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 slid 45.26 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 18,098.94. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index declined 6.63 points, or 0.3 per cent, to 2,132.55. The NASDAQ composite shed 25.69 points, or 0.5 per cent, 5,213.33.
Benchmark U.S. crude rose 26 cents to $50.44 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 22 cents to $52.03 a barrel in London. In other energy trading, the price of natural gas jumped 13 cents, or 4.1 per cent, to $3.34 per 1,000 cubic feet. Wholesale gasoline added 2 cents to $1.48 a gallon. Heating oil picked up 1 cent to $1.58 a gallon.
Vector Space Systems Opens Manufacturing Facility In Tucson -- Vector Space Systems, a micro satellite space launch company comprised of new-space industry veterans from SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, McDonnell Douglas and Sea Launch, today announced that it is locating its manufacturing facility to the Pima County Aerospace, Defense and Technology Business & Research Park. Pima County and the Arizona Commerce Authority are leading the facility development through a public-private partnership agreement to further the economic advancement of the Arizona technology and aerospace industry. (Gov. Ducey Press Release)
Stocks shaken by China report, but recover from early plunge — Bank stocks were shaken Thursday after a steep drop in China’s exports made investors worry again about the health of the world’s second-largest economy. U.S. stocks gradually recovered most of their losses as safer investments like utilities traded higher. Indexes took big losses early on after major Asian markets skidded overnight. Industries that depend heavily on China and global economic growth, like technology and energy companies, also fell. As the day wore on, though, investors bought utilities, real estate investment trusts, and other stocks that tend to pay big dividends. (NEW YORK AP)
Applications for US unemployment aid remain at 43-year low — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits stayed at a 43-year low last week in the latest sign that layoffs are scarce. Weekly applications for unemployment benefits were unchanged at a seasonally adjusted 246,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, fell 3,500 to 249,250. Both figures were at their lowest levels since November 1973. The number of people receiving aid fell 16,000 to just over 2 million. That is the fewest since June 2000. (WASHINGTON AP)
Average US 30-year mortgage rate rises to 3.47 per cent — Long-term U.S. mortgage rates rose this week as the prospect of a year-end interest-rate increase by the Federal Reserve grew more likely. Mortgage giant Freddie Mac said Thursday the average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage increased to 3.47 per cent from 3.42 per cent last week. Rates still remain near historic lows. The benchmark 30-year rate is down from 3.82 per cent a year ago and close to its all-time low of 3.31 per cent in November 2012. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage, popular with homeowners who are refinancing, ticked up to 2.76 per cent from 2.72 per cent. (WASHINGTON AP)
A $1 Million Bet: The Anatomy of a High-End House Flip “Not only is house flipping on the rise in today's increasingly competitive market, but average gross profits are now the highest since 2000, or since ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate sales and analytics firm, began tracking flips. House flippers in the second quarter of this year saw an average gross profit of $62,000, up from $57,900 in the second quarter of 2015. That gross profit represented an average 48.8 percent return on the original purchase price, up from a 47.5 percent a year ago.” (CNBC)
Liberty Property Trust Sells $969 Million Portfolio to Workspace Property Trust “Workspace Property Trust announced last week the purchase of 108 office and flex buildings, plus 26.7 acres of land, in five markets from Liberty Property Trust for approximately $969 million. The acquisition was made in partnership with Safanad, a global principal investment firm, and affiliates of Square Mile Capital Management LLC ("Square Mile"), a diversified real estate investment firm. This acquisition is the second significant real estate transaction by WPT and has expanded its portfolio to 149 properties totaling approximately 10 million square feet.” (World Property Journal)
