Hello Brick Brief readers, 

Thank you for your continued support! Today we’re seeing housing supply rise as sellers retreat, private capital accelerate its push into REIT take-privates, and apartment markets soften under heavy supply.

🏡 Housing Supply Climbs While Sellers Step Back
Housing inventory continues to climb for a 25th straight month as active listings rose 12.6% YoY and topped 1M for the seventh month. Realtor.com notes that sellers are increasingly stepping back as delistings in October jumped 45.5% YTD and 38% YoY with roughly 6% of listings coming off the market each month.

🏢 Private Capital Targets Undervalued REIT Assets
MW Group, Blackstone and DivcoWest agreed to acquire commercial real estate investment fund Alexander and Baldwin in a $2.3B take-private as private buyers continue to seize discounted public valuations. The JV will pay a 40% premium for a Hawaii portfolio of grocery anchored retail and industrial properties that public investors discounted due to limited scale and growth prospects. 

🏘️ Apartment Markets Weaken Under Heavy Supply
Apartment fundamentals continue to soften as new construction presses rents lower across major Sun Belt and Mountain West metros. Supply has continued to weigh on performance as national rents fell 0.18% in November while occupancy slipped to 94.8%.

Treasury yields hit two-month highs – The 10-year rose to 4.17% as rising term premiums and expectations for a more cautious Fed path in 2026 keep long-dated yields elevated (Bloomberg)

US consumer inflation expectations held steady in November – One-year expectations stayed at 3.2%, while three- and five-year readings held at 3% and job-loss fears fell to 13.8%, the lowest of 2025 (Bloomberg)

JLL expects 2026 CRE momentum to strengthen in the U.S. – Lower rates, tighter supply of top-tier space and rising AI-driven energy demand will lift leasing and investment activity as office, industrial and housing markets face sharper shortages of modern product (JLL)

High inventory and rising delistings show sellers would rather pull homes than cut prices, signaling weak demand and limited pricing power.

Inventory climbs for the 25th straight month – Active listings rose 12.6% YoY and topped 1M for the seventh month as supply growth slowed and the West and South led gains (Realtor.com)

Buyer activity remains soft as homes sit longer – Time on market increased to 64 days, up 3 days YoY, while the median list price dipped 0.4% and price cuts reached 18% of listings (Realtor.com)

Home sellers are giving up at an unusually high rate – Delistings jumped 45.5% YTD and 38% YoY in October as about 6% of active listings came off the market each month (CNBC)

Buyer’s agent commissions edge up after new NAR rules – The average commission rose to 2.42% in Q3 from 2.36% a year earlier, with sub-$500k homes holding the highest rate at 2.52% (Redfin)

US apartment rents record a 0.18% November decline, the steepest in 15 years – Rising vacancy and heavy new supply in Sun Belt and Mountain West markets continue to pressure pricing (CoStar)

U.S. apartment rents fall again as occupancy dips to 94.8% – Rent cuts extended for a fourth month and prices slipped 0.7% YoY while national occupancy posted its first annual decline since 2024 (RealPage)

South and West markets see the deepest rent cuts – Heavy supply in Austin, Denver, Phoenix and Charlotte kept pricing under pressure even as the pace of rent declines eased slightly (RealPage)

Tech hubs lead rent growth with renewed demand – San Francisco, San Jose and New York posted 4% to 7% YoY gains as AI-driven hiring helped lift occupancy and pricing (RealPage)

Tetra Technologies leases 62K SF at 10000 Energy Drive in Houston, TX – Spear Street Capital signed the engineering firm to the South Tower of the 564K SF Spring campus (TheRealDeal)

J.P. Morgan leases 60K SF at 390 Madison Avenue in New York, NY – The bank expanded its Midtown footprint to 497K SF as it redevelops 383 Madison and consolidates space near its new 270 Park Avenue headquarters (CommercialObserver)

Woodline Partners leases 20K SF at 712 Fifth Avenue in New York, NY – The San Francisco investment manager took the 43rd and 44th floors at Paramount Group’s Midtown tower for its new NYC office (CommercialObserver)

Fifth Third Bank will invest $1.9B in new branches through 2029 – The Comerica deal will speed its push into Texas and the Southeast as it plans to open 150 Texas branches, hire 1,500 staff and target 8% of the Texas branch market (Bloomberg)

Early November strength offsets a softer Black Friday weekend – Monthly mall traffic still rose YoY as early November visits ran ahead of 2024 levels before flattening during Black Friday week (Placerai)

Black Friday performance bifurcated – Indoor mall visits rose 3.1% YoY on Friday and open-air centers gained 1.7% before Saturday and Sunday declines pulled the full week negative (Placerai)

Shoppers showed more mission-driven behavior – The share of visits lasting over an hour declined across all mall formats as dwell times shortened compared to last year (Placerai)

Google and NextEra plan gigawatt-scale data center campuses with on-site natural gas and nuclear power plants – The partnership secures dedicated generation for AI demand as Google accelerates its buildout (Bloomberg)

KKR commits several billion to Compass Datacenters’ portfolio – The investment backs Brookfield-owned Compass assets across major U.S. markets including Northern Virginia, Chicago, Dallas and Phoenix (Bisnow)

