Wall Street Journal, Feb. 18, 2016–Dulaney, Chelsey; Light, Joe
Mortgage-finance company Freddie Mac said it would send a $1.7 billion payment to the Treasury in March as it reported a higher profit for the fourth quarter, driven by increased interest rates.
Bloomberg, Feb. 23, 2016–Alloway, Tracy
Morgan Stanley analysts last week predicted U.S. commercial real estate prices would grow by a big fat zero percent in 2016, replacing a previous forecast of 5 percent growth over the course of the year.
Associated Press, Feb. 23, 2016
Home rental price growth slowed down in January as even sizzling markets such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Denver and Portland are cooling.
Wall Street Journal, Feb. 23, 2016–Plevin, Liam
The rise of online shopping and changing consumer habits are battering the big department stores known as anchors that once lured shoppers to malls-leaving landlords with empty space and forcing them to undertake expensive overhauls to stay relevant.
Bisnow, Feb. 22, 2016–Drake, Martin
If a slowdown is underway, multifamily didn’t get the memo. Freddie Mac’s employment hit a 10-year high in 2015 with 400 new hires to bring the staff to 5,416–and most of those went to work on multifamily deals.
National Mortgage Professional, Feb. 16, 2016–Hall, Phil
In his first speech as the new president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, Neel Kashkari took on a strikingly political edge by complaining about the limits in enforcing the Too Big to Fail aspect of a Dodd-Frank Act. Speaking at the Brookings Institution, Kashkari noted that his regional Fed bank was taking aim at the issue and then challenged Capitol Hill to do the same.
Wall Street Journal, Feb 16, 2016–Ng, Serena
The financial engine of the market for office buildings, hotels and malls is showing signs of strain, raising questions about the resilience of the commercial real estate boom.
Wall Street Journal, Feb. 16, 2016–Karmin, Craig
Investors are shrugging off the lodging industry’s best fundamentals in years to dump hotel stocks, a move that could signal a broader downturn for the commercial real estate sector.
National Real Estate Investor, Feb. 16, 2016–Anderson, Bendix
Multifamily rents are likely to keep rising in 2016, just not as fast as before, according to forecasts for the coming year.
Richmond Times Dispatch (Va.), Feb. 14, 2016–Little, Andrew R.
The first week of February was the annual Mortgage Bankers Association convention in Orlando, where about 5,000 industry professionals from all walks of the commercial lending world converged. The themes were hard to miss: Most conduit lenders made money in the first half of 2015 and then spent the second half trying not to lose it.
