Market News

Hotels are projected to pay a record high total of wages, salaries and compensation in 2024—$123.4 billion compared to $118 billion in 2023.

The data show hotels are projected to generate a total of nearly $83.4 billion in tax revenue in 2024.

Fueled in large part by the stock market's surge and soaring salaries during the post-pandemic labor shortage, the number of Americans with an adjusted gross income of at least $1 million per year jumped 44% between 2020 and 2021 according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service.

Blackstone has agreed to acquire private Apartment Income REIT for about $10 billion and will invest another $400 million to improve these properties. AIR Communities owns 76 upscale rental housing communities that are primarily in coastal markets, including Miami, Los Angeles, and Boston. This acquisition is Blackstone’s largest transaction in the multifamily market.

Treasury yields jumped and stock prices gyrated following the jobs report. Investors are torn between wanting a strong economy to support further corporate earnings growth and wanting a weaker jobs market that will give the Federal Reserve the green light to begin cutting interest rates.

Chair Jerome Powell said stronger-than-anticipated economic activity this year hasn’t changed the Federal Reserve’s broad expectation that declining inflation will allow for interest-rate cuts this year.

It would take $1.46 million to retire comfortably, according to a recent survey of 4,588 adults released by financial-services company. That is up from $1.27 million a year ago. And over $1 million more than the average survey participant’s nest egg.

Due largely to occupancy costs, Dollar General, located mostly in rural areas plans expansion, while the more urban-focused Family Dollar will close hundreds of stores.

Private-pay senior-housing communities average rate was at 85.1% in the 31 largest U.S. markets for the fourth quarter of 2023. While that is still 2 percentage points below the first quarter of 2020, it is up from its pandemic low point, 77.8% in the first half of 2021. Rent increases, meanwhile, have been outpacing inflation, with independent living costing an average initial rate of $4,126 a month in December and the more intensive assisted-living units costing $6,422.

Commercial property values have fallen 21% on average since the Fed began raising interest rates two years ago.