This Week's Boston Deal Sheet

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced her plan to remake the city's Zoning Board of Appeals. Wu released a 10-person list of new appointees Monday, part of her bigger plan to gain more influence over real estate development in the city, the Boston Business Journal reports. The…

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When Bertha Benz made the world’s first road trip in an automobile 134 years ago, one of the tricky points of the voyage was finding a place to refuel. Luckily, chemists at the pharmacy carried ligroin, a lab solvent made of petroleum, which propelled Benz and her children on their 110-mile trip in Carl Benz’s grand invention.

Electric vehicle proponents hope the rollout of the $5B National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program will make it a little easier for EV drivers in the U.S. to charge than it was for Benz to refuel in 1888 Germany. 

And like during the Benz road trip, EV drivers should soon get an assist from an existing property type — this time, gas stations, which experts said could get a boost in business with the installation of chargers.

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Owners of older office buildings across the U.S. are facing hard times ahead as financing deals get more difficult — and opportunistic buyers are lying in wait.

“I really haven't invested in office in the last 14 years,” PGIM Real Estate Global Chief Operating Officer and Head of U.S. Equity Cathy Marcus said at Bisnow’s National Finance Summit last week. “I think that in the next year or two, it'll be a heck of a lot more interesting than it has been for a really long time.”

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LONDON — Shares in REITs have been among the biggest fallers on the UK stock market as turmoil continued to grip UK financial markets on Monday, causing a £500M real estate investment deal to collapse. The sharp interest rate rises expected to be caused by the collapse in the value of the pound augurs a tough period for the real estate sector in the UK. 

LXi REIT said Monday it was pulling out of a deal to buy 18 supermarkets from Sainsbury’s for £500M at a yield of 5%.

Just last Thursday, it said that it had exchanged contracts on the deal, flagging that the inflation-linked leases would be beneficial in a period of high inflation.

In its announcement on Monday, LXi cited only “market volatility” as its reason for pulling out of the deal. But in a note on the transaction, analysts at Stifel gave insight into how the deal was scuppered, pointing to collapsing share prices, triggered by the volatility in the pound and expectations on UK inflation. 

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