Is housing headed for another bust or boom?
Let's start with a quick history lesson. From 1978 until the end of 2007, the annual housing starts nationwide (single-family and multifamily units) averaged about 1,544,000 annually. In 2008, housing starts dropped below a...
Dangerous trends
The real precedent was set with the 1998 multi-state tobacco settlement of $365.5 billion. Tobacco is a legal substance. In the mafia, this is called a shake down. If the government can attack one...
Safe harbor
The mainly bi-coastal apartment REIT broke ground for two new apartment projects in Q4 2009. The 219-unit, $36 million second phase of Avalon Northborough, in a suburb about 22 miles west of Boston got...
Waiting to exhale
Yet, Congress has been consumed over the past year with those things at the bottom of Americans' priority list: reducing health care costs (57 percent), providing health insurance to the uninsured (49 percent) and...
MH Feeding frenzy
"With their stocks battered over the past several years, REITs could sell a building for a lot less on a yield basis then what they could turn around and buy their own stock for....
Deal-maker
The company has been taking advantage of weakness in the apartment market, buying recently constructed Class A apartment and condo product with more than 100 units in core locations and uncompleted busted condo properties,...
Close to home
At the height of the market a few years ago, reports of a firm purchasing two properties in a year's time would have registered as a mere blip on the industry radar screen. Today,...
Growing the business
"Those were the areas of difficulty for Wallick," said Feusse, who began working as a consultant for the 44-year-old affordable multihousing company in May 2005. Discipline and focus, along with the strong belief that a...
The Boston Market
That sale heralded a new vibrancy in the apartment transaction world in Massachusetts that saw only seven apartment communities worth more than $10 million change hands in all of 2009, tying with 2001 for...
Rocky Mountain High (and low)
The Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2010 by PricewaterhouseCoopers lists Colorado's capital as one of the top 10 national cities to watch—the third year in a row the report has highlighted Denver among top-tier...
Multihousing ka-boom
Buzz on the deal abounds. Richard LeFrak, whose family built LeFrak City, a 5,000-unit affordable housing complex in Queens, has already expressed interest in managing the properties. Tishman and its partner BlackRock Realty—which defaulted on...
Back in the sweet spot
At least part of the explanation for the rise in real estate's standing in the 2010 survey is pretty obvious, thinks Mission Capital Advisors' David Tobin: the outlook today compared to a year ago,...
Make them stop
The most irritating or disruptive things about a job may have nothing to do with too much work or boring assignments. Sometimes what gets your goat is the annoying habits of the person at...
The Zen of work
The past year has brought layoffs, furloughs, pay freezes, increased health care costs and heavier workloads. And it's starting to eat at you. You can't control these factors, but there are things you can do...
Renting: the new American dream
How does government support for home-ownership compare with government support for renting? Cino: Federal home-ownership subsidies outnumber rental support 4 to 1 or about $230 billion to the renters' $60 billion. If subsidies were adjusted...
