Hotel and resort managers say requests for connecting rooms and suites have increased recently as multigenerational families and large groups of friends gather. Some hotels have reported a more than 20% increase in demand for these types of rooms.
Slowing Rents
The average of six national rental-price measures shows new-lease asking rents rose just under 2% over the 12 months ending in May. That is down from the double-digit increases of a year ago and represents the largest deceleration over any year in recent history.
San Fran Hotels
San Francisco hotels are still struggling badly in both occupancy and room rates compared with before the pandemic. Revenue per available room was nearly 23% lower in April compared with the same month in 2019. The city’s lodging business has been squeezed by crime and other quality-of-life issues that have kept many convention bookers away. Tech companies’ embrace of remote work also undercuts business travel to the city and hotel activity.
Startups Slowing
Startups in the U.S. raised $37 billion in the first quarter of this year, down 55% from the first three months of last year.
Resort Sale
Blackstone Real Estate Investment Trust is selling the 1,000-room JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort and Spa for $800 million in a deal that is being called the second-biggest hotel transaction since the pandemic and a major bet on the convention and leisure industry. The hotel is being bought by Nashville, Tennessee-based Ryman Hospitality Properties Inc.
Treasury’s Debt
Investors are bracing for a flood of more than $1 trillion of Treasury bills in the wake of the debt-ceiling fight, potentially sparking a new bout of volatility in financial markets by overwhelming buyers, jolting markets and raising short-term borrowing costs.
S&P 500 Performance
Compared with the S&P 500 traditional index’s 11% gain, the equally weighted version has added 1.1%. That is the largest-ever outperformance by the S&P 500 on a year-to-date basis based on data starting in 1990.
Fed Target
Derivatives markets show investors now expect the Fed’s target rate to sit at 5% at year-end, up from just above 4% last month.
Consumer Confidence
Despite steady job gains, Americans are growing more pessimistic about economic growth, which slowed in the first quarter. Consumer confidence fell in May for the second straight month.
Bank Loans
In the first quarter, banks’ real-estate loans, excluding residential single- to four-family homes, yielded 5.4%. That represented a rise of more than 1.7 percentage points over a year earlier. Those residential home-loan yields, by contrast, rose just over 0.6 point from a year earlier, to 3.96%.