Location Strategy Chartbook 07.11.2026

The two-year US Treasury yield climbed back toward last month’s peak amid a selloff in global bond markets. The moves were spurred in part by rising oil prices and inflation worries. That short-term yield, which closely tracks expectations for the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, rose as much as five basis points to 4.23%, within a basis point of its June 22 peak. That was the highest since February 2025. The 10-year yield climbed as much as four basis points to 4.59%, the highest since late May.

“Bond investors are wary,” said Bryce Doty, a bond fund manager at Sit Investment Associates. “If oil prices are starting to go up and there’s a hard message that they’re going to do whatever it takes to have price stability, yields are going higher.”

The Texas Stock Exchange, a new, purely electronic national securities platform, is scheduled to launch live trading this month as a rival to the storied NYSE and Nasdaq, where regulations and costs have been increasing. Plans for the Texas Stock Exchange were announced two years ago with backing from some of the world's largest investors, including BlackRock, Citadel Securities and Fortress Investment Group.

DFW now ranks as the nation's second-largest financial market outside of New York City, according to the Urban Land Institute's 2026 Emerging Trends in Real Estate report.

Morgan Stanley is planning to build a $1.3 billion hub in Uptown Dallas, and Goldman Sachs is nearing construction on a highly anticipated two-building, 800,000-square-foot campus. Bank of America is building its new namesake office structure with 30 stories and more than 500,000 square feet with a potential rolling ticker for the Texas Stock Exchange, just blocks from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Since 2022, South Florida has attracted major financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Elliott Management and, perhaps most notably, the headquarters relocation of the $67 billion hedge fund Citadel and its billionaire CEO, Ken Griffin.

Miami International Holdings opened its first securities facility with a trading floor and electronic exchange in 2025 with the Miax Sapphire options exchange in the city's Wynwood arts district.

Heading into the summer, consumer spending momentum was very strong, with total credit and debit card spending rising 6.3% year-over-year (YoY) in June - the strongest growth in over four years - according to Bank of America internal card data. With
gasoline prices falling, the increase in spending growth is almost entirely a discretionary story.

Some of the strength in June was likely driven by online promotions and the FIFA World Cup 2026™. On the latter, we see comparatively strong increases in spending growth in host cities versus other US cities, particularly in food services.

There has been a notable convergence in both wages and spending across income cohorts in recent months. In June, lower-income households' after-tax wage growth rose above that of middle-income households. Whether these trends persist into the
second half of the year will hinge on whether underlying labor market momentum is sustained.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is making a $500 million bet on U.S. neighborhood shopping centers, backing grocery-anchored retail and other open-air properties that continue to outperform much of the retail sector.

Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the roughly $2.2 trillion Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, partnered with Charlotte, North Carolina-based Asana Partners to launch Asana Partners Strategic Partners I, the firms announced.

The investment highlights growing institutional demand for grocery-anchored retail, a property sector favored for its stable cash flow and resistance to e-commerce disruption. As investors pull back from more challenged office and retail formats, centers anchored by supermarkets and other necessity-based tenants have become increasingly attractive targets.

NBIM’s $500 million commitment gives it a 49% stake in the venture. Its first investment will be the acquisition of a 50% interest in a portfolio of grocery-anchored shopping centers in what Asana described as “desirable growth markets.” Neither company disclosed the properties, markets or deal value.

The venture will target stabilized, income-producing open-air retail properties across the United States, Asana said, including grocery-anchored centers, smaller open-air centers without big-box tenants, street retail and mixed-use properties. Asana controls about 4.7 million square feet of U.S. retail space, according to CoStar data. Its most recent acquisition was the $20.5 million purchase last month of Crown Valley Center, a Smart & Final-anchored shopping center in Laguna Niguel, California.

Brookfield is seeking to capitalize on investor appetite for artificial intelligence support systems by taking one of its data center companies public in an offering that could raise up to $1.35 billion, the latest AI-related company to sell shares to the public. As of March 31, Csquare owned and operated 64 data centers across 21 markets in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, providing about 389 megawatts of sellable capacity. The company serves more than 1,700 customers, with no single customer accounting for more than 7% of revenue, according to the filing.

The national median rent increased by 0.4% in June, and now stands at $1,385. This marks the fifth straight monthly increase, with the market now in the midst of the busy summer moving season.

Rent prices nationally are down 1.2% compared to one year ago. Year-over-year rent growth has now ticked up for two straight months, after bottoming out in April at the lowest level that we’ve seen in our estimates going back to 2017. The national median rent has now fallen from its 2022 peak by a total of 4%.

The national multifamily vacancy rate currently stands at 7.2%; after hitting a new record in February, the vacancy rate is now decreasing for the first time in over four years.

Units are taking an average of 30 days to get leased after being listed, which is down from 31 days last month, but still three days longer than at this time last year.

The San Antonio, TX metro continues now has the softest conditions among the nation’s large rental markets, with the median rent there down by 5.0% over the past year. At the other end of the spectrum, the San Francisco metro now sits atop our rankings of fastest year-over-year rent growth at +7.4%.

The fast-rising costs of owning a home have some young Americans questioning whether buying a house is still a good investment. Less than a quarter of Americans aged 18 to 39 say buying a home is a very good investment, compared with 38% of those over 60 years old. Homes are a worse investment (compared to buying stocks) for first-time buyers today because wages haven’t kept up with surging prices and ownership costs, said Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance.

June 2026 asking prices fell again at a record pace—down 2.5% year over year. That’s the steepest annual drop in Realtor.com data since 2017 and the eighth straight month of declines. List prices per square foot fell 2.1% and are declining in 33 of the top 50 metros.

The 26-month streak of homes taking longer to sell is over. Median time on the market held at 53 days in June—exactly matching last June—ending more than two years of consecutive year-over-year slowing. The median time a home spends on the market is now identical to the pre-pandemic norm.

Spring’s momentum looks to carry into summer. New listings rose 2.4% year over year, and pending sales grew for a seventh straight month (+3.7% YoY)—a streak not seen since January through July 2021. Contract cancellations held below last year (6.9% vs. 7.3%), and there are no signs of a repeat of last summer’s delisting surge: Delistings are down nearly 10% year over year in June.

Two Americas, four years from peak prices. Since list prices peaked nationally in June 2022 at $449,000, asking prices are down 7.3% in the West and 3.5% in the South—but up 10.0% in the Midwest and 12.6% in the Northeast. Prices since the 2022 peak have fallen in 28 of the top 50 metros and risen in 22: a true measure of how fragmented housing has become since mortgage rates climbed.