Inflation Eases, Tariff Tensions Cool, CRE Activity Dips & FEMA Fades — Good News, Bad News for CRE

Inflation cools, tariff tensions ease, and investors start breathing a little easier, but is CRE catching a tailwind? The team digs into surprisingly positive CPI and PPI reports, unpacking why the market's fears may have overshot reality for now. With the May LightBox CRE Activity Index posting its first monthly decline of the year, the big question is whether this is a blip or the beginning of a new trend. Meanwhile, the conversation shifts to headlines shaking up sentiment: civil unrest in L.A., a federal ruling on eviction bans, and a proposed FEMA shutdown that could upend disaster recovery and reshape pricing in high-risk markets. As construction costs face new labor pressures and the Fed stays in wait-and-see mode, the team weighs what it all means for commercial real estate’s second half. On the ground, not all markets are slowing, Florida still has some upside, with luxury apartments trading hands at a premium and retail/hotel deal volume picking up steam. And in the office sector, a milestone moment: for the first time in 25 years, more space is being demolished or converted than built. The outlook? Cautiously optimistic. Or, as Manus puts it: “We went four for four this week—and that’s reason to feel good.” Also on the radar: socks, three-woods, and why a bagel might just be the best Father's Day gift of all.

00:46 Macroeconomic outlook: CPI, PPI, and tariffs 
06:16 LA Spotlight: CRE implications 
09:35 Eviction bans, rent caps & regulatory risk 
13:51 FEMA phase-out: Resilience and rebuilding 
16:04 LightBox May CRE Activity Index Dips 
22:05 Office conversion trends & market bifurcation 
28:00 Multifamily, retail, hotel: The dogs are hunting 
30:37 South Florida trophy deals, Father's Day forecasts & more 

Have questions for the pod team? Send them to Podcast@LightBoxRE.com.

www.lightboxre.com

Transcript

The CRE Weekly Digest by LightBox

Episode 50: Inflation Eases, Tariff Tensions Cool, CRE Activity Dips & FEMA Fades — Good News, Bad News for CRE

June 13, 2025

Martha Coacher: This is the CRE Weekly Digest by LightBox, a firm transforming the commercial real estate landscape by connecting every step of the CRE process with comprehensive tools and data. I'm Martha Coacher with our experts, Manus Clancy and Dianne Crocker for the week from June 9th through the 13th. Some positive signs this week for investors on the trade front, a deescalation with China.

The administration says that the US China tariff deal is done and won't be changing, and consumer inflation this week was tamer than feared. This is all on the heels of the jobs report last week, which showed that it is gradually moderating, and these are all signs that the economy, while cooling continues to be resilient.

Manus Clancy: It was an interesting week for data. We saw several data points, several news items. The winners or the better than expected headlines certainly outpaced the negative headlines. It continues a trend, which we've seen for a couple months now, that even though there's been a a lot of hand wring, including by me, that tariffs would have a.

Detrimental effect and that maybe the markets were getting ahead of themselves, the data is telling us otherwise. Earlier this week, CPI came in lower than expected. Today we saw another data point. PPI coming in more benign than expected. All of this is good news. It goes to show that the fears that we all had, that.

These tariffs were gonna be passed on in higher costs to the consumer. Really hasn't turned out that way. Uh, costs have come down now several months in a row since that April 2nd tariff announcement. And I think as investors, as borrowers, as commercial real estate, landlords, as market watchers, as analysts, we have to feel pretty good.

Those were two really good data points this week. The tariff news. Between the US and China. Also a positive. I know that there's still some i's to dot and some T's to cross on that, and they might be short term deals at the moment. It is still trending in the right direction. We could feel good about that and accordingly, if you recall last week, I said I thought the market was a little bit overly exuberant, that we went from overly panicked to a little bit complacent.

Now, I think some of that complacency I. Isn't unjustified or some of that enthusiasm isn't unjustified. We're seeing some pretty good data points and, and it feels good right now. The one negative I would say is given the CPI, given the PPI, I would've expected a more pronounced to impact on long-term treasury yields.

