Blue Vault Insights- Page 6 of 22

Blue Vault Insights

August 16, 2023

Converging Trends in Commercial Real Estate Markets Highlighted

A recent article by Peter Grant, who covers commercial real estate trends for the Wall Street Journal, covered a lot of territory and trends in the commercial real estate space. (See “Wall Street Is Ready to Scoop Up Commercial Real Estate on the Cheap” August 15, WSJ) Like pulling a thread from a sweater, digging…

August 16, 2023

Hedging with Gold Has an Opportunity Cost

Judging by the number advertisements heard regularly promoting holding gold as a hedge against inflation and protection should the U.S. economy crash, one would conclude that Americans are turning to investments in gold bullion or equivalents in large numbers. The facts don’t support that conclusion. As the chart below illustrates, spot gold prices (green line)…

August 15, 2023

Has the Self-Storage Real Estate Sector Peaked?

An August 6 Wall Street Journal article asked the question: “Is There a Limit to Americans' Self-Storage Addiction?” And answered its questions with: “Billions of Dollars Say Nope.” “There are self-storage facilities around the world, but nowhere have they been more popular to rent and profitable to own than in the U.S., thanks to Americans'…

August 8, 2023

Rising Interest Rates a Boon for Blackstone BDC, Interval Fund Investors

As interest rates continue to rise, investors in Blackstone’s business development company (BDC) and interval fund are seeing a similar spike in distribution payments, reflecting the asset manager’s profit-generating prowess amid extended economic turbulence. On Blue Vault’s July 26 webinar, A Deeper Look at Blackstone, Senior Financial Analyst Luke Schmidt said both funds are performing…

August 2, 2023

Nontraded REITs Don’t Own Floundering Enclosed Mall Assets

Using Blue Vault’s exclusive database, we looked at the properties held by nontraded REITs as of March 31, 2023, to see if those assets could be categorized as “older, low-end malls”...

August 1, 2023

What Government Can and Cannot Do to Make Housing “Affordable”

The U.S. has a “housing shortage” and a popular part of that theme today is an “affordable housing” shortage. Honest economists would have to question that conclusion...

August 1, 2023

Blackstone NAV REIT Performance Outshines Cash Flow Concerns

Despite indications that Blackstone’s nontraded real estate investment trust (NAV REIT) has struggled to deliver on redemptions, the diversified fund has shown “consistently better” total returns than its peers, proving its post-pandemic staying power, Blue Vault researchers say. As more second-quarter data become available, we’re finding that Blackstone’s Real Estate Income Trust has outperformed or…

July 27, 2023

June 2023 Reported Nontraded REIT Sales Down 11.3% from May 2023

Blue Vault received June 2023 sales totals for ten nontraded REIT program offerings as of July 19, 2023. Sales reported by those ten NTRs totaled $176.0 million, down 11.3% from $198.4 million in May for the same ten NTRs, and down 72% Y-O-Y from the $630.7 million in sales in June 2022. FS Credit Real…

July 24, 2023

NAV REITs Report Flat Median Total Returns for June

The median monthly total return for 16 continuously offered nontraded REIT programs (“NAV REITs”) was just 0.01% in June, compared to negative 0.46% in May. Eight of the 16 reported positive total returns. This is the first month since November 2022 that, as a group, the continuously offered nontraded REIT programs have reported a positive…