4Q 2021 State of the Market

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This is Real Estate Investing Live from New York with James Nelson, the principal and head of Avis & Young's Tri State investment Sales Group. In this program you'll learn about the world of commercial real estate and find out why it's one of the largest investment opportunities in New York and around the world. Now here is your host, James Nelson.

Welcome to episode number 107 of Real Estate Investing Live from New York. This is your host, James Nelson. I am principal and head of Tri State Investment Sales at Avison Young. Thank you as always for joining and listening in. I really truly appreciate it, especially when you rate this show and you subscribe to it. That is what helps spread the word so others can also find out how to gain the inside edge to real estate investing. That's what this show is all about. And don't forget to check out james nelson.com which is your resource hub. Not only can you find previous podcasts with the show notes, but you can also sign up for my exclusive video series on how to invest in commercial real estate. You'll also find key terms as well as recommended podcasts and books. For today's show, we are presenting to you our state of the market that we just gave for not only New York, but US and capital markets. And starting off the presentation is Craig Leibowitz, our head of insight for the US and he presents our Vitality Index. Now this measures the pace of the return to office, among other things in key cities. And for those of you who are investing across the country, we're also tracking up in Canada. You can see specifically by not only city but also by industry how the return to office has fared since COVID If you go to avisonyoung.com and search for that Vitality Index, you can find very useful information. We're also going to have Craig back next week with us on the show as we take a deeper dive into making data driven decision making. If you didn't hear that first episode that I did on the topic with Rich Sikarsky, founder of Reonomy, I'm gonna have Craig back to talk more about making data decisions driven decisions. So after Craig gives his presentation supplying that the backdrop on what is happening in the US with the Return to Office, I will be going over the state of investment sales in New York. We're gonna be talking about each of the various asset classes and again, even if you're not investing in New York, I think you'll definitely appreciate some of the commentary, especially some of the macro trends across these asset classes. And lastly, Scott Singer, who is our co head of debt and equity here in New York is going to talk about the state of the debt markets which is also should be incredibly helpful to you as you think about how to structure and finance your deal. So we're going to have a brief word from our sponsor and then we'll get into this presentation on the state of the market. Thank you again for listening.

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Okay, welcome everybody to our year end state of the market for New York City. I'm James Nelson, head of Tri State Investment Sales here for Avis and Yang and really thrilled to have with us today Craig Leibowitz who heads our US Insight Group and he's got some really interesting statistics to share with you on the recovery of the market. And then we've got Scott Singer who is co head of our debt and equity group here and I'll have some commentary as well. So I see we still have participants jumping on but we can, we can go ahead and we definitely want this to be interactive so if you do have questions feel free to post them in the chat and we want to leave some, excuse me, please put them in the Q and A portion so we can can look at those or we're happy to answer those at the end. So without further ado, Craig, why don't you kick things off? I think you're, you know, your insight will certainly help set the stage as Scott and I then talk about the state of the capital markets.

Thank you James. Great to be in front of this audience. We have a tremendous data partner named Orbital Insight that enables us to quantify the recovery of cities across different representative areas of interest that has broad implications for investors and occupiers alike. So what we've done is we've partnered with Orbital Insight to isolate or geofence locations, whether they're office buildings, retail corridors, residential locations or elsewhere to determine ultimately what's the vitality of a city. How does it compare from now to the same time frame two years ago? I'm going to share my screen here and I'll show you exactly what it looks like for New York. We're looking at here is a time series across all different representative areas of interest of Manhattan. Cell phone pings through which we could measure visitor volumes across all these unique areas of interest. From now, the most recent week, we have this data that refreshes daily, but on a two day lag. We have this through the week of January 10th. I'm comparing it against the same week two years ago, meaning post Covid versus pre Covid visitor volumes. What jumps off the page to me is that there are some areas of interest that have effectually recovered to pre Covid levels. And they are, to no one's surprise, health care and residential, to a lesser extent, education and government locations. But at the very bottom of that list are office locations. So what's happening here? To my understanding or the way I interpret the data, I should say there are really three influencers for this data as it relates to the office sector in particular. They are in no particular order infection rates which inform governmental regulations. So in New York City, if you're in a closed venue, including offices, you do have to be masked unless you're in an enclosed office like myself right now, which is causing some concern as it relates to those return to office efforts and the ancillary industries that those office workers support. Think about for example, bars and restaurants that are in Grand Central and are nearby. The second is employees reliance on mass transit. The greater the reliance on mass transit, the greater the hesitancy is to return to the office by virtue of your exposure to others and the prospects for higher potential infection rates. And the third is the industry composition of cities. So for example, some industries have more so adopted. Remote work like tech is one of the hallmark industries. I'll tell you, finance and banking is now one of them. And we do have a public version of this report. I'll show up in just a moment. Which underscores how long it has taken some industries to recover like office to pre Covid levels of normalcy and also underscores just how far we have to go until the city truly has returned more holistically to pre Covid levels. The return to office Vitality Index is available publicly. If you're to search Office Vitality Index, Avis and Young, you're going to find it. It's going to look a lot like this through which you could measure recovery rates across cities. And we have 23 gateway cities here across North America and across industries. So what are those industries that have returned to work more quickly than others? Life sciences has returned to some extent based on the function of work and the necessity of that specific industry as it relates to the broader economy and so forth versus the other end of the spectrum. You start to look into tech and banking, which are still quite a bit lower than what we would have otherwise anticipated during pre Covid levels.

