Portland Real Estate Market thread

[MarkDaMan]

Lenders shy away from condos, but not much else
Those that specialize in green projects and bridge financing find opportunities
Portland Business Journal - by Wendy Culverwell Business Journal staff writer

Commercial lenders are filling a gap left by banks that have tightened loan requirements in the face of the subprime lending crisis.

Several local lenders are avoiding condominium construction, but are still interested in offices, apartments and industrial real estate.

State figures indicate nonresidential construction is growing at a 5.4 percent rate each year. This year, according to office market research by the Portland office of Grubb & Ellis, commercial construction eclipsed residential construction for the first time in five years.

"As we talk to our developers, I've been expecting things are going to slow down a bit, but they say they're going forward," said David Williams, president of Portland's ShoreBank Pacific.

By one estimate, some $30 billion in commercial mortgage-backed securities has no takers, forcing the lenders to hold the balance on their books. The result: Interest rates are hovering between 6.4 percent and 7 percent and underwriters are less willing to loan more than 75 percent of the value of the project than they have been in recent years.

ShoreBank favors commercial deals involving properties away from core business areas. It particularly likes developers building with sustainable materials and practices. The bank has a commercial lending program that allows it to fund sustainably designed projects even if the developer isn't putting up 25 percent of the equity.

Case in point: ShoreBank provided the construction loan for Graham Street Lofts, a $4.3 million 12-unit condominium project at Graham and Northeast Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The project had plenty to give lenders pause. It is being developed in an untested neighborhood by architect Hilary Mackenzie, who previously built houses. Mackenzie is also using concrete building blocks in place of steel or wood-based framing.

"That's a good project," said Williams, who called it an example of a builder doing something new and challenging.

In a similar fashion, President Rance Gregory said NBS Real Estate Capital is busier than ever in part because primary lenders are more likely to stick to their guns when it comes to debt ratios.

Concerned about being overextended, banks are refusing to place more than 70 or 80 percent debt on a property. That opens the door to firms such as his that provide loans and investments to bridge the gap, so-called mezzanine financing.

NBS Real Estate Capital invests in a variety of commercial properties on behalf of its two investment funds, Morrison Street Funds 1 and 2.

NBS Real Estate Capital has closed two mezzanine loans in the past month. The first, for $1.09 million, was packaged with a senior mortgage from Bank of America to buy a 96-unit apartment complex in Lakewood, Wash.

In the other, its $1.35 million mezzanine loan was packaged with a senior mortgage from an Arizona-based bank to fund the purchase of a 132-unit apartment complex in Mesa, Ariz.

"Business has picked up a lot because of the residential crunch," Gregory said. "We're doing a lot of mezzanine lending as a result."

Lenders, though, are shying away from condominiums.

Since its inception, NBS Real Estate Capital has funded just one condominium project. Seeing trouble in the overbuilt market, it stopped considering residential condominiums several years ago.

Gregory continues to favor apartments because so little supply was added during the boom in condominium construction. As a result, both apartment occupancy and rental rates are up. Around Portland, the vacancy rate for apartments is below 3 percent in most neighborhoods

Nelda Scott Newton, vice president of Wells Fargo's Portland-based Real Estate Group, said the bank continues to loan on office, subdivisions, apartments, land, industrial and so forth.

She said the market is solid in Portland for office and industrial property. Both rents and occupancy rates have risen. For Class A office space, the vacancy rate is about 5.6 percent. The industrial vacancy rate is about 6.9 percent and dropping in the face of record leasing activity.

Downtown hasn't seen a new office tower since 2000, although that is about to change with a handful of new buildings in the early stages of construction and development.

"Only now are we really seeing vacancies low enough to justify new office," she said.

The same thing is true in the industrial sector, with the added benefit to owners that the market is severely constrained by the urban growth boundary.

The only real estate product that has really showed signs of slowing is residential land. With the pace of sales slowing, home builders aren't out buying up land for future development.

