CRE Keeps Moving Despite Market Headwinds

Markets felt stuck in a familiar loop this week. Inflation climbed to its highest level in three years, Treasury yields pushed higher, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East resurfaced, and investors once again found themselves debating what comes next for rates, growth, and risk. Yet beneath the headlines, commercial real estate continues to show surprising resilience. 

Manus Clancy and Dianne Crocker unpack the latest economic data, the implications of the Fed's first meeting under new Chair Kevin Warsh, and growing investor scrutiny around AI infrastructure and data center spending. They also share insights from the recent CREFC conference, where lenders acknowledged a more cautious environment but emphasized that capital remains available for the right opportunities. 

The discussion dives into the newly released May LightBox CRE Activity Index, which registered 126.6, marking the fifth consecutive month above 100 and the second straight month above 125. Environmental due diligence activity increased 6% month over month, reinforcing signs that transaction pipelines remain active despite ongoing uncertainty. The team also highlights major industrial transactions, a $1.2 billion rare earth minerals investment in South Carolina, a discounted Phoenix office sale, and an ambitious $7 billion mixed-use development planned for Chicago. 

Volatile markets may dominate the headlines, but the CRE story remains far more resilient than many expected.

00:17 Knicks Fever and Episode 100 Reflections
02:09 Inflation Returns and Markets React
09:21 AI Spending, Data Centers, and Investor Scrutiny
14:39 CREFC Takeaways and Capital Markets Sentiment
16:22 LightBox CRE Activity Index Holds Strong
20:45 A Day in the Life of LightBox Data
23:18 Major CRE Deals: Industrial, Office, and Rare Earth Manufacturing
30:35 Chicago's $7 Billion Bet and Sports Memories to Close the Week

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

www.lightboxre.com

Transcript

The CRE Weekly Digest by LightBox

Episode 101: CRE Keeps Moving Despite Market Headwinds

June 12, 2026

Dianne Crocker: 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 Dianne Crocker here with my co-host, Manus Clancy. Welcome to our 101st episode. And if you missed our 100th episode, we did an interview with LightBox CEO Eric Frank.

If you missed it, take a listen. Eric covered a lot of ground on why he set out to modernize commercial real estate, his vision for connected data and streamlined workflows, and of course, his prediction that the Knicks would take home the trophy. How about that game last night, Manus? I don't think I have any fingernails left.

Manus Clancy: Thank you, Dianne. That was a great intro. Eric's interview last week was really terrific. It was forty-five minutes really well spent. He articulated terrifically the intersection of all the things coming together that are going to be so life-changing for CRE professionals in the near future. But we have to start with that Knick game last night.

You teed it up perfectly And I'm so glad we're gonna dive into that before we get into this week's data and CRE news. You know, I'm still breathless from last night. I'm, I'm a casual Knick fan, but I have completely jumped on the bandwagon at this point. I can't wait for all the games. I've been watching them with my youngest son, and it was complete white-knuckle time last night.

Uh, for those that are sports fans, you already know this. It was an instant classic. The Knicks came back from 29 points down to take the lead with two seconds to go, and now hold a three-to-one lead in the series, a chance to wrap up their first title since the early 1970s on Saturday night in San Antonio.

So New York is buzzing with excitement. I'm, I'm hearing from people that I haven't heard from in months. All of my kids have completely jumped on the bandwagon, and it's a great time in New York City. 

Dianne Crocker: It sure is. I was down there Monday night, not at the game, but a terrace party that Rockport hosted surrounding the CREFC conference, and it was just really cool to see the venues that were set up at the ground level and parks, just these big watch parties, and the city was definitely on fire, and I'm sure they went nuts last night.

All right, Manus, we could talk about the game, you know, for the full episode, but let's dive into the market news. Another week of headlines dominated by the war in Iran. Sounds like the strikes are set to resume again after weeks of diplomatic impasse. This week's inflation report shows that the CPI hit four point two percent.

That is its highest level in three years, in May, and that's on the heels of a jobs report that was stronger than expected but uneven. Bond yields pushed higher, hovering around four point five five percent. Equities had a rough ride. U.S. stocks sold off sharply, then tried to claw their way back. And I don't know, Manus, the, the market headlines have a real Groundhog Day feel to me this week.

I can almost hear Bill Murray's alarm clock going off again and again. What do you think? 

