The LightBox Signal: Our Weekly Analysis of the Top Headlines

In the latest commentary, LightBox’s Manus Clancy breaks down a month defined by mixed economic signals: softer inflation, rising layoffs, and long-term Treasury yields locked in a narrow range. Investors also faced geopolitical tensions, private credit concerns, and a brief tech selloff before sentiment recovered. Despite the market stall, CRE kept moving. Weekly announced sales held steady, and capital remained available across banks, CMBS, insurers, and private equity. Major deals, from senior living and student housing to data centers and industrial, continued at a healthy clip. Even with multifamily softness and rising risk premiums, CRE’s deal flow proved surprisingly resilient.

LightBox Take: With just weeks left in 2025, CRE appears on steadier footing than the broader market, supported by functioning credit channels and ongoing transaction momentum. A Fed cut this week would further ease financing costs, bolster refinancing pipelines, and strengthen borrower confidence heading into early 2026. Still, the margin for error is narrowing: yields, credit conditions, and macro headlines will determine whether CRE’s durable deal activity continues or pauses.

The long-delayed PCE report showed core inflation rising 2.8% year over year and 0.2% month over month, almost exactly in line with expectations, and giving the markets reassurance that price pressures accelerated only modestly in September. Headline PCE rose 0.3% month over month and 2.8% annually. While the data reflects conditions from three months ago due to the government shutdown, it did little to shift expectations for this week’s Fed meeting, where traders continue to price an 87% chance of a 25-basis-point cut. Equities rallied on the release, viewing the steady PCE print and cooling labor signals as supportive of further easing.

LightBox Take: The PCE report cleared the final hurdle for a likely December rate cut and strengthened the case for a third reduction this year. With core PCE steady at 2.8% and inflation gradually easing, the Fed has more cover to support a softening labor market and unlock cheaper capital. A third cut would reinforce 2025’s improving financing landscape: lower debt costs, revived transaction pipelines, and greater investor willingness to re-enter the market. Despite being dated, nothing in the latest inflation release challenges the easing path markets expect.

AI adoption in environmental consulting is accelerating at an unprecedented pace, reshaping daily workflows even amid skepticism and governance concerns. Early adopters are using AI to streamline document review, flag compliance risks, model climate and ESG scenarios, and convert static reports into analyzable data. Others remain cautious, citing accuracy, privacy, and oversight challenges. Still, the industry is quickly moving from experimentation to integration as firms discover AI’s ability to unlock efficiency, deepen analysis, and elevate client service. This latest article from Alan Agadoni and Dianne Crocker in the December edition of AWMA’s EM magazine explores how consultants are applying AI today, where the risks lie, and what’s ahead in their rapidly evolving landscape.  

LightBox Take: AI adoption in the environmental due diligence field is still in its early stages as the industry establishes best practices around accuracy, privacy, and responsible use. To understand how firms are truly approaching AI, LightBox is conducting the first industry benchmark survey on AI in environmental due diligence, with results releasing in early 2026. Stay tuned for this new dataset that will reveal where the industry stands, and how AI is poised to reshape practice in the years ahead.

The just-released Cushman & Wakefield’s 2026 U.S. Outlook signals a move from resilience to optimism as AI-driven productivity, lower interest rates, and reduced policy uncertainty support renewed momentum across sectors. Capital markets are recovering as lower costs of capital and tight spreads drive double-digit growth in mortgage originations. Office fundamentals are improving with higher attendance, rising leasing, positive Class A absorption, and the smallest construction pipeline in a decade. Industrial demand is strengthening as e-commerce expands, while slowing development should tighten vacancy by 2027. Multifamily demand remains elevated due to affordability pressures, and retail fundamentals remain firm.

LightBox Take: This outlook mirrors the dynamics evident across LightBox platforms: CRE has moved past its most volatile phase and is now showing steady, if modest, momentum. Lower rates and stabilizing fundamentals are creating a healthier backdrop for underwriting and investment, even as asset performance remains highly differentiated across property types and geographies.

EQT Real Estate has closed the largest industrial transaction of 2025, selling a 25-asset, 8.7-million-square-foot logistics portfolio spanning 13 major U.S. distribution hubs including New York, Phoenix, Atlanta, Chicago, and Texas. The properties, largely built after 2000, serve tenants across e-commerce, retail supply chain, and industrial operations. The sale reflects EQT’s strategic rotation out of stabilized, older inventory and into next-generation logistics facilities. Over the past two months, the firm has shed more than 13 million square feet while reinvesting in nearly 5 million square feet of newer high-clear-height warehouses.

LightBox Take: EQT’s portfolio sale highlights a broader rebalancing in the warehouse market. After years of pandemic-era outperformance and heavy development, supply and demand are resetting. In oversupplied markets, rents are softening slightly even as e-commerce, expected to account for nearly 25% of new leasing next year, continues to fuel long-term demand. Tenants are prioritizing efficiency, clear heights, and power capacity over raw square footage.