Finance & Investment

The timing of this recession could not have been worse. The National Bureau of Economic Research puts the start at January 2008. This coincides with the final leg of the lame-duck Bush Presidency. Regardless of your politics, it is clear that the Bush administration a) lacked the political power to produce apic1n all-encompassing response, and b) realized after Lehman’s demise that the complex, global recession developing was going to require a long-term solution.

New York—REITs posted their best-ever quarterly gains since the NAREIT indexes’ inception in 1972.

The REIT tsunami that struck the industry in late 2008 and continued into 2009 has officially subsided. During the past five months, the REIT industry has raised $20 billion of new debt and equity, and even companies whose very survival was in question are now raising unsecured debt at attractive pricing.

Investing in apartments is a multi-part effort that involves determining return expectations, seeking apartments, conducting due diligence and exiting the investment. The economy and financing conditions have changed, and that impacts the apartment investment process.

Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.— Sycamore Urban Properties, a multifamily investment and development company based in Irvine, rescued a troubled 41-unit townhome development in a successful demonstration of its model for acquisition, stabilization and rapid revival of financially distressed real estate.

Over the last few generations, a handful of local old-line families controlled New Jersey’s multifamily inventory. However, in the early 2000s, the popularization of Northern New Jersey’s Hudson Waterfront (Jersey City, Hoboken, Weehawken, West New York and Edgewater) and the entry of institutionally backed builders paved the way for a liquid investment market that took hold in 2004.