American consumers’ spending on the luxury market, which includes high-end department stores and online platforms, fell 9.3% in February from a year earlier, worse than the 5.9% decline in January.
Credit Card Debt
As of the fourth quarter of 2024, the average household’s credit-card debt surpassed $10,000, adjusted for inflation, for the first time since 2009.
Global Fundraising
Total global real-estate fundraising by private-equity firms that invest in real estate was $10 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, a five-year low.
Layoffs
U.S. employers announced 172,017 layoffs for February, up 245% from January and the highest monthly count since July 2020. More than one-third of the total came from the DOGE effort to reduce the federal headcount.
BX $8 Billion
Blackstone closed this week on an $8 billion commercial real-estate debt fund, matching the record for this type of investment vehicle and offering another sign of a property-market rebound.
Data Centers
Among 569 data-center facilities in markets across the Americas, the vacancy rate stood at 4.9% at the end of 2024, and 83% of upcoming capacity is already preleased. In the second half of 2024, North American markets reached 20 gigawatts of operational capacity, with 1.5 GWs added in the second half specifically. That brought the total capacity added in 2024 to 3.2 GWs.
401(k) Hardship
Some 4.8% of 401(k) account holders took early withdrawals last year for reasons such as preventing foreclosure and paying medical bills. That is a record high, up from a prior record of 3.6% in 2023 and a prepandemic average of about 2%.
$2 Billion Data Center
JPMorgan Chase and Starwood Property Trust have agreed to lend $2 billion for the 100-acre data center campus in West Jordan, Utah, outside Salt Lake City. The borrower, a venture of real-estate investor CIM Group and Novva Data Centers, said the facility will be able to provide 175 megawatts of continuous service.
Existing Home Inventory
In January, U.S. existing-home inventories were 16% below levels seen this time five years ago. Beneath the headline numbers, different states are recovering at sharply different paces. In Texas, the number of properties for sale is 20% higher than it was before the pandemic while in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the number of homes currently on the market is still less than half what was normal before the pandemic.
Pending Home Sales
Pending home sales fell 4.6% in January 2025 to the lowest level on record as mortgage rates held above 7% for the entire month.