Mike Glanville, chairman and chief executive officer of Q10 National Mortgage, a Portland-based commercial lender, said that since his firm chiefly lends on behalf of 20 or so life insurance companies, it isn't dependent on the market for commercial mortgage-backed securities.

Glanville said his firm can lend on just about anything but condominiums, and offers loans for $1 million to $25 million. He said he hasn't seen an unusual number of commercial loans in trouble.

wculverwell@bizjournals.com | 503-219-3415

http://portland.bizjournals.com/port...ml?t=printable

[Leo]

Not about condos, but relevant to PDX real estate market:

"Pollock's Lake Oswego company, Buena Vista Custom Homes, built too many houses during the boom in towns from Scappoose to Happy Valley to Bend. Next month, Pollock will put all 230 of his unsold homes and condos up for a two-day auction. The asking prices have ranged from $300,000 to $650,000. The bids will start as low as $69,000. "

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/o...l=7&thispage=1


Once again, about 12-18 months behind San Diego, Miami, etc. My guess is that just like in those places, it will be another 6 months or so before we see "real" auctions. The first auctions in other cities have typically resulted in few sales because the winning bids failed to meet the developers' expectations. Only in the last few months have the expectations begun to be tempered...

[MarkDaMan]

except in Portland we are talking of the low thousands of extra units and in other parts of the country they are dealing with tens of thousands of housing units. I believe I read somewhere that Miami had 80,000 unoccupied units? I might be wrong on the city, but Portland's market isn't nearly as saturated as the others you mentioned.

[Leo]

Originally Posted by MarkDaMan

except in Portland we are talking of the low thousands of extra units and in other parts of the country they are dealing with tens of thousands of housing units. I believe I read somewhere that Miami had 80,000 unoccupied units? I might be wrong on the city, but Portland's market isn't nearly as saturated as the others you mentioned.

Yes, the numbers are quite different. Places like Miami and San Diego have a much higher number of vacant units than Portland. Although these cities also have larger resident and tourist populations, so if you wanted to compare numbers, you'd need to normalize them to the populations first. Also, the number of vacant units in those cities did not become apparent (for some reason I don't understand - maybe some funny accounting in the RMLS system?) until well after the market decline began; possibly, Portland's vacant inventory is similarly understimated now.

The fact that Portland is behaving so similarly to those cities, albeit with a 12-18 month lag, leads me to expect that the normalized excess supply in Portland may be similar. After all, if the Portland oversupply relative to real demand was not similarly large, why would these auctions appear?

[Leo]

While sale prices of U.S. homes fall, the Rose City's still rise

...

Home prices have dropped below 2006 levels in most U.S. metro areas this year, but Portland's median sale price for new and existing homes was up 6 percent from a year earlier. October's median price was $287,000, compared with $270,000 a year ago, according to a monthly survey by the Regional Multiple Listing Service, which lists most home sales in the region.

The price growth came despite a bloated inventory of unsold homes that would typically drive down prices. So far, sellers have refused to reduce their prices dramatically even though they have to wait nine weeks on average to sell. That wait is up by more than one-third from a year earlier.

"It defies explanation," Jerry Johnson, Portland housing economist, said of the market's strength.


I don't understand why a professional economist would say something like this. Even a casual observer knows that this situation (rising prices and falling sales) occurred in every other housing market before prices started to fall. To me, the simplest explanation is that the market is "sticky" (inefficient) and that there can be a significant time lag before prices adjust to demand.

In fact, Johnson himself later allows for this possibility:

Johnson, the housing economist, says Portland might not continue to show price growth through the end of 2007. The region's December 2006 median price was $273,500.

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/o...810.xml&coll=7

[MarkDaMan]

The return of the renters: Upended housing market spurs Portland's apartment market
Portland Business Journal - by Wendy Culverwell Business Journal staff writer

The mortgage meltdown is good news for apartment owners.

Owners of multifamily buildings will benefit when former renters who overreached and face foreclosure return to the rental market. Grubb & Ellis, in its 2008 real estate forecast, notes that multifamily housing is the only commercial real estate sector to benefit from the housing slump because more people are renting.

