Tariffs, Data Blackouts & Pricing Reset – CRE’s Quiet Strength

Tariff shock, federal data blackout, and CRE dealmaking…still strengthening. This week, a new 100%-tariff threat on China could rejigger aluminum/steel inputs that already jumped 50%+ in Cushman & Wakefield’s math, and the federal shutdown kept key economic releases in the dark. Manus Clancy and Dianne Crocker break down what it all means on the ground: how tariffs could slow new development (and support pricing), encouraging signs from big banks, and the great office reset in full swing. See the Midtown tower that sold at 43% below its 2007 mark. We also hit the $40B BlackRock–NVIDIA data-center pact, sturdier Q3 bank prints, and why multifamily is crowding institutional pipelines. Plus, a $660M loan modification negotiated by Iron Hound Management on a national office/industrial portfolio highlights how uncertainty around GSA lease risk is complicating refis. Bottom line: volatility may be rising, but CRE isn’t flinching. Investors remain disciplined and focused on deals that pencil. 

03:30 Impact of Tariffs on Construction and CRE
08:20 Bank Earnings and Corporate Failures
13:13 Commercial Real Estate Trends
17:39 Federal Shutdown Effects on CRE
21:54 Leases and Transactions in the Office Segment
26:38 Industrial Sector Boom
31:26 Luxury Developments and Market Dynamics

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

www.lightboxre.com

Transcript

The CRE Weekly Digest by LightBox

Episode 68: Tariffs, Data Blackouts & Pricing Reset – CRE’s Quiet Strength 

October 17, 2025

Alyssa Lewis: 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 Alyssa Lewis with our experts Manus Clancy and Dianne Crocker. It's the week ending October 18th, and we're now at week three of a government shutdown. The US equity and crypto markets were jolted last week by President Trump's threat of a hundred percent tariffs on Chinese goods, leading to a big spike in volatility. Treasury yields fell as investors raced out of equities. Earnings season began with positive news from JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, and a peace deal and hostage release in the Middle East, helped lift spirits across the globe. Manus, it was a good news, bad news week. What should investors take away from this? 

Manus Clancy: Wow, there was a lot going on this week, and you did a nice job outlining a lot of the headlines there. And by the way, welcome Alyssa as your first week as host of the LightBox podcast. It's great to have you here. The headlines.

Plentiful. Uh, the first one of course was late last week. We saw the threat of 100% tariff rates on Chinese goods that sent the stock markets reeling. It sent the crypto markets. Really reeling. We saw a 20% downdraft in the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Some people were saying it was the biggest single day wipe out of value.

The biggest paper loss day for any asset class ever with trillions of dollars lost. The president kind of reversed course over the weekend and said everything will be fine. But during the course of the week, the Chinese kind of ratcheted up their rhetoric. Kind of saying that they're not gonna be intimidated by what's going on.

And in fact, on CNBC this morning, the bright red headline was a quote from the president, which said, president Trump, that is, we are in a sustained trade war with China right now. And that was really the. Essence of the news for me at least economically. Certainly we have nothing really to sink our teeth into for economic news.

So that really dominated the headlines. But I'll peel back the onion with, with two thoughts. Thought number one is, this is a terrifying headline to me that. When we're in a trade war, you're not thinking, the economy is not functioning on eight cylinders. You're not thinking this is the best thing to promote job growth, GDP growth, right?

It's, it's sand in the gears when things like this happen, and yet the equity markets today and yesterday up the Russell 2000, now again at an all time high. So that part of it. Just really stuns me that on the one hand we have these screaming negative headlines, and on the other hand, we have equities in the US being bid up and bid up and bid up.

That's thought number one. Thought number two is. Volatility is the enemy of CRE. When markets get volatile. CRE lenders push out risk premiums. Buyers get cold feet deals fall apart. That has been the 40 year history of CRE. That did not happen in April when Trump announced his tariffs on April 2nd. The CRE market largely shrugged off the volatility that came with it.

