WeWork, once one of the world’s most valuable startups worth $47 billion, said excess supply of commercial real estate, greater competition for flexible space and uncertain economic conditions resulted in losses in the second quarter. The company’s stock is down more than 95% since its public listing, with an estimated market capitalization now around $450 million.
Total commercial and multifamily mortgage lending is expected to fall to $504 billion this year, a 38% decline from 2022.
Apartment-building values fell 14% for the year ended in June after rising 25% the previous year.
Hedge-fund firms that have more than $5 billion in assets had net inflows of $14 billion in the first half of this year. Those with between $1 billion and $5 billion had inflows of about $1 billion. Firms managing less than $1 billion, by contrast, had net outflows of some $2 billion.
Private funds’ gross assets recently surpassed those of the commercial banking sector at more than $25 trillion. That is up from $9 trillion in 2012.
The Federal Reserve resumed lifting interest rates with a quarter-percentage-point increase that will bring them to a 22-year high.
Rents for new customers at U.S. self-storage facilities declined in the first quarter of 2023 to $15.45 a square foot, a 10% drop from the first quarter of 2022. That drop, following a comparable reduction in the fourth quarter of 2022, marked the biggest decline on record since tracking the rates in 2013.
The Conference Board said last week that its leading economic index fell for a 15th consecutive month, signaling slowing economic activity ahead. That is the index’s longest streak of declines since a span from the spring of 2007 through early 2009. The U.S. economy fell into a recession in December 2007 and didn’t exit until June 2009.