Metro-wide, apartment vacancy rates stand at about 4.4 percent, down from 4.9 percent a year ago. Average rent has climbed to $781, up 5.7 percent in the past year.

The numbers are helped by a slowdown in new construction, with about 770 units expected to be constructed in the area this year, somewhat below the annual average of 1,000.

About 3 percent of the city's apartment inventory of roughly 250,000 units has been converted to condominiums in recent years, further dampening supply.

Jerry Johnson, a real estate consultant and principal with Johnson Gardner LLC, talks of one owner who plans to offer a "Welcome Back" package for former tenants facing foreclosure and returning to the rental market. His theory: They'll be solid renters for several years to come as they rebuild their credit.

Phil Oester, a multifamily broker with Hendricks & Partners, said mortgages with low interest rates and 100 percent financing took some of the most financially stable renters out of the market.

"Now they're back," he said.

The bigger impact will likely result from current tenants who might have become owners when mortgages were easier to come by. The days of easy mortgages are quickly drying up.

It's been a long wait for owners. Rising levels of homeownership helped push up vacancy rates and lowered rents.

Nationally, the rate of Americans who own their own homes climbed nearly three points to 68.2 percent in the past decade, according to U.S. Census data. In Portland, one percentage point equals about 7,000 households. A three point rise in homeownership here translates roughly to 21,000 fewer rental units.

That has a huge impact on a market this size, said Johnson.

Now, however, it's starting to correct.

According to Hendricks & Partners, the Portland apartment market is benefiting from the addition of 14,500 jobs in the past year along with a drop in home sales, as reflected by the rising inventory of unsold homes.

According to the Regional Multiple Listing Service, the number of closed sales fell more than 25 percent in October and pending sales were off by 22 percent. With 15,567 homes actively for sale in October, the inventory would satisfy demand for 8.4 months, up from 4.6 months in 2006.

Oester has noticed a surge in buyers for complexes built in the 1980s and 1990s. They're updating the interiors with new cabinets, counters and trim, raising rents and planning to sell in just two to five years.

"Most activity is in rehab," he said.

Joseph Chaplik and Bernard Gehret, partners in the multifamily brokerage Joseph Bernard Investment Real Estate, agree that apartments are attractive to buyers and to banks.

While bankers are sweating over bad mortgage loans, financial institutions continue to write loans on income-producing properties, such as apartments. Interest rates have even dropped in recent weeks, they said.

The reason: Good fundamentals and the rarity of foreclosures on multifamily properties.

According to LoopNet, the California-based real estate data service, the average price per apartment unit in the Portland area is up to $103,658, a 39 percent increase from just a year ago.

At the same time, eager buyers are accepting a lower return on their investments, anticipating a future rise in value. The average capitalization rate for apartment deals in the past year is about 6 percent, down from 6.3 percent a year ago.

wculverwell@bizjournals.com | 503-219-3415
http://portland.bizjournals.com/port...ml?t=printable

[MarkDaMan]

Ashforth Pacific buys a 'trophy' downtown
PacWest Center - The $309-a-square-foot sale continues the firm's recent westside purchases
Friday, December 21, 2007
RYAN FRANK
The Oregonian

Ashforth Pacific Inc. will close today on a $161.5 million purchase of the PacWest Center, a landmark downtown office tower and the city's third-tallest building.

Ashforth Pacific, Portland's biggest downtown office landlord, worked around the clock over three weeks to finish the purchase from Mitsubishi Estate Co. before Dec. 31, said Scott Langley, Ashforth Pacific's president.

The sale price comes out to $309 per square foot, the highest rate ever paid for a downtown Class A office tower.

Tokyo-based Mitsubishi had been the majority owner in the building since it rose in 1984. Ashforth Pacific's purchase signals that the firm, normally seen as a conservative player in Portland real estate, plans to continue its recent buying wave.

Ashforth Pacific has a near monopoly on Lloyd District properties. Since 2005, it has bought the ODS Tower near the Morrison Bridge and One Pacific Square in Old Town. Ashforth Pacific also has ventured outside Portland with purchases in Seattle and San Francisco.

