Sales show Gold Coast is back in business

SALES worth more than $34 million have settled in the $850 million Soul supertower in Surfers Paradise.

Property records show sales of seven apartments in the 77-storey tower were finalised at the end of last year for a total of $12.02 million, indicating a turnaround in the prestige property sector.

CBRE's residential marketing director Chris Litfin said the end-of-year buying surge in Soul came as the city's prestige apartment sector registered one of its best Christmas sales periods in five years.

The highest-priced property was a $4 million two-level subpenthouse which was acquired by Andrew Greig, the boss of construction giant Bechtel Australia.

Six other apartments sold for between $1.05 million and $2 million. A Sydney-based investor paid $3.7 million for two apartments on level 50.

The settlements came after the beachfront Surfers Paradise tower was relaunched to the market in the wake of receivers taking on management of the project when banks called in the debt last October.

Mr Litfin said the Christmas period had seen a resurgence in high-end apartment sales.

"We had the best Christmas in five years by a long way,'' he said. "It did come off a low base but we saw really strong sales across a string of projects, and to have people spending over $1 million on an apartment is a massive improvement.''

He said there had also been two sales, at $1.4 million each, for apartments at Eclipse in Broadbeach.

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Selling season starting strongly

HIGH hopes for the first day of the spring selling season did not disappoint as house hunters took advantage of perfect weather to search for a bargain.

Spring is traditionally the season when buyers move house and sellers capitalise on warmer weather in the hope of bigger crowds during open for inspections and auctions. The property industry is banking on the end of winter bringing a change to the flat sales that have prevailed through the June quarter.

Home buyers clearly hit the hibernation button this winter, with Real Estate Institute of Queensland data revealing an obvious slowdown from May to June.

Buyers holding out for a return of the stamp duty concession on July 1 was partly to blame for house shoppers delaying purchases.

But real estate agents have already seen signs of renewed interest as new housing stock rolls on to the market.

CBRE residential projects managing director Paul Barratt said the spring sales period got off to a good start yesterday amid strong interest in one of the Brisbane's newest urban renewal projects - the $270 million Nundah Village (below) development by Property Solutions.

While 60 per cent of the second stage of the development has been sold off the plan, potential buyers were out viewing the remaining units yesterday.

Mr Barratt said many developers timed the release of their new residential projects for spring when buyers are considered more active.

"It is as simple as the weather getting warmer, people are out and the mood changes,'' he said.

"Whether it is demand driven or supply driven it is not really known. But there are always project launches timed around spring.''

Agents for houses listed above the $500,000 Brisbane median house price recorded a slight increase in prospective buyers attending open to inspections yesterday.

On the Sunshine Coast, real estate agents said the season signalled the traditional return of holiday buyers to the area.

The number of spectators doubled to 30 at one auction in Mudjimba yesterday, compared with the numbers attending in the winter months.

Nathan Nicholl, from Ray White Buderim, said a five-bedroom house at 59 Gossamer Drive sold under the hammer for $550,000 after a three-way bidding war.

"Just in the last few weeks things have been much more positive,'' Mr Nicholl said. "We've actually sold five houses recently with multiple offers. We had nine offers and we've not had that happen for a couple of years.''

Propertyology analyst Simon Pressley said the return of stamp duty concessions for some buyers was one of the biggest factors in a change of pace.

He expected a lift in consumer confidence after the delivery of the state budget on September 11 and once the focus had shifted from public service job cuts.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/realestate/selling/selling-season-starting-strongly/story-fndbawks-1226463625627

CBRE: Commercial Real Estate Market Showed Q2 Improvement

The U.S. commercial real estate market showed improvement across all property sectors in the second quarter of this year, according to the latest analysis from CBRE.

CBRE reports that vacancy in the nation's office buildings dropped to its lowest level since 2009, falling 30 basis points (bps) during the second quarter to 15.7%. National industrial availability dropped 20 bps during the quarter to 13.2%, continuing two years of improvement.