Manus Clancy: Well, I love the pop culture reference. Anytime you bring Bill Murray into the conversation- ... it's good for a chuckle, and that is a, a fun movie to watch. Let me break this into two parts, the geopolitical and then the data side of it.

On the geopolitical, it feels like here we go again. And your Groundhog's Day reference was spot on, that we're back to people being concerned about oil prices, that the war will continue. The ceasefire seems all but over at this point. The US is now talking about taking some land on the island that touches the Strait of Hormuz.

So here we go again. This is where we were in March. This is where we were in April. We had a pause during the ceasefire, and now we're back to kind of where we were at the beginning of the, the war, and we hope that at some point we get to the end of this, right? That we go back to life as it was in February.

On the data side, there were three big headlines this week, and they painted a couple of different pictures. The first one, of course, the jobs report that you talked about on Friday, about twice as many jobs were created as were anticipated. Now, nobody thinks this is a blowout jobs economy. When the US economy is growing, you like to see numbers of two hundred and fifty thousand per month, three hundred thousand.

This was below two hundred thousand, but it was still better than expected. That contributed to that jump in bond yields that we saw on Friday. Although I would say there were other contributors, too, and we'll get to that later. I also think that the two inflation numbers we saw this week were concerning.

So whereas the jobs report was helpful and positive, the inflation reports were not. Yesterday, we saw CPI four point two percent, as you noted. That was high, but it was in line with expectations. It was the oil jolt impact that we were expecting a month or two ago finally making its way through. This morning, on Thursday, we saw the PPI number, which was even more alarming, month over month, up one point one percent Uh, which was considerably higher than expectations.

So on the job side, good numbers. On the inflation side, very concerning numbers. So let me pause there, Dianne, and let me get your thoughts. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, I mean, I agree. We can't, we can't seem to get a consistent story across the board. And obviously, when you start talking about the jobs market and inflation, you know, my mind naturally flows to interest rates because that is the dual mandate that the Fed faces, is to keep inflation down and the jobs market healthy.

And now, of course, this month, I think it's next week, is the first Fed meeting under new Fed Chair Warsh. And I don't know if you saw this, Manus, but he, uh, he introduced a, a term I'd not heard before, at least not recently, where he said in response to inflation that he prefers trimmed mean inflation measures.

So any students out there, there's a new Econ 101 term, and it essentially means you strip out extreme price moves in order to get kind of a cleaner read on the underlying inflation. So his trimmed mean inflation measure runs much cooler than the dramatic headlines that we're seeing. And I bring that up because if Warsh persuades the committee to put more weight on this trimmed mean measure, then it means the Fed kind of has more room to hold steady and avoid overreacting to what's clearly an energy-driven shock on, on the pricing side.

So I don't see that as a bad thing. So I'm interested in seeing, you know, how he frames these latest inflation reports, whether he does it as a temporary geopolitical shock or as a broader problem that requires tighter policy. But I think, you know, the... Clearly, over the near term, I think the rates will hold, at least for the June meeting.

Manus Clancy: Did he give any specifics as to what trim and lean means? I know we have alternative readings that strip out currently food and energy. Did he give any insights into where that was going, or was it just kind of a generic line that, you know, we'd like to see new metrics? 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, I think it was, it was more of a generic comment that he's not gonna run with the headline CPI numbers.

But in terms of the impact of where that leads, um, the Dallas Fed's trimmed mean measure brings inflation down to two point three percent, and the Cleveland Fed's trimmed mean measure is at two point nine percent for May. So that's kind of where it lands, but I'm not sure what they're trimming out specifically.

I think the idea is to, to trim out the things that are really shooting it high, and obviously, oil is a big part of that. 

Manus Clancy: Yeah, maybe this will be too much editorializing, but he comes in with a reputation of wanting lower rates. He needs a justification for those lower rates. And changing the metric allows him to defend where he's going, right?

You just can't say, "I want lower rates," without some kind of justification and be taken seriously, and it sounds like this is his marker, that we wanna take away things like food and energy. But who needs those? Who needs food? Who needs energy, right? 

Dianne Crocker: Those are like our biggest necessities, right? 

Manus Clancy: Right. But we saw the numbers today and yesterday, the CPI and the PPI.

The core, which strips out food and energy, were still pretty benign. They were under 3% in each case. And to your point, this is an oil-driven shock to the system, nothing more. And of course, oil can push other things higher, like food and fertilizer and, and other things. But whatever uptick we're seeing right now is, is clearly Oil-driven.

