Markets Surge, AI Booms, and CRE Activity Shows Resilience Even with Geopolitical Volatility and Fed-Policy Uncertainty

It’s a milestone week at The CRE Weekly Digest—our one-year anniversary and 52nd episode. From launch day to today, we’ve unpacked the headlines, challenged assumptions, and surfaced the trends that matter most for CRE professionals navigating uncertainty. This episode is no different. 

Markets are running hot, with stocks brushing all-time highs despite risks from Middle East volatility to tariff headwinds and the Powell–Trump standoff. Is it optimism or selective amnesia? Manus calls it like he sees it, with Dianne and Martha weighing in on rate cut speculation, earnings compression, and investor fatigue.

In CRE, conviction is showing up in the form of major bets: a $211M construction loan in Miami’s Edgewater, a Manhattan office-to-resi conversion, and a surge in data center demand, even as zoning friction and energy strain rise. Cincinnati tops rent growth rankings, and Walmart experiments with dark stores and drone delivery.

We also give an advance look at the latest LightBox CRE Activity Index and spotlight the metros showing real momentum in environmental due diligence.

And finally, a big thank you to our listeners—from NYC to Singapore—for showing up, weighing in, and pushing the conversation forward every week. Here’s to the next 52 episodes.

00:52 Geopolitical Tensions and Market Reactions

07:03 Interest Rates and Economic Outlook

12:29 New York City Mayoral Election and Potential Fallout

19:14 The Rise of Data Centers in the AI Era

24:57 Gyms are Back and Part of the Amenity Draw

27:39 Bold Moves in Multifamily and Office-Resi

35:11 Innovations in Retail: Dark Stores and Drone Delivery

37:00 Celebrating One Year of Insights with the Pod Team

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

www.lightboxre.com

Transcript

The CRE Weekly Digest by LightBox

Episode 52: Markets Surge, AI Booms, and CRE Activity Shows Resilience Even with Geopolitical Volatility and Fed-Policy Uncertainty

June 27, 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 23rd to the 27th. Despite a raft of data released this week on housing consumer confidence and durable goods, investors seemed focused on two things, monitoring the tensions in the Middle East after ceasefire was announced between Israel and Iran and the intensifying standoff between Fed chair Powell and President Trump.

Speculation over whether the president will name a successor to the post before summer's end. Manus geopolitics took center stage early this week giving way to the Trump Powell face off. What stood out to you this week? 

Manus Clancy: I think this thing that stands out to me this week more than anything else is just how much investors and Americans in general are discounting geopolitical events, what's happening in the Middle East and and so forth.

What we're seeing this week is. US stocks really hitting all time high Nvidia now at a new all time high. Again, the NASDAQ 100 hitting a record high yesterday. I think they're gonna break that record high today, Thursday, uh, as it appears with about an hour to go in trading. So I find it quite remarkable that we have a lot of things that remain unresolved tariffs.

Even though we've made progress, there has been what seems to be a framework for a deal with China. While there's rumors of deals on the precipice, as there's talk about more delays coming down, all of those things are nice, but. They don't allow businesses to function normally, and they threaten to push prices higher for the consumer.

Yet even with that looming over us, the markets are on fire. There's no indication from the bond markets that. People are concerned about inflation. Yes, treasury yields remain naggingly high, but they're not going up, right. They've been in that four and a half percent range or lower for quite a while right now, and all concerns about higher oil prices.

Events in the Middle East, metastasizing into something bigger. Other countries getting involved really seems to have come and gone over the course of a week. And for me, I'm happy that these things are happening. I'm happy we see tariff delays. I'm happy that it seems like we might be on on the cusp of a cease fire in the Middle East.

All that's wonderful, but it's not the kind of environment that I think. Earns us or spawns new all time highs for stocks. I'm kind of shocked, frankly, at just how exuberant investors have become over the last two or three months. 

Dianne Crocker: Maybe manna, they're getting tired of the wild fluctuations that we saw earlier this year.

You know, what if, what if the past three, two months maybe with tariffs and the wars and the ping pong didn't happen and we didn't have that market volatility and what happened this week happened, you know, I wonder if we would've seen more of a reaction, you know, maybe the market's kind of, I hate to say it, but getting a little used to those kinds of.

