In the Fortune 500, 82% of employers offer at least some remote-work opportunities and Americans spent about 30% of their paid days working from home in January 2024, largely the same from a year earlier.

Asking rents for prime space in 16 U.S. markets declined in the third quarter after increasing on average from about $61 a square foot in mid-2021 to close to about $70 in the second quarter of last year. They were just under $69 in the fourth quarter.

Vacancies at U.S. shopping centers fell to 5.3% in the fourth quarter, the lowest level since tracking the metric in 2007. Average asking rents rose to $23.70 a square foot and are now nearly 17% above 2019 levels.

Fed officials expect to cut rates three times this year, according to projections from their last meeting in December, but they haven’t indicated when those cuts would begin.

The U.S. economy grew 3.1% over the last year, defying projections of a recession as a resilient labor market supported strong consumer spending. The 2023 figure stands in contrast to what economists expected a year ago, when they saw a recession as very likely and expected anemic 0.2% growth for the year. Last year’s gain was a sharp pickup from a comparable 0.7% advance in 2022.

Blackstone agreed to sell the Arizona Biltmore luxury hotel to London-based private equity real estate manager Henderson Park for $705M. Almost six years ago, Blackstone acquired the property for roughly $400M from Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC and spent over $150M on property renovations.

Businesses large and small acquired some 570,000 homes in 2023, down from 802,000 in 2022. Fourth-quarter investor purchases of 123,000 represented the lowest quarterly total in the last eight quarters with 2023 on track for the largest annual drop in investor buying activity in at least 20 years.

In the heart of Boston, the 02115 ZIP Code has catapulted into having the priciest median residential real estate as ranked by price per square foot in the U.S., at $2,663 in December 2023.

Sales of previously owned homes in 2023 dropped to the lowest level in 28 years, as home-buying affordability worsened and the supply of homes for sale remained low. Existing home sales, which make up most of the housing market, slid 19% in 2023 from the prior year to 4.09 million, the lowest full-year level since 1995.

Rising interest rates drew trillions of dollars into money-market funds and other cash-like investments in the past two years, with more than $8.8 trillion parked in money funds and CDs as of the third quarter of 2023.