So we'll see if his new message takes root with the other presidents out there, if he can make headway. But the numbers, the headline numbers certainly are concerning to everybody. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, definitely. And I... You know, that's why it kind of brought up the Groundhog Day reference because it, it feels like the market keeps circling the same questions.

You know, when will the war end? How long will oil prices stay elevated? How patient can the, the Fed be? And how much the higher for longer pressures can borrowers, lenders, and investors absorb before the, the math behind deals change? So now we've got something that's changing the narrative a little bit, which is the new Fed chair coming in.

So I'm curious to see what the commentary is after the June meeting. 

Manus Clancy: When you talk about commentary, this is a segue of sorts, but I felt like after the jobs report came out last week, the national press, the financial press gave us kind of a head fake and misled readers, I think, as to what we saw late last week and early this week, and I'd like your thoughts on this as well.

We saw the hot jobs report. Bond yields jumped up right after that. And the markets, the equity markets really collapsed. We really saw some of the biggest losses we've seen in the last couple of years, especially in the tech world. And the headlines we saw on Friday afternoon and Saturday was connecting the dots between jobs report, higher bond yields, and the sell-off.

And I think that that really missed what was happening last week and this week. On Thursday afternoon, after the bell, we saw a really disappointing Broadcom earnings and commentary that they weren't bullish enough, and that got people very nervous. At the same time, late last week, we saw a couple of big tech operators say, "We are going to raise more equity.

We are gonna dilute our equity to raise more money to invest in data centers and AI." And to me, I think that rattled people more than higher bond rates because this may be eluding the, the casual market watcher that the big tech firms, until about six or eight months ago, were just minting money quarter after quarter.

Their free cash flow was through the roof, and the earnings and profit were real. What we've seen over the last six months is a lot of that profit has been erased. Now, they're still producing profitable numbers because what they're spending is considered capital, capital charges, which can be spread out over years and years.

So it doesn't erode their earnings per se, but it crushes their free cash flow. So not only do these firms not have any free cash flow now, they're starting to use financial gimmickry to fund their data center purchases. And I think people are looking at this and saying, "At what point is enough, enough?

And are we ever gonna see a return on principal on this spend. Now, that's a real detour from the CRE space we really talk about, but I thought that there was more going on than met the eye last week and early this week. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah. No, it's a good point. I mean, there were a lot of headlines this week about data centers, specifically about tech firms, about whether there's enough scrutiny around the math behind the assumptions about revenue growth and valuations.

You know, so it's almost like the honeymoon's over in that sector, and now everybody's scratching their head saying, "Wait a minute," you know, "Are the revenue growth projections feasible? Have we really thought this through?" You know, whether it's for AI infrastructure, for chips, for, you know, cloud capacity, obviously data centers.

But I mean, these, these revenue growth projections, I mean, we've all seen them. They are at a scale that I don't think we've ever seen in public market history. So it's, you know, it's maybe not surprising, and it's not a bad thing that the market's getting more discerning about the projects, you know, the tenants signing leases, the locations, and, and which ones deserve premium pricing.

What I'm also seeing starting to come into play more and more in the headlines is pushback against data centers, and we've touched on this a little bit in the podcast. But it seems like the, the tenor around NIMBYism, you know, not in my backyard, as community-level opposition to data center development is starting to gain more and more momentum.

The Urban Land Institute had a really good article this week on that pushback, and our podcast friend, Rebecca Rocky, she's at Cushman Wakefield, we had her on as a guest, I think, last summer. She had a great quote, you know, saying that this, um, the rising cost of data center pushback will probably trigger a geographic rebalancing as there's more opposition, as regulations intensify against data center development in more dense kind of established markets, like we've talked about Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia, that we're likely to see development kind of migrate to secondary and tertiary markets where maybe population density is lower, and they can expect less community center pushback.

So a lot of things happening on the AI front and technology front, and certainly a lot more scrutiny which investors will need to take into account. 

Manus Clancy: One of the Wall Street analysts had a great line, and I wish I could remember who said it. I'd read it in an article. They were calling... or he or she was calling the data center investment The most overhyped or overpursued investment since the railroad.

So we're talking about something, you know, I guess railroad investment was probably like 1850s. We're talking about nearly 200 years since the last big thing like this. And I don't think railroad investment worked out all that well for a lot of people back then. I think a lot of people said, "We're gonna start a railroad.

