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Foreign.
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Welcome to the Tripwire Podcast, the show where commercial real estate needs data and insights. This is our Week in Review for the week ending May 1, 2026. I'm Hayley Keene with TREP, a data modeling and analytics firm for the CMBS commercial real Estate and CLO markets. I'm with Lonnie Hendry, Chief Product Officer, and Steven Bushbaum, head of Applied Research and Analytics. This week, the macro backdrop is less about one single data point and more about uncertainty piling up. The Fed held rates steady at its April meeting, which was expected, but the vote was unusually divided. And with markets now looking ahead to a wash led Fed, the bigger question is whether the Fed's communication around inflation and rate cuts may start to shift at the same time, oil and inflation risk are back in focus because of the Middle east conflict, while consumer confidence remains fragile under the surface. Housing is also showing more weakness, with the latest Case Shiller data showing national home price growth slowing to just 0.7% year over year and more than half of major markets posting annual declines. On the commercial real estate side, the picture is still mixed. CBRE's earnings were strong, with data centers and critical infrastructure standing out. We also saw more AI driven real estate demand in San Francisco office leasing, Super Micro, San Jose campus lease, and Oracle's $16 billion Michigan Data center project. On today's episode, we'll also touch on regional bank earnings where credit quality looks stable but lenders remain selective, especially around office. And for this week's 101 segment, we'll explain trimmed mean PCE and why it could matter more if Kevin Marsh puts greater weight on it as Fed Chair. Stephen, when you put all of this together, the Fed transition, inflation risk, housing softness and mixed CRE signals, how are you reading the market this week?
C
Well, at risk of sounding like a broken record, which I feel like we need to change for today's terms, like I think in modern day this would be like if you had a song in Spotify that's stuck in a loop and your mouse doesn't work so you can't click out of it. So at risk of being that looped Spotify song, I think the main theme this week is that Siri is stabilizing in pockets, but the macro backdrop is still not clean enough for the market to fully relax. I mean, there's so, so much strength when you scan this week's Siri headlines, but when you pivot to the macro and geopolitical side, you can't help but wince and wonder, will this disrupt our CRE momentum. So starting with the Fed, the rate hold was expected. The bigger issue is the war transition and whether the Fed starts communicating differently about inflation. That's why we'll talk about trimmed mean PCE today. It's giving a cooler inflation signal than core PCE right now. So if Warsh chooses to emphasize that it could give some more room for rate cuts but but that is a huge massive if so we'll definitely dig into that more on the podcast. But the key question is whether this really lowers all in borrowing costs. I mean if investors do view term to mean PCE as a credible read on underlying inflation, sure that could start supporting some assumptions and helping with underwriting. But there's really the risk that it's viewed as cherry picking as a friendly inflation measure. And this could all actually push up long term yields term premium and could ultimately mean that spreads stay elevated for longer. Now the second theme is pressure on consumer housing. Consumer confidence didn't collapse, but there's definitely caution in the read and I think that's not a surprise to anyone. People are still worried about prices, rates, gas, recession risk and the case Shiller home price reinforced that showing clear fading in momentum and with broadening out and weakness beyond the sun belt. Now in theory we have pretty strong bifurcation which has been the case for gosh weeks, months. CBRE's earnings were strong with that standout growth engine being data centers and critical infrastructure which lines up with what we're seeing across the market. AI has really created so much of the real real estate demand, but it's highly concentrated. Now the good thing is for places like San Francisco they've been a clear standout winner. I mean the office demand there has been on fire. So there's definitely some benefit here, especially when it rolls down to say banks.
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Right?
C
This is great read through to banks because bank earnings have shown that critical is stabilizing provisions look manageable and Siri lending is coming back now, albeit with still some selectivity. Multifamily and industrial continue to attract capital and is what bank leaders have largely been highlighting the most in comments. So basically things are healing but uneven. AI real estate demand and AI related demand in general is really what's driving the economy. Capital's available, but gosh, the outlook looks murkier or cloudier than ever with rates, oil inflation, credibility, long term yield premiums. And to pass it over to you Lonnie, the fact that we've seen rates continued to creep higher all this week and then on Wednesday with the Fed announcement I mean, shoot, they were up seven to ten basis points. We're almost at four and a half percent of the ten year. This doesn't feel all that great, even though the headlines are great.
A
So I would ask you, Stephen, like, what's changed? I mean, I feel like this has been the narrative now for some time. I mean, it's so, you know, I would maybe push back a little on the murkiness. Like, I think this is just the new normal. You know, we use that term a lot coming out of COVID and I think we all kind of got tired of hearing about the new normal. But this is the world we live in now where you look at some of these traditional markers and they're sending mixed signals and the market continues to just move at the way that it's moving. I mean, look, we've seen what happens when the ten year gets close to five. Things really pull back. I would expect that if rates continue to go up, like you're going to see a pullback that's kind of built in at this point, if it's in that 4.344 range. And there's some optimism around origination volumes and transaction volumes, like we've seen coming out of 4Q25 and through 1Q26. I think we just kind of navigate through, like we have. I think for every one of these positive signs that you highlighted, San Francisco office leasing, you know, obviously driven by AI demand, the data center stuff, which we covered in detail last week, you know, those are canceling out some of these, like, negative or kind of like, you know, fringe positions of certain sectors or certain markets or whatever. So for me, I'm probably still a little bit more bullish in sense of. I don't think anything has significantly changed on the macro. Obviously, with the Iran conflict, there's been more uncertainty, but I even hate to use that word because at this point, like, we're navigating an uncertain market. Like, that's just a known known at this point. And, you know, I think for the most part people have learned to just deal with it. I would say from my perspective, the one thing that gives me the most concern is just the consumer. If the consumer starts to pull back, then I think all of these other things compound together and it really does slow things down.
C
And.
A
But to this point, even with some of the sentiment shifting and we've seen, you know, the sentiment over the last couple of months, you know, kind of ebb and flow, I don't think there's going to See, too much of a, of a change. I mean, I, I didn't want to go too deep into the data center stuff because we just talked about that. But I wanted to highlight, I don't know if you saw this week, Kevin o', Leary, you know, from Shark Tank, you know where he's mostly famous from, he actually sold a company before that and made billions. But he, he has a Utah data center project called Stratos, 40,000 acres, up to 9 gigawatts of build out. The entire state of Utah is 4 gigawatt consumption right now. So over 2x. Now the way he's pushing this through is that it's going to be off grid. So it's going to be powered by a natural gas pipeline off the electrical grid. So like when I saw that this week and I started reading into it and getting some of the details, it actually gives me some optimism that some of the things we're concerned about. This is an example of where the discussion we had last week around power and water and some of these things is potentially neutralized at some level because there are some alternative options being considered. This has already gotten like the first phase approval. It's not fully approved. There's a lot of political pushback with local constituents, et cetera, et cetera. But I kind of view that in this context of what you read or walked through in the lead in of, yeah, there's 100 things that are murky and nerve wracking. But on the flip side of it, there's just as many things that I think are innovative, exciting and going to continue to push the CRE landscape and the macro economy towards positive marks.