The big question we as CRE professionals are talking about right now is, should this trade war result in heightened and lengthy volatility? Will CRE remain as stoic as it was in October, 2025, as it was in April, 2025? 

Dianne Crocker: I wanna lean in on two things that you hit on there, Manus. Um, the first one was the tariff headline last week, which for me was, it was such a reminder.

To everyone about how fast risk can reprice. Let me just, um, divert a little bit. So you might remember that in July we had, as a guest on this pod, Rebecca Rocky, uh, Cushman Wakefield, and in July she went into great detail about this model that they were building, which estimated tariff costs by building material literally as.

The tariffs were making headlines and taking shape. And when I was at Crew convention last week in Austin, I got to hear James Bonker. He's a senior economist who works with re Rebecca, and he highlighted that research. So what he put on the screen was that Cushman is estimating that the biggest impacts of tariffs on building materials will be on aluminum and will be on steel with rates going up from only.

Three to 6% in the fourth quarter of last year to more than 50% now, so. He pointed out clearly that's a real headwind for construction budgets. It's a real headwind for proformas, given that roughly 40% of building materials and commercial projects are imported. And he also mentioned that our domestic capacity cannot possibly meet demand for many of these key inputs.

So, you know, while we might see new plants here and there, they take years and significant capital to come online. And what I'm leading to man is, is that. Emblematic of this whipsaw environment that we're in just hours after I sat there listening to James wrap up the 100% China tariff news hit. And as you said, you know, the market's tanked with the SMP seeing its largest one day decline since April, and you know when the goalposts are moving that fast, how can you possibly.

Price projects. That's the first thing that struck me this week. And the second is interest rates. You know, and where this is all headed, and I'm not sure if you read about this, but Fed Chair Powell spoke this week at a conference in Alyssa's home city of Philadelphia. And he said that the economic outlook hadn't changed much since the Fed agreed to cut rates at its meeting in mid-September.

But the lead up to the, their next meeting, which is right before Halloween, is gonna be really interesting given. The lapse in federal funding. You know, we were supposed to get PPI data this week and that's no deal, um, because of the shutdown. So the fed's driving through the fog without the stats that it typically uses to see how is the economy performing and, you know, what are prices and jobs doing.

So I think, you know, given that the meeting is just two days before Halloween, Manus, is it gonna be a trick or a treat? 

Manus Clancy: I really don't know. I mean, like you said, there's so much fog out there. It's impossible to really get your arms around where things are going. If I were to bet, and I'm not much of a betting person, but if I were to bet on this, I think we're gonna see another 25 basis point rate cut.

I think that there's enough concern about the labor market that the Fed will pull the trigger again on a 25 basis point rate cut. I don't have an overwhelmingly strong conviction on this, so, but I wanna get back to some of your remarks here and talk about the CRE market in particular as it pertains to these tariffs.

We've mentioned this before, and I do think that there's, as Alyssa said in the beginning, a good news, bad news set of headlines this week. There's also good news and bad news for CRE with these a hundred percent tariffs. If. New developer who counts on completing four to six projects a year, and that's how you make your money.

This is a disaster. This is the kind of thing where you can't pencil a deal because you have no idea how much your lumber's gonna cost, how much you are, uh, steel framing is gonna cost, et cetera. However, if you are an operator where you're concerned about new inventory, this can be kind of a blessing that you're saying.

I was worried about more inventory coming on in 26, 27, 28. This might throw a. Wet blanket on that new inventory and give me more runway in the future. 

Dianne Crocker: Certainly lots of moving pieces to play out and I think I read there's a runway between now and was it November 1st, where they possibly might, might reach some kind of an agreement that could change that 100% tariff, but certainly it's glass half full, glass half empty here for sure.

