DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

Sam Zell — the legendary, outspoken real-estate tycoon and self-made billionaire who founded a property empire — has died, his company announced on Thursday. Zell was 81. This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

☆ No office tower is safe from the roiling market — not even a trophy building housing Google and Visa deemed one of the best
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Potential problems at One Market Plaza show how far San Francisco's office market may fall. One Market Plaza has long been considered the pinnacle of San Francisco's office market. Autodesk plans to downsize by about 73,000 square feet to 211,000 square feet, a spokeswoman told Insider. Google did not respond to a request for comment on its plans for One Market Plaza. One Market Plaza could indicate how far San Francisco's office woes reachTurbulence at One Market Plaza indicates the extent of the problems facing San Francisco's office market.

☆ Banks are finally admitting they have a problem with billions of dollars in looming real-estate defaults
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

This earnings season, some major banks bucked tumult in the sector by raking in record revenues and surpassing Wall Street expectations. The bank separately disclosed $725 million of "non-accrual loans" tied to office assets — debts that are already delinquent on payments. That was a nearly fourfold increase in dollar volume of bad office loans over the previous quarter held by the bank. Even some loans tied the nation's robust market for apartment buildings have faltered recently. Anderson said about $760 billion of office loans were held by banks, which amounts to roughly 35% of their commercial-real-estate debt.

☆ Landlords pumped billions into apartment buildings during the pandemic. That bet could now go horribly wrong.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Big money investors pumped billions into buying up apartment buildings in the pandemic era. But fault lines have emerged for investors who paid top dollar for assets that depended on substantial rent increases and persistent low interest rates to achieve profitability. In those years, investors purchased $355.5 billion and $299.2 billion worth of apartment buildings, according to MSCI — unprecedented sums that far surpassed the previous $194 billion record of multifamily sales in 2019. "It's early, but it's going to become a bigger story, especially if interest rates stay high and lending standards are tight," said Alan Todd, the head of commercial-mortgage-backed-securities strategy at BofA Global Research. As these short-term debts come due, they will be difficult to swap with commensurately sized loans today, because of the falling values, higher interest rates, and lender caution.

☆ Landlords who bought thousands of apartments are facing a reckoning
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Investors showed outsize interest in apartment buildings during the pandemic. Rents and occupancy rates were rising, interest rates remained relatively low, and rental-property prices were climbing with no sign of letting up during a surge in housing demand. Laguna Point did not respond to a request for comment. Marc McDevitt, a senior managing director at Cred iQ, said it was possible Laguna Point had lost some, or even all, of its investment in the deal. While offices have been going through a paradigmatic shift as more workers do their jobs remotely, apartment buildings have experienced robust demand from tenants.

☆ Office Doom Loop: Landlords Face a Reckoning As Companies Move to Fancy Offices
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

The Gas Company Tower in downtown Los Angeles has a sterling pedigree, but even that can't save it from the doom loop facing many older office towers. A huge swath of America's office market is vulnerable to these twin threats of being under-equipped with amenities and underwater financially. This behavioral shift has deeply cut into demand for office space. The amount of sublease space nationally more than doubled from 118.5 million square feet at the end of 2019 to 242.8 million square feet at the end of 2022, Colliers stated. Lenders are often reluctant, he said, to seize office buildings because of the costs and expertise required to operate the properties.

☆ Commercial real estate loans are the next major risk for banks, a top analyst said. Here are the top 20 institutions exposed to property debt.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Alex Nicoll | Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Silicon Valley Bank's historic collapse this month helped trigger the failures of a few other financial institutions and weeks of chaos in the world of finance. On Friday, a Bank of America analyst pinpointed commercial-real-estate loans as the next major risk for banks. Regional banks like Silicon Valley Bank hold 68% of all commercial-real-estate loans, many tied to struggling sectors, like office buildings. Even more worrisome, a massive $450 billion in commercial-real-estate loans is maturing this year, and most of that is held by banks. Silicon Valley Bank wasn't a major lender to the sector, but the failed Signature Bank, the 10th-largest lender on this list, was.

Last year VCs invested $19.8 billion into these property-technology, or proptech, startups. We surveyed venture capitalists to identify the hottest proptech companies right now. Climatetech and AI-powered tools are major themes of the proptech industry in 2023, just as they are in the wider venture world. Insider asked more than 20 venture investors who focus on real-estate and construction technology to nominate the most exciting proptech startups in 2023. Here are the 26 buzziest proptech companies right now, presented in alphabetical order.

☆ Tiny homes, big problems
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Daniel Geiger | Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +21 min

Beyond their star appeal, low-cost tiny homes like Casitas have real-world utility. The homes have been seized upon as a solution for cities like Los Angeles to house the homeless. They showed off their homes' transportability by hitching several of them to a Tesla and filming drag races between Teslas and trucks that were hooked to trailers carrying the homes. So far, though, after a little more than a year of building, the company has fabricated only about 400 homes. Even if it were churning out thousands of units, Boxabl hasn't yet received the certifications required to sell them in most states across the country.

