Fertitta Entertainment, owned by billionaire Tilman Fertitta, agreed to buy Caesars Entertainment for about $5.7 billion. The acquisition will add Caesars’ more than 50 resorts to Fertitta’s portfolio, which includes Golden Nugget casinos.
New York Hotel Labor
Hotel owners in New York City signed the industry’s most expensive union contract, raising hourly wages by about 50% over eight years. Rising labor and other mounting expenses will push up hotel owners’ annual property operation costs by an estimated 15%.
Denver Office
Downtown Denver faces a crisis with nearly 40% office vacancy, the highest among the country’s top 50 cities.
Google Blackstone
Google and Blackstone plan to launch an artificial-intelligence cloud company with $5 billion in equity capital from Blackstone. The new venture aims to bring 500 megawatts of capacity online in 2027, using Google’s specialized chips and software. Blackstone will be the majority owner and has over $150 billion in existing data-center assets.
AVB EQR
Apartment owners AvalonBay Communities and Equity Residential have agreed to a merger, creating a multifamily real-estate giant worth more than $50 billion. The merger between the two REITs would bring together more than 180,000 rental apartments across the country.
US Quantum Computing
The Trump administration is awarding $2 billion in grants to nine quantum-computing companies, including U.S. government equity stakes. IBM will receive $1 billion of the package. The funding comes from the 2022 Chips and Science Act, with the government taking minority equity stakes in each company.
Down Payments
In 2025, 26% of Americans ages 18 to 44 used family money to help fund their first home purchase down payment.
Hotel Transactions
The first quarter’s total hotel transaction volume of $5.6 billion was up 14.4 percent from Q1 2025, but down 47 percent since the cyclical peak in 2022. Single-asset transaction volume reached $5.4 billion, up 33 percent year over year, and five of those single assets sold for more than $100 million, up 24 percent in volume year over year.
Gen Z Malls
Generation Z is showing a welcome affinity for malls after millennials’ lukewarm allegiance, and mall owners are spending more time and money courting this generation. However, mall owners are reacting to a wave of recent disruptions to their properties by taking an extreme measure: They are banning all shoppers under 18 who aren’t accompanied by an adult.
Office Removals
A recent report found that 2025 was the first year that office space removals, whether through demolition or conversions, outpaced newly completed space for the first time since tracking the data began in 1988.