C
So here's the bear side of me now Trump comes out, makes a comment that the straight of Hormuz is going to be closed for a prolonged period. So buckle up, this is going to be ugly. Now there is one mitigating fact here. You had the UAE pull out of opec. We can talk about that later. But maybe that's going to mitigate some of the oil price impact. But if this really is going to last through the summer, we have now massive rationing that's going to take place across the other half of the world and we haven't yet seen spot and forward prices converge. At some point the US Oil price has to follow global price. So if this all of a sudden increases 50%, which I think is very realistic, very possible, at least for a three month period, that has to unwind fairly quickly to not disrupt the economics of those data centers that are Fully off grid and natural gas driven. So if the economics all of a sudden blow up because we can't really justify increasing the price, we can't pass along that cost to our enterprise and consumer clients, and it causes a broader demand pullback. I mean, the implication that could have for broader AI companies and their valuations. Think like Anthropic and OpenAI wanting to go public. And all of a sudden this week we've had concerns about OpenAI's demand side and you maybe see a rift opening up between the C suite in terms of strategy, planning, timing. I shudder to think what that could actually do to broader risk pricing and market conditions. We're a long way from that happening, but I don't think it's as far away as some people think. I think it's maybe six weeks, potentially. I don't know. We'll see.
A
Yeah, I think that's fair. Something I used to tell my kids when they were little and I used to sneak them either some money or candy or clothes or something is like, if anyone asks how long you've had this, you could tell him you've had it a long time. And with dad, we haven't had it that long. I'm like, well, listen, when it's your birthday, you only, you tell people it's only three more sleeps, but those three more sleeps feel like a very long time. So when Trump says prolonged, you know, it could mean, you know, two and a half weeks, it could mean three days. It just depends on the perspective. Like, I think I'm with you, I listen, they're not going to let the. They're not going to let the global economy blow up over this. Like, I just don't think they have the backbone for that. And hopefully that it doesn't get to that. I do think the stuff with OPEC this week and, you know, them pulling out like that definitely adds some wrinkle. I think the timing of that is very interesting given where we're at with everything else. You know, the stakes are very high. I will, I will concede to that. The stakes are very high. And I think the stuff with Open AI, I mean, they had the Wall Street Journal article this week that talked about them missing both on, you know, new accounts and revenue. And I think, you know, you're starting to maybe see the bifurcation between them and Anthropic in the sense that strategically, OpenAI really went after consumer users and Anthropic has gone much more of the business side and the revenue on the consumer side is just not there to the point that OpenAI is going to switch to like an ad selling strategy and other things. But now you're right back into competing with Google and others that have like really mastered this. Like, it's just, it's, it's strategic error after, you know, strategic error. So, yeah, I'm not, I'm not suggesting that the clouds have parted and the sun is shining and everything is perfect, but I, I think, you know, in every presentation, webinar, whatever that we do, Stephen, the one thing that you and I come back to almost every time is just how resilient the market has been. And I just tend to believe, you know, given what we've seen transpire in the last five or six years, that while these things historically would be enough to just tank the market, any one of them in the new paradigm that we live in, this is just accepted. And like the, the path forward, I would contend, is always going to be murky and it's always going to be uncertain because I don't suspect you're going to get to a point where there's less things globally happening that are, you know, neutral or negatively slanted. I think that we're, we're going to see this into perpetuity.
C
Yeah. I mean, I think it's hard to really appreciate just how dramatically different the world of equities trading is and what that means for our perception of risk and pricing and risk markets. You go back to the gfc, yeah, we still had a very large percentage of equities trading that was happening algorithmically, but now it's like double, triple. I mean, I think it was like 40% going to get the numbers totally wrong, but it was like 40 to 60% back in 07 to 12 or something like that. Now it's like 99% of volume, something ridiculous like that. And so when Covid hit, like if this was still like the early days of algorithmic trading, you probably would have had a much deeper and much more prolonged reaction. But with algorithmic pricing logic in there, the buy the dip, buy the risk mentality is just overwhelming. In a way. It's a very great backstop to have. But at the same time, when you do have one of those tail events, like an unwinding of basically energy pricing into the AI trade, hopefully it doesn't cause a broader unwinding of compounded trades that could disrupt markets in a measurable way. And heck, we won't know until it happens.
A
Yeah. You know, one thing that maybe gives me some of my positive spin this week I'm sure you saw this, but remax is being sold to the real brokerage firm. This was a story in the Journal this week. You know, the real brokerage is primarily a tech focused brokerage firm and they agreed to buy ReMax in a deal that's valued around 550 million. And what's interesting here is you're starting to see this. We talked about Compass acquiring anywhere real estate probably six, eight weeks ago when that deal finally commenced. You have Rocket buying Redfin and now you see this additional acquisition strategy where you're building a much bigger brokerage. It just highlights for me that there's a shift, things are coming together and creating synergistic opportunities for some of these firms that have scale but maybe don't have technical expertise, marrying up with firms that have a lot of tech enablement, but maybe don't have the initial scale. And so to me, you know, that's, that's not a two point whatever billion dollar deal we saw with like Blue Al last week, but 550 million for, you know, a traditional real estate brokerage firm is nothing to sneeze at.
C
Yeah, I mean, I've actually used real and I got to say, like, really good outcome from the consumer side. There's a lot that you just don't want to deal with. You don't want to have to talk about when you're buying or selling a home. And they've solved some of those frustrations. So good for them. I mean, this is, this is great thing to see when you have somebody lower on the ladder that's looking to just kind of really compound what they've done well and take it up to the top. So excited to see what, what this means because the consolidation has been long overdue in this sector.
A
Yeah. So this, this combined company is going to have about 180,000 agents. There's about 80,000 in the US and you know what's interesting is they plan on operating both brands into the future, so they'll still maintain a remax and a Real brand into the marketplace. So again, it's a nice fit, it's a pretty good price and I think it just shows that people are still, you know, even on the residential side, you know, where things have cooled, there's still an appetite for, you know, long term viability with some tech enhancement for some of these players.
