Cash-Strapped
Home Builder Works to Avoid Going Under
From
The Wall Street Journal Online By Dawn Wotapka and Kemba J. Dunham
Could
Levitt Corp. be one of the first casualties among builders from the
housing bust? The answer will partly depend on the success of the
company's rights offering, which is under way.
Levitt, of
Fort Lauderdale,
Fla., played an
important role in the history of the nation's home-building industry
and was among the first companies to produce suburb an tract
developments. The company has been ailing for years because of
management missteps.
Now Levitt's future seems uncertain as
it rushes to raise cash. Last month, the company reported a loss of
$58.1 million, or $2.93 a share, in the second quarter, and analysts
don't expect a profit anytime soon. While stock prices of all home
builders have fallen sharply in the past year, Levitt's stock has
been hit harder than others and has plummeted more than 80%, the
weakest performance among the 37 companies in the Dow Jones U.S.
home-construction stocks index. Levitt's shares were down 11 cents
to $2.23 yesterday in 4 p.m. composite trading on the New York Stock
Exchange.
To Read More: http://www.realestatejournal.com/indinvestor/20070907-wotapka.html
Can
REITs Tower
Again Despite Recent Selloff?
From
The Wall
Street Journal Online By Kemba J. Dunham
Judging
by the sharp sell off of real-estate investmen t trusts in recent
weeks, it is clear that some investors feel the good times have come
to an end for these stocks.
Yet, some analysts and investors
believe that the heavy selling was too extreme and that some REITs
-- particularly those in the office and retail sectors -- could
stage a comeback. Indeed, just as the residential housing slump has
produced some steals for home buyers, the REIT selloff may similarly
yield some good deals for stock-market investors.
For a
bargain hunter, a smart shopping list could include Simon Property
Group Inc., Kimco Realty Corp., Public Storage Inc. and SL Green
Realty Corp., which have management teams with proven track records
of boosting shareholder value and which will likely continue to
benefit from strong economic fundamentals.
To Read More: http
://www.realestatejournal.com/reits/20070717-dunham.html
Demand
for Commercial Space Is Expected in Bakersfield
From
The Wall Street Journal Online By Maura Webber
Sadovi
With
soaring home prices and a booming population, the Bakersfield,
Calif., region has drawn comparisons to a young Inland Empire -- the
formerly agricultural region east of Los Angeles.
Inland
Empire, anchored by such cities as San
Bernardino and Riverside, has become a major
warehouse distribution market for the West Coast in recent decades.
Now some s ay it's Bakersfield's turn.
To Read
More: http://www.realestatejournal.com/columnists_com/blueprint/20070208-blueprint.html
Samsung
introduces flat-panel wireless TV
David Berlind
talks to Samsung's senior manager for plasma TV marketing, Bill
Dickey, about the company's new FPT 5084 50-inch wireless flat-panel
TV. I like to mix it up and this is the future of flat screens.
See More: http://news.zdnet.com/2422-13568_22-156140.html
CRM
What is it? Can it help me?
September
13, 2007, By JW Najarian
At one time good
contact management systems like ACT or Goldmine helped the small to
medium sized business track clients and helped us remember when to
call them. Larger companies needed more horsepower to keep track of
customers and sales so they turned to large Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) programs. CRM was hard to implement and many
companies had incredible horror stories, but nowadays larger
companies cannot get along with out CRM. Has CRM come of age for
smaller companies and will it or can it help the small business
owner. There are many CRM companies large and small are going after
the small to medium sized business owners. In this new age of online
sales CRM may be the ticket for automating your sales, making email
marketing work and keeping your clients happy.
Read More: www.prigen.net/articles/crm_article.html
CRM mashup
From small to
large, from the enterprise to the mid-size organization, from
on-demand to on premises with consolidations aplenty, there's a sea
change going on in CRM.
Video Speaker:
Dan Farber, editor in chief, ZDNet Length:
04:12
http://news.zdnet.com/2422-13569_22-155306.html
REAPING
THE REWARDS
Sep
1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Jennifer Popovec
Jeffrey Packard,
an assistant vice president with life insurance compa ny John
Hancock, which does about $2 billion in commercial mortgage lending,
has been waiting for this moment for four years. The rise of CMBS
lenders has radically altered the scene. CMBS lenders have been
driving the terms for all commercial real estate lenders. Life
insurance companies — once a dominant player — have moved to the
back seat.