We're gonna put some tracks on the ground." I think that not all people who did railroads ended up profiting. I think a lot of went out of business chasing the dream. Hopefully, that is, is not the case with, with AI. But certainly in the AI case, the backers of these things have plenty of financial strength, and we're not talking about startups here when we're talking about Amazon and Google and Meta and others.

Dianne Crocker: Mm-hmm. 

Manus Clancy: Switching gears here, Dianne, you have been keeping your finger on the pulse Of what is one of the bigger commercial real estate conferences that takes place every year. The CREFC Council has two every year, one in Miami and one in New York. The one in New York finished just yesterday. What are you hearing about it?

Dianne Crocker: I have to say I did not attend, so I have been watching it from the sidelines. But I went to a terrace party that was hosted by Rockport, and it was scheduled around the CREFC conference, so a lot of attendees were there. I have to give a shout-out to a young woman, Abby McPherson. She is a loyal listener to the podcast, Manus.

I met her last fall in Austin at the Commercial Real Estate Women's Network convention because Abby won one of their scholarships. And so she's been listening to our pod since then. She just graduated from the University of Denver, and she relocated to Manhattan, so she's ready to start her career in commercial real estate, and she attended CREFC to network like a boss.

Side note, I love spending time with young professionals. It always gives me great hope for the future. She's way more ambitious and outgoing than, than I was at her age. But Abby just sent me a summary of the CREFC conference session. So two things I wanted to share from Abby's takeaways are that the market's early year optimism has cooled but not disappeared.

Inflation concerns, tighter spreads, geopolitical uncertainty are back in the conversation, and they're shaping how lenders think about risk and pricing and refis. And the second is that still capital is available. The market is more selective, but it's not closed, and lenders are competing aggressively for the right opportunities.

Spreads are tightening, and borrowers are looking for higher leverage solutions to close refi gaps and protect their equity. So thank you to Abby McPherson for that. And I think it's a nice segue, Manus, to our Data Dive, which is that our May CRE Activity Index is about to go live this afternoon. So I have the final numbers here to share, and I wanna hear your feedback.

The May index slipped only modestly in May to one hundred and twenty-six point six. That's down from April's one twenty-seven point five. So I'd say that's a small dip in a month that had plenty of reasons for activity to pull back. It was the fifth consecutive month of triple-digit readings and the second straight month above one twenty-five, which is a level that the index hadn't reached since May twenty twenty-two.

So what do you think, Manus? 

Manus Clancy: Well, first of all, I think that the summary of CREFC was really spot on. Thank you for sharing that. Certainly well-written, and I think it tethers very closely to the way you and I feel, that the market is soldiering through. Yeah. It sounds like people at CREFC are seeing things the way you and I do.

I have to say, I am incredibly encouraged by that May activity index number. Not super surprised that we're continuing to soldier through as an industry, but I would have expected a little bit more of a downturn, maybe three or four or five points. I wasn't expecting the rug to be pulled out from under us.

I wasn't expecting a one oh five number. But the fact that it was essentially unchanged month over month now a full three months into the war in Iran and a full three months since oil has jumped by between twenty-five and fifty percent Is remarkably encouraging, and it just sets us up well right now.

If we can ever get the war over, imagine what kind of activity we'll see in the second half. 

Dianne Crocker: That's true. And you just reminded me of something else I wanted to mention, which is that for any listeners who have been here before, you know that the index is rooted in three different measures of CRE momentum.

There's environmental due diligence, there's lenders' demand for appraisals, and there's the volume of property listings that are coming onto the LightBox live platform. And the performance in May relative to April was not even across those three. So the environmental due diligence component went up six percent over April, while appraisal awards and property listings each went down by three percent.

And that was pretty consistent in terms of the pattern of, of recent months too. Property listings are still strong, due diligence is strong, and, and they're offsetting slightly softer appraisal demand. So I do think June will be very telling. You know, Manus, you and I have said before that if the war ends by mid-year, it would position CRE for a strong second half.

But that's starting to feel less and less likely because we're almost mid-June now, and an agreement to end the conflict is still so elusive. 

Manus Clancy: You're right, Dianne. This continues to just kind of endure in not a positive way, these geopolitical events, whether it's in Lebanon or Israel or Iran, even the Ukraine, it just continues to be the war that never ends.

