NATIONAL
Downtown San Francisco Is The Launching Pad For A New Ikea Concept In The U.S.

BisNow

While some are fleeing San Francisco's sprawling Market Street, one of the world's best-known retailers is doubling down on a long-term commitment to the city's future and treating the beleaguered spot as a launchpad for a new strategy in the U.S. Following last summer's opening of a new location at 945 Market St., Ikea took the next step in the rollout of a new concept called a "meeting place" by opening a coworking space atop its new store.

'A New Era': What Nvidia's Rise Means For The Future Of Data Center Development

BisNow

Chipmaker Nvidia's record sales have taken the tech and investing worlds by storm, but its eye-popping growth is also making waves in commercial real estate, showing the potential scale and development patterns of the artificial intelligence-driven data center boom. Nvidia, which manufactures the vast majority of chips needed to support artificial intelligence, posted fourth-quarter earnings figures Wednesday.

Empty office buildings won't be the solution to the US housing shortage

Business Insider

The pandemic ushered in a new era of remote work, and it's caused a structural decline in office demand that is set to worsen in the years ahead, Goldman Sachs said. Real estate experts have theorized that office-to-residential conversions could be a promising solution to the supply problem, but strategists at the bank caution that would be neither simple nor cheap.

Distress soared 440% in a key corner of the commercial real estate debt market in the last year

Business Insider

Commercial mortgages packaged into collateralized loan obligations and sold to investors as bonds saw a distress rate of 8.6% in January, marking a huge jump from the beginning of 2023 when the rate was 1.4%. The amount of outstanding loans packaged into CLOs is about $80 billion, according to a report by data and analytics firm CRED iQ.

ILLINOIS
Longtime Cook County tax appeal commissioner faces big-money push to replace him

Chicago Sun-Times

At one time in his 20 years as a Cook County Board of Review commissioner, Larry Rogers Jr. employed his half-brother Frederic Everly at the agency that can reduce property tax bills. After he left the payroll of the Board of Review, Everly became a lawyer specializing in tax appeals. Since then, Rogers' aides have facilitated property tax breaks for some of Everly's clients.

MASSACHUSETTS
Amid office market slump, tax break requests rise in downtown Boston

Boston Globe

While abatement requests were down citywide, they were up in the core of downtown, where office towers help power the city's tax base, and thus its $4.28 billion operating budget.

TEXAS
Lenders Foreclose On Historic Office Building In Downtown Fort Worth

BisNow

A historic building in Fort Worth has joined a growing number of troubled office properties taken back by lenders. Legacy Bank & Trust has assumed ownership of the 167K SF Oil & Gas/Star-Telegram building on West 7th Street in Downtown Fort Worth. A partnership between Wolfe Investments and BlueLofts had planned to convert the property to apartments.