Today's Real Estate Pulse
U.S. housing starts jump 10.8% in March, hitting a 15‑month high
Residential construction starts surged 10.8% in March 2026, matching both month‑over‑month and year‑over‑year growth. The Northeast led the rebound with an 18.9% YoY increase, and single‑family starts topped one million units for the first time in over a year. Meanwhile, permitting lagged and the South saw a 14% YoY drop in permits.
Also developing:
Sierra to Open First Florida Store, Fourth Kentucky Location
Sierra, the outdoor‑themed off‑price chain owned by TJX Companies, announced it will open its first Florida store in Jacksonville and its fourth Kentucky store in Owensboro on May 30, 2026. The Jacksonville location occupies a 16,700‑square‑foot space previously held by Petco at Riverplace Shopping Center. Sierra will contribute $10,000 to a local Jacksonville charity as part of the launch. The expansion brings Sierra’s total footprint to 145 stores, following 28 new openings in 2025.
Garry Marr: Are Young FHSA Savers About to Get Duped Again?
Canada’s First Home Savings Accounts (FHSA) have surged to roughly $8.07 billion CAD (about $6 billion USD) by the end of 2024, with an average balance of $8,000 CAD (~$5,900 USD) per holder. Meanwhile, the housing market remains soft, with average home...
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass To Speed Up Permits After Meeting With Trump
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed an executive order to overhaul the city’s building‑permit process, a move prompted by a recent meeting with President Donald Trump who criticized LA’s slow post‑wildfire rebuilding. The order introduces artificial‑intelligence review, expands pre‑approved housing...
Home Ownership Rate at 65.3% in Q1 2026
The Census Bureau reported a seasonally adjusted homeownership rate of 65.3% for the first quarter of 2026, a 0.4‑point dip from the fourth quarter of 2025. Rental vacancy held steady at 7.3% while homeowner vacancy remained low at 1.1%. The...
Single‑Family Delinquencies Slip; Multi‑Family Near Bust Levels
Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Delinquency Rate Decreased Slightly in March Fannie Mae Multi-Family Delinquency Rate Near Housing Bust High https://calculatedrisk.substack.com/p/fannie-and-freddie-single-family-b15
Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Delinquency Rate Decreased Slightly in March
In March, Freddie Mac’s single‑family serious delinquency rate slipped to 0.60%, down from 0.61% in February, while Fannie Mae’s fell to 0.58% from 0.60%. Both rates remain near pre‑pandemic lows and only marginally above year‑over‑year levels. Historic peaks reached 4.20%...
Homeownership Rate Steadies at 65.3% in Q1
The U.S. homeownership rate held steady at 65.3% in the first quarter of 2026, unchanged from the previous quarter and a year earlier. Homeowner vacancy slipped to 1.1% while rental vacancy remained at 7.3%, indicating a pause in the modest...
Fetner, PGIM Team up on $65M Columbia Student Housing Buy
Fetner Properties and PGIM closed a $65 million sale‑leaseback for Columbia University’s Arbor student housing in the Bronx. The 126‑unit, nine‑story building was purchased with $47.6 million in acquisition financing and a bridge loan to fund upgrades. Columbia will continue leasing the...
A New Social Security Proposal Could Fast-Track Seniors Paying Off Mortgages in Retirement
A Republican‑backed Senior Citizens’ Freedom To Work Act would eliminate the Social Security retirement earnings test, allowing seniors to keep full benefits regardless of income. The current law caps earnings at $24,480 for workers under full retirement age and reduces...
Mortgages Are High Stakes. Can AI Be Trusted to Get It Right?
Mortgage lenders are turning to neuro‑symbolic artificial intelligence to address the high‑stakes risk of erroneous underwriting. LoanLogics CEO Dave Parker argues that combining pattern‑recognition with explicit regulatory rules creates a transparent, auditable model that can satisfy the Equal Credit Opportunity...
St. Regis Chicago Hotel Owners Land $125M Refi: The Chicago Deal Sheet
Gencom and GD Holdings have secured a $125 million refinancing for the 192‑key St. Regis Chicago hotel, replacing the original $76 million acquisition loan from Varde Partners. The new financing, arranged with Banco Inbursa, allows the owners to extract roughly $49 million in equity....
