The Lede

Bloomberg, June 27, 2016--Yu, Hui-Yong New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel is scheduled to close in spring 2017 so owner Anbang Insurance Group Co. can convert most of its 1,400-plus rooms to condominiums. The luxury hotel, managed by Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., will reopen as many as three years later, with about 300 to 500 hotel rooms remaining.

Reuters, June 27, 2016--Lawder, David U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said on Monday that policymakers in Britain and other European nations and elsewhere should use all available tools, including fiscal and monetary policy and structural reforms, to boost global demand in the aftermath of the U.K. vote to leave the European Union.

MarketWatch, June 23, 2016--Ouyang, Xuanyan U.S. bank officials said Thursday the Basel III reforms are too complex and do not align with reality in the United States. The complaints about the international regulatory framework came before the Senate Banking Committee.

National Real Estate Investor, Jun 23, 2016--Mitchell,  Donna Commercial real estate professionals have been wondering how the market would deal with the wave of commercial mortgage debt maturing in the next year and a half, particularly at a time when lending standards are considerably more conservative than they were 10 years ago.

Politico, June 23, 2016--Nelson, LouisThe U.S. economy is safer and more stable now than it was seven and a half years ago, President Obama said this week in an interview with Bloomberg published on Thursday--and one of the reasons is that the financial industry is smaller, with less "froth." 

Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2016--Gamerman, Amy Boston--a city with a Puritan back story and an ingrained suspicion of glitz, where a well-preserved Back Bay townhouse has long been the gold standard of top-tier real estate--is embracing the designer high rise. Shiny residential towers are sprouting up across Beantown's once drab and neglected precincts, emblems of Boston's boom and its growth as a bigger, more international city.

CNBC, June 28, 2016--Cox, Jeff Not long ago the Federal Reserve told markets to expect as many as four interest rate hikes this year. Now, traders are beginning to give serious consideration to a rate cut before 2016 is over.

Rents for downtown core office buildings jumped 7 percent year-over-year into record territory, reported JLL, Chicago.

Few executives anticipate reducing the average term of their leases or trimming space leased because of new lease accounting standards, but many expect challenges around data collection and systems, reported CBRE Group and PwC US.

Central business district office buildings are aging, and retrofitting older buildings to address workforce changes and space-usage patterns will require capital improvements, reported Moody's Investors Services, New York.

Risk of Class A multifamily overbuilding is rising in some submarkets, reported Fitch Ratings, New York.

The Mortgage Bankers Association released its first quarter 2016 Commercial/Multifamily DataBook today.