Commercial Real Estate Investing
Prudential US Quarterly Update on Commercial Real Estate
July 29, 2010
Prudential is out with its quarterly update on US CRE. Values have increased (in some cases dramatically), capital markets are opening up, and volume is gaining. All is great, except the fundamentals are still broken; job growth is anemic. Report embedded below. US Q July 2010_ PRU
Read More >>A Quick Thought on Carried Interest
June 4, 2010
John Reeder over at MarketWi.Se has a post up with some of his views on the carried interest tax as well as those of Fred Wilson, a prominent venture capitalist. There has been a lot of debate about this tax, and I’ve even posted a couple times here and there on the issue. Much of the [...]
Read More >>Let The Feeding Frenzy Begin: Parkmerced In Default
May 26, 2010
Multifamily investors have been and continue to run around like addicts looking for their next fix. So surely there will be a frenzy to get a chomp at the bit of Parkmerced, the 116-acre San Francisco apartment community which has apparently gone to special servicing. Parkmerced is essentially the StuyTown of San Francisco. [via SF [...]
Read More >>Prudential’s Case for CRE
May 25, 2010
Prudential has released a mini-report titled “Revisiting the Case for Commercial Real Estate”. It covers all the basics but surprisingly keeps the Challenges & Risks to a brief five paragraphs. It talks about interest rate risk, but doesn’t talk about the credit rating of the US. It talks about the financing gap but doesn’t go [...]
Read More >>Not Much To Say
May 25, 2010
Bad news on the heels of bad news. There are pockets of strength here and there, but overall the sentiment is what drives the equity markets and it seems we’ve reached a point where the self-fulfilling prophecy is achieved by a bunch of machines. Sprinkle in reckless spending and it won’t take long for things [...]
Read More >>Moody’s/REAL CPPI Index Down .5% in March
May 19, 2010
The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index dropped .5% in March. This marks the second month in a row that prices have dropped after a few months of increases. The index is now 42.1% off the peak. Despite the overall decline in the index, some positives were Apartments and Industrial in the top-10 MSAs. In the [...]
Read More >>40 Million Americans Receiving Food Stamps
May 10, 2010
1 in 8 Americans is now receiving food stamps, a new record. Despite the economy purportedly adding jobs again, it is also adding to the number of people on food stamps. The USDA numbers show that 39.68M Americans were receiving food stamps in February, up 260,000 from January. And the problem is expected to grow. [...]
Read More >>Mark to Market: Sunnyvale R&D Trades For $40 PSF
May 7, 2010
Well there you go, $40 psf on a building, and less than $1M/acre for a Sunnyvale R&D project. We’re back to the lows of 2003 as far as land costs go when Gilbane acquired the 12-acre site of Kifer Commerce Park for about $19 psf. The purchase of 645 Almanor by Trumark sets a new [...]
Read More >>What The Market Told Us Today
May 6, 2010
We were told that a trader put in a “B” (for billion) instead of an “M” (for million). Then we’re told it was tied to the E-Mini futures. Let’s say we’re naive enough to believe the B vs M scenario is accurate. The total market capitalization of the US stock market is probably somewhere around [...]
Read More >>Richard LeFrak on CNBC With a Wait and See Attitude
April 27, 2010
Richard LeFrak of the LeFrak Organization was on CNBC with Maria to discuss commercial real estate. He continues to be somewhat cautious and is taking a “wait and see” approach, though there is certainly more cautious optimism out of him. Echoing his comments, multifamily continues to be hot with investors scrambling to take a stab [...]
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