Can CRE Investors Dodge Tariff and GSA Office Turbulence?

Martha, Manus, and Dianne tackle another week of economic uncertainty, breaking down the latest data—and tariff turbulence—and what it signals for CRE. Stagflation fears are creeping in as the economy weathers a turbulent cycle—much like a white-water rafting trip, where each rapid brings fresh uncertainty. Mortgage applications jumped over 20% as buyers seized lower rates, while a surprising wave of scorched land listings in LA hints at long-term fallout from recent wildfires. Dianne shares insights from the CRE activity index, with February data showing strong momentum despite macroeconomic headwinds. In Manhattan, institutional investors are eyeing opportunities as leasing activity surges, and Manus breaks down why savvy buyers are acquiring debt to skip the foreclosure line. He also reflects on a sharp question from a Clemson student at his guest lecture last week: when is the right time to pick up distressed assets? Meanwhile, the team debuts a new segment—LightBox Listings—highlighting new deals on the market. And finally, in a lighter moment, they discuss the 60-foot Kim Kardashian balloon making waves in Times Square. 

01:34 Tariff Turbulence and Investor Sentiment 

08:31 How do you Handicap the Housing Market Right Now? 

13:29 Lightbox Data Dive with Deal Activity  

17:23 Office Sector Updates 

19:36 Investor Activity in San Francisco and New York 

26:18 AI's Impact on Commercial Real Estate 

30:19 LightBox Listings and Market Activity

Have questions for the pod team? Send them to Podcast@LightBoxRE.com. 

www.lightboxre.com

Transcript

The CRE Weekly Digest by LightBox

Episode 36: Can CRE Investors Dodge Tariff and GSA Office Turbulence

March 7, 2025

This is the CRE Weekly Digest by LightBox, a firm transforming the commercial real estate landscape by connecting every step of the CRE process with comprehensive tools and data. I'm Martha Coacher with our experts Manus Clancy and Dianne Crocker. For the week of March 3rd through the 7th, trade policy has been the focus this week as topsy turvy tariff news keeps investors on unsure footing.

Equities and Treasury markets reacted to the on again, off again announcements. And Manus, tomorrow we have the jobs report, and investors are already rattled by the tariff uncertainty. 

We had a real uptick in interest rates this week that raised the specter that just as the economy is slowing here in the U.

S., prices may start moving higher. We saw the 10-year bottom out at about 4. 12 percent a couple days ago. This morning it was up to 4. 33%, so a 20-basis point jump in just a couple of days. At the same time, we're seeing some worrisome home builder news, retailer news, and I think that's what everybody's afraid of.

That's why you're seeing these 2 percent sell offs of the NASDAQ several times over the last two weeks, the Dow having. Several hundred points swings even intraday yesterday down 900, back to flat, finishing down 800 today. Again, we opened very weak. We fought our way back a little bit and now we seem to be troughing once again.

And I do think it all comes down to this specter of tariffs, pushing costs higher, certainly pushing uncertainty higher, and the US economy starting to show some fraying. What do you think, Dianne? I 

think you're right. And, and Manus, going into this week, we knew it was going to be a bumpy ride because last week everybody was talking about the tariffs to come.

And of course, this week they jumped from a campaign promise or a threat to our trading partners to a reality and real concerns about inflation expectations, especially, um, in states that are net importers of goods from Mexico and China. So, you know, I think as we look at the ups and downs, especially in the 10-year treasury, you know, you think like, is it, you know, a gloomier sentiment that's driving the 10 year.

Now we're starting to see exemptions to the tariffs almost every day. So I think the market is starting maybe to feel a little bit more relieved than they were on Tuesday when the, when the tariffs first came out, you know, it kind of reminds me, man, have you ever gone whitewater rafting? 

I did. I got a terrible sunburn. It was awful. 

Well, what I remember, I did it once. You're on these group excursions, you know, a dozen of you are packed into this raft with a guide. And, you know, most of the time it's very scenic 90, 95 percent of the time you're bobbling along and listening to the guide. And All of a sudden you hear it, you know, these roiling rapids, the guide goes into detail about the best case and worst-case scenario that could, you know, that could happen depending on whether you follow directions or not.

And then like for a second, it's like loud and it's, it's chaos and all eyes are on the rapid as you hope for the best. And then you kind of bobble out, you catch your breath, you reposition, and you assess how it went and everything's. It's fine until the next one comes and it's just starting to feel like that to me with this seven-day news cycle and these, you know, calm rapids as news comes out of DC and things look one way one day and then the next day they're maybe not so bad.