☆ Commercial real estate's biggest investors are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the grittiest land in America. Here's why.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Big commercial-real-estate players from Brookfield to Fortress are snapping up industrial land. Brookfield is one of several big-name investors that are paying increasing attention to lowly industrial land. Industrial land also generally has lower operating costs and taxes compared to other real estate. It's hard to find big enough portfolios of industrial landThere are challenges, too, in breaking into the business of owning industrial land. Atkins said he has been impressed by the robustness of the IOS market, even with fears about the broader economy.

Tiny-home startup Boxabl amassed a 160,000-person wait list since Elon Musk was linked to a Casita. Max, who put down a $2,400 deposit for a Casita in 2021, told Insider he is fed up with the delay. They told Insider they've received little communication from the company about when the homes, called Casitas, will be finished. One Arizona-based prospective buyer, Max, told Insider that he put $2,400 down for two Boxabl homes in 2021. Boxabl's founders — the colorful father-and-son team of Paolo and Galiano Tiramani — told Insider the six-year-old startup is now worth $3 billion.

☆ A tiny-home startup has attracted 160,000 customers, including Elon Musk. But disgruntled customers, an empty factory, and a tie to an alleged Iranian agent cloud its future.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Daniel Geiger | Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +17 min

A Boxabl Casita being delivered to a SpaceX facility in Texas. Tackling the US housing crisisStamped out on an assembly line, Boxabl homes could finally begin to help quench America's perpetual housing shortage. Homeowners, meanwhile, could rent out Boxabl units as secondary dwellings in their backyards or as Airbnbs. Firooznia, Tiramani said, sometimes provided a tiebreaking vote when the father and son disagreed on business decisions. During a tour of Boxabl's factory in December, a freelance reporter for Insider saw Tiramani's wife, Shauna, arrive with their four young children.

☆ News Corp plans to sell real estate giant Move Inc, valued at $1.4 billion, to CoStar as Rupert Murdoch shelves proposed merger of News Corp and Fox
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Claire Atkinson | Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

News Corp is in talks to sell Move Inc, the operator of listings site Realtor.com, to CoStar. The news comes as executive chairman Rupert Murdoch shelves a News Corp merger with Fox. News Corp is planning to sell Move Inc., the California-based operator of Realtor.com and other real estate listings sites, to CoStar, a commercial real estate data and technology firm. One News Corp shareholder, Irenic Capital, had argued against the merger, suggesting that News Corp could benefit shareholders if it unlocked the value of its holdings including Dow Jones and the real estate assets. The balance is held by News Corp's digital real estate subsidiary REA.

☆ Compass is laying off more staff as it races to cut expenses to cope with a cooling housing market
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Compass is laying off more people after two rounds of job cuts in the past eight months. The firm, which went public at an $8 billion valuation in 2021, now has a $1 billion market cap. The real-estate brokerage Compass told its staff on Thursday that it would be conducting another round of layoffs, with the money-losing firm seeking to further cut costs amid a weakening housing market. These layoffs follow rounds in June and OctoberAt the end of 2021, Compass had about 4,500 employees. In June, Compass let go of 450 employees across corporate departments, including administrative, marketing, and other support staff.

☆ Read the memo Compass CEO Robert Reffkin sent staff about the third round of layoffs since June
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Read the email Robert Reffkin, Compass' CEO, sent to staff announcing the layoffs Thursday morning. Robert Reffkin, the CEO of Compass, told staff on Thursday that the brokerage would be laying off more people. In an early-morning email, he said that the latest staff reduction comes amid "difficult economic times." The size of the layoff appears to amount to around 350 workers, or roughly 10% of the company's remaining staff, though Compass would not confirm a specific number. RobertRobert Reffkin | Founder & CEO

Insider's rising stars of real estate span roles in leasing, affordable housing, and urban planning. We asked 20 of these young industry experts and innovators to offer predictions for 2023. 2022 wreaked havoc on the housing market: Mortgage rates rose at a fast clip, bidding wars cooled, the Airbnb market shifted, and some high-flying proptech darlings crashed back down to earth. Insider picked 30 rising stars of commercial and residential real estate who're transforming the way homes are sold and offices get built. Here are the predictions for 2023 from our rising stars:

Insider's rising stars of real estate span roles in leasing, affordable housing, and urban planning. We asked the young achievers about the books that influenced their careers or personal growth. For some of Insider's rising stars of 2022, the subject matter might surprise you. Other rising stars told Insider they wanted to learn from the trials and tribulations of successful people, like the Nike cofounder Phil Knight. Below, find the selection of 29 books that influenced the rising stars, along with their musings of what they learned or how they applied the lessons to their practices.

