Blog

Advance planning has put the heavily trafficked Internet destination and online media company Yahoo! in a sound position to develop a planned 3,000,000 SF campus in a high-profile location in Santa Clara, CA.  Yahoo! purchased the 48-acre site in 2006 – well before the financial crisis and increased competition from Google and Facebook.  Although no […]

The economic upheavals of recent years have changed Americans in ways that we are still coming to terms with because it marks the end of an era.  The Great Recession was anything but an ordinary downturn and the way we live and work has been transformed.  Construction and auto jobs have declined by one-third; retail […]

If you’ve noticed a recent drop in mortgage interest rates, thank the PIGS’ (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) troubles, which are causing jitters in the globe’s equity markets.  Seeking a safe haven, investors are putting their money into U.S. Treasury notes.  Because mortgage interest rates tend to rise and fall with 10-year U.S. Treasury note […]

Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) is enjoying a big victory in his last days in the Senate following passage of broad financial reform legislation designed to rein in the excesses that caused the financial meltdown.  First, the Senate and House versions of the bill must undergo reconciliation.  Under the new law, for example, homebuyers will have […]

Wells Fargo & Company and LNR Property Corporation are hunting for buyers for $1 billion each of distressed commercial real estate assets and loans.  San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest commercial real estate lender, is soliciting bids on $500 million to $1 billion worth of office and hotels.  LNR, the nation’s largest CBMS special […]

The Great Recession has taken a toll on the famous American optimism and belief in social mobility as defined by the stories of such luminaries as Alexis de Tocqueville, Horatio Alger and Barack Obama.  According to a poll by YouGov for The Economist, 39 percent responded that the opportunities available to them were not as […]

The long-abandoned United States Steel South Works on Chicago’s South Side moved closer to undergoing transformation to a mixed-use development when the Community Development Commission unanimously approved a $96 million tax-increment financing (TIF) district to fund the project’s initial phase. The Chicago City Council still must approve the TIF district, which would give the green […]

Foreign governments are a growth engine for New York City commercial and residential real estate at a time when many cash-strapped European nations are facing financial crises.  For example, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations has $8 million to spend and is looking at Manhattan office space.  Laos recently paid $4.2 million in […]

Although upwards of 800 towering wind turbines provide power to countries like Denmark, Britain and other European countries, the United States has engaged in a 10-year debate over constructing Cape Wind, its first offshore wind farm planned for the south side of Cape Cod in Nantucket Sound and recently given the go-ahead by Secretary of […]

In a rare moment of bipartisanship, the Senate voted 96 – 0 to attach a modified version of an amendment proposed by Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT) to the financial regulatory bill to investigate transparency in emergency lending practices by the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.  “This amendment begins the process of lifting the veil […]