Well, President Trump and Howard Lutnick certainly don't take my phone calls, but I imagine they probably listen to the podcast every week. So this is my only way to communicate to them. But I do feel that if one piece of advice I could push along is that the explanation for the tariffs has not been very strong, right?

Sometimes it's. We want more help cutting down drugs coming over the border. Sometimes it's, we want countries to pay their fair share. Sometimes it's, we're carrying too much of the load of national defense. I feel like the narrative has gone askew many times. And I think that makes it hard for investors and the average American to really understand why we're doing this.

And I do feel that the fits and starts the March start the pause. To April, the, some markets are going to be exempt, parenthetical. I think all of these things give a feeling of chaos. And if there's a way to kind of regain their footing, I think the way is to be more precise on why we're doing this, who it helps, what it's going to do to prices in the future, how much pain we're going to feel.

And exactly what things are going to be tariffed and what's going to be exempt this moving of the goalposts regularly, I think, is contributing to a lot of this volatility we've seen over the last month. 

Yeah, I agree. And I've been kind of thinking about what's the impact on folks in the commercial real estate market, which is.

Of course, why we're all here and why we do this every week and, you know, I'm kind of left with two schools of thought, you know, there'll be some who think, look, I was so impatient last year to place capital and if things are going to get worse, then maybe I should do it urgently. And then the second school of thought is it'll drive folks back into the cave, you know, where they spent much of last year, kind of waiting and seeing and wondering about when that first interest rate would come.

Last week, the industry, or I should say the administration, was talking about putting tons and tons of offices on the market, flooding the office market with inventory of things to be sold. This week, they kind of pulled back on that. Thank goodness, by the way, on that particular front, I think the combination of Terminating lease leases nationally, by the way, it's not just Washington DC.

We've seen it in LA and Denver and Minneapolis and other places combined with flooding the market with new inventory could have really been a death nail for the office at a time where the office is already on fumes, right? We're seeing values down 70%. So thank goodness that. They said, we're going to pause on selling offices right now.

Somebody must've whispered into the ears of, uh, the chief of staff that we just don't need another leg down an office right now, but it does suggest that at the moment, there's a little bit of chaos coming out of the administration. Maybe this is what happens when you have a turnover from one to the other.

Maybe this is to be expected, but the more there's consistency and less knee jerk reaction, I think the better the market will feel. 

Yeah, I think you're right. 

I would add to that one more point that by and large, I do think that there are things that will benefit the U S economy over time, that if the administration can stay on target will be beneficial things like cutting our deficit, right?

That will be beneficial to reducing interest rates. Down the road, right? I think coming up with clear goals, trying to execute those goals, sticking to them could yield some really positive news for the U S economy down the road. It's this metronome of going back and forth on which way we're headed policy by policy week by week, which is really unsettling.

Manus, I have a prediction that your phone will start ringing with a job offer from inside the beltway to be their communications director. 

Wouldn't that be something? Could you picture me up in front of the, the white house, uh, press staff every week coming up with thoughts and rants about the, uh, the U S economy.

It is a bit of, of trivia from back in the day, uh, Martha and I, we've been doing podcasts for just about four years now, actually, it'll be four years, uh, in about two weeks. And at one point, the Trump organization sent us a case of wine. They liked something that we were speaking about. I don't remember what it was, but the next day, a case of.

Trump wine showed up at our offices for, uh, something we had said. So. Somebody in the Trump organization was listening at the time. 

So we saw the seesaw in the yields, but in the period of time where there was a drop in rates, we saw mortgage applications surge. 

Yeah, I saw that Martha, mortgage applications increased 20.

4 percent from one week earlier as buyers are pouncing on lower rates. And that was according to the Mortgage Bankers Association for the week ending February 28th. You know, and another thing that caught my eye this week on the housing front was dozens of listings for scorched plots of land have hit the market and they're selling above expectations.

We're only less than two months out since the LA fires and more than 80 new listings of scorched plots in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena area have already hit the market just since the middle of February. So that kind of struck me as the first sign that Residents are starting to make permanent decisions to leave, and I think it's going to be a land grab there.

In Altadena, the first four lot sales closed at an average of 69 a square foot, and that was well above a 22 average between 2023 and 2024. So I think, you know, residents are starting to sell their land due to exorbitant rebuilding costs, even with their insurance payouts. And wait times could go on for years while they're in temporary housing and trying to pay off a mortgage.

