Editors’ Weekly News Roundup March 24 – March 28
Two developments in the Midwest and three national reports comprised Connect CRE’s roster of five most-read stories in the past week. The Chicago suburb of Orland Park, IL was in the headlines and led the roster with Edwards Realty Company Breaks Ground on Orland Park Development, which described a mixed-use project about to launch.
Locally based Edwards will build Downtown Orland Park in phases, with completion projected for 2027. Encompassing retail, entertainment and office space, the project certainly observes the cardinal rule of real estate: location, location, location. It’s set to rise adjacent to the Ninety7Fifty on the Park apartments, the University of Chicago Medicine Center for Advanced Care and the 143rd Street Metra station.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed under government conservatorship amid the 2008 global financial crisis, and there have been calls in recent years to cut them loose. Under the current administration, those calls may soon translate into action.
Privatization of Fannie and Freddie Appears to be Gaining Momentum, our second most-read story of the past week, reported that President Trump may soon issue an executive order calling for a study of implementing such a privatization. And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two GSEs could be rolled into a sovereign wealth fund, the creation of which has already been authorized by another executive order.
Staying with the residential sector, Connect CRE’s third most-read story focused on the build-to-rent (BTR) sector of the single-family rental market. Based on findings from RealPage, BTR Construction Heavily Concentrated in 14 U.S. Submarketsreported that one-third of the new stock was rising in a handful of metro areas. Six of the submarkets are in Texas, while five are in the Phoenix metro, including the top-rankedAvondale/Goodyear/West Glendale submarket.
That submarket has seen its BTR inventory grow by 105.4% over the past five years. It’s therefore appropriate that an upcoming Connect Conferences event on the Phoenix multifamily market will also delve into the region’s BTR sector.
Ranking fourth in the past week’s top five was another Midwest development story, albeit on a different stage of the development timeline: choosing where to build. We reported in Site Selected for Nebraska Convention Center Development that Assemble Lincoln had decided on the location for the facility.
The announcement of the site selection capped a search process that began two years ago. It bears repeating that the advent of a convention center can have a positive ripple effect on other property types in the immediate area, including hotels and restaurants.
Completing the top five was a story reflecting the current state of the debt market—or more accuratey, the state of the indebtedness market. Drawing from the latest in the Mortgage Bankers Association’s quarterly reports, MBA: Commercial Mortgage Delinquencies Rise in Q4 2024informed Connect CRE readers that more commercial real estate loans are now in arrears.
However, the increases in 2024’s fourth quarter generally were small and the delinquency rate for most lender types was less than 2%, with the exception of CMBS. Life companies bucked the trend in Q4, with delinquencies on their commercial mortgage loans declining by a few percentage points from the previous quarter.