Data centers are popping up in lower-income neighborhoods, fewer retail stores are shutting down, and British homebuyers are looking for air-conditioned residences. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are our Hits and Misses for the week of Aug. 10-14.
Miss: The Data Center Next Door. A new analysis this week from Realtor.com found a growing number of new data centers are being located in lower income areas. In 2023, ZIP codes receiving new large facilities were 24.7% above the national median income. But as for the data centers being activated this year, 2.1% are in areas below the national median income; the 2027 construction pipeline points to communities 5.7% below the median. Glen Morgenstern, an economist intern at Realtor.com, observed data centers are now being planned in areas that “tend to be lower-income, lower-density and farther from a city center, which usually also means fewer resources on hand — fewer attorneys, less organized civic engagement, and housing markets that react more slowly to new information. That doesn’t tell us those communities will be worse off, but it does mean they may be less equipped to respond if a facility turns out to be a difficult neighbor.”
Hit: Welcome, Shoppers. Here’s some good news from the retail real estate sector: As of July 31, major US retailers announced 3,255 store openings and 3,399 store closures year-to-date, according to a new data report from Coresight Research. This resulted 144 net store closures, a significant decline when compared with 1,778 net store closures in the comparable period of 2025. As of July 31, the retail market had an estimated 26.1 million net addition of retail square footage, with big-box and grocery brands leading the expansion. There are still some problems in this sector – the report also noted year-to-date announced store closures are led by the apparel sector (including clothing, footwear and accessories), which accounted for 1,103 closures, or 32.4% of total closures. Still, it is obvious that brick-and-mortar retail is alive and mostly well.
Hit: Cool Living. Europeans have traditionally not been obsessed with air conditioning, but this summer’s brutal heat wave is creating second thoughts about having a cooling appliance. The Guardian reports that the British property website Rightmove has seen a 104% year-over-year rise in searches for homes for sale that have air conditioning. The website also shared research that found 61% of Britons claiming they would consider installing air conditioning – though only 12% had already accomplished this task – while 87% said that a property’s ability to stay cool was an important factor in homebuying. Considering the UK saw temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit this summer, an air conditioner should be a must-have in the nation’s homes.
Hit: A Voice in DC. Kudos to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the CEOs of the state realtor associations in Nevada, Tennessee, and Virginia for meeting this week with officials from the White House, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Health and Human Services to discuss expanding affordable health coverage options for self-employed professionals. The Labor Department is developing a proposed rule that would redefine “employer” under federal law, which would enable self-employed individuals to participate in Association Health Plans. Shannon McGahn, NAR’s executive vice president and chief advocacy officer, stated, “We support the administration’s efforts to develop a workable and legally defensible rule so that self-employed professionals can rely on these options for the long term.”
Miss: Who Writes This Stuff? Have Democratic Socialists taken over the Wall Street Journal? Consider their obsession this week with Mat Ishbia, the CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage. Today, the Journal ran an editorial titled “UWM Is a Government Mortgage Canary” that highlighted how 21.5% of mortgages originated by “billionaire Mat Ishbia’s” company over the last two years became seriously delinquent within a year of origination. However, the editorial’s third-to-last paragraph sneaked in an admission that “12 mortgage lenders have even higher one-year serious delinquency rates for recent mortgages” – so why pick on thirteenth-ranked Ishbia? Then, there is a news piece from earlier this week titled “America’s Mortgage King Lost $600 Million and Needed a Rescue” with an introductory paragraph that is aghast at how Ishbia “used his wealth to buy the NBA’s Phoenix Suns for $4 billion in cash and to build a mansion in Michigan with a trampoline park and rock-climbing wall.” Yes, Ishbia’s company is going through a rough patch, with a badly played hedge bet and a lawsuit against Two Harbors Investment Corp. over their aborted merger. There’s nothing wrong with conducting a serious analysis on what went wrong for the company and its leader. But when the Journal throws around language such as “billionaire” and “Mortgage King” in identifying a highly successful housing executive, you have to wonder if Bernie Sanders and AOC are secretly running the newspaper.
Miss: The Pulte Touch. And, of course, what’s a Hits and Misses column without the irrepressible Bill Pulte? This week, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director engaged in a strange X dialogue with Natalie Winters, the conservative commentator who co-hosts the “War Room” podcast with Steve Bannon. Winters posted her surprise on X that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both accommodate Sharia Law-compliant home financing.” She added that “Fannie Mae even has a specific loan code for: ‘Musharaka Islamic Finance Mortgages’” while “Freddie Mac explicitly recognizes financing ‘designed to comply with Islamic law.’” Pulte quickly spotted her tweet and responded, “We are looking into this right now. Thanks for mentioning!” Uh, looking into what? Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have been buying Islamic mortgage products since 2001 and 2003, respectively, and they are now the primary investors in Islamic mortgages? Considering that Pulte is the chairman of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, you might assume that he knows something about their connection to that niche market.
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
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