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Alternatives You Can Bank On
Monday,
November 4, 2013 at 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time
There
are a myriad of reasons why more and more owners, developers, and investors are
exploring the favorable financing options afforded by credit unions and their
affiliate organizations (CUSO's). Unlike banks, their not-for-profit status
translates to lower borrowing costs and more flexible terms.
Environmental
Symposium
Wednesday, November
06, 2013
Wednesday, November
06, 2013
November 11 and 12
We're
hoping to catch you at REALSHARE INDUSTRIAL on November 11 and 12 at the
Viceroy, Miami. First of all, it would be great to have an even more diverse
array of companies represented here, but also, you’ll hear from a stellar
speaker lineup.
Local
Bellevue
Galleria sells for $88 million
This
time the Bellevue Galleria really did sell.
Documents
recorded with King County on Friday show that MPH-1 Bellevue Limited Liability
Co., paid $87.6 million for the 204,000-square-foot retail and office complex
in downtown at 550 106th Ave. N.E.
Health
care to dominate Beacon Hill tower once again
Pacific
Medical Center was built 80 years ago as a hospital for seamen, Merchant
Marines, Coast Guardsmen, veterans, and the poor and indigent. Over the
decades, it served the cause of public health and medical research in Seattle
before becoming better known as the former headquarters of Amazon.com Inc.
Major
redevelopment planned for Rainier Square in downtown Seattle
The
University of Washington plans to select a developer next month to transform a
large portion of Rainier Square, part of the university's prime property
holdings in downtown Seattle.
R.C.
Hedreen Co. submits new drawings of its Seattle mega hotel
The
latest renderings of a proposed convention-center hotel planned for downtown
Seattle show a tapered, 41-story tower rising from Howell Street between Eighth
and Ninth avenues.
Seattle,
Bellevue streets high on list of pricey office addresses
Union
Street and 108th Northeast are among the nation’s most expensive office
addresses. Also, Microsoft rewards a Windows hack with $100,000, and the new
owner of Walt’s automotive shops is sued over a ‘lifetime’ contract.
The
Seattle group that developed the GreenHouse apartment building in Seattle’s
Columbia City neighborhood has sold the property — after saying earlier that it
couldn't let it go.
After
years of study, a Bellevue church is getting close to selling a valuable piece
of downtown property where high-rise office and residential towers could be
built.
Seattle
commercial real estate company Schnitzer West had a $547.5 million payday
Tuesday when it sold two assets — the Bravern Signature Residences in Bellevue
and a collection of 11 office buildings in Bothell — to two different buyers
Seattle-based
Security Properties has prevailed in one of the greater Portland area's most
competitive apartment offerings in recent memory
The
Bravern Signature Residences in Bellevue have sold for $308 million, which is a
record price of $692,134 per unit.
Skanska
USA plans to break ground Wednesday on its 400 Fairview office and retail
project in Seattle now that it has poached tenant Tommy Bahama from Vulcan Inc.
Members
of Congress could learn a thing or two from Myrtle Woldson, a 103-year-old
Spokane resident who owns a choice chunk of downtown Seattle waterfront
property.
Island-lifestyle
retailer Tommy Bahama has leased more than one-third of a 13-story Seattle
tower that broke ground Wednesday, with executives gripping brightly colored
beach shovels filled with sand and sipping coffee from cups with umbrellas
A
property in the Belltown area of downtown Seattle sold Thursday for $11.5
million, according to public records.
Officials
of GIS International Group said Wednesday that they’re starting to plan
development of a hotel-condo building in the Denny Triangle area of downtown
Seattle.
Microsoft,
which once envisioned a major campus in the Issaquah Highlands, sold the
63-acre tract to a local developer for a mixed-use project.
Market
Leader, a residential real estate technology company, is moving to downtown
Bellevue, where it has leased nearly 72,500 square feet of space at 110 Atrium
Place. It's the largest new lease so far this year in Bellevue, where office
rents are rising and show no sign of slowing down.
A
year ago, a vacant property in Redmond sold for nearly $17 million. On Friday,
the same property traded hands for just over $60.6 million.
The
marketing flyer for Bellevue Center states that the planned office tower will
be downtown’s “next modern architectural landmark” and will be engineered to
meet the power and cooling demands of tech companies.
A
California development company is updating plans for a high-rise residential
project near the Space Needle — complete with a rare parking system that stows
your car away
Coast
Aluminum and Architectural Inc. is the latest company to lease a large amount
of warehouse space in the Kent Valley
It
might sound odd, but food trucks are playing a role in multi-million dollar
commercial real estate investments.
The
Exchange Building in downtown Seattle traded hands Tuesday for $66 million,
according to public records.
Developers
of a planned 24-story condo tower at 1321 Seneca St. in Seattle said they will
begin construction in mid-2014.
The
Seattle area office market is outperforming the rest of the country, according
to a new study.
The Empire State
Building's owner saw its initial public offering price at the low end of
expectations, marking tepid demand for one of the largest such deals ever by a
U.S. landlord.
