As CPN reported last week, the results of a new residential occupancy and closings study for Downtown Miami defy the perception that Miami’s urban core is a ghost town awash with empty condos. Conducted by independent research firm Goodkin Consulting/Focus Real Estate Advisors in partnership with the Miami Downtown Development Authority, the report surveyed 80 Downtown Miami buildings erected during the height of the boom and found that (1) a healthy majority of these units – 62% — are occupied by mainly full-time owners or renters, (2) occupancy and closing rates are trending upward, and (3) equilibrium is probable within…

Hedge funds, private equity funds and top-tier investment banks that inhabit or inhabited Midtown offices along the premier Avenues were the first companies in New York City to experience the tumult of the current recession. Of course, the declines in their respective businesses that began in the second quarter of 2008 were preceded by the burgeoning collapse of the residential housing market that began a year earlier in the rest of the country. When New York City’s financial sector started to contract in 2008, demand for office space in the Midtown market shriveled. As a result, the availability rate escalated…

The latest national forecasts by PKF Hospitality Research call for unit-level RevPAR declines in excess of 17 percent and a fall-off in profits of more than 30 percent.  In this depressed environment, cost control becomes even more crucial.  While savvy managers tend to keep a close check on their operating expenditures, one expense item that is not typically on management’s radar screen is property taxes. For the most part, property owners have no control over the movement of the millage/tax rates set by the taxing jurisdiction. However, there are ways for hotel owners, lenders, and asset managers to take a…

  Miami’s commercial real estate sector is intently focused on a recent court ruling that rejected the planned development of a Lowes hardware store outside Miami-Dade County’s Urban Development Boundary (UDB), our line of demarcation for westward sprawl. Essentially, commercial and residential developers are pushing to expand the boundaries while environmentalists and advocates of sustainable growth favor holding the line in place. Another planned development that would require moving the UDB – this one a large-scale residential community – is still awaiting a decision from the court. Unlike many U.S. cities, Miami evolved after the arrival of the car, a…

  As companies retrench across the commercial real estate industry and layoffs compound by the month, it is no surprise that some professionals are giving serious thought whether they should change careers and abandon the industry altogether. The commercial real estate sector undoubtedly faces a difficult road ahead, but we can be comforted in the fact that the industry as a whole will never become obsolete. As real “tangible” property, brick-and-mortar assets are not going to go away as a major investment class, despite lower valuations. While land and building ownership may deleverage and change hands, with mortgage notes getting…