At midyear, 10,781 lodging projects and 1.8 million guest rooms were being developed worldwide. That is a record high and a 28 percent year-over-year jump for each metric, according to Lodging Econometrics’ inaugural “Global Construction Pipeline Report.” Forty-one percent, or 4,468 projects, are under construction, and 3,819 are scheduled to start in the next year, while 2,494 are in the early planning stages. Rooms under construction, 836,567, account for 46 percent of the pipeline, trailed by 561,538 rooms scheduled to start in the next 12 months and 421,381 that are in early planning stages.The global financial downturn, however, is clearly…

Conditions in the U.S. office market have turned very dour very quickly. We are thus far only getting a taste of what we know is coming. Vacancy rates are generally on the rise, but the latter half of the third quarter was far worse than the first half, meaning that much of the third-quarter data that has been released recently does not fully reflect the closing weeks of the quarter. We see the layoff announcements. We’ve watched major credit tenants essentially disappear from the map. Heck, we personally know the people who are no longer occupying those offices.We also know…

The financial services meltdown has and will continue to yield job losses in New York City, the financial capital of the United States. But in a recent CB Richard Ellis Investors Investment Research Quarterly report, Sabina Kalyan and Nadja Savic pose an interesting question: Will New York City’s office market fare worse than that of the world’s other financial capital, London?The report notes that the performance of the U.S. and U.K. economies has correlated closely during the past 40 years. Employment cycles in the cities’ financial and business services sector are also similar. Through the second quarter of this year,…

The U.S. office vacancy rate hit 14.1 percent in the third quarter, an upsurge of 50 basis points from the previous quarter, according to November Americas MarketView, a report by CB Richard Ellis Inc. director of research operations for the Americas Raymond Wong. That figure translates into almost 4 million square feet of negative absorption. Detroit, Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix each struggled, registering vacancy rates that surpassed 19 percent. On the other end of the spectrum, Manhattan, Honolulu and Miami featured the lowest vacancy rates, each less than 10 percent.“It is expected that most real estate occupancy decisions that can…

Before catching a break in 2010, the industrial sector will face a long, hard slog, according to a study released last week from RREEF America L.L.C., Deutsche Bank AG’s alternative investment management affiliate.By the end of 2009, industrial investors, owners and brokers may feel like the market has nowhere to go but up. The majority of industrial markets will stay in contraction or post-peak mode next year, the report indicated. Exceptions include Boston, San Diego and Portland, Ore., which are poised to get an early start on other major industrial markets and start recovery in 2009.Negative absorption will reach 24…

The U.S. warehouse market continued to struggle during the third quarter. The vacancy rate spiraled up 27 basis points to 8.7 percent, according to commentary by Colliers International executive vice president of market and economic research Russ Moore.Considerable declines in manufacturing output and reduced retail inventories have hurt the market’s leasing activity. Though exports have painted a silver lining, “this is sure to change with the increasing possibility of global recession and the expected decline in demand in products destined for ex-U.S. markets,” he noted.Meanwhile, the amount of new product that came online during the third quarter did so at…

As a huge number of condominiums sit empty in Miami, Rilea Group president & CEO Alan Ojeda has launched a venture to make the best of a bad situation: a short-term rental program at its One Broadway Brickell luxury high-rise apartment property in the city’s Brickell Financial District.The offering, launched last month, targets, among others, renters who may have jumped at bargain rental rates for condos that are now backfiring. Some condos go into foreclosure, requiring leasers to leave, for example, and other complexes, facing budget shortfalls, may employ only a skeleton staff and thus lack in service.Some apartments in…

The ailing economy hasn’t damaged the apartment sector as badly as it has other commercial real estate sectors, thanks largely to debt capital available through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But the multi-family industry is starting to feel the impact of the global fiscal turndown, according to the National Multi Housing Council’s October 2008 quarterly survey on apartment conditions.On a scale from zero—if all respondents answered in the negative—to 100—indicating that all respondents answered positively—the Market Tightness Index, which measures changes in occupancy rates and/or rents, fell from 40 in July to 24 in October. That forms the index’s worst…

U.S. Marine Corps Commandant General James Conway commemorated the 90th anniversary of Veterans Day this morning by ringing the Opening Bell at the New York Stock Exchange. The markets, however, have not shown much enthusiasm; the Dow Jones index fell in the wake of lower markets in Asia and Europe overnight, losing more than 176 points, or nearly 2 percent. The S&P 500 was down 2.2 percent, and the Nasdaq was down 2.22 percent.The three-month Libor rate dropped yesterday to 2.18 percent, which is the lowest the rate has been in more than four years. The rate was as high…

Place/BV Student Housing Fund L.L.C. has invested a total of $47 million in two new student housing projects, one in Indiana and the other in North Carolina. A joint venture of Place Properties L.P. and Blue Vista Management L.L.C., the $280 million fund focuses on acquiring and developing student housing properties nationwide. St. Joe Place, half a mile from the Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne campus, will be a garden-style community housing 432 students in 144 furnished two- and four-bedroom apartments. All apartments will have full kitchens, and washers and dryers, and each bedroom will have its own private bathroom….