AUSTIN, Texas – Hendricks & Partners announced the sale of Silvervale Crossing – Brookstone, an 840-unit development located at 8800-8900 North Interstate 35 in Austin. The Buyer was GE Capital Realty, Inc. ofAddison,Texas. The Seller was FPA Multifamily LLC, aCalifornialimited liability company, ofSan Francisco. The property includes the 336-unit Silvervale Crossing, built in 1981, and the 504-unit Brookstone, constructed in 1985. The complex consists of 200 studio, 456 one-bedroom and 184 two-bedroom units. The transaction was negotiated by George Deuillet III of the Austin office of Hendricks & Partners and Ellen Muskin of Muskin Commercial, on behalf of the seller.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – Pathfinder Partners LLC – a San Diego-based firm which invests in distressed real estate assets and defaulted loans – announced it recently closed on two multi-family transactions in the greaterSeattleandPhoenixmarkets. The acquisitions included the $9.5 million, 29-unit Chelsea Courte II inKirkland,Wash.and the purchase, from a receiver, of the 21-unit Shorewood Apartment complex inPhoenix.  Chelsea Courte II is located 15 miles north ofSeattleand consists of two-bedroom, two-bath condominiums. The Shorewood Apartments, located just north of downtown Phoenix near a light rail station, includes seven one-bedroom, one-bath units and 14 two-bedroom, two-bath units.

CHICAGO – HFF announced it has closed the sale of Aspen Place Apartments, a 416-unit multi-housing community in Aurora, Ill. HFF marketed the property on behalf of Kensington Realty Advisors. A unit of Friedkin Realty Group of San Francisco purchased the property. Aspen Place Apartments is located at 826 Terrace Lake Drivein the western Chicago suburb ofAurora. The 96 percent leased property has 50 residential buildings with one- and two-bedroom apartment homes and townhome units averaging 1,061 square feet each. The HFF investment sales team representing Kensington Realty Advisors was led by Managing Director Marty O’Connell, Executive Managing Director Matthew Lawton and Managing Director Sean Fogarty.

KIRKLAND, Wash. – HFF announced it has arranged a $31.85 million construction loan for the development of the 196-unit Juanita Village multi-housing community in Kirkland, Wash. HFF worked on behalf of M-M Properties and BayNorth to secure the three-year construction loan through Bank of the Ozarks. The property is located at 11801 97th St. inKirkland, a suburb of Seattle. Due for completion in 2013, Juanita Village will also feature 8,700 square feet of ground-floor retail. The HFF team representing the borrowers was led by Senior Managing Director John Brownlee and Managing Director Tom Wilson.

TEMPE, Ariz. – CBRE has negotiated the sale of San Portella Apartments, a 308-unit  community located at 2155 S. 55^th St. inTempe. Tyler Anderson, Sean Cunningham and Asher Gunter of CBRE’sPhoenix office represented the seller, Apartments at Fountainhead LLC of Des Moines, Iowa, in negotiating the $45.1 million sale.  The buyer is Private Portfolio Group LLC of Seattle, Wash., managed by Pillar Communities, a wholly owned company of the buyer. Developed by Mark Taylor and Principal Real Estate Investors in 2008, San Portella is located on Broadway Road east of Interstate 10. It was 95 percent occupied at time of sale.

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Houston’s home sales continued its rebound momentum in January, as the city recorded the eighth consecutive month of increased home sales.

Home sales were up 9.2 percent in January, compared to January of 2011, according to the Houston Association of Realtors.

 Houston housing, boosted by strong  job growth and a solid energy industry,  has been on a roll since last summer.

Upbeat economic news and predictions that home prices will rise in 2012 have boosted home buyer’s confidence, said Evert Crawford, director of the Institute for Regional Forecasting at the University of Houston’s Hobby Center for Public Policy. “People are in the buying mood more than they’ve been in a long time,” Crawford said.

The inventory of homes for sale has been dropping steadily, boosting the overall health of the market. The inventory of available properties, or active listings, at the end of January declined 15.1 percent from January 2011 to 42,067, the Realtors association reported.  It is the lowest inventory since December 2009.

The positive January report indicates that Houston’s realty market has recovered from the decline that began about three years ago. Houston realty suffered some hard knocks, but it fared much better than some markets, such as California, Florida and Arizona where foreclosures reached epidemic levels and home prices fell by as much as 50 percent.