Big waves coming and proceeding despite that, 

Manus Clancy: I'm not really there. I, I have to say, I do think that the window of concern shortens with every event that takes place that doesn't lead to the world ending. And when you think about it, we've had a lot of these events. I wonder if people have become too complacent if they think, well, we've panicked so often in the past.

The sky never falls. Therefore, we should dismiss all of this. I am of the camp that even if tariffs get worked out nicely, some of these companies out there are going to report disappointing earnings in the second half of 2025, because either they paid more for inventory or the inventory costs passed on to consumers led to lower sales.

So when you talk about things like Walmart, target. Best Buy and others. Not everybody's Nvidia. Not everybody's micron. Not everybody is a MD, and I think that the likelihood of compression and earnings in the second half, kind of taking the wind out of sails from this enthusiasm still exists. Am I being chicken a little right now?

Am I being overly concerned, or do you also think that the markets are getting ahead of themselves? 

Dianne Crocker: My sense Madison, in talking to people is I feel like there's an overriding sense that the second half of the year could be tricky, but that the numbers aren't showing that the wheels are coming off the bus yet.

So there's kind of a sense of, of business as usual with I. A broad undercurrent of fear, unrest, uncertainty for the second half. And it's almost a sense of, I'll worry when it's time to worry, but they're not, they're not quite there yet. 

Manus Clancy: And maybe I should be more precise with my words. It just feels to me like people are dismissing what remain as big potential concerns in the second half that I don't think what we're seeing warrants.

The kind of enthusiasm we're seeing for stocks and risk assets and spread contraction right now. 

Dianne Crocker: I'll add to what I just said too, Manus. I spoke at two events in June. One was for the credit union business group, and the second was for the appraisal institute in New England. And the number one thing that I got questioned on from the audience wasn't unrest, wasn't I?

Geopolitical concerns and not even tariff wars, it was interest rates. What happens with interest rates? How many cuts will we get? What do you think will happen? What if we don't get any interest rate cuts? What if they actually go up? What happens? So, you know, I think at least for the folks I'm talking to, interest rates are, are more top of mind than some of the, the geopolitical tensions that you referenced.

Manus Clancy: Interest rates certainly are top of mind. We did get some good news this week. We saw two fed presidents say it's time right. One of them said shortly and the other said July would be the right time for a 25 basis point rate cut. So there does seem to be some momentum for a rate cut sooner rather than later.

Certainly fed Chair Powell was not quite there yet. His remarks this week were not. Of a sense that we're, we're on the cusp of, of cutting rates. But the two remarks from the Fed presidents, I think were encouraging. But the other thing that looms out there that we haven't talked about yet, and, and by all means, weigh in on these two things.

One is we still haven't seen the impact yet of higher wages from. Lower immigration and perhaps people self deporting or people being deported from this country, you know, that that's another headwind that could take place in, in the second half of the year. And then obviously we have this election in New York, which to me is a real bellwether for where the country is right now in terms of its thinking and, and, and not in a good way.

Martha Coacher: I think, I think there's fatigue, right? We've heard about a recession coming for at least the last year, probably for the last 24 months, and the data that is parsed and poured over, I. Week after week, month after month leaves us with some disparity in data points. We see consumer confidence go up. We see it drop.

Uh, we see durable goods orders this week, report that they were surging In May. We've seen the housing market. Show, you know, month over month that it's weakening and usually that is a leading indicator of the broader economy, but somehow it's been an outlier in what's happening in the rest of the economy.

So I think people are left scratching their heads, trying to figure out. Whether the tariff inflation number will be something that shows up, or is it something that's gonna be relatively controlled and muted? And then how do all of these other geopolitical events impact things like oil prices, supply chain, and some of the other things that we really got wrong?

After COVID, we really did not predict what would happen and how high inflation would go and that it wasn't transitory, that it was something that took months and effort with rate increases for the Fed to get control of. 

Manus Clancy: Well, if there's anything that COVID taught us, it's that there is a long delay between stimulus or an event and the impact from it, right?

The early stimulus that we saw come out of Washington to help people pay their rent, keep their apartments, put cash in their pocket, buy groceries, that came shortly after the pandemic began. Yet we didn't see the real impact. Of inflation for about two years. We never saw that. Certainly we didn't see an impact for the first 16 to 18 months, and it took us two years to get to peak inflation.