C
Speaking of cooling, we got a read on home prices from the S and P totality case Shiller hpi. I don't know when that rebrand happened. I feel like I haven't, you know, mentioned totality, even though I have heard about their kind of rebrand out there. So anyway, interesting to try and squeeze one more word in here to the brand so Home price growth continued to slow in February 26th, and the S&P totality case Shiller HPI was up 0.7% year over year, which is a cooling from 0.8% in January. Now the slowdown broadened geographically. More than half of the major metro markets posted annual price declines, suggesting that weakness is no longer just the Sun Belt story. Denver became the weakest market with prices down 2.2% year over year, followed by Tampa at minus 2.1, Seattle at minus 2, Phoenix at minus 1.8, Dallas at minus 1.7 and Los Angeles at minus 0.8 and Washington D.C. at down 1.10 of a percent. Market leadership remains concentrated in Midwest and Northeast. Chicago led the 20 city index with a 5% annual growth rate, followed by New York at 4.7 and Cleveland at 4.2%. Now here's where it gets to be an interesting twist. Real home price returns are negative. CPI inflation ran 1.7 percentage points above national home price growth, marking the ninth consecutive month in which inflation outpaced home price appreciation. So we've been in negative price territory now for a while. Monthly data showed only modest seasonal strength. National index rose 0.3% before seasonal adjustment, but only 0.1% after that seasonal adjustment, while the 20 city composite slipped slightly. So the takeaway, the final read the housing market is not like we have a crash here. It's just clear momentum fading, elevated mortgage rates near 6%. Honestly, we're probably closer to six and a half. Six and three quarters now is clearly weighing on affordability and transaction activity. And the story is increasingly local with Midwest and Northeast resiliency and strength and weakness spread across the Sun Belt, Mountain West, Pacific Northwest and even parts of coastal gateway markets.
A
Yeah, I don't think there's really anything new here other than maybe the naming convention of the Case Shiller, which unfortunately it's always going to be known as just the Case Shiller for those of us that have been in the business a while. But I'm glad that they're trying to get it rebranded. That's good. Look, I'm not surprised by anything that you walked us through there. I mean, I think we've covered this at least anecdotally in terms of what we're seeing across the landscape. And you know, listen, mortgage rates are not forgiving at this point in time and Property taxes are up, insurance is up, you know, cost of home ownership is up. And you couple that with historically high valuations coming off of the early 2021, 22 market cycle. And it's just a real struggle. And some of these Sunbelt markets that saw proliferation of people moving there and so they started running new construction and building houses like crazy now just have, they have too much supply and not enough buyers and prices come down. So I think this will continue. I don't think this is something that, you know, gets fixed. I mean, the good thing here, and I like the way you framed it, is like there's not a crisis, it's just, it's going to be this like prolonged cooling period where you're probably not going to see that realized price appreciation that people have grown accustomed to seeing. And quite honestly, it's okay. Like that's how the market is supposed to work. The objective for a lot of people that want to live in a top tier city, they actually maybe have some opportunity to buy a house at a little bit lesser price if these trends continue and live in a city with good wages and you know, in the next 10 or 15 years have some equity built in. But yeah, it's, it's, it's going to be a tough, it's a tough road for some of these markets with people that are locked in to really high prices and they didn't put a bunch of money down and they're, they're kind of trapped where they are because the demand side's not helping.
C
Yeah, I mean, couple that with a good amount of Sunbelt supply add. And in the background we also still have that new law or hasn't yet become law proposed to acts built to rent. So you've seen, I think some news stories about these build to rent neighborhoods basically being put on pause or killed altogether, which is really not great for some, some markets, you know, at the end of the day that could actually mean less supply is getting built in. Some of these markets that needed it. At the same time, with this sort of price cooling, I look at it and say, well, you know, maybe this is okay. You know, in general, not the best way, not the best outcome we could hope for, but it's, it's still an okay outcome. Not overly positive, not negative, but certainly not good for the build to rent companies.
A
Yeah, what I'd like to see, and I don't know that we actually have anyone that does this, but have someone do a comparison in real dollars. What do you get in Dallas today, price wise versus five years ago. Because I think the, the underlying theme here is if you were a homeowner five years ago, you're still sitting really in a good spot. Even if their market has cooled, home prices are still way higher now than they were five years ago. So I mean, like, it's just, there's two sides of the equation. It's for the folks that haven't bought, this is, this is still tough and like seeing a little bit of cooling is not going to make homeownership any more attainable and, or exciting for them because they're priced out. But if you, if you bought and you own something and you've been the benefactor of this rapid increase in price, a little bit of a pullback doesn't negatively impact you because you're reaping the benefit already of significant equity gain from previous ownership. It's the folks that bought in like 20, 22 or 23 at the top that are really in a pickle because I think for a lot of these people that don't own, you know, we've covered many markets where rental rates have come down. And so from an affordability perspective, there are some options for them as non owners. And for people that have owned houses for 10 years or so, I think they're in a tough place to complain because they've benefited from the increased equity that's happened because of price inflation.
C
Now since I did mention it, just really briefly, we don't have to get into the nitty gritty details. I just wanted to provide a little bit more detail on UAE's OPEC exit. So this week the UAE said it will leave opec, an OPEC which is really a major blow to the cartel because The UAE is OPEC's third largest producer and one of the few members with meaningful spare capacity. So the move comes amid severe Middle east oil market disruption, including the war in Iran and the closure of Strait of Hormuz, which has limited OPEC's ability to manage the market during a major supply shock. So the UAE has more flexibility than many of its Gulf producers because it can actually route more than half of its oil exports across the country, partially bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. And so leaving OPEC will give it more freedom to expand production and invest in export infrastructure. So for oil markets, the key issue is spare capacity and discipline. The uae has roughly 4.8 million barrels per day of production capacity, but is limited to about 3.4 million barrels per day under OPEC quotas. So outside the group, it has both the incentive and the ability to raise output. So as I mentioned earlier, maybe, maybe some of this dramatic price increase that we could see if we do get to the point of severe rationing across Asia, Middle East, UK markets, maybe this helps blunt some of it. Though I gotta say it's really difficult to get a read on that because it's not clear to me from this article and from reading exactly how quick we can get that capacity, you know, out the door and ultimately to where it needs to go.
A
I think it makes for an interesting talking point at this point in the cycle at least it, it provides some optionality and I think for them to your point, you know, they both now have the incentive and the capacity to increase supply and you know, they've decided to take that opportunity and this is going to send some, some big waves. They'll have some ripple effects here. OPEC has been together and pretty much impenetrable for some time and to have them decide to walk away given the current market climate, it's a very interesting move on their part. So I'm with you. I don't know what this actually means this week, next month, next quarter, but I think it's an interesting, it's an intriguing story.
