Weekly News (April 17,2024)

Mortgage Interest Rates Review

United Mortgage Nation  4/17/2024

 Federal Fund Rate: 5.25 -5.50%        Prime Rate: 8.25 – 8.50%  

Palisades Park residents oppose new apartments construction

팔팍 주민들, 신축 7층 아파트 건물 반대     

Korea Time  4/17/24 

• Facing the zoning board meeting on 15th  on new 7th floor apartment construction at West Columbia Ave, some residents of Palisades Park made assembly to oppose the approval of the construction. 
• The zoning board meeting was over without any conclusion after about 2 hour discussion. 

New Office Building(62  Story) at 5th Ave

맨하탄 5 애비뉴에 62층 오피스 건물 들어선다

Korea Daily  4/17/24 

• Citadel, a hedge fund co, will construct new 62nd floor office building at 350 Park Ave which might new energy to the mid-town after the pandemic era.    
• This 62 story, 1.8M sf office building boasts the stair type exterior with all glasses.  Also the 1st floor will have 12,500 sf open space.  The architect will be Foster and partners. They will start the construction in 2026 and will complete in 2032.    
• Citadel and Vornado purchased air rights from St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. Bartholomew’s Church, allowing the tower to be larger than originally proposed as part of the rezoning deal. Part of the proceeds pay for upgrades to public spaces in the area.

350 Park Ave, Manhattan

Aron Ginsburg 4/16/24

The Real Estate Nightmare in St. Louis

St Louis 에 부동산 악몽    

WSJ   4/12/24 

• The Railway Exchange Building was the heart of downtown St. Louis for a century. Today, the building sits empty, with many of its windows boarded up.  A fire broke out last year, which authorities suspect was the work of copper thieves.
• Nearby shops and restaurants suddenly had fewer customers, so they closed or moved. Empty streets have made the office district more dangerous. Drivers speeding on wide, mostly empty roads are a menace.
• The Railway Exchange building’s owner, a Florida investment firm, bought the building in 2017 and announced grand plans to redevelop it into apartments and retail. The firm eventually stopped paying for security and defaulted on the mortgage. The city condemned the building last year.

Inflation Upsets rate-Cut Plans

인풀레이션이 이자률 인하 결정을 흔를리게….  

WSJ  4/12/24 

• CPI rose 3.5% in March from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday. That was a touch higher than economists had forecast and a pickup from February’s 3.2%. Core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy categories, also rose more than expected on a monthly and annual basis. 
• Stocks fell, with the Dow Jones down more than 400 points to its lowest close in nearly two months. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note settled at 4.559%, marking its highest close since November and its largest single-day increase since September 2022. 
• “We’re in a situation where if we ease too much or too soon, we could see inflation come back, and if we ease too late, we could do unnecessary harm to employment,” Powell said last month. 

CPI change from a year earlier

WSJ  4/12/24

Tech Giants Trim Office Space, Dealing LLs Major Blow

거대기술기업들, 사무실 공간줄이기에 건물주 큰 타격

WSJ  4/17/24 

• Big tech companies are letting leases expire or looking to unload some offices. Amazon is ditching or not renewing some office leases and last year paused construction on its second headquarters in northern Virginia. Google has listed office space in Silicon Valley for sublease. Meta has also dumped some office space and is leasing less than it did early on in the pandemic.  Salesforce, the cloud-based software company, said in a recent securities filing that it leased or owned about 900,000 square feet of San Francisco office space as of January. That is barely half the 1.6 million of office space it reported having in that city a year earlier.
• San Francisco’s office-vacancy rate hit a record 36.7% in the first quarter, according to CBRE, up from just 3.6% in early 2019.

Rents are still Rising and Fueling Inflation

렌트비 여전히 상승세로 인플레이션을 부추겨

WSJ  4/17/24 

• The Federal Reserve wants to see cooler inflation before cutting interest rates. The rental market remains in the way.
• Rent growth has slowed from double-digit recent highs after pent-up demand caused by early pandemic lockdowns and record home prices sent rents soaring. Economists expect that decline will continue as more supply comes on line and tenants reach their limits.   
• “Housing inflation typically runs higher than general inflation,” said Moody’s Analytics. “But it has to come down further than where it is right now.”  Shelter inflation, or what the government calls its measure of home and apartment rents, rose 5.7% in March compared with a year prior, well above the shelter inflation rate of about 3.3% from 2015 to 2019.

Annual change in home and apartments rents

WSJ 4/17/24

Cost of Owning a Home Soars

주택소유 경비 상승

WSJ  4/12/24 

• Home-buying affordability fell last year to the lowest level since 1985, according to a NAR index that factors in family incomes, mortgage rates and median single-family home prices. But the factors driving homeownership beyond the reach of many Americans have shifted dramatically from four decades ago. 
• Mortgage rates today have more than doubled from the lows of three years ago, but they are still modest compared with the 1980s. Property taxes, which are rising due to the effect of inflation on local government budgets, are also pushing homeowners to dig deeper into their bank accounts. Surging home insurance costs are hitting homeowners hardest of all.  Some insurers have stopped offering coverage in some states, leaving homeowners with fewer options.

Housing Affordability index

WSJ 4/12/24

Bank Of Hope reduces 8 Stores

뱅크오브호프, 지점 총 8곳 줄인다

Korea Times   4/17/24 

• BOH(CEO: Kevin Kim) will sell the branch office at Annandale and Centerville, GA to PromiseOne Bank(CEO: DongJoon Kim) headquartered at Duluth, GA. 
• The deposits of Annandale and Centerville branches are $100M and $80M respectively.  The total branches of BOP will become 46 from 54 nationwide. 
• Hanmi Bank also cease their operation of  3 branch offices by the end of May : 1 office in LA and 2 offices in TX .