Langley says the firm sees a bright future in the three cities. All three have vibrant downtowns with land-use policies and mass transit to support them. Their economies benefit from Pacific Rim trading and growing populations, especially from young people.

The numbers show there's a reason to be bullish on Portland's downtown office market. Class A vacancy rates are down to a tiny 4.8 percent, and Cushman & Wakefield predicts the market will get tighter in 2008.

The PacWest Center covers a full downtown block. Brokers call it a "trophy asset."

The futuristic design by the late Hugh Stubbins of Massachusetts and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Architects has stood the test of time. The tower has a unique two-story atrium with its own mini-Main Street: a coffee shop, bank, barber, dry cleaner, convenience store and two restaurants.

The tower's exterior is glass and aluminum panels imported from Japan. Its two interlocking cubes increase the number of corner offices.

The Wall Street Journal in 1997 named the PacWest Center the best building in Portland, and it won building of the year three times from the Building Owners and Managers Association, according to Cushman & Wakefield, which has managed the building for Mitsubishi.

"It has all kinds of pedigree," Langley said.

Today, the building is a prize purchase for anyone who can afford nine figures.

It is 96 percent full, with an A-list of renters, including KeyBank, law firm Schwabe, Williams & Wyatt, Merrill Lynch and software company Oracle. And it's in a prime spot across the street from City Hall and the University Club, and just a few blocks from the federal and county courts.

Once transit mall construction is finished, the building will be sandwiched by the new downtown light-rail line, with stops on either side.

Mitsubishi Estate Co. began marketing the sale in September, said Gary Griff, a senior director at Cushman & Wakefield.

Griff shopped the building around to a limited group of buyers who could handle such a large purchase and could close by Dec. 31. Griff said Mitsubishi had owned the building since 1984, and it had come time to sell.

Langley and Ashforth raced to put their bid together and investigate the building so they could finish before Christmas week. "Frankly, people are running on adrenaline fumes," Langley said.

Ashforth Pacific, as a branch of Connecticut-based Ashforth Co., and its investment partner, GE Asset Management, have deep pockets. GE Asset Management, General Electric's pension fund manager, has more than $175 billion.

Griff and Jim Lewis, an associate at Cushman & Wakefield, represented the seller, formally known as 1200 Building Associates.

Langley expects to get the keys this morning.

Ryan Frank: 503-221-8519; ryanfrank@news.oregonian.com; blog.oregonlive.com/frontporch.
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/o...480.xml&coll=7

[MarkDaMan]

Robust downtown attracts office investors, developers
Shorenstein buys Portland portfolio from Blackstone
Portland Business Journal - by Wendy Culverwell Business Journal staff writer

Two of Portland's biggest commercial office portfolios changed hands in 2007, a sign that investor interest in downtown surged in the past year.

In the spring, San Francisco-based Shorenstein Properties LLP acquired the former Portland holdings of Equity Office Properties Trust from The Blackstone Group LP, a massive private equity fund with assets approaching $100 billion.

Last February, Blackstone had purchased Chicago-based Equity, at the time the nation's largest office landlord, for $39 billion and then split the national portfolio.

The $1 billion Portland transaction made Shorenstein the Rose City's largest landlord with 47 properties and 4 million square feet in downtown and Kruse Way. Portland represents about 40 percent of the equity investment of Shorenstein's $1.1 billion Eight Fund, of which the Yale University Endowment is a leading investor.

Although Blackstone's tenure as a Portland owner was brief, the New York-based investor made a significant change that will affect tenants as they enter new leases or renew existing ones.

For leasing purposes, Blackstone "re-sized" local buildings, meaning tenants will pay for more square footage of common areas such as lobbies, hallways and restrooms, boosting their overall rent and, not coincidentally, the financial performance of the portfolio.

"The Blackstone Effect" will be most evident as tenants renew leases and find they are not only being asked to pay higher rents, but that their leases now include more square footage. Brokers say Blackstone's detail-oriented accounting suggests Wall Street thinking is permeating the commercial real estate market in Portland.