So I think this is a rebuilding effort that will be years in the making. And these land sales are the first step in that direction. 

You have to think the, the area is so well to do prices are so high. Land values are so high that to afford that. You're probably not talking about kids, right? You're talking about people that are empty nesters, people that have kids out of college.

And if you've seen this devastation, do you really want to go through the pain of rebuilding a house, which may take three or four years? I think that that may come into the equation but turning the lens a little bit on the housing side, going back to the mortgage applications and the data we've seen over the last two weeks.

Homebuilder sentiment being weak, forecast being weak, uh, existing home sales being surprisingly low. I, I think it's a very, very hard industry to handicap right now in terms of where it's going. On the expense side, you have a really tricky situation with the tariffs right now, kind of trying to figure out how much lumber is going to cost, how much.

Other supplies are going to be I think that that's very difficult. I think the home buyer is very nervous right now the U.S. Government is an enormous Employer around the country if you're worried about will I still have this job a year from now? You're not Probably looking to buy a new home or to maybe invest in your home.

I think there's volatility in the equity markets weighs on people's confidence. And if you think that there's another leg down in the U S economy, chances are, you're probably going to wait and say, maybe housing prices will come down further if I sit on my hands for a year. So I think that's the toughest thing to get your arms around right now.

It's such a big part of the economy. And so hard to predict where we're going with this 

speaking of predictions, we've seen a big red flag that shows that perhaps data may catch up to the gloomy sentiment that we've been talking about over the last few weeks. The Atlanta Fed GDP now. Forecast that the U.

S. economy will shrink at a 2. 8 percent annualized rate in the first quarter of 2025. 

I don't know what goes into the Atlanta feds GDP expectations, but to the extent that part of the calculus is that tariffs are going to push prices higher, higher prices will slow down sales and slower sales away on GDP.

Then I guess it makes sense, just as I don't want to predict where the housing market goes, it's just too uncertain. I'm not sure how you predict where GDP goes. If tariffs get resolved between now and Memorial Day, right? Maybe we bounce back. We snap back very quickly. If, if it's by Easter, maybe it's even faster.

Who knows it's if it's a yearlong process, it's a different story. So these numbers, I wouldn't want to be the guy putting them together. It's very, very tricky right now. 

You know, man, that's what you're saying is right, you know, and the data that's coming out in terms of this new GDP forecast. They're from the Census Bureau.

They're from the Institute for Supply Management. That data showed a decline in construction spending. It showed weaker than expected U. S. manufacturing activity. So the projected drop, it's a meaningful reversal from the estimate that we saw just two weeks ago when it was estimated that the economy would grow 2.

3%. But to your point, you know, it's anybody's guess where, where this will go in the future based on all the things that are in flux that we've talked about thus far today. 

Let's go to the light box data dive. We are about to release our CRE activity index, which gives a reflection of transaction activity in the previous month.

We've got a preview of some of the components of that activity index. 

One of the things that we've talked about in the past few weeks that we've seen so far in 2025 is that the volume of property listings that we look at in LightBox's RCM platform, they more than doubled in January over December. So that was our first sign in the new year that Sellers were really hitting the ground running in 2025.

And what I was very curious to see in February is what that sharp uptick and properties on the selling block meant for the environmental due diligence function. So. For those of you new to the podcast, maybe LightBox has property level data that supports the work that environmental consultants do in the field conducting phase one environmental site assessments.

So those projects often happen before there's a big property loan or before there's a significant investment. And because environmental due diligence happens in advance of deals, it's a good leading indicator of where transaction volume is headed and whether it's going up or down. So in February, LightBox's scorekeeper model estimated that there were just over 18, 000 phase one ESAs conducted nationwide.

So it's a big universe of properties that are all going through this environmental due diligence process. That volume was up 9 percent over January. And if I look at it on an average daily basis, it was up by an even higher 20%. So I'll take that as an encouraging sign that the high listings that we saw in January are starting to filter down to the environmental site assessment level.

And, you know, if the market's starting to get jittery for the reasons that we talked about already today. Maybe we start to see activity weaken in the next few months. So I think March will be very telling, but right now, February, at least on the environmental side, definitely came out looking stronger than it was in January.

I have to agree, Dianne, with your assessment that March will be very important. We're seeing volatility in the market thus far, any of the volatility we've seen since election day. Has not seemed to translate into slowing activity in C. R. E. Does that happen in March as we see these wild swings in equity prices?