When superstorm Sandy
hit parts of New Jersey, it sparked concerns about future investor demand for
commercial real estate in the waterlogged region.
When the financial
sector began healing after its 2008 crash, New York landlords were hopeful that
big banks would return to their traditional roles as the growth engine for the
nation's largest office market.
New York is
experiencing its biggest hotel expansion in a generation, attracting a host of
new brands and developers betting that the good times will continue.
Cerberus Capital
Management LP, which completed raising a $1.4 billion real-estate fund this
week, expects to keep a major focus on distressed European property.
Many U.S. banks are
starting to see new growth from the old business of commercial real-estate
loans.
From office buildings
to shopping centers to warehouses to apartments, lending to developers and
owners of such properties is on the rebound because of rising real-estate
values and improved credit quality.
Related Cos. is
taking its fight over Chicago's most notable pit to bankruptcy court.
The New York
developer this summer bought the soured debt on a stalled construction site on
the edge of Lake Michigan, where North America's tallest building, known as the
Chicago Spire, was supposed to have risen.
Carlyle Group LP, CG
+1.91%a private-equity firm that has interests in everything from an oil
refinery to a vitamin maker, is adding trailer parks to its portfolio.
A slumping mortgage
market pressured regional banks during the third quarter, but a pickup in
commercial lending helped limit the damage.
Blackstone Group BX
+0.85% LP rode a jump in profits from real-estate deals to higher third-quarter
earnings, despite a fall in the performance of its corporate-buyout funds.
Michael
Jordan's Home Heads to Auction
Michael Jordan is auctioning off
his 56,000-square-foot compound in a Chicago suburb. He first put the home on
the market in February 2012 for $29 million, but earlier this year lowered the
price to $21 million.
Blackstone
Approaches Pivotal IPO
As Blackstone Group BX -2.28% LP
prepares an initial public offering for shopping-center landlord Brixmor
Property Group Inc., investors and analysts are watching the deal to see what
tone it sets for other Blackstone-led IPOs waiting in the wings.
TRI
Pointe Nears $2.7 Billion Deal
TRI Pointe Homes Inc., the West
Coast home builder controlled by Barry Sternlicht's Starwood Capital, is in the
late stages of negotiating to buy Weyerhaeuser Co.'s home-building unit for
roughly $2.7 billion, according to a person familiar with the talks.
State
Farm Is There
When building a campus for 8,000
employees, you need to provide more than cubicles and conference rooms.
Making
Art Out of Dough
A flour mill that played a
significant role in the growth of Minneapolis during the industrial revolution
is set to be converted into an artist community under a development plan that
recently obtained financing
LONDON—More
property firms will list on European stock markets in 2013 than in any year
since the financial crisis, bucking a trend that has seen the Continent fall
behind the U.S. and Asia as a home for real-estate stocks.
Mexico's
new-home industry, still suffering from the global economic downturn and from
shifting consumer preferences, is bracing for yet another blow from a package
of steep tax increases proposed by President Enrique Peña Nieto.
As
Mexico's upper middle class has grown, Avenida Presidente Masaryk, the main
drag in the capital city's ritzy Polanco district, has transformed from a
sleepy street of mom-and-pop shops to Mexico's version of Rodeo Drive, packed
with boutiques including Burberry, Cartier and Bulgari.
Investors
in retail property are piling back into China's biggest cities as slower
economic growth makes second- and third-tier centers—once considered a good way
to bet on brands' eagerness to expand into new markets—less appealing.
Thousands
of apartments still sit vacant in Dubai, the wreckage from a massive property
bubble that burst in this tiny Persian Gulf emirate only five years ago.
The
unlikely response: Developers are moving ahead with billions of dollars in new
projects.
Foreign
investors are showing a growing appetite for Italian commercial real estate, a
sign that the gradual improvement of the European economy is being felt in some
of the Continent's weaker property markets.
SHANGHAI—Average
new-home prices in 70 Chinese cities rose to another fresh high in September,
amid signs of panic buying driven by fears that prices will rise further.
Chinese
investors have been snapping up real estate in the world's most important
cities this year. While it's easy to dismiss rich foreign buyers as the dumb
money in any market, these investors are taking a sensible approach.
LONDON—London's
hot property market has commercial-real-estate investors scouring the rest of
Britain.
SHANGHAI—Shanghai-based
developer Greenland Holdings Group plans to invest 1 billion Australian dollars
(US$957 million) in real estate in Sydney and Melbourne in the next two years,
as part of an aggressive global expansion that has already included
billion-dollar projects in the U.S. this year.
Nonbank
lenders are providing more financing for commercial-real-estate lending in the
Netherlands as investors grow more confident in the European recovery and
properties that are outside the most favored markets of London, Paris and
Germany.
MultiFamily
Facebook
Inc.'s FB +1.52%sprawling campus in Menlo Park, Calif., is so full of cushy
perks that some employees may never want to go home. Soon, they'll have that
option.
State-owned
property developer Greenland Holdings Group of China agreed to buy a majority
stake in a 15-tower apartment project in Brooklyn, N.Y., that would rank as the
largest commercial-real-estate development in the U.S. ever to get major
backing directly from a Chinese company.