The 10 year went from about 4 42 to 4 36, so trending in the right direction. We'd like to see that closer to 4% for CRE. Borrowers for property values and so forth, but that will come over time. But generally a good week. 

Dianne Crocker: I, I would agree with that. Manus. You know, I think given the CPI report that we saw, um, clearly inflation isn't falling fast enough to give the feta green light, but it's not rising either.

At least not yet. I think the concerns about tariffs are, are still out there and everyone is expecting prices to rise later in the year, maybe once they burn through. Inventories, um, or tests what consumers can tolerate in the form of, of higher prices. But I think this kind of middle place, this, this wait and see period is, it's keeping everyone on edge.

But I certainly think that the CPI report was encouraging and I believe Fed Wednesday is next week, and it, it seems like it will be rather uneventful because I think the, the likelihood of any interest rate cut is. Is now essentially zero. But I'd agree with what you said on tariffs. You know, I think that was certainly welcome news and potentially positive.

It kind of brought to mind what Ryan Severino said on the pod back in February. You know, you might remember that he said if Trump is using tariffs as more of a negotiating tool or. In a very deliberate way, like a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer, I think is how he said it. You know, then the impacts will be less severe.

So I think the market is kind of coming to terms with the fact that it will all unfold slowly over the next few months. I saw a term this week that I liked. They called them tariff table tennis stories, and I think that that table tennis will will be with us for quite some time. 

Manus Clancy: Well, a couple of thoughts on this one.

I always feel time is the great equalizer when it comes to understanding how big an issue is, and the more time you can put between an event. Catastrophe not happening. The more likely it is that catastrophe won't happen. And we are now two and a half months, 10 weeks, give or take post the April 2nd announcements.

The fact that we haven't seen a hedge fund blow up a retailer declare bankruptcy, a just complete rattling of investors through higher CPI and PPI numbers, that is just a great sign and we should give credit where credit is due. I think in this case, maybe some of our listeners won't like this, but you know, the White House is not exactly known for pivoting quickly and changing their trajectory on things.

They tend to dig in, and it's not just this administration, it tends to be a lot of administrations. They take a policy path. It's what they want to do. They dig in, they don't change direction. I do think in this particular case, the swoon in stocks that we saw in April. Really forced the hand of the White House and forced them to take a long, hard look at what they were doing and to the good.

The fact that we didn't play this game of chicken very long was to the benefit of everybody, and I think that that's a good thing. 

Martha Coacher: So while there was some good news, there were a couple things that may be concerning before we get to our May activity index, which I think a number of our listeners will be interested in hearing.

The civil unrest that we're seeing in LA right now is unwelcome for lots of reasons, and without us getting into. The politics of that. We've had a number of stories covering downtown LA and how it's a challenging market prior to any of this happening. So on that point, not good news for the LA market.

Similarly, if this policy ends up being something that is replicated in other urban areas, if they're targeting 3000 immigration arrests a day, that's triple the number of daily arrests. That were made in the early days of Trump's term, which means you could see this spread to other urban locations, Newark, Chicago, Miami, and other places, which again, would be not great news for some of these urban areas.

Manus Clancy: Well, let's start on a narrow basis and then let's pull the lens back a little bit further. What does this mean for the CRE markets, the economy, and so forth? So when you look at the lens, very narrowly, civil unrest in any market. Is not helpful to the commercial real estate market in that area. And sometimes actually the problems are bigger than the symptoms, if you will.

And what do I mean by that? When you go back. To, let's say the 1970s or 1980s. In New York, we had a lot of crime. We had a lot of neglect, and New York was stigmatized as a place where you didn't want to go, and it really impacted the city enormously. But if you lived here, if you lived in the suburbs, you knew the real story there.

There were parts of the city that were flourishing and there were parts of the city that were troubled. But once you got beyond that radius of the tri-state area, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, you were stigmatized. People didn't want to come here for a vacation, and that's what happens when civil unrest takes place.