Affordability Improves Across All Top 100 US Housing Markets
First American’s February 2026 Real House Price Index revealed an 11% year‑over‑year improvement in housing affordability across all 100 tracked U.S. markets, the first such broad gain since October 2024. Real home prices fell 11% while consumer buying power rose 12.6%, driven...
Fashion Designer Pamella Roland Takes 10K-SF Office at 462 Seventh Avenue
Hollywood designer Pamella Roland has secured a five‑year lease for a 10,013‑square‑foot office at 462 Seventh Avenue in Midtown South. The lease runs at $45 per square foot, translating to roughly $450,000 in annual rent. The newly renovated space offers...
Inflation Outpaces Home-Price Growth for 9th Straight Month
Mortgage rates slipped below 6% in February, the first sub‑6% level since 2022, but home‑price growth continued to decelerate. The S&P CoreLogic Case‑Shiller index showed a modest 0.7% year‑over‑year increase nationally, while more than half of major metros recorded price declines....
Marketing Agency Sportfive Inks 18K-SF Lease at RFR’s 477 Madison Avenue
Sportfive, the Hamburg‑based sports marketing agency, signed a long‑term lease for 18,038 square feet at RFR’s 477 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. The lease covers a prebuilt, full‑floor suite opposite St. Patrick’s Cathedral, though the exact term and rent were not disclosed....
Zillow Finds Homes Sold Within a Week 2.6× More Likely to Beat Asking Price
Zillow’s new analysis reveals that homes that go under contract within seven days are 2.6 times more likely to sell above the listing price, with 44.3% of those fast sales beating the ask. The report highlights regional hot spots and...
Dexus Secures $600 Million for Wholesale Property Fund, Boosting High‑End Office Market
Australian REIT Dexus attracted $600 million of secondary capital into its $13 billion Wholesale Property Fund, with a superannuation fund contributing $500 million. The injection, covering a 49% office exposure that includes Sydney’s 25 Martin Place tower, marks a clear shift toward premium...
AI Giants Secure 40,000 Sq Ft at King’s Cross, Cementing London’s Tech‑Driven Regeneration
OpenAI, Anthropic and Jeff Bezos’s AI venture Prometheus are negotiating for roughly 40,000 sq ft of office space in King’s Cross, joining DeepMind, Wayve and Synthesia. The influx underscores a broader shift toward AI‑powered spatial analytics in the 67‑acre redevelopment, positioning the...
Denver Surpasses Tampa as Market With Fastest-Falling Home Values
Denver’s home‑price index fell 2.2% year‑over‑year in February, making it the fastest‑declining major metro in the S&P Cotality Case‑Shiller data and overtaking Tampa. Over half of U.S. metropolitan areas posted price drops, indicating the housing slowdown has spread beyond the...
8990 Expands Colocation Deal with PLDT Data Center
8990 Holdings Development Corp announced an expanded colocation agreement with PLDT’s data‑center arm VITRO, adding Makati and additional facilities to its existing Cebu footprint. The deal gives the affordable‑housing builder direct access to VITRO’s high‑capacity data centers, including the 50‑megawatt...
SM Prime Profit Flat in Q1, Eyes Cut in Capex
SM Prime Holdings reported flat first‑quarter net income of ₱11.66 billion (≈$212 million) while revenue rose modestly 2% to ₱33.3 billion (≈$606 million). Rental income surged 8% to ₱21.6 billion, cushioning a 16% drop in real‑estate sales. The developer, which earmarked ₱100 billion (≈$1.8 billion) for 2026...
ABS Partners Plans 400-Unit Development at Manhattan Studio Site
ABS Partners Real Estate filed a ULURP rezoning application to replace a historic studio at 515 West 57th Street with a 30‑story, 394‑unit residential tower. The 378,000‑square‑foot project will include a commercial component and 119 affordable units under New York City’s inclusionary housing...
Repeat‑sale Prices Rise Faster than Median Home Values
Home prices based on repeat-sales, meaning the same property that sold twice. Flying higher. This differs from median prices, which don't control for size, quality, or location. Repeat sales track how prices are changing over time, while median shows what...
Blackstone-Backed Bagmane Prime Office REIT to Go Public; Plans to Raise ₹3,405 Crore via IPO
Bagmane Prime Office REIT, backed by Blackstone, filed its offer document to raise up to ₹3,405 crore (≈ $415 million) through an IPO. The raise comprises a fresh issue of ₹2,390 crore and an offer‑for‑sale of ₹1,015 crore, with the issue opening on May 5 and...
