Office Reinvention, Multifamily Momentum, and a Better Week for Markets

Markets finally caught a break this week. Oil prices slipped back below $100, the 10-year Treasury eased toward 4.45%, and equities pushed toward record highs led by tech, giving commercial real estate investors a welcome shift in tone after weeks of volatility. But beneath the rally, Manus Clancy and Dianne Crocker remind us that this is still a bifurcated market. Consumer confidence just came in at record lows, and the Fed’s latest PCE inflation reading of 3.3% keeps rate-cut hopes firmly on hold as the new Fed Chair moves into position. 

In this week’s episode, Manus and Dianne dive into what the improving macro backdrop could mean for CRE, including an encouraging new Federal Reserve study that challenges the long running “extend and pretend” narrative around loan maturities. 

The conversation also dives into fresh LightBox CRE transaction data showing smaller CRE deals outperforming trophy asset trades, while multifamily continues to attract deep investor demand. Meanwhile, the $69 billion AvalonBay-Equity Residential mega-merger is a sign of massive conviction in multifamily. A major student housing portfolio deal makes a compelling case that today’s resort-style college living may be reshaping what an entire generation wants from housing. The team also dives into why investors may be overlooking strong opportunities in the Midwest in favor of ROI in the Sun Belt. 

Plus, office-to-resi conversions are going national. From a Portland tower being eyed for data center use to a Denver developer snapping up four buildings at up to 97% discounts to convert into multifamily, distressed office is finding new life coast to coast. With car buyers retreating to the sidelines, the episode closes with a nostalgic Slice of Life conversation about our first new car purchase.  

00:33 Markets Catch a Break: Oil, Rates, and Equities Rebound 
04:37 Fed Pushes Back on the "Extend and Pretend" Narrative 
09:01 Inflation Comes in as Expected. What Will the Fed Do Next? 
11:31 Data Dive: Smaller CRE Deals Drive Transaction Activity 
13:58 AvalonBay and Equity Residential's $69B Multifamily Merger 
17:49 Did You Know? Multifamily Listings and Buyer Demand Remain Strong 
19:57 Office Reinvention: Data Centers and Residential Conversions 
24:55 Multifamily Momentum: Student Housing, Chicago Strength, and Hotel Deals 

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

www.lightboxre.com

Transcript

The CRE Weekly Digest by LightBox
Episode 99: Office Reinvention, Multifamily Momentum, and a Better Week for Markets
May 29, 2026

Alyssa Lewis: 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 Alyssa Lewis with our experts Manus Clancy and Dianne Crocker. This week brought a sharp reversal in market tone. Oil prices fell back below one hundred dollars.

The 10-year treasury eased to roughly four point five percent, and equity markets pushed back toward new highs, led again by tech. Manus, what's your take on how this week played out? 

Manus Clancy: Well, certainly the needles were moving in the right direction over the last couple of days. You mentioned that US stocks hit new all-time highs.

The Nasdaq and the S&P 500 still living in that very lofty territory way up there. People are now saying that S&P 500 eight thousand is just weeks away, which might be the case. Tech has been the especially high flyer with chip makers and software makers rebounding this week. So a lot to be positive about there.

In the past, we've said that the equity markets were the only thing that were really positive, but this week that wasn't really the case. We saw bond yields really retreat. As of a couple minutes ago, the 10-year was at four forty-five, which was down from nearly four seventy a couple of weeks ago. We are seeing oil prices come down as Hints and rumors come out that peace or an extended ceasefire in the Middle East may be near.

And so it was a good week in that regard that if there's progress on a peace deal, if we could open up the strait, if there's no toll on the strait, if America can pull back some of its troops, if we could have an enduring ceasefire, all of that would give the market even more momentum. So it feels better than it has in the last couple weeks, and for that we can be grateful.

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, definitely some encouraging bits of macro news, Manus. You know, I have to say it, it feels a little bit unfamiliar after the conversations we've been having the, the past couple weeks. You know, we've been talking about how oil up at $110 has been kind of like a de facto tax on consumers. It just cost me exactly $100 to fill my gas tank, so hopefully prices will continue going down.

