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.
Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 157.54 points, or 0.9%, to 17,646.70. The S&P 500 index climbed 22.64 points, or 1.1%, to 2,075.15. The NASDAQ composite, which is heavily weighted with technology stocks, rose 111.81 points, or 2.3%, to 5,031.86.
The price of U.S. crude oil fell 78 cents to $44.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Friday. Brent Crude, which is used to price international oils, fell 9 cents to $47.99 a barrel in London.
In other futures trading on the NYMEX, wholesale gasoline fell 0.3 cents to close at $1.304 a gallon, heating oil fell 1.1 cents to close at $1.454 a gallon and natural gas fell 10 cents to close at $2.286 per 1,000 cubic feet.
The Cities With the Highest Rent for Prime Office Space “Hong Kong is the most expensive city worldwide to rent prime office space, according to Knight Frank’s Skyscraper Index. The annual rent for a square foot of office space in one of Hong Kong’s towers amounts to $255.50. In second placed New York City, renting a square foot of high-rise office space would cost $153 – over $100 less than in Hong Kong. Even though rents are expensive in Hong Kong and New York, they grew at a rate of only 2 percent in the six months to June.” (Forbes)
Starwood Capital, Milestone to Buy Apartment Owner Landmark “Starwood Capital Group and Milestone Apartments Real Estate Investment Trust agreed to buy Landmark Apartment Trust Inc., an owner of multifamily properties in the southern U.S., in a deal valued at $1.9 billion, including debt. A Starwood and Milestone-owned entity called Monument Partners will acquire the landlord for $8.17 a share, Landmark said in a statement Thursday.” (Bloomberg)
Why Your Favorite Retailer Didn’t Come Back from Bankruptcy “It's never good when a company has to resort to bankruptcy as a last-ditch effort for profitability. But for players in the retail industry, things are even more dire. According to a new study by AlixPartners advisory firm, 55 percent of all U.S. retailers that have filed for bankruptcy over the past 10 years have ended up in liquidation. By comparison, less than 5 percent of nonretail filings over that period have had the same result.” (CNBC)
CalPERS is Slowly Digging its Real Estate Portfolio Out of a Big Hole “The Achilles' heel of the vast CalPERS fund has been its real estate portfolio, but there are signs that the long-troubled segment is finally turning around. Investment returns for the California Public Employees' Retirement System have been dragged down by its $27-billion investment in office buildings, housing developments, warehouses and shopping centers. By the fund's own admission, it was nothing short of a disaster area.” (Los Angeles Times)
ARC Hospitality Resumes Buying Binge “It has almost seemed like American Realty Capital Hospitality Trust Inc. was buying hotels like were those little red plastic jobbies on a Monopoly board, and now it’s really happening. In the first tranche of what will eventually be a hotel acquisition surge worth nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars, the REIT has closed on a $150.1 million purchase of 10 hotels from Summit Hotel Properties, ARC Hospitality announced Tuesday.” (Commercial Property Executive)
Private Investors Dominate So Far in 2015 “Last month’s Real Capital Analytics analysis of 2015 apartment sales data showed that private investors account for 69% of deal volume in the garden segment. International investors pulled about 9% of these transactions, while institutional investors captured about 10% of all market share. In the mid- and high-rise segment, which tends to attract more professionally managed capital, private investors secured 49% of all transactions.” (Multifamily Executive)
Dunkin’ Brewing Up Impressive Growth “Dunkin’ Donuts isn’t letting lackluster sales in its most recent quarter stand in the way of store expansion. The coffee chain, a division of Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc., on Thursday said it is on track to add between 410 and 440 net new U.S. stores this year. The expansion represents greater than 5% net new locations. Globally, the company -- which also owns Baskin-Robbins -- expects to open between 615 and 750 net new restaurants across the two brands.” (Chain Store Age)
The 11 Largest EB-5 Projects in America “The EB-5 Program allows for foreign investors to have stakes in US developments while also reducing costs for US developers and helping to create regional jobs. So far, $3.7B has streamed into major US cities, such as NYC and San Francisco. Here are 11 of the largest and most important projects funded by EB-5 in the country.” (Bisnow)
Here are the Seven Deadly Sins of Investing—in Cartoon Form “Aberdeen Asset Management has been getting into the Halloween spirit. Mike Turner, the head of multi-asset investment solutions at the $480 billion fund manager, took to the web on Wednesday to caution investors against seven critical mistakes they can make while investing. Turner drove the point home by pairing each lesson with a fun, 30-second cartoon snippet framed around the seven deadly sins: greed, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, and pride.” (Business Insider)
New health law premiums available online this weekend — Premiums are expected to rise in many parts of the country as a new sign-up season under President Barack Obama’s health care law starts Nov. 1. But consumers have options if they shop around, and an upgraded government website will help them compare. Consumers can see their own premiums for 2016 starting Sunday night on HealthCare.gov, officials said on Friday. The federal website will serve 38 states this time. States running their own sites may have different timetables.
Real Numbers on Stuy Town Sale, Office and Apartment Rents “The private-equity giant Blackstone Group is buying the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village for $5.3 billion—essentially the same price Tishman Speyer paid for the housing complex in 2006. At least that is one way to look at the transaction. Another measure of the riskiness of the deal is that adjusted for inflation, Blackstone is actually paying less than Tishman, whose 2006 deal would have been worth $6.4 billion today.” (Crain’s New York Business)