Commercial/Industrial Real Estate

The idea came to Johnny Taylor Jr. early last year, after one of his employees made a case that her technology position could be done anywhere. She wanted to leave Virginia, where she held a job at the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional association based in Alexandria. She asked to work remotely in North Carolina. “Then a lightbulb went off,” said Mr. Taylor, the association’s chief executive. Instead of having the employee work in another state, he…

Extra Space Storage Inc. EXR -4.82% has struck a $12.7 billion deal to combine with smaller rival Life Storage Inc., LSI 3.92% which earlier rejected a bid from industry behemoth Public Storage, executives from the companies said.  Life Storage stockholders are set to receive 0.8950 of an Extra Space share for each share they own, or $145.82, the companies announced Monday. That is…

Industrial real-estate executives expect only limited fallout from the turmoil that has engulfed the U.S. banking sector, even as warehouse developers grapple with the rising interest rates and weakening demand that are dampening construction following a period of historic growth. “The availability of credit might likely be diminished in the short term as banks will begin to be more stringent on underwriting,” said Craig Meyer, president of industrial for the Americas at real-estate services…

Defaults and vacancies are on the rise at high-end office buildings, in the latest sign that remote work and rising interest rates are spreading pain to more corners of the commercial real-estate market.For much of the pandemic, buildings in central locations that feature modern amenities fared better than their less-pricey peers. Some even were able to increase rents while older, cheaper buildings saw surging vacancy rates and plummeting values. Now, these so-called class-A properties, whose rents generally fall into a…

Tighter belts for smaller banks could count as a big problem for some parts of the U.S.The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank SBNY -22.87% as well as questions about First Republic Bank’s FRC -32.80% future have cast a sudden pall on the banking sector. An emerging concern is that customers at community and regional banks, worrying that their deposits aren’t safe, might pull their money, putting it into…

As questions about where interest rates and real-estate prices are headed continue to weigh on the market, more people could be tempted to turn their homes into rental properties instead of selling them.But becoming a landlord isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. In fact, it comes with far more financial, legal, emotional and time-consuming factors than many rookies realize. Rents, for example, aren’t surging the way they had been in recent years. We spoke to landlords and experts in the field about the biggest…

But landlords who own big-box space occupied by the troubled home-goods retailer are more confident about finding new tenants than they would have been in years past, according to property owners and retail analysts. One of the bigger Bed Bath & Beyond landlords has received commitments from tenants to fill all 12 locations if and when they close, according to a person familiar with the matter, including Sephora, Trader Joe’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc., T.J. Maxx,…

Twitter Inc. is auctioning kegerators, pizza ovens and other supplies from its San Francisco headquarters in what appears to be its latest cost-cutting move. More than 600 items are being sold online through Wednesday afternoon, according to an auction page run by Heritage Global Partners, Inc. The items were described on the page as surplus corporate office assets. Some of the more quirky pieces on sale include a neon sign of Twitter’s bird logo, currently fetching $27,500,…

Many of the most prominent office developers in the U.S. are shifting gears, looking to buy or build real estate that isn’t office.  Boston Properties Inc. is planning to develop 2,000 residential units up and down the East Coast. The firm, which owns more U.S. office space than any other publicly traded company, also is developing millions of square feet of lab and life-science space.  New York office owner SL Green Realty Corp is teaming up with…

The U.S. warehousing market is retrenching heading into 2023, a turnaround from the pandemic-driven boom in industrial real-estate demand as companies slow down decisions on new storage and distribution space amid fears of a recession. Companies leased 132 million square feet of industrial space across the U.S. in the fourth quarter, down 28.2% from the third quarter, according to a new report from commercial real-estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. That was the second straight…