But I will finish this particular segment with one observation, and that is, now that we've seen three full months of data since the war began, you can no longer say that we're getting the benefit of things that were already in the pipeline before the war started. You might have made that argument in March that deals were too far along to pull the plug on, maybe even in early April.

But by the time you're getting to May, you're talking about deals that were circled after the war began, and that's the most encouraging thing for me of all, that all these deals that closed last month closed, or the listings that were made or the appraisals that were ordered were done with full knowledge that oil was already above ninety dollars a barrel.

And that's, that's very, very, uh, encouraging to me. And even though the appraisals dipped, I think that that's probably our best measure of economic forward-looking activity. A three percent downdrift in a period like this is a win 

Dianne Crocker: Mm-hmm. For 

Manus Clancy: me. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, I agree. And I think the feedback from CREFC gives me hope that, that Junes might at least sustain that level.

You know, obviously barring anything unforeseen and dramatic, I expect the June number will probably stay kind of in the same ballpark. All right, let's do Did You Know because I know we have some, uh, deal headlines to cover too. So for Did You Know, we took, um, kind of a fun turn here compared to what we typically cover, and we wanna give listeners kind of a view into a day in the life at LightBox.

So thanks to Kathleen Lavallee who gave us this week's Did You Know. She looked at the average number of environmental due diligence orders, so the activities behind phase one ESAs that are made on an average business day in LightBox's platform. So in 2025, it was an average of 662 environmental due diligence orders per business day, and year to date in May, that went up to 695 per business day.

What do you think of that, Manus? 

Manus Clancy: Well, kudos to our marketing team for coming up with the idea that we should start looking at metrics. I come up with the image, you've probably seen them over and over again over time, where they'll show an aerial vision of a city time lapse, and you'll see all the cars moving and the lights going and all the activity that's taking place maybe as cars go through Chicago or down the West Side Highway or the FDR in New York.

They'll have that time lapse image, and you can just get a sense of how many cars are passing through these, these major arteries. And I would love to find a way to do the same thing with the LightBox piping. Over the next couple weeks, we're gonna do this day in the life type analysis, which how much is happening at LightBox on a given day on your average Tuesday during June.

And you just said almost 700 environmental due diligence reports are ordered on an average day at LightBox flowing through our piping. We're gonna try to produce similar numbers for our zoning reports, the sales transactions we follow, the appraisals that are ordered, all of the listings that are done through our RCM And Revere affiliates.

And I think that if we could somehow come up with an AI view of this which made it look like things running through a pipe in a city like traffic, I think people would be blown away at just how much information is going on our information highways day after day after day. 

Dianne Crocker: I love that. I love that visual.

So stay tuned, we'll share more metrics in, uh, the coming weeks. But let's move, Manus, to some of the headlines on deals that caught your eye this week. Where do you wanna start? 

Manus Clancy: Well, I'm gonna start with a somewhat unique one, something we've never talked about before. This is my weekly curveball that I throw to Dianne.

For those that wanna know the inside baseball, we, we kinda throw some notes together, we put 'em in a Word document, we do our best to capture some of the headlines, but most of this that you hear is organic. We're not sitting here reading a script and so forth. And something will run across my wire maybe 10 minutes before we start that, that just piques my interest, maybe for no other reason than it's different.

And the one I saw today was a $1.2 billion sale in South Carolina Where it's expected that a rare earth mineral plant will be developed. You know, we've heard a lot about data centers, which we didn't hear much about two or three years ago. Five years ago, it was all about life science centers. Before that, it was all about logistics centers.

This is the first time I'm hearing a rare earth plant being developed somewhere, and I'm shocked by the price tag that was paid for this particular asset, $1.2 billion in South Carolina. 

Dianne Crocker: I did see that headline. I have to confess, I didn't read the whole story, but $1.2 billion is a huge price tag. I never heard anything about rare earth metals and manufacturing, but it turns out the plant will produce permanent magnets and refined rare earth metals that are used in industries like defense, like aerospace, like semiconductors, and of course, AI is there.

So sounds like this is a pretty major manufacturing win for South Carolina. 

Manus Clancy: Well, listeners know that I spend most of my year in South Carolina. This particular investment won't be too far from where I live. It's not right next door, but it's within probably 45 minutes or an hour. I have to say, South Carolina does a terrific job inviting companies in.

It's a very friendly business climate, and I think that this underscores that. I think it's really important, too, because the administration, the Trump administration, has talked over and over again about how rare minerals short we are as a nation, that we need to invest in this particular asset, and this sounds like a, a great new development.