So Craig, not to stop you, because I know you are on a roll, but I think the huge benefit for you all here is this is not a static report that we put out quarterly. Craig is pulling up this information live for you all. And that last screen that you had pulled up was about the return to office by city. And I know that even as of December, New York was faring very well. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, our return to office, if you look at December of 2021 and you compared it to December of 2019, pre Covid New York had the second best return in the country, which is pretty. Or North America. I see you even have Canadian cities here. It does look like we've slipped a little bit. And you know, we're sitting here in our office in New York, but, but I know January has been a pretty quiet month as companies are kind of taking a cautious return to the office. So I think we've, you know, we've now slipped to the fifth position. I'm amazed that Boston has continued to be the number one city for return to office. They've been up there for some time, as has Austin. But I just, I want to underscore that this information, obviously it changes daily, if not weekly. And so it'll be very interesting to see how this. I'm hoping selfishly that New York's return to office picks up where we left off in December. So maybe you could just talk a little bit about that.

It's funny you mentioned that, James. If you were to poll me two months ago and said what would you expect those return office rates would look like either in New York or elsewhere across North America. I would have told you we'd be down maybe 50 to 60%, not down 73%. But then again, the virus mutated. It was much more transmissible than prior variants, which has caused those return to office efforts to stall compared with what we would have otherwise anticipated. Which again underscores just how Unpredictable. The current environment is now. More and more offices are reinforcing a more hybrid work schedule. And I heard actually yesterday that a bank is going to mandate their employees to return to the office full time unless they have a medical exemption. And we're going to hear more and more of those circumstances arise. But we also have to keep in mind the broader labor market environment for just a moment. We're in the arguably the tightest labor market for office talents we've ever experienced, and employers do not have the upper hand. The employees do. And if employees are mandating a hybrid or largely remote work schedule, if one employer is not going to offer it, a different one will.

Great point. And I also want to just make one important distinction between your numbers, the vitality index, which is really the physical occupancy as opposed to. And I don't know if you want to share the availability rate. So the point being that office space here in New York might be least, but the employees might not be coming to the office this month. So when you talk about the occupancy rate at 72% off where it was pre Covid, again, you're talking about people who are physically in the office as opposed to space being leased. And I know you also, on one of your priorities slides, put in that, you know, show that the residential vacancy was higher. And I know our groups were having a pretty involved conversation on this in the past week. And you all have probably seen that the residential market here in New York rents are back to, you know, pre Covid levels. You know, the vacancy rate reported Douglas Elliman in New York city was at 1.5%, and yet we're showing 17% off from before COVID So again, what this means is these apartments are leased, but the tenant, instead of actually physically using that apartment, might still be down in Miami because their office hasn't called them back. So I think it's important to really distinguish what these stats mean. But this really has to do with the physical presence of the return to both apartments and office.

It's real time and it's also predictive. So if an office tenant has adopted remote work, they're not physically in the office yet, but they are leasing that space. They could ultimately wind up subleasing that space or significantly contracting their footprint. And there's a precedent for that that we've seen across cities just in analyzing the data.