And the 10-year Treasury easing back down, well, that, you know, that takes pressure off borrowing costs. So I do think you're right. You know, on the surface it's been a much more pleasant week to, uh, to scroll the news over my morning coffee. I have to say but, because it seems like there's always a but, there was also this week a low read on consumer sentiment, you know, and I, I think that's a sign that consumers are just getting worn down by higher prices at the gas pump, higher grocery bills, higher mortgage rates, and, and just the kinda general anxiety over the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

So I think a week of better headlines on bond yields and the equity market, I'm happy about that, but I think retail spending, which has been really strong, we could start seeing that take a hit based on the consumer sentiment index that just came out. 

Manus Clancy: When you look at the equity markets, it really has been the Roaring '20s over the last couple of months, right?

New records being set multiple times a week. But you're right to point out the soft spots because they have been plentiful. We got a relief on two soft spots this week with bond rates coming down and with oil prices coming down. But there are plenty of soft spots out there. Home builder confidence remains quite weak.

The consumer confidence really at record lows. I think people are really concerned that the jobs market could crack at some point. Uh, over the threat of AI, I think we're keeping an eye on that very confidently. And it's still not easy for young people to buy homes, afford homes or find new jobs. So sometimes you get into periods, and I would say that the late '90s were this way with the dot-com bubble and 2007 in the era before the great financial crisis, where everything was up.

You know, everything was functioning on eight cylinders, probably to the detriment of the market, right? We were getting too euphoric, too upbeat. We were taking our eye off the ball when it came to risk and pricing risk and lending hygiene. I don't think any of that is true now. We have a bifurcated market.

We have that K shape. But it's good for at least one week that we got some relief in interest rates and in, in oil. And if we can get peace next week, and if we could see some positive job numbers the week after that, even better. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, agreed. And I think you can almost, like, feel that there would be just this palpable sigh from the market that it could get kind of back to business.

I wanted to also mention on the positive side of the ledger, I don't know if you saw this, Manus, but a Fed paper that came out that really pushed back on the whole extend and pretend narrative. You know, for years folks have been talking about this wall of maturities and how it was getting bigger every year.

They use terms like the snowplow effect, you know, whatever you wanna call it. But headlines were fueling this narrative that the lending sector was kind of facing this systemic risk due to that wall of loans that were coming due. And then along comes this... You know, I read it as kind of a, a comforting analysis by the Fed that big banks are extending loans at a pretty standard pace if you look at it in the context of historical norms.

You know, so not every loan extension means that a bank is hiding a problem. Certainly, some loans are distressed, especially in office, no doubt about it. But in other cases, I think, you know, lenders are-- They're just giving borrowers some time to work through a, a tough rate environment rather than forcing a bad outcome, which isn't good for anybody.

So I found the study pretty reassuring. What do you think? 

Manus Clancy: I'm glad you brought it up because I thought it was a great contrarian piece to the ongoing narrative that this wall of maturities is going to crush us all. Uh, I've never believed that for even one moment. I think that people have made careers using the wall of maturities to generate clicks and generate fear among the markets.

And for somebody who's been in the market for as long as I have, we know what real fear looks like. That from two thousand and ten to two thousand and fifteen, lenders had no choice, or I should say maybe really from two thousand and eight to two thousand and twelve, they had no choice but to extend and pretend because there was no buyer.

There was no incremental buyer other than maybe you could say Appaloosa, who came in and bought CMBS bonds at twenty cents on the dollar. There wasn't anybody vacuuming up multifamily assets, office assets, retail assets at twenty cents on the dollar after the great financial crisis. It took years for that pain to be squeezed out of the system, and that's when extend and pretend was really quite true.

Now what we're talking about is a very different world. We have two pockets of issues that have been very, very severe over the last couple years. We've seen a disaster in the marketplace for offices Uh, in terms of valuations, and we've seen a semi-disaster in some multifamily markets, especially where people bought at high prices and used floating rate debt.

