Each Wednesday, The Wrap presents a compilation of recent noteworthy commercial real estate stories from a variety of publications. Below are links to five non-Braves stories that caught our eyes in recent days.
• Looking Ahead: A Seller's Market in 2014 by Lindsay Machak of Multifamily Executive.
Key excerpt:
“It’s not just the domestic REITs and institutional investors duking it out on the transaction market. Foreign investors, too, are expected to play a large role in shaping next year’s dealmaking environment, with a slight twist. While foreign investors have always favored high-barrier coastal cities, many are now finding better opportunities outside of the nation’s largest metros, according to Brian Murdy, the national director of Encino, Calif.-based Marcus & Millichap’s Institutional Property Advisors, says.”
• The Good and Bad of City-Owned Hotels by Deidre Wengen of Lodging Magazine.
Key excerpt:
“But not all city-owned hotels have reason to be optimistic. With the exception of high-performing properties such as the Omni Dallas, which exceeded revenue projections by 24 percent in its first year, many city-owned hotels struggle to break even and cause hardships for taxpayers and other in-market owners.
‘I get why municipalities find it important to make sure there is an appropriate convention hotel in their market but more often than not, they discover that they are not necessarily the best owners,’ says David Loeb, senior research analyst for Baird. “They’re just not the people who have the skills and the sophistication to be able to asset manage a hotel effectively.’”
• NMHC Special Report: Next-Generation Apartment Amenities Tailored to Suit Taste of Echo Boomer Renters by Keat Foong of Multi Housing News.
Key excerpt:
“Gathering spaces have acquired a new importance today as a response to Generation Y’s preference for interaction, sociability and even ‘people-watching.’ Steve Boyack, senior vice president, asset management and business development, The Laramar Group, said that the developer aims to provide more gathering spaces for ‘people to be alone together.’ ‘If you stay long enough, [you will see] they are checking each other out’ in those spaces, he added.”
• Solutions for Suburban Strip Malls by Leslie Braunstein of Urban Land Institute.
Key excerpt:
“It seemed like a good idea at the time: building low-density, single-use retail space along heavily traveled corridors and arterials, surrounded by massive parking lots. Now, however, ‘suburban strips are ugly and congested,’ said Edward T. McMahon, ULI’s Charles E. Fraser Chair for Sustainable Development, who moderated a Fall Meeting session on repositioning suburban corridors.
‘Over the last 20 years, we have built retail space five times faster than sales,’ McMahon continued, noting that the U.S. has over a billion square feet of empty retail space, much of it in suburban strip malls. ‘The suburbs have to re-invent; demographics are changing where we live and shop. In 1960, 200,000 square feet of retail space would have been located in a downtown department store; by the 1980s, that space became a Wal-Mart reachable only by car.’”
• Industrial Real Estate: They’re Not Just Boxes! by CoStar Staff.
Key excerpt:
“Lovingly, we refer to industrial buildings as ‘boxes.’ And truth be told, that is what most of them look like, which is enough for the casual observer.
However, for those interested in investing in this property segment, a closer look reveals that there are significant physical, and more importantly, performance differences within the sector.”