Month: August 2020

Jeff Bezos and the Amazon building in Hyderabad (Getty, Youtube/Amazon India) Amazon just opened its largest office in the world, spanning 1.8 million square feet, in Hyderabad, India. It’s part of the e-commerce giant’s massive push in the second-most populous country, a move that not everyone is happy about, according to the New York Times.…

Lake Tahoe More and more urbanites are making permanent moves to towns that were predominately vacation retreats. The pandemic has boosted demand in places like Colorado’s Vail Valley and Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border. It is making for hot competition among homebuyers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Lake Tahoe’s inventory of unsold homes…

The hospitality industry is facing an existential crisis, but some REITs whose portfolios include extended-stay properties may be a safe long-term bet for investors. Courtyard Houston-West University in Houston, Texas (Courtesy of Chatham Lodging) The coronavirus pandemic has hammered the hospitality industry, with real estate investment trusts that own and manage hotels and resorts getting…

Federal Reserve Board chairman Jerome Powell (Photos by Samuel Corum/Getty Images; iStock) The Federal Reserve has shifted its strategy for setting interest rates, allowing inflation to rise higher than previous targets. The change codifies what the Federal Reserve has been practicing for the past 18 months, and signals that interest rates will remain low, the…

“For every person who is in the real estate industry, The Real Deal is a must-read. If not, they are at a disadvantage.” So said Don Peebles, a self-made real estate entrepreneur and founder of the Peebles Corporation. We agree with him. Admittedly, we may be a bit biased. Now we want to give you…

(Getty) Months after civil unrest prompted retailers in cities across the U.S. to board up their shops, there’s still plenty of plywood hanging. The reasons vary, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some business owners say there’s still plywood up on their shops because glass shipments are delayed, sales are slow and fear of more…

The 97-unit complex (Credit: Google Maps) While the pandemic has sunk commercial real estate property prices across most sectors, apartments have been among the very few exceptions. Demand, it seems, remains high. And so does transaction activity. In the latest deal, Sussex Capital Group paid $26.4 million for a 97-unit apartment complex in the San Fernando…

From left: Victor Franco Noval, Victorino Noval and Jona Rechnitz with the Mountain of Beverly Hills (Getty; A Bird’s Eye) In the months after being sentenced to prison for his role in an NYPD corruption scandal, cooperating witness Jona Rechnitz, a former donor of Mayor Bill De Blasio, has been entangled in numerous lawsuits involving…

Commercial real estate indices were down compared with this time last year, but buyers still aren’t selling — yet (iStock) The economic toll on commercial real estate shows no signs of abating as the health crisis lingers. Indexes for office, retail and lodging properties were all lower in July than they were a year ago,…

Rate of Scrapped CRE Deals Rises Worldwide Due to Covid (Credit: iStock) Soon after the coronavirus was declared a pandemic in mid-March, real estate dealmaking around the world ground to halt as capital markets froze and buyers reconsidered the value of assets. In-contract deals that were disrupted in the early days of the crisis included…