May 2011 Newsletter from Scott Miller





Seattle is No. 4 office market in USA
A series of big office leases has popped the Seattle area office market into the top five nationally, according to a new report by
Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment, an Encino, Calif.-based real estate services firm.

Seattle 654-unit apartment complex planned
A new 654-unit, twin 24-story apartment complex is planned for the corner of Lenora Street and Sixth Avenue in downtown Seattle.

Kirkland's Plaza at Yarrow Bay sells to Kilroy Realty for $100M
In the biggest office deal so far this year in the Puget Sound area,
HAL Real Estate Investments Inc., in Seattle, sold the Plaza at Yarrow Bay office campus in Kirkland to Los Angeles-based Kilroy Realty Corp. for $100.2 million, or $363 a square foot.

199 Blaine DJC - Alexandria Real Estate Equities' new biotech building at 199 E. Blaine St. is part of the transformation of South Lake Union into a technology center.

Westwood Town Center in West Seattle sells for $78.1M
Westwood Town Center, a shopping center located at 2600 S.W. Barton St. in West Seattle, has sold for $78.1 million.

Key Center in Bellevue up for sale
In a move that could be seen as a test of the Bellevue office market, Beacon Capital Partners has put the 23-story Key Center office tower up for sale.

Bellevue Galleria sold for $87.5M
Thor Equities said it’s purchased the Bellevue Galleria shopping and office center for a reported $87.5 million.

Red Lion sells Seattle hotel for $71M
Red Lion Hotels Corp. has sold its downtown Seattle hotel on Fifth Avenue for $71 million.

Aegis Living doubles pace of assisted-living projects to meet demographic demand
With a growing population of senior citizens who need daily assistance with dressing and meals, Redmond-based
Aegis Living is on a growth spurt.

Kidder Mathews Named New Agents for Kent Valley Portfolio
Kidder Mathews will take over leasing for two business parks owned by Principal Real Estate Investors LLC, the Northwest Corporate Park and Kent North Corporate Park.



Lehman Puts Stakes in Projects on the Block
When the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. real-estate engine was chugging during the boom years, the firm teamed up with developer LCOR Inc. on dozens of projects.
Now, as real-estate development begins to stir in a few markets, Lehman's bankruptcy estate is preparing to put its equity stake in about 10 of those projects on the block, according to people familiar with the matter.

Setting a Record in New Jersey
The high investor demand that has been seen for top-quality office buildings in Manhattan is beginning to cross the Hudson River to the New Jersey waterfront.
Hartz Mountain Industries Inc. this week sold twin 12-story office buildings in Jersey City's Colgate Center in a deal that values them at about $310 million.

Developer Lets a Bet Ride
Never one to retreat when he can attack, Related Cos. Chief Executive
Stephen Ross is doubling down on the furniture-mart business.

Commercial real estate's improving health exceeds forecasts
The once-dismal commercial real estate market is turning around far more quickly than analysts expected, with troubled loans falling, occupancy rising and office building sales surging in the largest markets.

Never Too Late To Go Retro The FDIC Finds Buyers For Pool of Small Loans Sliced Up Into Bonds
Two decades after a U.S. government agency helped pioneer the creation of the commercial-mortgage-backed securities market, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is getting into the act

Apartment-Building Foreclosures Piling Up
For more than three years, Fannie Mae has faced surging foreclosures on deteriorating home loans. Now, it also has to deal with an uptick in souring loans backing apartment buildings made as the market peaked four years ago.

Stalled Projects Revive
The strength of Washington, D.C.'s office market, which has lifted the values of some properties to boom-era levels, also has helped busted developments in the nation's capital.

Hey, Malls Here! Get Your Used Malls Here!
It is spring selling season for U.S. mall landlords.
Mall giants
Westfield Group, Simon Property Group and General Growth Properties are marketing 40 malls across the country, an unusually large number for any one time. The sellers are hoping to take advantage of the slowly improving economy and commercial-real-estate market.

Silicon Valley Office Market Booms
When San Francisco developer Jay Paul left town for a Pacific Ocean yacht voyage about 10 weeks ago, his shiny new office complex in Sunnyvale, Calif., had been sitting mostly empty since it was completed in late 2008.

Emeritus buying 24 assisted-living centers
Emeritus Corp. said it's buying 24 assisted-living centers worth $310 million from a partner.


International


Housing Bubbles Percolate Far From Crises Elsewhere
Housing prices are rising rapidly in Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Israel, Singapore, South Africa and Sweden.
Housing prices are flat—or falling—in Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the U.S.
Welcome to the two-speed global economy.

A Real Estate Plunge on Tokyo's Waterfront?
Developers in neighborhoods near Tokyo Bay, where apartments are often built on reclaimed land, are halting sales after Japan's earthquake in mid-March turned some of the landfill into mud, shattered pipes, and severed water lines. While most of Tokyo avoided major damage in the Mar. 11 quake because of stringent building codes, some bayside areas experienced liquefaction, a phenomenon in which violent shaking causes soil to fragment and lose its strength. That in turn allows water to well up and create a quicksand-like mess. The most affected suburb was Urayasu, one of only three residential areas in greater Tokyo where land prices rose last year and the home of the Tokyo Disneyland resort.