Midweek Christmas and New Year’s timing is set to undercut US hotel demand – STR data shows Wednesday holiday placement delivers the weakest occupancies as an already soft demand environment faces another seasonal drag (CoStar)

Breakthrough sees a prime window to buy discounted life sciences assets as market conditions stabilize – The Bellco Capital and Tishman Speyer JV says vacancy, pricing resets and Big Pharma onshoring are creating a rare entry point for well-located labs (Bisnow)

Bally’s secures a $1.1B private credit loan package for its Bronx, NY casino bid – Ares, King Street and TPG provided a $600M term loan and $500M delayed-draw facility to refinance debt and fund state license fees for the $4B Ferry Point project (Bloomberg)

Madison Realty Capital secures $285M loan for Greenpoint multifamily in Brooklyn, NY – TPG Real Estate Credit provided the bridge refinancing for the newly built 473-unit Greenpoint Central complex (ConnectCRE)

Clipper Equity secures a $450M refinance for the Tower 77 multifamily project in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY – JP Morgan provided the five-year loan after the 746-unit, 799K SF building reached roughly 95% occupancy (CommercialObserver)

Metropolitan Realty Group secures a $98M refinance for the 272-unit Villa Hermosa Apartments in East Harlem, NY – Greystone provided HUD-insured 223(f) financing that will fund renovations and support long-term affordability (CommercialObserver)

Rialto and Hines refi New Jersey office campus with $58M loan – The five-year financing helps Columbia Pacific Advisors stabilize the 320K SF 101 and 103 JFK Parkway complex (CommercialObserver)

MW Group, Blackstone and DivcoWest will take commercial real estate investment fund Alexander & Baldwin private in a $2.3B all-cash buyout – Shareholders receive a 40% premium; the fund owns 21 retail centers, 14 industrial assets and four office properties across Hawaii (Reuters)

Insight: This acquisition of Alexander & Baldwin reflects a broader market dynamic we discussed yesterday with Land & Buildings: in today’s public markets, small and mid-cap REITs that own high-quality assets often trade below the value of their real estate because investors reward scale and growth over stabilized cash flow. A&B illustrates this disconnect, since its stock price didn’t capture the scarcity value of grocery-anchored retail and industrial properties in Hawaii where supply is capped and replacement costs are extremely high. Blackstone, MW Group and DivcoWest are willing to pay a 40% premium because they see reliable cash flow, limited competition and upside from more than $100M of planned upgrades, making the portfolio more valuable to private buyers than to public shareholders who only see slow growth and limited scale.

SoftBank is in talks to buy $2.7B digital infrastructure firm DigitalBridge – The move aims to tap DigitalBridge’s AI-focused data center and network portfolio, which includes Vantage, Zayo, Switch and AtlasEdge (Reuters)

Insight: DigitalBridge owns hyperscale data centers, long-haul fiber and edge networks through Vantage, Zayo, Switch and AtlasEdge that serve the hyperscalers driving today’s AI compute cycle. As you may remember, a few months ago SoftBank, the Trump administration and OpenAI announced a $500B Stargate initiative to build out massive AI infrastructure. Acquiring DigitalBridge gives SoftBank immediate access to the scaled data center and network backbone Stargate needs, which is why SoftBank wants to control that infrastructure rather than wait years to build it.

$373M-listed Site Centers plans to sell all remaining shopping centers after its Curbline spinoff – The retail REIT is effectively winding down as it markets its last 11 assets across Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey and California (Bisnow)

Crescent Real Estate buys the Ryder Colonnade office building in Coral Gables, FL for $70.4M – AEW Capital Management sold the 205K SF tower at 169 Coral Way at a 13% discount to its 2013 price; Crescent lined up $67.9M in FS Credit Originator financing (TheRealDeal)

IMT Capital buys 456-unit multifamily complex in Boynton Beach, FL for $183.5M – The Seabourn will rebrand as IMT Gulfstream; Walker & Dunlop provided a $119.28M Fannie Mae-backed mortgage (ConnectCRE)

Brookfield sells a 525K SF warehouse in San Bernardino, CA for more than $120M – Overton Moore purchased the Kohl’s-leased Inland Empire distribution center, which Brookfield acquired for $84M in 2020 (CommercialObserver)

Lincoln Property Company and PGIM form a new health care JV – The partnership will target outpatient medical assets nationwide (CommercialObserver)

CRE distress climbs as delinquent loans reach 8.78% – CRED iQ says special servicing has surged to 11.21% as maturity defaults drive nearly 60% of distressed CMBS loans across office and multifamily (GlobeSt)

Dynamic Star files for bankruptcy to halt a foreclosure on the Fordham Landing megaproject in the Bronx, NY – The developer sought Chapter 11 protection to pause auctions tied to $74M in alleged loan defaults as partner disputes and financing setbacks jeopardize the multibillion-dollar plan (TheRealDeal)

AI tools fall short for property managers – AppFolio says bolt-on systems lack operational context and warns that true value comes from AI-native platforms that free teams to focus on community building rather than faster task completion (GlobeSt)