Right. I, I think it impacted places like Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis. To a very painful degree a couple years ago, and maybe unfairly, I don't know those markets very well, but I imagine that people that might otherwise have gone to see a play or gone to a restaurant and said, you know what? Let's stay in the suburbs tonight.

Let's not stay in a hotel downtown. And the risk is that that's what happens to Los Angeles. People say, let's not make our employees come down here. Let's think about getting office space outside the CBD, and, and that's the painful reality of it. And sometimes. What you see on tv, stigmatizes an entire. A and I hope that that doesn't happen.

Dianne Crocker: Yeah, I think that's, it's an important nuance, you know, especially at a time when attention is, is being drawn into the revitalization of downtown areas. Now, if we have the widespread, um, unrest that you just mentioned, that I. Could potentially extend outside of la. Um, if these raids extend into other metros, that could have obviously a very real impact on decisions companies make about where to open offices, where to have their employees.

Um, there could be an impact on retail since so much of that spending happens at the, at the ground level, that could be very widespread depending on where this all takes us. 

Martha Coacher: We had some other stories that were worth watching, a ruling on eviction bans and a shutdown for fema. Let's first talk about the eviction ban.

This was something that came out of the COVID Pandemic where you saw the CDC ban evictions during the period of COVID. And I recall at the time we talked about whether or not that was, uh, within the law's limits. It seems that now a federal court has ruled. That there are legal claims brought by landlords that must be addressed.

Manus Clancy: Well, it's good news for landlords. I think that landlords in general were really punished over the last couple years on several fronts. The eviction ban, very painful for landlords. I also think that. In certain markets, these rent caps, especially in New York, on how much you can increase rents in the affordable, the rent stabilized.

The rent controlled markets really squeeze landlords and, and let's not kid ourselves. It doesn't just squeeze landlords, it que it squeezes the tenants themselves. Yes, they might get the benefit of their rent only going up 2.9% year over year, but rest assured they're not gonna see the hallways painted.

There's not gonna see the rugs. Refurbished. They're not gonna see the roof patched on time. They're not gonna see exterminators coming into the building. So anything that kind of takes the, the shackles, if you will, off the landlords and gives them a little bit more breathing room is a good thing. So I'm, I'm happy about that.

I will pivot When we talk about the regulatory to a different story. I'm not sure if you saw this Martha and Dianne, but just today I believe, or yesterday. A law went into place in New York where landlords can no longer allow brokers to charge fees to people looking for buildings in New York. So in the past, somebody looking for a two bedroom apartment, maybe a couple people just graduating from college might have paid 15% to a broker to find them an apartment.

That's now become illegal. That's not allowed. And street easy in New York, which is a source of this type of traffic, you know, kind of the, the Craigslist for renters saw a drop of a thousand listings just overnight. So what that impact is remains to be seen. Something tells me sadly, that. These young kids are gonna have to walk around New York with a thousand bucks in their pocket in cash to, to find an apartment.

I don't know, it, it, I'm not sure it's a well thought out, uh, law. 

Dianne Crocker: Something to watch Manus that I wanted to point out is that on the lawsuit, the latest decision does not award damages. But what it does is allow plaintiffs to move forward with claims that their constitutional rights were violated and that the federal government may owe them compensation undertakings law.

So, you know, it's interesting. If it's successful, the case could open the door for a compensation for landlords who are affected by emergency orders. It also reignites debate over government limits and private housing markets. So it, you know, it shows that regulatory intervention is a real risk for anyone who's thinking about investing in multifamily.

Manus Clancy: You know, I hearken back to something Bob Knackle said. I'm not sure if it was in the most recent podcast we did, or the one prior to that, but the 800 pound gorilla in. The housing market in these major metropolitan areas is the government just getting outta the way? Right? Bob says, you know, these zoning things, which cap the height of a multifamily building that you could put up or keep things under wraps by keeping them under the rate stabilization or rent control moniker and keep them kind of controlled under the just vast.

