Nevada Unemployment DropsAnd it may be real this timePosted: April 19, 2011 at 9:25 AM by John McClellandThe state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation has reported that the unemployment rate for the state has dropped to 13.2% while Clark County dropped to 13.3%. This was the first year-over-year increase in 38 months. While the unemployment rate remains elevated, at least this rate drop was due to evidence of job creation rather than a disapearance of individuals in the labor force. March was merely one month but after such a long period of weakness, any encouragement has been taken with open read more |
Multi-Family NewsCap Rate compression, REIT earningsPosted: March 29, 2011 at 5:38 PM by John McClellandREIT's have been on a tear in the past year and apartment REIT’s have been doing particularly well. NAREIT finds that apartment REITs had a return of 47% compared to 15.06% for the S&P 500[i]. Actually I found even the S&P returns to be better than I expected as we headed into 2010. I still don’t believe in a lot of public earnings but then again, I am a real estate analyst rather than a securities analyst. The REIT returns have been even more shocking.Why is the apartment sector farin read more |
Distressed Commercial Real EstateRon Opfer, Andrew J. Segal and Others talk about the marketPosted: March 03, 2011 at 9:34 AM by John McClellandCostar has published a fascinating discussion of distressed real estate trends and distressed debt. Ron Opfer discusses Las Vegas below in this direct quote from the Costar Article.The Craig Promenade deal is typical of what Las Vegas insiders are seeing these days. "There have been three 90,000-square-foot plus retail centers, (one was retail/office), close in the last 90 days. None of them are grocery anchored, and, most of them have been plagued with leasing trouble," said Ron Opfer, di read more |
A visit to the CosmopolitanThis will be the newest thing for a long time...Posted: January 03, 2011 at 11:58 AM by John McClellandCosmopolitan opened on the 15th of December and I finally made it there yesterday. The property cost $3.9 Billion and has 2,995 rooms. This is actually a significant increase in the available room supply on the strip. The word about employment that we are hearing is that the property has about 5,000 employees. That’s about 1.6 employees per room, down from the 2+ figures we used to hear about in the upper-end resorts. It is very likely that recent economic strains have caused firms to automate more ta read more |
A new price indexHedonic IndexPosted: December 02, 2010 at 9:16 AM by John McClellandFNC,Inc has developed and published a new home price index using a hedonic, rather than repeat sale method. Basically, the hedonic approach uses price as the dependent variable and the characteristics of the homes sold as regressors (ie, home size, age, location, etc.). Essentially this is taking a partial derivative of price with respect to each variable, or characteristic of homes.By employing this method, FNC,Inc hopes to overcome some of the problems associated with repeat sales. One being a sample read more |