Those have been kind of isolated issues. They haven't been, "The world is ending," systemic risk that causes banks to fail. And the most important part of this is that throughout this whole office demise, there have been people waiting to hoover up offices at seventy percent discounts and eighty percent discounts.

Banks have not had to extend and pretend because a seller was willing to capitulate and a buyer was coming... was willing to come to the table at a price that was representative of a market. So I'm glad somebody besides me and a few others like Richard Hale have come to this conclusion that the world is not ending and the metrics don't point to something that is really disaster-prone.

Dianne Crocker: Do you remember that story, Manus? Was it Henny Penny running around telling everybody that the sky was falling? That's what this always reminds me of. 

Manus Clancy: You know, we live in a world where there's people who are... think the world's gonna end every single day, right? They're hoarding food, and they're building camps in the, in the woods, and they're, you know, creating three-year food supplies because they're terrified of what's gonna happen tomorrow, and there are people that play golf in lightning storms, right?

They don't care about any risks whatsoever. So I think you and I probably live somewhere right in the middle of those two worlds, that we understand that there's risks, but rarely do they result in a nineteen twenty-nine style depression or a two thousand and seven like great financial crisis, and that's the reality almost every time.

Dianne Crocker: Historical perspective is, is important when you see those headlines screaming doomsday, Henny Penny type outcomes. 

Manus Clancy: Do you happen to have the name of the author of that Fed piece? I would love to give credit where credit is due because I know when it comes to research pieces like this, people put in an awful lot of time and really dig deep into the weeds of data, which is not easy.

So if you have that name, I'd love to give that credit. 

Dianne Crocker: You're right, Manus. We should give credit for that Federal Reserve paper to David Glancy. He is of the board's division of Monetary Affairs. It was a great study. 

Manus Clancy: Like I said, these things don't happen overnight. People really dig into call report data and the loan data that banks are asked to submit to the Fed every quarter and I, I like the read.

I like the take on this. One more data point came out today. We saw the Fed's favored inflation measure came in largely within expectations, an inflation rate of three point three percent for that PCE. Any hot takes on that from your perspective, the three point three number? 

Dianne Crocker: Not really. I guess I have to say I wasn't all that surprised, especially after what's been happening over the past month or so.

Um, when's the next Fed meeting? Is that... That's in June, right? And I think, you know, largely people think the Fed will just have to stand pat, and I don't think that this report really changes that expectation much at all. What do you think will happen at the June meeting? 

Manus Clancy: I think standing pat is probably the best bet, but I do think this three point three percent number...

I think if you go back over the last fifteen months and you said, "On April second, twenty twenty-five, when tariffs were announced, where would inflation end up six months from that period forward based on the higher cost of imports?" People would have been at levels that would scare you. And I think the same thing happened, at least mentally, when we saw oil crack a hundred dollars a barrel, that people said, "We are going to be at five or six or seven percent," before you could say, "Bob's your uncle."

And instead, what we have have been readings in the low threes. Yes, things are trending upward, but I think if you had asked me on the day when oil went to $100 a barrel, I would've been in that camp. Yes, this is gonna make its way through the system really, really quickly, and we're gonna see some really ugly prints.

And instead, the prints have drifted higher, not raised higher. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, and it, it puts the Fed in a really tough spot, I think. You know, we'll see what happens, but prices remain sticky, and the labor market is still in a challenging spot. So it's not a great combination, but you know, my read is this wasn't a, a new shock to the market either.

I feel like the market was largely prepared for this. 

Manus Clancy: Yeah. There are a couple of Fed presidents that scare me. I have to say that at every slightly hotter than expected print, you get the sense that their trigger figure is very, very itchy. They want that rate hike. They wanna, you know, tackle inflation because be- before it becomes a problem.

Hopefully, when they get inside that room, when they do their dot plot and all their conversations and votes and everything else, that cooler heads prevail, that this is, uh, not a problem we have to worry about at least today. 

Alyssa Lewis: All right. Let's turn to our Data Dive. Dianne, what are you seeing in the markets this week?