490 new jobs coming to Cherokee County in South Carolina. 

Dianne Crocker: It's not too shabby, Manus. You might be sitting in more traffic than you're used to if this trend continues. 

Manus Clancy: Well, maybe I'll start mining my backyard. You know, if these rare minerals are as rare and sought after in the backyard, you might see me with a hoe and one of those old...

What do they call those things that the guys used in California, where they would shake the thing and... A sifter. You might have seen me with a sifter in my backyard. I don't know if I could identify a rare mineral with the naked eye, but hey, look, if there's, if there's gold in my backyard, I'm gonna at least take my shot.

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, you could be sitting on a gold mine there and not even know it. 

Manus Clancy: There we go. 

Dianne Crocker: All right, Manus, let's move over to industrial. What do you have on that front? 

Manus Clancy: Well, we saw several big transactions this week, which Underscores the point that we've made for many, many years, and that is that the industrial rally never seems to peter out, even though we hear about rental weaknesses or leveling off in places like the Inland Empire in Southern California or in South Florida.

Nothing ever seems to throw cold water on this particular rally, and this was another week of, of nice headlines. The first one, BKM and Kayne Anderson paying one point eight billion for eight point five million square feet for a light industrial portfolio. Again, y- you see things like this all the time, big portfolios changing hands for high nine digits, 10 digits, and this is just the latest example of that.

Another one we saw this week, this was said to be the largest single property industrial sale in the Chicago market since twenty-twenty-one. Reporting here from Matt Preston of Commercial Search, Realty Income paid a hundred and twenty-four million to acquire a nine hundred thousand square foot warehouse in University Park, Illinois.

That's about thirty-five miles south of Chicago. One last one, two Waukegan industrial properties sold for forty-seven million. John Schreiber's Centaur Capital bought the buildings from Venture One Real Estate. So again, an upper Midwest sale that caught our eye. 

Dianne Crocker: Those are great. You know, and the, the Link Logistics one, you know, one point eight billion dollars that went over to BKM Capital Partners and Kayne Anderson is huge.

You know, and that portfolio, I think I read, was ninety percent leased. There's an investor writing a, a big check for industrial when the rent roll, when the location, when the tenant mix are compelling. And, you know, as Blackstone's logistics platform, Link Logistics, they're recycling capital out of stabilized assets or non-core assets, and this is just the latest news in that strategy as they then use that capital and reposition into other opportunities.

But one point eight billion is a pretty, pretty high price tag for an industrial portfolio. 

Manus Clancy: That's a, a perfect segue to another similar, let's call it adjacency in the industrial space. I'll take us to the, the office Segment. This one caught my attention this week. It's because of an industrial player moving out of their comfort zone and moving into the office space.

The headline here, LXP Industrial Trust, that repurchased the former University of Phoenix headquarters in Phoenix, of course, for $103 million. The interesting thing here, LXP, known as its name would suggest for investing in industrial spaces, moving outside of its comfort zone. Here acquiring a former office campus, uh, it was used by a private university.

It paid 103 million, which is a 44% markdown from the 183 million that the property last traded for in 2015. The seller in this case, Epic Apollo. The deal works out to about 164 bucks a square foot. The problems there really come down to the tenant. University of Phoenix once was the sole tenant occupying the entire property.

Now they've paired that space to just 80,000 square feet, leaving a big, big hole, and that contributed to the, the huge decline in value. Reporting there again, uh, mentioning him twice in one week, Matt Preston of Commercial Search. 

Dianne Crocker: 44% markdown is, uh, it's pretty significant. So yeah, that's part of the, the theme of many of our stories these days is the repricing that's happening in that space.

Manus Clancy: Well, there's probably people out there that might say, "I would die for only a 44% discount." We've seen a lot of these distressed sellers that have to sell their properties in Portland or Chicago or San Francisco for 70 or 80 or 90% off. So there might be some people out there that say, "If I can get a 56% bid on my property, I would take it in a heartbeat."

So dare we say 44% discount is the new flat? 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah. Very true. Perspective matters, right? 

Manus Clancy: So I do wanna turn to one last story on the headlines. This one, it fits my basically standard of, of trying to pick out a story every week that just highlights votes of confidence and leaps of faith in the market that is so critical to commercial real estate.

