Market Data
Regional Outlook
South
Florida’s Big Deal
Investors aren’t wasting away in
Margaritaville, they’re buying hotels: since May 2013 four hospitality assets
in and around Key West, Fla., have sold. Ashford Hospitality Trust bought the
142-room Pier House Resort and Caribbean Spa for $90 million; LaSalle Hotel
Properties acquired the Southernmost Hotel Collection for $184.5 million; Carey
Watermark Investors bought Hawks Cay Resort, in Duck Key, Fla., for $149.4
million; and Inland American purchased the Hyatt Key West Resort and Spa
(pictured) for $76 million. Along with healthy hospitality revenues and
occupancies, Key West’s limited infrastructure prevents new hotel development
and increasing air travel is making it more accessible to tourists. But these
purchases also represent a wider investor interest in resort properties,
accounting for $2.5 billion in transactions globally through August 2013 and
18.4 percent of all hotel transactions, according to HotelNewsNow.com.
“The U.S. investment sales market continues
to broaden geographically. This has been most notable in Atlanta, where office
investment volumes so far have surpassed each of the prior two years by more
than 50 percent.”
— Jones Lang LaSalle, 4Q2013 Global Market Perspective
Midwest
Indianapolis Apartment
Stats
Indianapolis has turned the corner on distressed
multifamily properties, according to George Tikijian III, CCIM, senior managing
director of Tikijian Associates Multihousing Investment Advisors in
Indianapolis. While distressed sales comprised more than half the multifamily
sales activity from 2010 to 2012, in 2013, only 1,886 distressed units sold,
compared with 6,432 non-distressed units. “Sales have been dominated by
private, for-profit sellers,” Tikijian reports, “while apartment buyers
continue to be primarily private equity investors, syndicated groups of high
net worth individuals with an occasional purchase by private REITs. The
increasing number of for-profit sales has also resulted in the return of buyers
with Section 1031 exchange requirements.” For more on Indiana multifamily
market opportunities, go to www.TAmultihousing.com.
National
Outlet Centers Lead Retail
“No other retail sector can say
that the recession of 2009 was a good thing,” said Michael P. Kercheval,
president and CEO of the International Council of Shopping Centers at the Value Retail News Fall Outlet Leasing and Marketing Convention in fall
2013. In the past four years outlet center sales have increased 28 percent,
from $19.9 billion to $27.6 billion, he added. “Since 2006, 39 outlet centers
have opened in North America. In contrast, there has only been one traditional
mall that has opened in that same period.”
West
North
Big Lots to Close Canadian
Stores
Retail discounter Big Lots will close the 73 Canadian
locations it operates under the Liquidation World brand as well as Big Lots.
The company acquired the Liquidation World brand in 2011, hoping to use it as a
foothold to expand further in Canada, but extreme value merchandising found few
Canadian takers. Big Lots is also closing its U.S. wholesale operations to
concentrate exclusively on its retail stores.