Read More: http://retailtrafficmag.com/finance/lending/retail_commercial_mortgage_lending/
THE
BIG COMEDOWN
Sep
1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Jennifer Popovec
The spreads
between 10-year Treasuries and CMBS loans now jump more in a couple
days than they did in whole years. Those 10-year, interest-only
loans borrowers were getting? They vanished weeks ago. And conduit
lenders are getting revamped underwriting standards handed down from
on high every couple of days because the market is changing so fast.
Borrowers, meanwhile, acutely aware of the tremors shaking the debt
markets, are holding back and waiting to see where things settle. As
a result, conduit lender activity dramatically diminished over the
course of just a few
weeks.
Read More: http://retailtrafficmag.com/finance/lending/retail_treasuries_cmbs_loans/
Commercial
Index Bucks the Residential Trend
Commercial real
estate sectors are benefiting from rises in industrial production,
shipments of durable goods and wholesale trade according to NAR's
latest Commercial Leading Indicator for Brokerage Activity. The
index rose for the ninth consecutive time during the second quarter
in spite of the slowing economy. "The rise in the index means net
absorption of space in the industrial and office sectors is likely
to expand over the next six to nine mon ths," Lawrence Yun, NAR's
senior economist, said.
Read More: http://www.realtor.org/Research.nsf/pages/commleadingindicator
Markets
Take a Time Out: Transaction Slowdown Extends Into Fall
By
Randyl Drummer
The "August
panic" that capped a summer of discontent in the financial markets
may be over. But with cap rates rising and liquidity sluggish,
transaction volume has slowed across the board from the dizzying
pace earlier this year, and values appear to be dropping in some
areas. Buyers are remaining on the fence longer and tenants are
slower to negotiate leases, waiting for the dust to settle. "It's an
interesting moment," said John Combs, principal with RiverRock Real
Estate...
Read More: http://www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?id=AF38C86C25E3FC5EDC19A93397877D26&ref=100
HUD
Appropriations Funding for 2008
Current funding
levels in the House and Senate versions of the appropriations bill
for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for fiscal
2008, which begins next month.
Read More: http://www.housingfinance.com/ahf/articles/2007/sept/BILLS/HUD-APPROPRIATIONS-2008.htm
Is
Retail Inextricably Tied to Housing?
By
Matt Hudgins
Retail sales are
resisting a historic tendency to follow drops in home prices and
sales, but whether consumers maintain spending levels hinges on
which way the economy goes from here, according to one economist.
"As it stands today, retail sales growth has held up better
than the falling housing market would otherwise indicate," says
Suzanne Mulv ee, senior real estate economist at Property &
Portfolio Research. "For some reason retail sales haven't reacted to
falling home prices yet. That's probably because we have very low
unemployment today, so people aren't worried about losing their
jobs."
Read More: http://www.nreionline.com/news/Retail_Tied_Housing/
Self
Storage Strategies: Development opportunities
dwindle
The great era of
self storage development in the United
States is over, and investors should focus
on acquiring existing properties and squeezing every bit of upside
out of them. Self storage construction activity is slowing down
across the nation because it's tougher and tougher to find good dirt
to build on. Instead, many investors are buying older facilities
that are a little worn.
To Read More: http://nreionline.com/september_article1.html
Wanted:
Mixed-Use Experience
Aug
1, 2007 12:00 PM By Ben Johnson
Despite the buzz
surrounding new and proposed mixed-use projects, the product niche
remains a fledgling and untested formula for long-term financial
success.
Lenders increasingly are challenged in underwriting
mixed-use projects because of ever-higher construction costs,
changing market conditions and the built-in unknowns about how mixed
uses ultimately will work together.
Read More: http://nreionline.com/property/mixed_use/real_estate_long_term_financial_success/
Banks Get Tough with Condo
Projects
APARTMENT
FINANCE TODAY • SEPTEMBER 2007By Bendix Anderson
Condo developers
desperate for construction financing are taking what they can get.
Condominium
developers are starving for construction financing as commercial
banks focus on rental projects. With condominium markets soft and
the capital markets in turmoil, the banks that still finance
condominium development are demanding more equity and higher
interest rate spreads—terms that desperate developers are happy to
accept because they often have no oth er choice.
Read More:
http://www.housingfinance.com/aft/articles/2007/sept/BANKS0907.htm
Defeasance
Goes Discount
APARTMENT
FINANCE TODAY • SEPTEMBER 2007 By Jerry Ascierto
“Defease at a
discount” may soon become a common phrase.
Earlier this
year, something u nusual started happening to multifamily borrowers
with defeasance options. They were able to earn a profit on
defeasance transactions after rates rose enough to give them the
option of paying less for the collateral securities than the amount
owed on the loans.
Read More: http://www.housingfinance.com/aft/articles/2007/sept/DEFEASANCE0907.htm
Time
Is Not on Your Side
APARTMENT
FINANCE TODAY • SEPTEMBER 2007 By Bendix Anderson
With prices
headed down, the time to sell apartment properties is now.
Prices for
apartment properties are as good as they are likely to get for the
next year or more, making this a great time to sell. Despite chaos
in the capital markets, buyers still abound for strong properties in
high barrierto- entry markets and for Class B and C properties that
can be renovated to raise their rents.
“If you’re thinking
about a sale in the next one to three years, I’d think about it
now,” said Mark Forrester, a partner in the Phoenix office
of Hendricks & Partners, a real estate brokerage.
Read
More: http://www.housingfinance.com/aft/articles/2007/sept/TIME0907.htm
Telemarketers
and Junk Mail
By
JW Najarian
Many of you have
received the Andy Rooney rant on junk mail, junk email and
telemarketer calls. He has some great tips for getting rid of
telemarketers and junk mail, but according to Snopes.com, it turns
out that the email that is floating around is FALSE. Andy Rooney did
make comments about stuffing the return envelopes with junk mail and
returning it to the company that sent it to you, but did not suggest
any of the other methods attributed to him. I like the one where
when a telemarketer calls you put them on hold and walk away till
they hang up. That was brilliant, but there are other ways to stop
the harassment. Go to Snopes www.snopes.com/politics/business/telemarket.asp
to get their suggestions. This assumes you believe the company that
is calling you is legit. I have asked several companies to take me
off their list only to have them call me time and time again.
In the bogus Andy Rooney piece it is mentioned that when you
get phone calls from a computer. You know the ones that are silent.
These computers are looking for people to pick up to mark the number
as goo d. Also to check what times the number is answered to find
out when might be the best time to call you back and actually get
you. The email suggests you hit the # key continuously to freak out
the computer which will knock you off the list. I have searched
everywhere and have not found evidence of this working.
I
have used a wav file in the past on my messages to deter computer
calls. I have used the disconnected phone tone at the heading of my
message. This tells the computer that this is NOT a working number
and takes you off the list. I have had great success in the past
with this method, but will say that with today’s technology I would
not guarantee the results. You can find the wav file I used at www.telephonetribute.com/signal_and_circuit_conditions.htm.
There is a link to the file sit_disconnected.wav. I will record my
new messages with this tone and let you know the results. FYI.. I
never had anyone complain to me that there were strange tones on my
phone. There are machines you can buy that add these tones to your
phone.
Email
vs Spam
I was on a
webinar for the CRM article that was hosted by Infusion. It was
EXCELLENT. If you are marketing using the web this is a MUST HEAR /
SEE Webinar. They sent me the link to the replay of the live call I
was on. Here it is. www.gotomeeting.co
m/en_US/island/webinar/provideEmail.tmpl?_sid=71159484%3A33CB573C62AC186&Action=rgoto&_sf=2
Interesting
Links
RE Trends www.retrends.com/real_estate_trends_articles.asp?mode=articlearchive&view=byyear
Intuit
Commercial Real Estate Software http://realestate.intuit.com/products/office/overview.asp
Thank
You
I would like to
thank the readers of this newsletter who have been so wonderful with
their suggestions and help. Also I would like to thank everyone who
has sent me such wonderful feedback on how much they like my
newsletter. I work hard to find just the right stuff so it is great
to hear. If you enjoy my newsletter, please pass this along to a
friend or colleague. I would like to grow the quality and
distribution of this newsletter.
Please do not forget that I
am an investor looking for great commercial deals and that I am also
a commercial lender. You can find our company at www.PathfinderCorp.net.
I look forward to your business and will help in any way I
can.
Kind Regards,
JW
Najarian
818-353-9100