And maybe that's the opposite right now. Maybe what we're seeing is these potential headwinds, tariffs, supply chain issues, oil fluctuations, potential. Labor shortages. Maybe that's just something that will take time to play out, and at the moment it's just not showing up in any of the data. That's as good a possibility as anything else for some of this exuberance.

I. 

Martha Coacher: You talked about the Democratic primary election in New York for the mayor, which resulted in a big upset with Soran Mandani beating Andrew Cuomo. The outcome is still gonna be decided by a ranked choice where the winner will face incumbent Mayor Eric Adams. But there was some immediate reaction after the election, mainly because Mandani is proposing a freeze of rents on rent-stabilized units, and the reaction to this type of policy was immediate with New York real estate and bank stocks selling off sharply.

There's real concern about what the impact could be. 

Manus Clancy: Yeah. I thought it was a, a disappointing outcome. As somebody who spent more than 50 years in the New York City, tri-state area on Long Island in Brooklyn, in Manhattan, I challenge anybody to find a bigger fan of New York City than me or a bigger, somebody who roots harder for the city or wants the city to succeed.

So. My heart is so much with the city, but I do think that the policies that this gentleman is espousing are just not what the city needs. What we need is free market housing. What we need is things that encourage people to replace dilapidated housing, that replace public housing with more housing. Take those eight and 10 and 15 unit.

Properties that have been around for decades and replace them with 40 stories, right? Try to increase the housing stock by by 20 or 30%. I just don't think policy-wise, this is what the city needs at this time. 

Dianne Crocker: Well, Manus, I read, uh, bill Ackman, he's a billionaire and a CEO of, uh, hedge fund and an activist investor.

He was on X, you know, and he said, rent freezes will destroy our housing base. They'll shrink the affordable housing supply. They'll kill new construction. And he encouraged a right in candidate. So, Manus, maybe you are the right in candidate. 

Manus Clancy: Oh, I don't know. I, I think, you know, maybe my brother and two sisters might, uh, write me in.

You get beyond that and I think it, and the truth is only one of them who still lives in New York, so maybe I get one vote. 

Martha Coacher: Let's turn to our LightBox data dive. Dianne, we have a preview of where we are with the three factors that we look at. 

Dianne Crocker: We do. So June ends on Monday, which officially puts us into the second half of the year.

So that means our June CRE activity index is coming out. I took a look back at Mays. Any of our loyal listeners know the CRE activity Index. Is an aggregate and it brings in three measures of commercial real estate velocity, environmental due diligence, property listings, and appraisal demand from lenders across all LightBox platforms.

So I looked back at what those three components did last month. Environmental due diligence fell in April by 5% from March. Something we thought might be due to tariff uncertainty. It got back in the black in May with a 1% increase. Property listings rose by 3% in April, and they moderated a little bit to a 1% increase in May and lender driven appraisals.

Those were up in April by 7%, but in kind of a dramatic twist, they fell in May by 19%, and that was the first drop in appraisal demand that we saw since December. So we chalked that up to the first sign of lender caution starting to take root. So in the aggregate where we landed was that Mays index was our fourth month in the triple digits, our fourth consecutive month.

But it was also the first time this year that the index lost a little bit of momentum. It fell by a few points, and that was largely due to that pullback in lender demand for appraisals that I just noted. So Manus, I got a little nostalgic as we approached this week's anniversary of the podcast and it occurred to me that you've had a pretty good success rate on predicting the index.

I must say you successfully predicted a dip back in October after we saw a September surge when the Fed finally lowered rates for the first time this year. So what say you on the June index after Mays was our first decline of the year? You think it'll go down a little bit or refers back into positive momentum?

Manus Clancy: I think we're back into positive momentum, right? When you think about the depths of the concern that we had post April 2nd post, the tariff announcement, that was really over by early May. I do think by the middle of May people were back to business as usual, and I do think that people were back to.

Doing business. They were buying, they were selling, they were listing, they were appraising, they were refinancing. So I don't think this June number's gonna blow the doors off, but I do think it will be somewhat up modestly when we look further down the curve. This might sound contrarian to what I said for the first 10 minutes about whistling past graveyards.

