More hotels are monetizing the mountain of daily requests for early check-ins and late checkouts with fees for extra hours in the room.

In the second quarter, U.S. businesses signed new leases for an estimated 97.5 million square feet, up from 57.4 million square feet in the second quarter of 2020, the low point of the pandemic. But, the average U.S. office lease size was 3,275 square feet, or 19% less than the average lease size between 2015 and 2019.

Since 2018, the average unit size for new housing starts has decreased 10% nationally to 2,420 square feet. Construction starts for new single-family homes declined in 2022, but starts for homes with fewer than three bedrooms increased 9.5% over the same period.

While retail landlords in some areas, including large cities, have been forced to lower rents since the start of the pandemic, the overall average asking rent for retail space in the U.S. has increased 6.3% since the second quarter of 2020. Asking rents now average more than $23 a square foot, the highest level in at least a decade.

Money-market yields recently soared to their highest level in 16 years. Similarly, yields on 10-year Treasurys have lurched to the highest since 2007.

For 2023, growth in revenue per available room was lowered by 0.5 percentage point, due to a 0.6 percentage point downgrade in occupancy growth. While that RevPAR growth remains above the long-term historical average, most of the increase was frontloaded to the early portion of the year. For 2024, the RevPAR growth projection was also lowered 0.5 percentage point on a 0.5 percentage point downgrade in occupancy. Average daily rate was upgraded 0.1 percentage points for 2023 but kept flat for 2024.

The 60-day-plus delinquency rate for subprime auto loans rose to 5.37% in June. That is well above the 0.49% June rate for prime loans in the tracker, and the highest June level ever for subprime.

Opportunistic real-estate funds run by private-equity firms have nearly $145 billion in so-called dry powder for future investments, up from $120 billion at the end of last year.

$100 invested in three-month Treasury bills in 1928 grew to only $2,141 by the end of last year while it became $46,379 invested in medium-grade corporate bonds and a whopping $624,534 if invested in stocks.

Activist hedge funds have seen their investments climb about 14% through July. That trails the S&P 500’s gains of about 20% through the same time period. But it’s better than 2022, when activists as a unit were down more than 16% for the full year.