Manus Clancy: There were other parts of it that I think people can take. Some solace in, I gave solace already in the sense that these higher tariffs may keep new development on the sidelines and may keep prices firm because new inventory is not coming online. We did see the yield on the 10 year drop to about 4 0 3 this week, which was about 20 basis points lower than it was two weeks ago.

That should help people looking for refinancing to lower their cost of funding or at least make some deals, pencil that maybe were iffy. In the past, and I also think, and we've said this before, that the CRA market is not coming into this period in a excessive period of froth. Setting aside data centers where there is froth, every other segment I think is on pretty firm footing.

We haven't seen a race up in values, we haven't seen people chasing the next dollar, and I think we've seen pretty good lending discipline. 

Dianne Crocker: I'd agree with that, and I spent some time when I was in Austin talking to Jeff Renko, who's the CEO of Leanne Associates, and he pretty much echoed what you just said.

Not withstanding data centers, but just with the four major food groups in commercial real estate. You know, obviously most of the interest he's seeing from his neck of the woods is on multifamily. He did mention on industrial, he's still seeing kind of a bid and ask. Gap in place, but it's starting to narrow and demand for office, you know, where the numbers make sense, but I certainly didn't hear anything from him or others there that suggested there were strong cracks in the foundation in terms of commercial real estate fundamentals.

Manus Clancy: And then we wanna get to bank earnings. And I'll turn that over to you in a moment, Dianne. But I did wanna throw in a quick parenthetical. I talked about a little bit of froth in the data center market. This headline just hit. Less than two hours ago, I wanted to bring this one up. Uh, aligned data centers, which is a data data center operator in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, has just been acquired by a combination of BlackRock and nvidia.

They will be paying $40 billion to take over. Company, which operates 50 data centers around the us So in this particular case, BlackRock and paying. $800 million per data center to control this particular asset. Imagine what data centers were going for even three years ago, right? Maybe these things were going for 50 million, a hundred million, something like that.

I don't even know. But now we have something, a deal here, $40 billion and in $800 million per data center price tag. 

Dianne Crocker: That's really amazing. And the Wall Street Journal had an article today on data center. Development kind of rolling in power center development at the same time, and it was the first time I'd seen kind of a macro look at where those are popping up across the United States, and there were conversations at Crew about the fact that our real estate brokers suddenly becoming power brokers in the data center segment, because that's obviously probably the biggest site selection consideration.

But that the article that you mentioned was really staggering when you consider the scope of it. 

Manus Clancy: I'm reporting there, by the way, Nick Wooten of the Dallas Morning News, so a kudos to him for breaking that story. Dan, I'll turn over the earnings to you. There's a lot going on this week. Some of the banks themselves spoke about their commercial real estate exposure.

What did you take away from this week's announcements? 

Dianne Crocker: I think, uh, back to Alyssa's opening comment, it was a mix of good and bad news, but I think mostly good. One thing that struck me this week, Manus, was Jamie Diamond's quotes were all over the place, and it reminded me of those old ads, and this might be going back to like the 1980s when EF Hutton talks, people listen right.

And that's how I feel about Jamie Diamond. His quotes are everywhere. And so the first thing that he said this week that struck me was actually in regard to a story that we talked about last week, which was there were corporate failures of first brands and tricolor, and we talked about, you know, how bad that might be.

Is it the, you know, the first of a wave of corporate failures? And Jamie Diamond had a very interesting quote this week where he said. When you see one cockroach, there's probably more, you know, and his message was, any corporate failure is a warning sign. And he was basically voicing caution over these high profile crack up, you know, saying his antenna is up.

And I think that message was a practical one. You know that if you are leaning in with lending, make sure you do it with eyes wide open and, and take these two collapses as as a cautionary tale. 

Manus Clancy: It's interesting. I have two thoughts on that. The first is that historically this part of the market, which I would call the double B, the single B, the Triple C investment grade lending market, where the debt all goes into the collateralized loan obligation market, that has been incredibly resilient for really 15 years.

