Overall, this was a good week for CRE. Washington can now soon get back to critical legislation focus, the press has been put in a can and shown to be biased and producers of fake news, and infrastructure funding is moving ahead. The issue now is the stock market. With the crash of the fab five late Friday, will the stock market continue to move up and create wealth effects for homebuyers and investors. We will just have to see how this week plays out. Even though the Fed will raise rates, the ten year rate is still very low and probably will not rise too much as the rest of the world still needs the US to be the last safe haven. All the issues from the UK election, to terror attacks, to Qatar and N Korea, make the US the one place left for safety. That will keep capital coming to the US and rates lower than they might otherwise be.

The views expressed here are the author's own.

In a huge disappointment to the press and the Democrats, the Comey hearing essentially brought an end to the frenzy over Russia, impeachment, and the whole Trump imbroglio. Comey confirmed Trump is not a target, he said Trump said he “hoped” the FBI could go easy on Flynn, which is in no way obstruction and was never an order to end the investigation, there was no indication of any collusion and, overall, there is no potential charge against Trump. There were no charges or bombshells.

What was interesting was the revelation Comey probably violated the law by leaking his memo to the press, and it raises a big question what else he leaked. The memo was of an official meeting of the head of the FBI with the President in the oval office. That under the law is official business, so the memo is likely official government property according to rules already on the books. Comey decided there should be a special counsel. It is not up to the FBI Director to use surreptitious means to get a special counsel appointed. Then we have the whole Loretta Lynch pressure to adhere to more Hillary-friendly language of “matter” versus “investigation.” That is direct political interference with an investigation. What else did she do to impede or influence the Hillary investigation and decision not to prosecute her?

Bottom line, this all played in Trump's favor and left CNN, NBC, the NY Times and Washington Post being called out for publishing fake news based on sources who had no actual knowledge, according to Comey. Exactly what Trump and the Republicans have been saying. So now the press is left with no credibility, and the public being told by the head of the FBI, don't believe what the press says.

So where does that leave things and CRE. Despite the hoopla, the Congressional committees continued to function, and healthcare, tax reform, infrastructure and Dodd-Frank legislation are all moving ahead. The infrastructure plan has been preliminarily introduced and is in motion, with Congress now starting to work on it. The House passed major changes to Dodd-Frank, which will not get through the Senate, but maybe some version of it can, although it is questionable. Tax reform is in process and will happen. It is a question of what will the rate on corporate really drop to and how to handle pass through income. For CRE and funds, the issue of carried interest is very likely to be adversely decided against us. With border tax is dead, the corporate rate is likely to be closer to 25% than 15%. There will be some middle class tax cut. Deductions will be severely cut. Overall for CRE, it will be helpful, but probably not a huge change, unless they make interest not a deductible item. Infrastructure funding will have much more impact if they can materially cut approval time, and environmental review costs and time. It will also potentially make transit-oriented projects move faster and have a much better chance to happen. Infrastructure is far more important to CRE than any of the other legislation.

Overall, this was a good week for CRE. Washington can now soon get back to critical legislation focus, the press has been put in a can and shown to be biased and producers of fake news, and infrastructure funding is moving ahead. The issue now is the stock market. With the crash of the fab five late Friday, will the stock market continue to move up and create wealth effects for homebuyers and investors. We will just have to see how this week plays out. Even though the Fed will raise rates, the ten year rate is still very low and probably will not rise too much as the rest of the world still needs the US to be the last safe haven. All the issues from the UK election, to terror attacks, to Qatar and N Korea, make the US the one place left for safety. That will keep capital coming to the US and rates lower than they might otherwise be.

The views expressed here are the author's own.