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Calendar
of Events
Monday, October 14,
2013
Wednesday, November
06, 2013
Wednesday, November
06, 2013
Local
Developers
Bet Big on Seattle
Seattle's
growing technology sector is giving area developers grand visions.
Developer
Wright Runstad & Co., a locally owned office builder, is planning to start
demolition on Monday to clear the way for the first phase of a massive 36-acre
office and apartment development in Bellevue, Wash.
Developers
and Investors See Opportunities From Houston to Seattle Amid Market Rebound
SHANGHAI—The
upswing in the U.S. property market is attracting Chinese developers and
investment firms, and they are dipping their toes into new cities.
Stanford
Hotels Corp. is paying an eye-popping price of $16.75 million for a downtown
Seattle development site, according to a court ruling.
If
you think there are a lot of apartments under construction in the region, just
wait
The
dollar volume of construction contracts in the Puget Sound region is up
significantly, a new report states.
Owners
of eight office buildings in the Tacoma area would lose a major tenant if
Pierce County moves ahead with a plan to develop an office campus.
Bill
Gates’ private investment arm, Cascade Investment, has scooped up a major
luxury hotel in downtown Houston.
The
old Chutney’s restaurant on 15th Avenue East on Seattle's Capitol Hill looks
boxed up and ready for storage. And that’s not by accident.
A
Seattle City Council committee on Thursday backed a proposal to build a
130-foot-tall office and apartment building in the city's Pioneer Square
district — 30 feet taller than what would normally be allowed.
Amazon.com
Inc.'s new Seattle campus in South Lake Union is "cursed by
dullness," according to one architecture critic.
Doug
Duncan, chief economist for federal mortgage giant Fannie Mae, visited Seattle
to speak to members of the Seattle Mortgage Brokers Association on Tuesday. I
had an opportunity to talk to Duncan before his speech. Here are his answers to
my questions.
IRVINE,
CA-Three Western markets made the list of the top 25 investor-saturated
single-family rental markets in the country, according to RealtyTrac. Canyon
County, ID; Pierce County, WA;….
PORTLAND,
OR-Pebblebrook Hotel Trust has acquired the Hotel Modera for $47.5 million. The
174-room, urban, boutique, upper upscale, full service hotel is located in
downtown Portland.
GLL
Real Estate Partners, Inc. has acquired 202 Westlake Ave. N in Seattle, WA from
a joint venture of First Western Development Services, Spear Street Capital GP
LLC, and Stephen C Grey & Associates for a reported $97.4 million, or about
$745 per square foot.
BELLVUE,
WA—Major Northwest real estate executive Kemper Freeman has green-lighted a
$1.2-billion mixed-use expansion to the popular Bellevue Collection shopping
destination.
Even as home prices
recover, private-equity firms continue bulking up on capital to buy homes,
renovate them and rent them out. The latest to do so is Thomas J. Barrack Jr.'s
Colony Capital LLC, a Los Angeles-based investment firm.
CHICAGO— Sam Zell
gained the nickname "the grave dancer" in the early 1990s for buying
beaten-down real-estate properties and riding them to huge recoveries.
In the first half of
2008, as storm clouds gathered over the world economy, the commercial
mortgage-backed securities market was badly shaken by the inability of
Blackstone Group LP BX +0.23%to pull off a record CMBS issue tied to its 2007
buyout of Hilton Hotels Corp.
The owners of the
Standard Hotel in Manhattan's hopping Meatpacking district have resisted
unsolicited offers for the trendy hotel. But now they have decided to put it up
for sale.
The
Peabody Orlando hotel in Florida has entertained families for decades with its
twice-daily parade of ducks through the lobby, a tradition that dates back more
than 70 years at the original Peabody hotel in Memphis, Tenn.
Gearing
up for its hotly anticipated initial public offering, Hilton Worldwide has
taken a key step: reducing its borrowing costs with the first leg of a $13.5
billion refinancing.
The design for what
would be Milwaukee's tallest new office building in more than 20 years, set to
be unveiled this week, combines two motifs that often compete: a high-rise
exterior typically associated with staid finance and law firms and a large,
open interior popularized by Silicon Valley.
SAN DIEGO-The untold
story in the financing realm is how well the US banking system has recovered
since the financial downturn, according to Michael Marino, EVP and division
manager for Wells Fargo Bank.