I think it remains to be seen. It could happen. That's thought. Number one thought. Number two is. Underscoring what I just said is that to date, you know, early two months and a week into 2025, none of the noise surrounding tariffs, the broader U. S. economy falling GDP thus far has seemed to weigh on the confidence of the CRE professional.

We're seeing activity take place. We're seeing diverse buyer sets, buying properties at high prices, activity velocity has been quite strong. It will be very interesting to see if the latest round of uncertainty changes that direction. I just wanted to point out for our listeners how deep this data set is that Dianne is referring to.

When we talk about the LightBox Activity Index, we are talking about 10 appraisals. A month, as Dianne mentioned, nearly 20, 000 environmental reports in a month, thousands of property listings every single month. It really gives a great gauge of velocity and economic activity and confidence. And it's why we touted so much month after month is a great barometer for the CRE market.

Let's go into some specific property news. Let's start with office. 

So there was good news and bad news in the office segment, uh, in Manhattan. Manhattan really has been quite active more so than any other major us city in the office segment for the last two months. We saw some good news and some bad news.

I'll run through the bad news first and pivot to some more positive news. On the negative side, we saw Empire Capital acquired two properties from Investcorp for 50 million dollars. The disappointing headline there was that the properties at 256 West 38th Street and 229 West 36th Street For more than two thirds off the 157 million that invest court paid for those properties in 2017.

So this is of a piece we haven't seen the relentless bad news wave of bad news that comes really every week in the office space, relentless at all. The headlines are always this property sold for 60 percent off. This one sold for 70 percent off, uh, 80 percent off. And that really extends from everywhere from New York to Chicago to San Francisco to Charlotte and beyond.

But there was some positive news, and the positive news comes in the leasing side. Tenants inked 1. 25 million square feet in downtown Manhattan in February. That's the highest monthly total since 2019. That data comes from Collier's. This particular story comes from Isabel Durso of Commercial Observer.

Universal Music has taken 300, 000 square feet near Penn station at Penn two, which is actually right above Madison square garden. The great part about this story is that they're moving from 240, 000 square feet at 1755 Broadway. So an uptick. In the space that they are taking by about 25 percent and a lease of real size here, 300, 000 square feet at that Vornado real estate trust office near MSG, not just sales that we're seeing nationwide, seeing some loans getting sold as well.

Dianne, you had one in San Francisco. 

I did, you know, it's interesting because there's definitely momentum building for an office recovery in San Francisco and, and downtown properties that are available at bargain basement prices and this story, New York life, real estate investors is aiming to acquire a loan.

That's backed by a building that will become it's. Third recent San Francisco office investment. So, it's New York life and its partner, Dallas based Lincoln property company. They're in talks to acquire nonperforming debt tied to a 23 story, 285, 000 square foot office tower in the financial district. So, they're expected to purchase the loan from its lender for a price in the low 200 per square foot.

So that was a headline this week that just shows that investors are starting to come off the, the sidelines in office. 

It is a technique that buyers will use from time to time for seasoned CRE pros. Most of you will know this already for newbies, people that are young, new to the industry. There's several ways to buy distressed properties.

One is to wait for the foreclosure process to go for a property to go REO and then to acquire it during the auction process. Another is. To go out and try to buy the debt when you're buying the debt, often you're acquiring it at pennies on the dollar or dimes on the dollar with the intention that you will be the one to foreclose and basically be the one who can take the property over without going through the competitive process that involves going through a foreclosure auction.

We've seen this take place in several cities. Some really savvy buyers out there are. Uh, using this technique, buying things for 30 cents on the dollar, acquiring the note and then foreclosing themselves so they can basically jump the line. It is, uh, growing in popularity and we had another one this week in San Francisco.

And we saw another pickup of an underperforming loan portfolio. This time LoanStar was the purchaser. 

Yes, we've seen more of these as well in the last six months. These are loans that were formerly originated by New York Community Bank. For those that may have forgotten, New York Community Bank hit the rocks about six months ago, needed a bailout.

Their loans have been kind of up for sale for a long time. LoanStar came in and bought a big slug of these. It's another way to participate in the market instead of originating your own loans. You come in and try to acquire things. We've seen B of A also sell some big assets as well. We've seen JP Morgan be a buyer of assets.

This is a fruitful period for people that are looking to buy assets on the cheap, whether it's buying notes, individual notes, portfolios of loans, discounted properties at the foreclosure level. Activity is happening and people are picking up things at nice discounts. 

