A recent Wall Street Journal cover article headline read, Builders Fuel Home Sale Rise. Curious, I read further: New home sales jumped 28.9% in January from a year earlier [Gotta like that, been tough sledding in this market]. In the past two years, more homebuilders have offered to pay closing costs [That sounds like a solid [...]
It's no secret that apartments have become the apple of institutional investor's eyes. For good reason - the sector has held up well in the (supposedly over) recession and has continued to provide stable and reliable cash flows. It this point, however, I think we are looking at the beginnings of a bubble. Here is the cash flow from a [...]
A recent Wall Street Journal article focused on the value of views in real estate. I will shorthand it for you: views are valuable - sometimes very valuable. The article goes on to describe the tragedy of a Colorado couple who lost a view and value when an inconsiderate neighbor had the audacity to legally build a berm and plant [...]
I attended the 2013 Annual Redevelopment Law institute Seminar sponsored by the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education (NJICLE for short) yesterday. Two important takeaways: Section f and Incentive Zoning. Section f is a little used section of the New Jersey Redevelopment Law that allows municipalities to name certain areas "in need of redevelopment" if [...]
No, this is not political commentary. It is, however, good news for the people of New Jersey and the poor out-of-staters who have to drive here. Senator James W. Holzapfel of Ocean County has proposed that the Garden State do away with jughandles, the world's worst traffic management tool that requires motorists to take a [...]
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal focused on the issue of government subsidies for real estate development. The article discussed the decision by Oak Creek, Wisconsin to provide a $2.75 million dollar tax break for a hotel developer. The municipality determined a need for a hotel near Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport, and, responsibly, commissioned [...]
Well, another storm. Trees down. Power lines down. Power out. Again. Since the power companies have decided that burying their lines is too costly (although I am convinced that the public would accept even a 50 year project of this sort) what exactly is their Plan B? I have a thought: design power grids to work like [...]
I recently had the opportunity to interview Ann Babineau, Esq., CRE http://wilentz.com/anne-s-babineau about her practice in redevelopment and asked her about trends in the industry. She said that most of her current work is in two categories: Transit Villages and Brownfields. Transit Villages are residential developments at a transportation hub, most often a train station. The concept is an [...]
The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global plans to invest as much as $11 billion of the country's oil and gas money into real estate in major American cities. The Norwegians recognize that prices in major city markets are high, but according to Karsten Kallevig, the sovereign wealth fund's [...]
Hot off the presses is an issue paper published by the Rutgers University Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy entitled Reinventing the New Jersey Economy. http://policy.rutgers.edu/reports/rrr/RRR33dec12.pdf. The paper was written by James W. Hughes, Dean of the Bloustein School and Joseph J. Seneca, a Professor in the Bloustein School. The report initially focuses on employment trends [...]