Dianne Crocker: Thanks, Alyssa. I shared some preliminary data from our April transaction tracker. The report's coming out early next week, and the total deal count for April was, as a whole, 5% below March, which didn't really surprise me given that it was a shorter month. But one thing that did jump out is that the larger transactions above 50 million were down 24% from March, which, you know, kinda told me something, that the, it's the trophy deals that grab the headlines, but there's more growth happening with the smaller transactions.

And you know, I've been thinking about this, Manus, maybe it makes sense. The smaller deals are easier to execute, cleaner financing, simpler ownership structures, less competition from major institutional capital. So, you know, maybe this is the start of a trend. We'll have to see if it continues in May, but I think this is the first month in several that I saw that trend.

Manus Clancy: Well, I think part of it is Who's being wagged here? Who's the dog and who's the tail? And I think when you are a small balance borrower, a property owner for an asset that, hey, maybe has a, a value of 30 million or less, when your loan is coming due and you have to refinance and/or you have to sell your property to pay off an earlier loan, you know, you are the tail.

You're being wagged, right? The, the bank is telling you, "No, you're not gonna get an extension. No, this loan is due. You have to sell your property or you have to refinance." But I do think when you're talking about these 500 million and up properties that are, or portfolios that are being financed by the likes of Brookfield or Blackstone or Prologis, time is on their side.

They've financed their portfolios with floating rate debt. They can go back to their lenders and say, "We wanna extend this debt for another 90 days. We wanna hold off refinancing until as, you know, till conditions are more favorable. We don't wanna tap the CMBS or CRE CLO market until such time as the war ends."

And in that case, they are the dog, right? They are the ones with the power. And I think that's part of the reason why you've seen this fall off in bigger deals, that the bigger guys can tell the banks, "We are gonna come to market when we're ready to come to market," and the smaller guys don't have that kind of heft.

But while we're on the topic of deals, why don't we talk about the big one that was announced this week, the $69 billion merger between AvalonBay and Equity Residential. Votes of confidence from both sides, right? That they're looking at each other's portfolios and say, "We see strength in a combination of two really highly well-run, highly valued firms combining forces."

So when you saw that headline, any hot takes on that? 

Dianne Crocker: It was pretty incredible. You know, I have to say, I guess my first thought was- Wow, you know, this is really an acknowledgement that they need scale to be competitive in multifamily. You know, like, tenants want apps, and they want amenities, and they want high-tech touches.

You know, different than, you know, when we j-graduated from college and were looking for our first apartments. And those kinds of multifamily properties, they're expensive to build and to maintain. Operating costs are higher. We've talked on the pod about high insurance rates, new supply, low rent growth are weighing on some markets.

So, you know, I also kinda thought, well, this, this mega deal is a strategic move maybe to spread higher costs across a, a broader portfolio, maybe improve margins and compete more efficiently with smaller REITs. 

Manus Clancy: It's funny you should say that because I was on a panel just an hour or two ago talking about multifamily costs.

Not just costs, it was the entire multifamily market. What was weighing on the supply side, how was demand, what markets were strong, what segments were strong, and so forth. And part of the conversation, which was hosted by Franco Faraudo of Propmodo, who did a great job moving the conversation along and taking us through the entire multifamily segment in about sixty minutes.

Terrific. And we were talking about costs, and one of the gentlemen on the panel was talking about how we're moving slowly to a situation where there's fewer boots on the ground, and they're deployed remotely. That you can have a system where you don't need three leasing brokers, two porters, and two property managers on every property.

You can kind of distribute people as needed. And I love your take on this because this was pure speculation on my part, but I, I pictured a world where maybe in five or ten years there's an Uber for plumbers or an Uber for electricians where instead of having your own staff or your own Rolodex, you as a property manager, you just go online or on your phone and you say, "Here's the location, here's the unit, here's the problem."

And all of a sudden those Concentric circles go out and they start pinging f- plumbers in the area, and people are bidding on things, and you have no staff whatsoever, right? You don't have a team of drivers like livery services did years ago. It's a completely new world. 

