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Like the Black Knight in the classic “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” film after both of his arms are cut off, the commercial real estate market endured multiple economic blows in March, but it shrugged them off as if they were “just a flesh wound.”

Even though values continue to bump along the bottom, the market’s tenor was tested and came through remarkably calm, given all the reasons to be volatile.

Perhaps the best indication of this trend is found in the commercial mortgage-backed securities market, which ended the first quarter with about $8.7 billion of new offerings.

At that level, commercial mortgage-backed securities volume so far this year is on par with 2000 and 2002. In those years, annual volume in the U.S. amounted to $46.9 billion and $52.1 billion, respectively.

The strong start has many market participants believing that commercial mortgage-backed securities can reach $40 billion in volume this year, which would be almost four times what was offered in 2010.

Yet even at that huge increase, it is important to keep in mind that $40 billion would represent only a fraction of what was offered in 2007, when commercial mortgage-backed securities volume peaked at $228.5 billion, according to data from Commercial Mortgage Alert.

While volume was quite encouraging in the first quarter, what about rates?

Despite a pullback during the month while events unfolded across the globe, rates actually ended the month about where they started, and they ended the first quarter lower than where they stood on Jan. 1.

The five-year and 10-year commercial mortgage rates now are about 0.25 percentage point lower than at the beginning of the year, according to the John B. Levy & Co. Commercial Mortgage Survey.

The rates are in the 4.75 percent to 5.65 percent range for stabilized properties at a leverage level of about 65 percent to 75 percent, the survey found. While lower leverage transactions price more aggressively, loans that represent 80 percent of a property’s value are available again, but at higher rates.

Other good news can be found in another major part of commercial real estate lending.

The default rate for commercial real estate mortgages held by U.S. banks fell to 4.28 percent in 2010’s fourth quarter from 4.36 percent in the third quarter, according to Real Capital Analytics, a New York-based commercial real estate research firm.

This is the first quarter-over-quarter default-rate drop in the past 17 quarters dating to the second quarter of 2006, when the default rate was a paltry 0.58 percent.

Interestingly, the highest default rates are on the books of the country’s largest banks — those with more than $10 billion in assets — probably because they can afford the write-downs.

Default rates as reported by the smallest banks — those with less than $1 billion in assets — generally are lower. Since smaller banks are much more highly concentrated in commercial real estate, it appears they are putting off inevitable write-downs.

The strategy of putting off a write-down would actually be a good one if values were rising.

However, according to Moody’s CPPI index, which measures value trends by tracking multiple sales of the same property, we are clearly bouncing along the bottom.

Recently released data for January indicates that values are down about 4.3 percent compared with the prior 12 months and down 42.8 percent since the peak in October 2007.

The trouble for lenders in the Richmond area and other secondary and tertiary markets is that real estate values in smaller markets are not increasing as much as they are in primary markets.

Real Capital Analytics’ study indicates that recovery rates on liquidated loans in secondary and tertiary markets are much lower than on loans in primary markets.

But like Monty Python’s Black Knight, many community banks are muddling through this mess, now with no arms or legs but continuing to fight.

04/11/2011

Publicity! Good and Bad in Chappaqua NY | Chappaqua NY Homes

 

 

In my prior life I spent eight years working in higher education public relations where I heard over and over again that “any publicity is good publicity.” But I’ve never understood it.

A football team has the longest losing streak in the nation can get publicity, but is it good?

However, I whole-heartedly agree that any publicity is an opportunity to provide a positive side to a story — if it is managed properly.

For example, let’s take a situation I witnessed just this summer. A Columbus, Ohio, man was murdered on the front-steps of his rental home. Of course, the local television stations covered the story with the same gusto as TMZ heading after Paris Hilton’s alleged cocaine habit. The home is currently for sale, and the REALTOR® sign and the listing agent’s name were all prominently featured throughout the shots — on all three networks. If that wasn’t enough, the home’s owner was on one station saying something to the effect of “this is a common situation in this area, you hear gun shots all the time – day or night.”

