With final agreement expected at the end of this month, Colliers Turley Martin and Indianapolis-based F.C. Tucker Co.'s Commercial Real Estate Division have announced a merger. Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Once completed, the two firms' combined operations will exceed a closed annual transaction volume of $825 million and will manage more than 25 million sq. ft. of office, industrial and retail properties.
According to the company leaders, the merger fits both organizations' shared vision and commitment to build a dominant central region-based full-service commercial real estate firm. The companies also want to maintain their market leadership in the cities where they currently operate major offices - Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mo., Nashville, Tenn., and St. Louis.
* NREI featured a year-end update on the state of multifamily market cap rates and prices nationwide on page 10 in the January issue. This data was provided to us by Property Information Exchange (PIX), based in New York. An error was made in the multifamily section, and the corrected market cap data is below.
Multifamily: Based on the year-end 1997 numbers, multifamily market cap rates were 11.17% nationwide in December, down from 11.30% in December 1996. The average for the year was 11.20%.
In pricing terms, PIX data indicates that, for 1997, the price per sq. ft. remained relatively stable throughout the year, showing a slight year-end decrease of $57.54 per sq. ft. vs. $57.84 per sq. ft. in December 1996. The average for the year was $57.62 per sq. ft.
* Also, our January supplement Multifamily Monitor ranked the top 10 apartment real estate investment trusts and in error left out Avalon Properties Inc., a multifamily REIT based in Wilton, Conn. According to ASSETrac Inc., an information service based in Bloomfield, N.J., the market capitalization for Avalon is $1.19 billion, ranking it No. 7 on the list.
* In a column from the National Multi Housing Council by Stephen Lefkovits in the January Multifamily Monitor supplement, a line of type was left out in the jump from page 7 to page 9. The corrected sentence should have read as follows: "The creation of the Multifamily Housing Institute (MHI) as the central source of financial and property performance data for the multifamily industry is a major step by the lending industry attempting to harness this benefit."
"As economic fundamentals continue to strengthen, real estate has been a direct beneficiary," says Dewey Struble, CCIM, 1998 CIREI president, whose CCIM International Commercial Real Estate Conference, co-sponsored by NREI, is scheduled for June 11-13 at the Sheraton Hotel and Marina in San Diego.
The commercial investment industry has seen a gradual but positive repricing of real estate, with the U.S. economy doing its part to sustain optimal conditions for investor confidence. Attendees at the session "Investment Real Estate: Where is it in the Cycle?" will hear how much capital remains in the marketplace, whether buyers should be prepared to be long-term players and what the outlook is for sellers. Panelists including Craig Evans, CCIM, Cushman Realty, and Hugh Kelly, Landauer Associates, will address whether a potential deflation of real estate values is on the horizon and where the six major property markets are in the cycle.
In the session "How to Catch the Asian Flu and Get Healthy Returns," Alice Young of Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler, New York, will discuss the Asian economic crisis and its effect on the U.S. real estate market. Which Asian countries are hardest hit, and are they now more likely to sell, buy or hold U.S. real estate? The session will include advice on international business negotiations and insight into cultural and legal differences.
Microsoft Senior Architectural Engineer Bret Arsenault will explain, during the session "Web 2000," that several changes in technology, infrastructure and social fabric will have to occur before the full economic promise of the World Wide Web can be realized. Arsenault will identify these changes, how they may be brought to fruition and who may lead these innovations.
Other speakers at the meeting will include Peter Pike, former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, and authors Tom Morris and Harry Dent.