ABG Commercial Real Estate Blog
Local Boston & Cambridge Commercial Real Estate News from Industry Experts.

Major lab, housing project proposed on Soldiers Field Road in Brighton
By Greg Ryan – Senior Reporter, Boston Business Journal Jan 23, 2023 Trammell Crow Co. has put forward one of the largest development proposals in Boston in the past year: Three new life sciences buildings, as well as 200 residential units — all of them...
Rent Going Up? One Company’s Algorithm Could Be Why.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. On a summer day last year, a group of real estate tech executives gathered at a conference hall in Nashville to boast about one...
Higher Interest Rates Can Take a Long Time to Bring Down Inflation
FRANKFURT—The world’s central banks face a nail-biting wait. They have raised interest rates this year at the fastest pace in decades. But those hikes work with what economists call “long and variable” lags so central banks might not know for years if they have...
‘Pencils down’: Commercial property sales slump in Greater Boston
Inflation and fast-rising interest rates are taking their toll on commercial real estate transactions in Greater Boston. Real estate investors bought $4.6 billion in commercial properties in the Boston metro area in the third quarter, a 27% decline from the same...
MetLife Adds Boston Life Science Asset for $103M
MetLife Investment Management has completed its $103 million purchase of Burlington BioCenter, a 109,085-square-foot life science research and pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Burlington, Mass. Public records show MetLife financed the acquisition with a $54.4...
Lab Space Demand Remains Strong as NYC Life Science Sector Grows
Demand from life sciences tenants in search of lab space in New York City remained robust in the third quarter as premium product became available, CBRE reported. During Q3, demand for space reached 2.1 million square feet, while new lab space under construction or...
Life Sciences Real Estate Shows Signs of Normalizing After Rapid Growth
U.S. life sciences real estate showed signs of normalizing in this year’s third quarter after setting records in 2021, CBRE says in a new report. Nonetheless, market fundamentals surpass those from before the pandemic. The average lab vacancy rate across the top 12...
Here’s how many people Twitter is laying off in Boston
A clear number for how many people Twitter is laying off in Boston is finally emerging, after a week of speculation following Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover of the company, thanks to an official state document obtained by the Business Journal. The social media giant...
Another Closely Watched Recession Alarm Is Ringing
A recession warning tracked by Wall Street is growing louder, as another measure of the widely watched “yield curve” signals that the United States is headed toward an economic slump. The yield curve is a way of comparing interest rates, also known as yields, on...
Startups Look to Scoop Up Laid-Off Tech Workers
Flush with investor capital, technology startups plan to scoop up software developers, engineers and marketers flooding the labor market following job cuts at Twitter Inc., Lyft Inc. and other large tech employers. Kathy Zhu said she is lining up candidates for...
Nauset Breaks Ground on Alewife Mixed-Use Apartment Community
Cambridge, MA – Construction is underway for 605 Concord, a mixed-use transit-oriented development that will deliver 49 apartment units above 2,500 square feet of street-level retail space to the Fresh Pond neighborhood. The construction manager is Needham, MA-based...
Cape Air to buy 75 all-electric planes
ARLINGTON, Wash. (AP) — Eviation Aircraft, an Arlington company that has built a fully electric commuter airplane, got a boost this week when one of the nation’s largest commuter airlines, Cape Air, signed a letter of intent to buy 75 of the Eviation Alice model. The...
U.S. workers have gotten way less productive. No one is sure why.
Employers across the country are worried that workers are getting less done — and there’s evidence they’re right to be spooked. In the first half of 2022, productivity — the measure of how much output in goods and services an employee can produce in an hour — plunged...
Why Multifamily Investments Are a Good Option When Inflation Runs Wild
In an inflationary environment, many investors flounder as pulling the trigger on investments of any kind can feel like higher stakes. The questions are endless. With rising interest rates, falling returns and concerns about recession, where are our dollars best...
Rising Interest Rates Threaten to Expose Office Buildings’ Inflated Values
Cheap debt fueled a decadelong boom in U.S. office values, offsetting the impact of years of rent increases that didn’t keep pace with inflation. Now that the long period of easy credit is over, office-building owners are bracing to see how much less their properties...
Ranked: 30 housing markets where values are cooling the fastest — or even declining
Some were booming before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Others shot up in popularity arguably because of the pandemic. A few have been slow-but-steady-growth markets for some time. The national housing market slowdown has been one of the headlining stories of 2022, after...
Breakthrough Properties and CRISPR Therapeutics celebrate completion of The 105
Boston, MA Breakthrough Properties (Breakthrough), a leading global developer of life sciences real estate, celebrated the completion and grand opening of The 105 by Breakthrough (The 105) in collaboration with CRISPR Therapeutics. The new facility is fully leased to...
Demand for Industrial Space Is Slowing Down. But It’s Still a Landlord’s Market.
As U.S., like the rest of the world, continues to grapple with stubborn inflation (at 8.2 percent in September), there are worries that consumer spending is going to falter and impact industrial owners’ ability to raise rents. Industry insiders, however, say such...
Apple Begins Making iPhone 14 in India Weeks Ahead of Schedule
Sankalp Phartiyal and Debby Wu September 26, 2022 at 1:26 AM EDTUpdated onSeptember 26, 2022 at 3:48 AM EDT Apple Inc. began making its new iPhone 14 in India sooner than anticipated, after a surprisingly smooth production rollout that slashed the lag between Chinese...
New MIT system could cool buildings up to 10℃— without electricity
As the world’s climate continues to heat up, the global demand for air conditioning is now skyrocketing. In 2019, the need for cooling drew in 8.5% of the world’s total electricity consumption, equating to some 1 billion tons of CO2 emissions. As more air conditioning...
More Mass. liquor licenses? How Ballot Question 3 could impact your community
Massachusetts chain stores may be allowed to have 18 beer and wine licenses by 2031, which would double the current threshold should a ballot referendum succeed at the polls this November. Advancing Ballot Question 3 would gradually raise the alcohol license threshold...