Now, I’m an investor thinking about buying a rental in Columbus and even looking in this neighborhood. What just happened? More than likely, I’m walking away from this area and looking for another location — or, at best, I’ve just adjusted my offer down by a huge percentage taking into account the “neighborhood factors” that I’ll be encountering.

So was this publicity a good thing? Of course it wasn’t. The listing agent’s name was on television associated with a murder, the home’s owner is on record saying this isn’t a good neighborhood, and most importantly a man just lost his life.

While, there may have been little that could have been done to put that publicity into a positive light, most of the time there are a few things you can do to promote your “side” in the most positive light.

1. Be Prepared. You know the problem existed. Don’t ignore it and wonder why it isn’t going away. Sit down with the home owner and have a plan of action if something were to happen. What is your “story?” Did that home owner regret his words later? Maybe. However, in the heat of the moment he said what he believed at that moment. Not realizing that he just decreased the value of his property by a significant amount.
2. No Comment Equals Guilty. You may simply need time to get a hold of your lawyer or broker to clear a question. However, never — and I mean NEVER — say “no comment” when a question is asked. That equals guilty, period. End of story. Also, don’t hide behind the phone; “calls to Mr. Doe were not returned” is nearly as bad. The best way to handle it is to steal a line from the police — “I hope that you understand. I am not authorized to discuss that at the present time.”
3. What Is A Solution? This goes back to the first two points — if you’ve already addressed the issues internally, then you need to create a collection of solutions that could be completed to address the situation. Don’t take this as a chance to just “pie in the sky” items. Be prepared to be accountable for the items you are proposing and use it as an opportunity to build community and local connections while addressing issues in the community, block, association, or neighborhood.
4. Blame? Really, are we in fifth-grade? Or Washington, D.C.? Don’t go blaming others for the situation — it does nothing for anyone. The public sees you as whiny and the person you called out is now angry and not interested in addressing the situation with you.
5. Show Compassion. What killed BP’s Tony Hayward with the Gulf disaster? He was perceived to not care about the people of the Gulf Coast. Like it or not, perception is reality. If you show that you care about the situation — genuinely caring — the overall public will respond favorably to you.

Is this list a license to “spin”? Of course, that’s what public relations is all about, getting your message out to the public to lessen the distance between how they really see you and how you want them to see you. I equate spin to flipping; if done right it is a “win-win” situation for everyone involved.

Any chance to get your “story” out to the public is wonderful, but not all publicity will be good publicity

 

Full Story

Chappaqua Luxury Homes

Apr 11, 2011 3:30:42 PM | Weblogs

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Katonah NY Split Level Home | Katonah NY Homes The Split-Level Neighborhood… Chances are that if you live in a classic three- or four-level split, you can look across the street at another split. You can probably look to your left and right and see more splits; perhaps a few behind as well. In some communities, split levels are…

Yesterday I bummed you out with a riff about favors becoming impossible to fulfill. Worth a thought: the alternative, the good news that comes with the bad, is the massive asymmetric gift.

A gift is not a favor, because no recompense is implied or expected. A gift is just from me to you, that’s it.

The internet makes it easy to give gifts to large numbers of people at very very low cost. Editing a wikipedia article, for example, is a gift for the ages, one that might be seen by a million people over three years.

This leads to a new clause in the social contract. In this environment, we expect that civilized participants will give. Just because. Because they can. Because the gift makes all of it work better.

While mass favors have to fade (too easy to ask for, too unfair at scale), mass gifts show up to change the equation. Gifts are easy to scale, now, the more generous, the better. For all of us.

Have a question you’ve been dying to get the answer to, but didn’t know who to ask? Want to find out what products and services your business needs to add to the mix? Well, our buddies at Facebook have done it again with Facebook Questions! I’m going to break it down so you can decide if Facebook Questions is right for you, and show you a few examples of what happened when we tried it out last week.  

What is Facebook Questions?

