Commercial real estate markets could be headed closer to a normalization of activity, some experts say, and Chris Aiken of MetLife Investment Management noted a narrowing of the bid-ask spread. Elevated interest rates pose an obstacle, but "going forward, I think we will see opportunities," said Starwood Capital Group's Bakari Adams, adding that much depends on the sector.

A JPMorgan Chase report says the private credit market is much larger than the $2 trillion or $1.71 trillion estimated by the International Monetary Fund and data firm Preqin, respectively. JPMorgan contends that the market's actual size is around $3.14 trillion, saying that Preqin reports the value of invested assets on a net basis and doesn't fully represent the size of business development companies.

January and February saw nearly $900 million in financial advisers' nontraded REIT sales, for a $5.4 billion annualized rate, compared with a $10.2 billion full-year total in 2023 and $33.3 billion in 2022, data from Robert A. Stanger & Co. shows. Meanwhile, a drop in listed REITs' values is prompting questions about when net asset value REITs will reduce their values.

Demand for unanchored strip center space has eclipsed new deliveries by a significant margin in recent years, sending vacancy rates down to 4.7%, the lowest level since 2003, according to a Marcus & Millichap report. "Should this momentum continue, competition for strip center space should remain robust, with most retailers required to comb existing properties amid a pullback in development," the report says.

IPC Alternative Real Estate Income Trust, a nontraded REIT from Inland Real Estate Investment, has paid $25.5 million for two self-storage facilities in Montgomery, Ala., and two in the Atlanta area. The properties come from Self-Storage Portfolio V DST, a Delaware statutory trust offering from Inland Private Capital.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has finished its review of the Labor Department's fiduciary rule, according to a notice on a government website, despite having meetings scheduled with stakeholders through April 15. Attorney Brad Campbell called the move "highly irregular, and yet another example of the arbitrary and capricious nature of this rulemaking process."

Inflation is likely to take longer than expected to decline to the Federal Reserve's 2% target, Chair Jerome Powell says. "We've said at the [Federal Open Market Committee] that we'll need greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably towards 2% before it would be appropriate to ease policy," Powell says. "The recent [inflation] data have clearly not given us greater confidence and instead indicate that it's likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence."

Some Americans are working past traditional retirement age to fill financial gaps, and while remote work and desk jobs allow older Americans to stay in the workforce longer, many people working past age 65 are still in physically demanding roles. A Nationwide Retirement Institute survey found two-thirds of pre-retirees expect to encounter more obstacles than previous generations did, and 69% said they do not necessarily believe they will be able to retire at 65.

Facing a client complaint can be unnerving for a financial adviser, writes attorney Richard Chen, who warns of the risk of compounding the problem when handling the complaint. Chen highlights five common mistakes advisers make when faced with a complaint and offers some best practices for minimizing the legal and regulatory risks.