1. Airbnb boss said there is unprecedented pent up demand for leisure trip, making up for some of loss for business trips, which he believes will never the same as pre Covid;
2. Malls still in tough spot: 250 class B malls in US some of lucky ones will not escape the destiny of repurpose or conversion, CBRE Research predicts 20% shrinkage of mall space by 2025, and mall valuation drop by 48-60% per DBRS Morningstar, but conversion to warehouse also lost value by 60-90% per Barclays, so between rock and hard place;
3. NYC retail shop rents continue to free fall in Q1 2021, lead by SoHo, ranging 15-20% drop in rent with 30-40% vacancy, per Cushman Wakefield;
4. Bloomberg story of a loan tied to a distressed mall outside LV which was appraised at $28M last year, was liquidated for $400K, total loan lost to lender was $74M;
5. Defiance CIO, bosses at JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, MS, Citygroup sound off on RE and agreed the current RE status maybe a bit overheated or slight bubble, but no where close to the same as full fledge bubble in 2008-2009;
6. Prof Shiller was interviewed by Yahoo Finance, he expressed a bit worry but doesn’t expect home price to collapse overnight, said felt like 2003 even though not due to subprime mortgage this time, price drop will cause enough pain after a year or two of continue run up in price due to low rate + WFH model;
7. Guide to Fed rental assistance program for each State in US;
8. Great news for Bay Area: SJ city council gave green light to Google for its massive 7M sf/multi Billion $ mega campus in SJ with potential for 25000 jobs, development project will start in 2022;
9. Relo wave continues into April, 30.6% of Redfin users search homes outside of residing metros, top destinations based on input of 2M users are Phoenix LV Sacramento Austin and Atlanta, top departure metros are NYC, SF, LA, DC, and Denver
10. Nationwide price has been rising 7.2% for suburban areas where residents depend on cars, while it is falling -0.84% in areas with high walkability scores, per Real Capital Analytics RCA report.