Market News

Private funds’ gross assets recently surpassed those of the commercial banking sector at more than $25 trillion. That is up from $9 trillion in 2012.

More than $14 billion of loans backed by local malls comes due in the next 12 months with about a fifth of all malls financed through commercial mortgage-backed securities underwater.

Rampant uncertainty has pushed commercial-property sales to their lowest level in years. Investors purchased only $130.5 billion worth of U.S. commercial property the first five months of 2023, a 61% decline from the same period last year.

The Federal Reserve resumed lifting interest rates with a quarter-percentage-point increase that will bring them to a 22-year high.

Rents for new customers at U.S. self-storage facilities declined in the first quarter of 2023 to $15.45 a square foot, a 10% drop from the first quarter of 2022. That drop, following a comparable reduction in the fourth quarter of 2022, marked the biggest decline on record since tracking the rates in 2013.

The Conference Board said last week that its leading economic index fell for a 15th consecutive month, signaling slowing economic activity ahead. That is the index’s longest streak of declines since a span from the spring of 2007 through early 2009. The U.S. economy fell into a recession in December 2007 and didn’t exit until June 2009.

Companies going public in the U.S. through traditional IPOs raised just $9.1 billion in the first half of the year, far below the $27 billion average for the same period over the past decade.

Blackstone said its assets climbed to $1 trillion in the second quarter from $991.3 billion at the end of the first quarter and $940.8 billion a year earlier. Inflows were $30.1 billion in the quarter, with insurance and credit, including real-estate credit, pushing it over the threshold.

Existing home sales decreased 3.3% in June from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.16 million. That was the slowest sales pace since January. June sales fell 18.9% from a year earlier.

A report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that, on average, the headquarters of federal agencies are about 20% occupied each week. Weekly attendance in the bottom quarter of surveyed offices is a measly 9%, and not one reported attendance above 50%. Compare that with corporate offices in New York, where average in-office attendance surpassed 50% last month.