Author: David Osborn
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Answers Arrive
Economies plunge. Clients cancel. Jobs disappear. Debts accumulate. Organizations contract. Tenants shrink. Cubes empty. Owners worry. Managers panic. Space gets spacious. Buildings remain. Maintenance awaits. Expenses loiter. Costs get costlier. Tenants demand. Inflation looms. Oil prices rise, then fall, then rise, then RISE! Transactions slow. Cap rates contract. Light bulbs go off. Managers manage. Engineers…
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Tenets of Tenant Retention
We know the bad news – that there is decreasing demand for commercial office space, caused by an economic recession stemming from significant job losses, a historic decline in consumer spending, a global slowdown in import and export activity, and the collapse of the residential housing market. The good news is that there is a…
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Green Jobs are Good Jobs
The U.S Commercial Office market is suffering unprecedented vacancy rates which are expected to hit 18.6% in 2010 – close to the historic high of 19.3% set in 1990. We are facing a “jobless recovery” as employers focus on workforce efficiencies and try to do more with less…or fewer. Arthur Jones, Senior Economist, CBRE Econometric Advisors…
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A Successful Climate Bill Means More Jobs!
I am particularly interested in the new climate bill that is before the US Senate. It’s called the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act” – which is a mouthful, even from a bunch of American politicians. Before I’d finished reading the title of the Act, I knew someone had flipped the dial to the…
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America’s Love Affair with the Office
Americans love “The Office” with Steve Carell – a quirky, strife and breath sitcom about working in an office environment for an aptly named company called Dunder Mifflin. The plot originally centered on an office that faces closure when the company decides to downsize its branches. Now there’s a funny scenario for you. I personally…
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Know What Your Tenants Want
“If you know what women want, you can rule!” says Bette Midler in the film “What Women Want” and Mel Gibson (Nick Marshall) proceeds to prove her right when he suddenly can hear everything that every woman he meets is thinking. We should be so lucky. Imagine now that you could hear everything that your…
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Asset Appreciation Through Improved Operations
In a real estate down-cycle our asset valuation focus changes. The heyday of strong cap rates, rental rate growth and high transactions volumes caused asset managers to focus on high return through asset appreciation. Capital projects soared, borrowing soared, and valuations soared with them. It seemed like there was no ceiling to real estate values.…
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Over Here….Over Here.
The other day I read that there has been a recent and not insignificant uptick in foreign investment in the United States commercial real estate market. It appears that healthier pockets are looking to get back into what is traditionally a safe investment marketplace – US real estate. Costar Group just reported that a $200…
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Lock & Lode
Office rental rates are falling so lock in your tenants for the long term by sitting down at the table and negotiating lower rates now. Nationwide, effective office rents fell almost 9.0% in the third quarter compared with the same period a year ago. Office tenants returned approximately 20 million square feet of space to…
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Noble Warming
The financial and mortgage crisis of 2008 created what we all know as the credit Ice Age. Losses were so severe that the Obama Administration created a $700 billion bailout throwing a financial TARP over the big banks to protect them from a rain of failure. It worked, if only temporarily. Yet the residential real…