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space left open by department store closures is being filled by operators that offer either value or an experience. Former Macy's stores, for example, are being filled by Whole Foods or Life Time Fitness, according to JLL's report, while AMC Theatres and H&M have gone into space once occupied by Sears and JC Penney.

It's all part of the trend toward service-driven, experiential real estate. Consumers are looking for experiences; something that cannot be recreated online, or that can be posted on Instagram. Or both.''

The Fed claims to be able to engineer a "soft landing," but that virtually never happens in reality. It's even less likely to happen in this current bubble cycle because of how long it has gone on and how distorted the financial markets and economy have become due to ultra-cheap credit conditions.

I'm from the same school of thought as billionaire fund manager Jeff Gundlach, who believes that the Fed will keep hiking interest rates until "something breaks." In the last economic cycle from roughly 2002 to 2007, it was the subprime mortgage industry that broke first, and in the current cycle, I believe that corporate bonds are likely to break first, which would then spill over into the U.S. stock market.

... Because of the record debt burden in the U.S., interest rates do not have to rise nearly as high as in prior cycles to cause a recession or financial crisis this time around.

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A survey conducted by Douglas Elliman found that about 20 percent of all retail space in Manhattan is currently vacant, she said, compared with roughly 7 percent in 2016.

While a commercial crisis might more likely be associated with periods of economic distress, this one comes during an era of soaring prosperity, in a city teeming with tourism and booming with development.

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Particularly hard hit are gentrifying areas in Brooklyn and many of Manhattan's top retail strips in some of the world's priciest shopping districts, from Broadway in SoHo to Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side.

Yeah right, it's just a "period of prosperity" -- not a time of papered-over economic lacunae using cheap money...

WeWork initially was scheduled to close on the purchase last month, according to TRD, but Hudson's Bay granted its buyer an extension to Nov. 13 in exchange for another $25M deposit. In addition to its search for equity partners, Eastdil Secured is on the hunt for lenders to provide a $738M loan package to help fund the buy and an estimated $200M worth of renovations the building would need, Commercial Mortgage Alert reports.

While WeWork has billions in cash thanks to its venture capital investment from SoftBank, that money is not earmarked for property acquisition, according to TRD, which is why WPA and Rhone have raised at least $404M to buy property outside of WeWork's balance sheet. It is unclear how much of that equity will go into 424 Fifth Ave., and how much they are hoping to bring in from a third party.

"It's really the consumer saying ‘this is enough," he said. "New developments showed a huge decline, falling 54% while resale condos only fell 25%."

Already steep competition could be set to steepen.

Manhattan's new condo inventory is projected to hit 7,900 next year, The Real Deal reported earlier this summer, citing data from appraisal firm Miller Samuel.

That is a significant increase on the average from the last few years -- which has sat between 3,000 and 4,000 units -- and means it would take about four-and-a-half years to sell all the units.

"This game plays out very slowly," Roth added, noting that the first cracks are appearing. "We're beginning to see lenders who are out of the money," he said. "We're beginning to see mezz lenders and debt funds and private lenders beginning to become aware of the fact that they are impaired."

The Toronto-based investor is prepared to inject up to $700 million in equity and will essentially take control of the building unencumbered with a 100 percent leasehold, the people said. A Brookfield representative declined to comment.

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The building lost $25 million last year and has almost always been unprofitable. As a first step in its latest restructuring plan, Kushner Cos. said in June it would buy out Vornado. Vornado continues to own the retail portion of the property.

The cash infusion from Brookfield comes just in time, with a $1.2 billion mortgage on the property coming due in February.

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The company intends to update the aging property with lighter and airier offices that would command higher rents, the people familiar with the matter said. The update would be similar to those Brookfield has made to properties including Manhattan's old Daily News Building, they said, adding that the Kushner Cos. would not participate in gains from the work until Brookfield earns a return on its investment.

Wonder if this results in a softening of the administrations recent "anti-Canadian" stance...

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Losing the property is the latest in a string of bad news for the firm. Thor lost its interest in three valuable retail properties that had been purchased for almost $900 million after defaulting on an $85 million loan from its partner GGP in the properties, according to The Real Deal. In March, Thor and a partner dumped a 70-unit apartment building on the Upper West Side for $65 million--a $2 million loss from what they paid for the property four years ago.

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With such lean inventory, prices are getting bid up. The median price of a home sold in June was $276,900, a fresh all-time high, and 5.2% higher than in June 2017. Higher prices--along with somewhat higher mortgage rates--are handicapping less aggressive buyers. First-timers made up 31% of all transactions in June, roughly the same level they've been stuck at throughout the recovery, and well below the 40% share they generally enjoyed before the housing crisis a decade ago.

