SAN DIEGO – OliverMcMillan, a San Diego-based real estate development firm,  and Capri Capital Partners, are building The Lofts at 688 13^th Street, with a two-year construction schedule. The Lofts at 688 13^th Street is planned as a five-story residential building fronting 13^th Street between Market and G Streets in the East Village Arts District of downtown San Diego. Covering three-quarters of a city block, the new construction includes 208 mid-rise and ground-level apartments with studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom residences and about 5,000 sf ground-level retail.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Morgan Group, a Houston-based multifamily developer has broken ground on a 331-unit midrise apartment development in Flagler Village in south Florida. Morgan acquired the site, which is located just north of the Las Olas River in downtown Fort Lauderdale, in December 2012. First move-ins are projected for Summer 2014. The site, which fronts Federal Highway, marks the return of The Morgan Group to south Florida and the company’s first development within Broward County. Said Chairman and CEO Mike Morgan. “We were very active in the area until the late 1990s and are looking forward to growing our presence here once again. Richard A. Buck is leading our regional development efforts and we’ve recently opened an office in Fort Lauderdale.”

PLAYA DEL REY, Calif. – Hendricks-Berkadia announced the sale of Tiffany Apartments, located at 8040 W. 83rd Street in Playa Del Rey. The 18-unit apartment community was sold for $4,325,000, $125,000 over asking price. The sellers had received 25 offers on the building, eight of which were at or over asking price. The transaction was negotiated by Steffan Braunlich and Mike McKinney of the South Bay Los Angeles office of Hendricks-Berkadia.

Driven by the expansion of domestic fracking, ConocoPhillips will move 2,100 employees into two new office towers in the Energy Corridor area of West Houston.

The two towers are being developed Trammell Crow Co. in partnership with Principal Real Estate Investors at the southwest corner of Interstate 10 and North Eldridge Parkway, near the ConocoPhillips headquarters building.

The employees in the new towers will mostly be assigned to projects in the Eagle Ford Shale and Permian Basin of Texas and the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, according to a report by Nancy Sarnoff of the Houston Chronicle. With the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, production in these domestic oil plays has taken off, creating thousands of jobs across the nation. Houston, known as the Energy Capital of the World, leads the nation in the growth of new jobs and housing starts.

ConocoPhillips leased 850,000 sf in two new buildings: all of Energy Center Three, a 20-story tower under construction, and half of the 22-story Energy Center Four, scheduled for a 2013 ground breaking.

In addition to these two buildings, Trammell Crow has an adjacent six acres where another building is planned

NAREE University sessions at the conference will offer journalism workshops focusing on topics ranging from digital and social media to radio broadcasting.

Conference advisor, Ralph Bivins of RealtyNewsReport.com says, “NAREE 13 covers the confluence of the commercial real estate and residential real estate markets from financing, developing, building and sales replete with economic forecasts, tours and ‘Twitter and the Fourth Estate.’ “

Economists, architects, builders, developers and mortgage experts will come together under NAREE’s roof.

More than 20 company presidents, chief executive officers and partners from leading real estate-related firms will appear.

“The amount of information this conference offers is incredible,” said Kris Hudson, NAREE president and Wall Street Journal reporter. “When writing about real estate, one has to cover several facets of the industry and the NAREE Journalism Conference touches on them all.”

Three chief economists lead the NAREE forecast panel: Lawrence Yun, National Association of Realtors; Jed Kolko, Trulia and Mark Fleming, Core Logic.

The Boom in Luxury Housing panel presents: Kofi Nartey, Agency of Beverly Hills; Martha Turner, Martha Turner Properties and Jack Cotton, Sotheby’s International.

Mark Woodworth, PKF Hospitality Research, will deliver a hotel market forecast and author and architect Marianne Cusato, designer of the famed Katrina Cottages, will speak on “The Best Places to Live.”

NAREE’s 17^th Annual Meet the Press will match journalists with publicists and freelancers during three-minute interviews. Winners of the 63^rd Annual NAREE Real Estate Journalism Competition and the Bruss Book Awards will be unveiled.

