Pedestrian foot traffic in U.S. urban downtowns was down about 25% in April compared with the same month in 2019 with urban retail availability surpassing suburban availability for the first time since 2013.
Hotel Asset Managers
Hotel asset managers surveyed with 64.6% of respondents ranking wage increases as one of the factors they are most concerned about, followed by 57.3% who are worried about labor availability and 52.4% concerned about demand.
Residential Supply
New single-family home sales are bouncing back with supply tight in the existing-home market. Active listings in March stood at roughly half of where they were four years earlier, in part because higher mortgage rates made many homeowners reluctant to sell and give up their current low rates.
Fed Hike
The Fed’s rate hike was its 10th since March of 2022. Seeking to rein in high inflation, the central bank has increased the key federal-funds rate from next to nothing to between 5% and 5.25% over that span.
Repo
Harley-Davidson last week said its credit loss rate rose to 3.2% in the first quarter, up from its typical rate of about 2%.
Active ETFs
Active funds still make up a sliver of the roughly $7 trillion ETF market—less than 6% of total assets—but have attracted about 30% of the total flows to ETFs so far this year. That follows a banner year for active ETFs in 2022, when they gathered roughly 14% of total flows. Analysts say the outsize flows reflect greater interest in active management amid turbulent markets as well as the ease with which they allow investors to more easily trade specific strategies.
FRC JPM
First Republic Bank was seized and sold to JPMorgan. The deal will see JPMorgan take on all of First Republic’s $103.9 billion in deposits and buy most of its $229.1 billion in assets.
San Fran Vacancy
Nearly 30% of San Francisco’s office space is vacant, which is more than seven times the rate before the pandemic hit, and the biggest increase of any major U.S. city.
Small Cities
Small cities in the Midwest topped The Emerging Housing Markets Index in the first quarter, a sign that buyer demand for affordable homes remains robust even as activity in the broader market slows.
Office Buildings
The U.S. office vacancy rate reached a milestone in the first quarter when it rose to 12.9%, exceeding the peak vacancy rate during the 2008 financial crisis, with office-building prices down 25% since early 2022.