B
So let's go back to some of the news from the week and talk more specifically about today's FOMC meeting and the wash transition in general. And then I know later Steven, we want to get into why trimmed mean PCE is now getting attention.
C
Yeah, I gotta say for FOMC meeting that was largely expected to be a snoozer. This had more like drama intention to it than I expected. I mean I was like eh, maybe I'll listen to the press conference, maybe there'll be some interesting stuff in here. But, but it had some tension right off the bat just looking at the committee vote. So yes, the Fed held rates steady 3 1/2 to 3/4 of percents widely expected. But the vote was divided 8 to 4 and this is the largest number of dissents since 1992. Now importantly three of these four dissents supported holding rates but they objected to the language suggesting a near term easing bias. So in other words, these three members wanted to basically retain optionality to either cut rates or raise them. And so that was a very interesting twist, especially given the timing since we're transitioning to a war Fed. But then Powell stepping down, but not stepping down. Well he is stepping down but he's going to stay on as Fed governor which is a Fed governor which is very rare. You don't usually see this. And he attacked this right off the bat in the press conference when he announced that it was a very smooth, calm, cool note, yes, I'll be staying on, and blah, blah, blah. But then, of course, the first person to press to ask a question has to go after that. And he just didn't miss a beat, went right into the explanation and basically said, this legal attack we've had on the Fed really leaves me no choice. In other words, if you hadn't come after me so hard, I wouldn't be concerned about Fed independence. I probably would have gone quietly away and retired. But given that you tried to do something that had no precedent, I'm going to stay on. Which keep in mind, this also means that Trump now doesn't get to elect somebody that could potentially also raise question about Fed independence. Now, Powell was very, very blunt here. He said, like, this has nothing to do with it politically on that front. It's really just to do with the Justice Department coming after me. I was like, okay, I'm glad he made that clarification. But, wow, this is going to be interesting. Now, he did say, I'm going to be super quiet, low key. I'm not looking to make waves here. I'm here to help support Kevin and do whatever I can. But you also got the sense that he was going to continue toeing the line. Whatever he thought was the right course of action, he hold the line on that. So, yeah, it's going to be interesting here. Now, Kevin Warsh himself, as Haley mentioned that the trimmed mean PCE is something he's talked about. Now, the Fed itself, they look at headline pce, and specifically they look at core pce. But Kevin takes a slightly different approach and says, well, I also like to look at trimmed mean pce, which is just a third measure, a different read. And so we can get into a little bit of that 101. What is trimmed mean PCE in just a second. But curious to get your read on this, Lonnie. Like, did you have the same feeling of, like, tension, drama, or. I don't know any different? Reid?
A
No, I mean, I think you hit it on the head. I mean, and honestly, I think anyone that was expecting anything different was just mistaken. Like, and I like that Powell said, this is not political. But look, this is like political theater, man. This is textbook. He's been trying to get forced out. Trump's come after him with every opportunity. They tried suing him. They made a fool of him. They've made him age 20 years in the last 12 months, like all this stuff has played out and now he's just kind of like slipping a jab in at the end. He's like, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm gonna hang around. And, you know, I don't care if you pretend that you're gonna be quiet and you don't, you say you're gonna just, you know, stick to your morals and you think is right or whatever. Just being in the room adds tension. And listen, it's gonna be, it's going to be very interesting because there are going to be people that are loyal or, you know, maybe not loyal is the right word, but they're going to be predisposed to generally align with Powell because they have for a very long time in terms of how they vote. And then you have this other half that's, you know, going to be, you know, looking to make waves and kind of like do what they think the administration wants them to do. And then you have the data that's like somewhere in the middle. And, you know, I think it's interesting that they're bringing up trimmed mean PCE now. Like, all of these things are just wrinkles to what should be a benign process, independent, apolitical. And now it's, it's really setting itself up for some really interesting dynamics. And, you know, I remember when we had a vote, you know, a couple of meetings ago, where there were just two dissenters, and that raised some eyebrows. And now you have, you know, an 8 to 4 vote and you have the news about Powell. So I, I would just recommend people get their popcorn ready because I think this is going to be, you know, taking the show on the road for a while every time they meet until, you know, one of them gives. If they can make up and Trump and Powell can find some, you know, common ground after he steps down as chair, then I think maybe this fades away. But as long as they still have beef and he's still around, I don't see how this doesn't create some intrigue for everybody.
C
So let's get into what this new measure of inflation is. Because Kevin Warsh has come out and touted it as a reliable or a meaningful measure of inflation that gives a slightly different read and maybe in theory could support the argument for cutting rates. Now, to be clear here, no one knows if Kevin Warsh is going to be dovish or hawkish and exactly how credible the trimmed mean PCE will go over as being an argument if we do go down that path of cutting rates. So headline PCE is The full consumer spending basket and technically remains the Fed's official 2% target measure. Core PCE removes food and energy every month. Those are the more volatile categories. So if we strip out the volatile food and energy and look only at that core basket, that gives us a slightly more stable read on price inflation. So trimmed mean pce, instead of removing categories, it removes the biggest price increases and decreases each month and then averages the middle of that distribution. So to be clear here, core PCE filters inflation by category. It removes food and energy, measures everything else versus trimmed mean pce, which filters inflation by the size of price moves, which can make it a useful way to separate broad inflation pressure from one off price spikes. So what are the numbers telling us right now? Well, trimmed mean PCE is actually giving us a noteworthy cooler signal. So for the 12 months ending in February, we're putting out a blog on this. The trimmed mean PCE was at 2.3% versus 2.8% for headline inflation and 3% for core PCE. Now, interestingly, if you look at a six month annualized basis, which you could argue is more relevant because instead of looking at the full year, maybe the last six month time period gives us a better read on trajectory. So on a six month annualized basis, trimmed mean PCE is exactly at 2% versus 3.4% for both headline and core PCE. I don't know, Lonnie. To me this feels maybe a little bit like cherry picking, does it not?
