The volume of office building sales increased to $63.6 billion in 2024, up 20% from 2023. That activity still pales compared with 2015 to 2019, when volume averaged $142.9 billion a year. But it marked the first increase since 2021.

The equity risk premium, defined as the gap between the S&P 500’s earnings yield and that of 10-year Treasurys, turned negative in late December for the first time since 2002 and sat last week at negative 0.15 percentage point.

In recent months, wealthy political appointees, new members of Congress and business leaders have flooded the luxury real-estate market in Washington, D.C., scooping up multimillion-dollar properties in the nation’s capital and in nearby McLean, Va.

The federal government currently leases 149.39 million square feet of office space across the nation, with rent payments totaling $5.23 billion annually. In total, the GSA owns and leases more than 363 million square feet of space in 8,397 buildings nationally. A filing of its real estate inventory found 1,715 of the GSA’s listed leases nationally are set to expire in 2025 and 2026, totaling at least 47 million square feet.

Public pension plans, university endowments and charitable foundations have about doubled their investments in private-equity funds since 2018. North American private-equity funds now manage some $4 trillion in assets.

The Trump administration is considering selling two-thirds of the federal government’s office stock to the private sector, and approximately three-quarters of the 70 million square feet of office space the GSA leases from private landlords in D.C. is also likely to be canceled.

The top 20 hedge-fund managers oversee about 20% of industry assets but are responsible for an estimated 32% of industrywide net gains.

Meeting minutes from the Fed’s December policy meeting showed officials bracing for the possibility that the coming administration could usher in another spell of higher-than-expected inflation.

The stock market is pricing portfolios of American homes at a hefty discount to what houses are changing hands for in the open market. Shares of publicly traded single-family landlords are trading at 35% and 20% discounts to their net asset values.

CBRE announced Tuesday that it has agreed to purchase the 60% stake that it didn’t already own in Industrious, a deal that values the co-working company at about $800 million. Industrious has more than 200 locations in over 65 cities globally that make office space available to businesses on flexible terms.