When the oil bust was happening, when it was thought that there was gonna be oil and gas bankruptcies, hand over fist, that these CLOs were gonna blow up. Even through all of that, even coming outta the great financial crisis, the losses on those assets always remained so de minimis 1%, one and a 5%. None of these CLOs really blew up over time, so it'll be interesting to see.

If Diamond is correct, if, if this time it's different and dis discipline has really left the room and we're gonna see more of this certainly possible. But in the past, there's been more panic than reality, at least for the last 15 years, over potential landmines in that. Leverage loan segment of the market.

My other thought here, because Diamond also said as part of his remarks, that stocks seem very, very pricey right now. So he had two very negative comments this week. He is very quickly becoming either, depending on how you think, the voice of reason in an overheating market or just an old crank, right? If you think like I do that.

This market is overly inflated, especially on the equity side. You're looking at him and saying, amen, brother. This is a reckoning coming. But if you're somebody who thinks that s and p 7,000 will be followed by s and p 8,000 and, and so on, you're thinking, okay, boomer, we, you know, you've had your moment.

Let's move on. Right. And I, I tend to agree with them. I think that we will see more cracks in credit, but I don't think it'll be overwhelming. And I do think that. At some point there will have to be a stock market repricing. This everyday runup in the face of labor jitters and a trade war just really, really concerns me.

Dianne Crocker: I agree. And I, I think people listen to him when he speaks for a reason. And these are important warnings. You know, in a market as volatile as this one, keeping risk management on the front burner is, is prudent. Um, no matter, you know, where you're playing, which brings me to their Q3 results. So, I mean, if JP Morgan Chase's Q3 results are any indication, you know, I think Diamond's Head is in the right place.

And the reason I say that is. CoStar reported Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase both kind of painting a story of credit trends turning a corner. So JP Morgan Chase's Q3 results, topped analysts estimates they generated about 700 million more revenue dollars than expected, and their CRE revenue in particular rose quarter over quarter with balances edging up to.

About $146 billion. So that was a 0.2%. Very modest, but still an increased quarter on quarter and up 1% year over year on the wells front. Wells pointed to office values that were stabilizing a plus is that they're seeing overall loan quality. Improving wells is CRE net charge offs were 107. Million in quarter three.

That was up against quarter two, but it was down sharply year over years. And Wells is continuing to shrink Its office exposure, which is down 18% year over year. It's down 33% against two years ago. So that's been a long slow process. And Wells', CFO, he put it pretty plainly. He said losses in officer are still coming, that they may be lumpy, but they're expected and they're well within what they expected to see this quarter.

Manus Clancy: I thought it was remarkable watching all the earnings come in this week. First of all, how strong the bank earnings were across the board. Yes, there were some misses, but by and large, almost all the banks reported better than expected, top line and bottom line earnings, and that surprised me a little bit.

Why did it surprise me? Largely because I do think that banks profit. Especially these, these mega banks when period are very volatile. They buy assets cheaply. They sell 'em more expensively. They're in a position to exploit opportunities when markets get dislocated, and that's when you see trading revenues explode.

This most recent quarter was really one that lacked volatility at all. There wasn't this opportunity to make these. Big bets on market moves. Perhaps there were in in foreign exchange markets, and I don't know that well enough, but I was blown away at how profitable they were in a market that seemed to be one big yawn over the last 90 days.

That took me by surprise. Another thing that I'm not surprised about that I'm glad that has come to fruition is this. Two years ago when Silicon Valley Bank failed, all people could talk about was how banks were gonna be deep sixed by their CRE exposure. Everybody wanted to know who had CRE exposure, how big it was.

Offices were gonna suffer huge losses. Banks were gonna have enormous write-offs. We're gonna see 50 banks fail. We're now two and a half years since the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and none of that has come to pass. Yes, banks have had losses on office loans. Sure, there have been pockets where charge offs have increased, but this panic mode that we're gonna see dozens and dozens of banks fail has just come and gone without any of that happening.

