After disappointing reports by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in August and September, hiring has surged with employers adding 271,000 new payroll jobs last month, far surpassing the 185,000 jobs forecasted in Bloomberg’s survey of economists. Revisions to the August and September reports were also minor, totaling only 12,000 jobs. While the hiring surge is positive in many ways for the commercial real estate industry, it may also prove to be a source of negativity, as it is likely to lead to a rise in interest rates… Read more »

Lenders will keep pouring money into apartment properties over the next two years, originating about the same volume of loans in 2016 and 2017—with slight increases—that they are likely to close in 2015, according to the latest Commercial/Multifamily Real Estate Finance Forecast from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), an industry trade group. “The forecast anticipates continued strength and growth,” says Jamie Woodwell, vice president for the research and economics group at MBA… Read more »

Micro-units are growing in popularity in cities across the country, with Seattle a center for these small studio apartments of less than 350 square feet with kitchen and bathroom. In Arizona, the units face barriers, such as the focus here on single-family units as well as size requirements in building codes… Read more »

The Granite Commerce Center, which consists of over 407,000 square feet at the northeast corner of 75th Avenue and Van Buren Street, sold Thursday for $30.75 million or $75 per square foot. Cobalt Capital Partners, which was acquired by Colony Capital in January of this year, purchased the property in a cash-only sale from Texas-based Crow Holdings… Read more »

The U.S. foreclosure inventory in September witnessed a 24.3 percent year-over-year decline, while the number of completed foreclosures declined by 17.6 percent compared with September 2014, according to new data from CoreLogic. CoreLogic determined that the national foreclosure inventory consisted of approximately 470,000, or 1.2 percent of all homes with a mortgage; one year earlier, the inventory consisted of 621,000 homes, or 1.6 percent with a mortgage… Read more »