Levels of paperwork and, and rules that have to be met, get outta the way, free up the space, let more development to happen happen. And what you would see is more product and lower rents. People talk about this all the time. Nobody really does anything about it, but Bob has the right answer for this, right?

Take the training wheels off and let developers develop. 

Martha Coacher: I mentioned the shutdown for FEMA that was announced this week. President Trump has announced plans to start phasing out FEMA after the 2025 hurricane season, and this has some impact on the commercial real estate market. I. 

Dianne Crocker: It definitely does.

Martha, I, that was a drastic policy statement by Trump. FEMA's budget is $33.1 billion. They have more than 20,000 employees nationwide, so phasing out FEMA is something that will have a significant impact just on that and. The other kind of obvious impact is that it would shift the burden of disaster recovery and rebuilding to states, to private insurers, to property stakeholders.

So what does that do? Well, it raises the cost of capital Insurance costs are already skyrocketing, so those would go up even more and development costs would increase. So, you know, I, I think the impacts as I. Could be, um, significant and widespread if federal aid is is less reliable. You know, it leaves developers, lenders, insurers to absorb more risk or.

Maybe pass it on to tenants and buyers. LightBox has flood risk models and rebuild cost data already that show that billions of dollars in commercial real estate exposure sit in these zones that are FEMA dependent. So if those federal safety nets shrank, then pricing and development feasibility in coastal regions that are at high risk of of storm exposure could definitely see a reset.

And then I think. It really kind of heights the imperative for any stakeholders in those areas to really kind of think long and hard about, uh, climate resilience and planning. You know, think about measures to mitigate climate risk and owners who embed resilience into their operations, I think will be.

Better positioned to whether a world where FEMA support might not exist or could be dramatically reduced. And I'll mention here, Martha, that next week we are lucky to have a preeminent expert on property resilience and climate risk. That is a EI consultants Holly Deber. So this is a great topic to talk to Holly about.

Martha Coacher: Let's turn to the LightBox data dive. We've talked about the May CRE activity index, which was released at the end of last week, and we did see a change in the momentum of deal transaction activity. Dianne, tell us what happened. 

Dianne Crocker: We did back when the April index came out. The pace of growth had started to moderate, but it was still an increase over March.

So it was interesting. In May, the index slipped to 1 0 5 0.5, which was down from 1 0 9 in April, and that was the first monthly decline of the year. You know, obviously the question is, is that a potential inflection point for the market? Is it the sign of a long-term trend or is it just a, a tapping of the breaks?

For those listeners who haven't tuned in to hear us talk about the index before, it's an aggregate measurement of market velocity. Maze is built on 28,500 data points across, uh, appraisals via our, uh, C3 60 and RIMS platforms, environmental due diligence reports via EDR and new property listings via our RCM and Revere platforms.

So all of this kind of tracks the pulse of pre-transaction activity, so. If you're trying to spot turning points in commercial real estate at this volatile time, consider the index kind of our early warning system. So let's talk for a second about the small dip that we saw in May. Across those three components, the average deal flow of property listings increased 1% compared to April.

Still 47% above last May. So I'm very encouraged by the fact that listings are still coming in at a very healthy clip. The volume of environmental due diligence was relatively flat for the second consecutive month, but still 7% higher than last May. So another encouraging sign, but it was the lender.

Driven commercial appraisal awards that fell 19% below April, and that was the first month on month decline since December. It took our volume back to where we were back in January. So this in my mind, is reflective of lenders who are. Seeing the storm clouds, they're worried about the uncertainty. They're hearing the chatter about sentiments starting to erode a little bit, and they're pulling back from the strong momentum that we saw in the first four months of the year.

We're just two weeks away from the midyear point. So I think the June index will be very, very telling. And I wanted to add Martha, another encouraging point is that. Along with the May index, we just published a rundown of big deals that happened in May, and the good news is big ticket deals are still getting done.

We had 45 9 figure transactions that we watched close in May, and that edged up from April. So that to me, tells me that there's strong conviction among institutional and private equity buyers. You know, we, we saw a little bit of a slowdown in the 50 to $100 million range where maybe tighter credit is sidelining.