Dianne Crocker: That's true and it's, you know, it's certainly good news to see. I didn't, I didn't hear a tone in these earnings reports that banks are sitting back given the volatility. They're being very open about being selective with new originations and refis, but. To the points that we talked about before and the strong fundamentals.

They're leaning into multifamily and they're leaning into industrial. They're very open about keeping a short leash on commodity office, and that sector remains a workout story, but it's not a free fall, which is great. And so I think on net, the slow thaw in banking continues. 

Manus Clancy: So Dianne, I know you spent some time going through the beige book over the last day or so.

What did you find beneath the covers there? 

Dianne Crocker: I did. So I guess the shutdown didn't affect the beige book coming out yesterday. It struck me as kind of a mixed bag, maybe a a bit more beige than the previous report. Some things that jumped out, they noted consumer spending that edged a little bit lower.

More firms are trimming their headcount, which we would see in jobs data if and when we get jobs. Data back kind of a shift from the earlier slight growth. Narratives to maybe something a little bit slower. They mentioned tariff driven input costs that are showing up more clearly and basically mixed conditions across commercial real estate.

I think, you know, in terms of commercial real estate lending in particular, none of the federal districts reported decline in CRE lending, so that was certainly great to see. And then lastly, in terms of the outlook. It really varied by district. Um, some districts are expecting a pickup over the next six to 12 months, and others are worried that a prolonged federal shutdown could weigh on growth.

So nothing earth shattering there, Manus. Alright, Dianne, let's pivot to this week's light box data dive. We just published a piece on what a prolonged federal shutdown could mean for environmental due diligence. As of today, we're on day 16 of the shutdown. We don't seem close to an end date and in the world of finance, federally backed financing programs from agencies like HUD and SBA work can stall when agency staff are offline.

So before the shutdown, HUD backed multifamily projects were running hot. So there are definitely concerns that the longer that it drags on, the greater their potential will be to slow down momentum there. So yesterday I reached out for a take from the field. To one of our clients, Karen Hurd. She is the Senior Vice President of National Accounts at a and e Consultants.

They're a national firm. She's based in Boston, and Karen said that so far they haven't seen a direct impact on their projects and they're not hearing major disruption across the industry. So that was certainly reassuring to hear. Um, but that if it does drag on. Anything that needs regulatory reviews or approvals could start to back up.

And also from a due diligence perspective, due diligence requires tapping federal databases and historical records. So if the federal data blackout slows access, then reporting times could feel it. The good news so far is that AE i's pipeline is healthy and they're busy. But I should note that the extent to which a consulting firm's business is impacted by the shutdown will really depend on their reliance on federal funding programs.

I've heard of others that rely more heavily and even exclusively on Hutter SBA, and they've been hit harder by the shutdown, so we'll continue to watch this closely and report on it. So thanks for that, Karen. And what about our, did you know for the week? So we just started digging into light boxes, Q3 data and capital markets, Alyssa.

And based on our property listings data, we're seeing that, um, institutional deals are leaning in hard on multifamily. So multifamily listings at the, the high price end accounted for the vast majority or 59% of Q3 listings. Industrial was a distant second with only 19, but looking at the deals that are priced at less than 50 million, there's a lot more diversity.

Multifamily was in the lead there too, but with 28%, and right behind it is retail with 27. So a lot of retail assets coming on and industrial is. Third at 13%. So we will be cranking out our series of Q3 snapshots over the next few weeks and it'll have more details into that data. So Manus, that's a nice segue to hearing about some of the leases and transactions that caught your eye this week.

Manus Clancy: Yeah, say a drum roll please. As we go into all the, the headlines for the week. So we'll start with the office segment and we'll talk about three different things in the office segment leases. A big loan modification that we saw this week, as well as some transactions here, the least that caught my eye.

