Real Estate Daily News Buzz is designed to give news snippets to readers that our (yet to be award winning) editors thought you could use to start your day. They come from various business perspectives, real estate, government, the Fed, local news, and the stock markets to save you time. Here you will find the headlines and what the news buzz of the day will be.
Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average edged up 0.34 of a point to 18,285.74. The S&P 500 closed up 4.97 points, or 0.2%, to 2,130.82. The NASDAQ composite rose 19.05 points, or 0.4%, to 5,090.79.
Benchmark U.S. crude rose $1.74 to close at $60.72 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oil used by many U.S. refineries, rose $1.51 to close at $66.54 in London. Wholesale gasoline rose 4.1 cents to close at $2.082 a gallon. Heating oil rose 4 cents to close at $1.986 a gallon. Natural gas rose 3.4 cents to close at $2.949 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Silicon Bowery: Does the Bowery Own the Future of Manhattan Creatives? “Adrian Hopkins likes the Bowery so much as a work neighborhood that he organizes area walks for new staff and colleagues at peer companies in the area. He likes to take people out and show them the spots that represent the spirit that, he believes, makes it the right part of Manhattan for a technology-oriented, entrepreneurial company to be based. Mr. Hopkins is the director of strategy for Bureau Blank, a creative agency that’s focused on organizations and government more than media and industry.” (Commercial Observer)
Manhattan, LA and Chicago Lead Retail Investment Sales “Manhattan came out ahead of the rest of the country in the retail investment market last year with a total transaction volume of $6.5 billion, according to a new report by Cushman & Wakefield.” (The Real Deal)
CVS Health Agrees to Buy Omnicare in $12.7 Billion Deal “The CVS Health Corporation said on Thursday that it had agreed to acquire the pharmacy services provider Omnicare for about $12.7 billion, including debt.” (New York Times)
Global Cities Being Transformed by Transit Oriented Development “According to a new report from CBRE, a series of factors are converging to create global opportunities for Transit Oriented Developments (TODs) that are ‘city changing’ in scale.” (World Property Journal)
New Luxury Rental Projects Add to Rent Squeeze “Developer Mark Randall cut his teeth over the last few decades building apartments for Atlanta’s middle-class with properties such as Alta Ridgewalk, a complex of low-rise buildings clustered around a swimming pool in suburban Atlanta.” (Wall Street Journal)
As Shake Shack Reopens Flagship, Danny Meyer Becomes $600 Million Man “Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer can enjoy multiple pieces of good news today. First, his original flagship burger joint in Madison Square Park reopened on Wednesday morning at 11am, more than seven months after it closed for renovations. Second, Shake Shack’s stock performance since its initial public offering in January has raised Meyer’s personal fortune to more than $600 million.” (Forbes)
Target's Turnaround Is Off to a Faster Start Than Walmart's “Target’s plan to recapture the discount retailer’s old ‘Tar-zhay’ magic with millions of middle-class customers seems to be taking hold, showing results more quickly than Walmart’s parallel efforts to re-invent itself.” (Fortune)
Buyer Pays $160 Million for 10 Medical Office Buildings The health care arm of MB Real Estate paid $160 million for 10 Chicago-area medical office buildings, a sector growing because of Obamacare and the aging of the baby boom generation. (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Is This the Office of the Future or a $5 Billion Waste of Space? “Workers of a certain age may recall that long ago, people once divided their waking hours into two parts: work and life. At quitting time, Fred Flintstone would slide down the tail of his dinosaur with a ‘Yabba dabba doo!’ That was before technology put the office on vibrate inside everyone’s pocket, and before economic upheaval decoupled work from the security of a full-time job. Today, an estimated one-third of the labor market is made up of ‘contingent’ workers—freelancers, contractors, and the self-employed. When the job is no longer 9-to-5, it’s hard to keep a work-life balance. Now, though, there’s a place where the age-old divide can seem irrelevant, where toil and fun blend together beneath neon signs that say things such as ‘Embrace the Hustle.’ Where there’s always a free keg of beer at the self-serve bar, with a tap that says: WeWork.” (Bloomberg)
U.S. Judge Rules RadioShack IP Auction Was Fair “A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Wednesday cleared the way for RadioShack Corp to sell its brand name and customer data to a Standard General affiliate for about $26 million, rejecting a competing bidder's claim that the auction process was unfair.” (Reuters)
CVS Health will pay more than $10 billion for pharmaceutical distributor Omnicare in a deal primed to feed its fast-growing specialty drug business and tap a lucrative and growing market: care for the elderly. The acquisition announced Thursday will give one of the biggest U.S. pharmacy benefits managers national reach in dispensing prescription drugs to assisted living and skilled nursing homes, long-term care facilities, hospitals and other care providers. Omnicare’s long-term care business operates in 47 states and the District of Columbia. (Washington Post)
High rents are worth it. At least that’s the sentiment of apartment dwellers in New York, San Francisco and Washington, who say they’re more satisfied living in those cities than do renters in far more affordable areas such as Milwaukee, Albuquerque and Detroit. The finding comes from a survey released Thursday by Apartment List, a San Francisco-based company that helps renters find homes. It dovetails with other evidence that people are spending more on rent yet avoiding home ownership given the high cost of a down payment. (AP)
McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook proud of pay hike, protesters want more said Thursday he was “incredibly proud” of a decision to bump pay for some workers, even after protesters called on the company to do more outside its annual shareholder meeting. Easterbrook, who stepped into his role in March, is fighting to revive sluggish sales and convince people that McDonald’s is a “modern, progressive burger company.” But the push comes at a time when protests for pay of $15 an hour and a union have been spreading around the country. (Yahoo)
Sales of existing U.S. homes slipped in April due mainly to relatively few listings and rising prices, providing evidence of the housing sector’s uneven recovery. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that sales of existing homes fell 3.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.04 million. April marked the second straight month of the sales rate topping 5 million homes. Purchases have recovered from a disappointing 2014 because strong job growth and low mortgage rates have generated more would-be buyers. (US News)
More Americans sought unemployment aid last week, though the number of applications remains at a historically low level that is consistent with a healthy job market. Weekly applications increased 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 274,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week average, a less volatile figure, fell to a fresh 15-year low of 266,250. Applications are a proxy for layoffs, so the very low readings indicate that most employees have solid job security. Businesses also appear to be confident enough in the economy to keep their workers. (AP)
Gauge of US economy jumps 0.7% in April - An index designed to predict the future health of the economy rose in April by the largest amount in nine months, a sign that the economy is beginning to accelerate from a sharp slowdown during the winter. The Conference Board said Thursday that its index of leading indicators rose 0.7% last month, the biggest advance since a 1% rise last July. The March increase was also revised up to show a 0.4% gain, better than the initial 0.2% estimate. Those two gains followed a decline of 0.2% in February. (Fox News)
Average long-term U.S.30-year mortgage rates edged slightly lower to 3.84% this week after rising for three straight weeks. Mortgage giant Freddie Mac said Thursday the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage ticked down to 3.84% this week from 3.85% a week earlier. The rate on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages slipped to 3.05% from 3.07%. Last week both rates reached their highest level since mid-March, rising along with the yield on 10-year Treasury notes — reflecting some signs of improvement in the U.S. economy. The unemployment rate dropped last month to 5.4%, the lowest since May 2008. (ABC News)