Commercial Real Estate Finance

Posts Tagged ‘e-commerce’

Mensch 

Noun, informal. A decent, upright, mature and responsible person. 

Schlemiel 

Noun, slang. An awkward, clumsy, or unlucky person whose endeavors tend to fail; a loser.

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Mensch of the Week:

Curbed

For sheer entertainment value, my favorite real estate website (or really, family of sites), is Curbed. This site (which has local pages for many major markets) seems to go for more fun or unusual news from the world of development, real estate policy, and related issues, which can be a nice break from the more dry, data-driven stuff we usually see. You won’t get a market-by-market analysis of cap rates by asset class, but you will find out about the house Kelsey Grammer put on the market, or get a slide show of the coolest works of architecture in the U.S.

The site’s emphasis of architecture, both historic and recent, is what makes it especially interesting to me, and their recently announced “Curbed Young Guns 2013″ Competition makes them our Mensch of the Week.  Here are a couple snippets from the announcement:

…we’re excited to announce the launch of Curbed Young Guns, our search for the next wave of up-and-coming architects, developers, and interior designers. …Now we don’t necessarily mean we’re looking for the next Frank Gehry (though obviously we’ll take him). We’re also looking for the junior architect who’s the rising star of a start-up, the designers dreaming up yet-unbuilt schemes, and the decorators creating the next big thing in interiors. The rules are simple: nominees must be under the age of 35 and they must be based in the United States.

Best of all, it’s a totally democratic voting process; a nomination form can be found on their site.

Even though we mostly talk about the financial and economic sides of the commercial real estate industry, I like to touch on issues related to architecture and design now and then. Despite it’s glamorous reputation, most of the architecture industry’s members toil in obscurity, working on projects with far less profile than the latest Frank Gehry or Cesar Pelli masterpiece. Granted, a non-glamorous design gig (a no-frills affordable housing project, a future Walgreens) is still appealing to many in the industry who’ve struggled to find work in the recent development drought. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though many retail markets have struggled since the recession and the advent of e-commerce, there are many markets, submarkets, and property types that still show potential for retail investors and operators. From IRR’s Viewpoint 2013, based upon data from Real Capital Analytics, here are the Top 10 Retail Markets of 2012:

10.Seattle

9. Houston

8. Nashville

7. Phoenix

6. Dallas

5. Boston

4. Washington, DC Read the rest of this entry »

Today, we have two interesting videos from the busy researchers over at Jones Lang LaSalle (NYSE: JLL). First, we have an interview with Steve Ondrejack,  VP Logistics for Modell’s Sporting Goods. He discusses the ongoing effects of e-commerce on his company and the brick-and-mortar retail sector: 

Read the rest of this entry »

A few hundred square feet isn’t what it used to be. These days, it’s worth more.

As CoStar Group’s Mark Heschmeyer reported last Wednesday, online retail’s ever-growing presence in the national economy isn’t simply replacing the demand for retail space with an equal demand for warehouse or distribution center space. That would seem logical, since e-commerce isn’t diminishing the demand for any particular commodities, but simply moving them to a new place and selling them in a more streamlined fashion.

However, warehouse space is quite different from a storefront property, and not simply because of the cost disparity (per square foot, leasable warehouse space may cost as little as half that of other properties, according to the research department of Grubb & Ellis).

Read the rest of this entry »