Chris Lehane, head of global policy at Airbnb, said the policy will subject innocent hosts to over-policing and violates their privacy. Lehane, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, lashed out at the council in a conference call with reporters and accused the bill's supporters of putting the interests of hotel owners and unions above regular New Yorkers. "This is a bill that really is designed to benefit the hotel industry," he said.

The debate over Airbnb's role in New York has raged for years, with housing advocates saying short-term rentals contribute to rising rents and gentrification, while the company argues it helps homeowners afford their mortgages. Regulation hasn't stopped the rise of the San Francisco-based company, which is valued at about $31 billion and has faced resistance from local governments practically since it started a decade ago.

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Yet the researchers also found that even among white households that are married, with children, and even with substantial income, the homeownership rate is 2 to 3 percentage points lower than earlier generations.  Obviously other factors are at play, some of them defined as attitudinal.

The preference of educated Millennials to move to more expensive urban centers has contributed to their lower homeownership rate.  In high-cost cities the housing supply is inelastic and within large metro areas, Young adults additionally migrate to the counties with a more urban environment where prices have increased more than in surrounding areas.  This shift in preference was mostly observed among those who are higher educated. The supply of affordable housing has declined overall during the last decade, but this is especially true in areas where Millennials prefer to live.

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Obtaining a mortgage has become more challenging over the last ten years. The process is unwieldy, and underwriting has not adapted to the unstable and non-traditional labor market and tightening credit standards.

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In addition to Vicecroy's mounting expenses, the Manhattan hotel market is in a radically different place. The borough saw a slump in RevPAR -- or revenue per available room -- and pricing power, but there appears to be turning around in recent months.

Funny that the city itself is admitting what AirBnB itself argues: that the overwhelming majority of hosts use it for occasional extra income (e.g., when they themselves travel). Looks like AirBnB is just a convenient scapegoat for an otherwise very messed up real estate market -- "The Rent Is Too Damned High" long predates AirBnB. NYC's government should look in the mirror and ask themselves whether they're really facilitating the development the market demands (you know, that whole "supply" thing)...

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You have closing costs and in many cases, there are commissions to pay out once escrow closes. These may range from 3 to 5 percent. So when you purchase a home with a 3 percent down payment, you are essentially putting yourself in a zero or negative equity position from day one if you needed to sell.

The public release of the renderings come weeks after West filmed an interview where he spoke about his plans to build a real estate empire. In a lengthy taped conversation between him and radio and television personality Charlamagne Tha God, West said, "I'm going to be one of the biggest real estate developers of all time. Like what Howard Hughes was to aircrafts and what Henry Ford was to cars."

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But it was only last month, via Twitter, that he announced his new venture to bring architectural design in-house: "We're starting a Yeezy architecture arm called Yeezy home," he tweeted. "We're looking for architects and industrial designers who want to make the world better.

The most expensive 10% of U.S. rentals had a vacancy rate of more than 13 percent during the first quarter of the year, according to a CoStar Group study cited by Bloomberg News.

For the rest, the rate was around 6 percent. CoStar's study excluded subsidized rentals and focused on the 54 largest metropolitan areas in the country.

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There are now 537,000 apartments und construction -- the most going back at least to 2000, according to the study. But those units are disproportionately located in expensive submarkets.

"Capital around the world is enamored with U.S. multifamily, and a lot of that is manifesting itself in high-amenity, high-asking-rent" apartments, said CoStar's Michael Cohen. "The market is missing some other opportunities."

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Not everyone is convinced, however. Some of its critics say that WeWork should be treated like a traditional property company, not a Silicon Valley unicorn. WeWork doesn't actually own most of it spaces, but takes out long leases on buildings, which it then offers out in smaller chunks and on shorter terms. This can be a risky model: serviced office provider Regus (now IWG) thrived in the dotcom boom only to suffer when the bubble burst, filing for bankruptcy protection for its US business in 2003.

"The problem was catastrophically falling rents," IWG CEO Mark Dixon, who founded the company in 1989, tells me later. There was no real fall in demand, he says, but a disjoint in cost base. "If you sign leases that are too long and you're fixed at double the market on your liability side on leases, you basically lose all your margin." Today, IWG remains one of WeWork's main competitors, and, with over 3,000 locations to WeWork's 200, it is much bigger. IWG has been publicly traded since 2000; at the time of writing, it has a market cap of £2.2 billion. Dixon insists that he is not worried about WeWork. "There's no magic ingredient that they have that everyone else doesn't have," he says. IWG launched its first space under co-working brand Spaces, which is closer in style to WeWork than its more formal Regus offices, in 2015. I ask what he makes of WeWork's $20 billion valuation. "Well, it's a great story," he says.