I was directed to a video from a very smart gal (Dianne Crocker of Environmental Data Resources) on commercial real estate, and where investors should be putting their dollars, yen, euros, etc. for maximum value.

It’s from CNBC, and for me it’s always interesting to hear coverage from them when it can’t be measured by a stock market or other index where most to all of the numbers are publicly known.

Click here to view it. I can’t really comment on it, because for some reason it won’t play on my Mac or my PC here at the office. Darn strange. If you see it, please use the comments section to let me know what you think. I’m sure it’ll play for you just fine; sometimes my network at the office gets twitchy about things like video. I just curse at it and move on. But that’s another story.

She says it’s worth the view, though, and I trust her — so I’m betting that you’ll want to watch it, too.

May was not a kind month for property prices in the commercial sector … on two fronts.

According to the Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index (as reported by Reuters), CRE property prices fell 3.5% in May, as compared to April of this year. More figures after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

They’ve been stronger than residential mortgages, but now the tide is turning in commercial mortgage-backed securities.

According to Standard & Poor’s (originally reported by Seeking Alpha), commercial-backed mortgage securities (CMBS) defaults are expected to rise in the next 12 months to 18 months. But the report says the rise will be a gradual one; much unlike what we’ve seen on the residential side: (More after you make the jump)

Read the rest of this entry »

Having been on the journalism side of the news-coverage equation in the past, I can tell you that sometimes it’s difficult to find the right “expert” you need for a quote on a story.

Now that I’m on the “we-need-coverage” side of that equals sign, I can also tell you it’s tough to get into the stories and/or publications you want to be in.

I hope you’re seeing where I’m going with this. It’s not easy being on either side of this equation. Now, though, there’s a new free service that aims to really equalize the equals sign. More (including the video version of this post) after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since Billy Packer was (and still will be, in a sense) a TV guy, it’s only appropriate that this blog entry be “told” as “video only.” The link is below.

Later this week Next week, we’ll update on our video efforts here at Sibdu. I’m starting to see more videos from CRE pros out there. Hopefully our successes so far will prompt more of you to start doing them. And CREmunity.tv is really starting to be “stocked” with videos, so that’s encouraging.

Here’s the video of this story. Also available as a podcast in the iTunes Store.

From the “…and now for something completely different…” file:

Imagine my surprise when I checked in at the iTunes Store this morning, and discovered that the video podcast version of Sibdu Update Commercial Real Estate News is now featured at the “New and Notable” area in the Business / Business News section.

These podcasts are chosen by iTunes staff. We don’t have any influence over this. (For the record, we don’t spend money there. Well, I do personally. Probably too much, actually. But that’s another story.)

Our video efforts are really paying off, too. We’ve been doing them for only three weeks now, and we’re already up to almost 800 views among all of the major video platforms. Considering we’re a niche area, that’s pretty impressive. In addition, there’s a lot of Web sites that pull video from those platforms and re-purpose them for their own audiences. I’ve seen them in Google searches, so I know our reach is wider than even that.

And who knows how many podcast subscribers we have (not sure how to access that information). Hopefully we’ll have a lot more with the new listing.

The next iTunes Store goal for us? Making it to the “Featured” and especially the “Top Podcasts” lists. That’ll probably take awhile. Then again, I wasn’t really expecting the “New and Notable” listing, so who knows?

You can subscribe to our video podcast here (automatically opens your iTunes client).

Later this week, I’ll detail how we’re doing with video. Not because we’re tooting our own horn — regular readers of this blog know how I feel about too much self-promotion. What we do want to do is convince commercial real-estate pros out there that videos are most definitely worth the time and effort. There’s a vast, untapped market for CRE-specific content, and the first-movers here will really benefit — like us here at Sibdu.

Everyone you hear who knows a whit about investing … no matter if it is in stocks, real estate, businesses, etc. … always says there’s opportunities in down markets. While sometimes you have to wonder about their motivation (as in, they want to make money off of you), they’re usually right.

That’s why when I did a story last week on real-estate investment trusts and the drubbing they took in the second quarter of this year, I have to admit I thought: Ahh, where’s the opportunity here? And how long would it take for someone to identify it?

Well, I got my answer. It’s after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re going to be a bit “wider” now than we’ve ever been (to use a broadcast TV term).

Sibdu’s video-based commercial real-estate news updates and features will be available via CREmunity.tv, a service of the New England Real Estate Journal and REJournal.com. Our first one is already up, and more are to follow.

Add this to our distribution on all of the major video platforms (we’ve trimmed down to six: YouTube, Revver, Viddler, Google, Dailymotion and AOL Video) and our video podcasts in Apple’s iTunes store, and you’ll see that we’re approaching ubiquity. Well, not quite that much exposure, but you get the drift.

We hope you’ll continue to both enjoy our videos and gain useful knowledge from them as we continue to build our own community at Sibdu, prior to our launch. And of course, we’ll continue to bring you the best and latest in news from the world of commercial real estate long after we’ve launched.

Starting today and running every other week on Friday, Sibdu brings you the Deal Blotter … a summary of some of the significant deal flow in commercial real estate across the U.S. If there’s a hugely significant international deal, we’ll bring it to you as well.

What qualifies for the Deal Blotter? Any announced deal, changes to deals, or (especially) closed transactions. We’ll only have time for a few in each installment, so they need to be noteworthy.

Additionally, we’re only doing them in video form. This means to find out the details, you’ve got to watch the video.

Ideally, I’d like to feature contributions from our blog readers and (soon) users at Sibdu. If you have a good deal coming down the pike that satisfies the requirements in the above paragraph, please e-mail me with details and either photographs of the property or a Web site or two that shows the property (both would be preferable).

As soon as we upgrade our blog software, we’ll just plunk down the video right here at Sibdu Blog (as well as have it up at the various major video providers and on our iTunes podcast). Until then, we’ll link you directly to the story (below).

View the Deal Blotter video. Also available as a podcast in the iTunes Store.

There’s a lot to be down about nowadays in commercial real estate. Tightening credit. A slowing economy. Rising vacancy rates. Lower cap rates. I’d go on, but I’ve made myself a bit depressed.

That’s why a new study from Grant Thornton LLP is intriguing. It measures the feelings of commercial real-estate executives about the economy and their own industry. While you can probably predict their overall attitudes about the economy and real estate, some of the figures may pleasantly surprise you.

The raw figures are comin’ atcha, after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »