For the second year, Westerville’s Uptown District will be awarding up to $15,000 in grant money per property for improvements ranging from paint, new windows, awnings to concealing rooftop wiring. Eight local businesses will be receiving grant dollars from the Westerville Industry and Commerce Corp., acting in behalf of the City of Westerville. $200,000 is…
New data show major rebound in both commercial and residential construction led almost entirely by multifamily and single family development. Developers and builders started construction on the highest number of single family homes and apartments since July 2008. Multifamily rose 10% in October 2012 to an annualized rate of 285,000 units. Single family building application…
For March 2012, DQ News reported that 19,953 new and resale homes sold Southern California last month. That was up from February by 36% and up 2.8% from the 19,412 sold in March 2011. The average increase is 37% from February to March since 1988, when DataQuick’s statistics began. This sounds like great news, but…
First quarter 2012 softened a bit as compared to fourth quarter 2011, but net absorption remained positive according to Mark Heschmeyer of CoStar news. Plus, a mild slowdown in the rate of recovery is balanced by the lack of new commercial space coming out of the ground so as a result, vacancy rates are still…
The Puzzuti Company expects to break ground shortly for an 11 story hotel with office and parking garage. The hotel will be on the east, Italian Village, side of the street with a six story office and five story parking garage on the west, Victorian Village, side of the street a block north of the cap. There…
DQ News reported that 15,573 new and resale homes sold Southern California in February 2012. That was up from January by 7.2% and up 8.4% from February 2011. Plus it was the best February since 2007. The increase in sales between January and February was larger than usual. On average, sales have risen 1.1 percent…
It’s a mix of both moderately good news and some bad news. Starting with the bad news is that we had a major drop off in construction and development funding from $321 billion last to $240 billion this year. I was pretty optimistic back during the second and third week of January when I was…
The Utica shale gas resources are forecasted to bring an addition 65,000 at an average $50k per year to the long suffering Northeast sector of Ohio. The area has been Ohio’s highest chronic unemployment since the steel industry shut down in the late 70s and early 80s. According to the study Ohio’s gross domestic product…
DQ News reported that 14,523 new and resale homes sold last month. That was way down from December by 24.5% but up .4% from January 2011. Normally, sales are down from December to January because investors frequently want to close before year end and traditional residential buyers hold off until March or so to get back…
For the first time in five years, a majority of banks are considering growing their loan portfolio due to improving conditions in just about all sectors of the economy. There’s neither an overwhelming consensus nor a large gain in activity, but most banks feel that they are through the worst of the write downs and…
It’s back! Business is cranking again and the phone is ringing. CoStar news reports that the dollar volume of commercial real estate transactions are back up to historical long term average and that’s with a lousy third quarter 2011, due mostly to the debt limit impasse That’s a total of $291.6 billion last year, which…
The unseasonably warm January weather has helped keep many of the new Columbus Ohio commercial real estate downtown projects on or ahead of schedule. Walker Evans from Columbus Underground brings us up to date on many new downtown projects such as the new apartments at Grandview Yard, The Columbia Gas Building, FBI Building, Nationwide Offices, Hilton…
Positive net absorption has continued for the last eight consecutive quarters. The first half of the year was strong then third quarter weakened due to the uncertainly caused by the U.S. debt ceiling increase negotiations. Fourth quarter picked back up to make for a decent if not a stellar year. “Retail Markets throughout the country…
CoStar’s monthly National Composite Index of Commercial Real Estate increased for the seventh consecutive month in November 2011. I know its January 19, 2012, but it takes them around 45 days to get the numbers out to us. Leading the price recovery again has been investment grade property. There’s nothing new there as I’ve been writing…
America’s largest retail trade organization forecasts a healthy 3.4% growth for 2012. That’s below the 4.7% of 2011, but the rate of growth for 2012 is sustainable at least until the next bust and there will be one in seven or eight years. Nothing is going to make the boom bust cycles go away. The…
According to Randyl Drummer at CoStar News, non residential commercial construction posted a 4.5% gain in November over same month last year. All segments showed solid gains. Residential commercial construction starts for apartments resulted in the strongest monthly performance in 18 months. According to Randyl, manufacturing expenditures on new construction was up 12.6% over last…
According to Roger Vincent with the LA Times. “As 2011 came to a close, some commercial real estate experts found promising signs in often troubled markets.” I agree, but that’s quite an understatement in certain segments. In certain market segments, it’s getting real competitive and in others, it’s still lagging. Primary markets are doing much…
The residential market is coming back across the state of Ohio so says Ohio Association of Realtors. The number of single family homes and condos put under contract brought the Pending Home Sales Index up to 135.9, up 33% from October. November marks the seventh consecutive month that pending homes sales rose. November saw 7,415…
I know I’ve been posting more residential real estate news over the last week or so than I have commercial. Commercial real estate pretty much shuts down this time of the year unless you have a year end closing. Plus, we’ve had some relatively bright residential news over the last week or so. The Commerce…
Homes sales in Central Ohio were 1,406 for the month and that’s up almost 7% over November last year. Homes going into contract increased 37% last month over a year ago making November the seventh consecutive month of increases. There’s still significant fall out due to appraisal and lending issues. Total sales YTD still lags 2010…