Perfect. So not to put you on the spot, but again, just to show how this information is really at your fingertips, I think maybe it would be helpful for us to talk a little bit about the office leasing market. And what you have really seen is that there's been a flight to quality. So I don't know if you want to pull up some of the activity for trophy office buildings here in New York, but it's been very interesting to see, you know, and you're reading about in the headlines these triple digit rents that are being signed. And there has been a lot of appetite for it. And that's really as we define trophy as opposed to some of the other class A buildings. And then once we talk about class B and C, that's when you kind of derive at an availability rate that I believe we have at about 18% right now for New York. But maybe it'd be helpful to show our audience how strong the demand has been for trophy office space.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to pull up our data visualization platform that'll really hammer home that point. And one thing I would note is that this is not a post Covid phenomenon. It's simply accelerating a pre Covid trend where there's already a dislocation in performance between the haves and. And the have nots. The haves being transit oriented. New construction, like, for example, the west side of Manhattan is one of those hallmark examples of success that many point to. But now more than ever, it's, or I would argue now in the current environment, there is certainly a dislocation in performance as it relates to where the building is physically situated, keeping in mind where talent may have migrated during the pandemic. So that was another structural opportunity or concern, depending on how you frame it, of millennials who are already positioned to migrate to raise families to those transit oriented neighborhoods. Again, the post Covid environment accelerated that. I'll show you in just a moment what that looks like. Now showcase also the scale of post Covid leasing activity.

Really quickly, here we are.

Do heat map here. Showcase my screen.

Here we go.

So we're looking at post Covid leasing activity here. And what jumps off the page to me is where that leasing activity is situated and it's near our transit hub, Grand Central Terminal, Times Square, Roll Trade center, and to a lesser extent, but was likely to change in the not too distant future, Penn Station. That's not a mistake. It's a structural opportunity here. And keeping in mind the number of leases that transpire post Covid, what we've seen is that for trophy and class A leases, the top 25% of our market, they're capturing about 41% of leasing activity. So they're batting those are properties of batting way above their weight class, so to speak. Because of those really, because of what tenants are focused on. They're focused on location and they're trading up, meaning they're either moving from one building to another building of the same or similar quality or they're moving up in property type because of the 10 of largely tenant favorable market conditions that persist through which if they're going to change their image and they have a certain budget in mind for the office space, they're going to sign a lease for pretty competitive net effective rents after concessions such as tenant improvement allowances, free rent periods and other lease provisions that may not be quantifiable.

