Leased Another One - 6,088SF

What a great deal! Both tenant and landlord are going to make out well on this one. Tenant got great rent and landlord got a ton of capital improvements. This lease was for 6,088 SF and located at 167 Progress Circle in Venice, FL. Recession? Where?

New Foreclosure Listing

This one's down in Venice near the Jacaranda / I-75 exit.

Just Listed

PROPERTY IS NOW FULLY LEASED! THANK YOU FOR YOUR INQUIRIES.

Just an idea how inexpensive office space is getting out in Lakewood Ranch. This one's fully furnished.

Latest Office Vacancy Report

Sarasota EDC released its latest numbers...

Downtown Sarasota: 13.21%
University Parkway Area: 18.00%
I-75 Fruitville South to Clark: 22.97%
Venice: 22.03%
North Port: 35.13%
Suburban & South Trail: 28.02%

Note: this does NOT include sublease space. Numbers are definitely higher when this is factored in.

Remembering 9/11/01

Somber day today.

I remember where I was when all of this happened. Back in 2001 I was a full time professional touring musician. Because of my travel and production schedule, I used to sleep in pretty late and, that morning, I had to unexpectedly drive my girlfriend to her job because her car battery was dead. I returned home around 8:30 am and promptly went back to sleep. A short while later the house phone began ringing incessantly. When I finally answered, on the other end was my girlfriend saying an airplane crashed into the WTC. "You should turn on the TV". Didn't think much about it but felt it might be worth at least turning on the news to see how bad the damage was. A few minutes later I watched another airplane fly into the south tower on live TV. Like a lot of Americans, I was transfixed, shocked and horrified by everything I saw that day.

I traveled weekly by air back in those days and things were really eerie. I had a gig in Birmingham, AL that weekend and my flight, incidentally, was about a day or so after the FAA lifted the nationwide ban on commercial and private air travel. In light of the fear around air travel, I still thought it was very strange that there were only 4 people on the entire flight with me that day. My flight was scheduled to depart from Tampa and I had to catch a connecting flight in Atlanta to Birmingham. I made it to Atlanta just fine but then ended up stranded at Hartsfield because the flight crew flat out refused to show up out of fear of further hijackings. In the end, I had to rent a car and make the drive to Birmingham by myself. I made the gig...but just barely. The one thing I remember very clearly was how empty all my flights were in the months after 9/11. I would say passenger traffic was light for nearly a year afterward.

In late December 2001, I was on a 20 city tour for Icebreakers Mints and found myself in NYC for one of my scheduled appearances. One of the things I insisted on doing before I left New York was visiting Ground Zero. I remember that, even after three months, the WTC rubble was still smoldering from fire. That fact stuck with me over the years along with the sight of the memorial "wall" that had been erected a few blocks away (across from Au Bon Pain). Many of the handwritten signs saying things like "Brother Missing, Worked on 104th Floor at Cantor Fitzgerald. Please call XXX-XXX-XXXX if you know his whereabouts" were still there along with quite a few memorial tributes. Really sad.

While I was in college in Connecticut, I spent a lot of time in NYC on the weekends. The sight of the WTC was always a common one to me. Seeing the skyline minus the towers the first few times after 9/11 was something I never got used to.

9/11 is something I won't forget.

FDIC To Dump Nearly $5-Billion in Distressed Assets

Mostly note sales...

FDIC Launching Nearly $5B of Asset Sales

Sep 4, 2009 - CRE News

The FDIC is expected to shortly bring to market a whopping $4.7 billion of mixed quality residential and commercial real estate loans that it assumed from some 20 failed banks.

The assets will be offered through what the agency and its contractors call structured offerings, in that investors will buy only an interest in each portfolio sold, while FDIC will keep the remainder. And the agency is expected to include elements of federal government's proposed public-private investment partnership, or PPIP program, in that it might offer seller financing.

The largest of the offerings will involve $2.7 billion of residential acquisition and development loans that will be marketed through Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, which has handled a number of previous FDIC loan sales.

The other portfolios will each involve roughly $1 billion. Deutsche Bank will offer a package of commercial mortgages, while a venture of Midland Loan Services and Pentalpha Capital Group will handle the sale of a portfolio of commercial acquisition and development loans.

Each of the advisers is said to be close to formally distributing sales announcements, with bid dates expected to be in mid- to late-October.

The agency has so far sold $4.9 billion of assets through six similar structured sales. But it did not offer seller financing for those. It sold stakes of 20 percent and 40 percent in each portfolio, with the interests having a face value of $1 billion. Their sale has generated total proceeds of $209.8 million, or 20.7 percent of the interest's face value.

Those proceeds compare with the 47.7 percent sales price for the $2.9 billion of loans the agency has sold through whole-loan offerings, or what it terms cash sales. Those offerins have been conducted by DebtX and First Financial Network.

Click here for a listing of FDIC's completed loan sales.

But the agency's proceeds in the structured offerings could increase over time.

It's clear that the agency is selling assets at or near the bottom of the market. And investors understand that the agency must sell, especially since banks continue to fail, swelling the FDIC's workload. So the prices at which assets from failed banks sell could be artificially deflated. By keeping a stake, it could theoretically benefit when market conditions and values improve.

Meanwhile, the agency earlier this week took offers for a stake in a $1.4 billion portfolio of residential mortgages taken from Franklin Bank of Houston. The offering, handled by RBS, was the first that adopted the government's Legacy Loan Program, through which the FDIC would provide generous financing to buyers.

Investors competing for the portfolio were asked to bid a price for a 20 percent stake, if they didn't require financing, or 50 percent, if they needed financing. Like in all of FDIC's structured offerings, the investors' stake would grow to 40 percent if certain performance thresholds were met.