Man is it reminds me of a prediction that Bob Knakal made maybe 6 to 8 months ago that we were on the cusp of this major transfer of assets specifically in New York City.

But I think clearly these stories show that it's happening and other metros like San Francisco at the same time. And. Whether they are buckets of non-performing loans where the investor's backing into it or outright purchases of distressed loans or perfectly good class A properties. I think that transfer that Bob Knakal talked about is, is definitely getting underway in a way that we just didn't see last year or the year before.

I want to take a quick detour along with a shout out. I spent a day lecturing at Clemson last week. I do that periodically for Professor Lily Shen. She and I go back a long way. A real CRE expert and a CMBS expert as well. And my lecture was stepping away from the spreadsheet and taking a sense of what is happening more broadly in the world, in personal preferences, in demographics, in um, uh, Other parts of the economy that if you spend too much time in the spreadsheet you might miss and i brought up the example of the pivot away from the shopping mall into the e commerce space and i talked about the work from home and how that impacted the office and that if all you did was look at.

Historical cap rates and discount rates. You might miss the forest from the trees. And I had a great question from one of the students there. I wish I remembered his name. He said, when you pull back the lens and you see all the decimation that has happened in the office space, when do you know that it's time to jump in?

When is that inflection point coming? And I didn't really have a great answer. Maybe Dianne, you have an answer. Maybe Martha, you do that. How do you call a bottom? If you want to pull back the lens and say, okay. We've seen a lot of decimation. Everybody's negative office. Everybody thinks that everything is obsolete.

Nobody is Seeking out bnc class offices If you want to be that contrarian who's trying to pull back the lens, how do you know when the bottom has been hit? I'd love to know your thoughts on this because I was stumped a little bit. Like there is nothing that really gives you that confidence that now is the time.

Yeah, that is the, if you knew the answer to that, you'd be a rich individual. And it wasn't at a Warren Buffett quote that you rush in when others are rushing out. 

That is the quote, right? Be greedy when others are frightened fearful. And be frightened when others are greedy. And people are frightened right now.

I guess the question is, when do you know that it's max fear, right? Are we at max fear? Are we beyond max fear? I just thought it was a wonderful question from the student to come up with that. That insight, it was, and it led to a really wide-ranging conversation. When do you know it's time to go in and start buying discounted loans or buying discounted notes?

It just goes to show that, you know, sometimes the younger generation, you know, people sometimes dismiss them as spending too much time on tick tock and, uh, video games and stuff like that. These were great kids that were really engaged, thoughtful, and came up with some really pointed and challenging questions for me. I had a great day. 

That's wonderful. There's, there's great hope for the future then and the next generation of leaders and good for you, Maness, for going and, uh, and educating them further. 

Well, Maness, just like you want to figure out when to buy the dip, you're trying to also figure out when is it too frothy and time to not get involved.

And I think we've been talking about AI's impact on commercial real estate, and we saw more stories. That show that there's still a lot of enthusiasm in this sector. 

Wow. There sure is. I mean, every week you go by and somebody is either acquiring land for a hundred million dollars or 200 million, or they're announcing a fund that is being dedicated to buying up or developing data centers, you hear of the.

Old fang stocks Amazon, Facebook, Google talking about acquiring more and more space developing more data center stuff. I have to say that I’m a little nervous, I’m not completely bought into the fact that we will need in perpetuity nearly as much demand for data centers or energy. As we thinking we do right now, I am very bullish on AI.

I think over time, it will be a great accelerator of productivity. Yet what we've learned in the last 30 or 40 years is that computer programming evolves and computer efficiency, productivity gets better and better. Right, that we get more out of computers every 18 months, that what they can compute on a single chip just continues to grow.

And it begs the question that if that continues over time, will we need as much data center space as people are predicting right now, five years from now? I'm a skeptic. 

Yeah, there's, uh, there certainly seems to be no end in sight, but there were two headlines this week that show that. It's still like full on in the data center market.

The first was a stat by CBRE that the data center sector has supply under construction. That's doubling to 6, 350 megawatts and operational capacity reaching 20 gigawatts. And it's because of the increasing power demands of AI companies. You know, you have these hyperscalers and operators that are starting to expand.

Um, they're starting to go into, uh, peripheral markets. I don't know if you saw the story this week, Manus, but one of the biggest construction loans ever for a data center, JP Morgan chase and Starwood property trust agreed to lend 2 billion for a 100-acre data campus and. West Jordan, Utah, which is right outside of Salt Lake City.