Thank you, Craig. And I think for you all watching that, this can give you an idea of the power that we have with the Avant platform to really get specific. If you're an office owner and you're trying to get a sense of how you're building fares comparatively to other buildings in the area, we can get very specific to talk about not only the taking rents, but also the concessions. And the concessions have been a huge talking point over this last year or two in that, you know, most landlords are trying to preserve these top rents by offering more concessions, free rent ti. And the amazing statistic, Craig, that I saw from, from your analysis is that if you look at the trophy net effective rents from 2019 to today, the net effective rent is only off 1%. I mean, that is pretty remarkable. Whereas I think if you compared the class A, it was at about 11% drop off, which is still, you know, pretty impressive. But, you know, the point is, and I know, Craig, your team's goal is, you said it's the death of the PDF, it's the death of the static report. So, you know, and if we have any questions that come on line, more about how the office leasing market is faring, you know, you do have the ability to really answer those questions in a very specific nature. So with that I we will pull up a quarterly report that we just put out because I think as far as sales are considered, we still need to take a look at how the rest of last year played out. So we can certainly make some markers here and talk about the unbelievable momentum that we have going into this year. And if you did not read the white paper that I put out, which you can find@aytristateinvestmentsales.com the headline was surge in fourth quarter Manhattan sales creates strong momentum. And this fourth quarter, this year, especially December of last year, was reminiscent of the fourth quarter in 2012. I don't know if a lot of you remember that quarter, but that was right before the capital gains rate went up and we saw this whole flurry of sales activity. And in much the same way we know there was a lot of pent up demand coming into the end of last year, but we also had a lot of long term clients who were looking to preserve the 1031 exchange or beat the capital gains increase. And I always preface these reports by saying, look, this is a rear view indicator because someone who was negotiating a deal in late summer or even early fall, those sales might not have actually closed and hit the transfers until December. So this is really kind of a commentary of where it was in late summer, early fall. But we did have a lot of long term clients who again were in investors who were very concerned about the talks that the 1031 might be eliminated. That's still where half of our transactions come either from the seller or the buyer. And those looking to cash out, they thought at one point the capital gains were going to increase up to levels of ordinary income tax. So fortunately they preserved the 1031. Any discussions I've heard about the increase in capital gains seem to be a little more muted. So we'll have to continue to watch that. But if you look at what happened in the fourth quarter and start flipping through these sales, you can see that there was a huge, huge surge in sales volume. So when we look at sales for New York City, we're talking about across the major asset classes. We're talking office, multifamily, retail land and we're talking at $5 million and up with the exception of retail, where we do look at a million and above and you can see across the board, dollar volume was up 283% over the trailing four quarters. Brooklyn, quadruple Manhattan, triple. Queens, more than triple. The Bronx was the only borough that didn't see a huge uptick in volume. But again, when you look at what it was across the board, impressive. That being said, we're still looking at last year closed out at $15 billion in trades, still a far cry from the 2015 at 68 billion. Although I think we need to all acknowledge that might been a once in a generation type year. I think what's more reliable is this 10 year average of 36 billion. So we're still half off what the 10 year average was. So plenty of room for more growth, but a welcome uptick from 2020. And again, as we stated, the trailing four quarters so looking at the number of sales in New York City, Tom, again we love green arrows. We love to see increase in activity not as pronounced with the dollar volume surge. Again, the dollar volume you're going to see in this presentation was really anchored by these massive trophy type sales that took place on a number. When you talk about the number of transactions, we're still seeing a very solid uptick, 81% increase over the trailing four. We ended the year with about 500 sales in new York City, which again is about half the 10 year average. And you can kind of see how this dollar volume for Manhattan, same thing, still off the 10 year average, but a nice uptick since 2010 and certainly kind of getting back to the 2010 year. And you look at what happened in the last cycle when things bottomed out in 2009, look how much the market swung back up over the next year. From 2009 to 2010 to 2011, the dollar volume, the number of trades seemed to double almost every year. So I hope we're in for a good run now. And you can see on the number of transactions in Manhattan, 240 sales to close out 2021. So now looking at the multifamily market, and this was a big portion of the sales, in fact, multifamily was almost half the Number of sales, $1.4 billion in sales activity alone for the quarter, cap rates compressed down to 4.6% average price per foot up to 738. So you know, again we look back to the days of 28, 2019, before the housing Stabilization Tenant Protection act that eliminated the ability to decontrol rent regulation. And so that certainly has had a put positive, excuse me, pressure on cap rates to expand. But now we finally see cap rates level off. And anecdotally I think what we're seeing happen is a lot of the New York investors who were searching down in the Southeast for value or better environments are finding that those markets in many cases are three cap markets where, excuse me, whereas here we're offering returns in the high 4% range.

While you, while you catch your breath, I'd say we saw the same a property we were involved in Charleston that had not met its business plan plan yet, sold it under a three and a half cap. And when you look at what you were able, the cap rates that were available for purchases in New York during that fourth quarter or third quarter leading into fourth, I think is part of what certainly what drove volume.

Thank you Scott for that save and hopefully my voice will hang in there. For a couple more slides. So we are, this is an interesting trade on the Upper east side. We saw Empire State Realty Trust make a multifamily acquisition. 116 John St. Silverstein making a major acquisition for 247 million. AIMCO selling their Upper west side portfolio to hub for 189 million. So these were all substantial institutional type multifamily sales that we haven't seen for some time. So we'll continue to move on land sales. We certainly have seen land prices.

Hey, James.

Yeah, go ahead.

I know you're rolling, but I just want to say I think it is very interesting to see Empire State, for example, buy multifamily. Right. And so and again is indicative of the opportunities that while some people are running, there are others who are finding opportunities and shifting gears and really taking advantage of these changes.