I am very, very bullish. On the second half of the year for commercial real estate in in particular, I just feel that the market did not miss a beat like it did in 2020 or 2023 after Silicon Valley Bank in the face of tariff announcements, war in the Middle East, budgetary concerns, no budget deal yet, all these things have come and gone, and.

The market has just maintained a very stiff upper lip and continued to soldier on. If we see no more problems with the Middle East or more trade deals coming out, I think the second half of the year. Could be our best second half since 2022. Uh, I do think that there's confidence growing. People are feeling good.

I don't think that we're gonna see a recovery in office, per se, uh, in terms of valuations. But I think even there, we're seeing leasing up. So I think we're gonna predict something even better. I think that the index is up 15 to 20 points by December. 

Martha Coacher: A bold prediction by Manus Clancy. I love that. Our did you know, for the week gives us a view of the metros that are leading the pack.

Dianne Crocker: I always like to look at the metros on the environmental due diligence part of our index, because that's an early read, and it has been historically too, on where investors are looking back a few years, when investors were leaving primary metros because prices were going up too high, our index showed that.

That kind of migration to secondary metros where they could get their ROI. So I looked at the five metros year to date through the end of May that are leading the pack in terms of year on year growth. And the leader was Houston. Their growth was somewhere in the range of 40% over the first five months of last year.

And then rounding out the top five were Raleigh Chicago, your New York City, Manus. And also Northern New Jersey. So that's where the majority of activity has taken place so far this year. 

Manus Clancy: One of the things that makes me so bullish right now is the fact that there's no pause. There certainly wasn't over the last two weeks in terms of big ticket.

Sales across multiple property types. We try to cover sales data periodically. We have it in a couple weeks. We've had some great guests on the podcast recently, Holly Neber and Shlomo Chop. If you haven't heard those interviews, uh, I urge you to go back and listen. Lemme just rattle off for you, Dianne and Martha, what I am seeing just over the last two weeks.

In Washington, dc Boca Raton, Belmont, Massachusetts, Seattle and Mill Creek, Washington, salt Lake City, Utah, Malden, mass sales of apartments of over a hundred million dollars, right? This is not 10 and $20 million Classy apartments for $20 million. Tertiary markets. These are big tickets in the industrial space.

Nine digit sales in Las Vegas, west Valley, Arizona, Shaka, Minnesota. Uh, that's an Amazon warehouse and a portfolio in Orlando, Florida. In the land space, $105 million for a two property portfolio in Oaa, in the office space in Anaheim, Tysons, Virginia, and Boston sales of over $60 million. So a lot going on there and it just tells me that the market is just shrugged off all this geopolitical noise, budget noise and tariff noise.

Martha Coacher: While you're feeling bullish, we saw a number of stories about data centers. We saw a mega project that's taking shape in Louisiana. 

Manus Clancy: Certainly there doesn't seem to be any slowdown in demand for land and a willingness for developers to put up new data centers. We're seeing it all the time. We saw several land sales over the last two weeks that are intended to be future data centers.

So this. Creation of data centers is certainly moving ahead, full steam ahead. Do we someday get a glut? Do we someday get a sense of pushback? Do we get a a moment where supply outpaces demand, maybe. I think we're so early in the AI cycle, it's really hard to say, but when you read the comments from Nvidia, chipmaker a MD mic run.

Others, they are just saying the demand is there for people to spend on ai, to buy chips, to invest in data centers, and for right now, it's all hands on deck. 

Dianne Crocker: I agree with that, Madison, to continue what we were just talking about at the, the metro level. First of all, demand from these hyperscalers and, and cloud service providers, they're fueling record leasing volume in the, the first quarter of this year as we.

Get more reliant on ai. CBRE just came out with its global data center trends report, and at a metro level, it's Northern Virginia that remains the largest data center market in the us. Atlanta is in second, Phoenix is in third, and so they have now surpassed Dallas and Silicon Valley for the first time.

So there are these shifts as certain metros are in vogue for data centers and others kind of fall out of favor. There were three separate Virginia Data Center projects that have been rejected or recommended for denial by local officials amid growing local pushback in that largest data center market.

So, you know, I think we're starting to see this, this kind of friction point. Obviously these huge data centers need a lot of energy intensive infrastructure developers need. Big parcels of land. They need access to reliable power. They need favorable zoning. And communities, I think are starting to get more vocal in demanding transparency, demanding sustainability.

