Sunday Summary: Seven. Hundred. Fifty. Billion.

Three-quarters of a trillion dollars can buy you pretty much anything you want.

If you took the gross national product of Chile, and added the GNP of Colombia, you’d still have more than $100 billion left — and that can also get you pretty much anything in the known world.

Well, J.P. Morgan Chase has decided to use that ungodly amount of lucre to invest it in a roof over one’s head.

On Monday, the bank announced an unprecedented push to build $750 billion worth of housing over the next nine years with the goal of increasing both supply and homeownership nationwide. (Oh, yeah — Commercial Observer broke the story.)

“We’re focused on helping more people access quality housing they can afford,” said Michelle Herrick, the bank’s head of commercial real estate. “And we’re working across the real estate community, local governments and nonprofits to scale housing solutions throughout the U.S.”

J.P. Morgan’s approach will be to focus on expanding financing through debt, equity and grants, with a target of creating 1 million units of affordable housing. They’re hoping to aid 500,000 customers, of which they’re anticipating 200,000 will be first-time buyers.

Of course, the timing of this is opportune.

Back in May, CO reported that construction starts on multifamily projects throughout the U.S. for the first quarter of this year hadn’t been this low since 2011.

But a few companies have been trying to meet the demand — at least in certain regions.

In New York, for example, LMXD and Bedrock Real Estate Partners are building a 560-unit mixed-income development in Astoria.

In Florida, Ultimate Equity just shelled out $32 million for a 69-unit townhome community in Hollywood. Krea USA is mid-construction on a 385-unit development called Le Parc at Lauderhill in Lauderhill, Fla. And Harbor Group International bought a zoo — actually, make that HGI bought a garden-style apartment complex near Zoo Miami.

California is one of the more valuable and perhaps the most vexing areas for housing in the nation. On the one hand, it comfortably remains the most populous state in the union, and yet it’s also one of the most expensive and byzantine markets in terms of regulation.

But BlackRock is seeing the upside. The company announced a $1.63 billion buy from Camden Property Trust for an 11-property Southern California multifamily portfolio, consisting of more than 3,600 rental residential units — making it the largest U.S. multifamily sale in more than two years.

Report cards are still coming in…

Starwood Property Trust did not have a great week. The firm reported just $6.6 million in net income — which is a nearly 95 percent drop from the $129.8 million in net income from last year’s second quarter.

This did not sit well with investors. The stock dropped 4 percent in one morning.

A “surprised” Barry Sternlicht tried to soothe investors. “I think we’re kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” said Sternlicht. “We’re pretty confident in our ability to get back to earnings power to drive the dividend and restore coverage of our dividend.”

Indeed, Starwood President Jeffrey DiModica also painted a better picture than the investor reaction would suggest.

“Despite a volatile macro backdrop, we’ve accretively deployed a near-record $6.7 billion year-to-date,” said DiModica on the earnings call. “The breadth of opportunity across our global investment platform continues to grow.”

As for some of the other earnings calls CO listened to, their forecasts were largely clear blue — with a few clouds. (One big cloud appeared Friday morning after most of these reports were already in, that the economy shed 23,000 jobs and previously rosy employment numbers were revised downward.)

Brookfield Asset Management announced it had raised $77 billion in the second quarter of 2026 (a record for the company!) bringing its year-to-date total to $98 billion. (Oh, and they’re building their own in-house AI platform!)

Another company with a personal best was Cushman & Wakefield.

“We didn’t just meet the bar this quarter,” said C&W’s CEO Michelle MacKay, “we moved it, setting several company records, including the highest second-quarter total revenue in the history of the company, the highest second-quarter leasing and services revenue in the history of the company, and the lowest gross debt balance in the history of the company.”

And some of the companies that had been through some rough patches have also begun their turnaround.

Mall giant Macerich reported that occupancy increased by 2 percent to 94 percent from 2025, and they signed approximately 1.3 million square feet worth of leases. (And, hey, we’re seeing an appetite for malls beyond just Macerich territory.)

Likewise, after several years of life sciences market tumult, Alexandria Real Estate Equities seems to be showing some signs of improvement, with 1 million square feet of leases — a marked improvement from the 647,300 square feet of transactions in the first quarter.

Vornado Realty Trust was pretty jazzed about Manhattan’s office potential, predicting rents could reach a dizzying $350 per square foot at 350 Park Avenue, which Vornado is developing with Ken Griffin’s Citadel and Rudin.

“The fact that there’s a scarcity of new supply, and the combination of the construction costs, interest rates, et cetera, require a very high rent for a new building,” said Steven Roth. “That will cause the great, well-located, older buildings to go up and drive [leasing] enormously. And obviously, that’s the reason we bought Park Avenue Plaza.”

Roth has good reason for this optimism. Leases are happening. Whatever myths one heard about summer slowdowns are clearly false, with leasing velocity up 22 percent in July from June, according to Colliers’ latest market report. (At a Vornado building, Penn 2, Snap, the technology firm behind Snapchat, subleased a whopping 198,983 square feet from Verizon.)

And it explains why companies like Marx Realty are pouring tens of millions of dollars into repositioning centrally located assets like 430 Park Avenue, where Marx is investing $68 million. (Those who are looking to get into the office market and can spare $450 million can purchase 6 Grand Central.)

Hello and goodbye

On Friday we heard some big news — Barry Gosin, one of the legends of the New York City real estate scene (actually, make that the national real estate scene) — is stepping down from his perch as CEO of Newmark at the end of this year.

“For nearly five decades, Barry, along with his entire leadership team, have led Newmark through some of its most consequential milestones, including its initial public offering in 2017 and becoming the fastest-growing publicly traded commercial real estate firm in the world, increasing annual revenues by over 1,400 percent since 2011 while expanding to more than 10,000 professionals across approximately 195 locations,” said Stephen Merkel, chairman of the board, executive vice president and chief legal officer of Newmark.

But that was not the only personnel shift of the last week. Arrow Real Estate Advisors tapped Jeffrey Weinberg to be a managing director, luring him from his previous position at Meridian Capital Group.

And Rudin named Craig Panzirer as its new senior vice president for office leasing.

Sunday reads

When you get right down to it, all of this activity is the result of investment.

One of the questions we’re always asking is: Who are the investors making the big moves?

Our answer to that question can be found in this week’s Power Investors issue, where we name the top GPs, LPs, family offices and sovereign wealth funds who are fueling the real estate market — and we would modestly submit that our results are worth a careful examination this Sunday.

And those who are looking to go deeper on one of the honorees here can read our Sit-Down with Invesco’s Chase Bolding.

See you next week!