The HAR reported that current levels of pending sales are up 6 percent over this time last year. Importantly, this points to a positive beginning to the spring home buying season, when home buying is at its peak.

The home buying spree in January was spread across all price bands, except for the upper end of the market.  The sale of upscale homes priced over $500,000 declined 2.1 percent in January, compared to January of 2011.

Sales of new upscale home in the Inner Loop, where old houses are torn down to make room for new million-dollar dwellings, face stiff competition from existing homes, said housing analyst David Jarvis of Metrostudy. Buyers who opt to build a new custom home get the exact design and finishes that they want, but they pay a premium for buying the new custom home.

 For more: http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/02-21-12-no-more-foreclosures-homes-sales-jump-for-eighth-straight-month-and-spring-should-be-even-better/

ORLANDO — New trends in apartment design and development were a hot topic at the National Association of Home Builders’ IBS convention in Orlando in mid-February.

Apartment construction is surging across the nation. And there are a plenty of new ideas to consider for architect and developers as new projects are on the drawing board.  Architects Doug Buster and Manny Gonzalez, in particular, had some great ideas.  Here are the top 10 best trend ideas coming out of the builders convention: 

1. Small is in. New multi-family units are going smaller to save cost – cheaper to build, cheaper to rent.  
2. Tiny is in. Very small appliances – the 18-inch dishwasher, the 20-inch range and 24-inch refrigerator are being installed.
3. Apartments with two master suites are popular. People are rooming together to save money in tough economic times. Roommates want to have equally nice bedrooms and baths.
4. Forget big living areas. Singles want to go out to socialize, not have big parties at home. A tiny place for a couch and a TV will suffice.
5. Have wireless everywhere. Apartment dwellers want to be online everywhere – in the parking lot, in the fitness center, by the pool.
6. The big home theaters with fixed-seating and aisles are out.
7. Make sure to have great fitness centers.
8. Pets – a must. Renters demand it. Developers should allocate some green space for a bark park.
9. Tomorrow’s apartments must be green. Sustainability in design, in building products and in operations is a must.
10. Accommodate bicycles. Apartments should have plenty of bike racks and have a thoughtful plan for bike riders. Installing a bicycle repair vending machine, selling tire tubes and repair items, is a great idea.

For more:  http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/02-20-12-the-top-10-apartment-building-trends-the-apartments-of-the-future/

 Located in  the 40-story Two Houston Center in dontown Houston, PDR is the tower’s first tenant to earn LEED certification.  

 LEED CI is the U.S. Green Building Council’s green benchmark for the tenant improvement market.  According to the USGBC, LEED CI stands as the recognized system for certifying high-performance green interiors that are healthy, productive places to work, are less costly to operate and maintain, and have a reduced environmental footprint.

Highlights of the achievement include:

• 94% of PDR’s regularly occupied spaces are day lit;
• 92% of its regularly occupied seats have a direct view to the outside;
• 78% of construction waste from its build out was diverted from the landfill; and
• 56% of materials used in the PDR workplace were manufactured regionally.

The 2200 West Loop South building is located adjacent to the Intercontinental Hotel on the west side of Loop 610 between San Felipe and Westheimer Road.  The property was extensively renovated in 2000 and is 87 percent leased to tenants including Morgan Stanley and Tenaris.

HFF’s investment sales team, led by led by senior managing director Dan Miller and director Marty Hogan, marketed the property on behalf of the seller, KBS Real Estate Investment Trust.

KBS Realty Advisors, an SEC-registered investment advisor, and its affiliate, KBS Capital Advisors, KBS REITS’s external advisor, are one of the nation’s largest buyers of commercial real estate and structured debt investments on behalf of institutional investors and the public REITS they advise, having consummated more than $16.5 billion in transactional volume.

Parmenter Realty Partners is an institutional, privately-held real estate investment, management and development company.  Headquartered in Miami, Florida, Parmenter Realty Partners is actively involved in acquiring, repositioning, and managing real estate assets in major markets throughout the Southeast and Southwest United States on behalf of the firm’s principals and investors.  Parmenter Realty Partners has real estate professionals located in Miami, Atlanta and Dallas.

