Reprinted from www.globest.com
CHICAGO—As bid-up pricing results in lower returns, especially in prime office markets, investors are turning to a new strategy, according to Transwestern’s Gary Nussbaum. That is, they’re becoming more opportunistic, buying buildings with substantial or total vacancies.
It’s not only the lower returns on stabilized assets that have motivated investors to accept more risk—and, often, pay higher prices on vacant, nearly vacant or soon to be vacant office properties, writes Nussbaum, Chicago-based managing director, investment services. They’re also finding more debt sources willing to lend on opportunistic deals.
“In order to increase their returns, some lenders have been willing to finance the acquisition of vacant buildings, offering interest-only, debt fund financing at 65% loan-to-value” as well as providing 100% of the cap-ex funding, Nussbaum writes in a special report. Interest rates, meanwhile, have been as aggressive as sub-6%. “Terms are improving because more debt sources are loaning on these non-core assets.”
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An Audacious Plan for Baltimore’s Vacant Industrial Spaces
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Rob FelberReprinted from www.citylab.com
New “makers spaces” in a struggling neighborhood could bolster the local economy with small-scale manufacturing opportunities.
It was some tough timing for urban planner Andy Cook as he lined up a tour of vacant industrial properties in Southwest Baltimore late last month, trying to drum up interest among businesses and real estate developers.
The nation had been glued to news of the riots that followed the the death of Freddie Gray, who died in police custody. People were beginning to understand the despair present in Baltimore neighborhoods that residents themselves declared dead.
The Southwest Baltimore Industrial Opportunity Tour wound through similar landscapes of abandonment, in Mill Hill, Shipley Hill, and as far north as Rosemont, where big companies—and the smaller businesses of butchers, bakeries, and brewers—had long since left. It was audacious to suggest that a collection of 35 dilapidated buildings could somehow begin to fix what had been broken for so long.
Read the full article at http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/06/can-makers-spaces-revitalize-baltimore/396185/
Importance of a Commercial Property Inspection
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Rob FelberReprinted from www.southlandcommercial.com
One of the most important things to have, when representing a buyer in the purchase of real estate, is a commercial property inspection. This should be done by a qualified property inspector. Having this type of inspection ensures that the buyer has “looked under the hood” and knows exactly what they are getting. What can appear to be a good purchase can sometimes quickly turn into a money pit with multiple unseen issues that the buyer would be inheriting.
A list of the items to be checked during a commercial property inspection:
Read the full article at southlandcommercial.com
Developer J. Shorey plans to turn a vacant foundry into a fish farm, arts complex
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Rob FelberReprinted from www.cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Central and Fairfax neighborhoods lost an estimated 100 jobs in 2012 when T&B Foundry closed a storied metal casting plant in a foreclosure process that left the eight-acre property vacant, shuttered and saddled with nearly $2 million in liens.
Now Cleveland Heights entrepreneur J. Duncan Shorey has a proposal to transform the plant at 2469 East 71st St. at Platt Avenue with an unusual mix of overlapping uses including a fish farm, an orchard, a studio center for artists, a farmers market, a cooking school and a computer server farm.
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Guilderland approves vacant property crackdown
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminReprinted from www.timesunion.com
Guilderland
The town cracked down on vacant properties Tuesday night by unanimously adopting an ordinance that requires o
wners of vacant structures to register them, keep them neat and put up a $5,000 bond that the town can tap into if the property needs to be cleaned up.
“These properties don’t generally become public health issues, but they become unsightly and rundown,” said Town Supervisor Ken Runion.
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Detroit program pairs new businesses with vacant spaces
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminReprinted from Detroit Free Press
The Motor City Match program will award $500,000 in grants quarterly to building owners and small-business startups, a key part of Mayor Mike Duggan’s 2013 campaign pledge to foster growth and jobs in neighborhood storefronts long vacant amid years of business flight from Detroit.
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Detroit to businesses: Clean up your blight
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminReprinted from Detroit Free Press
A team of six lawyers in Detroit’s Law Department has brought more than 50 lawsuits in Wayne County Circuit Court against commercial property owners in the last nine months, many targeting blighted buildings that help tarnish neighborhoods.
Targeted so far have been the owners of properties ranging from a large, dilapidated apartment complex on the city’s west side, to a downtown high-rise and even a two-family duplex near Indian Village, one of the Detroit’s more stable neighborhoods.
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Investors Don’t Fear Vacancies
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminReprinted from www.globest.com
CHICAGO—As bid-up pricing results in lower returns, especially in prime office markets, investors are turning to a new strategy, according to Transwestern’s Gary Nussbaum. That is, they’re becoming more opportunistic, buying buildings with substantial or total vacancies.
“In order to increase their returns, some lenders have been willing to finance the acquisition of vacant buildings, offering interest-only, debt fund financing at 65% loan-to-value” as well as providing 100% of the cap-ex funding, Nussbaum writes in a special report. Interest rates, meanwhile, have been as aggressive as sub-6%. “Terms are improving because more debt sources are loaning on these non-core assets.”
To read the entire article, click here
A New Life for Dead Malls
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminReprinted from www.citylab.com
In case you haven’t heard, suburban malls are on the way out (sorry Paul Blart). Some have become abandoned wastelands popular for ruin porn. Others have been torn down and turned into industrial sites.
According to Ellen Dunham-Jones, an architect and professor at Georgia Tech, there are about 1,200 enclosed malls in the United States, and about one-third of them are dead or dying. That’s because developers rapidly overbuilt malls in the 20th century, she said: The U.S. has twice as much square footage in shopping centers per capita than the rest of the world, and six times as much as countries in Europe.
“The malls died for a reason,” she told me. “We were way over retailed.”
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5 Ways to Redevelop a Vacant Armory
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminReprinted from www.opportunityspace.org
beautiful Cranston Street Armory in Providence, RI.
Armories in the United States were built in the 19th and 20th centuries by local and state militias to store weapons and to train volunteer soldiers. Armories typically have a large interior space that was used for drills and rooms used for weapons storage and administrative offices. With the reorganization of many local and state militia groups under the federal National Guard, today armories in their original form are typically vacant or underutilized.
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Blot Out Blight: 3 Ways to Turn Around a Vacant Lot
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminReprinted from www.oportunityspace.org
It’s hard to start from square one, so here are 3 vacant lot transformations that have been successful for individuals and groups in the OpportunitySpace sphere to get you thinking about your own project.
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