Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign

Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign. The Five Man Electrical Band sang it back it 1971, and many who follow commercial and residential real estate are signing a similar tune for a whole other reason. There are negative signs — Credit will remain tight. Bank foreclosures will increase as more commercial loans come due. Vacancy rates for all major commercial real estate sectors will continue to increase throughout most of 2010. And, there are positive signs: transaction volume is increasing on a quarter-to-quarter basis, more distressed assets will be coming on the market, and job growth can only improve,

Read what the 2010 President of the CCIM Institute, Richard Juge, said recently and a January 6, 2010 guest on Income Property Investment Talk dot com: “For those of us involved in the business of commercial real estate, stress has turned to distress. Reports of foreclosures on high-quality properties and failed banks are occurring almost daily. Property values continue to decline, along with occupancy rates and rents,” said Juge, president of RE/MAX Commercial Brokers in Metairie, Louisiana. “However, we also see signs of improvement, and while the path ahead is rocky and will be difficult to navigate for many, it also provides some extraordinary buying and leasing opportunities.”

How many investors would like “extraordinary buying and leasing opportunities?” How many know about where to find them? How many brokers and agents are helping investors be the millionaires of tomorrow?

FYI… the CCIM’s Investment Trends Quarterly, which captures market-specific data to determine the relative health of each of the major commercial property sectors, using a 1 to 10 rating system to grade existing investment conditions, with 10 being at the high end of the scale, found that during the third quarter, apartments fared the best among commercial property types with a 5.5 rating, which was up from the second quarter. Industrial ranked second among survey respondents with a 4.3 rating. This was unchanged from the previous quarter. The retail and office sectors tied in the third quarter with a rating of 3.8. For retail, the rating was up from 3.4 in the second quarter, while the office sector also increased from 3.5 during the same period. The hotel sector ranked at the bottom of the survey with a 3.6 rating, but this was an improvement over the 3.4 rating in the second quarter.