☆ Wall Street landlords who've stockpiled $110 billion are lying in wait for their biggest American home-buying spree yet
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( James Rodriguez | Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Institutional investors have earmarked as much as $110 billion to buy or build single-family homes. Institutional investors now own about 3% of the roughly 20 million single-family-rental homes in the US, according to Roofstock, an online marketplace for single-family investment properties. That would be nearly 9% of the roughly 88 million single-family homes in the US, according to the Census Bureau's most recent statistics from 2020. Better deals expected in the years aheadThere are signs the institutional investors won't have to wait long to begin buying. That leaves between roughly $70 billion and $80 billion that could still flow into the sector.

You can get the latest on that and much more from our finance newsletter, 10 Things on Wall Street. It's a snappy weekday read with the biggest stories on the Street, plus the latest on hot-spot restaurants, industry parties, and so much more. On the agenda today:Up first: Senior real-estate correspondent Daniel Geiger is giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the recent turmoil at Compass. With home sales dipping amid rising interest rates, Compass has cut workers and bled cash. In June, it laid off about 450 corporate staff, and in October, it let go of about half its 1,500-person tech team.

Carl Icahn had a textbook strategy for the Nevada-based energy utility Southwest Gas Holdings. In August, Southwest Gas' board decided against a divestiture, and the sale of subsidiaries that Icahn had urged remains uncertain. "Shareholders don't want to hear it, but you really have great difficulty selling a company at a good price today," the widely followed activist investor Icahn told Insider. via CNBCBut, like Icahn in the case of Southwest Gas, participants in this new onslaught may find themselves confounded by an increasingly complex and fraught business environment. According to Lazard, 37% of activist campaigns this year were launched by first-timers, the highest proportion since the company started tracking these figures in 2015.

Carl Icahn had a textbook strategy for the Nevada-based energy utility Southwest Gas Holdings. In August, Southwest Gas' board decided against a divestiture, and the sale of subsidiaries that Icahn had urged remains uncertain. That means that the sale of companies like Southwest Gas is off the table for the time being — or will get done at prices far lower than before. via CNBCBut, like Icahn in the case of Southwest Gas, participants in this new onslaught may find themselves confounded by an increasingly complex and fraught business environment. According to Lazard, 37% of activist campaigns this year were launched by first-timers, the highest proportion since the company started tracking these figures in 2015.

☆ A market downturn hasn't made activist investing any easier. Here's why.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

But even with a market downturn, activist investors' campaigns haven't been the cakewalk some might expect. Insider's Daniel Geiger, Rebecca Ungarino, and Casey Sullivan spoke to industry insiders — including famed activist investor Carl Icahn — about why the current landscape isn't as accepting as some might think to activist campaigns. But when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and a difficult market environment doesn't mean we'll see the number of campaigns decrease. Click here to read more about why top activist investors like Carl Icahn say this line of work is riskier than ever. Here's a five-step plan to help you decide when that side gig you have should be the only gig you have.

☆ Compass CEO Robert Reffkin's memo on how to dump poor performers was good, but here's how it could have been better
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Shana Lebowitz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Robert Reffkin, the CEO of Compass, asked his leadership team to help root out underperformers. The message is compelling but doesn't tell leaders what employees must do to succeed at the company. The memo arrived after two rounds of layoffs, in June and October, at Compass, which has been struggling financially. But the Compass memo, while giving strong examples of what workers shouldn't be doing, didn't offer as much guidance about what the company needs from employees right now. But Galinsky said the memo lacked details about what exactly employees need to do in order to succeed at Compass right now.

☆ Compass CEO Robert Reffkin told his leadership team to step up managing out low-performing employees, as the company racks up losses and is forced to cut costs
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Compass CEO Robert Reffkin sent an email to his leadership team on "managing out poor performers." Compass employees were disheartened. "It's also your responsibility to manage out employees who can't, or aren't, performing at that level," Reffkin wrote in the Sunday afternoon message. The full text of the memo was shared with Insider, and a Compass spokesman confirmed Reffkin sent the email. In June, Compass let go of about 450 corporate workers across departments.

☆ Read the memo Compass CEO Robert Reffkin sent his leadership team, telling them to crack down on 'managing out poor performers' and quiet quitters
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Compass CEO Robert Reffkin sent a memo to managers Sunday telling them to target poor performers. In the December 4 email, which has the subject line "managing out poor performers," Reffkin said to identify underachieving employees and to "move them out." "If you see evidence that someone doesn't want to stay at Compass and help us weather this storm, say something," Reffkin wrote. Compass needs you to know your employees and their work habits and results. I hold myself and my leadership team to this same standard.

Search resuls for: "Daniel Geiger"

25 mentions found