 

The Facebook Help site says, “Facebook Questions lets you ask any question and get quick answers from your friends and other people on Facebook.” Questions is designed so that anyone on Facebook can help you find the answer. So when you ask a question, it is shared in News Feeds. If your friends answer or follow that question, it will be shared with their friends getting your business in front of many other people that might not know you.

How Can I Ask a Question on Facebook?

You can ask a question from a few different places:

• From your Profile: At the top of the page, next to where you would normally share a status update, select the “Question” link. Then enter your question and add poll options if you wish. Click “Ask Question” to share it.
• From your home page: At the top of your News Feed, next to where you would normally share a status update, select the “Question” link. Then enter your question and add poll options if you wish. Click “Ask Question” to share it.
• From your Questions page: Click “Question” next to “Share” at the top of the page. Then enter your question and add poll options if you wish. Click “Ask Question” to share it.

What Kinds of Questions Can I Ask?

You can ask any type of question, but Questions was designed to help you get fast, short-form responses. For example, you can use Questions to get recommendations from your friends (What are your favorite iPhone apps?), learn more about the people around you (What was your favorite movie as a child?) or start discussion about current events (How can I help the earthquake victims in Japan?).

Anyone on Facebook may participate in a question you ask, but answers are always filtered to show responses from your friends first. So, even if many people have responded, you will always see what your friends have said first. You can access the responses from everyone else by clicking “Others” within the “Posts” section of the question.

How Do I Create a Poll or Ask a Polling Question?

If you’d like to create a traditional poll where you specify all the options up front and other people may not vote for more than one option, click “Question” at the top of your home page or profile. Then click “Add Poll Options” after entering your question to add the answers you want to have available. Finally, un-check the “Allow anyone to add options” check box.

So, now that you know some of the basics, here’s what happened when our social media manager, Ellery, put Facebook Questions to the test last week:

We often hear feedback that our users want new or different kinds of email marketing templates to add to our ever-growing library of 700+, so Ellery thought that would be the perfect question to ask on VR’s Facebook page. He posted this question: VerticalResponse is hard at work creating new email templates for you. What categories would you most like to see?

It looked like this on the page:

 

 

 

The good thing for us was that it was easy for people to engage with and cast votes, and it got almost 1,200 people viewing it. The bad thing that happened was that the question got cut off, and voters could only see the top three categories unless they clicked on the box that read 5 More…

One other big learning experience we had was by opening the categories to allow people to fill in their own, which we wanted to do in order to get the best feedback, we also got categories that weren’t necessarily related to email marketing. You can see the random category “beaches” that sprang up in the votes.

 

 

 

Facebook Questions allows you the ability to turn on or off the option for users to add answers outside of the ones you have given them to choose from. So, it’s worth noting that depending on what you are trying to learn, you should be aware of that when setting options.

 

Here are some of the more interesting social media marketing stories from the past week.

Beer Drinkers Turn to Social Media at Safeco Field

If you’ve ever been to a baseball game, you’re probably accustomed to beer vendors walking up and down aisles. Now at Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, you can tweet to have beer delivered to your seat.

GameStop Opens a Facebook Store

GameStop opened its Facebook store on Thursday, offering unique content to its 1.8 million Facebook fans including the ability to pre-order games for guaranteed in-store pickup. This comes a month after Warner Bros. began offering rentals through Facebook and may be the start of something new with social gaming.

Walmart is the Least Loved Department Store on Social

The retail giant can’t seem to catch a break lately. On the eve of a sex discrimination class action lawsuit, social media users ranked it as the least loved US department store. Read on to find exactly how badly they’re doing.

PepsiCo Talks Social After Soda Brand’s Fall

Pepsi has fallen to third in the soda rankings behind Coke and Diet Coke. Some have pointed to its focus on social media and de-emphasis on traditional advertising. However, PepsiCo’s global director B. Bonin Bough does not blame their social efforts for their decline in sales.

Read More: Lifestyle