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Commercial Real Estate

Commercial Real Estate Demand Is On The Rise Throughout The US 

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According to a new index from the National Association of Realtors, a multitude of markets throughout the US are showing an increased demand for commercial real estate throughout the country. 

South Carolina, in particular, ranked the highest among all US states in future potential demand for commercial real estate. The National Association of Realtors works to provide a clear vision for investors throughout America when it comes to pursuing their next big venture. The data they report utilizes figures from local economies and past patterns to predict future demand. 

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This specific index looks at over 300 metropolitan markets, analyzing office, industrial, retail, and multifamily sectors while measuring the economic conditions within each region, CNBC reports. 

Government data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau for population and movement also helped inform the rankings. The office sector looked at growth in professional and business services employment. For industrial they looked at manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing employment growth. 

The NAR also measures growth in retail trade along with leisure and hospitality employment. In the multifamily sector, they incorporated population growth and net migration domestically and internationally. 

“It doesn’t say, ‘OK, go there and just buy property,’ but it says … where the data shows that the momentum is building, the demand is building,” Nadia Evangelou, principal economist and director of real estate research at NAR, said. 

The association also compared those selected markets to 2022, which is considered the peak of the pandemic migration boom. According to the index, out of all the markets analyzed, Raleigh, North Carolina is the only major one that is stronger today than it was in 2022. 

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Austin, Texas, Miami and Naples, Florida, once considered to be “superhot” markets, have all declined within the market within the past four years. 

Within the index the strongest metropolitan market is St. George, Utah due to their office employment growth. 

“It also has very strong population growth and in-migration, and its industrial demand is above average,” Evangelou said. 

“So St. George, for example, is the No. 1, because one industry happened to have a good year, so there is a broader momentum over there.”

Evangelou also said that small and midsized markets could provide some of the best opportunities for investors. 

The index also broke down where each of the four sectors is seeing their strongest demand, which includes Salem, Oregon and Fairbanks, Alaska. 

“When we take a look at New York, San Francisco and the big coastal markets, we see that the large markets are still generally weaker than the fast-growing Sunbelt and smaller markets in this index,” said Evangelou.

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Solar Power Generating More Energy Than Coal In The US For The First Time 

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For the first time on record, solar power is generating more energy than coal and became the leading source of new power in the United States, despite President Donald Trump boosting coal use over clean energy. 

This week, global energy thinktank Ember, a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association, and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie released data that showed a continuous growth of solar power and a decline of coal in America, despite federal policies trying to lead the nation in the opposite direction. 

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Electricity in general is produced by converting sources of energy into electrical power. These sources of energy are generally fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewable resources. Burning coal, oil, and natural gases have long emitted carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which traps heat and warms the planet. 

On the other hand, solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, and nuclear energy are carbon-free. 

The data showed that in May of this year, solar energy provided more of the country’s electricity than coal for the first time with 12.8%, according to Ember. Coal, on the other hand, supplied 12.2%, which is its fourth-lowest monthly share ever, the Guardian reported.

“For years solar power has risen in the US electricity mix,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior energy and data analyst at Ember. 

“At the same time, coal power has lost its status, first as the largest source in the US mix, and then gradually over the years has fallen even further.”

Fulghum went on to explain that solar also became the third-largest source of electricity in the US in May, while coal hit an all-time monthly low in April, which is what allowed solar energy to overtake. 

Electricity demand has been constantly increasing within the 21st century. In the last few years especially, new technologies such as artificial intelligence, growth in domestic manufacturing, and electric transportation and heating have all contributed to the type of energy being consumed around the US. 

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Fulghum stated that he’s expecting more months of solar energy exceeding coal, and eventually, this will become an annual pattern.  

He added that this milestone shows that solar “has staying power” during a time period in the world where renewable energy isn’t being supported on a federal level. 

Ember gets its hourly and monthly data from the US Energy Information Administration. According to the International Energy Agency, globally, electricity from renewables is increasing quickly with renewables becoming the largest global energy source. It’s projected that renewable energy will be used for almost 45% of electricity by 2030. 

Last week Trump announced a plan to boost the struggling US coal industry by spending up to $700 million to support both coal-fired power plants and coal exports. 

Martin Pochtaruk, CEO and founder of Heliene, a solar panel manufacturer based in Canada, stated that regardless of Trump stating that coal is coming back, investors will invest their money in what the data shows is bringing the best return, and solar power is becoming the fastest-growing fuel, according to the Guardian. 