“CBRE’s appointment is evidence of its proven platforms and unsurpassed experience with similar premier properties,” said Mark Nicholson, Managing Director of Asset Services for CBRE in Houston.

Built between 1978 and 1984, Houston Center is recognized as one of Houston’s most prominent office and retail complexes,  and is an anchor for the eastern side of downtown Houston.  Downtown’s eastern side has become a vibrant activity center in the decade with the construction of  projects such as Minute Maid Park, Toyota Center, Discovery Green park, Hilton Americas Hotel and Hess Tower.

A future development site,   an adjacent 12-acre corner land parcel along Legacy Drive was part of the purchase. Hines Dallas Vice President Ran Holman said the parcel can accommodate a 300,000 sf office development.

Computer Associates (aka “CA Technologies”) recently reconfigured their space and renewed for an additional 10-year term to now occupy approximately 43 percent of the leased space (77,000 square feet, with an expansion right for approximately 16,000 square feet), leaving  approximately 120,000 square feet available for  immediate multi-tenant use.

As a result of CA Technologies’ reconfiguration, the venture plans to reposition the building from single-tenant to multi-tenant office use.  Plans include:  reconfiguring and upgrading the lobby; adding a new deli/sundry shop; adding a fitness and conference center; and upgrading common areas finishes on each floor.  U.S. Bank is providing the financing for the retrofit.

“U.S. Bank is proud to support Hines & J.P. Morgan by providing a creative financing solution that allows the partnership to take advantage of the growing opportunity in theDallasmarket,” said U.S. Bank Dallas Senior Vice President Greg Kaye. “This kind of transaction is right in our sweet spot and is representative of U.S. Bank’s continued commitment to commercial real estate businesses throughout the Texas market and across the nation.” 

Renovations will be complete by year end, and Hines is actively co-marketing the remaining space exclusively with Cassidy Turley.  

Jones Lang LaSalle’s Houston Real Estate Investment Banking team acted as Hines exclusive advisor in arranging both the joint venture equity and the debt.   

The office building was developed in 2001 by Hines as a build-to-suit for Computer Associates.  In 2004, Hines sold the asset to ING-Clarion, and continued to manage the property until 2006.

• The vacancy rate for Class A office space decreased 60 basis points to 20.2 percent in the last 12 months, marking the sector’s lowest level since early 2009. The vacancy rate for Class B properties dropped to 23.7 percent in the last year, a 110-basis-point reduction and the sector’s best performance since the end of 2008.
• The region’s office market posted 887,832 square feet of positive net absorption in the fourth quarter of 2011, bringing the year-to-date positive absorption total to more than 2.1 million square feet.
  • The bulk of the net absorption gains in 2011 occurred in the Class B sector, which experienced 867,313 square feet of positive net absorption as tenants leased good quality space at competitive rental rates.
  • Year-over-year, average asking rental rates for the region’s Class A office market decreased $0.38 to $22.92 per square foot. Average asking rental rates for Class B office space dropped to $17.73 per square foot at year-end, a $0.07 decrease from the prior year.
  • More than 4.4 million square feet of sublease space was available at the end of 2011, a drop of 28.5 percent from the peak in early 2010.
  • The Dallas-Fort Worth region closed the year with 615,600 square feet of space under construction in the form of three speculative and one build-to-suit projects. Developers broke ground on a 164,000-square-foot, six-story office building during the fourth quarter in the West Plano/Frisco submarket that will be completed in early 2013.

The seller was  TPG CalSTRS, a joint venture of Thomas Properties Group and the California State Teachers Retirement System.

Miami-based Parmenter also owns the Woodland Park Plaza building in the Westchase area of Houston.

Brookhollow is a value-add acquisition. The 11-story Brookhollow Central I building, formerly home to the Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD), is 100 percent vacant.

HOUSTON — Houston’s home sales were up 4 percent in 2011, over the prior year, the Houston Association of Realtors reported Tuesday.

The city’s strong job growth, boosted by the energy industry, provided the basis for the rebound. With another increase in December, Houston ended 2011 with seven consecutive months of sales increases.

“2011 ended on a very promising note,” said Wayne Stroman, HAR chairman and President/CEO of Stroman Realty.  The key to sustaining that positive momentum in 2012 will be continued improvement in Houston’s employment numbers.”