Rents averaged $2,000 a square foot on upper Fifth Avenue over the past year. That was about 13% higher than the world’s next-most-expensive shopping destination, Via Montenapoleone in Milan. New York City displaced Hong Kong last year to top the chart for the first time since 2017.

Return-to-office rates have stalled for most of 2023. The average office attendance is about half of its prepandemic level in the 60% to 65% range, but the return rate has seemed to have topped out.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) decreased to 7.07% from 7.17%, with points falling to 0.59 from 0.60 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment. That was the lowest level since July.

The national vacancy rate increased to a record 13.5% in the third quarter of this year, up from 9.4% at the end of 2019.

Blackstone announced the final close on $2.6 billion for its latest real estate secondaries fund, Strategic Partners Real Estate VIII L.P.

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, which measures home prices across the nation, rose 3.9% from a year earlier in September, compared with a 2.5% annual increase the prior month. The September level was the highest since the index began in 1987. Home sales have slumped from a year ago because higher mortgage rates have pushed buyers out of the market. But the decline in demand isn’t causing prices to fall, because the inventory of homes on the market is unusually low.

Blackstone head Steve Schwarzman plans to spend billions buying up dorms, warehouses, and data centers across Europe.

In the first nine months of 2019, 88% of CMBS office loans were paid off when they matured. As interest rates and vacancies rose, that share dropped to 71% in the first nine months of 2022 and to just 31.2% this year.

Lenders this year have issued a record number of foreclosure notices for high-risk property loans. Commonly known as mezzanine loans, these loans have high interest rates and offer a faster and easier path to foreclose than mortgages. The current number of these high-risk loans is the highest total ever for a single year, as higher interest rates and rising vacancies punish the property sector.

With mortgage rates near 8% and average home prices hitting record highs, sales of existing homes were down 15.4% year-over-year in September.