Shorenstein is proving to be an active member of the Portland community.

In September, it broke ground on First & Main, a 16-story office tower first proposed by its predecessor Equity.

The $150 million project will have underground parking, ground-level retail and 346,000 square feet of office space with individual floors that are an average of 20,000 square feet.

When it opens in early 2010, it will be the first significant new office building in downtown since Fox Tower opened in 2000.

The start of construction permanently ended speculation that the site could be developed as a new Multnomah County Courthouse. It had been the county's preferred location because of its proximity to other government bodies. Instead, the county and the Portland Development Commission have assembled financing to begin relocating nearby streets to clear a block at the Hawthorne bridgehead for the courthouse.

In another significant transaction, Gerding Edlen Development Co. sold three-fifths of its marquee development, the Brewery Blocks, for a cool $291.6 million. Two of the blocks were previously sold.

Institutional investors advised by JP Morgan Asset Management bought the three-blocks, which are home to Whole Foods, the M Financial office building and the Louisa apartments.

Mark Edlen, principal, said he wanted to keep the Brewery Blocks, but had to consider the needs of investors who supported transforming a former brewery into a mixed-use development.

As the minutes ticked off 2007, investors remained busy. Shortly before Christmas, Ashforth Pacific Inc. paid $161.5 million for Pacwest Center, or $309 per foot, the 30-story, 522,000-square-foot Class A office at 1211 S.W. Fifth Ave.

Dominant in the Lloyd District, Ashforth Pacific now owns 2 million square feet of office space in the Central Business District, making it the largest landlord in downtown.

While 2007 saw plenty of trophy-quality properties change hands, investors were also interested in Class B, C and historic buildings.

Patrick Callahan, who once led Northwest operations for Equity Office, formed Renaissance Group in Seattle. For its debut acquisition, Renaissance selected the Sherlock Building, a historic office at 320 S.W. Oak, for which it paid $9.75 million.

Unico Properties LLC, best know as the Seattle-based managing owner of U.S. Bancorp Tower, expanded its local portfolio when it bought the Commonwealth Building from the OCF Joseph E. Weston Public Foundation for $27 million.

Unico plans to spend another $6 million to update the hallmark building, 421 S.W. Sixth Ave., which was designed by Pietro Belluschi and was one of the first office structures constructed after World War II using modern techniques, including glass exteriors.

wculverwell@bizjournals.com | 503-219-3415
http://portland.bizjournals.com/port...ml?t=printable

[MarkDaMan]

Housing's slide allows for apartment market's rise
Portland Business Journal - by Jon Bell Special to the Business Journal

If anyone's smiling at the way the housing market's gone of late, it may very well be apartment landlords.

Granted, slowing home sales and tightening credit haven't caused the same stir in the Portland area as they have across the country, but there's no denying that the brakes are on in the Rose City. As a result, fewer people are in any kind of hurry to buy homes.

Add in a steadily growing population -- fueled by an influx of 25- to 35-year olds -- a stalled condo market, a paucity of new apartment construction and renters who are content to sit tight, and it's no wonder that the apartment market is surfing along just fine in the wake of housing's slowdown. Rents and property values are up, renter discounts and vacancy rates are down, and the year ahead, while not entirely rosy, is looking to bring more of the same.

"Portland is a growing market," says Joseph Chaplik, co-owner of Joseph Bernard Investment Real Estate, a Portland commercial real estate firm. "We really haven't seen Portland [apartment building] owners raise rents significantly over the past decade, so I think it's been coming. Portland's been a really inexpensive West Coast city, but it's having a good boom."

According to Mark Barry, principal of the apartment appraisal firm Mark D. Barry & Associates, turnover rent rates -- those set for a unit when a tenant moves out -- rose 5 to 10 percent in 2007. Overall rates -- those imposed on an entire building -- rose roughly 2 to 3 percent.

What's driving the increases?

For starters, apartment vacancies in the greater Portland area are down to 2.9 percent, the lowest in 15 years. Two years ago, they were at nearly 6 percent.

