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By Craig Meyer and Kris Bjorson ‘Tis the season to order last-minute, gift-wrapped goods for next-day home delivery. But our growing demand for near-instant gratification via e-commerce means cookie-cutter industrial facilities of yesteryear are no longer going to cut it, according to a recent Jones Lang LaSalle report. Today’s retail logistics strategy is evolving fast, and changing the industry’s real estate needs from a simple matter of storage space for bulky pallet-to-store delivery to more specialized warehousing options that drive faster dock-to-doorstep times to support retailers’ omni-channel strategies. The business case for commercial real estate executives and brokers to accommodate…

Michael Fried, founder & CEO of Phoenix Realty Group L.L.C., offers insights into what to expect from real estate private equity funds in 2014. Look for quarterly video commentaries from Fried and president Keith Rosenthal.

Warehouses of all sizes—particularly in the 500,000 square feet and larger range—are a hot commodity, and only getting hotter, according to JLL’s Big Box Outlook report. Featuring a new Big Box Velocity Index, the report finds that big box real estate market demand is strongest in traditional distribution corridors, especially in the Northeast, though investment and development opportunities can be found in many secondary markets too. Below are a few trends driving the newly recovered industrial sector: 1. Speculative development is on the rise: With tenants now competing for what has become a limited pool of industrial and distribution space,…

James Breitenstein, Landsmith The much-anticipated SEC rules enabling crowdfunding for entities raising capital are beginning to flow, but it’s impractical as proposed and overly complex. Pure real estate still makes sense, because it can be done without these rules, and is easier for small investors. The securities commission has just come out with their initial rules (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-23/sec-to-vote-on-crowdfunding-plan-as-white-advances-jobs-act-1-.html) , and it’s not as crowd-friendly as first advertised. Currently, equity offerings are restricted to so-called sophisticated, accredited investors with at least $200,000 in annual income ($300,000 for a married couple) or $1 million net worth, but the new ‘crowdfunding’ regs carry onerous…

Starpoint CEO Paul Daneshrad blogs about multi-family performance and the debt ceiling.

Jones Lang LaSalle’s fifth-annual Seaport Outlook ranked the most prominent ports in the U.S., this year identifying the availability of industrial real estate surrounding the ports as one of three top features shared by successful ports.  The other two top factors include proximity to population density and improved infrastructure. As the top ports begin serving larger “post-Panamax” ships carrying double the number of containers, sites near to the ports are in great demand, with port-driven markets outperforming other top industrial real estate markets nationwide. According to the report, there are only 11 available distribution center spaces larger than 500,000 square…

Growth in the domestic energy industry is expected to create more than 3.5 million American jobs by 2035, including 700,000 in the next two years alone, according to industry reports from I.H.S. Global Insight. The same industry growth creating jobs is also driving heated competition for prime real estate – predominantly in a handful of cities where the oil and gas industry is booming. New research from Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) indicates that the majority of commercial real estate opportunities resulting from this job growth will be concentrated in the following North American cities: Calgary, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Philadelphia and…

Fall means cooler weather, the changing of the leaves and the announcement of new products from the biggest names in tech. As a leader in the real estate technology space, we’ve compiled a list of some of the new tech you can expect to see in the coming weeks. Wearable Tech There has been a lot of talk about wearable technology, and this week at Europe’s IFA tech conference, Samsung introduced us to the Galaxy Gear smartwatch. The smartwatch is capable of making and receiving phone calls using voice control, sending and receiving SMS texts and snapping “visual memos” with…

Since 2011, Tennessee has been implementing its T3 program, which is short for “Transforming Tennessee for Tomorrow,” the most advanced real estate strategy of any state known to date. T3 will ultimately move about 14,000 state employees from expensive or outdated office space into more efficient and improved buildings. T3 will also reduce the state’s office portfolio by at least 1 million square feet, saving Tennessee’s taxpayers upwards of $130 million over the next decade. Most recently, the state hired Jones Lang LaSalle to provide comprehensive facility management services for its state-owned and leased office facilities throughout Tennessee. Outsourcing this…