Brokerages Took Big Financial Blows As The Coronavirus Froze Transaction Markets

A prominent Duluth office building is going from cash registers to computer software. Atlanta-based AMI has leased 53,500 SF at Satellite Place, a six-building, 820K SF office campus off Satellite Boulevard in Duluth. The property,…

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For decades, companies looking to give themselves a financial cushion during periods of economic uncertainty have sold their headquarters buildings to a third party and leased the property back from the new owner.

As the coronavirus pandemic has thrown many businesses' finances into disarray, these sale-leasebacks are becoming increasingly popular in the industrial real estate market.

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Major U.S. hotel companies lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the spring as they gradually reopened hotels this summer to low demand, and their leaders expect there could be a long road back to profitability.

The hotel industry, by job losses and debt defaults, has been the hardest hit by the pandemic. The biggest owners and operators of hotels have revealed a host of new financial information over the last two weeks as companies release their earnings reports for the second quarter, which includes the nadir of pandemic-related shutdowns.

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Real estate companies are stepping up left and right with pledges to improve the diversity of their largely white workforces. But when recruiters tell them that commercial real estate has a supply-and-demand problem for diverse talent, are they willing to put in the hard work needed to bring about change?

Collete English Dixon is executive director of the Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate at Roosevelt University, a graduate program at a university with one of the most diverse student pools in the country. For Dixon, the real estate industry needs to do a better job of explaining what it does, and it needs to grab the attention of young people earlier: by the time they are in college it is already a bit late in the day.

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