A
Okay, you're going to say it in the professional, polite way. I mean, come on, man. I mean, like, look, they want a 2% target. This is kind of like erasing some variables, adding in some canceling factors to the equation to like get to where they need to go. Like that's what this is. Like this is, this is politics at play. Okay, let's come up with a new measure. We're going to. We're going to look at the trimmed mean pce, which takes all the stuff that's high and low and gets us to a mean which happens to be right around 2%. Look, I don't know enough about this specifically to know if this is a credible measure relative to the stuff that's been in play. I think that again, the timing on this is just incredibly interesting, you know, I mean, like, we know what the administration's push is. We know that they want rates lower. We know that they want to see activity pick up. It doesn't shock me that they've now come up with some sort of support for a methodology that kind of gets to those results and so it'll be interesting to see. I think it's one thing to talk about it, it's one thing to kind of highlight it as something that you, you know, think this is, you know, viable. It's another thing to take action based on that. And we're not quite there yet. But I, I mean this goes back to my popcorn comment like this is, this is just another example of, I think the political theater being played out real time.
C
Now in fairness of this measure, we all know this inflation data, it's backward looking and if you wait too long for your preferred metric to hit target before you cut, in theory you've waited too long and maybe this is where you end up going off the cliff or suffering more negative economic consequences of delay. So in theory, if this is a good measure to calibrate your rate cut timing, then in theory this is giving you a more accurate read on general trajectory and avoids potentially some of that noise that would delay your rate cut decision. That's a big if though. So the flip side is if we are cherry picking then what that means is we're going to have higher term premiums, wider credit spreads and less capital availability. Right. If this ultimately is a cherry picking exercise. So really interested to see how this gets woven into the discussion, the narrative, the press conference. Because keep in mind, we didn't used to have press conferences every meeting. The Fed used to have press conferences just every quarter when the SEP was released. And so Powell was the one who really made that change and brought us to an every meeting press conference timeframe. So it's basically more frequent, more detailed discussion and transparency on their decisions which I think is appropriate in a higher frequency world so we don't have to wait to get a read through on exactly what Kevin's mindset is. I mean he'll be in the hot seat day one.
A
Yeah, I agree with that. And look, I was joking a little at saying that this is them cherry picking because I've been a critic of saying the standard measures leave a lot to be desired in today's world. I mean, I think all of this should be questioned at some level of does this actually adequately capture where we are and we have a lot more real time data and technology and other things available where you think we could get a more real time read of where inflation Is, inflation at 3% or whatever they're saying now, you know, it just doesn't line up with reality. And so I, I'm a supporter of us finding some sort of blended or weighted or some other approach to trying to find what gets us to the best outcome. I just think the timing here, given what we know about the administration, is just kind of interesting because it's, it fits the narrative. But listen, we'll see what happens. And you know, I do like the every meeting press conference because I think in times of disruption or when the Fed was taking aggressive action, it's really good to get some better insight into what's driving the vote beyond just waiting for a quarterly update. I mean, I think this information should be disseminated as frequently as possible so that people have comfort. You may not like the result, you may not like the action, but if you at least can understand how or why the decision was made, it's a little bit easier for you to understand, you know, what the thought track is or talk track is. And so supporter of the transparency. Hope we see that continue. Keep my eyes open on what's going to happen. I think this is, this is going to be a mild meeting relative to what we might see over the next couple of meetings.
B
So another topic of the week was the CBRE earnings reports. So CBRE posted a strong Q1 earnings beat and also raised full year 2026 guidance. So walk us through some of the headlines there, Steven, and what this means for the industry.
C
Yeah, I mean, this wasn't just strong, this was fantastic for CBRE. They reported $1.61 in earnings per share versus $1.13 expected and $10.53 billion of revenue, which is up 18.1% year over year. And they raised their full year 26 core earnings per share guidance to 760 to 780, which is a more at the midpoint now. The biggest growth theme was critical infrastructure and data centers. CBRE generated nearly 950 million of infrastructure revenue in the first quarter. And management expects its BOE critical infrastructure business to grow more than 60% this year. And datacenter leasing also more than tripled year over year. Core services were broadly strong with advisory, building operations and experience and project management combined. All of that revenue was up roughly 20% while operating profit rose nearly 30%. US investment sales were especially strong. Those increased 64%. Grammel Crow remains a future earnings lever with roughly 900 million of embedded profits expected to be monetized over the next several years, supported by a pipeline that includes industrial, multifamily and data center land sites. But the timing is uneven because it does depend on entitlements, power access and site work. We talked a little bit about that last week how the lead time on those can be pretty substantial. AI is showing up in two ways for cbre, both as revenue driver through data center demand and critical infrastructure services and as a potential internal efficiency tool that could reduce support function headcount over time. The flip side is that CBRE also needs skilled labor to support growth in infrastructure related services. So the read through for CRE demand, broader transaction and advisory business is improving, but the standout growth engine is clearly AI related infrastructure and data centers. And even with strong earnings though, shares slipped after the print suggesting expectations were already elevated. Now I don't care about share performance at the end of the day quite as much. It's more about the long term trajectory of the company and everything released. And this, this earnings release was fantastic and points the trajectory that personally I love to see.
A
Yeah, I think this is what, two quarters in a row. CBRE has been really strong with earnings and I think, you know, it highlights how diverse they've come across the, the CRE landscape. I mean they have a bunch of different business lines. They've allowed them to tap into things that are profitable when the market's in a certain cycle and then pivot when the market cycles to something else. And I think this is, this is a strong signal. I think, you know, we've been talking about it for a while that the CRE market generally has bottomed out and is back on the uptick. And I think you're seeing that play itself out with these, these brokerage firms that are really starting to post significant gains across their, their lines of business. So good on them. And you know, hopefully we'll continue to see that play itself out. And imagine if the transaction velocity critical mass that we thought we would see in 2026, this could be an even stronger year for them.
C
All right now, continuing with the earnings theme, we have a couple of trep pieces that have been put out recently. We covered both mortgage REIT originations and regional bank earnings. So we'll touch briefly on these. But if we don't get into enough of the details for you and you want more of those insights, please reach out to us@podcastrep.com let us know what you're interested in and we can sen you along the links for both of those articles. So for mortgage REITs, they originated more than 22.5 billion of loans in 2025, which is a massive, massive rebound. Now it's still below the 50 billion that was originated in 2021. But get this Lonnie, it's roughly four times 2024 volume. So if we thought CMBS issuance looked great year over year, 25 versus 24 mortgage REITs looked even better. So this is a clear signal they're back in deployment mode. So just really quickly liquidity has improved. Mortgage REITs hold about $9.4 billion of cash and undrawn credit facility capacity, up from $8.8 billion to start the year. Originations outpaced repayments by a little more than 10%, which is a great turnaround and that helped stabilize or grow some loan books. Now, performance was varied, credit stress is still present, but in general we saw lower credit reserves, which is suggesting management teams are more confident in their loan books and things have per turned the corner. So I don't have time to get into the full details today. High level takeaway is that we're not back to the 2021 boom, but mortgage REITs are clearly re entering the market in a meaningful way. It's cautious acceleration, more liquidity, more originations and improving credit metrics. But keep in mind we still have meaningful overhang from troubled loans and foreclosed assets left over from the 23 and 24 rate shock.
