Google said it is buying a Manhattan office building for $2.1 billion. The deal for the new building on Manhattan’s West Side is the most expensive sale of a single U.S. office building since the start of the pandemic—and one of the priciest in U.S. history.

Market participants increasingly believe that Beijing will let China property developer Evergrande fail and inflict losses on its shareholders and bondholders. The company’s debt burden is the biggest for any publicly traded real estate management or development company in the world.

Pimco also has become a more active real estate investor after its parent, Allianz SE, put the firm in charge of managing its Allianz Real Estate investment business. Between its own investments and those made by Allianz, Pimco acquired $12 billion in private commercial property between January 2020 and June 2021. The combined Pimco and Allianz real-estate business also originated or invested in $7 billion in real-estate loans during that time.

National asking rents rose 10.3% in August, measured on an annual basis. That marked the first double-digit increase in the more than 20 years this data has been collected.

Shares in Chinese commercial-property developer Soho China Ltd. tumbled 35% Monday, after Blackstone Inc. abandoned a $3.3 billion takeover in the face of an unexpectedly long regulatory review.

Offices in 10 major U.S. cities were just 33.1% occupied in the week ending Aug. 25. That figure is a slight increase over the prior week but down from a 34.8% peak in late July.

Asking rents for houses rose nearly 13% for the year to date through July, the highest annual increase in the past five years. The sharp rise partly reflects increasing demand from people who can’t afford to buy homes, and the slow supply of new houses as construction trails historical levels relative to population growth.

Blackstone completed their previously announced acquisition of QTS Realty Trust, a leading provider of data center solutions across a diverse footprint spanning more than 7 million square feet of owned mega scale data center space within North America and Europe, for approximately $10 billion.

The Supreme Court on Thursday lifted the latest federal ban on evictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, siding with landlords against a moratorium the Biden administration imposed this month despite questions about its legality.

Shared office space firms are enjoying a rise in sales this summer as U.S. businesses grappling with the seismic changes in the workspace world sparked by the pandemic seek flexible and short-term solutions. Hundreds of companies particularly in the technology sector are taking spaces from these firms, ranging from a handful of desks to over 50,000 square feet for periods as short as one month. Many individuals are also doing this on their company’s dime as they wait for their employers to figure out when it is safe to require workers to return to pre-pandemic offices.