Behind every building you see in any city or in any suburb or in any small town, uh, across America, somebody looked at a vacant piece of land one day and said, "That would be perfect for a CVS or a shopping mall or a 44-story tower." Or a mixed use community. So it, it's part of the American fabric that there was somebody with a dollar and a dream that said, "I'm going to develop something big and useful and profitable on this particular parcel of land."

And we could probably write a book of 10,000 pages of the Aesop's Fables stories of people that have made their way in the world in commercial real estate, and they would be so interesting and so worthy of telling. And that's what-- that's, that's who I am. I love these stories and I love the people that are confident enough to take that next step.

So I'll close with this in, in our stories. This one takes us back to Chicago. It's near the United Center, which is where the Bulls and the Blackhawks play the NBA and the NHL teams. The Rynedorf and the Wirtz families, two big sports owners' families, plan to break ground on a project known as The 1901.

It is a $7 billion project where they hope to bring 9,500 apartments plus hotels, entertainment, and more to Chicago's near West Side. So maybe this will become the next Aesop's Fable, although in this case, those families have already had their, their moment in the sun and, and have acquired great wealth.

But again, they're taking a big risk here, and risk is part of the CRE equation. 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, exactly. I love that story, especially because we were talking just a few weeks ago about the momentum that Chicago was seeing or broader Midwest markets in particular. I know that was a topic that you covered on the PropMoto Multifamily webinar that you did as well.

And by the way, I love the idea of you writing an Aesop's Fable type commercial real estate book. Maybe that's a good retirement project for you. Just don't, don't retire anytime soon. 

Manus Clancy: Love it. So it's time to pivot to our slice of life. Dianne, I will tee you up for this one. We started the podcast talking about the Knicks My heart was probably racing at a level that is dangerous for a person my age last night, but it was a thrill, and it was a thrill to be able to watch it with my, my youngest son.

It'll be something we never forget. I wanted to start with you and ask what was your favorite all-time sports watching moment? It could be anything from a professional team to even maybe one of your children playing T-ball back in the day. You must have one memory that crops up in your head all the time where you said, "Wow, that was a great day."

Dianne Crocker: Well, I'm not gonna go back too far because I love to watch horse racing. It started when I was going to school in Baltimore and we would go to the, um, we would go to the big horse race around Memorial Day weekend, uh, in Baltimore. I love betting on the ponies, and I was like absolutely blown away this year by Golden Tempo winning the Kentucky Derby with twenty-three to one odds.

It was the first time that a female trainer won, and if you haven't watched this race, you really should because this horse was close to dead last and then just covered so much ground and took everybody by storm. The commentators weren't even talking about this horse, and then he did it again in the Belmont Stakes.

And the odds weren't quite as high based on his previous winning, but it was just really, really phenomenal to watch. I loved it. How about you, Manus? I know you have a good story here. 

Manus Clancy: Well, for me, any time I saw one of my kids do something successful, score their first goal in seven-year-old soccer or score their first hockey goal or make a hoop in basketball, right?

None of us were going to the NBA. None of the Clancys were in the-- I'm never sure there has even been a Clancy in the NBA for that matter. So, you know, it was always just appreciating the moment for what it was. So certainly at a, at a personal level, that was it At a professional level, probably 10 I could, I could rattle off, but I'll start, I'll, I'll go with one.

There's a famous Ranger game at which the announcer at the end of the game screamed, "Matteau, Matteau, Matteau", and the Rangers moved on to the Stanley Cup finals in 1994. I was blessed to go to that game, uh, with a friend of mine, and I would say on that night when the game ended in double overtime in 1994, that my heart was probably going about 300 beats a minute.

Dianne Crocker: That's funny. Somebody I know who was watching the Knicks game last night said that her husband almost stopped breathing just watching that, like, final play. It took him, like, an hour to recover. 

Manus Clancy: He's probably, he's probably not the only one. I think that there was a pro- a lot of guys reaching for their rescue inhalers- 

Dianne Crocker: Yeah

Manus Clancy: uh, at about 11:30 last night. 

Dianne Crocker: That was unbelievable. I think I've watched that final shot probably 10 times, just like when, uh, UConn got that three-pointer that got them into the final four of the NCAA this year. You just, no matter how many times you watch it, you can't believe it. 

Manus Clancy: It was just great basketball.

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, thank you to our producers at Bruyning Media. Be sure to join us each week as we break down CRE news and data in context. 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