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Real Estate Investment and Development Trends in Latin America By Shannon Robertson Multinational business expansion, commodity demand and foreign direct investment are driving economic growth in Latin America. As a result, real estate investment opportunities are growing throughout many of the largest markets and cities in Latin American countries, and sustainability initiatives are playing a role in advancing economic stability. Recent industry research released by Jones Lang LaSalle analysing Latin American real estate suggests a trend in these markets: that the strongest-performing economies, which are best positioned to grow and accommodate urbanization, are those that have made investments in sustainable…

Alan Dibartolomeo, chief development officer for AMF Development, blogs about the flexibility required to attract multi-family residents today.

Would cleaning a busy office property earlier in the day really make a measurable difference in energy consumption? And even if it did, how would tenants react to such an initiative? Would it inconvenience them? In spite of these concerns, we decided to give daytime cleaning a try at 10 and 120 South Riverside Plaza – a 1.4 million-square-foot, multi-building office complex built in the late 1960s in Chicago. Our innovative project represented the first multi-tenant office property in Chicago to implement a daytime cleaning program. Although the costs of launching and maintaining the program were minimal, the results were impressive. As the program name implies, we started cleaning the buildings…

Starpoint CEO Paul Daneshrad blogs on Commercial Property Executive’s From the Inside about prospects for multi-family real estate in 2013.

The NYC commercial sales volume and number of transactions reached a new high in 2012. In comparison to last year, 2012 saw an overall increase in sales volume of 4 percent. This was mostly due to the surge registered in the last quarter of the year, when the numbers show that the commercial sales volume shot up by 73 percent from the previous quarter. The $11.1 billion recorded in Q4 2012 was the highest quarterly value registered in the last five years. This five-year high is also supported by the number of commercial transactions. As the chart shows, these values…

By Mark Woodworth and Jamie Lane The Commerce Department recently released a negative estimate of real GDP change for the fourth quarter. Given the correlation between changes in GDP and the demand for hotel rooms, is this an ominous sign for the U.S. lodging industry? We do not think so, and here’s why: First and foremost, the Commerce Department statistic represents the quarter-to-quarter change in GDP. Because of the seasonal nature of lodging demand, the GDP measure that is typically more comparable to hotels is the year-over-year change in GDP, which was up 1.5 percent. According to Smith Travel Research…

By Brian K. Rapela, MAI Office property sales in the San Francisco market are expected to reach $5.3 billion this year and show no sign of retreating. Investors are viewing the area as a safe haven of sorts, as such gateway cities are looked upon as trustworthy. That’s a good indication that San Francisco has come back very strongly from the recession. And indeed, office rents have increased faster than in any other major U.S. metro market, as a result of several tech company relocations to the city. Institutional investors remain very bullish about the San Francisco real estate market…

Having attended and spoken at Greenbuild for several years now, I saw a stronger emphasis at Moscone Center in San Francisco this year on integrating buildings with technology and transportation to consider energy and sustainability in a broader urban context. Part of the reason was the combination this year of Greenbuild with VERGE, the conference series that focuses specifically on the convergence of vehicles, technology, energy and buildings in creating more sustainable solutions mainly in cities. With a few hundred VERGE participants from across many industry sectors gathered at a hotel next to Moscone Center, it was natural that many…

We recently looked at the 10 U.S. cities with the most advanced smart grid programs and  infrastructure, and compared them to national averages key economic indicators. The result?  “Connected” cities have an annual GDP growth rate that is 0.7 percent higher, an unemployment rate that is a full percentage point lower, and office occupancy rates 2.5 percent higher than the norm. Cities that embrace smart grid technology are winning the competition for new businesses and job growth. This is due more to correlation than causation—companies are not uprooting and moving solely to gain the benefits of the smart grid—but it…

By Justin Leach-Waller Without a doubt, the new economy is bringing about new concerns. This is especially true for tenants who are investing heavily in upfit to their premises or for tenants whose facility locations are critical to their supply chain or other operational needs. All tenants, but particularly those in the aforementioned situations, should take a few steps to protect themselves against the effects of an increasingly prevalent occurrence in today’s market: a foreclosure. Here are the steps I’d suggest:  Know the owner and understand the capital stack. In the ordinary course of business, tenants sometimes fail to…