This is reporting from Cranes, Isabella Durso, AI developer. Scale AI subleased 80,000 square feet at one World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. They're taking space from marketing service company, wonder Kind. The sublease runs another five years. Asking rent was $65 per square foot. The nice takeaway here is that people have been expecting.

Ai boom. Um, in leasing. We've seen some of that in San Francisco, but there's often a gap between the expectation and the reality. But when you see scale AI subleasing 80,000 square feet, that's real. And hopefully that's the first of many that we see. Turning to a loan extension here. I love this one. Uh, reporting here from Andrew Cohen of Commercial Observer, NGP Group extended a $660 million CMBS loan on a federal office portfolio.

They inked a three year loan extension on that package. The portfolio is backed by. Assets in 19 states all leased to the federal government. The workout specialist here that helped facilitate this was Iron Hound, uh, Chris Herron, Kevin Thompson, Anthony Delio, and Will Forbes negotiated this, which often comes with a lot of work.

There's 41 properties here. There's loan terms that have to be negotiated. As is the case with most modifications, the borrower has to put in new equity to get this modification over the finish line, and in this case, they did. The debt on this 2.6 million square foot portfolio was to mature in August of this year.

It's now been pushed out for a couple of years, and that gives the borrowers some breathing time to make things work. Obviously, a very uncertain time right now. For the federal government, not just because it's closed, but because earlier this year, the federal government said it was going to reject leases and try to sell properties.

The borrower there, NGP, now has more time to try to make this set of assets work with more certainty. 

Dianne Crocker: So kudos to Iron honk for pulling that one off. I'm sure that wasn't an easy project. And to your point, you know, I think that's the latest example, Manus of the impact that the uncertainty around the federal government's real estate posture is having in terms of, of refinancing any portfolios that have a heavy footprint in GSA leased properties.

And as you mentioned, they're not only in D. C these were properties across 19 states. Um, they were primarily in Florida, Texas, Virginia, and Kentucky with federal agencies like the FBI and the DEA, accounting for the majority of the rent obligations. So, you know, we'll see what happens to it after this, but it, that was good news.

Manus Clancy: To close out our office segment, I'll talk about, um, one sale in Manhattan that is emblematic of what's been happening in offices around the country. Norjes, uh, acquired 1177 sixth Avenue for almost $600 million. The real deal with the reporting on this, they partnered with Beacon Capital to pay 572 million for the asset, the sellers there, Silverstein Property and Calsters, which is the California State Teacher's Retirement System.

The building last sold in 2007 for a billion dollars, and when I say this is emblematic of the market right now, you can do the math. That's a 43% decline for what was once a real trophy asset in Manhattan. It's Midtown West Sixth Avenue Corridor. Tons of trophy buildings. Probably now considered a minus where they were once solid A or AA or aa.

But it just shows that what. Lenders who have made loans on these buildings and what owners are facing right now, which is the market has repriced and in almost every major city discounts of 40, 50, 60, 70% are the norm. 

Dianne Crocker: As I recall, this was the second big kind of offloading by a large pension fund. There was teachers, which offloaded a ninth Avenue property for, uh, almost $170 million price cut last month.

So I think, you know, these are signs that large pensions are trimming their legacy office exposure and recycling capital into higher conviction sectors, even if they have to do it at a discount, which certainly this deal that you mentioned did. 

Manus Clancy: I think there's the best news about this office, Armageddon, right?

Remember we had the retail apocalypse. Now we have the office. Armageddon is fortunately how little this has metastasized into a bigger issue, that the losses have been big. And for lenders who made these loans, there's an awful lot of remorse and for borrowers who have seen their equity wiped out a tremendous amount of regret.

The fact that this hasn't taken out a hedge fund who is making, you know, PE based loans or led to catastrophic CMBS losses or taken down a, a bank that is, is a positive out of this particular cycle, which is now really three years in the making. 

Dianne Crocker: Mm-hmm. And, you know, and for the sellers who have to kind of take their hits, there are deep pocketed buyers who are jumping into scoop up prime real estate at, at reset values.

