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Seven Must Reads for the CRE Industry Today (April 8, 2022)

Walmart is raising salaries for its truck drivers to make its supply chain run more smoothly, reports The Wall Street Journal. Los Angeles Times looks at how Opportunity Zones have become a tax break for the rich. These are among today’s must reads from around the commercial real estate industry.

  1. Walmart Raises Pay to Attract Truck Drivers “In a bid to keep its supply chain running smoothly, Walmart Inc. is raising wages for in-house truck drivers and expanding a program that trains its existing workers to become drivers. Walmart is raising starting salaries for its truck drivers to between $95,000 and $110,000 a year, up from an average starting salary of $87,000, said a Walmart spokeswoman. The internal training program will offer workers in other Walmart roles a 12-week course to become certified truck drivers and join the company’s internal fleet, the company said.” (The Wall Street Journal)
  2. Tax Break for the Rich: How Investors Exploit Opportunity Zones “Opportunity zones were supposed to encourage investment in low-income communities. But billionaires are building luxury hotels and high-rises, instead.” (Los Angeles Times)
  3. CREFC, NICREIF Seek Participants for First Fund Index “Two industry trade groups are attempting to create a first-of-its-kind debt fund index that would be used by managers to benchmark performance. The two groups—the CRE Finance Council, a Washington, D.C.-based group that represents the debt markets, and the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), a Chicago-based group that represents institutional money managers—have been working on developing the index since 2019.” (Commercial Observer)
  4. Work-from-Home Costs Are Adding Up. Employees Are Suing to Get Their Bosses to Pay Up “In the more than two years since the pandemic shut down many offices, white-collar employees across the country have been forced to set up desks in cluttered kitchens and cramped bedrooms, reinventing how to work, day in day out, on the fly. New social codes developed between employees and employers, perhaps changing the nature of work irrevocably. Another consequence of the mass relocation of office workers: A rise in employee lawsuits demanding reimbursement for expenses incurred while working from home during the pandemic.” (Los Angeles Times)
  5. The State Rejected L.A.’s Plan for New Housing, Will S.F.’s Proposal Get the Green Light? Billions of Dollars Are at Stake “San Francisco must add 82,000 housing units by 2031. It all starts with a housing element.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
  6. Are 1,818 Airbnbs Too Many for Joshua Tree? “Around three months ago, amid tensions with neighbors and a shift in how the Joshua Tree area in southeastern California regulates short-term rentals and glamping facilities, the 47-year-old Italian artist pulled his last listing off an online booking platform. In order to get a permit — which would satisfy newly enforced rules in San Bernardino County that prohibit renting out most glamping setups on Airbnb, Hipcamp and Vrbo — he’d have to disassemble the club and build a traditional house. This is infuriating, he said, because he cannot drive anywhere in the region without seeing new luxury modernist rentals, whose owners have no trouble obtaining permits.” (The New York Times)
  7. Many CEOs Want Workers Back Full-Time. Here’s How Twitter, Netflix and Other Major Companies Are Handling Return to Work “The post-pandemic future of work is starting to take shape—and revealing some surprises. New research from Microsoft finds that 50% of business leaders say their company requires or plans to require full-time in-person work this year. The best-known fan of that policy is Goldman Sachs, as Fortune has explained, but it’s clearly not the only one.” (Fortune)
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