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All eyes are on the House today, specifically on the 133 House Republicans who spearheaded the surprise defeat on Monday of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Meanwhile, signs are growing that the financial crisis has potential to metastasize further, and an observer of the Washington scene gave CPN an exclusive update on why the pending legislation matters more than ever to commercial real estate. Late yesterday, the Senate handily passed (74-25) the latest version of the EESA, which features a number of major changes aimed at making the bill more palatable to those who had opposed it and…

Yesterday, hope. Today, fear. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 348.62 points today, seemingly upset by lousy numbers on the economy regarding jobs and manufacturing (see below). Among the decliners today were insurance stocks, stung by a passing remark by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) about a “well-known insurer” being on the edge of insolvency. A spokesman for Reid backpedaled today, telling Reuters that “his comments were meant to refer to the conditions in the financial sector generally,” not any particular insurer. It’s more evidence for the case that markets do not, in fact, behave rationally. The U.S….

New York City’s ING Clarion Partners and Poway, Calif.-based Silicon Border Development have hashed out the final details of their joint venture and financing plans for the development of the Silicon Border Science Park, a 10,000-acre state-of-the-art project in the City of Mexicali in Baja California, Mexico, about two hours across the U.S. border from San Diego. The news comes 18 months after the two companies announced they had entered into an agreement to form the joint venture. ING will provide capital for the first phase of the behemoth project whose infrastructure development alone will carry an ultimate price tag…

As the credit crunch tightens its grip on lending, REIT One Liberty Properties Inc. is looking to take advantage of retail owners seeking sale-leaseback deals. In this month alone One Liberty has bought and leased back nine Office Depot locations for more than $53 million. Through wholly-owned subsidiaries, One Liberty Properties acquired a portfolio of eight retail locations totaling about 218,000 square feet of retail space in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Texas, California, Georgia and Oregon for $47.6 million, paid in cash. Simultaneously with the acquisition, each of the properties was leased on a triple net basis for an initial…

At The Lodging Conference last week in Phoenix, those three little words–“I don’t know”–were on many hotel industry executives’ lips, as many seemed unsure of the industry’s path in light of the uncertainty caused by a Wall Street bailout plan that was still being negotiated, rising oil prices and concerns about how much further the economy could deteriorate.Industry executives on one conference panel revealed some of their strategies to navigate these turbulent seas—strategies that in some cases actually look toward growth and not just survival.Stephen Joyce, president & CEO of Choice Hotels, was happy to report that so far owners…

A stop-gap funding measure passed by the Senate last Saturday may have significant implications for a mainstay of the United States industrial sector. A $630 billion federal funding bill would provide the Big Three automakers with $25 billion worth of low-cost loans for developing clean technology and re-tooling manufacturing plants. It may be too early to say when–or if–Detroit can catch up to foreign automakers in the race to build low-emission vehicles. But the federal funding could help increase demand for both new projects and re-purposing of existing manufacturing facilities. That, in turn, could increase the demand for site-selection consulting…

One of the early signals of the credit crisis that has turned the U.S. financial markets upside down showed up in Orange County, Calif. There, the office market featured a 7 percent vacancy rate as recently as the fourth quarter of 2006–a number that has inflated to 20 percent today.The market is home to a large number of mortgage firms, and consequently began to suffer as those firms either ceased operations or shed workers as the subprime housing crisis began to unfold, with serious tremors felt throughout the market. Ameriquest has given back the most office space in the market,…

Each year, the retail sector counts on big holiday sales to beef up its bottom line. The way things look now, retailers and retail property owners, developers and advisors are more likely to find lumps of coal in their stockings this year than candy and presents. According to the National Retail Federation’s annual estimate published on Sept. 23, holiday sales will creep up only 2.2 percent this year–only half of the 4.4 percent gain that the retail sector has averaged over the past decade. To put that in perspective, a gain of 2.2 percent would be the smallest year-over-year increase…

The hospitality market pulled in $8.7 billion in sales during the first half of 2008, the lowest level among major property types and down 77 percent from the same period a year ago, according to Grubb & Ellis Co.’s second quarter “Capital Markets Update.” The cap rate hit 8 percent for full-service hotels, a 50-basis-point decline over the past quarters, while the cap rate for limited-service properties came in at 9.7 percent, an increase of 70 basis points.While higher prices at the pump have caused many consumers to shrink their retail expenditures, it appears that local hotels are seeing a…

August saw the sales of significant industrial properties jump slightly from the previous month, but price tags for such assets were lean, according to Real Capital Analytics Inc.’s latest Capital Trends Monthly report on the sector. The value of closed transactions came in at only $1.6 billion, and while another $1.5 billion worth of deals were under contract at the beginning of September, given the fiscal crisis, the future of some deals that haven’t closed yet may be up in the air. The good news is that the industrial segment is less susceptible to distressed transactions. About 1.6 percent of…