Propmodo

Blackstone is marketing a pair of vacant Paris office buildings it developed near Porte de la Chapelle, roughly six years after completion. BNP Paribas provided a €100 million loan for the €180 million project, later extending the debt for three years in 2023. Blackstone has written off its equity and the sale is proceeding with lender consent.

The speed of AI adoption in commercial real estate has been remarkable by any measure. JLL’s 2025 Global Real Estate Technology Survey, which gathered responses from more than 1,000 senior CRE decision-makers across 16 markets, found that the share of teams piloting real estate AI jumped from under 5% to 92% in three years. Occupiers are running an average of five real estate AI pilots simultaneously across roughly 27 identified use cases.

The best brokers I know all have the same strange habit: they can make bad software work. Give a top producer a CRM built for residential agents, or a platform built for landlords, and they’ll bend it, patch it, and run their whole business through it without complaining. It looks like a strength. It’s the reason our industry keeps buying tools that were never built for us. The problem never gets fixed, because the best of us are too good at dealing with whatever gets put in front of us.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development opened an investigation into Wells Fargo’s programs designed to increase Black homeownership, questioning whether the bank violated fair-lending laws by offering products or terms based on race. HUD sent a letter to CEO Charlie Scharf on Wednesday stating the agency would examine whether the bank engaged in illegal “sorting” of homeowners. Secretary Scott Turner said HUD is reviewing similar initiatives at other banks.

Amazon Web Services announced it will stop using nondisclosure agreements with local governments during data center permitting and will distribute over $1 billion across host communities over five years. CEO Matt Garman outlined the commitments in an October 2 blog post, directing funds toward workforce training, energy affordability, and water solutions. Amazon currently has two 96-megawatt data center campuses under construction in Mesa, Arizona, on Elliot and Signal Butte roads.

BDT & MSD Partners is buying a majority stake in Sunrise Senior Living, the fifth-largest operator in the sector with more than 230 communities across the United States and Canada. The seller is Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board. Terms were not disclosed, though a source familiar with the deal said the buyer values it at more than $1 billion. What makes it notable is the buyer.

Tonal installed its strength training machines in nine WeWork locations across Northern California, Southern California, Washington, Oregon, and Texas. The partnership marks Tonal’s first move into workplace fitness, bringing the company’s adaptive resistance equipment to coworking spaces where users can train without commuting to a separate gym.

Dolly Parton’s SongTeller Hotel and Life of Many Colors Museum opened downtown on October 6, converting the former 211 Commerce office building into a 245-room hotel with two live entertainment venues and a full-floor museum. Herschend Enterprises partnered with Parton on the project, which debuted months after the singer’s death in August at age 80.

Office utilization has been the organizing metric of corporate real estate for the past four years. Badge swipes, desk sensors, and occupancy dashboards became the primary evidence in return-to-office debates, and the entire smart building sensor industry oriented itself around counting people accurately. The problem with that metric is that it answers a question nobody actually cares about.

BDT & MSD Partners acquired a majority stake in Sunrise Senior Living for more than $1 billion, with senior leadership retaining the remainder. Sunrise, the fifth-largest senior-housing operator in North America, runs more than 230 communities across the U.S. and Canada serving over 22,000 residents. Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board sold its stake in what marks one of the largest senior-housing transactions since the pandemic.