Some smaller players, but clearly capital hasn't exited. And I think it's, it's just being more selective. And one last thing that I'll mention is that a trend behind this is a lot of what we're seeing in office and the stories that we highlight here on the podcast, CB or RE came out with an interesting stat, got a lot of.

Headline exposure last week, and it, it's worth mentioning here that for the first time in 25 years, more office space in the US is being demolished or converted than newly constructed for the first time in 25 years. So by the end of 20 25, 23 0.3 million square feet will be removed through either a conversion or or demolition, and only 12.7 million square feet will be completed.

So the trends being driven by remote work and, and high vacancy. And it's leading to this focus on class A office properties. So I feel like in office it's differentiated, you know, these shiny class, A top 10%. Office is what's driving leasing highs in our downtowns. And then you have this bottom 10 to 20% that's effectively obsolete and the middle is kind of in this existential crisis for, for relevance.

So there's a lot of opportunity, I think, as the old space gets, gets reimagined. So that's my take on office. Manus, I know that you watch transactions closely. What are you seeing in the other asset classes? 

Manus Clancy: Wow. A lot to peel back there. Dianne, at the very high level, before I get into the property types themselves, I think two things about what you mentioned are actually glass half full points.

The fact that. The index dipped only slightly, I actually think is a bullish sign that we didn't see activity fall off the cliff after April 2nd. Now that we're two months in to this data. I think it's quite encouraging. I think also encouraging when you talk about all these conversions taking place.

This is not for the faint of heart. If you're gonna convert something from an office to a residential office, to a, a hotel, you are taking on a lot of risk. As a developer. This is a capital intensive project. You need a lot of equity, you need a lot of time. You need to make sure that you. The numbers add up at the beginning and then they come through As you reposition this property over the course of three or four years, you also need a hardy conviction.

If you're a lender, a construction lender is, is putting a lot of money on the line for these types of things and the fact that so many different entities, developers. Have put their money where their mouth is and so many different lenders have done the same, is a really bullish indicator for the market, in my opinion.

That's, I, I, I think that's quite encouraging. I love your thoughts on that. 

Dianne Crocker: I would agree with that, and that's why I think, you know, June, July, August will be very telling, especially because of the things that we've talked about here already. You know, what happens with the labor market, what happens with construction costs when tariffs really start to take hold and as an early indicator.

In the market. If tariffs, if higher prices, if, uh, harder to get construction labor really start to impact projects, then we should start to see that reflected in the index in the coming months. So I certainly think it's worth watching, but I agree what we're seeing so far is expected and certainly not concerning.

Manus Clancy: I'm gonna make a call here and, and my call is gonna be that. We are going to see CRE really take off in the second half of the year. I made a presentation earlier this week about what we're watching, and it's gonna be no surprise to our listeners here. It was no surprise, probably to the audience. We're watching interest rates, we're watching volatility, we're watching tariffs, and we're watching economic signals.

C-P-I-P-P-I, unemployment, GDP, et cetera. And I mentioned that. If all four of those items trend in the positive over the next six months, you can expect a really, really healthy rebound in the second half of the year. I said, if half of those items go to our benefit, and we see lower rates, lower volatility, I.

But tariffs are still an issue and the indicators are mushy. It'll be kind of bumping along like we saw with the index this month. And I said if we go oh for four, it's gonna be back to 2023, we're gonna see a very difficult theory market. What we've seen this week is positive news on tariffs, positive news on inflation, positive news on interest rates.

And with that a. Fall in in volatility. So we kinda went four for four this week and it's got me feeling pretty good about the second half of the year, at least right now. 

Dianne Crocker: So, listening to what you just said, Manus really reminded me of something that we're being constantly reminded of now, and that is investing in commercial properties.

It's a long game, you know, it's, it's not a short scrimmage. And I think the, the deals that we're tracking. Show that buyers are moving in, you know, they wanna hold properties, sell them for a profit, maybe years down the road. So, you know, all the political drama, the latest was the Elon Musk and, and Trump drama of, uh, last week trigger short-term volatility.

