'We Wish That New Owner The Best Of Luck': Simon Continues Handing Back Struggling Malls

Berkeley Investments has secured Sasaki’s Watertown office for $23M with lab conversion aspirations for the 97K SF building. The developer bought Sasaki’s longtime headquarters at 64 Pleasant St. near Watertown Square last week, the architect announced. Berkeley announced renovation plans to attract small…

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A Massachusetts biotechnology company, boosted by its initial public offering last year, is expanding its Seaport footprint. Akouos Inc., a gene therapy company developing hearing loss treatments, inked a new $30M lease extension at 645 Summer St. at the Pappas Commerce Park, according to >

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In 2020, for the first time in history, China captured a larger share of the world’s foreign direct investment than the U.S., according to data from the United Nations. That is money spent building infrastructure, factories and opening new businesses. And where that investment goes, real estate dollars are likely to follow.

China knocking the U.S. off the No. 1 spot is for now something of a blip, a result of the Chinese economy recovering significantly faster from the impact of the coronavirus than the U.S. But that speedy recovery is attractive to global property investors, and in the medium to long term, China is set to attract a greater share of the cross-border real estate pie than it has in the past.

While it may not overtake the U.S. in terms of real estate investment in absolute terms for many decades, if ever, China has factors in its favour that will increasingly draw in global investors. Alongside the well-known gravitational pull of its demographic growth and strong economy, it is booming in areas much sought after today by global investors, like logistics, data centres and tech-led offices. 

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Nearly a year after the spread of the coronavirus was declared a pandemic and office workers turned their homes into their workplaces to curb the spread of the virus, the great work-from-home experiment has proved that the trend will at least in part become a fixture of our society.

But not everyone will work from home, real estate heads from a pair of tech companies said on a Bisnow webinar last week, and the vast majority of workers are expected to go into an office at least some of the time. 

Twitter has been polling its employees on their preferred workplace arrangement throughout the pandemic, Twitter Vice President for Real Estate and Workplace and Remote Experience Tracy Hawkins said on the webinar. Right now, 10% want to come to the office entirely, 20% want to work remotely entirely and the rest prefer some kind of hybrid.

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Demand for data center development is as high as ever, but there is one key ingredient holding the industry back: a shortage of qualified talent. 

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