Harbor Group Sells New York Office Building for $270m

Harbor Group bought the property in January 2010 from JP Morgan Chase for $107 million. Habor Group International LLC has sold an office building at 4 New York Plaza in Lower Manhattan for $270 million to a joint venture of HSBC Alternative Investments Limited and Edge Fund Advisors. Harbor Group bought the property in January 2010 from JP Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) for $107 million in a 15-year sale and lease-back deal for 75% of the property. The 1.1 million square foot building is located at the corner of Water Street and Broad Street http://www.globes.co.

New York Beats London as Top Spot for Real Estate Investment

New York overtook London as the No. 1 destination for real-estate investment for the first time since 2007 after improved access to financing spurred more U.S. deals, Cushman & Wakefield Inc. said in a report today.
Investments grew 166 percent to $29.7 billion in the New York area in the 12 months through August, compared with a year earlier. Investment in greater London increased 2.4 percent to $27.2 billion, according to the report based on data compiled by the New York-based broker and Real Capital Analytics Inc. Buyers are drawn to cities like New York and London because of a greater focus on the “biggest and best,” Cushman said in the report. The trend will continue in the next six months, it said.
Outside of the U.S. real estate lending tends to be tighter and is still “very focused on prime, leased assets only,” Cushman said in the report.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-05/new-york-beats-london-as-top-spot-for-real-estate-investment-on-financing.html

Investors Have Been Moving Into Secondary Markets

Investors have been moving into secondary markets such as Dallas and Minneapolis amid growing confidence in the recovery and soaring prices that drove down yields on office buildings, shopping malls and apartments in prime cities including New York, San Francisco and Washington.

The trend may be cut short. Turmoil in financial markets over the past three weeks -- triggered by concern that Spain and Italy will struggle to pay off their debts, signs that the U.S. will remain mired in sluggish growth through next year and Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating -- may send buyers back to prime cities and push prices even higher, as long as the economy doesn’t deteriorate so much that trophy properties suffer.

U.S. commercial Rents Will Reach Their Former Peak Levels By 2015

U.S. commercial rents will reach their former peak levels by 2015, with growth in office and warehouse rates surpassing the apartment sector in two years, according to a forecast by RREEF.

Buildings in New York, San Francisco, Boston, San Diego and San Jose, California, will have some of the strongest growth after office rents fell 4.9 percent nationally last year, Alan Billingsley, head of research for RREEF, an investment unit of Deutsche Bank AG (DB), said yesterday at a conference in San Francisco.

“Net operating income is still moving downward, but when rent growth starts, it really takes off,” Billingsley said.

U.S. commercial property prices fell 4.3 percent from a year earlier in January, the second straight monthly decline, as distressed sales in all sectors held back values, the Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index showed March 22. The delinquency rate on loans packaged as commercial mortgage- backed securities rose to a record 9.2 percent in February, Moody’s said March 15.

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