Market News

Red Lobster, the largest seafood restaurant chain in the U.S., has filed for bankruptcy protection in an effort to reduce debt and will sell its assets. Under a stalking-horse agreement, the company will sell its business to an entity formed and controlled by its existing term lenders.

Starwood Real Estate Investment Trust is running low on liquidity as spooked investors pull money amid rising debt costs and fears over real estate valuations. The Starwood Trust, owned by private real estate investor Starwood Capital Group, has borrowed more than $1.3 billion from its $1.55 billion unsecured credit facility since the beginning of 2023 due to high redemption demands.

As of April, $19.9 billion in office CMBS loans will mature by next spring. That's a marked increase over the $8.75 billion in office CMBS debt that matured in 2023. Outside of the CMBS universe, $929 billion — or 20% of the $4.7 trillion in outstanding commercial mortgages across all CRE lender types — will mature in 2024, a 28% increase from $729 billion that matured last year.

Developers are building new houses for rent at an unprecedented rate, aiming to capitalize on the steep home prices and higher mortgage rates that are forcing many Americans to keep renting. In 2023, 93,000 new single-family homes for rent were completed, 39% more rental homes than in 2022, and the most in any year ever.

Walmart has worked to cut costs over the past year in some areas as it gives priority to spending elsewhere. Last month the company said it would shut all 51 of the health clinics it has opened over the past five years as it tried to build a bigger healthcare business.

In Miami, about 38% of the housing stock is condos, the highest of any major metropolitan area in the U.S. Of those buildings, nearly three-quarters are at least 30 years old. For those that have large repairs looming, many owners are scrambling to sell before Jan. 1 when building reserves must be fully funded to be in compliance with the law.

The Biden administration is preparing to raise tariffs on clean-energy goods from China in the coming days, with the levy on Chinese electric vehicles set to roughly quadruple.

Mortgage rates climbed for most of 2023, at one point reaching nearly 8%—a level not seen in two decades before dropping closer to 6.5%. In 2024, after falling a bit in early March, mortgage rates are now back above 7%.

Earnings per share for companies in the S&P 500 now look to be up 5.2% from a year earlier, better than the 3.4% analysts expected at the end of March, and marking the strongest growth in nearly two years.

The downtown Manhattan availability rate—which includes vacancy and space coming on the market in the next 12 months—increased to 21.3% in the first quarter, compared with 10.3% in early 2020. Average asking rents have fallen to about $57 a square foot from more than $65.