The
Seattle group that developed the GreenHouse apartment building in Seattle’s
Columbia City neighborhood has sold the property — after saying earlier that it
couldn't let it go.
The
Bravern Signature Residences in Bellevue have sold for $308 million, which is a
record price of $692,134 per unit.
A
South Florida developer is converting a closed Miami Beach hospital into a
condominium, the latest example of an obsolete hospital property being brought
back to health as a residential project.
MIAMI—Carmel
Apartments, a 51-unit multifamily property in North Miami Beach, is the latest
in a rash of apartment communities to trade hands in South Florida. The asset
sold for $3.15 million, or $61,765 per unit.
Many
condominium developers who rode out the real-estate downturn by renting out
their units are reverting to for-sale housing, in another sign of the market's
continued recovery over the past year.
When
a luxury condominium development overlooking San Francisco's waterfront was
approved by county officials last year, it appeared to have cleared the last
hurdle before construction could start.
Developers
of a planned 24-story condo tower at 1321 Seneca St. in Seattle said they will
begin construction in mid-2014.
DISTRESSED
Fannie
Employees Reinstated After Probe Ends
Four employees at Fannie Mae FNMA
-3.90%who were placed on administrative leave two years ago amid a federal
investigation have returned to work after officials didn't allege wrongdoing on
their part.
Troubled
CMBS Debt to Get Permanent Homes
Firms overseeing troubled
commercial real estate mortgages may suddenly be in a hurry to sell the debt
after years of trying to find a better solution for investors.
Real-estate
market haunted by ‘vampire’ foreclosures
Vampire foreclosures are homes
that have gone through the court proceedings and are bank-owned but are still
occupied by their previous owners. Nationwide, 47 percent of bank-owned homes
are still occupied by their previous owners.
China
Moves to U.S. Projects
An unlikely participant
increasingly is showing up in the bidding for distressed office buildings,
hotels and other overleveraged commercial properties left over from the boom
years: Chinese investors.
Respect
Still Eludes Mexican REITs
Mexico's real-estate
investment trust industry reached a symbolic milestone last year when the
country's largest REIT, Fibra Uno, paid about $100 million to buy a 49% stake
in the Torre Mayor complex that includes the tallest building in Mexico City.
Investors
Turn From Once-Hot REITs
Real-estate investment trusts
posted negative returns in the third quarter and continued to trail the broader
stock market, raising the prospect that the sector is losing its luster in the
eyes of investors.
Real-Estate
Pioneer Loses Its Touch
Vornado Realty Trust VNO
+1.82% grew from a small, New Jersey strip-center owner to a giant in real
estate partly through its strategy of buying big stakes in retailers to get a
piece of their valuable holdings of malls, stores and parking lots.
American
Realty to Buy Cole Real Estate
This past spring, executives
of Cole Real Estate Investments Inc. COLE -0.04% rejected an unsolicited
takeover bid from a company led by Nicholas Schorsch, accusing Mr. Schorsch's
company of having "structural flaws" and using "too much
leverage."
Plum
Creek Timber to buy MeadWestvaco land for $1 billion
Plum Creek Timber, a
Seattle-based real-estate-investment trust with investments in forest products,
agreed to acquire MeadWestvaco’s U.S. timberlands for $1.09 billion.
Nick Sinatra, the
owner of a small real-estate investment firm, believes he has found the next
big opportunity in the housing market: renovating and flipping million-dollar
properties.
Consumer confidence
registered its sharpest one-week drop since the period immediately following
the collapse of Lehman Brothers, according to recent Gallup polling
LOS ANGELES-Over the
past several months one sentiment has remained constant—change is imminent.
With the 10 year Treasury climbing over 100 basis points since May, many
investors have had to adjust their investment strategy yet again.
GROSSE POINTE,
Mich.—Just outside bankrupt Detroit, where thousands of homes are being sold
this week at auction for as little as $500, real estate is hot again.
As the holiday season
approaches, temporary stores selling Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas merchandise
are sprouting up in malls across the country. But whether pop-up stores are a
positive or negative trend for retail landlords is an open question.
The slowdown in sales
of newly built homes since last summer has sapped momentum from the land
market, as home builders are starting to balk at paying increasingly lofty
prices for lots
It
might sound odd, but food trucks are playing a role in multi-million dollar
commercial real estate investments.
RE Blogs Education
Four years ago, BOMA
International was one of the founding members of the Better Buildings Alliance
(originally called the Commercial Building Energy Alliance – CREEA). BOMA, the
Department of Energy (DOE), and a small number of the leading national
commercial real estate companies who were leading the charge on sustainability
got together to see if collectively we could identify the “game changers” that
would transform the energy marketplace – and the commercial real estate
industry.
As a general rule, you cannot cut
down trees or vegetation on another person’s property without their express
permission. If you do so, Washington has two separate statutes that can impose
significant damages in a civil action: Trespass and the so-called “Timber
Trespass” statute.
