The first commercial-mortgage-bond deal of the year is expected to be marketed to investors this week, according to sources familiar with the transaction.

The offer is seen as a sign of investors’ willingness to tolerate risk, despite the deteriorating fundamentals of commercial real estate, as long as a deal is accompanied by adequate protection and conservative underwriting.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group, through its real-estate advisory business, will offer a $500 million security backed by existing loans that were refinanced and underwritten to stricter guidelines, the sources said.

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It’s the annual report season for the majority of public companies and those from REITs and real estate operating companies not only lay bare the damage from the economic declines of the last year, but also the strategies they intend to adopt this year in the post-recessionary environment, and their outlooks for when market conditions will improve.

As one might expect, these reports tend to be very specific in detailing what has happened in the past, but become less so in projecting when conditions will improve. In an analysis of reports filed thus far, CoStar Group has identified at least a dozen strategies that companies reported that they have adopted or will adopt for the period in between.

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Florida’s consumer confidence fell in March, by three points to 70, as the state’s bleak unemployment rate cast doubts about the long-term health of the economy and people’s ability to make major household purchases, according to a new University of Florida survey.

“The decline in optimism is almost certainly related to persistent elevated levels of unemployment in Florida and the perception that jobs are neither secure nor widely available,” said Chris McCarty, survey director of UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

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Orlando, FL (March 24, 2010) – The Central Florida Industrial Team of Matt Sullivan, CCIM and Wilson McDowell, CCIM have closed on nine industrial lease deals so far this year totaling over 200,000 SF, despite the sluggish industrial market.  “The industrial market continues to have its ups and downs with very little new absorption in the market,” Matt Sullivan remarks, “The bulk of the completed transactions involve existing Tenants moving around the market for better deals.”  Preliminary research indicates that we may see an uptick in overall absorption for the first quarter of 2010 but vacancy should continue to increase and more downward pressure on rents should remain.  With this in mind Wilson McDowell says, “The ability to be creative in structuring a deal that is mutually beneficial for the Landlord and the Tenant is becoming the recipe for success in this market.”

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No one sets out to develop or own real estate to sell at a loss. Unfortunately, the unprecedented downturn in the real estate market has left many developers and owners of commercial real estate holding property worth less than its cost.

If you earned considerable income from real estate during the boom years, you also paid significant taxes during those years. Selling property now at a loss creates an opportunity to recoup some of the taxes paid in prior years. This is the silver lining in the current market gloom, and may present opportunity for some owners: Losses could mean tax refunds.

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Florida, a frequent issuer of federally subsidized Build America Bonds, is temporarily suspending its use of the highly successful program, state Finance Director Ben Watkins said Thursday.

Mr. Watkins told a Florida municipal bond conference, and then Dow Jones in a telephone interview, that he is “uncomfortable” with an Internal Revenue Service “offset” rule that he believes would let the federal government subtract from the bond subsidy any money the state may owe it for other programs, such as Medicaid or Medicare.

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Colliers International is pleased to present the following white paper examining the shipping trade’s varied impact on industrial demand for space. Occupied industrial space in port markets increased by roughly twenty percent, between 2001 and 2008.  Since its peak, containerized trade has shrunk by 15%.  But not every market has felt the same reaction.

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More than 1,000 banks in the United States have commercial real estate exposure greater than 300 percent of tier 1 capital, said Brian Lancaster, managing director and head of MBS, CMBS and ABS strategies at Royal Bank of Scotland.

Tier 1 capital reflects a bank’s strength. The tier 1 capital ratio is the ratio of a bank’s core equity capital and disclosed reserves to its total risk-weighted assets, rated for credit risk–in this case, commercial real estate. As loan values deteriorate, banks need to hold higher amounts of capital in reserve.

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In June 2009, a headline in a Virginia newspaper read: “Chinese-made drywall used in Chesapeake hotel.” This is not the only hotel that was unfortunately constructed with tainted, reactive drywall imported from China, nor is it the only type of commercial property that reportedly contains Chinese drywall.

Office buildings, restaurants, warehouses, retail establishments and other commercial projects nationwide have been built or renovated with Chinese drywall since 2001, though the number of reported cases is very low. We know that homeowners are still reluctant to report that they have Chinese drywall—to date, only 2,833 cases have been reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. However, based on shipping records, enough drywall was imported between 2004 and 2006 to build as many as 100,000 homes. For this reason, a significant number of commercial projects are likely affected.

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Large dollar property sales seem to be emitting faint sparks of hope for the commercial real estate outlook so far in 2010, particularly in the multifamily and hospitality sectors.

To be certain, the number of property sales with price tags of $5 million or more still declined 16% in January from the number of sales in January 2009, according to CoStar Group Inc. And that was a steeper decrease than seen in November and December.

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