Dianne Crocker: I think you're onto something there, Manus, because when you need a car ride, it's urgent.

You want it right away. If your shower's broken or your fridge goes on the fritz, you want it fixed right away. So if you apply the Uber model to fridge repairman or, or plumbers, maybe you get a quicker response than just focusing on one guy who's really good and happens to be booked for a week. 

Manus Clancy: Right.

You could have the star system again and- 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah ... 

Manus Clancy: right, you could know within 15 minutes how long it's gonna take for that guy to, to come to your home. You know, we're already comfortable getting in cars with strangers, you know? Now, uh, you know, we, we could have an Uber for plumbers and electricians and roofing guys and cleaning people maybe.

Who knows? I think AI and the next generation of technology may take this to places we can't even imagine yet. 

Dianne Crocker: Here's the thing, a year or two from now, this will be standard operating practice, and you're gonna say, "You know what? I talked about this on our 99th CRE Weekly Digest episode." 

Manus Clancy: There we go. 

Dianne Crocker: All right, time for Did You Know.

What do you have for us this week, Dianne? Well, Manus, you beat me to the punch because I have to say that you did a really good job on the Propmodo webinar. All the panelists did. I, I thought you guys covered a lot of ground, and it was very well moderated. I really enjoyed it, so if anybody gets a chance to listen and you're following multifamily trends, it's, it's definitely worth your time.

So because the topic du jour is multifamily, Manus, the Did You Know takes us there. So as our loyal listeners know, the LightBox live platform tracks the volume of properties that are being listed for sale, and multifamily activity has been very, very strong. So in our platform, last year's listings for multifamily assets were up 35% above 2024, and Q1 continued that trend.

And the other thing I want to add to that is that more than any other property type, multifamily stands out because it accounts for more than half of all of the nondisclosure agreements that are filed in our platform by potential buyers. So that, I think, is a very strong signal of multifamily as a desirable asset class.

Manus Clancy: I think one of the terms that really defines the market right now, certainly for everything perhaps other than office, is the depth of the market, that when you look at the sheer number of confidentiality agreements being signed, we're talking about hundreds of these things being signed on average for every multifamily deal, almost 200 if I'm not mistaken.

And when you look at the buyers and sellers of assets every single month, you might see 100 multi-family properties of 40 million and up being sold, and that might be 85 different buyers or 90 different buyers. This is a very, very deep pool of buyers and sellers, and I, I think that underscores the confidence that it's not just a couple of big players being opportunistic like Sam Zell was back in the day.

This is a lot of people on both the lending and the buying side being really confident that this market is resilient. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah. It's a great sector to be on, and, and you guys made some great points in the podcast today about that. All right. Let's move from the data to the deals that caught your eye this week, starting with office.

Dianne? Sure. There are two that caught my attention, Manus. One is a headline, "Could this Portland office tower be a data center?" Reporter was Jonathan Bach in The Oregonian. Menlo Equities, a Silicon Valley firm active in tech markets and data centers, just acquired a downtown office tower. It was the former Union Bank of California Tower in downtown Portland, and they marketed the property partly for its potential as data center space.

You know, and I'm reading this thinking, "This isn't San Francisco, it's not Manhattan, where you might expect tech capital to chase real estate." You know, Portland's a secondary market. We've talked on the pod before, it's, it's a struggling downtown with high vacancies. And here you've got a Silicon Valley data center investor coming in.

So I feel like this is another example that a buyer's looking at discounted office, and they're no longer kind of looking at it through the lens of, you know, "Can we lease this back up?" But rather, "Can I invest in this building and, and use it to support a completely different purpose?" So w- if Portland's on the radar, you know, maybe we'll see stories like this and other ones.

And then the second one was about Denver, and it was in The Wall Street Journal. The reporter was Peter Grant, and the headline was, "Can this guy get people to live in America's emptiest downtown?" And it was Denver, which is another struggling downtown. Um, office vacancies are almost 40%, which is the highest among the top 50 cities in the country.

