Free Republic

The White House will announce this week that it is creating an Office of Gun Violence Prevention to focus on efforts to curb gun violence, two sources familiar confirmed to The Hill. Gun violence prevention advocates and Democratic lawmakers have been pushing the White House to establish a designated office solely focused on gun violence. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has known for his focus on gun violence prevention, applauded the White House on Wednesday after reports of the first-of-its-kind office. “This is an idea I have been pushing relentlessly for some time, and I’m thrilled President Biden is making...

Bidenomics is a train wreck. But unlike E. Palestine Ohio, the site of a train derailment and massive toxic spill (for which Biden has yet to visit), Bidenomics is a continuing train wreck. The first chart is the record decline in US net cash farm income. Now in negative growth! Second, US office vacancy rate is now higher than the peak during the financial crisis. Under Bidenomics, US debt is now near $33 trillion. Up 19% under Biden. And while not Biden’s fault, the US has promised $194 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities. Biden won’t do anything to halt the entitlement...

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has unequivocally told employees that non-compliance with the company’s return-to-office mandate “is probably not going to work out for you.” Business Insider reports that in a recent internal meeting, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy made it abundantly clear that employees who do not adhere to the company’s return-to-office policy should consider other employment options. “It’s past the time to disagree and commit,” Jassy said during the meeting. “And if you can’t disagree and commit, it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon.” The directive requires Amazon employees to be in the office at least...

Vacant properties in San Francisco's downtown area are being snapped up by investors at heavily reduced rates. A run of crime and homelessness in the area sparked a mass exodus as businesses and residents abandon hope of a revival. Office vacancies dipped to a low of 31 percent this year while developers stepped back from mammoth construction projects.

Its not a wonderful world for regional and small banks given the deterioration of office markets. The latest data from Trepp, which tracks commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) securities market data, shows the delinquency rate of commercial property loans packaged up by Wall Street jumped again in July, with four of the five major property segments posting increases. “While the rest of the US economy has seen relief in terms of higher equity prices, better-than-expected corporate earnings, and falling inflation numbers, the commercial real estate (CRE) market continues to be left behind,” Trepp wrote in the report. Trepp data found the...

Zoom is asking all of its employees to return to the office for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, when the tech company blew up as one of the main means of communication for people forced to work from home. Zoom, which remains a leader in the post-pandemic remote work trend, is now asking all employees within 50 miles of a company office to go in at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule.

We’re now finding out the damaging consequences of the mandated return to office. And it’s not a pretty picture. A trio of compelling reports—the Greenhouse Candidate Experience report, the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), and Unispace’s Returning for Good report—collectively paint a stark picture of this brewing storm.Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. And almost a third (29%) of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment. In other words, employers knew the mandates would cause some attrition, but they...

The unfortunate case of 111 Wall Street might be even more unfortunate than it sounds. Two months since we wrote that the vacant, 1.2 million square-foot tower at the corner of South Street “epitomized the crisis” of the downtown commercial market, the building owned by Nightingale Properties and Intervest Capital Partners now faces a foreclosure action by mezzanine lender Oaktree Capital Management, as first reported by Real Estate Alert.

AUSTIN (The Texas Tribune) — In response to increasing threats against members of Congress, the U.S. Capitol Police plans to open regional field offices across the country, including in Texas. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger announced the plans at a joint oversight hearing of the Capitol Police Board, describing a 300% increase in threats to members of Congress over the past seven years. In addition to an office in Texas, the agency plans to open field offices in Milwaukee and Boston, Manger told the committee Wednesday. A Texas location has not yet been determined, a department spokesperson said. The...

San Francisco’s commercial real estate fortunes may finally be turning. Office demand in the city increased 10.2% in the second quarter of 2023 compared with the first quarter, according to data from real estate tech firm VTS. The researchers also found that the city has, since March, seen more prospective office tenants looking for spaces larger than 50,000 square feet.

Where is the bottom for commercial real estate (CRE)? Starwood Capital Group’s Barry Sternlicht recently told Bloomberg’s David Rubenstein about the ongoing crisis in the commercial real estate sector, equating it to a severe “Category 5 hurricane“. He cautioned, “It’s sort of a blackout hovering over the entire industry until we get some relief or some understanding of what the Fed’s going to do over the longer term.” Currently, the biggest problem in the CRE space is sliding office and retail demand in downtown areas. Couple that with high-interest rates, and there’s a disaster lurking for building owners. According to...

