What Captivated CRE In 2024? Bisnow’s 12 Most Popular Reads
A little bit of drama, a lot of pain, a dash of Blackstone and a shot of Ozempic — that’s the recipe for a heck of a lot of eyeballs.
The Bisnow stories that clicked the hardest this year tell the tale of an industry ruminating on an uncertain future. Here’s what you couldn’t get enough of.
12) 'The Whole Industry Could Collapse': D.C.'s Housing Providers Face An Existential Crisis
Jon Banister, Sept. 5
The collapse of D.C.’s Neighborhood Development Co. in August was just the tip of the iceberg. The owners of tens of thousands of income-restricted apartments were also at risk of losing their properties.
It was an existential crisis for D.C.’s affordable housing community, and this article blew it all open. Less than a month later, the District Council passed emergency legislation to address unpaid rent and eviction delays and cited this article in introducing the bill.
11) CBRE Sues To Prevent Former Exec From Working At Cushman & Wakefield
Kayla Carmicheal, March 13
Chris Hipps was supposed to start at Cushman & Wakefield on Jan. 2, 2024. Instead, he’s still embroiled in a noncompete lawsuit with his former employer, CBRE. An appeals court in August upheld an injunction barring Hipps, who worked at CBRE in Dallas for more than a decade, from doing deals for Cushman until January 2025. Meanwhile, he is essentially on the bench at the firm, drawing a salary but unable to work with clients.
10) More Construction Projects Are Being Delayed Or Abandoned Entirely
Dees Stribling, March 12
Construction activity plummeted in early 2024 as interest rates remained high, and the number of projects that were paused or spiked was on the rise. Most notably, there was a 70% YOY jump in public projects that were abandoned from March 2023 to March 2024. The trend reversed course later in the year, with developments getting back on track as interest rates fell, though the index remains above its benchmark level.
9) Open To Work: How CRE Job Candidates Can Get On Recruiters’ Radars
Elizabeth Reyn, Feb. 29
In an indication of how worrisome things were out there for CRE dealmakers in 2024, this article with tips on how to juice up your resume and use LinkedIn more effectively to catch recruiters’ attention broke Bisnow’s top 10 for pageviews.
8) Office Politics: The Battle For The Future Of Work
Mike Phillips and Miriam Hall, Aug. 1, 2021
We have no clue why Bisnow’s special podcast series from 2021 about how people work in the modern era — and how office does and doesn't fit in — started making the rounds again in 2024, but tens of thousands of readers came back to this package in the last few months of the year.
The five-part audio series was prescient and thorough, hitting topics like whether remote or in-office work is more productive, the climate impact of each style of working and the intangible impact on society, culture and a sense of belonging when people work alone or together.
7) Fannie Mae Reportedly Tells Lenders It Won’t Take Deals From 2 Title Insurers
Taylor Driscoll, Feb. 23
Fannie Mae blacklisted Riverside Abstract and Madison Title in February, saying it would not accept loans from the firms after they were tied to fraudulent real estate closings by Boruch Drillman. Mortgage fraud investigations continued through the year and other firms hit the blacklist as the GSEs said criminal activity was so pervasive it was affecting their balance sheets.
6) 40 CRE Execs Tell Us How 2024 Will Play Out — And What They're Doing To Prepare
Bisnow Staff, Jan. 1
The whole Bisnow newsroom came together to interview dozens of CRE experts about how they would pivot their strategies to survive till ‘25. Their responses span everything from being insulted by the question to deep concerns over the future of CRE.
5) Blackstone’s Real Estate Co-Heads On Their Next Big Investment Bet, The Market Recovery And Career Lessons Learned
Mike Phillips, March 13
Blackstone Real Estate global co-heads Nadee Meghji and Kathleen McCarthy gave Bisnow a peek into their game plan in March, including the big splash they intended to make in data centers. The wide-ranging interview hit a lot more, including how Meghji, who had just stepped into the role, rose through the ranks.
4) Ozempic Could Be The Next Big Curveball For Commercial Real Estate
Olivia Lueckemeyer, Jan. 18
Ozempic was the talk of the town at the beginning of the year, and readers loved this exploration of what the boom in semaglutides could mean for CRE. Retail, housing, healthcare and more could see a shift in demand as people eat less and deal with fewer obesity-related diseases.
3) Largest U.S. Hospital Landlord Reports $664M Loss, Plans To Sell Assets
Taylor Driscoll, Feb. 21
The collapse of Steward Health Care was one of the biggest stories of 2024, and its full impact on landlord Medical Properties Trust is still to be seen. The $772M in write-offs reported in its fourth-quarter earnings release in February set the tone for the rest of the year, and the hits kept coming, from more losses to congressional inquiries.
2) Asset Classes, Markets, Operational Concerns: Bisnow Survey Reveals CRE Focus For 2024
Julia Troy, Jan. 4
Where is the money going in 2024? That’s the question we asked attendees of Bisnow’s Escape and Ascent retreats. Investors shared the property types and cities they wanted to be in, their split between deploying equity vs. debt and how distressed investing wasn’t panning out quite the way they expected.
1) New England's Largest Mall Faces Looming Trouble With $505M Loan Maturing
Taylor Driscoll, June 20
When Bisnow reported in June that the Natick Mall, a 1.7M SF suburban shopping center outside of Boston, was on a Morningstar Credit watchlist, it hit like a bomb. Brookfield’s $505M CMBS loan backed by a 1M SF portion of the mall was set to mature in November, and Morningstar flagged it at high risk of defaulting. One reason: Tenants making up 25% of Brookfield’s square footage were expiring within the year, and cash flow was well below underwriting.
The mall did indeed hit special servicing this month, and Brookfield is working on an extension.