Get this, Manus, the developer, Asher Lozado, acquired four downtown office buildings for pennies on the dollar. One was a 97% discount from what the owner paid in 2013. He got it for $5 million. And another one was valued at 100 million when Blackstone bought it in 2015. He paid $3.2 million. And he wants to convert the whole thing into about 1,100 apartments.

So classic live-work-play kind of deal for a struggling downtown. So we'll see how that works out. 

Manus Clancy: I never spent a lot of time in Denver, so I didn't know that it was a struggling downtown. Certain markets you s- you know historically Have had to kind of rebuild from the ground up, rebuild their local communities like Detroit, places like that.

I didn't know Denver was in that category, but it's good to see somebody putting their money where their mouth is and trying to revive Denver in the way that Gilbert did with Detroit and other locations over the last 20 years. But I'll pivot for just a moment because I think this is an interesting segue.

You talk about an office-to-resi conversion in Denver. I think for a really long time it was New York and nothing else, that in New York we would see two or three headlines every single week, or every month at least, of a new office being slated for conversion to multifamily. Now we're starting to see that trend in other places.

I'll give you a couple of others that we saw recently. I think I may have made-- mentioned them in past podcasts. Insight Property, they're doing an office-to-resi conversion in Fairfax, Virginia, and in Los Angeles, in the Los Angeles area, Douglas Emmett at 10900 Wilshire Boulevard looking to do a resi conversion as well.

So we've seen this in Oakland. We've seen this in Southern California. You're, you're talking about it in Denver. We've seen it talked about in Chicago. So this is a trend which is not just limited to New York anymore. A lot of people are embracing this, and I do think that planners in a lot of these cities seem to be meeting developers halfway, that maybe in the past there was more resistance to this.

You know, any development is bad development, uh, is the mindset of, of some people. You know, they want less growth, not more. But when it comes to providing more housing, I think we're on common ground here. Both progressives and developers and non-progressives are all thinking the same way. More housing is better.

We can address the affordable housing issue, and let's remove as many inefficiencies in the process to make sure these deals get done. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, it's definitely great to see, and I think one of the most exciting things about this chapter in real estate is really creative reuse of properties that have outlived their usefulness.

You know, and you're right that local governments are stepping in to provide incentives or attractive loan packages that make these deals work. And a few years ago, an office-to-resi conversion had a lot of doubters, and I think the more and more successful projects that, that come into being, it, it gives, um, it gives courage to other developers to come in and try it.

So I think the downtowns of tomorrow are gonna look very, very different than the downtowns of the past. 

Alyssa Lewis: Shifting gears from office to multifamily, where momentum is still building. Manus? 

Manus Clancy: So before we get into traditional multifamily, we gotta talk about another really, really big sale that took place this week.

A 12-property, 7,600-bed student housing portfolio was sold by Harrison Street Asset Management to a JV of Scion and Ares for almost a billion dollars. And only in a, in a week where you see that other big transaction between AvalonBay and Equity Real Estate would a billion-dollar student housing sale kind of fly under radar.

But that's a big deal, Dianne, a consolidation there, uh, a big, big check being written by Ares and Scion for, uh, what is a very sizable portfolio. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, for sure. When I was at the MBA of New York Real Estate Summit a few weeks ago, someone asked what asset classes are favorable kind of outside of the major food groups, and I said student housing.

I mean, there's so much interest in it. There's a lot of capital being invested in it. As you mentioned on the webinar today, these are nice living quarters. I mean, you could retire in a, a student housing development of today. They're certainly much nicer than when I went to college. My freshman dorm room looked like a prison cell compared to my son's eight-person suite.

So there's certainly a lot of investment capital happening in student housing, and this, this definitely was a, a huge deal that shows that there's a lot of interest. 

Manus Clancy: I think something is happening, and one of the panelists on today's webinar touched upon this, that I think is eluding a lot of us that have been in the market for a long time.

