Following its initial $100 million commitment last May, Dutch pension fund PGGM has made a commitment to invest an additional $100 million in Behringer Harvard’s growing portfolio of Class A apartment communities. PGGM has an option to expand its commitment to a total of $300 million.PGGM is a pension fund for Dutch healthcare workers, Mark Alfieri, BH senior vp/real estate, told CPN today, and with more than $100 billion in assets, it’s the second-largest pension fund in The Netherlands, the 8th-largest in Europe and the 17th-largest in the world. In a prepared statement, Robert Behringer, founder & CEO of Dallas-based…

With construction started on Ritz-Carlton’s second resort in Arizona, Phoenix-based Warnick & Company arranged for $160 million in equity financing for the new 250-room golf and spa resort Ritz-Carlton now under construction at Dove Mountain in northwest Tucson. The resort is scheduled to open in late 2009 in the nation’s 32nd largest city. The project was announced Oct. 18. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. joins Tuscon-based Cottonwood Properties and Greenbrier Southwest Corporation to open The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain, which will also include 300 single-family residences in the town of Marana.Encompassing 850 acres within the Dove Mountain master-planned community, The Ritz-Carlton…

Like much of the country, Washington, D.C.’s over-supplied condominium market is under a great deal of strain. Particularly, the number of investors saddled with fractured condo deals has ramped up. CPN associate editor Amanda Marsh spoke with Matthew Texler (pictured), vice president of Bethesda, Md.-based Meridian Capital Group, on why this has been happening and who has been hardest hit.CPN: The D.C. market has seen an increase in fractured condos, with owners struggling to find financing. When did this begin to happen, and what is fueling the trend? Texler: The current D.C. condo market is stagnant. It has followed the…

The 729,000-square-foot office tower at 31 West 52nd Street in New York City has officially come under new ownership with the closing of a $595 million transaction between Paramount Group Inc. and a partnership spearheaded by Deutsche Bank. Paramount Group Inc. came into possession of the Class A property, home to Deutsche Bank AG’s U.S. headquarters until 2003, through the acquisition of the partnership. The tower at 31 West 52nd has soared 30 stories above Manhattan since it opened its in 1987. Real estate firm Hines and CBS originally developed the building, which was designed by the architectural firm of…

Freddie Mac has purchased a $198 million pool of cross-collateralized, cross-defaulted mortgages from Capmark Finance Inc., in Horsham, Pa., according to a statement by Capri Capital Partners.The mortgages are in connection with the purchase by Capri Capital Partners, in Chicago, of eight apartment properties, all built between 2000 and 2004. The total number of units involved in the deal is 2,224. The assets are located in Florida, Texas, Colorado, Nevada and California. The transaction originally closed, with permanent financing in place, on July 31, Dori Nolan, principal of Capri Capital Partners, told CPN. The seller was Whiteco Residential, Merrillville, Ind.

New York City-based Care Investment Trust Inc. has paid $72.4 million for an 85 percent equity interest in limited liability entities owning nine medical office buildings valued at $263 million. The seller was Cambridge Holdings Incorporated, a Dallas-based developer, owner, and manager of healthcare facilities.Care acquired the equity interests through a downREIT operating partnership subsidiary. The purchase price consisted of 700,000 operating partnership units worth $10.5 million and $61.9 million in cash. The term downREIT describes a joint venture between a REIT and a property owner, whose assets are held separately from other assets in the REIT. As a result,…

Australian retail real estate giant Centro Properties Group, buffeted in recent weeks by the international credit crunch, has let it be known that it is “seeking expressions of interest for key alternatives available to it,” as the company obliquely put it in a release today. In other words, potential buyers of assets, or of Centro itself, have been invited to look around and kick the tires. According to the Financial Times, interested buyers might include the Westfield Group, a rival Australian retail owner; Stockland, another Australian landlord that owns a diverse commercial property portfolio; Morgan Stanley; or the Canadian Brookfield…

This year should be sluggish for commercial real estate, but fundamentals will remain strong and U.S. economic growth will be enough to keep leasing markets stable, noted forecasts released today by Grubb & Ellis Co. and Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.With many economists predicting a 50/50 chance of an economic recession, “our outlook is realistic and hopeful that the economy can avoid a recession,” Bob Bach (pictured), Grubb & Ellis’s senior vice president & chief economist, told CPN. “But this is with the caveat that it is possible.” Overall, the Grubb & Ellis Co.’s 2008 Global Real Estate Forecast notes that…