ROBERT S.
BRUNSWICK
Buchanan Street
Partners
PATRICK
CRANDALL
CIBC World
Markets
JOAQUIN DE
MONET
Arden Realty Inc.
SCOT T FARB
Reznick Group
LE WIS G. FELDMAN
Goodwin Procter
ALEX GLICKMAN
Arthur J. Gallagher
Risk Management
Services
HARVEY GREEN
Marcus &
Millichap
BILL HALFORD
Bixby Land Co.
LE WIS C. HORNE
CB Richard Ellis
CHUCK HUNT
Grubb & Ellis
GUY JOHNSON
Johnson Capital
DIANA LAING
Thomas Properties
Group
MICHAEL
LOWINGER
Wrightwood Capital
JOHN M. O WEN III
MARC PAUL
SCI Real Estate
Investment
MAR TIN PUPIL
Colliers
International
JAN POPE
Jones Lang LaSalle
GERALD A.
PORTER
CresaPartners
TOM SHERLOCK
Buchanan Street
Partners/NAIOP
SOCAL President
JOSEPH M. VARGAS
Cushman &
Wakefield
MIKE ZUGSMITH
NAI Capital
Commercial
today will be small potatoes compared to
what can happen in the future.”
Josephson advised insiders to look at the
bigger picture in their business practices to
come out better on the other side. “None
of us want to run our business as a risk-management strategy,” he said, “The risk
is too great.”
Following Josephson’s presentation,
FOX News’ Varney pointed out that for
the past 25 years until
the fall of last year,
America was the best
performing of the industrial economies.
“Out of 100 quarters,
only five quarters have
we had flat or negative
growth,” he said. Josephson
The financial landscape has been shifted. Where we are
now, Varney said, is that “our public
policy has been geared towards wealth
creation and now it has shifted to wealth
redistribution.”
In a quick summation, Varney recapped
the cascade of how we got here, using
headlines from the beginning of the
fund meltdowns, to Iceland’s bankruptcy,
to when 2 trillion euros were set aside as
a rescue fund for Europe. But he ended
on a positive note, with the assertion that
America will be first to get out of this mess.
“We will be the first out of this mess, and we
are the only ones who can be first,” he said,
“so give yourselves a round of applause.”
—Natalie Dolce
SAN DIEGO
Experts: Multifamily Heaven in 2011
We will see heaven in 2011—in the multifamily sector that is. So said industry
analyst Ron Witten, president of Witten
Advisors, during at the recent National
Association of Home Builder’s Pillars of
the Industry conference and awards gala
in San Diego.
“It’s a tough time right now, but at least
there is hope somewhere out there in the
distance,” said NAHB’s chief economist
David Crowe, who joined Witten to provide a comprehensive economic overview
that focused on the housing correction
in general.
Crowe began his presentation noting
that there were a couple of things that compounded at the same time to create the
housing downturn, such as mortgage stress
and housing price declines. He explained
that although initially Florida, California,
Arizona, and Nevada were poster children
for particularly bad markets, the bad has
now stretched everywhere else.
The second quarter of this year will be
negative, Crowe forecasted, but then it will
be positive, he said thanks to his great deal
of faith in the recovery package/stimulus
efforts. “But that doesn’t mean we will have
employment right away,” he said. “We will
continue to see job losses through this year,
but it will eventually trough out late in ’09
and 2010."
Crowe’s optimism stretched as far as to
say that sales should bottom out this quarter. “I am putting a lot of faith in some of
these still not so great numbers that keep
coming out this month,” he said. “I am
thinking that by the end of second quarter, there will be a positive growth of sales.”
He explained that “if you are looking hard
for good news, it is that we [multifamily
builders] aren’t as bad off as everyone
else, but we are in for some tough times
in the housing market at large for a good
while.” The reality is in fact that there is a
silver lining to this very dark cloud, Witten
noted. “Once jobs come back, we think we
will see (in 2011) more apartments rented
than ever before.”
Witten closed his presentation noting
that if you are in the development business, you want to deliver in 2010 or after
and that if you are in the acquisition side
of the business, you want to be buying late
2009 and into 2010. “While there is a difference from city to city, this recession we are
in is so deep, and the housing competition
is so intense that we don’t think any of the
housing markets will have rent growth,” he
said. “We expect some real challenge here
in the short term and will get in good position for 2011.” —Natalie Dolce
MBA Panel Finds Different Age of
Banking, Recourse on Table
If you look at the multifamily market and
household growth in the US between
1995 and 2005, the increase in the ho-meownership rate meant phenomenal
growth in ownership, but not in rent,
according to Jamie Woodwell, vice president of commercial real estate research