Much of that has to do with the fact that not as many people are buying homes as they were a few years ago. The U.S. Census Bureau says that the national homeownership rate dropped from 69 percent in the third quarter of 2006 to 68 percent in the same quarter in 2007. In the West, it dropped from a little more than 65 percent in the third quarter of 2006 to 63.5 percent in 2007.

The crumbling subprime lending market is to blame for some of that, but Portland's relatively expensive home prices also have kept some prospective buyers wearing renters' shoes.

"A 2 percent change [in homeownership rate] can result in a lot more renters," says Barry. "And with subprime lending heading south, tougher underwriting and the expense of homes, people are taking more of a wait-and-see attitude to home buying. All of those reasons have resulted in pretty good demand for apartments."

Also, there's been very little significant apartment construction in the metro area for some time.

Barry says just 1,500 building permits were issued for new apartments in 2007, one of the slowest years in the recent past.

And out in the suburbs, homebuilders have snatched up most of the expensive land that could be used for new apartments.

"The apartment guys ... can't even compete for that ground anymore," says Kirk Taylor, a veteran apartment broker executive with CB Richard Ellis in Portland.

Another factor that has helped lead to higher rents is the sprucing up of some formerly rough urban neighborhoods. Nicer, cleaner apartments in nicer, cleaner neighborhoods mean landlords can charge more.

"That's definitely another part of it," Chaplik says.

Besides pushing rents up, the changing market is allowing landlords to essentially do away with discounts, incentives and lax restrictions. With less pressure to fill their buildings, landlords are also finding themselves freer to employ bill-back systems, whereby they charge residents for a percentage of a building's utilities, usually water and sewer.

The recent market trends have not only driven up rental rates, but property values for apartment buildings as well.

According to Barry apartment values were up by 4 to 6 percent. The median per-unit sales price for apartment units in 2007 was $70,000, up from $66,400 in 2006. And, total apartment sales rung in at $950 million for 2007, nearly $100 million more than in 2006.

"There's more money being thrown at me than we can place," says CB's Taylor, noting that many apartment complexes for sale receive 10 to 12 offers, and some as many as 18.

Many of those making the offers want to boost the size of their portfolios.

"A lot of investors are trying to capture a lot more units," Chaplik says.

But not everything is shaping up to be hunky-dory for the apartment market in 2008. Taylor worries that eventually there could be overbuilding in the apartment space, and Barry is concerned that the economy, especially in light of a weak finish to 2007, could put a damper on the good fortune that's shone on the apartment market over the past year.

"There are a lot of signs that the economy is heading south," Barry says, "and I think that's what people are a little nervous about. '07 was a very good year for landlords, but my sense is that '08 is not going to be quite as good."

portland@bizjournals.com | 503-274-8733
http://portland.bizjournals.com/port...ml?t=printable

[MarkDaMan]

this is somewhat enjoyable...

Sub-prime loans take toll on Kruse Way
Suburban offices see vacancy rates climb in ’08, industry experts say
Daily Journal of Commerce
POSTED: 06:00 AM PST Tuesday, February 26, 2008
BY TYLER GRAF

Portland’s office market is at a conflicting confluence: On the one hand, the downtown market is booming and is set to perform even better in the coming years. On the other hand, the suburban market has hit a slump, with vacancy rates rising along traditionally strong Kruse Way.

Once considered a major player in the office-market game, suburban offices are seeing increases to their vacancy rates in 2008, according to real estate professionals working along the corridor.

The reasons for the precipitous shift are debatable, but industry professionals point to the sub-prime meltdown as the primary culprit. It’s forced many mortgage companies – a big presence on Kruse Way – to move away.

It’s a sign that the corridor was relying too heavily on one industry, whose practices were economically unsustainable, said Steve Reaume, a 13-year real estate professional currently with Pacific Real Estate Partners.

“Kruse Way is still golden, but it got too top heavy with these mortgage companies,” Reaume said, adding that the market started getting glutted by mortgage companies three years ago, when Kruse Way was viewed as an atypically strong market. “And everyone in the business knew it was getting too top heavy.”