The buzz is that the RBS portfolio attracted a high bid of 60 percent of face value. But that could be explained by the fact that 70 percent of the portfolio was comprised of performing mortgages.

LINK

Commercial Activity Predicted To Pick Up, Values Stagnant

Latest report from The CoStar group shows we're possibly headed toward some increase in transactional activity. I'm busier than I've been in over a year and have plenty of prospects and deals in the pipeline - so many at this point that I'm able to cherry pick. The upcoming plays WILL be in distressed assets. That doesn't look too positive for the private sellers out there as they'll have to compete with the flood of foreclosed assets being unloaded.

CRE Sales Will Pick Up, But Values Expected to Stay Flat Through '12
Jones Lang LaSalle Study Finds Banks Will Eventually Be Forced to Stop Delaying REO Foreclosures and Begin Taking Back the Keys of Distressed Assets

By Randyl Drummer
September 9, 2009
Credit markets for office, industrial, retail, hotel and multifamily property should see the effects of a gradual return of liquidity during the second half of 2009, Jones Lang LaSalle predicted in its U.S. Midyear Capital Markets Bulletin released last week.

In it, and in a separate report on global market performance issued this week, JLL noted that several trends are expected to help begin to restore capital markets over the next year, including the $33 billion in equity raised and $5 billion in debt issued through the first eight months of 2009 by global REITs. Also, with the world economy starting to recover, JLL noted foreign real estate investors are again circling select U.S. markets, and real estate companies are finally tapping into government programs such as the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF). For the first time in what seems like ages, meanwhile, the gap in price expectations between buyers and sellers is starting to narrow in the third quarter, JLL executives said.

But while all that may sound great, "it is unlikely that any true debt liquidity will return to the market until mid-2010 at the earliest" with the recession and unemployment continuing to batter occupancies and drive down rents, cautioned Kenneth Rudy, president of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Capital Markets practice.

Still, that may be welcome news to investors battered by the dramatic decline in U.S. property sales and prices that occurred in the first half of 2009. According to CoStar data, the value of Class A office buildings declined by 57% in the first half of 2009 compared with prices paid at the peak of the market in 2007. Industrial and institutional-grade retail property sales declined even more sharply, falling 71% sand 86.5%, respectively, since their 2007 peaks.

By mid-2010, JLL predicts investor interest in U.S. markets will slowly begin to return. But transaction activity likely won't reach the dizzying levels of the 2005-07 market "for a generation or longer," Josh Gelormini, vice president of capital markets research, tells CoStar Advisor. And that may not be such a bad thing for players who manage to fight another day after surviving the current downturn, following an era in which cheap and easy credit and overzealous speculation led to the latest and worst commercial real estate price bubble.

"We're definitely still in early stages of the distressed asset game, working out the assets most likely to have been bought during the boom years, and it's going to take a while to work itself out," Gelormini said. "The fact that large investors around the world are starting to see attractive values and act on the opportunities will help speed the process some, but it will still take several quarters for sales activity to stabilize."

"Although we feel transaction volumes have very likely bottomed and will be turning upward the next quarter or two, values will still have some more downward pressure into next year before we see stabilization."

LINK TO REST OF ARTICLE

Leased Another One, #3 out of 3 for the Week!

We would like to welcome national tenant Kumon Learning Centers to their new home at Tourist Center Drive in University Park. Kumon signed a 5 year deal last Wednesday for their new home. Kumon, based out of Teaneck, NJ is actually expanding in this market. They have over 1,500 locations in 44 countries. I appreciate the business, guys. Thank you!

Leased Another One, #2 out of 3 for the Week!

We want to welcome Dish Network and DirecTV affiliates Rising Star Communications to their new home at 2436 Stickney Point Rd in Sarasota. This lease wraps up this strip center for me seeing that it's now 100% leased. I took this over from another agent in the spring where several spaces had been vacant for a very long time. I gave the landlord an analysis of what needed to be done to make the center more attractive to tenants and we were able to lease the center up with a little bit of effort and some creative marketing. Glad to be able to help. Again, motivated landlord + motivated tenant means another leased space! This is lease #3 for the week!

No recession here. No way!

Leased Another One

We want to welcome Starr Title Insurance to their new home at 100 Wallace Avenue, Suite 250. Starr has signed a 3 year lease with the landlord. We wish them all the best. The location is excellent, almost directly across the street from the Sarasota courthouse.

Took a little less than six months to find a tenant. Not bad, considering the climate. Aggressive marketing + motivated landlord + motivated tenant = another deal in an ailing economy!

Old SRQ Herald Building to Become Publix

We've been hearing about this possibility for months. Looks like it's a done deal. Link below.

Former location of Herald-Tribune to become Publix
GROCERY: Lakeland-based supermarket chain plans to open new site in 2010

Staff Report

Published: Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.

Publix Super Markets has closed a $6.3 million deal for the Herald-Tribune's former offices on South Tamiami Trail.

The Lakeland-based supermarket chain plans to open a new 52,000-square-foot store at the site toward the end of 2010.

Publix will tear down the existing building and build a store with parking underneath. Customers and their shopping carts will ride on escalators up into the store.

Once the new store is complete, Publix will close its older site at the Ringling Shopping Center, transfer employees to the new larger store and hire additional employees.

Publix closed the deal with the New York Times Co., the Herald-Tribune's parent, on Monday, according to George H. Mazzarantani, the Sarasota lawyer representing Publix. The special warranty deed that Mazzarantani supplied showed $44,100 in document stamps, which equates to the $6.3 million sales price.

The building had been for sale since 2003, when the Herald-Tribune announced plans to build its downtown Sarasota office to house its multimedia operations. The media company moved to its new headquarters in February 2006.

The city had considered buying the property for a new police station, but went with another site.

LINK