So it's not just insight selection, it's not just about technology. Zoning policy comes into play, utility regulation comes into play, as well as urban and rural land use. I had mentioned that I spoke, um. This week at the Appraisal Institute conference in Boston, and the speaker who came after me was Aaron Jaka at Colliers, and his sense was that the data center market is showing no signs of slowing down.

He said developers cannot build them fast enough, especially in markets that are not land constrained. So you know, they're trying to build up quickly. They're facing growing pushback like. Those instances in Northern Virginia, but I think developers have their, their work cut out for them. I do kind of wonder, because there's so much momentum in this market right now, you know, what's the obsolescence of these data centers long term?

You know, what happens in 10 years or 20 years when we maybe evolve away from the need for these gigantic data centers? Brian Ooff brought this up when we had him on as a guest back in October, and I, I just wonder what happens to them in the next stage. But right now it's, it's foot on the gas. 

Manus Clancy: We just don't really know yet how.

Impactful. This will be on energy usage. We have projections. We have people saying these are gonna be enormous energy users and and so forth. What that does to the consumer that's nearby to the citizen that lives near a data center, does it drive prices through the roof? Do we need a whole new grid in these areas?

What happens when Microsoft opens one, Amazon opens another I. A third developer opens a, another data center, each have their individual demands. But when you triple that demand, what does that do? What does it do to multifamily developers who all of a sudden are watching their electricity bills go through the roof?

I don't really know. I think we're in the really, really beginning stages. Of, of watching this play out and it's really anybody's guess. So when people say, we want to tap the brakes, we wanna learn more, I don't really blame them. 

Martha Coacher: Well, maybe this'll kind of turn that around a little bit. Related to that, AI has sparked an office revival in San Francisco.

So there's a paradox here for HuManus to consider. The city is on track to experience its best leasing year since 2019, largely stimulated by AI firms. 

Manus Clancy: I think that could be the, uh, real balm for the office space, not just in San Francisco. I expect the same thing to happen in. New York and other major metropolitan areas that all that space that had been laying fallow as advertising agencies and law firms and accounting firms went to hybrid work might become in demand again.

We've seen reports where New York had its highest leasing numbers in several years. San Francisco is seeing a renaissance, and I think that's terrific. I think that's great. 

Martha Coacher: Sticking with leasing news in New York City Lifetime. The luxury fitness brand has leased 52,000 square feet at 10 Bryant Park for 20 years.

And it's interesting because we saw post COVID, I. Gyms and fitness centers absolutely vacant while people were, you know, ensconced at home using their pelotons. Now they've become a strategy for commercial real estate, either multiuse, uh, adding amenities, multifamily, et cetera. 

Manus Clancy: I think what we're seeing, and it's the continuation of a trend, is developers have figured out that.

Places that are highly amenitized are going to attract premium rents, whether that's multifamily or office. We've seen even in the hardest hit cities with the highest vacancies class, AAA offices. The brand new inventory with great amenities is going to outperform. I think that this is part of that trend that if you could have an office with communal space, with a great restaurant in the lobby with a really accessible coffee place, a golf simulator, and a gym, I think you're getting that premium rent that you can't get in an ordinary A a B or a C class office.

Dianne Crocker: Agreed, the race is on to, um, really to give people reason to come in, to make one office building more competitive than another, whether it's from having a gym inside or nearby, or a, I've seen office buildings in Boston that are getting redeveloped with these gigantic food halls. And the lower level. But I think gyms in particular, golf simulators are obviously great ways that an owner or developer can make their building stand out, and it's not just in downtown areas.

I have a friend who was a. Real estate attorney who specialized in office and post COVID. She pivoted to retail and specifically there was so much interest in grab and go food options and gyms and suburban markets because with hybrid work they were going downtown a few days a week and still are, and home the other two.

You know, and they wanna work out at a gym during their lunch hour and they wanna run into Panera or Chipotle to grab a lunch to go. So I think gyms and, and certainly fast food restaurants are really a positive light in the retail sector right now. Let's shift 

Martha Coacher: to a couple of noteworthy financings.

Let's start with Miami Momentum. And Manush, you were just talking about multifamily, so this is an interesting one to start with. 