Cuba publishes awaited details of economic changes
HAVANA -- Cuba made official on Monday what had been rumored for weeks: It is legalizing the sale of real estate and cars and expanding the ranks of private cooperatives that could serve as engines for the sputtering economy, among other major changes.

Ronesans sets price for up to $374 million IPO
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish commercial real estate firm Ronesans is offering its shares for between 5.0 and 6.4 lira each in a planned Istanbul listing next month which could raise as much as $374 million.





Commercial Real Estate Distressed Asset Association

Loan Middlemen Become a Big Draw
With tens of billions of dollars in underwater commercial real-estate loans coming due by the end of next year, some savvy investors are trying to get to the head of the line in the race to snap up distressed properties.

SALES VELOCITY: Surge In Total Office, Hotel Sales Provide Huge Boost in First Quarter Volume

First-quarter data from CoStar Group shows investment sales activity for commercial property continuing to increase. For all property types, first-quarter sales totaled more than $47.86 billion. That amount is significantly higher (more than $16 billion in some cases,) than the amount of property sales reported for the same period by other analytic firms in the past two weeks.

CRE Distress Brings Down Another Five Banks
This past week, three banks picked up the assets and deposits of five failed banks (two in Florida, two in Georgia and one in Michigan) with FDIC assistance.

Banks Whittle Away at CRE Assets While Waiting To Jump Back Into Lending
Coming out of the first quarter, most U.S. banks still view commercial real estate as an anathema to be further banished from their books, or at least kept off their rolls. However, for the first time in a long time, they have started talking about the day when that won't be the case. And that day could come sometime in the second half of this year.

FDIC Completes Its First CMBS Offering
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) closed on the sale of a commercial mortgage-backed securities backed by approximately $394.3 million of performing commercial and multifamily mortgages from 13 failed banks.



Commercial Real Estate Clouded by Delinquencies
Barely a few minutes after reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about banks finally opening the
"spigot for commercial real-estate," the folks over at Trepp issued their monthly report on the delinquency rate for commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS); let's just say it isn't good.
C(RE) Trends

No Place Like Home for Banks
Just a few years ago, banks in industrial states made ill-fated bets on piping hot markets in Florida and Nevada in search of growth. Now, they are finding it in their own gritty backyards.
Banks like
Fifth Third Bancorp, M&T Bank Corp. and Huntington Bancshares Inc. are among a number of banks this quarter to show marked improvement in commercial lending as manufacturing companies in industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania show signs of growth. Once-sluggish heavy industry is leading the slow rebuilding of troubled loan books.

Commercial Real Estate Update: A Tale of Two Markets
With property values rebounding, greater availability of debt financing and a slew of significant recently completed merger-and-acquisition and individual property transactions, commercial real estate investors might be tempted to believe that a robust market recovery is underway. However, a closer look reveals a highly bifurcated market with enough potential future roadblocks to cause investors concern. Much like the broader economy, the ongoing recovery of the commercial real estate market is expected by many to be uneven, inconsistent across asset types and geographies, and occur at a halting rather than a steady pace through the remainder of 2011.

One-third of homes sold for a loss in March
One-third of homes sold in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties were sold for a loss in March, according to online real-estate website
Zillow, The Seattle Times reported.CRE BLOGS

There’s Stinky Gas Inside Of This Mini-Housing Bubble, You Don’t Want To Be Around When It Pops!
Yesterday, I revisited the
US employment vs inflation situation, which itself was an extension of my warnings on Employment and Real Estate Recovery. In the second post, I included the story from a BoomBustBlogger who was an investor of a large multi-family properties.

Bubble, Bubble, Real Estate Toil and Trouble: Macro Climate for Real Estate Still Sucks, Despite New Bubbles
A reader wrote me complaining about the nonsensical bubble blowing in multi-family properties before the last bubble was even finished bursting. I feel his pain. Let’s run through a quick pictorial of how I see the macro climate for real estate as of right now…Everybody is getting squeezed, businesses, consumers, homeowners… Everybody!

Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation ~ Lower Real Estate Values!
as I see it and China is primed for a hard landing – at best. The US, EU, and UK face stagflation. After the AP excerpt below is a clip from my recent keynote presentation at the ING Real Estate Valuation seminar in Amsterdam on this very timely topic.

Zillow on Negative Equity: 28.4% of all single-family homes with mortgages are "underwater"
Note: The most recent
Negative Equity report from CoreLogic showed 11.1 million, or 23.1 percent, of all residential properties with a mortgage were in negative equity at the end of the fourth quarter of 2010. With falling house prices, CoreLogic will probably show more homeowners have negative equity in Q1.