About 70% of mortgages issued in 2020 went to borrowers with credit scores of at least 760, up from 61% in 2019.
Corporate Travel
Around 44% of US corporate travel managers think that travel volume will shift to virtual in 2021, up from 34% when surveyed in October. The expectations are a bit more optimistic for 2022, showing only 27% expecting the shift up from 22%.
BlackRock Secondary
BlackRock Inc. has raised $3 billion to invest in the private-equity secondary market. BlackRock Secondaries & Liquidity Solutions LP is among the largest debut funds ever raised to buy secondhand private equity stakes.
Office Sublease
At the end of 2020, 137 million square feet of office space was available for sublease across the U.S., according to CBRE Group Inc. That is up 40% from a year earlier and the highest figure since 2003.
Labor Participation
Women’s participation in the labor force slipped to 57%, the lowest it has been since 1988. More than 2.3 million women have dropped out of the labor force during the pandemic, compared with 1.8 million men.
Realtors
There are 1.45 million members of the National Assosication of Realtors. Meanwhile, there are only 1.04 million homes for sale.
Colony Pivot
Digital Bridge, merged with Colony Capital in 2019, at which time 80% of Colony’s assets were in traditional real estate. Since then, 60% of the merged company’s assets have become data centers, cell towers and fiber networks.
Hotel Completions
According to pipeline data as at December 2019, there were 3,867 hotels and 603,037 rooms set to open in 2020. Of these, 322,561 rooms were completed, equating to a 53% completion rate. This is a substantial drop compared to 2019 when completed hotel projects totaled 77% of the pipeline.
Airport Retail
Hudson Group, which runs the eponymous convenience shops in U.S. airports and temporarily closed more than 700 of its more than 1,000 stores during the pandemic, has reopened 635 of them.
Cruise Industry
While not cruising, Carnival Corp. told investors that it expected to burn through an average of $600 million in cash a month just to keep vessels maintained, sustain corporate operations and invest in preparations to return to sea.