Weekly News (July 17, 2019)

This week’s Interest Rate

     30 Y Rate: 3.875%/  15 Year Rate:3.375%/ 10 Y Treasury: 2.106%/  Prime Rate:5.5%

Gap in Ridgewood, NJ will close down on 7/27/2019

(The Record  7/17)

• Gap on East Ridgewood Ave will sale for all items by 50-70% and even fixtures by 50%.  The company announced the plan of splitting up Old Navy from the remaining brands -Gap, Athleta, Banana Republic, Intermix, and Hill City.  Also the company announced they will 230 Gap stores which is about 50% of Gap stores.
• Retail stores in US is being challenged by consumer habit change and competition from on-line business like Amazon.
• US retailers so far this year announced 7,062 store closures.

4 Story, 38 units Apartment building in Astoria, Queens sold at $12.4M ( $420/sf)

(The NYT   7/17)

• Apartment building, 4 story, at 29-06 Crescent Ave,(at 29th Ave), Queens was built in 1928, and sold at $12,400,000.  All 38 apartments are fully occupied. Total building size is 29,480 sf and the sold unit price per sf is $420.  Seller was Battigi family.
• 5 brokers form Marcus & Millichap were involved for the transaction.

RE market in Flushing, NY is cooling down ?

(The Korea Times  7/17)

• According to Elliman report, home price is going down for 3 consecutive quarters from 2018 4th The median price in NE Queens(Flushing, College Point, Whitestone, Bayside, Douglaston, Little Neck, Oakland Garden, Beechhurst) is $697,500 which went down by 3.1% from last year.
• At 2nd Qt in this area shows 638 sales which went down by 15.9% from same period a year ago (759).  Same area shows 10.4% increased sale and 2.7% increased price compared to the previous Qt (1st Qt).
• LIC shows the median price, $903,419 in 2nd Qt which went down by 11.2% from previous Qt($1,017,350).  It went down by 3.7% compared to last year same period ($938,441)
• However, in 2nd Qt, over all Queens area shows median price up by 2.5% to $572,000 which indicates 13 quarters continuous increase.  Sales show down by 11.7% (3,022) compared to same period last year.

Job Fair for American Dream Meadowland shopping mall will be on 7/24, 7/25

(The Korean  Daily  7/17, The Record 7/17

• ADM announced it will be open Job Fair at BCC Meadowland campus in Lyndhurst on 24th and 25th, from 9:00am to 1:00pm, looking for 1200 employees.  Available jobs are security guards and life guards, ride operator, technicians, HVAC and electricians, theme park workers, etc.  ADM will have 450 retails, 15 entertainment theme parks in total of 3M sf.
• ADM will hire 16,000 employees in the future and it is expected 7000 from the neighboring towns.
• Job Fair place: 1280 Wall Street West, Lyndhurst, NJ
• Further info: americandream.com

Reasons for Forever 21’s falling down, LA Times reported

     (The Korea Daily 7/16 )

• The company did too much, fast expansion while the company missed market change, customer’s wanting differentiation individually, and e commerce’s fast advance.
• Forever 21 was well known for low cost, leading trend for most recent fashion: “coolness factor”, which attracted younger people who follow Idol’s fashion.
• Over 800 stores have too many similar clothing stocks, but customers started looking into individual unique fashion.  Too big giant could not follow up and started loosing customers.
• Z gen does not like Forever 21 fashion.  They are more dependent on Instagram/SNS and do not like the fashion that M gen likes.
• Forever 21 failed to create new trend and advanced trend.

35% of REITs investment will face the danger of environmental/weather changes

(The Korea Daily 7/6)

• By looking into 321 REITs companies with 73,500 properties, the report says that 35% of the properties will face danger with flooding, typhoon, hurricane due to climate changes, especially properties located near water or lower than sea level.
• Good alternative is ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investment strategy.  ESG/REITs show fast increase to 108 companies and $272B level in 2018 while there were 30 companies with $24B level in 2010)
• ESG funds are looking for company’s contributions to environmental, and social matters, and clear management structure.
• FTSE Russell, specialized in providing reliable accurate indexes, invented Climate Risk Adjusted World Government bond index.