DENVER-GlobeSt.com has
exclusively learned that locally-based HREC Investment Advisors has expanded
its mortgage brokerage platform, forming a capital markets group within its
hotel brokerage platform.
SAN
FRANCISCO-According to panelists at RealShare Bay Area there is a slight
concern of reaching down the risk spectrum to get the deals done. “There is a
fine line between getting creative and chasing risk,” said panelist Keith
Harris…..
The New York family
that controls the Empire State Building is about to launch the formal marketing
process to sell the building, in what would be one of the largest real-estate
initial public offerings and the end of a colorful era for the storied
skyscraper.
An investor group is
betting the growing popularity of New York's Brooklyn borough will help it
resurrect Industry City, one of the largest privately owned industrial
properties in New York.
Justin Beck,
president of the family-owned, 31-year-old Beck Property, a major Pensacola
full-service commercial real estate company, talked to Florida Trend about the
commercial market’s recent positive signs.
In a
measure of the breakneck pace of development in Canada's energy capital,
Calgary's newly minted tallest building is already set to be outdone.
OSLO—Less
than a week before national elections, Norway's oil minister is proposing a significant
shift for the nation's $750 billion oil-wealth fund, suggesting a separate
real-estate fund with increased exposure to U.S. property be carved out amid
expectations of low returns in the global bond market.
KIRUNA,
Sweden–It is a tough slog trying to relocate an entire city—just ask the people
of this Swedish mining town dozens of miles above the Arctic Circle.
Hong
Kong has over the years filled in half its harbor through reclamation and
literally pulled down a mountain in the 1990s to build its airport, so it is no
stranger to large construction projects. But the scope of infrastructure
development the city has in the works is extreme even by its standards, with
the pace of construction taking a toll on labor availability and straining
budgets.
Developers
and Investors See Opportunities From Houston to Seattle Amid Market Rebound
SHANGHAI—The
upswing in the U.S. property market is attracting Chinese developers and
investment firms, and they are dipping their toes into new cities.
For
years, international companies wanting to set up in Myanmar were stifled by Western
sanctions or rebuffed by the country's military government.
Now,
as the country opens up, global corporations are finding a new hurdle:
real-estate prices.
GOTHENBURG, Sweden—In 2006, a
decade and a half after taking over for his father at the helm of one of
Sweden's biggest property firms, Hans Wallenstam bet billions of Swedish kronor
that a clutch of wind farms scattered across the Scandinavian nation eventually
could save the company money and lure high-dollar property seekers eager to
consume "green" energy.
MultiFamily
Doug
Duncan, chief economist for federal mortgage giant Fannie Mae, visited Seattle
to speak to members of the Seattle Mortgage Brokers Association on Tuesday. I
had an opportunity to talk to Duncan before his speech. Here are his answers to
my questions.
If
you think there are a lot of apartments under construction in the region, just
wait
LOS
ANGELES-Multifamily real estate owner, developer and manager Oak Coast
Properties has purchased a string of value-add multifamily acquisitions
throughout Northern and Southern California, totaling $42 million.
CHULA
VISTA, CA-McMillin Communities is launch today what it has dubbed its “most
ambitious project ever.” Millenia is the name it has given to an urban center.
That will feature 3,000 unites of miltifmaily residences and 3.5 million square
feet of mixed-use commercial real estate.
LOS
ANGELES-Industry professionals gathered at the USC Casden Mulitfamily Forecast
conference on September 24 to hear expert opinions about the California
multifamily market.
LOS
ANGELES-Green and affordable housing complex Lotus Garden will unveil Southern
California’s first CarMatrix, a semi-automated car-staking system designed by
Harding Steel.
LOS
ANGELES-Beverly Hills-based real estate investment firm Palm Heights LLC has
acquired the Lanshire House, a West Los Angeles multifamily community, for $8.8
million in an off-market transaction.
NEWPORT
BEACH, CA-Greystone has opened its new West Coast headquarters here, led by
Rick Wolf as senior managing director. The office has added four professionals
to its roster as well.
Charlotte
is about to gain a green apartment company, as Fore Property Company (FORE) a
full-service, national real estate company, has announced the fast-approaching
opening of the 176-unit Belle Haven, a LEED Silver luxury apartment community
in Charlotte.