Thanks to The Federal Reserve, office property values have gone crazy despite rising vacancy rates. US office space vacancies (white line) have soared since 2008 as The Fed’s massive monetary expansion (blue and green line) has not helped. But Fed monetary expansion DID help drive office prices! At least until 2022, when office space values began to fall. Notice that office values are falling as The Fed withdraws monetary stimulus. During the regional bank failures in March, we directed our readership to focus on the next potential crisis: “CRE Nuke Goes Off With Small Banks Accounting For 70% Of Commercial...

As commercial and residential vacancy rates continue to reach all-time highs in San Francisco, many big tech buildings have been left abandoned. One of the largest offices there comes from Google, which owns a whopping 1.4-million-square-foot building that has remained on the market for sublease. Other big tech companies, like Meta and Roku, have also put up space for sale. Back in March, Intel even listed its 505,000-square-foot office. “As a hybrid-first company, we are continuing to assess and optimize our space utilization to create more vibrant workspaces for our employees when they are on-site, while also achieving cost reductions,”...

The Biden administration, the media, Democrats, and Republicans are all either willfully ignorant or blithely unaware of the looming economic crisis that's about to hit. Inflation is part of the problem, but we're going beyond job creation reports and the fallout from Silicon Valley Bank. It's a crisis that could cause all the dominoes to fall, and it doesn't help that we have a president who gets outright exhausted after a few days of work. A looming real estate crisis threatens to nuke the whole system. The bleeding has already begun, and it could take decades for some "superstar cities"...

The return to in-office work has not gone well. As detailed by Entrepreneur, companies that have forced workers back into the office are currently facing a litany of issues ranging from employee dissatisfaction to difficulty hiring. “Unispace finds that nearly half (42%) of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated,” writes author Gleb Tsipursky. “And almost a third (29%) of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment.” For the companies who are considering returning to the office, the outlook isn’t great. “According to the same Greenhouse report, a staggering 76%...

The Denver metro area is a study in real estate contrasts. Many office buildings now sit with high vacancy rates, but cranes mark where new apartments are rapidly being built. At the corner of 6th Avenue in Simms Street in Lakewood used to be an office building. For a dozen years, it sat empty and now it's been turned into something unique. It is now an apartment building that has struck the right note.

The activity and vibrancy of Chicago's downtown area, once the heart of the city's economy, shifted dramatically in the wake of the pandemic. Physical offices and gathering places closed while remote work soared. Cities across the US are now dealing with the ramifications of that workplace upheaval, despite many companies' attempts to get their employees back into the office. As a result, downtown crowds eating, drinking, and shopping are a fraction of what they once were. Chicago's downtown office space posted a 22.4% vacancy rate in the first quarter of 2023, which poses the question: What does the city do...

The Biden administration has been accused of peddling 'woke madness' after a top U.S. government watchdog banned the use of gendered language in the workplace. Leaked internal memos obtained by DailyMail.com show the Government Accountability Office forbids employees from using male and female terms. The agency, whose role is to scrutinize administration spending, issued the bizarre diktat in October 2022 at the behest of its so-called 'chief diversity management officer.'

Office values in San Francisco have plunged 75% on a per-square foot basis compared to sales from just before the pandemic, the Hoover Institution said.The Hoover report was authored by Lee Ohanian a senior fellow at the institution.The report's finding noted the former Union Bank building, located in the center of San Francisco financial district, was auctioned off last week for $65 million — 75% less on a per-square-foot basis than comparable building sales just prior to the pandemic.Ohanian called it "devastating news" for the city since the auction price provides a new market rate benchmark for setting the price...

Living in Biden Country! Where big American cities are becoming like Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago. And the sad headline of the day (other than pure chaos on the Mexican border) is that NO RENT IS BEING PAID ON 20% OF ALL US OFFICE SPACE! And small banks hold 70% of commercial real estate loans! As The Fed momentarily pauses rate hikes, office vacancy rate just hit an all-time high. Another Biden first!! And the NCREIF office property index falling as The Fed tightens.