A
Sounds kind of murky. Kind of like you said on the lead end, Stephen, there's some positive, there's some negative, there's some uncertain. I think it's good. This is a good news. This is neutral to positive in my mind, so I think it's good.
C
Well, I've got something even more positive for you, so don't worry. Now the regional bank earnings. I would be so bold as to say this is not a more cautious tone. I mean, to me this reads more bullish given where we've come from. Now on the whole, maybe I wouldn't call it bullish, but definitely bullish considering we're talking about banks here and all of the negative press and concerns you've seen pop up on LinkedIn. So again, this is another Trep blog piece that has been put out this week. So major regional banks posted A very stable first quarter 2026 with generally favorable year over year earnings results, solid credit performance and cautiously optimistic loan growth commentary. The quarter was not a series stress is gone story, but it did suggest that the large regional banks are still functioning extremely well despite geopolitical volatility, rate uncertainty and lingering credit issues. So loan growth has been improving, but CRE, interestingly is not the only driver. Several banks, I think we've talked about this number of times. Several banks have pointed to stronger commercial lending pipelines, particularly CNI lending now CRE loan balances do appear to be stabilizing after a long period of runoff, which I think is incredibly important just given the long period of runoff we've seen. And now you're starting to see some banks beginning to post modest loan growth again. Now I think importantly for all of our borrowers out there, Siri pricing remains very competitive. And in fact multiple banks specifically commented in their earnings calls that spreads remain tight even with geopolitical risk and broader market uncertainty. And one bank described current series spread pressure as among the most competitive it has seen in some time. And another called tight spreads quote a head scratcher which I think is kind of funny. This gets back to the market is in a completely different pricing paradigm these days. We don't really have as much liberty on the credit supply side to call the shots and raise spreads just because we feel a little bit uneasy. There's too much competition in the market, there's too much demand for yield. And if you don't make the loan at that spread, somebody else will in this kind of market. That's just not the kind of discussion you want to have as a loan producer with the C suite. So people are grinning and burying it on the origination side now office is still more of a resolution story. Banks are not aggressively adding new office exposure. They're working through legacy problems. Where you heard really the strongest demand and supply meeting was multifamily and industrial. The couple banks that did cite new Siri lending activity, it was typically really just tied to multifamily and industrial, which is good because multifamily is recovering from that rate driven stress and supply stress and industrial is continuing to benefit from that E commerce and supply chain demand. So really the backlogs that we were worried about of new industrial new multifamily properties doesn't appear to be causing any meaningful disruptions in the market. And we're working through that inventory, I would say fairly quickly now. The private credit ankle. Just one more thing. Private credit is important here. Banks are watching the growth of non bank lending and some noted that lending to non bank financial institutions continues to grow. That creates both opportunity and risk. Banks may not always hold direct Siri exposure, but they can still be connected through that private credit facility and those financing relationships. And that's something that regulators have become increasingly concerned about and banks are sensitive to. So that's something that we'll just have to continue to keep an eye on because the disclosure as it stands still is very, very unclear. And I get the sense that both investors and regulators are not fully comfortable with the read through to risk and exposure.
A
Yeah, I mean this is, this is just a, it's a matter of when, not if, in the sense that there's going to be more disclosure requirements, there's going to be more of a less opaque picture painted for the regulators because this has gotten whether it has or hasn't, we can't say. But based on the headlines and based on the news and based on all the publicity that private credit is getting and their ties back to some of these banks, they're going to have to paint a better picture than what they have right now. And I think for some lenders it probably makes them very nervous. For others it's still this is a viable opportunity for them. They've managed the risk. But this is a story Steven, I think you and I will be talking about for some time to come.
C
Yeah. So I just gave the high level takeaways and themes. The piece itself does provide some very great metrics and Data on the 11 major regional or super regional banks that were covered in this piece. So if you want more information, we can definitely send that to you. Reach out to us@podcastrep.com and we will send you a link to that piece.
B
Okay, so let's turn our attention to our deals and data property type segment. Let's start in office because we mentioned this story a few times in passing in the intro here. There was a report in Commercial observer this week that San Francisco's AI leasing is leading national office demand in the first quarter.
C
Yeah, national office demand strengthened materially in 1Q26. VTS's office demand index was up 18% quarter to quarter and 13% year over year, reaching its highest level since before the pandemic. And San Francisco led that national rebound with office interest up 70% quarter over quarter. And first quarter. Leasing volume reached 3.8 million square feet, reportedly the market's strongest leasing quarter since 2014. AI companies to nobody's surprise, are driving that surge. So you have Anthropic's 420,000 square foot lease and together AI's 154,000 square foot lease, I mean just massive chunks of space here being taken down. New York City also is seeing a good bump in AI leasing. AI firms took 415,000 square feet in 1Q26, double the total for all of 2025. While average AI lease sizes more than doubled year over year, the office recovery remains still highly sector and market specific. AI is directly boosting Tech, leasing, but it's also creating spillover demand for legal, financial and other service firms that support the sector. So the broad take here, office demand, is clearly improving. So I've seen very encouraging reports of tenants touring space. I mean, you're hearing agents say that, you know, they haven't seen this sort of touring activity in a long time. So that's a very encouraging forward signal release demand. But again, this is a highly bifurcated market. It's market and product specific and also industry specific. So what we want to see is markets like Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C. benefit from this surge as well, not just New York City and San Francisco.
A
Yeah, this is another, you know, mixed green in the sense that it's great for this kind of specialty use of the AI sector. But to your point, Stephen, we'd like to see some broader distribution across the office sector before I start getting too excited. But for San Francisco, given what they've endured the last five or six years across all property sectors, retail, hospitality, multifamily office, this is definitely a solid green shoot from that perspective. But I think on the whole, I'd give this a mixed green. Hopefully you'll start to see this trickle down across the spectrum. I know we've definitely started seeing multifamily rent growth, and we've seen some retailers come back to the San Francisco market, both fairly bullish for that medium term.
