Blackstone closed this week on an $8 billion commercial real-estate debt fund, matching the record for this type of investment vehicle and offering another sign of a property-market rebound.
Among 569 data-center facilities in markets across the Americas, the vacancy rate stood at 4.9% at the end of 2024, and 83% of upcoming capacity is already preleased. In the second half of 2024, North American markets reached 20 gigawatts of operational capacity, with 1.5 GWs added in the second half specifically. That brought the total capacity added in 2024 to 3.2 GWs.
Some 4.8% of 401(k) account holders took early withdrawals last year for reasons such as preventing foreclosure and paying medical bills. That is a record high, up from a prior record of 3.6% in 2023 and a prepandemic average of about 2%.
JPMorgan Chase and Starwood Property Trust have agreed to lend $2 billion for the 100-acre data center campus in West Jordan, Utah, outside Salt Lake City. The borrower, a venture of real-estate investor CIM Group and Novva Data Centers, said the facility will be able to provide 175 megawatts of continuous service.
In January, U.S. existing-home inventories were 16% below levels seen this time five years ago. Beneath the headline numbers, different states are recovering at sharply different paces. In Texas, the number of properties for sale is 20% higher than it was before the pandemic while in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the number of homes currently on the market is still less than half what was normal before the pandemic.
Pending home sales fell 4.6% in January 2025 to the lowest level on record as mortgage rates held above 7% for the entire month.
The number of full-time real estate agents and brokers has dropped to its lowest point in more than a decade. During the height of the housing boom in the run-up to the financial crisis, the total number of full-time agents and brokers was about 504,000 in the U.S. and by 2024, that number dropped to 398,000. The last time the number of full-time agents and brokers was that low was in 2013.
About 7.05% of FHA mortgages issued last year went seriously delinquent—90 or more days past when a payment is due—within 12 months. That’s more than at the 2008 peak of the subprime bubble (7.02%).
The top 10% of earners, households making about $250,000 a year or more, now account for 49.7% of all spending, a record in data going back to 1989. Three decades ago, they accounted for about 36%.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that about 55% of in-service distribution transformer units are older than 33 years and approaching their end of life. Distribution transformer capacity might need to increase 160% to 260% by 2050 compared with 2021 levels to meet demand.
