Despite the chilly economy, Faris Lee Investments is in an expansion mode.\u00a0 The company has opened a New York office, and has named Richard Berlinghof to head the retail investment sales and advisory firm\u2019s East Coast team. The move is a natural for the firm, said Richard Walter, Faris Lee\u2019s president. \u201cWe have a lot of clients on the East Coast, and there is a need for them to receive intelligence on a real time basis,\u201d Walter said. \u201cThere is something new that happens every day, so we decided to move down the street from them.\u201d Berlinghof (pictured), who has been named a principal at Faris Lee, is what Walter called a \u201cperfect fit\u201d for the company. Formerly a director at Merrill Lynch, Berlinghof was responsible for national originations of fixed and floating rate commercial real estate loans. He also was an investment sales broker with Chesterton International. Walter said that Berlinghof will spearhead Faris Lee\u2019s initiative to buy loans on behalf of its clients. \u201cAn investor may be getting one-and-a-half percent interest on money sitting in the bank,\u201d Walter said. \u201cThat investor can get a higher return by buying a performing loan.\u201d Faris Lee can also offer an \u201cexit strategy\u201d to investors, as it can manage or sell the asset if the investor were to acquire the asset if the loan turns sour, Walter said. Many retail centers are challenged today by what Walter called \u201creal estate issues,\u201d rather than loan maturity problems. These issues are caused by increasing retail vacancies, many of them the result of some major retailers that have gone dark. The bankruptcy of Circuit City in particular has caused problems for many owners of retail centers, Walter said. \u201cMany owners are having cash flow problems,\u201d Walter said. \u201cWe can sit down with a lender and the owner, and look at different strategies, such as selling some of the pads.\u201d New York City is seeing retail vacancy rise, according to a report released today by the Real Estate Board of New York. The report found that average asking rents for retail space in Manhattan showed their first meaningful decline since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, falling 11 percent since Fall 2008, to $115 per square foot. The declines ranged from 6 percent in Midtown to 22 percent on the West Side compared to the fall of 2008. The organization\u2019s advisory board, made up of retail brokers, said the drop is a needed correction to the market\u2019s upward spiral, that tenants are still signing leases, and that the decline will present opportunities for new retailers to enter the market. Faris Lee also announced that Eric Rosa has been named the managing director of financial institutions, and will be based in Faris Lee\u2019s Irvine, Calif., office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite the chilly economy, Faris Lee Investments is in an expansion mode.\u00a0 The company has opened a New York office, and has named Richard Berlinghof to head the retail investment sales and advisory firm\u2019s East Coast team. The move is a natural for the firm, said Richard Walter, Faris Lee\u2019s president. \u201cWe have a lot…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1003971108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-regions"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n