Duke Realty Corp. has leased a nearly 98,000-square-foot office building at Camp Creek Business Center, located three miles west of Hartsfield Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, to the Federal Aviation Administration.  The facility, located at 1500 Centre Parkway, will accommodate approximately 400 Federal Aviation employees in multiple departments.  The company plans to occupy the building in early 2009. The FAA lease brings Camp Creek Business Center’s office space, which totals 375,000 square feet, to 94 percent leased.  This latest deal represents the third significant transaction with government-related entities in the past 12 months.  Earlier this year, Duke completed a 47,000-square-foot…

Over the past year, the U.S. hotel sector has suffered from limited liquidity, resulting in part from the shutdown of the debt securitization markets but also from the general banking crisis. This subsequently lowered the leverage available to fund transactions, making it more difficult for investors to value assets, which consequently disconnected buyers and sellers. Based on Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels’ proprietary database, which tracks hotel transactions $10 million and above, U.S. hotel transaction volume during the first three quarters of 2008 reached $7.5 billion, down 80 percent from the same period in 2007. Portfolio transactions slowed the most, accounting…

Uncertainty in the global financial system has exacerbated the credit crunch, further limiting the availability of credit to private and institutional apartment investors. But despite the roller coaster ride on Wall Street that sent global stock market indices on a downward spiral, the Federal Reserve’s announcement that it would infuse $250 billion into the nation’s largest financial institutions, coupled with its decision to bail out government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could spur a recovery by as early as late 2009. Tighter lending standards will prevail in the foreseeable future, and spreads are expected to remain volatile through the…

With a full-blown panic gripping global debt and equity markets, one might expect a dramatic softening in office leasing market fundamentals, featuring sharply higher vacancy rates and plunging rents. One would be wrong. The fundamentals have been softening all year, but the pace of softening has been moderate. The national office vacancy rate ended the third quarter at 14.3 percent, an increase of 130 basis points since vacancy bottomed at 13 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. By comparison, vacancy rose by 300 basis points in the opening three quarters of the prior softening cycle, in 2001 and 2002….

Room rates negotiated between hotels and corporations are likely to be much more favorable toward corporations in 2009 than they have been in any year since 2003, according to a recently released report on the corporate negotiation climate for next year.More specifically, corporate rate increases will be much lower in 2009 than this year’s increase of approximately 5 percent, according to the report’s author, Bjorn Hanson, clinical associate professor of hospitality and tourism management at New York University’s Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management.The corporate and contract travel segment represents about 20 percent of occupied room…

For U.S.-based industrial players seeking new horizons in lean times, nearby Mexico may present plenty of possibilities. That was the conclusion of a webcast panel produced by CB Richard Ellis Inc. executives last week. Moderated by Raymond Torto, the firm’s global chief economist, the panel also included Guillermo Sepulveda, executive managing director for Mexico; Antonio Trueba, senior vice president of capital markets and investment for Mexico; and Ray Wong, director of research for the Americas.Mexico’s emerging economy admittedly faces formidable challenges, among them credit-card debt that could pose significant problems in the near future and fallout from the global economic…

Occupancy rates for student housing properties have remained strong, but the credit crunch has stemmed the tide of deals.Cap rates on student housing properties have risen from 50 to 100 basis points recently, according to Patton Jones, managing director of the national student housing group for Apartment Realty Advisors. Where cap rates were typically in the 6 percent range, they are now approximately 6.5 percent for top-tier, well-located properties, and in the 7 percent range for an average property at a smaller school.While potential buyers are able to obtain debt by way of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financing, many…

As the Texas state capital, the home of the University of Texas and headquarters for a significant roster of technology companies, notably Dell, Austin sports an office market that blends stability with volatility.A recent report from Commercial Texas, however, paints much more of a “tale of two cities.” Wrote Commercial Texas president Michael Kennedy: “From 2003 to 2006, all of Austin’s markets were on the rise, experiencing increasing absorption and comparable vacancy rates.” In 2007, however, the CBD rose to the top as the place to be for leading companies in Austin, while the other primary submarkets, the Southwest and…

This year, a number of familiar restaurant brands are paying the price for consumer cutbacks in dining out. Bankruptcy filings by operators of familiar chains like Bennigan’s, Bakers Square and Mrs. Fields Cookies are closing hundreds of locations and returning space to the market. Meanwhile, other casual restaurant chains like Pizzeria Uno, Ruby Tuesday’s and Applebee’s are struggling.  Industry experts expect little relief anytime soon: Hudson Riehle, the National Restaurant Association’s chief economist, told Reuters this month that the restaurant business faces its toughest climate in nearly 30 years. One-third of operators expect their sales to drop year-over-year over the…