It’s been bubbling below the national radar for some time now, but the dispute between employers and longshoremen on the West Coast has the potential to cost retailers – and their landlords – a lot of money this year, and maybe even punish other parts of the economy.

Investors know that it takes time for the benefits of higher employment to filter through to real estate.

Retail hiring hasn’t been a part of the recovery.

Both commercial and residential real estate continue to represent a smaller part of the GDP in the post-recession 2010s than during most previous decades.

While GDP growth in general might seem sluggish, if you look closer, you’ll see that real residential fixed investment, such as multi-family structures, grew at 4.1 percent.

Millennials have now outnumbered Baby Boomers and their existence is bound to affect real estate.

Housing, while back from the Great Recession abyss, has slipped into a walking-dead state.

The Financial Security Index hit the highest point in its four-year history.

Low inflation is a positive for the commercial real estate industry. Click here to find out why.

Predicting what the Federal Reserve’s going to do about interest rates is something of a mug’s game, since the central bank goes out of its way to be opaque about policy matters.