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement: “The President has reversed the Left’s devastating policies, saved the American coal industry, prevented the retirement of more than 17 gigawatts of power, and saved lives during heightened demand periods.”

Seia said that while Trump is trying to bring back the coal industry to its original power, solar has been the top source for new power for five years. Both Seia and Wood Mackenzie stated that solar and battery storage were almost the only energy resources being built in the first quarter, and made up 91% of all new generating capacity.

food bank

US Food Insecurity Is Causing Citizens To Go More Hungry Than They Did During The Pandemic 

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A survey released this week by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York revealed that more people in the United States are going hungry now than during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The survey showed that there are higher levels of food insecurity this year than there was during the summer of 2020, when the coronavirus outbreak led to “double-digit unemployment,” according to reports from NPR. 

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The New York Fed periodically asks Americans about whether they have to skip meals, rely on food donations, or receive federal assistance in order to buy groceries. The most recent survey was taken in February, and showed how hunger is a more intense problem now than any other time within the past six years. 

Amy Breitmann runs the Golden Harvest Food Bank in Augusta, Georgia. She recently told NPR how she’s witnessed first-hand the increasing number of families and children that are in need of food this year. 

“We have some distributions where people are sitting in a 2-to-3-mile line the night before the [food] distribution starts. They’re sleeping in their cars.”

The February survey from the New York Fed found that nationwide, 10% of families reported missing meals or having a lack of food in their household. About 16% of respondents relied on food donations. Families that are earning less than $50,000 annually are experiencing food insecurity twice as high as the last report. Nearly 20% of families have been forced to skip meals or went completely without food. 

CEO of the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama, Nicole Williams, also told the publication that they have to move their services to a larger building in order to accommodate the increased demand for food. The food bank serves 12 counties throughout the state. 

“Food insecurity could be your next-door neighbor. When gas costs a little bit more or food costs a little bit more, or they have a repair on their car or a medical bill, that takes away what they might be using to spend on food.”

Experts have been stating that what’s occurring is a part of a “K-shaped economy,” which represents a growing divide between individuals who have proper access to their basic needs and those who don’t. 

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The New York Fed recently wrote that “while many households are doing fine and economic activity overall has been expanding at a solid pace, large segments of the population are facing high levels of economic insecurity and financial strain, and consumer sentiment on the whole has dropped to low levels.”

In 2020, just 4% of households reported missing meals, which also included less than 7% of families that earn less than $50,000 annually. 

During the pandemic, families experienced some relief from their food insecurity thanks to government relief payments and supplemental unemployment benefits. Those same benefits, however, were pandemic-specific and are no longer available. Additionally, within the past six years food prices have increased rapidly. 

The most recent survey from the New York Fed was also conducted before the US war with Iran, which has caused gas prices to increase and the economy to strain further. 

Breitmann posed the question: “If you’re adding on another $100 to your budget a month just to put gas in your car to get to work or drop your kids at school and whatever they need their car for, where is that $100 coming from?”

“Most typically, they’re having to pull it from the grocery budget,” Breitmann said.

The survey also found that there is a growing number of Americans that are relying on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. This is surprising due to the fact that eligibility for the program has become even more strict as of late. 

About 18% of families this year had received SNAP benefits, compared to 10.6% in 2020. Lower-income families had over 38% receiving SNAP benefits, compared to around 22% in 2020. 

screen time

Excessive Screen Time Among Kids Now A Public Health Concern, Surgeon General Warns  

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Officials at the US Department of Health and Human Services recently collaborated with the surgeon general to issue an advisory warning about the harmful effects too much screen time can have on kids and teenagers. Getting stuck in an endless loop of social media scrolling, nonstop texting, and playing video games is officially a public health concern in America. 

The advisory, according to reports from CNN, warns that exposure to screens is becoming so normalized that it often begins before a child even turns one, and it only gets worse as they get older. 

The report stated that by adolescence, children may be spending more time on their electronic devices than sleeping or going to school. 

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By the time a child becomes a teenager, the amount of time spent on screens is an average of about four or more hours per day, and nearly half of the adolescents used for the advisory stated that they lose track of the amount of time they spend on their phones. 

