Wall Street Journal, Jan. 15, 2016–Hilsenrath, Jon
Federal Reserve officials, facing an economic jumble as 2016 begins, will almost certainly keep short-term interest rates steady at a policy meeting this month and turn their focus toward a potential cliffhanger decision about whether to lift them when they gather again in March.
Bloomberg, Jan. 14, 2016–Levitt, David M.
Companies are seeking to pack more workers into smaller spaces, a trend that’s having an impact on office occupancy in Manhattan.
Housing Wire, Jan. 11, 2016–Lane, Ben
When Real Estate Disposition rebranded itself as Auction.com in 2011, the company led a migration of distressed property auctions online. Since then, the company has expanded its distressed property auction business in both residential and commercial sales and recently became a desired portal for traditional real estate sales as well.
Reuters, Jan. 11, 2016–Schneider, Howard
Global risks including a slowdown in China and continued low oil prices are now the chief risks to what is an otherwise promising outlook for the U.S. economy, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Dennis Lockhart said on Monday.
National Mortgage News, Jan. 11, 2016–Macheel, Tanaya
The commercial mortgage-backed securities delinquency rate finished 2015 at a six-year low, said Fitch Ratings.
National Mortgage News, Jan. 12, 2016–Finkelstein, Brad
In a mostly light-hearted interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” HUD Secretary Julian Castro defended the agency against Republican calls for its shutdown.
Wall Street Journal, Jan. 12, 2016–Kusisto, Laura
After six years of rising apartment rents in U.S. cities, investors from all corners of the real-estate industry are piling into new projects in a bet the boom still has a long way to run.
Dallas News, Jan. 12, 2016–Brown, Steve
Despite challenges of storefront retailing in the e-commerce age, Dallas-Fort Worth shopping center vacancies are starting out 2016 with the lowest vacancy in 31 years.
Wall Street Journal, Jan. 12, 2016–Light, Joe
The Federal Housing Finance Agency said so-called captive insurance companies, which insure the risks of the companies that own them, no longer will be eligible for membership in government-backed federal home loan banks. Mortgage Bankers Association President David Stevens said the rule “removes a vital component of the FHLBank membership which provides liquidity for the real estate finance market.”
National Real Estate Investor, Jan. 13, 2016–Mattson-Teig, Beth
Banks are wading through the still murky issue of dealing with new Basel III rules related to high volatility commercial real estate loans. “We have definitely heard of instances where lending decisions have been impacted by the HVCRE rule,” says George Green, a senior vice president at the Mortgage Bankers Association.