Manus Clancy: Yes, this is of a piece of what I was saying before. About 10 minutes ago, I rattled off a lot of sales that were taking place. It was my evidence that the market continues to soldier on regardless of what the screaming headlines tell us.

And the same is true in the financing market. Every week we're seeing things get refinanced, things get construction, lending taking place, redevelopment, lending, taking place. It's evidence that. The four pillars of lending in CRE are all functioning banks are lending. The CMBS market has been on fire in terms of new issuance for all of 2025, the insurance company market and the non-bank private equity market.

All. Represented very healthily every week in terms of new deals that they've done. I've singled out two here, mark Martha mentioned the first one. Miami Momentum down in South Florida. Oak Row Equities just got a $211 million construction loan to develop a luxury apartment. Complex in the Edgewater neighborhood.

The lending here, 142 million came from Bank OZK Bank of the Ozarks. Uh, that is a senior note. There's also a $68 million Mez piece from Canyon Partners Re So what you're talking about here, why did this stand out for me this week? It's because obviously construction lending is the riskiest part. Of any bank's portfolio, they're making a bet on the developer executing, putting a shovel in the ground, getting everything in place, putting up a 30 or 40 or 50 story tower, and then leasing it up, and in the meantime, the economy not going into the tank.

So what we have here. Are two pillars of the CRE lending market. Stepping in without hesitation. Bank, OZK, who is a very active construction lender and has been for quite a while. Representing the bank piece and Canyon Partners representing the non-bank lending community to combine for a $211 million loan on construction.

The second story I wanted to talk about, not so much a financing story. This is a redevelopment story, but it talks about the confidence in the market, and this is in Lower Manhattan. Three developers led by Flatiron Real Estate and Duke Properties are converting. 64 Fulton Street, 120 5-year-old classy office into residential apartments and what we're talking about here.

It's just like lending on construction, right? You don't go into this type of business as a developer. You don't go into this type of business as a lender unless you have confidence that you can execute. That demand will be there at the, then the, and that the economy will not go into the tank over the three years it takes to pull this off.

So in South Florida, we have a big. $200 million project in New York. We have an office Rezi conversion, probably the 12th or 15th. We've talked about on this podcast, two signs that the CRE market is operating without any concerns at all. There's a lot of conviction out there and people are putting their money to work.

Dianne Crocker: Those are, you know, really interesting stories. Manus, you know, first off the project that you mentioned in Edgewater, you know that's a waterfront submarket in Miami. It's rapidly transforming into this luxury residential hub. You mentioned that construction lending is among the riskiest. That a lender can extend, you know?

And I wonder about sustainability, you know, can rents continue to justify construction costs? Especially if they go up, and at least for now, it sounds like lenders like Bank, OZK are betting Yes. But they're being selective in terms of where they're going. And then with the Manhattan office to Rezi.

Project. You know, I remember a year or so ago when the chatter about office to Resi conversions really started to ramp up. There was a lot of pushback. You know, people saying that the headlines didn't really convey that. These projects are very difficult, you know, and that there was a perception that it was as easy as flipping a switch, which it isn't.

And with every story like this that we talk about here on the pod, I think it tells other developers that look, you know, if, if the numbers work out as the location is right, that conversions of obsolete office. Space into much needed Multifamily developments offers a path forward. You know, they're not easy and there's zoning, there's um, securing capital, there's, um, adequately estimated construction costs, but deals that like this, that add to the housing stock where it's desperately needed, and obviously New York City is one market where it's desperately needed.

As we just talked about. It gives me hope that more conversions will be coming down the road. 

Manus Clancy: You said a little bit about rent growth and where that was. I thought there was an encouraging piece that came out from Redfin this week in it. The headline was that Cincinnati topped the US in terms of rent growth at 7.4%.

Good for Cincinnati for leading the pack there. But the part of the article that stood out to me was Redfin said that rents had dropped by only 1% nationally year over year. I think people were more concerned that. Given the new development that had come online, starting with COVID and the, in the two years since the pandemic began, that you know was completed in 2023 and 2024 would've made that number much more negative, negative 2%, negative 3%, negative 4%.

I think the 1% decline is kind of encouraging. 

Dianne Crocker: You know, and you might be right. Part of what's happening, which you alluded to before, is population migration. You know, people are moving away from very costly markets into ones that are, that are more affordable. And I think for owners and developers, trends in rent growth are going to really reshape where investors and developers and.