The retail availability rate declined slightly to 13% in the second quarter, down 10 bps compared to the previous quarter and down 20 bps compared to the rate one year ago. Absorption levels were well above the low square footage of new space completed in the second quarter, enabling availability rates to improve.

The nation's apartment buildings extended a spirited recovery as vacancy decreased 60 bps from a year ago to 4.8%. Compared to a year ago, vacancy rates declined in 52 markets, with the biggest year-over-year declines in vacancy (150 bps or more) in Fort Worth, Texas; Houston; Cincinnati; Birmingham, Ala.; Salt Lake City; Hartford, Conn.; and Orlando Fla.

"The commercial real estate recovery remained intact in the second quarter, despite growing worries about the global economy," says Jon Southard, managing director at CBRE. "With construction well below typical levels in a recovery, any and all improvements in demand get channeled into a lower vacancy rate."

Source: http://www.mortgageorb.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.11962

Real estate witnesses the rise of the researchers

They’ve long been considered the office librarians: quiet sorts who toiled away in the corner assembling quarterly reports or dull slide-shows.

Now research staff at commercial real estate firms are coming out of the shadows, with beefed up staff, responsibility and visibility as services firms try to provide clients with more rapid and expert analysis.

This is in part because of the uncertain economy, one that has institutional investors looking to add real estate to their portfolios but struggling to find the same level of detailed information available for other investments, according to Asieh Mansour, head of research for the Americas at CBRE. She said that as real estate becomes more integrated into capital markets, clients are asking for better information. CBRE has a huge research team — 450 worldwide — and is trying to better pool data from many localities for clients considering international investments.

“Real estate has evolved and matured as an asset class, and most institutional and high net worth investors are allocating part of their portfolio to real estate,” Mansour said. “As they are having global mandates, the questions are going to be a little more cross-market.”

The rise of online data providers (such as CoStar Group and Reis) has also freed in-house researchers from routine data compilation and allowed them to play a larger role in helping clients predict how hiring trends, investment yields and even politics may affect their decisions. They are using tablet computers and global positioning tools to quickly turn their data into portable, client-worthy presentations.

Studley produces interactive Google Earth applications overlaid with statistics and analysis. CoStar says its iPad application, launched in August of last year, now has more than 10,000 users. “We have kind of taken advantage of third-party providers to spend less time doing the mundane process of culling and collecting data and doing more creative tasks that help support our brokers,” said Steven Coutts, senior vice president of research for Studley.

Research as a career choice

Researchers at Jones Lang LaSalle have dramatically advanced their role at the firm by providing analysis on top of data that is now available to nearly anyone with a broadband connection.

“Research in our industry [typically] is very commodity-like and never truly lives up to the expectations of clients,” said John Sikaitis, director of local markets research for the Americas at Jones Lang LaSalle. “It’s to regurgitate information — it’s essentially kind of reactive information. It’s essentially a back-of-the-office function.”

Since joining Jones Lang LaSalle in 2005, Sikaitis and his partner, Scott Homa, have gone about growing a team of researchers who don’t view their jobs as stepping stones to brokerage work. Sikaitis avoids hiring people from other real estate firms or who are looking to become brokers, instead looking for people who want to become experts on a subject and grow that expertise over a long period, much as researchers do in the financial services industry. “It’s not odd for someone to be a research analyst at Goldman Sachs for 35 years … we want our researchers for Maryland or Virginia to be that same point of contact,” he said.

Colliers gave K.C. Conway similar stature after hiring him from the Federal Reserve in 2010. When executives from Dexus Property Group, Australia’s largest office owner, came to Colliers considering the sale of a 65-property U.S. industrial portfolio, brokers quickly brought Conway in to analyze the best course of action — not to provide basic vacancy and pricing information. The firm sold the portfolio to Blackstone Group for $770 million.

“I think research has evolved from less of a commodity to more of a value-add that can take the ingredients and put them together,” Conway said.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/real-estate-witnesses-the-rise-of-the-researchers/2012/06/18/gJQAI8lOlV_story.html