The real estate market is hot in North Texas.

But it’s not just housing – experts say the frenzy we’re seeing in homebuying is happening in commercial real estate, too.

The demand is driving up costs from rent to construction.

“Prices are now at all-time highs,” said Chris Dharod, president of Dallas-based SSCP Management. “There’s a lot of money from other cities coming here because they want to own DFW real estate. For a long time, people wanted to buy California real estate. It’s now Texas real estate that they want to own.”

His company owns several shopping centers, apartment buildings and other real estate holdings, so Dharod has been able to observe the ever-changing market as the pandemic has unfolded over the last 18 months.

He said before COVID-19 disrupted the economy, the market was much more predictable and stable.

“At the start of the pandemic, a lot of businesses sort of slowed down and completely froze any growth that they were going through. They stopped building restaurants, they stopped moving offices, and building offices,” he said. “Since then, companies in most industries have picked back up and prices are now at all-time highs.” Click to read more at www.nbcdfw.com.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A demand forecast by the NAIOP Research Foundation is projecting a strong resurgence of the U.S. office commercial real estate market through 2023.

As the unemployment rate declines, more workers return to the office and the economy continues to improve, the office space net absorption forecast has been revised upward from 1.8 million square feet to 8.3 million square feet in Q4 2021. The total net absorption in 2022 is forecast to be 53.5 million square feet with a quarterly average of 13.4 million square feet. In 2023, the projected net absorption is 34.3 million square feet during the first three quarters, with a quarterly average of 11.4 million square feet.

This forecast is dependent on continued economic growth, which seems plausible given recent data. The measured unemployment rate in September was 4.8%, down from 6.1% in April. Supply chain issues have resulted in higher consumer prices and stoked inflationary concerns. Still, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose at an annualized rate of 2.0% in Q3 2021, a pace that cooled from the Q2 2021 real GDP growth rate of 6.7%

According to the report, “although the number of people currently employed in professional and business services, financial activities and information industries is only 1.5% lower than in February 2020, office utilization rates remain much lower than before the pandemic due to continued concerns about coronavirus transmission. Click to read more at www.naiop.org.

The hottest NFT on the market may not be an ape or sport’s highlight—but your mortgage.

Indeed, mortgage lender LoanSnap recently announced they had minted the first NFT mortgages in existence, using their Bacon Protocol to wrap seven mortgage liens into tokens collectively worth $1.5 million.

The benefits of such tokens, according to LoanSnap, are lower mortgage rates, faster loan approvals, and greater flexibility around repayment terms. The explanation being that as the blockchain can permanently record information like applicant credit score, debt-to-income ratio, and home value, the need for verification through middlemen is eliminated—in turn reducing the cost and time involved in the lending process.

While these potential benefits are indeed significant, the largest beneficiaries of this innovation are almost certainly retail investors—who for the first time are gaining access to the highly-coveted $17 trillion mortgage industry.

For those unfamiliar, financial regulation and capital requirements have historically made it virtually impossible for everyday citizens to get involved in mortgage lending. This has left large financial institutions and the government to soak up all of what’s considered to be one of the lowest-risk and consistent yielding asset classes available. Tokenizing housing debt eliminates many of these barriers to entry—making it theoretically possible for anyone with a DeFi wallet to own a fractional share of a mortgage. Click to read more at www.forbes.com.

Key Points
• Zillow’s shares have tumbled by about 37% since Friday.
• Q3 earnings show a $304 million write-down for Zillow’s iBuying business, with more losses to come.
• Zillow plans to close its iBuying service for good.
• Motley Fool Issues Rare “All In” Buy Alert

Zillow Group (NASDAQ:ZG)(NASDAQ:Z) sent shockwaves through the market on Nov. 2 after saying it planned to shut its iBuying operation, a home-flipping venture the company had touted as a pillar of its future. Zillow, best known for its online real estate marketplace, had amped up its iBuying operation this year and last, riding the momentum of the red-hot real estate market. But buying homes, expecting prices to rise for a quick profitable sale, is hard to pull off.

Leading up to the end of Zillow’s iBuying
The company initially announced a temporary pause in its iBuying operations on Oct. 18, halting new contracts and stating that strains in the labor and supply markets were proving challenging to keep in synch with its operational backlog. But its latest earnings reveal there is more to the issue. Click to read more at www.fool.com.