You know, it grabs front page real estate, but temporary disruptions, uh, often give way to, to longer term opportunities. And I think that's the case in office right now. So, you know, I asked you before. What have you seen in the other asset classes besides office? You know, what are your, your thoughts on recent multifamily retail industrial deals?

Manus Clancy: So taking it from the top, I will start with multifamily. There's some real trends that we're seeing right now that seem to have spread over many, many months and seem to be enduring others that are just kind of picking up now, and I'll go through them. We start with apartments. What we're seeing now is.

Apartments, apartment sales, that's the dog that never stops hunting every single week, five to 10 sales of a hundred million and up. Diverse buyer group, diverse seller group. The pool of buyers is very, very deep. Capital is available. Cap rates have come down considerably, and what we're seeing here is unlike in office, we're seeing people actually trade these things.

With decent returns from where they bought their properties a couple years ago. I'll highlight three in Westborough Mass. The park Westborough sold for $96 million. The buyer there. Apollo Commercial, the seller, Cottonwood Residential, the sale price, a 47% uptick from the 2018 acquisition price in Sterling, Virginia.

The Chase Heritage Apartments went for 72 million. This property last traded in 2021. The buyer there. Is paying a 25% premium over the last sale just four years ago. The buyer there. True America, the seller at McDowell Properties. I'll give you one more. In Kirkland, Washington View, Kirkland, this property traded for 55 million.

That's a 35% uptick from the 2015 price of, lemme do the math, lemme take my shoes off here. $41 million. The uh, seller there, Acacia. Capital. So what we're seeing here, there was a narrative for a long time that if you bought in 2021, you are considerably underwater. But when you look at that Sterling Virginia Sale, the Chase Heritage Apartments, this was sold in 2021, the seller made 25% on their transaction.

So the apartment market, very, very. Healthy right now. In contrast offices, you mentioned this before, what we saw this week three that met the narrative on the other side in Los Angeles, 6 0 1 South Figueroa, uh, sold for 210 million, 40% discount to the 2005 sale price in Atlanta. The Piedmont Center was sold for $200 million.

A 47% discount to the 2021 sale price in San Francisco Market Center that sold for 177 million, a 75% discount to the 2019 sales price. So themes emerging here, or at least staying in place. Apartments pretty good. Offices not so good. 

Dianne Crocker: That was an impressive range of transactions that you just ran through Manus, and I think it really highlights how differentiated our market is, and we've heard that from past podcast guests as well.

What really matters is an individual asset and one multifamily property is very different than another based on the market that it's in, based on the condition that it's in, based on what fundamentals like. Rent rate or occupancy are, and you know, I think those fundamentals and the data, not fears about the market are what will really shape the future and, and shape the decisions that are being made behind the transactions that you're watching.

Martha Coacher: Manus, I know you had also some updates on retail and hotels. 

Manus Clancy: Yeah, so I'll go through these very quickly. This is a theme that is more recent in, in each case, the retail segment and the hotel segment. Just like I said, the uh, the apartment segment was the area where the dog was always hunting, retail, and hotels was the area where the dog was never hunting.

We hadn't seen a lot of high ticket retail sales or hotel sales over the last six months. That seems to be. Changing just a bit. We saw in the hotel segment three sizable sales. Recently, we've talked about this two weeks ago, the JW Marriott in Phoenix, 800 million. Boston, we saw the courtyard, Boston Copley.

50 million in San Francisco, the Hyatt centric Fishermen's, WA wharf. 80 million. We're starting to see some hotels trade at big numbers. That's an encouraging sign for a market that had been quite locked up in the retail. Kind of similar in West Palm Beach. All of these are in Florida, by the way, in West Palm Beach.

The marketplace at the outlets sold for 133 million, uh, that was acquired by Invesco in Davenport, FL Posner Commons, sold for 63 million. The buyer there, Orion Real Estate. And then just today in South Florida, this reporting coming from commercial observers. Julia at Chick Sen, uh, commercial Real Estate Corp.

