The City of Tucson’s Reid Park Zoo’s newest residents are two black-and-white ruffed lemurs named Pepe and Nuit. Black-and-white ruffed lemurs are an endangered species, native only to the rainforests on Madagascar.  Someone meeting the furry tree-hopping creatures for the first time might guess they’re related to squirrels or cats. But the truth is, lemurs are more closely related to you and me. Lemurs are primates.

“The new lemur habitat is a magnificent addition to Reid Park Zoo,” stated Jason Jacobs, Zoo administrator in a recent news release. “Zoo staff is to be commended for renovating a dilapidated exhibit and updating it with new mesh for ease of viewing. The landscaping and enrichment features create a vibrant habitat for lemurs and allow us to support the AZA’s breeding program for this species.”

According to a zoo news release the pair Pepe (a five year old male) and Nuit (a three year old female) came to Reid Park for breeding purposes. Pepe comes to Tucson from the Gladys Porter Zoo in Texas and Nuit is here from the Saint Louis Zoo, all three zoos are accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). The AZA works cooperatively to “make careful animal care and breeding decisions for many threatened and endangered species.”

Reid Park Zoo is open 8 a.m. – 3 p.m. and the lemurs will be on exhibit daily.

For more on the lemurs guests can go online to www.reidparkzoo.org.

Don’t forget to wear your black and white (in honor of the lemurs) from now till Sunday to get $2 off your admission price!

SEATTLE and NEW YORK (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Zillow, Inc. (Nasdaq:Z), the largest U.S. real estate and home-related marketplace, announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire StreetEasy®, the leading real estate website in New York City, for $50 million in cash. The transaction is subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the next few weeks.

StreetEasy attracts nearly 1.2 million monthly unique users, primarily home shoppers in the New York region. This acquisition gives StreetEasy the resources to further invest in product development and grow its audience, while offering Zillow® clear market leadership in the country’s largest and most important real estate market.

StreetEasy launched in 2006 and has 34 employees. StreetEasy provides accurate and comprehensive for-sale and for-rent listings through partnerships with all of the largest real estate brokerages in New York. The site adds several layers of additional data organized and presented in ways that help consumers and real estate professionals alike.

“At StreetEasy, we pride ourselves on bringing much-needed transparency to the New York City real estate marketplace, and being the primary reference site for consumers and real estate professionals,” said Michael Smith, co-founder and CEO of StreetEasy. “We’re very excited to be joining forces with Zillow, the largest national brand in mobile and online real estate, as we continue our commitment to data integrity, innovation and collaboration with the local real estate community.”

“Simply put, StreetEasy has cracked the code in New York,” Rascoff said. “They now have a local network effect where nearly every New York broker is active on StreetEasy because of the site’s large audience and comprehensive data.”

Zillow’s brands serve the full life cycle of owning and living in a home: buying, selling, renting, financing, remodeling and more. In addition, Zillow offers a suite of tools and services to help local real estate, mortgage, rental and home improvement professionals manage and market their businesses. Welcoming more than 61 million monthly unique users in July 2013, the Zillow, Inc. portfolio includes Zillow.com®, Zillow Mobile, Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, Zillow Rentals, Zillow Digs™, Postlets®, Diverse Solutions®, Agentfolio™, Mortech® and HotPads™. The company is headquartered in Seattle.

CVS Pharmacy Store, at 7740 N Cortaro Road in Marana, at the southwest corner of Silverbell Road and Cortaro Road, sold for $6 million ($414 PSF). The ±14,419 SF building (built 2003) on 2 acres, was fully leased to CVS Pharmacy Store #8420 and sold with a twenty-five year absolute triple-net lease backed by a corporate guarantee.

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[mepr-show rules=”58038″] The transaction sold in a “Zero Cash Flow” or “Zero” sale as it is sometimes called, one of the least understood types of real estate structure in the net lease market today. So we’re going to take a stab at explaining it, and the best way to do that, is to jump right into the fire with this transaction.
A few things stand out as unusual with this sale and “zero” sales in general, besides the odd numbers. First, the financing loan to value is high! A $5,206,865 loan on a purchase price of $5,967,280 is an 85% LTV. These “highly leveraged” LTVs cannot be achieved by just going out and buying any property on the market.

This kind of leverage in zero deals requires a strong tenant such as a CVS. Typically, tenants must have a strong S&P rating of at least BBB and be strong bond net leases. CVS (NYSE:CVS) has an S&P rating of BBB+.

A second unusual feature is that the financing of zero properties is assumable, fixed rate, non-recourse, and often full amortization. At the end of the loan term, the property is owned free and clear of debt. With the financing already in place,  the loan is easily and quickly assumable at a low cost to buyers, attractive for 1031 Exchange buyers.

Third, and here’s the basis as to why it’s called “zero cash flow,” or “zero” – all of the property’s net operating income goes directly to service the underlying loan, with none remaining for distribution to the owner. Wells Fargo is the lender of our CVS deal in Marana. This might not sound attractive to all investors, but this real estate structure does have its benefits.

One of the key features of zero sales is called “Paydown/Readvance”. This is usually a one-time option that allows the property owner to pull out a large amount of cash from the property. This feature is perhaps the number one reason why zeros are so popular for 1031 Exchange buyers. Use the pulled out cash for whatever reason you want – without any fear of violating the exchange rule (since all the exchange requirements have already been satisfied). Use the money to go out and buy another property (you get to start all over again on depreciable basis), use the money for working capital, use it to go to Vegas, or whatever. The point is, you can use it for whatever you want.

Further, the more seasoned that zeros become (older) the more valuable they tend to get, as the owner gets closer to the day of owning it free and clear.

Remember, there are no landlord responsibilities with a zero. Investors may buy zero properties to put into their 401K or for the grand-kids who won’t need the cash for awhile.

So how does one calculate the cap rate on a zero property? Values for zero cash flow properties are usually expressed as a percentage over the debt. Or to value the property as any other NNN property by applying a cap rate to the NOI. It should be noted that both of these methods determine “gross” values and not a “net” value. That is to say that the net value (Gross Value minus the Debt) is the actual out of pocket cost to do the deal.

“The attractiveness of zeros is a function of equity over debt and the assumption of leverage,” Steve Underwood of Phoenix Commercial Advisors summed up to us. “And the tax benefits to the owner, something only an accountant can calculate.”

The seller, SCP Capital of Utah has been selling CVS Pharmacies in this manner since 2001 when Staubach of Texas acquired 10,000 active CVS store leases in a major sale/leaseback deal for $288 Million. The buyer was Marana Zero I, LLC; Marana Zero II, LLC; and Marana Zero III, LLC of Sandy, UT (Scott Beynon, managing member).

Steve Underwood and Chad Tiedeman of Phoenix Commercial Advisors in Phoenix handled the transaction for buyer and seller.

Underwood should be reached at (602) 288-3477 while Tiedeman can be contacted at (602) 288-3472 for more information.[/mepr-show]

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[ismember]Sale date was 8/2/2013. Exact sale price was $5,967,280. Broker reported cap rate of 8.97% based on NOI. Market time was 242 days. This was the buyers’ upleg in a 1031 exchange.  [/ismember]