While in Miami last week, I made sure to make time for an extensive tour of the downtown Brickell business district. One phrase I heard repeatedly from the locals is that they were trying to create a mini Manhattan on the shores of Biscayne Bay. However, unlike the conventional commentary from New York chauvinists like […]
Everybody wants to be safe. Apparently, the word is out that it may not be safe on the New York City subways, so Governor Kathy Hochul has stepped into the breach and is providing 1000 New York national guardsmen and state police to check bags at the entrance to major subway stations like Grand Central […]
Karl (not Groucho) Marx, citing Hegel as the source, famously said that history appears first as tragedy, twice as farce. While I will spare you from a dialectic, suffice it to say that the WeWork bankruptcy might be an example of what these famous economic and social philosophers had in mind. Let me explain by […]
It is well known that the commercial real estate industry, and most particularly the office sector, has been reeling from the double whammy of remote work combined with a 525 basis point increase in interest rates. But here’s the good news – the situation could be a lot worse. There may be two strikes on […]
With all the tumult in the commercial office market, I thought that a good news story would be a nice subject as the new year is now well underway. Soccer aficionados are probably aware that New York City has reached an agreement with Major League Soccer’s New York City Football Club (NYCFC) to […]
I was pleased to participate in a fascinating report just released in Fast Company. While titled as an eight-point guide for designing an office that office workers actually want to return to, it also contained a discussion of the state of the office market in several major cities and the views of several real estate […]
In another blow to the office industry, co-working giant WeWork finally bowed to the inevitable after a total of $16 billion in losses and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Newark last night. This was a case that had its origins well before the pandemic, but the trend to remote work hastened WeWork’s fall. The […]
As our well-informed readers know, the Wall Street Journal has reported that WeWork expects to file for bankruptcy next week. For now, the WeWork bondholders have entered into a seven-day forbearance of the grace period to declare a default in order to provide additional time for negotiations.
It has been evident for many years that WeWork’s […]
Below is an updated version of my latest Forbes.com column.
Our well-informed readers are likely aware that a couple of weeks ago, WeWork withheld interest payments due on five senior secured notes totaling approximately $95 million. In an 8-K report, WeWork stated that it has a 30-day grace period to make the payments before an event […]
I recently attended a fascinating real estate investors’ conference for hedge funds, lenders and owners held by the Real Estate Limited Partner Institute. The talk of the conference was the almost complete inability of landlords (other than owners of tier 1 properties) to get any financing at all, except at exorbitant rates around 15% which […]