Bought the city place, Doral retail component of a mixed use development, paying 88 million for that particular asset. So a couple of trends that make me bullish in retail and hotel going forward. Some good news there. I. 

Dianne Crocker: So retail's not the only thing that's driving transactions in Florida, man. Its, there was a story about Zara, which is a retailer that I know my teen daughter is very familiar with.

Uh, the founder of Zara Amancio Ortega acquired a 259 unit Venito Lalas apartment tower in Fort Lauderdale from Related Group for 165 million. That was one of the largest multi-family deals this year. It was reported by commercial observer and the real deal and per unit the cost was 637,000, which is pricey even by South Florida standards.

And what really jumps out about the story is that at a time when institutional international flows are down, over the past, you know, 12, 18 months. Total investment volume in Florida's commercial real estate has declined, but this family office, Ponte Ga Dega, has been quietly snapping up trophy assets across the US for the last decade from offices in New York to high-end residential in Miami and even Seattle.

You know, looking Martha at our light box data, cross border commercial real estate transactions in Florida fell by double digits last year compared to peak pandemic years when back then Florida was seen as kind of a safe haven for international capital. So. Ortega, you know, maybe isn't a trend follower here, but a, a trophy hunter, and maybe this deal isn't part of a wave, but just more of a targeted bet on a, a luxury asset.

It's in a top tier urban market. We're seeing more and more happen in Fort Lauderdale. So maybe in a cooling market, you know, standout assets like this are, are still attractive and drawing global money. 

Manus Clancy: If I'm not mistaken, the buyer got quite a deal there. I, I think the property was originally listed for 230 or $220 million.

So getting it at that 1 65 price sounds like a, a steal. If imagine saying that, oh, you paid 165 million, you got your deep discount. That's, uh, there was something I never thought I'd hear coming out of my mouth. 

Martha Coacher: Of course, father's Day is this weekend. Father's Day spending is expected to reach a record of 24 billion.

This figures an increase from 2024, where it was about 22 billion and exceeds the previous record in 2023. You know, Manus, the average person is gonna spend around 200 bucks. What $200 surprises are you hoping for this weekend? 

Manus Clancy: Well, let me start by saying I don't expect any of my children to spend $200 on me, and I might even be annoyed if they did.

You know, a nice, uh, I don't know. I. Set of socks or something like that is fine. I don't know. You know, I, I, I really don't need anything. I'm, I'm pretty happy where I am. If somebody was gonna splurge on me, I'd say I could use a nice three wood for my golf game. But even that, you know, I, I really don't need anything.

I'm, I'm, I'm quite content. Bring me a bagel with, uh, and everything bagel with butter when you come over my. Home this weekend. Make it nice and fresh. Don't get me one of those shrink wrap things, and I'll feel pretty good. 

Dianne Crocker: Not a hammock or an ax throwing excursion, Manus. 

Manus Clancy: No, I'm pretty good. You know, you come over.

I don't even need socks. You know, just come over, bring me a bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll. Bring me a, uh, you know, a fresh bagel with butter. That, that would more than make me happy. Find me a baron's so I don't have to read it online. I'm good. 

Dianne Crocker: I love it. Martha, I just wanna give a big shout out to any listeners who are parents with graduates crossing the stage this week.

My son is graduating from high school and getting him across the finish line post COVID was honestly no small feat. So congratulations to everybody who has students who are crossing that stage to get their diplomas. 

Manus Clancy: Both a gift and a curse, right? So happy for their achievements. So sad to see those hefty checks getting ready to be written for so many parents.

Martha Coacher: Congratulations and kids. If you're listening, mannus wants a three wood. Thanks to our producer, Josh Bruyning. Please join us each week as our LightBox team shares CRE News and Data in Context. You can listen on any of your favorite podcast channels and. Send your comments or questions to podcast@LightBoxre.com.

Thank you for listening and have a great week. 

Manus Clancy: Let's go.