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Homework clubThe pandemic turned the world upside down. People stockpiled toilet paper, did yoga over Zoom, baked banana bread, bought Pelotons, went crazy for online shopping, and anyone who was even thinking about buying a pool went and got one. Pretty much all of those trends have since returned to normal, but a major one has remained: working from home.According to new data published in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Time Use Survey for 2023, ~35% of all employed persons in the US spent the average working day doing at least some of their work from home — up from...

Imagine San Francisco 18 years from now. That’s more than four mayoral terms, at least one fashion cycle and nearly one Van Ness rapid bus lane project away. Generation Alpha—who will be adults—will likely be calling Gen Z “out of touch” by then. And—according to new long-term projections from real estate firm Avison Young—San Francisco won’t be left with a glut of empty office buildings anymore. On that front, the situation midway through 2024 is pretty grim. The city has the highest vacancy rate of any major market in the country—at more than 30%. Using previous recovery periods as a...

Paul Ryan, a Fox Corporation Board of Directors member, said Tuesday on FNC’s “Your World” that former President Donald Trump is “unfit for office.” Host Neil Cavuto asked, “Now, I know a lot of these folks who also shared your same concerns about Donald Trump that sort of said, all right, we’re rallying around Donald Trump. You said that would not be the case with you. You had said that he’s a populist and an authoritarian narcissist. That character is too important to me, and it’s a job that requires the kind of character he just doesn’t have. That’s pretty...

The owners of 64 New York City office buildings are eyeing a drastic transformation: turning their commercial properties into housing, according to fresh data from the Department of City Planning. In an interview with Gothamist, City Planning Director Dan Garodnick revealed that these owners or their reps have reached out to the city’s Office Conversion Accelerator Program to do so. This initiative aims to simplify the labyrinth of rules and building codes, assisting owners in repurposing their spaces. It’s a key part of Mayor Eric Adams’ bold plan to create 20,000 new apartments over the next decade, easing the Big...

CLAIM: President Joe Biden claimed during an interview with Yahoo Finance that inflation was nine percent when he took office in January 2021. VERDICT: FALSE. A report from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate was at 1.4 percent in January 2021, when Biden came into office.

The Biden administration is being ridiculed for hypocrisy as it touts 'energy savings' at federal buildings that are nearly empty of workers - and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm recently celebrated the Biden administration's efforts to reach net-zero emissions from federal buildings by establishing a rule outlawing the use of fossil fuels on-site. 'The Biden-Harris Administration is practicing what we preach,' Granholm said in a statement about the rule. 'Just as we are helping households and businesses across the nation save money by saving energy, we are doing the same in our own federal buildings.' But...

The Biden administration is being ridiculed for hypocrisy as it touts 'energy savings' at federal buildings that are nearly empty of workers - and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm recently celebrated the Biden administration's efforts to reach net-zero emissions from federal buildings by establishing a rule outlawing the use of fossil fuels on-site. 'The Biden-Harris Administration is practicing what we preach,' Granholm said in a statement about the rule. 'Just as we are helping households and businesses across the nation save money by saving energy, we are doing the same in our own federal buildings.' But...

During an interview with Univision that took place last Wednesday and aired on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said that he hopes his legacy is that he kept his word and did what he said he would do and that the reason he ran for office “was to help the life of ordinary people and reduce the prospect of war and — because of Vietnam.” Interviewer Enrique Acevedo asked, “Do you think a lot about legacy, because we’re talking about over 50 years of public service, and, regardless of the outcome, this might be your last political campaign, you’ve done a...

The mayor of the ultra-liberal, near-north Chicago suburb of Evanston wants to apply for a slice of a $20 million county grant to turn an abandoned office building in his city into a new migrant shelter in a bid to help take migrants off the hands of officials in Chicago. Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss (D) announced his intention to apply to Cook County’s recently created $100 million-dollar “disaster response and recovery” fund, of which $20 million is set aside for migrants, to help him rehab an empty office building near Church Street and Oak Avenue. Biss wants to turn the...

Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) had choice words for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Saturday comments, calling him a “maniac” who “needs” to be removed from office. The progressive Democrat initially discussed the Biden administration transferring 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs, 500 MK82 500-pound bombs and 25 F-35A fighter jets to Israel without notifying lawmakers, an arms package reported exclusively by the Washington Post on Friday.