That loan was the second data center construction loan of more than 2 3 billion loan in January from JPMorgan Chase for a facility in Abilene. So where does it end Manus? You have, you know, 200 plus acre data centers under construction. And to your point, you know, what happens years from now, when we realize that we don't need these gigantic data centers to get what we need.

The good news out of the stories you're referring to is that the players in this are the big boys, the big fellas, right? JP Morgan being a lender. Uh, I think bank of America has been a big lender there. The big, highly capitalized it firm, you know, tech firms, Amazon, Google, Facebook. They print money, these organizations, right?

So if there are bad bets made, if there are loan losses, this is not something that is going to be systemic down the road. That's the big positive. I think if you start seeing wannabes get into the market and lending on this at scale, I think that's when it's time to really, really get nervous that if everybody applies into this.

With not a whole lot of knowledge about the market or deep pockets, then it gets quite scary. 

Right. And the other thing that really kind of speaks to how strong these deals are is that they're getting commitments from big name tenants before they even break ground. You know, they're not building on a speculative basis with little pre-leasing.

So, let's cover a new segment. We're calling this the LightBox listings. These come from our own Revere platform, a Capital Markes workflow solution that provides verified professional network, a deal marketplace, and transaction management CRM.

So, we've got a couple that caught our eye that we're going to highlight. For anybody who wants to buy an extended stay 16 hotel portfolio, it's being offered by HREC investment advisors, and it's the opportunity to acquire the fee simple interest in a 1, 775 room extended stay America portfolio. 

On the listings front, another one we saw this week, Newmark is offering the Beltsville small bay portfolio.

This is on old Baltimore Pike in Beltsville, Maryland, a two-building industrial portfolio totaling about 270, 000 square feet, 91 percent occupied 14 tenants, 70% Of the market rent has a 1. 33 year weighted average lease term. I guess what that's saying to you is there's an opportunity a year from now to push rents higher in a market that is quite strong.

So, it goes back to Dianne's point before we're seeing an uptick in these types of listings, a big surge in January. We felt good about it in February. Our final numbers will come out Next week, but plenty of activity in cre despite the turbulence. 

Yeah, and one really interesting listing that I noticed in Office, you know, we just talked about some office deals that maybe weren't so bright and shiny But this is a listing from Cushman and Wakefield It is a 26 story class a office tower And it is in a really beautiful part of Atlanta that I've been to many times called the Buckhead Submarket, the southeast quadrant of Atlanta, very accessible, very amenitized, and it's a flagship property.

It's got appealing light lift value add profile, extremely attractive basis. So I don't know if I had fine money, I might be looking at that one. It sounds very attractive. 

And our light box. Did you know for the week is going to take us to our February listings. 

So, we mentioned earlier that the February CRE Activity Index is coming out in the next few days.

The property listings component of that in February went up by about 10 percent over January, and January was over, already very strong. So, we'll see in just a few days how that uptick in the February activity, both from property listings as well as environmental due diligence, translates into the overall score for the aggregate CRE Activity Index when it comes out.

And in closing, an interesting observation this week, if you're in the Times Square area, you probably will notice a giant 60 foot long balloon of co-founder Kim Kardashian to the Skims brand, which, man, as you may not know this, it's a shapewear brand in the middle of Times Square, and what's interesting about this is They invested heavily in the New York area.

They bet big with brick and mortar with the flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York City in December, opening the Manhattan store, which used to be the Versace flagship store. And they've got plans to expand more stores with about a dozen this year. 

So, say this again, this is a 50-foot balloon? 

That's correct.

A 50-foot balloon. And does it mimic kind of what you see next to a used car dealership? The thing that's like folding over and pointing right back up really quickly over and over again? Is that what we're talking about? 

Oh no, it's a shapely female form. In a bikini, and you'll be happy to know that I was able to snap a picture, an aerial, because my office overlooks Times Square, so you'll be, you'll be seeing it soon.

I think it would have been hilarious had they mimicked that used car balloon thing where it was just kind of shooting up and falling down and shooting up and falling down. Probably would have gotten even more attention. 

shapewear? 

Then again, I'm not the best, uh, balloon guy to ask. 

Nobody will be looking at the Elmos and, uh, and Spider Man people at ground level anymore if that balloon is floating up over Times Square.

Well, you'll have to see. Thanks to our producer, Joshua Bruyning. Please join us every week as our LightBox team shares CRE news and data in context. You can listen on any of your favorite podcast channels and send your comments or questions to podcast@lightboxre.com. Thank you for listening and have a great week.

Let's go