The Brief
- A Texas vote to pause data center approvals turned a building boom into a fight over power and land. Commercial Observer
- Cushman & Wakefield's own Chicago headquarters tower sold at a steep discount, a fresh marker of how far office values have fallen. Bisnow
- A push to free Fannie and Freddie from government control is gaining steam, which could reshape home and apartment lending. GlobeSt.com
Market Snapshot
- 10-Year Treasury
- 4.86%+2 bps
- Benchmark for long-term property loans
- SOFR
- 3.92%-2 bps
- Base rate for floating-rate property loans (as of Nov 5)
- Real estate stocks (VNQ)
- $95.73-0.5%
- A fund holding about 150 REITs
Rates as of Nov 6 close. Full market data
Week in Review
Texas holds roughly a quarter of planned U.S. data center capacity. Its voters just elected a governor who promised to pause data center approvals, making power, water and land the industry's new battleground, reports Commercial Observer.
An affiliate of Prime Finance, in a joint venture with Hines, bought Cushman & Wakefield's 31-story global headquarters at 225 W. Wacker Drive in Chicago at a 45% discount, per Bisnow.
Democrats won Congress on Tuesday, and a voter backlash against data centers showed up at the ballot box. The results touch everything from power siting to housing costs, according to Bisnow.
Momentum is building after the election to end the conservatorship of mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie, a shift that would change how home and apartment loans are funded, writes GlobeSt.com.
Brookfield agreed to a $5.2 billion REIT acquisition that expands its industrial holdings across the Midwest and Sun Belt, notes GlobeSt.com.
Market Spotlight
Data centers ran through the week's biggest stories, and the theme was supply, not demand. Data centers are the warehouses full of servers that run cloud computing and AI, and they need enormous amounts of power, water and land. Texas holds roughly a quarter of planned U.S. capacity. When its voters elected a governor who promised to pause approvals, the question flipped to who actually gets to build, reports Commercial Observer. That backlash showed up nationally too, as Tuesday's results put local power and land fights front and center, per Bisnow. Developers and the utilities serving them lose when permits stall. Communities worried about strained grids and water gain leverage. For investors, a project that cannot secure power or approval is a stranded bet, which is why a political shift can reprice this corner of real estate fast.
AI in Real Estate Weekly
Blackstone's investment committee now sees two memos on most deals. One comes from the deal team. The other comes from a model trained on more than 14 years of the firm's internal deal memos. The tool, built with Dealpath, surfaces patterns a human might miss, giving large investors a second read before they buy, reports Commercial Observer. AI firms themselves are also driving office demand, leasing space as they grow, though JLL says the bubble risk looks limited for now, per Institutional Real Estate, Inc.. The other side of that trade showed Thursday, when a tech stock selloff raised questions about whether AI-linked properties could get hit, notes Commercial Observer.
The Numbers
Every number is filled in automatically from public data.
Rates
- 10-Year TreasuryBenchmark for long-term property loans
- 4.86%+2 bps
- 5-Year TreasuryBenchmark for many 5-year commercial mortgages
- 4.64%+5 bps
- 2-Year TreasuryTracks where the Fed is expected to set rates
- 4.51%+5 bps
- 10Y-2Y curveNegative = short-term rates above long-term, often a slowdown signal
- 35 bps-3 bps
- SOFRBase rate for floating-rate property loans (as of Nov 5)
- 3.92%-2 bps
- Fed FundsThe Fed's target for overnight bank lending; other rates key off it
- 3.75% to 4.00%0 bps
- 30-Year Mortgage30-year home mortgage rate (Freddie Mac); a housing-demand gauge, not a CRE loan rate (as of Nov 5)
- 7.18%-6 bps
Rates as of Nov 6 close.
Federal Reserve
- FOMC: next Fed meetingWhen the Fed next decides on rates
- Dec 9
- Odds of a cutChance rates go down. Prediction-market odds from Polymarket traders
- 1.3%
- Odds of a holdChance rates stay the same
- 21.5%
- Odds of a hikeChance rates go up
- 77.2%
Kalshi: hold 23.6%
REITs
- Real estate stocks (VNQ)A fund holding about 150 REITs
- $95.73-0.5%
- Biggest gain todayOwns data centers
- Equinix (EQIX)+1.5%
- Biggest drop todayOwns West Coast offices and studios
- Hudson Pacific Properties (HPP)-3.1%
- REIT dividend yieldYearly income per $100 invested in VNQ
- 3.63%
- REIT yield vs. 10-Year TreasuryBelow zero: Treasuries out-yield REIT dividends, so REITs look pricey vs. bonds
- -123 bps
Term of the Day
IRR (internal rate of return)
The yearly return on an investment that accounts for when each dollar comes in or goes out. Getting cash back sooner raises it. If you put in 100 and collect 110 a year later, your IRR is about 10%. Investors use it to compare deals with different timelines.
Data Room
Slower-moving credit data. Rows marked Updated changed since the last issue.
- High-yield spread (Nov 5) UpdatedExtra interest risky companies pay over Treasuries; higher = lenders more nervous
- 3.48%+16 bps
- Bank CRE loans (Oct 28)Total commercial property loans banks hold
- $3,155B+0.1%
- Bank CRE delinquency (Q2 2026)Share of banks' commercial property loans that are behind on payments
- 1.53%-3 bps
- CMBS delinquency (Oct 2026) UpdatedShare of commercial property loans in bonds that are behind on payments
- 7.87%-15 bps
Data checks: REIT prices came from a single source today. Treasury yields matched across FRED and Treasury.gov. Fed odds in line with Kalshi.
New issue every morning at creblurb.org.