More than two-thirds of managers report that they’re under immense pressure to squeeze more out of their workers, according to a recent Slack survey of 18,000 knowledge workers. Amid major concerns about stagnant or declining worker productivity in the post-COVID era, one would think government and corporate leaders might ask whether they themselves aren’t the ones doing something wrong. One thing many of them ignore to their own disadvantage is the extensive evidence that flexible hybrid work is more productive than forced in-office work for the same roles. For example, according to the annual report by the Office of Personnel...

Across the country, deals are starting to pick up, revealing just how far real estate prices have fallen. That’s spurring widespread concern about losses that can ripple across the global financial system — as underscored by the recent turmoil unleashed by New York Community Bancorp, Japan’s Aozora Bank and Germany’s Deutsche Pfandbriefbank as they took steps to brace for bad loans. In Manhattan, brokers have started to market debt backed by a Blackstone-owned office building at a roughly 50% discount. A prime office tower in Los Angeles sold in December for about 45% less than its purchase price a decade...

resident Biden is facing criticism after a bombshell report revealed that all federal agencies are less than 50 percent occupied - wasting billions in taxpayer dollars - over a year after he declared the COVID-19 pandemic over. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) memo to Sen. Joni Ernst, obtained by DailyMail.com, not a single federal agency has over half of its workforce in the office. That's a staggering statistic since federal agencies spend about $2 billion taxpayer dollars per year to operate and maintain federal office buildings - and over $5 billion annually in leases. The shocking findings comes...

According to a survey from Resume Builder of over 1,000 decision-makers, 90% of companies plan to urge employees back to the office by the end of 2024. Almost 30% of these leaders say they will threaten to terminate employees who don’t oblige with the new return-to-office plans. These sentiments couldn’t be more at odds with the preferences of employees. In a Bankrate survey of 2,000 workers, roughly 68% of full-time employees prefer a hybrid work schedule. Ultimately, I believe the real reason leaders are trying to force workers to return to the office is not because they actually believe it...

Canada's largest pension fund sold a stake in a New York building for $1. Crashing office values have led investors to turn cautious on the sector. Office buildings have suffered from the pandemic's work-from-home boom. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the biggest pension in Canada, has completed a string of recent deals at discounted prices, including a sale of its stake in a New York building for $1, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.Commercial real estate concerns have escalated thanks to the pandemic's work-from-home boom and high interest rates in the wake of the Federal Reserve's inflation fight, and the gravest fears...

Twenty percent ($929 billion) of the $4.7 trillion of outstanding commercial mortgages held by lenders and investors will mature in 2024, a 28 percent increase from the $729 billion that matured in 2023 ... “The lack of transactions and other activity last year, coupled with built-in extension options and lender and servicer flexibility, has meant that many loans that were set to mature in 2023 have been extended or otherwise modified and will now mature in 2024, 2026, 2028 or in other coming years,” said Jamie Woodwell, Head of Commercial Real Estate Research at MBA. “These extensions and modifications have...

The developer that knocked down a landmark hotel opposite Madison Square Garden may build a temporary recreational space that could include tennis and basketball courts after scrapping plans for a shiny new skyscraper — a sign of the “office apocalypse” in the commercial real estate market. Vornado Realty Trust had initially planned to build a 56-story, 2.7 million-square-foot office tower on the site where the Hotel Pennsylvania once stood at 15 Penn Plaza. The century-old building in the Central Business District (CBD) near Penn Station was demolished last year. However, demand for commercial office space has been slow to recover...

Office building prices in the United States have experienced a substantial downturn, witnessing a significant 40% drop from their peak over the past two years. The past year alone has seen a massive 30% decline, leaving one in five office buildings vacant across the nation. The gravity of the situation is exacerbated by the substantial debt burdens carried by most of these empty office spaces.

Ever since San Francisco hired a pricey PR firm to help improve the city’s image by placing positive spin in papers like the NY Times, you see a lot fewer articles speculating that the city is in the midst of an urban doom loop. And yet, the PR firm can’t actually stop the bad news from getting out. Case in point, the city’s commercial real estate vacancy rate just jumped up to another record high.San Francisco’s amount of vacant office space has reached the highest level ever recorded in the city’s history.According to preliminary fourth quarter data provided by real...

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said Monday on NBC’s “Today” that she believes that if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, he will attempt to stay beyond the end of his second term. Anchor Savannah Guthrie asked, “You think this a vote about whether or not we still have democracy in this country?” Cheney said, “It certainly is. Donald Trump told us exactly what he will do. He will not abide by the rulings of the courts. He will certainly appoint people to office whether or not they can be confirmed by the Senate. He has talked about...