Mark McFarland, also of Pacific Real Estate, agrees with Reaume’s assessment but says that within eight to nine months the market should correct itself, as investors become less cautious about where the market is headed.

Rents along the corridor have also increased, despite the mortgage-company exodus, due to offices being bought and flipped by investment firms.

Early last year, private equity firm the Blackstone Group purchased 1.6 million square feet of office space from Equity Office Properties Trust in the hopes of making superficial improvements to the properties over a short period of time, then selling at a higher value – the common act of “flipping.”

In a two-month time period, the Blackstone Group resized the properties, increasing lobby space and widening hallways. This effectively forced some tenants out of their space and drove up rental rates.

The situation in the Kruse Way area runs counter to what’s happening downtown, where the lack of vacant space – currently hovering around 5 percent – has caught the attention of some real estate professionals. As a result of near-capacity Class A office buildings, less desirable Class B offices within the city are starting to demand higher rates as well, Greg LeBlanc, a real estate analyst at Portland State University, writes in his department’s quarterly report. In the fourth quarter of 2007, rents for Class B offices jumped 9 percent, to $21.16.

“It’s still sort of a soft market – a landlord market,” Pacific’s McFarland said. “But we’re still signing leases (along Kruse Way) with some of the highest rents available.”

For Kruse Way, however, Reaume sees it more as office-market triage: Space sits dead for a while, in part due to the sub-prime fallout, but this gives other companies an opportunity to move there. By the end of the year, he expects the market to have corrected itself.

“These companies have left,” Reaume said, “but other companies will take up the space in the future.”
http://www.djcoregon.com/articleDeta...ndustry-expert

[Sekkle]

That's where I work, unfortunately (no, I don't work for a mortgage company). It would be much more convenient for me to work downtown - then I could just take MAX. Maybe in a few months...

[Okstate]

I've never understood the big deal about Kruse Way. From Microsoft live maps (birds eye view) there doesn't seem to be a HUGE amount of buildings in the area. Maybe i'm just comparing it to other suburban office parks that are really big.. DTC (Denver) & Corporate Woods (Kansas City).

[MarkDaMan]

^Kruse Way is a road full of sprawl. It isn't an office park, which makes it even more pathetic. It's just suburban sprawl.

The draw is that each building is hidden in the trees and hills. I have been in some of the offices and they are absolutely gorgeous inside with breathtaking views.

[zilfondel]

So I thought this was funny:

Originally Posted by bils

American businessman buys $18m downtown condo

Bruce Constantineau, Vancouver Sun
Published: Tuesday, October 23, 2007
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/n...69f1af&k=70550

VANCOUVER - An unnamed Portland, Ore. businessman has paid a record $18 million for a 48th-floor penthouse suite in downtown Vancouver.

The 7,400-square-foot unit in the Private Residences at Hotel Georgia won't be ready for occupancy until 2011, when the $400-million development near Georgia and Howe is completed.

Sotheby's International Realty Canada president Ross McCredie said the buyer wants to remain anonymous, but the Vancouver property will be one of several he owns throughout the world.

"It's not the first time he's bought a penthouse suite in a big city," he said.

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...0&postcount=19

[Sekkle]

An unnamed Portland, Ore. businessman has paid a record $18 million for a 48th-floor penthouse suite in downtown Vancouver.

It was me. But keep that on the DL.

[Sekkle]

^
Do you ever say or write something that you think is semi-funny, but then you think about it and it’s not really that amusing at all, it’s just an obvious thing to say and you feel a little like an idiot for having said it? Yeah, I’ve been doing that shit a lot lately.

[sopdx]

Your photo tours always redeem you.

Since when is Vancouver BC a big city?

[cab]

When Phil Knight said it was.

[Okstate]

^ ForAteOh, if it makes you feel any better i feel stupid every time i post.

[bvpcvm]

so many comments of mine go unposted... which would be to the great relief of many, if only they knew.