City centres and suburbs have been subject to both centripetal and centrifugal forces in modern times. During the first four decades after World War II, rapidly growing middle-class incomes in the Western world translated into expanding city suburbs. This trend peaked in the early 1990s. Suburbia, with its carefully manicured single-family homes, was seen as […]
WACC is an acronym that stands for “weighted average cost of capital” and this is one of the most important metrics we use in the REIT sector. The WACC is similar to the required rate of return that an investor expects from his investment in a certain project. The WACC is a useful finance tool […]
Impacts fast, recoveries slow Just as tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods quickly change urban landscapes, so too economic disruptions, erratic business cycles, and pandemics impact real estate expectations and forecasts. Black swan events arrive unexpectedly whereas recoveries from such events are generally slow. Top down disruptions impact commercial real estate investors, developers, and lenders as price discovery […]
Price discovery in the private real estate market is always a challenge when there is a sudden change in the market as we have now with COVID-19. As happened during past recessions, the number of transactions grinds almost to a halt making it difficult for appraisers to estimate market value. When this happens, we often see a […]
There are about 6.3 million highly skilled tech workers across the U.S. and Canada that are leading global innovation. This subset of 20 technical occupations is known as “Tech Talent” and these professionals are the ones that have made it possible for us to remain productive during our crash course this year in remote working. CBRE’s […]
The US Dollar Index has fallen almost 6% since its March 2020 highs. This is no surprise given the sheer scale and speed of the Federal Reserve’s response to the pandemic – a $3 trillion rise in the balance sheet, a buying spree in US Treasury, agency, MBS and corporate debt, backstop programs in the […]
In the past 18 years, after a series of spectacular and occasionally failed rocket launches, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has emerged as Silicon Valley’s next colossus, a once in a generation business in the same league as an Amazon, a Google or a Microsoft. SpaceX’s current funding round values the company at a pre-money valuation of […]
The resignation letter from former New York Times editor and writer Bari Weiss was so powerful because it seemed to state what many once-loyal readers – I’ve been among them for many years, even given the obvious bias of the paper – already knew given the way things there have been going in the last […]
Macrobond Household Index Euro Area: Consumer confidence survey results for April 2020: -22 Lowest number since survey started: -24 Expectation of becoming unemployed in next 12 months: 62 (High) Household gross total income in Q4 2019: 1.8 trillion EUR Change since previous year: 2.5% As percentage of GDP: 60% Household savings rate in Q1 2020: […]
Many millions of people have spent the last four months in sadness and depression. It’s hard to watch the world shattered by the bad behavior of governments – and to see too many among us cheer the destruction – and not feel a sense of despair. And yet the human mind is an incredible thing. […]
