Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles That May Help You This Week
/Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners:" corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles.
1. U.S. Hiring Strengthened in November, Fueling Expansion
Labor Department
The U.S. job market strengthened in November, as hiring jumped and unemployment fell, adding fuel to the economic expansion.
Employers added 266,000 jobs in November and the jobless rate fell to a 50-year low of 3.5%, matching September’s level, the Labor Department said Friday. Wages advanced 3.1% from a year earlier.
The stronger pace of hiring could help juice up the broader U.S. economy, which is still expanding but at a slower pace than last year. U.S. stocks and government-bond yields rose Friday after the data was released.
2. Heading Into 2020, Here Is What Foreign Investors Are Targeting In CRE
Bisnow/Miriam Hall
Meridian Capital Group Senior Executive Managing Director Helen Hwang, Morgan Stanley Executive Director Michael Givner, Hodges Ward Elliott Managing Director Paul Gillen
China’s retraction from the United States commercial real estate market has left a mark — but there are new substitutes waiting in the wings, coming from all corners of the globe.
“Within the last 24 hours I've met with a Chilean group, as well as a German group last night for a closing dinner,” Nuveen Real Estate Global Chief Operating Officer Rahul Idnani said at Bisnow’s New York 2020 Forecast event Wednesday. “It seems to me that the Canadians and the Germans, the Koreans, Singaporeans and select countries in the Middle East are very active in the New York market — as well as the rest of the United States.”
Overall, offshore investment into United States real estate has slowed from the levels seen last year. Foreign buyers dropped some $14.7B on American real estate assets in the first half of this year, compared to $19.8B during the same time period the year before, according to CBRE.
The major foreign investors that have been active in the U.S. market dropped back, Chinese players invested some $3.8B in the first half of this year, which is down 95% from their annual spending over the previous five years.
3. North American Properties' $3B Retreat A Sign Of Mixed-Use Realities
The maelstrom of rising construction costs, retailers falling into bankruptcy and looming concerns about the U.S. economy have made ambitious mixed-use projects tougher to pull off. Market experts say those factors are likely behind North American Properties' decision to back away from nearly $3B combined in major developments over the last month.
North American Properties pulled out of its $900M Revel project — a partnership with the Gwinnett County Convention and Visitors Bureau to redevelop the Infinite Energy Center into retail, apartments, offices and hotels — this week, after backing out of its partnership with GID on their planned $2B High Street project in Dunwoody last month.
“If you think you can do a very large ground-up mixed-use development this late in the cycle, it's likely to stress your pro forma,” Piedmont Office Realty Trust Executive Vice President George Wells said.
4. Redefining Work for New Value: The Next Opportunity
MIT Sloan Management Review
The nature of work is evolving in two complementary directions. In one direction, managers are redesigning jobs to take advantage of new opportunities to automate workflow processes. Their aim: transform how workers execute tasks in order to boost efficiencies and reduce costs. At the same time, some managers are redefining work to take advantage of new capacity freed up by job redesign.
With work redefinition, work is no longer simply about task execution; it’s about creating new sources of value for customers and the business.
Although redesigning jobs and redefining work are both integral to long-term strategy, our research shows that too many companies are focused primarily on the former. Without an overriding strategy of redefining work, workers represent cost savings rather than freed capacity to create new value for the business or the customer.
5. From Instant Data to Truck Platoons, Here's How 5G Will Shape the Future of Transportation
KIM SIELBECK
The immediate future of autonomous vehicles won't be about cars, but about fleets of self-driving trucks, which are set to fuel another revolution in transportation.
"The shippers are looking for and investing in that, and transportation operators are looking to take friction and cost out," says Scott Corwin, leader of Deloitte's global future of mobility practice.
Levels of autonomous driving go from zero to five--from adaptive cruise control to complete, driverless autonomy. Today, fleets can hit level two, like Boston-based Embark's trucks, which move freight autonomously on highways between L.A. and Arizona, while being monitored by human safety drivers.
Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!