The advisory also offers solutions and a “toolkit” to help parents identify harmful behaviors around screens and how to better limit screen time. One of the suggestions is a limitation of no screen time for a child under 18 months old, less than one hour per day for children under 6, and two hours per day for ages 6 to 18. 

A statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics emphasizes that every family is different, but limitations should definitely be enforced, especially during the school week. 

“While screen use can have some benefits, the evidence of a range of risks to children’s overall mental and physical health is mounting,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in advisory.

“Social media is only one aspect of this ongoing screen time problem. Behavior patterns involving gaming, online gambling, and other forms of virtual interaction are emerging,” Kennedy said. 

“While this report uses ‘screen time’ as a widely understood shorthand, we want people to understand that we are referring to the entire digital ecosystem of apps, smartphones, tablets, chatbots, and other screen-associated devices and interfaces.”

“This Advisory is not only a warning, but also an invitation for all of us to enjoy a broader world, beyond the confines of screens.”

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The advisory also includes many “calls to action” to provide recommendations for kids, teenagers, parents, schools, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and technology companies. Some of these recommendations, according to CNN, include: 

  • Youth track their screen time, take breaks and create boundaries.
  • Children complete all other activities, such as homework or extracurriculars, before screen use.
  • Parents create a family media plan that covers who can use what screens, where, when, which content and for how long.
  • Schools implement cell phone policy restrictions and prioritize assigning work in books or on paper to limit screen use.
  • Healthcare providers include questions about screen use in annual well-child visits.
  • Researchers study long-term impacts from screens and evaluate school cell phone policy bans or restrictions.
  • Policymakers pursue laws that provide parents with controls, demand child safety and privacy protection.
  • Tech companies display warnings about harmful screen use and adhere to and enforce age minimums.

Surgeon general advisories are utilized as one of the government’s biggest and strongest statements in regards to public health. They are designed to draw attention and bring an immediate response based on its recommendations. 

Parents and families can also use the recently updated guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics to help place limits on devices for their growing children to best protect their mental and physical health. 

“The relationship between screens and children’s health remains complex,” said Dr. Courtney Blackwell, an associate professor of medical social sciences.

“That’s not to say on an individual level, some children in some contexts with some pre-existing conditions may experience some kind of challenges when it comes to screen use and mental health or physical health. But at the population level, the research is not definitive, I would say, to suggest screen time causes harm in and of itself,” Dr. Blackwell said.

Dr. Blackwell also doesn’t want families to panic over their children’s screentime in an ever-changing and evolving digital world. 

“There can be positive uses of screen media, like ‘Sesame Street,’ and some kids find social support online, and they use it to connect with peers with similar identities at a time when identity development is critical in adolescence,” she said. 

“So it’s not just how long kids are spending on screens but really how they’re using it and the context of that use.”

awake

Teenagers In America Are Getting Less Sleep Than Ever, According To New Study 

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Teenagers living in the United States are sleeping less than ever before, according to a new study from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. The findings were recently shared in publication Pediatrics, and showed a consistent decline in sleep across all age groups considered to be teenage. 

Rachel Widome, lead author on the study and professor at the university’s School of Public Health, said: 

“Some barriers to sleep faced by teens have existed across generations, such as the increased homework and extracurricular demands that come with high school, social pressures to stay up late with peers, and jobs.” 

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“Other issues are new in recent years, such as increasingly ever-present screens and social media as well as recent society-wide stressors such as the pandemic, social unrest, or militarized policing.”

The study also showed demographic gaps in its sleep outcomes. For example, Black and Latino teenagers are becoming even less likely to get adequate sleep when compared to other groups, the same is shown for adolescents whose parents have lower levels of education. 

Older adolescents were seen to have the greatest impact. Sleep time was shown to steadily decline as teenagers got older with both sleep duration and the feeling of getting enough rest dropping significantly with age. 

Researchers in the study utilized data from Monitoring the Future, a long-running national survey that represents over 400,000 US students in grades eight, 10, and 12 over the span of 32 years (1991 to 2023). Participants involved responded to two main questions: how often they slept at least seven hours per night and how often they believed they were getting enough rest. 

Insufficient sleep is a major issue especially for growing teenagers. It’s attributed with daily exhaustion and inhibited functioning while also leading to much larger long-term issues like mental health problems, struggles in school, and chronic illnesses later in adulthood, reports show.