Yeah, Scott, it's a great point. And I think diversification is the key. And even as we're dealing with our New York clients and there's not an, you know, some clients are investing nationally and having a little bit of diversification isn't a bad thing. Right. And certainly across asset class. So here for land sales, you see that the price per buildable did come down substantially where we finally saw some rental in Manhattan and now we're finally seeing some condo activity. An average price of 472A buildable. So if you go to the next page, we can talk about some of these sales. And I will say historically there has still been over the last few years a dearth of land sales. Okay. So I think what's going to happen is two to three years from now, everyone's going to be looking around saying, hey, where's all the new condo product? And there's been so few land sales that we're actually very bullish today about new developments. That being said, what's really in the wings here is the future of the 421A, the affordable new York, which expires next June. If you're not in the ground by June of next year, the program's expired. If you heard our governor's state of the state, she referred to the need on one hand for more housing, which was great. Eliminating the state cap of the 12 times fer again, great. And also the need for more affordable housing, which we of course agree about. The question is, you know, how do you put this in a program that is attractive to incentivize developers to build more housing? The current affordable New York plan has a 35 year tax abatement with multiple Options. Excuse me. Thank you, Eric. The affordable New York expires in June of this year. I keep still thinking back. We're still in 2021. So yes, if you are, if your plan is unfortunately not approved and you're not, you don't have your permits ready. Unfortunately, the window is closing here to grandfather in this current program. So I think what we're going to see in development is really the barbell where you're going to have either deeply affordable projects or condo. We can look at some of the last few rental sites that were sold here. On the next page you've got Gotham at 553rd Avenue. This will be a, excuse me, 10th Avenue. That's an assemblage piece for a larger rental project in the middle. You have related that recapped Elliot Spitzer. This is going to be for senior housing, but on the right here, 148189 Second Ave. Naftali bought this. This was a trade for condo development. And at this basis at 5, 600 a buildable foot, when all said and done, clearly a condo execution is going to be required here. So I would not be surprised if we saw more sales this year for condo development, certainly in Manhattan and the boroughs looking for fully affordable sites. Retail is an asset class that had a really big quarter. You have again triple the amount of dollar volume that happened here. Over a half a billion dollars in retail sales. Big uptick in pricing at over 2,000 a foot. Cap rates compressing to the low 5% range. You'll see on the next page some of the sample sales. So 535th Avenue. This was multiple retail at the base of this office building, Chase 5 below Ugg and Walgreens. This traded in the low 5 cap range. 1600 Broadway. The M&MS. World headquarters traded at a 4.2 cap. Paramount was the buyer there. 501 Broadway. This was a sale that we were involved with in soho. This was Capital One was the tenant but with only four years left in the. In their term. And so as a result we saw this at a higher cap rate, I would say than average because of the short term nature of the lease. What I will say is.

Hey Dan, sorry to interrupt again, but if you go back to that graph showing how pricing cap rates rose and then that down to that 5.19. It's interesting, we bid on and bought retail condos in Williamsburg prime across from the Apple store at the end of 2020 and I think we were the only bidder. When we went for the financing, there were almost no One was willing to finance it. In the end, we locked it at 10 years interest, only three and a quarter with a lender who shared our view. But there was not a lot of willingness to go into retail earlier on. So what a big departure, a return.

