City Council Proposal Would Pause New York’s Commercial Rent Tax for Years
New York City Councilman Keith Powers introduced legislation Thursday that could suspend the commercial rent tax on businesses below 96th Street in Manhattan, a move designed to bring relief to retail tenants still recovering from COVID-19 losses. If passed, businesses renting space in commercial buildings won’t have to pay an effective rate of 3.9 percent… Read more »
New York Office Occupancy Hits Pandemic Era Milestone at More Than 40% Full
New York’s recovery from the pandemic reached a milestone last week when city office occupancy topped 40% for the first time since the March 2020 shutdown. The closely watched Kastle Back to Work Barometer increased to 41.2% last week, up almost five percentage points compared to the week of May 30 to June 3. The… Read more »
Commercial Real Estate Insulated From Inflation Impact: Report
While rapid inflation is plaguing many parts of the economy, the impact is relatively muted for commercial real estate tenants and landlords, both of which should be more focused on real estate market conditions. Real estate costs tend to be fixed with predetermined escalations on deals that typically average five to seven years nationwide. Occupiers… Read more »
Finding Opportunities in a Bear Market
by Neil A. Dolgin With the recent news headlines about the bear market that arrived on Wall Street, I’ve been asked a lot recently about opportunities to be found in commercial real estate. There are some changes in the marketplace that I’m seeing as well as trends to monitor. Rentals – We’re having more discussions… Read more »
Commercial Property Sales Slow as Rising Interest Rates Sink Deals
Commercial real estate is showing the first signs of cooling in more than a year, disrupted by rising interest rates that are already causing some deals to collapse. Property sales were $39.4 billion in April, which was down 16% compared with the same month a year ago, according to MSCI Real Assets. The decline followed… Read more »
Commutes remain top obstacle to filling offices
The prospects of getting up early to catch the morning train or sitting in an hour of traffic are still deterring employees from filling offices across the country. EIght of the 10 major cities with the largest decline in office occupancy during the pandemic had averaged one-way commutes longer than a half-hour, according to the… Read more »
Gopuff scaling back warehouse footprint amid rapid-delivery slowdown
A fast-delivery app is closing or pausing operations at nearly two dozen warehouses in a sign of the sector’s hangover from its pandemic-era boom. Gopuff is altering its operations at 22 nationwide warehouses to assess how to operate more efficiently, Insider reported. About half of the facilities will be closed, while the other half are… Read more »
Brooklyn new development contract activity up 56 percent year over year
There were 420 Brooklyn new development contracts signed in Q1 2022 totaling $730 million based on last asking prices, according to Brown Harris Stevens Development Marketing’s (BHSDM) Q1 Brooklyn New Development Analysis. This contract activity marks a 56 percent increase year-over-year (270 contracts signed in Q1 2021) and 16 percent increase quarter-over-quarter (362 contracts signed… Read more »
Smart Building and Smarter Protocols: Mitigating IoT Cybersecurity Risks in CRE
From our homes to our workplaces, the deployment of smart technology is becoming increasingly prevalent. The Wall Street Journal notes that smart-building-related companies raised $2.88 billion in venture capital in 2021. In previous posts, we’ve discussed the increased use of smart technology in commercial real estate, the importance of a thorough and rigorous research and… Read more »
Commercial Property Pricing Held Steady In April
“Commercial property prices are not going up anymore, but for the most part, they’re not going down either,” said Peter Rothemund, Co-Head of Strategic Research at Green Street. “That’s about as good as one could hope for in this environment, and a lot better than bonds and stocks, which have both lost about 10% in… Read more »