C
Well, how about a neon green shoot? I mean, I'm talking green is green. Super Micro leased. 714,000 square feet of a San Jose office campus. Yo, I won a commission on that sucker. That is a fantastic lease. Holy smokes. So this campus is at 2350 CUNY Drive and is expanding Supermicro's footprint to more than 4 million square feet across four locations. Now, this isn't a classic office lease here. This space will support AI infrastructure manufacturing, including advanced system design, manufacturing, testing, customer service and global distribution. So this is more of an atypical type lease here, but still positive, positive signal because you're supporting physical production and logistics backbone behind the AI growth story. So Supermicro is scaling domestic capacity to produce servers, storage systems, network switches, and related AI infrastructure products for hyperscalers, cloud providers and enterprise customers. Now, this will create hundreds of jobs in engineering, manufacturing and support functions, reinforcing San Jose's role as a hub for advanced technology production.
A
Look, this is that Bay Area, another great story. And you know, 714,000 square feet is nothing to sneeze at, so. So I've never had us talk about a neon Green. Green. Shoot. But this probably fits the bill.
C
Let's go now. I'm sure, Lonnie, you saw, like the New York Mayor Mamdani, Ken Griffin spat over using his New York City residence as, you know, the place where they kind of filmed the announcement of the pied terre tax. Sorry, my French accent is absolutely terrible. So I'm sure I butchered that for anybody that does speak French. But. But, yeah, Ken was none too pleased to see the New York Mayor outside of his building in New York City announcing this tax. So, as you would expect, there's going to be some blowback. So Ken Griffin is expanding the office footprint at the planned Miami headquarters. Basically saying, look, we don't have to be in New York City and we produce a lot of wealth, so maybe we should come back to the table and have a deeper discussion about policy and taxes. So that's the subtext here. Ken Griffin is expanding the office component of Citadel's planned Miami headquarters, converting the proposed 54 story, $2.5 billion development at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive from mixed use into a standalone 1.7 million square foot office tower. So basically, the hotel component is being scrapped. Removing roughly 413,000 square feet are the 212 rooms that were planned. And the project's 23,600 square feet of retail is expected to remain. Citadel and Citadel securities may take significantly more space than originally planned. The companies were initially expected to occupy 300 to 400,000 square feet, but Griffin is reportedly weighing whether they could occupy the entire office component. And this expansion comes amid the tension with New York City after Mayor Bondani publicly referenced Griffin's $238 million penthouse while promoting that 5% pied tax. Griffin is also considering a major New York office tower at 350 Park Avenue, where Citadel had planned a 62 story, 1.9 million square foot project that could involve more than 6 billion of spending. So, really interested to see how Ken Griffin's meeting with the New York governor went over, because that massive development would obviously be a good win for the city, but it sounds like Ken is dangling that a little bit.
A
So, look, Steven, on the French topic, parlez vous francais, n' est CE pas? That's all you need is a Texas accent trying to speak some French. But listen, you know, in the professional sports world, every time you have a collective bargaining agreement that is about to expire, you have players that threaten to go on strike. And every time the same result happens, in the end, the owners get exactly what they want. And the reason for that is millionaires can't sit at the same table and negotiate against billionaires. And so this New York Mayor is going to understand very quickly that you don't threaten or put pressure on or make mockery of or, you know, do what you did to King Griffin, because that guy does not care. He will do whatever it takes, spend whatever it cost and build whatever is needed just to prove that he can, if that's what it comes to. So, you know, maybe they, they can find some common ground here and they can cool this off. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if you see them make a complete push into Miami. And you know, I mean, he's already spent who knows how many billions over the last couple of years there. If he gets mad enough, he'll just close up. I mean, like, and this is the part where I think these politicians just don't understand who they're dealing with. Like, these guys don't answer to anyone and they can't spend all of their money if they tried to. This is a short sighted losing proposition in my mind. Like, even if you don't like the politics and you're the mayor and you, you're trying to make an example, you find another way to get your story across. You don't go after the guy that has the ability to do whatever he wants. Like, it's just a bad strategy.
B
Okay, so let's turn our attention to our last segment here, which is the industrial sector. We saw an article in RE Business Online that Related Digital has secured financing for a $16 billion Oracle data center project in Michigan.
C
Yeah, we're no longer dealing with those pedestrian single digit billion dollar projects, Lonnie. Now we're up into the meaty tens of billions. So Related Digital secured financing for Oracle's $16 billion data center project in Sailing Township, Michigan, about 50 miles southwest of Detroit. With construction already underway on the first buildings, the project is tied directly to the AI infrastructure boom, supporting Oracle's partnership with OpenAI and forming part of the broader $500 billion Stargate initiative that was announced by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank. The capital stack includes major institutional players with equity from Related Digital and Blackstone affiliated funds, plus fixed rate long term debt from PIMCO managed funds and accounts. Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo are also involved as advisors. The planned campus will include three single story data centers with more than 1 gigawatt of capacity, making it one of the more economically significant data center projects announced in the current AI buildout cycle. The Local economic impact is substantial with related digital projecting 2,500 construction jobs, 450 permanent on site jobs, and another 1500 permanent jobs across the county. So this AI infrastructure buildout, it's pulling in massive capital, but it's also power intensive. And so we're continuing to just, you know, kind of see how this evolves. And it's interesting. This is outside of your traditional coastal tech hubs with energy and water usage and local land use impacts becoming really core parts of this real estate story as we talked about on last week's episode.
A
You know, look, if I'm Detroit or suburb of Detroit, I'm grabbing every single one of these that I can, even if it creates power and other issues like that's been a market that's had declining population since the 70s. It's never found its footing post, you know, the demise of GM and some of the car manufacturers there. You got to find something, an alternative. You know, I do think that we talked about the, the Oklahoma Data center last week and jobs was something that we said these don't really create. But it's interesting, you know, in this article as well, you're seeing 2,500 construction jobs and then 450 permanent on site jobs and 1500 permanent jobs across the county. People are starting to wise up to this and start touting, you know, the broader economic benefit, if you will, of these centers being located there, not just the actual on prem jobs.