Colliers Economist Looks to 2017 for Real Estate Trends “With election day less than a month away, Andrew Nelson, chief economist of Colliers International, one of the world’s biggest commercial real estate brokerages with 16,000 agents in 66 countries, expresses disappointment that the economy hasn’t attracted much attention in the campaign, except for globalization and talk of protectionism to save American jobs. ‘I think that’s a step in the wrong direction,’ he said in an interview Wednesday along with local managing partner Andy LaDow at the brokerage’s local headquarters in the University City.” (The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Americas’ Next Great Metropolis Is Taking Shape in Texas “If you drive south from Dallas, or west from Houston, a subtle shift takes place. The monotonous, flat prairie that dominates much of Texas gives way to a landscape that rises and ebbs. The region around Highway 35 is called the Hill Country, and although it does not seem so curvy to a Californian, it is some of the very nicest country in the state of Texas, attracting a growing coterie of wealthy boomers. It also turns out to be a growth corridor that is expanding more rapidly than any in the nation.” (Forbes)
The Amazon vs. Target Battle Is Moving to College Campuses “Amazon.com’s war against traditional retailers is moving to a new battleground: college campuses. The online retailer, with its eyes on the next generation of affluent shoppers, is quickly expanding its fleet of campus kiosks that allow students to retrieve online orders. That represents a big new challenge to traditional retailers, notably Target and Barnes & Noble’s college bookstore chain. According to a report this week by Bloomberg News, Amazon will have pickup kiosks up and running at 16 colleges (attended by 500,000 students).” (Fortune)
Major Mall Operators to Close 73 Shopping Centers on Thanksgiving “One major mall operator is giving back Thanksgiving to thousands of employees at 73 of its properties. Chattanooga, Tennessee–based CBL & Associates, which owns or has a hand in 89 regional malls and open-air shopping centers, will close the doors at nearly all of its properties until 6 a.m. Black Friday. At its enclosed malls, the only tenants allowed to open are department stores, movie theaters, restaurants or others that have an exterior entrance. All access to the centers' common areas will be restricted.” (CNBC)
Brooklyn Tenants to Get $250G in Rent Credits After Building’s Owner Overcharged Them “Dozens of tenants in a Brooklyn apartment building will receive $250,000 in rent credits after the state found the owner had been overcharging, The Daily News has learned. Equity Residential, which owns The Brooklyner Apartments on Lawrence St., agreed to give the credits to 60 tenants as part of a deal with the state's Tenant Protection Unit to resolve claims they overcharged for rent-regulated units. The newly constructed building received 421-a tax breaks, which required the apartments have regulated rents.” (New York Daily News)
Growth of NHL Hockey Nationwide Boosts Apartment Markets “As the 2016 National Hockey League season gets set to drop the puck Wednesday night, one thing that isn’t dropping are rental prices nearest hockey-only stadium venues. That’s the analysis from RENTCafe and MarketWatch, which looked at more than a dozen NHL-primary arenas in the U.S., and showed that some of the newest arenas, those less than 20 years old, have been the biggest drivers of higher rental prices. RENTCafe attributes the higher rents to the growth of retail and entertainment districts around the arenas as they have solid attendance and dozens of games during the season.” (MarketWatch)
Macy’s to Open LensCrafters Shops Inside 280 Stores by the End of 2017 “Macy’s is no stranger to the store-within-a-store concept, having already teamed up with Best Buy and Sunglass Hut to set up dedicated areas for the retailers to sell their products inside the department store. Now, the company is taking that same concept further in a deal with LensCrafters to sell eyeglasses, contacts, and other vision products. Macy’s currently operates about 675 full-line stores, but already announced a strategy that would see 100 of those locations closing by early 2017.” (Consumerist)
How Deutsche Bank Is Lehman Brothers and How It Isn’t “Lehman Brothers was simply a spectacular catalyst for the unravelling of a mortgage-debt bubble that was going to take probably a couple of years of accelerating losses and failures of smaller banks to unwind — that is, if the U.S. government had bailed Lehman out in September of 2008. The Lehman catalyst basically compressed two years' worth of declines in the debt and equity markets into a six-month period that is only comparable to the 1929 stock market crash when it comes to historical U.S. financial crises.” (MarketWatch)
Verizon closing call centres 5 states — Verizon plans to close call centres in five states, including its home state of New York, where the impending loss of hundreds of jobs prompted the governor’s office to label the company’s move as “corporate abuse.” The company said Thursday a consolidation of its call centres will impact about 3,200 workers near Rochester and New York City; Bangor, Maine; Lincoln, Nebraska; Wallingford and Meriden, Connecticut, and Rancho Cordova, California. Verizon has 162,000 U.S. employees. (ALBANY, N.Y. AP)