A record $151.8 billion in U.S. mortgages backed by rental apartment buildings are set to expire this year, and $940.1 billion are set to expire over the next five years.

Private equity funds snapped up a record 786 makers of food and beverages worth $32 billion in 2021, using bundles of debt to pay for their purchases. The financiers projected that staple goods would keep making profits no matter how the economy fared. But that forecast changed, as processed-food prices shot 14% higher last year, almost four times the 20-year annual average, while fruits leapt 18% and vegetables soared 51%.

Among 435 publicly traded U.S. banks listed on major exchanges, 97% of them reported that their loans’ market value was less than their balance-sheet amount as of Dec. 31.

The equity risk premium—the gap between the S&P 500’s earnings yield and that of 10-year Treasurys—sits around 1.59 percentage points, a low not seen since October 2007. That is well below the average gap of around 3.5 points since 2008.

The number of global travelers increased to nearly 7 billion in 2022, a 54% increase from the prior year. But 2022 figures came in about 26% less than 2019.

Investors purchased $14 billion of apartment buildings in the first quarter of 2023. That represents a 74% decline in sales from the same quarter a year earlier and is the largest annual sales decline for any quarter going back to a 77% drop in the first quarter of 2009.

Extra Space Storage Inc. has struck a $12.7 billion deal to combine with smaller rival Life Storage Inc., which earlier rejected a bid from industry behemoth Public Storage. the deal would create the largest storage-facility operator in the country by number of locations. Including debt, the combined company would have an enterprise value of roughly $47 billion. 

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, which measures home prices across the nation, fell 0.2% in January compared with December on a seasonally adjusted basis. Prices have fallen for seven straight months, the longest streak of declines since 2012.

Ten of the country’s 25 largest metropolitan areas lost population during the one-year period. The gainers were all in the South or West, with the exception of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which recorded a small gain after losing residents the year before.

Cancellations were a major headache for travelers in 2022 with about 181,000 flights scrapped by the largest U.S. airlines. Only 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, and 2020, the start of the pandemic, had more flight cancellations over the past two decades.