Great point. Yeah. No, we've seen retail come back as a very viable option. And I also want to say, I mean, with as big of a fourth quarter as there was, what this means is we're going to have this wave of 1031 capital hitting, looking to identify this month and into February and depending on how you feel about the future of multifamily. And we didn't even talk about the potential for good cause eviction, which currently seems like that discussion is going to be postponed at least a couple of months. Up in Albany, there's a lot of investors who say, look, retail is the contrarian play. I think especially for high street retail. All three of these trades here were great, I think, opportunities because, you know, last year, I think the final tourism numbers, tourist numbers were about 35 million visitors compared to 70 million in 2019. So High street retail, which is really dependent on that international tourist, is going to take a big hit. I think the pendulum has swung too far. Certainly that's the case of rents down in SoHo on Broadway. And I think as these travelers return, those rents are going to tick back up. So now we'll talk about the office sale market, which had a really, really big quarter. 14 sales, three and a half billion in trades, cap rate really strong holding at a 4, 4 cap price per foot. Again, think of this as a barometer because this, you know, averages class B, C and class A. But let's look at some of these representative sales. At the top of the list, 441 Ninth Avenue for over a billion dollars to Commonwealth Partners. Cove Properties was the developer who added floors to this building. This was incredible execution. Leasing this to Peloton and Lyft, among other tenants. On the corner of 34th street, you have 100 Pearl street which was 96% leased. A lot of medical, life science tenants. That was GFP and their partner Northwind that sold to Commerce German investment fund. And then lastly, 51 West 52nd street, this was the CBS headquarters that did a sale and then a leaseback for a portion of the buildings. Harvard Group, traditionally a multifamily investor across the country, bought in here for $760 million. So I would characterize all these major sales as core assets. These were almost fully leased and there is still certainly confidence in this end of the market for the higher quality buildings as we were talking earlier with Craig on this flight to quality. But it's going to be interesting to hear what Scott has to say about the types of deals that lenders are looking to finance. And I would imagine that for these types of sales, financing is plentiful. So with that I'll just say and then I will turn over to Scott. I mean some of the questions that we are looking for for the future is will this good cause eviction for multifamily gain momentum up in the state again? I think we have a couple months to see what's happening there. We're certainly tracking the return to office plans we had as Craig showed you, some great momentum at the end of the year. But now unfortunately we've taken a little bit of a step back. So let's hope that things get moving again for February and then what is the future of the affordable New York that's really going to impact development. So those are really the three key things that we are watching. But Scott, it'd be great if you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing out in the debt markets.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, James. So look, I think we're in such an interesting time in the market because it's just so dynamic, right? We just heard about an office REIT buying multi, we've got a multi owner buying office in the debt space. We have insurance companies who are doing value add deals. We have private equity funds who have pockets of core money. And it is as dynamic a market as I think we've ever seen. I think all of that sales volume or not all of that, but that sales volume has very much been supported by the financing that's available in the market rates. And now that's a mix of both debt and equity as an investment. But through that fourth quarter interest rates index rates were near all time lows. And I think that the reality is that even with some meaningful increases from those lows, we are very much from any historical perspective still in a very, very low interest rate environment with the added pressure benefit, at least from a broker's perspective of seemingly high likelihood of continuing increases. The liquidity is, it is enormous, as I think Craig and James have all said haves and have nots. Very true. Within the financing market. Now the property types that fared well through shutdown periods, locations that remained active or where people returned the highest quality building types that our leasing brokers showed at one point, I think we mentioned this last quarter, but an enormous percentage of the New leases signed, large office leases signed or were in situations where the tenants increased the quality of their space or the building or their location. And so for those deals that are strong from those perspectives, the competition for among lenders investors to provide money to those deals is enormous. And yet for deals that are outside of the favored groups, it can be a struggle. And I think that the difference is that in the attractive deals there's massive competition. Rates getting pushed down to the low end of the spectrum for each deal type. And in the more challenged deals, there's highly likely still money available. And the money that's available is available throughout the capital stack on most deals. There's such a need for yield among investors with money. Whether they're investing equity directly in transactions or they're putting money to private equity funds who have pockets or they're doing it through registered advisors, the money is coming from all areas. There's a tremendous amount of pricing arbitrage. So value add deals, some value add deals will get done under 4% and others will require double digits. On the stabilized side, it's still possible to do some deals under 3% but others will be in the high threes to mid fours. Even within the CMBS market, where you could think of CMBS offers or quotes as a commodity, we've seen a delta in pricing in initial proposals of as much as 50 basis points for the same transaction. So it's the, I would say the capital, what I think of as the capital markets, the debt and equity markets are as dynamic as the sales market. And I think it's an exciting time to be in. It's not easy, this isn't easy money. Even the deals that, you know, for a deal to get the type of super attractive pricing that's there, there has to be a lot of strength within it. But with creativity deal that makes sense to an intelligent operator developer can absolutely find capital.

That's great Scott, thank you. And we'll start going to some of the questions. So if you want to put your question in the Q and A, please do so. So Scott, we do have a question about loan to values. So you know, what would you say? I mean they're asking specifically about a multi family, say around 50 units, you know, what kind of leverage are you talking about today?

Yeah, I think it goes back to what I said before, that if you mix, if you mix debt and equity, then there is appetite for capital really to close to 100% for a strong operator. On the debt side, what is typical senior loan sizing, it can range from 50 to 70% depending on the the cap rate and the competition that's driven in the sales market. So lenders tend to size for the most part these days based on the cash flow in place. So deals may be more likely to be constrained by debt yield or debt service coverage than by appraisal.

Perfect. Craig, I've got a question. I don't know if you want to take a stab at this, but.

If.

Tech companies have the least return to office, why are they acquiring more space? So you know, I've got to say, I mean, look, Google, I mean the Google sale purchase of St. John's hasn't even come through the transfers, right? But that's going to be a 2.1 billion dollar sale that's going to hopefully happen in the first quarter of this year. So that's going to be great news. And I don't, unless if I'm mistaken, I don't think Google even has an official return to office. So. And then meanwhile, you know, Meta is making announcements that they're going to Austin and taking all this space. So why are these tech companies continuing to grow if they're at the bottom of all the industries? As far as the return to office.

