350 billion government effort to help small and medium-size businesses weather the coronavirus pandemic, is hitting its funding limit less than two weeks after it was launched on April 3. "At the present run-rate, we're going to be out of money," Lawrence Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said on ... READ MORE >