So it's a process and it's a slow one, but not, not as catastrophic as it could be. 

Manus Clancy: So we're gonna do a 180, a complete 180 from distressed values to really nice values. This is the industrial segment. I only have one story here. But it blew my mind here. The story, the reporting here by Nick Romola of commercial observer, manufacturer, future foam, and I don't know what they make.

I don't know if this is mattresses or the kind of foam that puts out fires or something like that, or silicon injections. In any event, they paid $145 million for a Southern California industrial facility. You might wanna hold onto your hat here, Dianne. The trade here, almost $700 per square foot for the asset.

The Snyder family owns future foam. They paid Principal Financial 145 million for the 210,000 square foot property at 10 50 South State College Boulevard in Fullerton, California. There was a time when, and not that long ago, maybe seven or eight years ago, where we would consider $95 a square foot for industrial a high price.

Even recently, when I see things trading for 300 or 400, I think, wow. The seller there really got a nice price, $400 a square foot for something that maybe was $80 a square foot when they bought it eight years ago. $700 a square foot. I'm just shocked. 

Dianne Crocker: I mean nearly three times what the principal paid for it three years ago, Manus and the Iest industrial deal in Orange County.

This year it's second only to Q one's. JP Morgan Chase sale of an industrial site to Walt Disney for 124 million. And when I look at the industrial deals that. Your group has been tracking over the past few weeks. There are a, a number of them that are in the nine digit, you know, ranging from a hundred million to 365 million, and where there was a prior purchase price, they have appreciated.

So there's certainly a lot happening, not just in Orange County, but in the industrial sector across the US right now. 

Manus Clancy: We like to close with a slice of life story, something that's a little bit offbeat that, uh, maybe gives us a, a few moments of levity at the end of each podcast. The one that caught my attention this week, this is reporting from Lois Weiss of commercial observer.

Lois, by the way, has been doing reporting on New York City commercial real estate. Excellent reporting by the way. For decades. Uh, she used to be at the New York Post. I loved reading her weekly summaries there for many years, and now she's with commercial observer related companies, is talking about building the Prada Tower in Manhattan.

The street level retail, of course, would be Prada. There would be office space utilized by the company above that, I'm not sure if Prada would use all the space or if it would become a. Partially Prada occupied, but then offered to other companies out there. I wanted to get your take on this, Dianne, and get your thoughts on what is happening or what may happen with a Prada tower in Manhattan.

I have my own thoughts, but I'm gonna save them for a moment. 

Dianne Crocker: Well, a couple things jumped out at me about this story. I had read that it would have the PR store at its base, the company's offices would be above it, and then they would have super luxury residences throughout the rest of the building that could sell for more than $10,000 per square foot, which is incredible to me.

And I read that they just finished filming the sequel to Devil Wear Prada in Manhattan. So these are some big headlines around that luxury brand. So you better get your outfit ready for the film Premiere Manus. 

Manus Clancy: That's what I'm afraid of that imagine you work for a company that takes space in this building and you're just Joe Schlub like I am.

Where, you know, some of my wardrobe has come and gone through. Like a popular phase and an unpopular phase through multiple decades, right? And then all of a sudden you find your office is in the Prada building and you say, I'm gonna have to be getting $300 haircuts once a month and new stylish clothes every couple of weeks.

The amount of stress that that would put on me, I think I would immediately quit my job and find something else, right? Something where I could still wear my 1980s. Wing tips and my white button down and, and the stuff that, you know, never, never is cool. 

Alyssa Lewis: You know, vintage is in Manus, so I wouldn't stress about it.

Manus Clancy: So you say it's my time, huh? 

Alyssa Lewis: With that, we'll close thank you to our producer, Josh Bruyning. Please join the LightBox team every week as they share 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. As always, thank you for listening and have a great week. 

Manus Clancy: Let's go.