That'S a great question. We have to keep in mind where we stand today and where we're going in the future. There's going to be some form of hybrid work in a future state, whether it's three days in the office, two days remote, four days in the office, one day remote remote remains to be seen and it's contingent upon a number of different factors here. But when tech companies like Roku for example, just expanded their footprint by about four fold when they relocated or they signed a commitment at Five Times Square. TikTok made a new expansionary commitment right next door, Four Times Square now one five one earlier in May 2020, I believe that lease was signed. They're doing it with the understanding that they're going to have to future proof their business with the understanding that there's going to be some form of in person work. And when you sign a lease commitment, especially one upscale in a market like New York, you're not occupying the space today or tomorrow, you're occupying it potentially years in the future. So it's really an indictment of capturing, attracting and retaining talent first and foremost. Google is the hallmark example of that. Given the campus they built out now in two different locations in the meatpacking district, they made really was a place making exercise in the meatpacking district. Basically a case study back in 2010. Now look what it's become today across property types. And now Hudson Square. Who are they going to be joined by? Disney. So it's more or less future proofing what the future of work will ultimately entail.

That's awesome, Craig. Thank you. And I'll put in a quick plug. I just interviewed Craig for my podcast, Real Estate Investing Live from New York about data driven decision making. So for all of you listening, you know, we have all this data. How are you going to make it actionable for your investments? Craig and I had a really interesting conversation on that. So if that's not up on itunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, it'll hopefully be up there soon. I think we'll take one more. Yeah, go ahead.

If you have another question there, by all means, go to it. But I was just going to say I think that I see across our team, people are pushing to get back to the office. I know your team is. And people, you know, dynamic dealmakers, entrepreneurs, know that in person interactions are what drive the business world. And I think that the. Craig, I appreciate the data that you're able to drive that shows that helps us see where we're really at. I think that the in office numbers for the beginning of January during a time when Omicron jumped off the charts, are just not how any real business operation would plan for the future. And so I think the tech companies, to me, it's opportunistic buys. They found the opportunity or leases, they found the opportunity to capture space at decreased prices. And they want to be in, in New York, in this location. They know this is where their people are going to want to be and that that's how they're going to drive their businesses forward. I think it's as simple as that, why they're, why they're doing it. And I think that, you know, other groups with the capital, the capital spender are doing the same.

Great point. Couldn't agree more. We'll answer one more question just because we want to keep these tight at 45 minutes. And you know, just a reminder, you know, these types of reports, we're happy to make them available if you want to get a copy of this. But we can, you know, definitely take Craig up on, on his offer to do more customized analysis. But you know, the last question, what percentage of properties were bought by foreign investors? We don't. And we might give you an exact number moving forward, but I would just say anecdotally that the bulk of buyers for the foreign fourth quarter were domestic. So again, if a lot of these were high net worth, looking to place 1031 exchanges, those are US investors 2020, interestingly, we had a lot of foreign investors. And oftentimes when you see how much when the market kind of came to a standstill, that was kind of an opportunity for foreign investors who oftentimes move more slowly than the local investors who have boots on the ground. So that was when we saw, you know, an Argentinian family office that bought a big property in Union Square, a Swiss retailer that bought on Madison Avenue. Those were some of the headlines for 2020. But you look at some of the, you know, the buyers, you know, for this past quarter and yes, there were some exceptions. You've got, you know, Commerce, the German conglomerate that came in to buy Pearl Street. But again, especially looking at a lot of these multifamily investors, a lot of them are, you know, local operators, we call them young guns in the office here, that there's a lot of new young operators, syndicators who are out looking, you know, they see this as their time to jump in. Kind of a contrarian time to invest. But we're certainly always keeping an eye out. And, you know, one of the great things for the New York market is that we do still attract interest from around the world. So with this, we'd like to thank you always for joining and we look forward to being in touch with you soon.

Thank you for tuning in this week to real estate investing live from New York. Please join your host, James Nelson for another program next Tuesday at 7pm in New York, 4pm Pacific Time on the Voice America Business Channel channel. All shows are rebroadcast on Wednesday mornings at 7am Eastern Time and 4am Pacific Time as well. As always on Demand. We'll talk again next week.

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