It certainly eluded me until it was brought up today. In fact, both panelists brought this up, that something is changing in market behavior that we'll look back on and say, "How did we not understand this when it was happening? How did we not see this coming?" And that is this that student housing in most areas is so upscale and so enjoyable.

We're not talking about No air conditioning, radiators banging, right? Sticky traps to catch the vermin. No amenities, right? We're talking about lazy rivers, grills, big outdoor cinemas for people to have great gyms, maybe retail in the basement where you can have lunch at a Five Guys within your complex.

And I think that experience is so enjoyable for students now that they're okay never buying a house, that they say, "If I could have that same experience in the private sector, maybe a little bit bigger, maybe a little bit m- more mature, right? Maybe, uh, you know, I don't want people playing with lacrosse balls outside my, my room at four o'clock in the morning.

I want something more mature, but I still want the lazy river. I still want the grills. I still want the, the media room." That we'll look back in 15 years and we'll say, "Goodness, we were trying to solve a single-family housing problem when the solution was right there." People wanted a better version of their college experience.

And that just hit me today by the two gentlemen that brought this up. Amazing insights into the fact that maybe we're not gonna worry about a glut of multi-family housing. We're gonna say, "We didn't build enough of this, especially in these college towns." 

Dianne Crocker: You might be right. Another tailwind for multi-family, especially in towns.

I mean, college towns where there are amen-- where there are amenities, where it's very walkable. I mean, that's very, very appealing, I think, to, um, to a lot of apartment seekers. 

Manus Clancy: Yeah. So I mean, y- you know, my wife and I, we always joke that we should spend our golden years in student housing, right? It's probably the nicest place we could find, right?

Just endless, endless catering to the, the youth of this nation. And I have to say, I got this one hundred percent wrong over the last couple of years that I was a believer that we were gonna be at crisis-level student housing occupancy numbers during COVID. I said, "What parent in their right mind is gonna be writing a check for twelve hundred bucks a month for their s- their kid to sit in a college town and not go to class?"

And yet everybody did, right? American Campus Housing and all the big student housing developers were just able to push up those eight and nine and ten percent rent hikes year after year, seemingly put up endless amount of new projects and fill them without any friction whatsoever in most locations, and incredible.

Dianne Crocker: And maybe you're onto something. Maybe if college attendance rates go down, then they just easily get converted into retirement communities. 

Manus Clancy: Imagine, like, people my age, like, walking down the hallway, "Who's got the funnel?" "Are we doing keg stands tonight?" Like... "What's, what's going on?" "Who's hosting the party?"

I don't know. It, it has the makings of a Will Ferrell and Owen Wilson movie in there- 

Alyssa Lewis: Yeah ... 

Manus Clancy: somewhere, right? I guess maybe they, maybe they've already done it with Old School. But we do have a couple of other sales to talk about in the multi-family segment. Let's run through them in short order. We see, this is not a specific sale, this is more of a, a bit of commentary.

We saw an article this week that three Chicago apartments are coming to market on the north side that any one of them, should they sell, and they probably will, would set new high water marks for the Chicago multifamily market in 2026. And so why do we talk about this story? Incredible strength in certain cities in the industrial Midwest.

Richard Hill of Principal brought this up a couple weeks ago, that the upper Midwest did not deal with that influx of new inventory, and steady rent growth is still available in those markets. And that Chicago and Chicago suburb market is absolutely on fire right now. The number of transactions we're seeing at prices that are really impressive makes it one of the hotter markets right now in all of the United States.

And now what we're gonna see over the next couple weeks is three new listings all in the same neighborhood test that momentum. And I think that people are gonna find out that that momentum is real and enduring. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, and I thought one of your panelists on today's webinar used a really interesting term.

It was, uh, Jay Lybik from Continental Properties in Nashville. And he referred to it as the Midwest flyover mentality. And that was the point of the article as well, is that investors who are busy chasing Sun Belt growth stories, and there are certainly strong ones, but they could be missing pockets of strength in Midwest cities like Chicago.

