Real Estate Daily News Buzz is designed to give news snippets to readers that our (yet to be award winning) editors thought you could use to start your day. They come from various business perspectives, real estate, government, the Fed, local news, and the stock markets to save you time. Here you will find the headlines and what the news buzz of the day will be.
Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 235.57 points, or 1.5%, to 16,284.70. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index jumped 35.94 points, or 1.9%, to 1,920.03. The NASDAQ composite climbed 102.84 points, or 2.3%, to 4,620.16.
The price of oil fell slightly as total U.S. crude inventories rose. U.S. crude fell 14 cents to close at $45.09 a barrel in New York. Brent Crude, a benchmark for international oils used by many U.S. refineries, rose 14 cents to close at $48.37 a barrel in London.
Wholesale gasoline rose 2.6 cents to close at $1.389 a gallon. Heating oil rose 1.5 cents to close at $1.513 a gallon. Natural gas fell 6.2 cents to close at $2.524 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Grand Central Owner Penson Sues City Over Air Rights “Real estate investor Andrew Penson, who owns Grand Central Terminal, sued New York City contending that Mayor Bill de Blasio, the City Council and developer SL Green Realty Corp. are depriving him of air rights through a building development at the train station. The value of such rights can be ‘greater than the land itself’ because of higher returns for upper floors, Penson said through his company, Midtown TDR Ventures LLC, in a lawsuit filed Monday in Manhattan.” (Bloomberg)
Commercial Real Estate Industry Underinvesting in Technology: Report “A Canadian information technology firm estimates that nearly one-third of the world’s commercial real estate industry is using archaic and error-prone spreadsheets to manage property portfolios potentially worth $11-trillion. Altus Group came up with its figures after surveying more than 300 international executives in the commercial real estate industry to come up with its findings.” (The Globe and Mail)
Manhattan Taken by Canada as Real Estate Purchases Reach Record “The country’s largest real estate investors have bought a record $3.85 billion in property this year in the New York city borough and spent more than any other foreign country in the last decade, according to data from Real Capital Analytics Inc. The purchases by Canadian investors such as pension funds, insurers and asset managers are double the $1.97 billion bought in 2014 and have surpassed the previous peak of $2 billion in 2007.” (Bloomberg)
Plaza Hotel Sale: The Latest Twist in a Long, Strange Trip “Thanks to a jailed Indian owner and a five-year legal battle that has pitted Indian regulators against far-flung stakeholders, the protracted sale itself has become something of an international spectacle. And time might be running out. Sahara Group, the hotel’s majority owner, must convince India’s Supreme Court it will make good on the $6 billion regulators say it owes.”(Wall Street Journal)
This Luxury Rental Building Is Expected to Fetch $400 Million “The 38-story luxury rental building RiverTower, at 420 E. 54th St., has just been brought to market and is expected to fetch around $400 million. The building was developed in 1982 by Harry Macklowe as the epitome of luxurious city living — thanks to its stretched hexagonal shape. Most of its sprawling 322 units have either East River or skyline views.” (New York Post)
New Mortgage Rules May Spark Delays, Frustration “Mortgage lenders and real-estate agents are bracing for the Oct. 3 implementation of a five-year-old law that has forced them to overhaul the way they process sales. The changes, prompted by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law, are meant to help consumers better understand the terms of their mortgages before they sign the dotted line.” (Wall Street Journal)
Wooing Millennials to Buy Condos: Really Tiny Condos “As more millennials graduate into better paying jobs, marriage and parenthood, real estate developers are doing all they can to entice this renter-nation generation in home ownership. That means making urban homes more affordable, which means making them smaller. In downtown Washington, D.C., as in other major cities, the tiny condo movement is moving quickly into the mainstream.” (CNBC)
RE Players Pushing Limits of Capital Gains Tax “Everyone knows the story: the visionary investor spots the undervalued property, negotiates a favorable deal, holds the asset patiently, then sells just at the right moment, banking a huge profit. Other, less sexy aspects of the process, like filing the taxes, are usually left out. But in today’s red-hot market, with prices breaking records nearly every quarter and copiers running out of ink printing investment sales contracts, some aspects of real estate taxation can begin to have a major impact on bottom lines.” (The Real Deal)
Developer Buys Brunswig Square Office and Retail Complex in Little Tokyo “A former drug company manufacturing and office complex in Little Tokyo has been purchased by a prominent Atlanta developer that plans to renovate the property and rent space to businesses in creative fields. Brunswig Square is in the heart of the popular shopping and residential district, where hundreds of apartments have recently been built or are under construction.” (Los Angeles Times)
Jamestown Invests in Metro DC “Stafford Place I, a 12-story, 587,036-square-foot Class A office building in the Ballston neighborhood of Arlington, Va., has been purchased for an undisclosed amount by Jamestown Premier Property Fund, it was announced Monday by Transwestern, which represented the unidentified seller, a private investor.” (Commercial Property Executive)
Target to match online prices with online rivals — Starting Thursday, Target will now match its online prices with more than two dozen online competitors including Amazon.com and Walmart.com. The change in policy marks a big step for the Minneapolis-based retailer, which until now only matched prices at its own stores. Target is also allowing 14 days, up from seven, for shoppers to get a price adjustment. And the retailer is increasing the number of online rivals that it will match from five to 29. That includes for the first time stores that require membership, like Costco and Sam’s Club. The latest move underscores how Target aims to rev up its e-commerce business, which increased by 30 per cent in the latest quarter. It also wants to win market share from rivals, a key part of its strategy under its CEO Brian Cornell, who took the helm in August, 2014. (Fortune)
No shutdown: Congress approves bill to keep government open — Just hours before a midnight deadline, a bitterly divided Congress approved a stopgap spending bill Wednesday to keep the federal government open — but with no assurance there won’t be yet another shutdown showdown in December. Democrats helped beleaguered House Republican leaders pass the measure by 277-151 — a lopsided vote shrouding deep disagreements within the GOP — after the Senate approved it by a 78-20 tally earlier in the day. The votes sent the bill to President Barack Obama for his signature. (ABC)
Volkswagen: ‘Nothing has changed’ at Tennessee plant despite scandal — Inside Volkswagen’s only U.S. assembly plant there’s little hint of the diesel emissions cheating scandal embroiling the German automaker around the world. Sparks fly off robotic welding arms, new versions of the Passat sedan roll off the line and workers install equipment to build a new SUV billed as a key to reviving the company’s growth prospects in America. But despite the business-as-usual feel of the plant, production of diesel-engine vehicles has been put on hold by VW until they get more clarity on the consequences of the emissions scandal, which has already led to the CEO’s resignation, cost the company billions of dollars in lost stock value and unleashed a flood of lawsuits. The carmaker has admitted that 11 million of its diesel vehicles worldwide were fitted with a program that duped U.S. testers into believing the vehicles meet environmental standards.(ABC)
Root of investor anxiety: Uncertainty about China and Fed - Fears about China’s slowdown and a coming U.S. interest rate hike have sent global stock markets into a fidgety freefall. But why? China’s economy has been slowing for years. And the Federal Reserve has long been expected to raise short-term interest rates from near zero, where it’s kept them since 2008. So what’s sowing panic now? In a word: Uncertainty. Investors have grown used to near-zero rates and a booming Chinese economy — the world’s second-largest after the United States. No one knows how the global economy will manage without them. (ABC)