Free Republic

The national office vacancy rate hit a record 19.8% in the first quarter of 2024, according to a preliminary report from Moody’s Analytics. And it could get worse, as companies continue to lease substantial space despite a decline in the in-office footprint. The 'urban doom loop' cycleWhile the shift to remote work in recent years offers plenty of flexibility to employees, some experts have concerns the decline in office building usage could spell a more sinister problem for big cities. “Everybody’s affected by this issue,” Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, told CNN. Van...

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...

For many across the U.S., hour-long transit rides and traffic jams to work have been replaced by roll-out-of-bed commutes and stand-up desks at home, leaving vacant offices behind.Long story short, more and more offices in major U.S. cities are empty. As Visual Capitalist's Avery Koop details below, at the end of March 2023, the national average vacancy rate of U.S. offices had climbed as high as 18.6%.So how have different cities in the U.S. been impacted? This ranking uses data out of fDi Intelligence to rank the top 10 cities that have seen the biggest increases in office vacancy rates...

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...

Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart is reportedly preparing to resign from the lower chamber in relation to his wife's health complications. His resignation announcement could come as soon as Wednesday morning, according to The Salt Lake Tribune, which cited "multiple sources." Stewart has served in Congress since first winning election in 2012 and represents the state's 2nd congressional district, which encompasses the state's western border and about half of its southern frontier. The district is solidly Republican. Stewart's replacement would be decided via special election.

After the banking crisis, could the next domino be all those empty office buildings in your downtown? Investors and economists are sounding the alarm about the commercial real estate market, seeing trouble ahead with refinancing. This sector has been hit hard for years now with the shift to remote work bringing about rising vacancy rates and falling property values. For her part, Lisa Shalett, the chief investment officer for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, and strategists, sees a “huge hurdle” ahead. Alarmingly, Shalett notes that regional banks accounted for 70% to 80% of all new loan originations in the past cycle,...

It didn't take long after Sasse's announcement for names to start rolling in to be his replacement. The first to announce their application was a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel who first hit Nebraska's political scene when he challenged Mike Flood in this year's CD1 primary. "My oath did not expire so I'm driving forward to continue my service to my country and my community. For the constitution and the folks of Nebraska, to serve them," said Retired Lt. Colonel John Glen Weaver. While his experience in politics is limited Weaver believes his extensive career in the military, which included...

Almost a week after the midterm elections, San Francisco's Proposition M, a vacancy tax on landlords, is projected to pass. The San Francisco Chronicle called the race Monday afternoon. (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are owned by Hearst but operate independently of one another.) The ballot measure is a warning shot at landlords who are sitting on multiple vacant units, but it includes some notable carve-outs that critics say will blunt its impact. Starting on Jan. 1, 2024, property owners with at least three units that have been vacant for more than 182 days (six months) will be taxed...

Nearly 1 In 10 Rent-Regulated Apartments In NYC Were Vacant In 2021It only takes so long before rising prices and surging crime start to show up in a city’s population and housing data. The latest such data point for New York City is a report from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development that 88,830 stabilized apartments were vacant in 2021. This number is significantly higher than the previously reported 61,000 by the state, according to the City, who obtained the previously unreleased updated figures. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development based its estimates on data collected by the...

Is New York City's central business district finally recovering after Covid-19? The simple answer is no. Although residential rents in Manhattan were inflated to record highs, the rise of remote work quelled any recovery for the office space market in the borough. Bloomberg reported blocks of decades-old office buildings sitting partially empty are becoming a multibillion-dollar problem for building owners. Even though Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and other Wall Street firms have pushed for a return to the office after the Labor Day holiday, NYC's office-occupancy trends are still below half, according to card-swipe data provided by Kastle Systems. Office vacancy...

By now only someone living in the most remote reaches of equatorial Africa could not know that Ruth Ginsburg died and that there is now a vacancy at the U.S. Supreme Court . . . right in time for the election chaos the Democrats had already planned to roll out.This will be Donald TrumpÂ’s third USSC appointment. In case you were interested, no, it doesnÂ’t come close to the record for a first-term president. Obviously, George Washington, who named all of the original Supreme Court justices (six) has the record. But William Howard Taft, an otherwise inconsequential president, also named...

A collection of Lunchbucket Joe's gaffe-a-minute machine at full speed. Priceless.

Officials with the U.S. Supreme Court have tried to downplay the fact that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg missed three days’ worth of oral arguments this week as related to her recent cancer surgery. “Her recovery from surgery is on track. Post-surgery evaluation indicates no evidence of remaining disease, and no further treatment is required,” said court spokesperson Kathy Arberg. While that statement can be taken a couple of different ways, The Hill is reporting that the Clinton-nominated justice will also be out next week, which will no doubt set off panic among Left-wing groups and congressional Democrats...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is missing arguments for the first time in more than 25 years as she recuperates from cancer surgery last month.

There has been a lot of discussion on the possibility of Trump selecting Judge Barrett as his nominee for the current SCOTUS vacancy. Surprisingly (to me anyhow) there has been a lot of opposition to her expressed here by FReepers with a significant portion because she is a woman and thus viewed as prone to “evolve”. Many FReepers who I know to be women are among those opposed to her because of the view that women Justices are subject to this “evolving”. Others oppose her because of concern that they don’t know much about her. If you go to the...

hen, just weeks after taking office, Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the supreme court, the newly minted US president made good on a central promise of his campaign: to replace the late justice Antonin Scalia with a bona fide conservative. That moment foreshadowed what is shaping up to be among the most indelible of Trump’s triumphs – the reshaping of the federal judiciary with the appointment of dozens of judges with an ideological bent toward the administration’s agenda. Republicans are working with Trump to make a record-breaking number of appointments to federal courts. These new, mostly young, white men...

Just how much influence is President Donald Trump going to have on the U.S. Supreme Court? His administration hasn’t been quiet about its hopes to replace as many as four justices — with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg near the top of the list. But with rumbling concerns about her health, Ginsburg doesn’t appear to be ready to step down. In fact, the same week she was a no-show at President Trump’s address to Congress, she was in the news for her impressive workout regimen. Now aged 84, and the senior member of the high court’s four-person liberal wing, Ginsburg has...

It used to be that taking a 10-minute walk around SoHo meant passing by at least a dozen upstart, trendy fashion retailers eager to sell you a $500 hoodie or $1,000 pair of sneakers.  But these days you're much more likely to see a whole bunch of this: As Bloomberg points out this morning, in the wake of Manhattan's retail drought, commercial landlords, who have seen retail occupancy levels plummet over the past 12 months, are doing everything possible to avoid big price cuts.  Instead, like residential landlords, commercial real estate owners are providing massive rent concessions through things like...

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hoped for a different outcome in last week’s election, but she made plain Monday that she accepts that Donald Trump will fill the Supreme Court’s 9-month-old vacancy. The 83-year-old justice said the most immediate impact on the court of Trump’s election would be to fill the seat that Justice Antonin Scalia occupied until his death in February. “President Trump will fill it,” Ginsburg said in a question-and-answer session at a meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America in a Washington ballroom. Ginsburg had criticized Trump in interviews last summer with The Associated Press and other...

On a hot day in June, the grandson of a bank president took to the floor of the Senate to denounce the daughter of sharecroppers. “I feel compelled to rise on this issue to express, in the strongest terms, my opposition to the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to the DC Circuit,” Senator Obama said.