And owners allocate their capital. So while a market like Cincinnati may not offer sky high rank growth, if they're starting to deliver stability and upside in an uncertain market, that could be a real plus. 

Martha Coacher: Well, one more story, that's a shout out. To our colleague Shlomo Chop, who we had on the pod. As Manus mentioned a couple of weeks ago, there was a story that Walmart is testing dark stores and a dark store looks like a regular shopping location, but it's not because the public's not allowed inside, and they're used to speed up their online fulfillment.

So it's an operation that lets them use a brick and mortar location. Basically to to ship goods that are potentially purchased online. Sounds a lot like the concept that Shlomo was talking about when we were talking about this concept of how retail can be, you know, much more responsive and used stores in brick and mortar locations and not necessarily have to have big warehouses.

Manus Clancy: It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. It is certainly along the lines of what Shlomo was discussing, where you have smaller display areas, but logistic areas assigned to them. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with Walmart. I think if it plays out well, it'll be a real validation of Shomos idea.

I hope it does. 

Dianne Crocker: Walmart was also in the news this week, Madison and Martha, because they want us to jump on the drone delivery bandwagon. I don't know if you saw this, but they made a bold announcement that drone delivery would reach 75% of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro. But the reality is that it's available at fewer than 2% of Walmart stores.

So I know you're excited. It's about having a drone deliver coffee, but the financials that were shared in the piece was that it cost $13 and 50 cents per package for drone delivery compared to only a dollar 90 for a ground van. So I think between the dark store story and the drone delivery one, Walmart's clearly trying to.

Showcase themselves as an innovation leader, I don't think drone flights will get much traction, but I do think that the war will be won in retail on efficiency. Drone delivery is just too costly, but I think in store fulfillment is, is probably where the war is gonna be fought, and that's, that's I think the dark store story and what it really brought to light.

Martha Coacher: Well, one year ago we launched the LightBox Siri Weekly Digest, and the concept was really a simple one. Provide data and information with context and why the stories matter. So guys, happy one year. We've done 52 episodes with about 14 esteemed guests. We have listeners from New York to Seattle and as far away as Singapore and South Africa, if you can believe that.

Manus Clancy: Well, let me start by saying I enjoy doing this every week. I think I have a great team to work with. I love hopping on every Thursday with Martha and Dianne. I think they do a great job keeping a pulse on what's happening in the CRE market. So I, I think it's a, a terrific way to spend an hour every week.

I think, to underscore your point, Martha, the guests we've had have been really terrific. I've learned so much from all the people we've had this year. My biggest shout out goes to the audience itself. The tens of thousands of people that have listened, that have written in, that have texted, that have touted us on LinkedIn and followed us and everything else, it's just I learned so much from our audience.

It's a classy bunch of people. It's an intelligent group, capable of agreeing or disagreeing on a very high level, and I just love the interaction and. Best part of my week. Thank you everybody 

Dianne Crocker: here, here. You know, I, I don't expect our anniversary to get quite as much media coverage as Martha's Vineyard did with the 50th anniversary of Jaws last week.

But, you know, I agree with you, Manus. I think it's, it's really incredible. Thinking back to when we first started this and, and how much has changed in such a short time. You know, the markets were sluggish. A year ago, all eyes were on the Fed. Every fed Wednesday, the election was heating up, so we didn't know who the next president would be.

And I agree. I think some of the best times here are having guests come in and share what they're seeing in the trenches and also talking to folks who are loyal listeners and tune in every Friday when the podcast comes out. We love hearing input and we love sharing perspectives, and we're always looking for new guests to help us make sense of, of these challenging times.

Martha Coacher: And one listener, I wanna give a shout out to Brian. B, thank you for being a listener since the early days, and I mean like. 2020. So he's followed us along, so we appreciate that. Thanks to our producer Josh Bruyning. Please join us every week as our LightBox team shares CRE News and Data in context. You can listen on any of your favorite podcast channels, and if you like what you hear, rate us on your favorite app and leave a comment in the meantime.

And if you have any questions, reach out to us at podcast@LightBoxre.com. Thank you for listening, and have a great week. 

Manus Clancy: Let's go.