Market News

Small cities in the Midwest topped The Emerging Housing Markets Index in the first quarter, a sign that buyer demand for affordable homes remains robust even as activity in the broader market slows.

The U.S. office vacancy rate reached a milestone in the first quarter when it rose to 12.9%, exceeding the peak vacancy rate during the 2008 financial crisis, with office-building prices down 25% since early 2022.

In March, 42,368 bankruptcy petitions were filed nationwide, up 33% from 31,898 in February and up 17% from a year ago. Commercial filings jumped 24% to 2,305 in March compared with a year ago, and 548 of those were Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings, up 79% from a year ago.

15% of insurers with commercial real-estate lending businesses are planning to shrink their activity this year. That's more than three times as many in the same survey last year.

After three consecutive month-over-month increases, the overall number of U.S. rooms in construction fell slightly in March. Among the chain scale segments, luxury shows the highest number of rooms as a percentage of existing supply at 5.2%.

Florida gained more residents than any other state in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau data with most of the domestic driver-license changes coming from New York.

Rockefeller Center is preparing to open its first hotel, the latest sign that Midtown Manhattan’s largest office landlords are leaning into hospitality and entertainment as remote work reduces demand for office space. Aspen Hospitality plans to convert 10 floors of vacant office space above the NBC “Today” show studios into a luxury hotel. Rockefeller Center was a natural choice for Aspen Hospitality, because its owner, the Chicago-based Crown family, co-owns the complex with New York-based real-estate developer Tishman Speyer.

Nearly 23% of the commercial real estate loans in CRED iQ’s database that are secured by properties within the Minneapolis MSA are delinquent or in special servicing. That positions the market as the worst performing among the nearly 400 MSAs the company tracks nationwide, which encompasses more then $900 billion in outstanding commercial real estate debt.

U.S. hotel gross operating profit per available room exceeded the pre-pandemic comparable and was the highest since October, according to STR’s February 2023 profit and loss data release for February. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was the only key bottom-line metric on a per-available-room basis to come in lower than February 2019.

U.S. inflation eased to 5% in March from a year earlier, its lowest level in nearly two years, but underlying price pressures remained elevated despite the Federal Reserve’s campaign to slow rapid price increases.