The red-hot rental market is starting to cool. Average apartment rents rose 9.4% in the second quarter of 2022 compared with the same quarter in 2021, down from the more than 11% annual increases seen the previous two quarters.

The VIX hasn’t closed above 30, a key level that signifies increased fear, since June and settled Tuesday just below 24. The VVIX, an index measuring the volatility of the VIX itself, has fallen relatively steadily since January and recently hit a three-year low of 80.

Total general-purpose and store credit-card debt fell to $748 billion in April 2021 from $913 billion in January 2020. It remains among the few mainstream forms of consumer debt where the aggregate balances, now at $855 billion in May, haven’t yet returned to prepandemic norms.

Embattled property developer China Evergrande Group was told to honor a $1.1 billion guarantee, revealing yet another large financial obligation that wasn’t previously disclosed. Evergrande said one of its subsidiaries in China had provided counter guarantees to an unnamed entity by pledging its shares in Shengjing Bank Co., a regional lender.

U.S. hotel construction has declined for seven consecutive months, according to STR, but planning activity continues to rise nationally, albeit at a slower pace. In Construction: 149,198 rooms (-20.1%), Final Planning: 178,809 rooms (-11.3%), Planning: 281,190 rooms (+6.1%).

The value of securities backed by real-estate loans issued by banks was $20.6 billion in the second quarter, down from $29 billion during the quarter prior.

Hundreds of thousands of hotel workers have left the industry since the pandemic. There were about 1.7 million accommodation workers employed nationwide in June, a roughly 16% decline from June of 2019.

The world’s pool of negative-yielding debt has shrunk to a roughly seven-year low, as an era of exceptionally loose monetary policy draws to a close in most major economies. The total stock of negative-yielding debt last week stood at $2.4 trillion, an 87% plunge from the $18.4 trillion peak reached in December 2020.

Comparing Q2 2022 with Q2 2021, the number of trades increased by approximately 122 percent while total dollar volume grew roughly 12 percent, however sale price per room declined by 25 percent.

The latest data shows the top 25 hotel markets are now at 65% of year-to-date 2019 levels of gross operating profit per available room and are just seven percentage points below the 2019 year-to-date gross-operating-profit margin. Additionally, all these markets year to date are beyond 50% of 2019 levels in total revenue per available room and beyond 24% of 2019 GOPPAR levels.