Manus Clancy: There are several operators in the Boston suburbs, in Chicago and suburbs, and other major northeast and upper Midwest cities that have just really been minting money. And It's kind of running where the masses are not, right? And the masses over the last couple of years have been racing to the Sun Belt, racing to Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, sometimes with regret, sometimes we're overpaying for assets.

And those that's kind of stuck to their knitting and said, "We are looking at, you know, negligible new inventory. We are able to name our price. We are able to push through substantial rent growth in the Boston suburbs or in the Chicago suburbs or other markets like that, the Detroit suburbs." They have been the winners, at least for the last year and a half.

They've seen scant competition, scant new inventory, and better price recovery, bet-better rental recovery than most parts of the, the United States. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah. Kind of like the, the quiet performers. So we'll see what happens with these three listings. They m-might not take long for them to sell. Manus, let's check in on hotel deals.

What are you seeing? 

Manus Clancy: Yeah. Well, we don't talk about hotels an awful lot, and rightly so. Of all the major food groups in commercial real estate, the hotel segment has seen fewer sales each month, month over month for several years now. It's just not a market that has seen an enormous amount of activity or velocity, what have you.

So when you do see a couple of sales lined up in short order, it's interesting to talk about. Maybe it's a breakthrough, and we're starting to see things move. So in no particular order, uh, in Atlanta, in downtown Atlanta, Portland acquired a 73-story Westin hotel. It's the Westin Peachtree hotel in Atlanta.

In Pasadena, the Old Town Pasadena traded for sixty-five million. The seller there, Dauntless Capital Partners. The sale price there, about four hundred and fifty K per room. And in Chicago, Vinayaka Hospitality acquired the Hotel of Presidents. This is a Chicago asset that sold for forty-three million. So you're talking about three decently sized, decently priced hotels.

We don't normally see that many high price sales in a given week in the hotel market, so noteworthy for that reason alone. 

Dianne Crocker: That last one you mentioned, the Hotel of Presidents, that was a landmark hotel that was on the market for years, you know, a-and finally found a price point that worked. And seems like it's got a historical significance, so maybe the buyer will do something clever with that one.

Alyssa Lewis: Before we close, it's time for our slice of life question. Inspired by a Wall Street Journal headline this week reporting that nearly 1 million prospective buyers have dropped out of the new car market. So Manus, Dianne, what was the first new car you ever bought? 

Dianne Crocker: I'll go first, Manus, 'cause you always outdo me with a story.

I'll keep it short and sweet. Mine was in my 20s, couple years out of college, first apartment outside of DC, and I got a brand-new 1996 Acura Integra. It was forest green. I drove it until the end of its useful life. I loved that car. It had these recessed headlights that Acura took out of the design, maybe because it was too hard to change them.

But I swear if they came out with it again as a retro model, I would buy it tomorrow. 

Manus Clancy: Well, I'll say some things that may shock our listeners. We'll find out. But because I spent most of my 20s and a little bit of my 30s living in New York City between Manhattan and Brooklyn, I never had a car at all until I was married and had a couple of kids.

And because my wife had a car when we got married, it was only six months or a year into our marriage that we ended up buying another car. Our first home was an apartment for which we only needed one car. So by the time I bought my first car, I had three kids, which is remarkable. So my first car that I bought myself was a minivan.

And my kids like to joke, or maybe not joke, maybe there's like real anger behind this. They claim that I bought the very last car off the assembly line for which you still needed to spin the window up or down, that you still had to crank the window to get the window of the minivan to go up or down. And that's true.

This car was bought, I would say, in 1995. It was probably the last Ford Windstar to ever roll off. I had several kids I had to put in that car very early on. It was an absolute lemon, and my kids never let me forget that the windows had to be operated by hand. 

Dianne Crocker: That's excellent. I love that. 

Alyssa Lewis: And with that, we'll close.

Thank you to our producers at Bruyning Media. Be sure to join us next week for our 100th episode with special guest LightBox CEO Eric Frank. You can listen on all your favorite podcast platforms and send your comments or questions to podcast@lightboxre.com. As always, thank you for listening and have a great weekend.

Manus Clancy: Let's go