DISTRESSED
Auction.com
Closes $65M Week
IRVINE, CA-Auction.com closed 20
commercial assets in 11 states during the week ending September 6. The sales
had a combined total value of more than $65 million.
SoCal
Investor Sees Value-Add in Distressed Tower
SAN JOSE, CA-A southern
California investor paid nearly $12 million for Civic Center Tower, GlobeSt.com
has exclusively learned. The 13-story distressed office and retail property is
located at 675-695 N. 1st St. in San Jose.
Nevada
Has Highest Foreclosure Rate
IRVINE, CA-Nevada’s foreclosure
rate ranked highest nationwide in August, taking over the top spot that Florida
had previously held, reports locally based RealtyTrac.
Foreclosure
Starts Hit Low, Bank Repos Up
IRVINE, CA-US residential
foreclosure filings decreased 2% in August from the previous month and are down
34% from August 2012, reports locally based RealtyTrac.
Bad-Loan
Revival Unburdens Banks
Western Alliance Bancorp. got a
pleasant surprise in May when it sold a vacant store in Victorville, Calif. out
of its foreclosed-property portfolio.
Why
the commercial real estate crash never came
FORTUNE -- Hilton Worldwide
recently announced plans to return to the public market, after The Blackstone
Group (BX) took the hotel giant private in 2007.
REIT
Answers Critics of Outside Managers
As Wall Street becomes more
wary of possible conflicts of interest at real-estate companies, Nicholas
Schorsch, one of the industry's most prolific fundraisers in recent years, is
shaking up the management structure at his flagship company, American Realty
Capital Properties Inc
A
REIT That Could Bite Back
Investors are pouring money
into nontraded real-estate investment trusts, despite repeated warnings from
regulators.
The products, which often
sport yields of more than 6%, have proved popular among income-hungry investors
looking to diversify beyond bonds.
NorthWest
Healthcare Properties Real Estate Investment Trust announces exercise of
Over-Allotment Option
TORONTO, Sept. 19, 2013 /CNW/
- NorthWest Healthcare Properties Real Estate Investment Trust (the
"REIT") (TSX:NWH.UN) announces the exercise in full by the
underwriters of the over-allotment option (the "Over-Allotment
Option") relating to its previously announced offering (the
"Offering") of $35,000,000 aggregate principal amount of 5.25%
convertible unsecured subordinated debentures due September 30, 2020 (the
"Debentures").
REITs
Will Ease Up on Investment Pace: EY
NEW YORK CITY-Although REITs
expanded their share of global transaction activity from 14% to 20% year over
year during the first six months of 2013, they’re not likely to maintain that
pace going into 2014.
Commercial
Real Estate Prices on Upswing
Commercial real estate pricing
indices continue to show signs of a broader recovery underway this year.
CoStar’s Commercial
Repeat-Sale Indices (CCRSI) indicate prices are heating up for lower-grade
assets. CoStar’s General Commercial Index, which comprises lower-tier
properties
Real
Estate Firm Seizes On New Opportunity to Expand Access to Investors
Broadstone Real Estate, a
property and asset management firm that sponsors two private REITs and manages
commercial and residential properties in 27 states, wasted no time jumping on
new relaxed federal rules that went into effect this week for raising
investment funds.
LOS ANGELES-Crowdfunding, a
method of raising capital from a large number of small investors in a wide
variety of industries, has made its way to commercial real estate
The U.S. government has won a
court victory in its 5-year-old effort to seize a 36-story midtown Manhattan
office building that it said is secretly owned and controlled by the government
of Iran.
A New York real-estate company
that has been a leader in crowdfunding in South America plans to replicate that
strategy in the U.S.
GOTHENBURG, Sweden—In 2006, a
decade and a half after taking over for his father at the helm of one of
Sweden's biggest property firms, Hans Wallenstam bet billions of Swedish kronor
that a clutch of wind farms scattered across the Scandinavian nation eventually
could save the company money and lure high-dollar property seekers eager to
consume "green" energy.
As demand increases for hotel
rooms in the U.S. amid growth in tourism in some cities, developers are turning
to pre-existing buildings to cut construction time and save money.
RE Blogs Education
It is always interesting to learn from other
people’s mistakes. In the following circumstances both the company and the
client gained valuable insight on what to do differently next time.
