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The industrial availability rate for the Torto Wheaton Research (renamed CBRE Econometric Advisors) Sum of Markets increased 80 basis points to 12.2 percent in the first quarter of 2009. This marks the sixth consecutive quarter of rising availability rates and the highest national availability rate in Torto Wheaton’s history, which dates back to 1989. The previous high, of 11.7 percent, came in the first quarter of 2004. The pace of increase has not yet reached that set during the 2001 recession, when the national rate increased 110 basis points in the second quarter of 2001.Of the 63 markets CBRE Econometric…

Few settings offer a greater contrast than the Brooklyn waterfront and the Arizona desert, but in both places, developers are finding innovative ways to give industrial development a green twist.At the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Thursday, New York City officials formally opened the Perry Avenue Building, a $25 million, 89,000-square-foot project that they touted as the first multi-story green industrial facility in the United States. The building features rooftop solar panels, and—in a first for New York City—permanent building-mounted wind turbines. Elsewhere at the Navy Yard, a spring construction start is scheduled for the Duggal Greenhouse, a 60,000-square-foot facility that…

As the first quarter comes to a close, the investment strategies of multi-family buyers and sellers remain further apart than ever before. Transaction velocity continues to plummet: In January, investment sales of properties that were priced over $3 million dropped 93 percent from January 2008 figures. In other words, 93 percent of the nation’s apartment owners decided to wait on the sidelines, declined participation in the investment sales market.There are two types of investors in the market today: short-term players primarily being forced to sell because they have debt coming due and long-term buyers who believe that fundamentals and demographics…

Granger Cobb, president & co-CEO of Emeritus Corp., which operates 307 assisted-living communities encompassing 27,000 units and 32,100 residents across 36 states, talked recently with multi-family Eugene Gilligan about trends in the assisted-living sector.Gilligan: How is the assisted-living sector performing?Cobb: It’s a sector that is doing quite well. Occupancy at our properties is holding up. Our occupancy was 87.1 percent on a same-store basis, and for the first quarter of 2009, it looks like that number will be flat or slightly up. From the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to fourth quarter of 2007, revenue per occupied unit increased by…

Credit markets are tightening, property values are falling, tenant defaults are increasing, rents are softening and unemployment is spreading. Surely all of this adds up to a material adverse change—and any borrower or lender, buyer or seller, and anyone else who signed an agreement with a so-called MAC clause in it may wonder whether rights under that clause may now be exercised. MAC clauses may be found in loan agreements, commitment letters, rate-lock agreements, merger and acquisition agreements and purchase and sale agreements, providing protection from having to perform certain obligations of a contract after a meaningful or significant event…

Just days after news that the Empire State Building would undergo an environmentally sustainable retrofit, green development has reached another milestone, with the unveiling of a plan to develop the world’s first solar-powered city.Real estate developer Kitson & Partners has announced an agreement with electric utility Florida Power & Light to build a solarvoltaic power plant at Babcock Ranch, Fla., which will provide all of the power to a 17,000-acre mixed-use development (pictured). The developer said that the the project, dubbed Babcock Ranch, will consume less power than the proposed Florida Power & Light facility, which will allow it to…

Adding its name to the list of firms looking to capitalize on opportunities in the down commercial property market, Wrightwood Capital has closed a $243 million fund. The company’s High Yield Partners II Fund will be invested in recapitalizations, acquisitions and selected new development projects.Wrightwood Capital’s mezzanine and equity program is available for assets with sponsor equity and provides capital structured as either a mezzanine loan or a preferred equity investment, company executives said. As the commercial real estate investment market has seen prices fall as the credit crunch and economic downturn have taken hold, many financers are looking to…

Much more than a catchy slogan, “Going Green” can provide a path for property managers that allows them to shed wasteful inefficiencies and reduce costs. Among the possible procedures involved are paperless invoice processing and centralized, Web-based procurement, environmentally friendly real estate practices that are also setting new industry standards for efficiency and cost effectiveness. Fully automated paperless invoice processing, for example, can sharply reduce labor and costs–by nearly $11 per invoice, according to an Aberdeen Group study. Vendor invoices arrive at a central location and are bulk scanned into the property management database, becoming electronic transactions. Leveraging the property…

Future proofing is inherent in perhaps every building design. Nobody wants to be responsible for a design that will soon be dated, especially given that the useful life for a building is 30, 40, even 50 years. Every day we hear about and await the next best product—the product that will save us energy, save us labor. Smart buildings, automatic lighting control, indirect and direct lighting, high-efficiency lighting—new options are constantly coming out. But are these the products to go with? Are there more new ideas we should hold out for? What if we apply this new technology and it…

As commercial real estate spending for online marketing continues to rise, companies must carefully evaluate the best approaches for their business needs. Two popular tactics with application for corporate and property marketing are search engine optimization, or SEO, and search engine marketing, or SEM.SEO leverages the potential of “free” search–the natural, organic search results that appear, for example, in the main, lefthand column on the page of search engine Google when someone searches for companies or properties. The results link directly to Web sites with content that best matches the searcher’s request, as interpreted by the search engine’s algorithms. These…