The main root cause that’s being identified is deep and growing feelings of social isolation and burnout. Aim Ideas Lab, a mental health research group that helps connect young people with proper resources, recently published student-led findings that showed about two-thirds of teenagers in California reported experiencing burnout and anxiety. 

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The students also found that about a quarter of students believe only about two days out of the week do they find they have enough time to meet their basic needs like sleeping, eating, and taking care of their personal hygiene. 

Jolie Delja, the executive director of Aim Youth Mental Health, stated that the respondents “connected this directly to relentless academic pressure. They asked for time to slow down, and the chance to learn and practice coping skills like breathing and mindfulness during calm moments, not just crisis ones.”

“Schools and communities do not need to invent entirely new solutions. They need to give students more time and space for the people, activities, and coping tools that already help them manage stress, including getting more sleep.”

Past studies have also revealed that teenagers who do go to bed earlier and/or sleep longer than others tend to have sharper mental skills and do better in school. 

Widome explained that while there may not be one direct nationwide solution to this problem, there are plenty of structural approaches that could help a lot of young people so they can truly take care of themselves, including starting the school day later. 

“Earlier starts are in direct conflict with preset rhythms of adolescent circadian biology,” she said. 

“A nation of sleep-deprived adolescents is not inevitable. We should embrace a culture of sleep, where sleep is actually valued and where we commit to enacting policies and other interventions that promote healthy sleep for everyone.”

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US Earns Most Gold Medals In Nation’s Winter Olympics History

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The United States took home a total of 33 medals at this year’s Winter Olympic Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. Of those medals, 12 were gold, the most gold the US had ever taken in a Winter Olympic Game. 

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When US athletes initially arrived in Italy, they faced a multitude of protests and questions regarding the nation’s politics and rising tensions. However, as the Games progressed, the focus was on what truly mattered, pure athletic ability and talent representing the pride these competitors have for their sports. 

Some of the most talked about moments were on the ice, with the solo and team performances by US figure skaters as well as the US men’s and women’s hockey teams. 

“The men of USA hockey are GOLDEN at the Winter Olympics for the first time since 1980,” the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said.

The US became the only country outside of Europe to get into the top five nations with most medals at this year’s Winter Games. 

Elena Meyers Taylor from Georgia won gold in the “monobob” bobsled event, and said: 

“I don’t think I’m going to process this for a while. There were so many moments during this entire season, during these past four years, that we just thought that was impossible.”

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At these Winter Games, the US sent over its largest roster of athletes ever, 232 men and women, with 18 states sending no Olympians at all, according to the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s official tally of athletes and their “recognized hometowns.”

Colorado itself accounted for five medals, including three gold, while Vermont and Wyoming accounted for one gold and six silver medals. This is an incredible feat considering how small of a population both states have. 

“It’s been a tough road, but sometimes you just have to keep going because that’s the only option. And sometimes when you keep going, maybe you’ll make it back to the top. It’s really special,” said Alpine skier Breezy Johnson from Wyoming, who won gold in women’s downhill. 

Norway took home more gold and the most medals overall with 25 of the 41 medals being won within two disciplines: cross-country skiing and biathlon. The US, in comparison, medaled in eleven different sports disciplines, shining in figure skating, hockey, bobsledding, and speedskating. 

“It [the gold medal win] means a lot to me,” said Stolz, from Wisconsin, who picked up two gold and a silver.

“It’s every four years that you get the chance to win Olympic gold, so I’m super happy.”

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Buyers, Sellers, And Agents Alike All Optimistic About 2026 Housing Market 

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US home buyers, sellers, and real estate agents are feeling optimistic about the trajectory of the housing market in 2026.

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Artificial Intelligence Is ‘Rewiring Democracy’ Around The World 

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AI is “undermining confidence in our information ecosystem, how the use of biased AI can harm constituents of democracies, and how elected officials with authoritarian tendencies can use it to consolidate power.”

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‘The US Refugee Program Changed My Life, Now Its Future Is Uncertain’

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“Despite these troubling political developments, I still love my country and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. Historically, generosity, welcoming and caring for people fleeing violence, war and persecution have been America’s core values.”

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‘I Retired In The Country Americans Want To Move To Most’ 

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“My wife and I now live in Portugal, the No. 1 country Americans want to move to. I spend my free time enjoying local food with friends and hiking the wildflower-dotted coastal trails. Retiring early is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made … but I remember how overwhelming it felt at the start.”

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