What's Trending in Real Estate, April 2023

Hotel performance improved slightly, Lee & Associates releases its Q1 North America Real Estate Report, SF joins the movement to convert empty office spaces, and Trepp’s March CMBS report February’s U.S. Hotel GOPPAR Highest Since October 2022 Better news for hotels after a gloomy report last month (“Remote Work Threatens Business Hotels’ Recovery, Boosting Default Risks,” Wall Street Journal).

Hotel performance improves

According to a press release from CoStar, things were finally looking up in the hotel sector: “U.S. hotel gross operating profit per available room (GOPPAR) exceeded the pre-pandemic comparable and was the highest since October 2022, according to STR’s February 2023 P&L data release.

EBITDA was the only key bottom-line metric on a per-available-room basis to come in lower than February 2019. For more on the February data, go here. 2023 Q1 North America Real Estate Market Report Commercial real estate services firm Lee & Associates has released its 2023 Q1 North America Market Report.

Real estate market trends

Highlights include the following: Industrial overview: Sharp decline hits first-quarter U.S. demand Office overview: Despite job gains office footprints continue to shrink Retail overview: Net absorption dips in the first quarter Multifamily overview: Rent growth continues to slow To learn more and download the report, go here.

San Francisco Joins U.S. Cities Seeking To Convert Empty Office Space With a record amount of vacant office space, this seems like a no-brainer with obvious benefits: increased tax revenue, salvation for downtown businesses, and relief for landlords still suffering from the WFH movement.

But this being San Francisco, the regulatory hoops and hurdles developers must clear could derail, or at least slow, this initiative from city officials. “The Bay Area proposal, which would codify uses such as flexible workspace in the planning code and permit others such as lab space, is aimed at cutting through the red tape that has long plagued the city’s development pipeline,” notes an article from CoStar. Other U.

Office space conversion

S. municipalities pursuing this idea include New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

, whose plans also include the possibility of apartment development in their city centers. For more on this national trend, go here. CMBS Delinquency Rate Dips in March, But Office Rate Continues To Climb Trepp has released its March 2023 Delinquency Report on commercial mortgage-backed securities.

After showing the largest rise since June 2020 in the previous month, the Trepp CMBS Delinquency Rate improved slightly in March: For more, download the March report here. For additional information on Trepp’s products and services, email [email protected] or phone 212-754-1010.