Why Invest in a Niche Real Estate Sector? Image by Frank Busch from Unsplash. Commercial real estate is broad and complex, offering a wide range of investment options to property investors. Most industry players, however, often focus on a few well-established property types, such as multifamily, industrial, retail, or office buildings. Meanwhile, several niche real estate asset types can provide the same benefits, while often being more feasible with lower upfront costs, especially for smaller private investors.  Investing in a niche property sector can help investors diversify their por ..read more

When it comes to financing multifamily investment properties, many investors choose loans backed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. After all, HUD loans offer some of the industry’s most beneficial financing terms. They have low, fixed interest rates and some of the longest, fully amortizing term lengths of any commercial financing products. That said, even with the host of advantages that HUD loans offer to borrowers, they have also gained notoriety for taking entirely too long to originate and fund. Of course, some would agree that HUD’s wait times are only a small price to ..read more

54 Gold St. in Canton, N.C. Image from Google Street View. Janover has closed $820,000 in financing for the acquisition of two self-storage facilities totaling 20,900 square feet in Canton, N.C. A North Carolina-based credit union provided the five-year, fixed-rate loan with interest-only payments in the first 12 months. The loan terms include a balloon payment and a 25-year amortization period.  Tyler Pepper, capital markets associate with Janover, arranged the deal between the lender and the borrower through the Janover financing platform. The buyer, a Texas-based investor, paid nearly ..read more

As the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates, investors across the commercial real estate sector are anxious to rework their investment strategies to withstand the challenges of an uncertain future. The higher cost of capital is slowing down real estate investments across all sectors. However, some types of assets will continue to be a safe bet for investors. In the article below, we examine the major commercial property types and how each will likely perform in the coming quarters based on key indicators, such as rent growth or occupancy dynamics.   Image by Victor from ..read more

Image by Guilherme Cunha from Unsplash. More and more investors and developers are seeking to get in on the hot industrial real estate sector. It’s hardly surprising — steady rent increases of 5.5% over the past year and historically low availability mean that those with distribution and manufacturing facilities in their portfolios have been positioned to win big.  Of course, due to low availability, the costs of acquiring industrial assets have skyrocketed, with sticker shock keeping many would-be investors away. While construction costs also have risen a staggering amount, there can be ..read more

Image by Adeolu Eletu from Unsplash. A Look at the Top NYC Lenders in August 2022 With record low interest rates over the past year, commercial real estate lending was a major source of growth for banks. However, the change in macroeconomic conditions, due to inflation and rising rates, is expected to slow down demand for commercial mortgages. The Mortgage Bankers Association projects overall commercial and multifamily lending and borrowing to drop to $733 billion this year, down 18% from the $891 billion recorded in 2021. Despite this notable drop, MBA anticipates that lending will rebound i ..read more

A Close-Up on the Top 5 Markets for Industrial Investments Industrial real estate has been the rock star of the commercial real estate realm for several years, and the pandemic served as rocket fuel for the sector, driving it where many had anticipated it would go — just in half the time. With the unparalleled rise of e-commerce and the ever-greater role logistics providers play in our lives, demand for modern industrial space has hit an all-time, sustained high. And it’s likely to soar even higher. A second-quarter report from JLL highlighted that while logistics, distribution, and third-part ..read more

Seattle. Image by Wilhelm Gunkel from Unsplash. Although office vacancy remains elevated in most markets, with many employers offering remote or hybrid working options, Seattle seems to break the mold. The metro’s largest office users — Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple — are all coming back to the physical office realm, if they haven’t already. As a result, there’s a great deal of optimism for office investment in Seattle. But do the numbers check out? We look at two recent reports focused on the first quarter from brokerage firms Colliers and JLL to find out. Worrying Vacancy i ..read more

Distribution center. Image by Marcin Jozwiak from Unsplash. Prologis and Duke Realty have revealed a $26 billion merger, which will see Prologis acquire 153 million square feet of completed industrial assets in an all-stock transaction. The companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter of this year. Prologis, the country’s largest private industrial real estate owner, continues to get bigger. As of March, the REIT had approximately 1 billion square feet of industrial assets around the globe in 19 countries. With the acquisition of Duke, not only will Prologis gain the completed pro ..read more

Image by Viktor Bystrov from Unsplash. Apart from hospitality real estate, few other property classes have felt the pain of the pandemic as acutely as brick-and-mortar retail properties. Two years ago, consumer spending plummeted to one of its lowest-ever levels in stores, while overall spending shifted dramatically to e-commerce transactions. This led to notable challenges not only for retailers themselves but for commercial real estate owners. The impacts weren’t limited to shopping centers and big-box retail properties, either. They also affected mixed-use assets, which broadly rely on ret ..read more