There Is No Other One
Gary Mittin, a 28‑year Southern California commercial broker, highlights that a single stand‑alone warehouse under 5,000 sq ft is currently on the market in Riverside County. The 4,791‑sq ft property at 1808 Container Circle offers 400 amp power, two loading doors, and parking, priced...
Brooklyn Developer’s Quay Tower Condo Scores Borough’s Top Contract
Brooklyn Home Company co‑founder Bill Caleo sold his renovated Quay Tower condo for $11.9 million, the highest contract among 29 Brooklyn deals signed between April 20‑26. The six‑bedroom, 4,500 sq ft unit was created by merging two unfinished spaces and features luxury finishes, private...
Shaftesbury Capital Adds Horatio and De La Vali to Adjacent Soho Spaces
Shaftesbury Capital has secured two adjacent retail spaces on Soho’s Marshall Street, welcoming independent footwear label Horatio and converting De La Vali’s pop‑up into a permanent store. Horatio occupies an 800 sq ft showroom featuring its signature loafers, laced shoes and unisex apparel, while...
Ingles Markets’ Real Estate Grabs Attention in Proxy Fight
Ingles Markets faces a proxy battle as activist investor Summer Road, which owns about 3% of the company’s Class A shares, seeks election of its nominee, Rory Held, to the board. Summer Road argues that Ingles has let hundreds of acres...
Your MLS Just Learned to Talk
FBS introduced the Flexmls MCP Server, an open‑standard bridge that lets Flexmls subscribers query their entire MLS database through AI models like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. The connection relies on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing agents to ask natural‑language...
US House Prices Freeze in February
U.S. house prices stalled in February, with the FHFA House Price Index showing a 0% month‑over‑month change while still up 1.7% year‑over‑year. The pause follows a modest 0.2% January gain after an earlier 0.1% rise. Mortgage rates briefly fell below...
Risking Savings to Open Store Amid CA Retail Vacancies
~Every day on here, I read someone complaining about vacant retail spaces in walkable areas in their cities in CA. Let me ask you a ?: How much of *your* personal life savings and time would you be willing to risk...
SD Case-Shiller Index, Feb
The San Diego Case‑Shiller Index held steady at 442.13 in February, mirroring levels from both the prior and current springs, indicating a prolonged flat market. Nationwide, more than half of major metros posted year‑over‑year price declines, with the S&P Cotality Case‑Shiller...
“Nesting”…Retailers Have A Gen Z Problem
Home‑improvement retailers are confronting a slowdown as Gen Z postpones homeownership, driving a 40 % drop in home‑sale volumes since 2020 and shrinking first‑time buyer share by half. Lowe’s revenue fell 10 % and Home Depot’s margins narrowed 20 %, while Wayfair logged $4.8 billion...
How the U.S. Tourism Slump Is Hitting Short-Term Rentals: Exclusive
AirDNA’s first‑quarter data shows international short‑term rental demand in the United States slipping faster than overall visitor numbers, with a 4.7% drop in January versus a 3.5% decline in inbound tourism. Canadian bookings led the downturn, falling more than 20%...
SL Green Partnering with Hyundai to Lease Tribeca Office
Hyundai has agreed to sell its 15 Laight Street Tribeca office building to SL Green for $275 million, up from the $247 million it paid in 2023. SL Green will lease the 109,000‑square‑foot property through its $1.3 billion debt platform and assume asset‑management responsibilities. The transaction...
Coop Alleanza 3.0 Reports a 5.3% Rise in Fruit and Vegetable Sales
Italian cooperative retailer Coop Alleanza 3.0 posted a consolidated profit of €38.5 million (about $42 million) for fiscal year 2025, up €20.4 million from the prior year. Total retail sales climbed 2.3% to €5.87 billion ($6.4 billion). Sales of fruit and vegetables jumped 5.3% to €23.3 million ($25.4 million),...
Morningstar DBRS Assigns Credit Rating to the Mortgage Loan Made to Cypress La Habra Associates, LLC
Morningstar DBRS assigned an “A” rating with a Stable trend to the 3.20% mortgage loan due 2031 that finances Cypress La Habra Associates’ 173,467‑sq‑ft industrial and self‑storage campus in La Habra, California. The loan is interest‑only, carries a current balance...
Cooley Signs Lease for New State‑of‑the‑Art Redwood City Office
Cooley LLP has signed a lease for a 145,000‑square‑foot office spanning the top four floors of a custom‑built tower at 1900 Broadway in Redwood City, with move‑in slated for early 2030. The new space will feature a centralized conference center,...
Medical Office Demand Strong; Costs Stall New Supply
Medical office occupancy has reached a cyclical high of 92.4% across the top 100 metros. Absorption is keeping pace with completions. Demand is not the problem. The constraint on new supply isn't lack of tenant demand; it's construction costs that hit an...
Haggerty Bill Rewards Cities Cutting Housing Barriers
While ROAD gets all the attention, there's a better pro-supply bill getting sparse attention that would likely produce far more housing (for sale and for rent), proposed by Sen. Haggerty. It's premise is simple: Reward cities that remove barriers to housing...
20th Century Vs. 21st Century Housing, Part 1
The article contrasts 20th‑century housing, which was marked by cyclical construction that rose and fell with household formation, with today’s 21st‑century market where permanent supply restrictions dominate. In "closed‑access" cities such as New York and San Francisco, policy‑driven limits on...
LA Mansion Tax Hinges on Statewide Negotiations or November Vote
The future of the Los Angeles mansion tax is now a) tied to the fate of high-level negotiations over the bevy of tax initiatives on the table statewide or b) voters in across California in November. https://t.co/GqTXJdLwsg
Retail Footprints Shrink as Tenants Favor Prime Sites
If you can get tired walking around it, it's probly too big. #Retail recalibrating. Tenants shrink their footprints. Demand concentrating on top-tier locations. #realestate #CRE #NAIFarbman #ICSC https://t.co/SwWQPgBj0G
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6 Outdoor Upgrades That Can Boost Your Home’s Value Almost Instantly
Homeowners can quickly boost curb appeal and resale value by targeting key outdoor upgrades. A refreshed entrance—painted front door, new hardware, and landscaping—costs $500‑$2,500 and can lift sale price by $6,000‑$10,000. Larger projects such as privacy walls, landscaping redesigns, outdoor...
HUD Permits Realtors to Discuss Neighborhood Safety Openly
The National Association of Realtors told realtors to stay safe by NOT answering questions about crime. “‘Is This a Safe Neighborhood?’ Don’t Answer That”. But HUD says realtors can now speak the truth. https://t.co/4Giw5JcHqG
U.S. Home Prices Edge Higher, Up 0.7
U.S. single-family home prices rose 0.3% month-over-month without seasonal adjustment between the January 2026 to February 2026 print Year-over-year: +0.7% Since March 2020: +52.1% Since 2022's peak: +6.2% Table via @ResidentialClub https://t.co/swLLdluSbF
The Reveal in NYC: This ‘One-of-a-Kind’ Apartment Just Off City Hall Park Is Now Listed for $2.199 Million
A 1,700‑sq‑ft loft‑style unit in Park Place Tower, a former American Tract Society headquarters near City Hall Park, is listed for $2.199 million. The two‑bedroom, two‑and‑a‑half‑bath apartment features 16‑foot ceilings, 11‑foot arched windows, a private terrace, and high‑end finishes. The building,...
Hochul's Pied‑à‑terre Tax Faces Pushback After Citadel Threat
Making hedgie #KenGriffin the poster boy in #Hochul push for #piedaterre tax on 2d homes of $5M+ not a good idea as #MayorMamdani eases tone after #Citadel threatened to walk away from $6B tower #Vornado+#Rudin building on #ParkAve. #NYC #realestate...
China’s Housing Collapse Erases Two Decades of Savings
I meant what I said: China is terrified of a global recession, and if Iran doesn’t capitulate, that’s exactly what we’ll get. Chinese home prices, representing the savings of the Chinese people, have erased all the gains of the past...
EQT Real Estate Raises €3.1bn for Latest European Logistics Fund
EQT Real Estate announced the closing of a €3.1 billion ($3.35 billion) European logistics fund, the firm’s latest vehicle targeting high‑growth warehouse assets across the continent. The capital was sourced from a broad base of global institutional investors, underscoring strong demand for...