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Slowly advancing first-quarter sales may not make this the right time to pop the champagne corks-though it does represent a plateau compared with the previous quarter and suggests that the bottom may be in sight.  This update comes from Real Capital Analytics (RCA), which warns that “there is no recovery in sight”. In its June […]

Chicago’s iconic post office that straddles the Eisenhower Expressway has been vacant since a new facility replaced it in 1995, and the U.S. Postal Service has decided it’s time to sell the deteriorating structure at 433 West Van Buren Street. On August 27, the Postal Service will auction the 77-year-old, 3,000,000 SF, 14-story building.  The […]

Toxic commercial real estate loans could create losses up to $100 billion for small and mid-size banks by the end of 2010 if the economy worsens.  According to a Wall Street Journal report – which applied the same criteria used by the federal government in its stress tests of 19 big banks — these institutions […]

Florida’s commercial real estate development community won big time in the Florida Legislature’s 2009 session with passage of the Community Renewal Act.  The legislation limits local governments’ ability to collect impact fees from developers, a step that is certain to encourage new commercial development in the Sunshine State. NAIOP Florida strongly supported the bill, which […]

Bank of America has pulled the plug on Chicago’s high-profile Waterview Tower with its filing of a foreclosure lawsuit against the 90-story condominium and hotel tower overlooking the Chicago River.  The bank has sued to collect $20 million from the developer, an affiliate of Chicago-based Teng & Associates, which stopped construction last year. The building’s […]

It’s no surprise that investors are still wary of investing in derivatives, given the financial devastation that these vehicles’ collapse caused last year.  Proof of the fact is that the IPO of a financial instrument designed to be on American home prices failed because its auction did not generate adequate investor interest. According to its […]

Las Vegas may be in the middle of a desert, but right now it’s underwater.  Fully two-thirds of the once fast-growing city’s housing stock is underwater,  meaning that the owners owe more on their mortgages than the home is worth. According to www.zillow.com, borrowers who are underwater totaled 20.4 million at the end of the […]

At a time when the CMBS market has contracted by 60 percent, a story that hasn’t gotten much attention is that fact that one slice of the securitized real estate market is doing phenomenally well. Ginnie Mae (the Government National Mortgage Association) has provided $124.18 billion of liquidity to the secondary mortgage-backed securities market during […]

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have been closely watching the credit crisis evolve, according to a Deloitte LLP report.  The good news is that they haven’t entirely lost their taste for American commercial real estate. Consider that two of 2008’s highest profile transactions were the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority’s $800 million acquisition of the iconic Chrysler […]

Encouraging data on home and auto sales, homebuilding and consumer spending is seen by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as “tentative signs” that the recession may be moderating.  Still, he cautions that lasting recovery depends on the government’s success in stabilizing the reeling financial markets and unfreezing credit. In remarks to faculty and students at […]