B
Okay, so turning to programming notes before we close, and I can't forget to mention Trep Connect, our annual commercial, real estate and capital markets conference. By the time you're listening to this event, it's only in a few days, so it's taking place on May 6th and 7th in New York City. Our teams are so excited. We've been gearing up for this for so many months. We have so many amazing speakers lined up. We have networking, receptions, lunches, dinners, chances to really connect and get all of our 200 plus attendees to really meet each other, work together, do deals together. And we're really excited to host you all in New York City. So if you're joining us, send us a note to podcastrep.com let's set up time to meet while you're in town and if you don't have a ticket yet, reach out to us. There might still be a chance. We are pretty much at capacity, but. But we'll just tell some TRAP employees that they don't get a seat and we'll welcome you instead. So reach out to us if you have been thinking about it or if you've been behind and you are ready to join us in New York City. Also, as a programming note, we will be very busy next week. All of the TREP teams. Of course our support will still be available for all of our clients, but our marketing and product and research groups will be very busy. We will still make sure to get you a podcast though, so that is something that is really cool about our show. We're a weekly show. We're always talking about the latest news and the headlines. Next week's episode might be a little special where we do some more digging through the Data segments or 101s, but we will still get you an episode on Thursday evening. We'll also have a lot of great content recorded from TripConnect that will be featured in future episodes, so stay tuned for some of the interviews and sessions that we get to then slice up and use on future episodes. Turning to shout outs, Spencer S. Was curious about our CRE Future Leaders program for the spring class. He was interested in applying, so we sent all the details to Spencer. I guess another programming note here. If you are graduating in May 2026 and have a focus in commercial real estate and are looking to make an impact in the commercial real estate state workforce, reach out to us. We'd love to have you apply for our Future CRE Leaders program where you will be honored and named as a TREP Future Leader. This is not just an award that you put on your resume, this is something that will really set you apart as you enter the job market. We have future leaders who are now clients at large brokerages or at banks, some of which are even sponsoring our TREP Connect event. So there's a lot of ways that working with us on our academic and education initiatives and and becoming a future leader can really set you apart and help you in your career. And we're excited to be able to do that. So reach out to us if you are a graduate or you know someone graduating in May and you want to make sure that they are nominated or they get to apply for our program. Jim D. Reached out and said he just wants to say how much he enjoys the pod. His typical frustration with podcasts is the abundance of soft data or as I like to call it, hearsay data. Whereas your podcast is founded in facts rather than storytelling, he said. While storytelling will always be part of real estate, if we peel away the noise and just look at the data, trends become clear, he gave us a lot of interesting takes on the retail market and we really appreciate your thoughtful email, Jim. We will reach back out to you and talk to you about what else we can do together and maybe have you come and give your retail takes on our show. Logan B. Is a finance and real estate student at the University of Tennessee and has been listening to our POD for about a year and said it's been a great resource for learning more about the commercial real estate industry. He leads his real estate club and is interested in finding new resources for the team. So Logan, thank you so much for reaching out. We are excited to work with you and share any of our education resources. Have your team join our webinars and we're really excited that you find so much value in the podcast. Joe F. Replied to some of our new enhancements to our bank CRE dashboards that we provide the banking market and said this is exactly the kind of transparency that CRE lending has needed for years. Having real time visibility into origination trends and capital flows changes how lenders can actually benchmark risk and pricing strategy. So you hit the nail on the head. Joe. If you're listening to this, if anyone else is listening to this and wants info on our bank commercial real estate dashboards, reach out to us and we'd be happy to walk you through those. Shaun C. Gave us a shout out for our podcast episode with Mike McDonald of JLL and agreed with some of his takes. He said Mike McDonald makes a compelling data driven bull case in our recent trip podcast. Really amazing conversation and worth a listen. We've released a lot of guest podcasts in the past few weeks. Mike McDonald of JLL, Chad Lavender of Newmark, and Justin Kennedy of 3650 Capital. So if you haven't listened to any of those, go check them out. Lots of really great insights from a wealth of knowledge across the industry. Andy C. Replied to some of your emails this week, Steven, about our Marketplace webinar and let us know. He listens to the podcast every week and also enjoys the Market Pulse webinar every month because we go a bit deeper into a few key topics.
C
I just want to give a quick shout out to Joel R. Really enjoyed getting to see one of our longtime listeners and contributors. Last week he came up to South Carolina, helped arrange a round of golf, which was the first time I played in about five years. So it was an absolute delight to get back out there on the Lynx. Thank you Joel. And also, also we absolutely love having you as a listener and appreciate all of your contributions to the pod, including that Shapiro Signature. And then finally wanted to give a shout out to the Real Estate Research Institute Ariri as well as Jacob Sagi at UNC Chapel Hill. He's putting together a panel session that I'll be on for RiRi's annual conference here at the end of May. I have a paper that I'll be presenting that I co authored with one of my TREP colleagues, Rachel S. And two other academic friends, Elaine W. And Tony C. RIRI always puts on a great conference that brings together academics and industry leaders, that produces some Siri research that actually moves the needle and pushes our industry forward. So thank you to RIRI and Jacob Saee.
B
All right, and a final shout out here to our TREP marketing team who put together this amazing Trep Connect conference. We'll have a lot more details to share about how it went next week, but an early shout out to all the behind the scenes work that goes into putting this conference together. We do it all in house, just like this podcast. We make it work. We don't have any outside agencies or help. We just add a project to our list and say, okay, we're going to achieve it. So again, really excited to see everyone at our Trep Connect Conference next week. Hear from all the great speakers, the sessions, the panelists, and just be able to network and take this podcast, really, and bring it in person. So with that, we'll close. Thanks to our producer, Mariana Sobrana. Join us next week as we look at what's happened during the week and how it may be impacting you. If you have a question or just a comment, send an email to podcastrep.com and subscribe to the Trepwire Podcast with your favorite provider. Thank you for listening and stay well.
A
All right.
The TreppWire Podcast: Episode 394 (May 1, 2026)
"The Inflation Games: The Fed Transition & Trimmed Mean PCE, Regional Bank & Mortgage REIT Earnings, & AI-Driven Real Estate Transactions"
This episode of The TreppWire Podcast provides a data-driven exploration of mounting uncertainty in the commercial real estate (CRE) markets, against the backdrop of a divided Federal Reserve, inflation debates, housing market cooling, and renewed AI-driven real estate demand. The hosts—Hayley Keene, Lonnie Hendry, and Steven Bushbaum—dig into economic signals, CRE earnings, the impact of AI on office and data center demand, and dissect "trimmed mean" PCE as a measure of inflation amid a Fed leadership transition.
| Sector | Trend/Key Point | Implication | |---------------|------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------| | CRE (General) | Stabilizing in pockets, but uncertainty remains | Volatility likely persists | | Housing | Cooling, negative real returns, regional differences | Long plateau, not a crash | | Data Centers | Accelerating (AI-driven), massive projects, energy issues | Data centers reshape market, raise utility concerns | | Office | AI demand boom in SF, NYC; selective recovery | Bifurcated market, sector-specific resilience | | Banking | Stabilizing credit, cautious origination | Regional banks & mortgage REITs in recovery | | Energy | OPEC rift, oil risk intertwined with CRE & AI | Potential shocks for CRE asset economics |
Listeners hungry for robust data, practitioner insights, and candid, real-world context will find this episode both an anatomy of current market uncertainty and a study in how CRE is evolving through technological and economic disruption.