We have just concluded our study of commercial real estate trends in Las Vegas. There are several takeaways from the report.     Distressed properties, reflect weakened fundamentals and deleveraging, leading prices downward.    Industrial buildings are approaching the same price-per-square foot that they were near the beginning of the decade.    Many office sector businesses have downsized or gone out of business and the existing demand seems to be comi... read more

Yesterday, Standard & Poor's released the S & P/Case-Shiller home price indices. Major news outlets were all over the place when quoting these. Some said it went up, some down, some sideways. I would like to highlight a few features of these indices: -There are seasonally adjusted and non-adjusted indices. Standard & Poor's, in a technical bulletin, recommends against using the seasonally adjusted series because it can misinterpret variations in the choppy real estate markets with seasonality. -S &a... read more

David Leonhardt had an interesting post in the New York Times business section today. He provides an exibit of home prices against mortgage rates. As you can see from his chart, the relationship is not very close, that is they are not cointegrated. The relationship betweent the two series is not direct, presumably because the borrowing rate is not the only variable people need to think about prior to their home purchase. Job growth, family size, comparable rents and other factors are mixed in there too. Nevertheles... read more

HAMP, or the Home Affordable Modification Program, an initiative that the Obama administration has been pursuing recently, is missing quite a few of its intended marks. Like its name suggests, HAMP was intended to target 3 million struggling homeowners at risk of foreclosure by working with their lenders to lower or modify monthly mortgage payments so that these individuals could stay in their homes. Of course, like any program the government pushes, there are many flaws. HAMP is no exception. According ... read more

National commercial real estate trends continue to reflect weakness. Housingwire.com (Gaffney, 8/26/10) notes that 88 percent of respondents to a development survey stated that development was almost non-existent in their markets. Such is the case here in Las Vegas as well and while there is still some construction in office, retail and industrial, there is almost no planned product and no planned product that we are aware of in industrial. Similarly, on REIT.com, Green Street Advisors analyst Steven Frankel als... read more