The conference includes tours to Serenbe, a 1,000-acre sustainable development in the country; Midtown’s Atlantic Station with its mix of high-rise residential, retail and commercial; and the Ponce City Market, the largest adaptive reuse project in Atlanta history.

The NAREE Conference, headquartered at the Hilton Atlanta Downtown, begins Wednesday morning, June 5 and ends Saturday afternoon. Registration: www.NAREE.org.

NAREE, founded in 1929, is a non-profit organization helping journalists advance careers as staff writers, editors, bloggers, freelancers and authors.

The city’s office market finished the first quarter with a total of 511,161 square feet of positive net absorption, which marks the eighth consecutive quarter of positive absorption. Class A space is on top for 326,441 sf absorbed, trailed closely by Class B with 236,927 sf. Class C recorded a negative 52,207 sf, continuing its second quarter of negative absorption.

Three suburban submarkets recorded positive net absorption of more than 100,000 square feet during the first quarter with the West submarket at 145,733 square feet taking the lead. Uptown recorded 121,749 square feet while the Energy Corridor completed the top three with 104,462 square feet. The three submarkets account for 72.8% of the total absorption for the year. The Central Business District (CBD) submarket recorded a negative 94,995 square feet of net absorption. No major new office buildings have been completed yet in 2013, although five buildings totaling 947,080 square foot are scheduled for completion during the second quarter; all but one is 66% or more pre-leased.

825 Ann is 99 percent leased to three office tenants: Ergon Energy; Laing O’Rourke Construction; and Macquarie Bank; and retail tenant 4evermen.

Designed by Rice Daubney, 825 Ann is a new 11-story, 206-507-sf office building, with ground-floor retail and two levels of underground parking.

The builder was featured on a national Bloomberg TV program in late April. http://www.bloomberg.com/video/mc10-changing-the-way-we-think-about-electronics-6qznYaxTRIuGEv6pb3EWoQ.html

“HOUZE is completely revolutionizing the way homes are built, how they consume and generate energy and the overall total cost of ownership,” said David Goswick, CEO, HOUZE. “By combining durable, efficient building materials with innovative energy management systems and advanced energy-saving, power-generating and storing technologies, we are comprehensively redefining the “American Dream”.

The homes, under construction in Houston,  are powered by a power cell that produces both on-site electricity and thermal heat from natural gas. Roughly the size of a traditional air conditioning unit, the power cell generates significantly more energy than the home will consume. This surplus is fed back to the electricity grid.

HOUSTON – The 46-story BG Group Place in downtown Houston is being acquired by Invesco Real Estate, with backing reportedly from Korean institutional investors, for $480 million, according to Real Estate Alert, an investment newsletter.

Invesco is believed to be acting on behalf of the National Pension Service of Korea, the newsletter reported. Korean money is been reallocated and invested in U.S. realty in a fast pace recently because of political unrest and nuclear threats.

The sellers of BG Group Place, Hines and Calpers, were represented by Eastdil Secured. The 973,000-sf tower is expected to close for $485 per square foot, the second-highest sales price ever in Houston, Real Estate Alert reported. The record sales price in Houston was set when H&R REIT paid $524 sf of $442 million for the 845,000-sf Hess Tower in 2011. The highest dollar price was set when the 1.8-million-sf One and Two Shell Plaza traded for $550 million last summer, Real Estate Alert said.

The tower is 92 percent leased with BG Group occupying 354,000 sf.  KPMG and the BakerHostetler law firm are major tenants also. The building, completed in 2011, is located at 801 Main Street.

The BG Group Place building is LEED Platinum. Urban Land magazine recently reported that investors pay more for sustainable buildings, rather than “brown” properties. http://urbanland.uli.org/Articles/2013/Apr/BivensHouston

In developing BG Group Place, Hines blessed Main Street as a viable location for new office development in the current era.  Years ago Main Street had been ceded to transit domination, making Main Street little more than an elongated bus stop surrounded by low-end retail and grease-coated restaurants. But Main Street has enjoyed a revival in recent years.

Hines has proposed to build another Main Street tower on Block 69, just a couple of blocks from BG Group Place, at the southeast corner of Main and Texas Avenue.

Lewis Miller, Ken Rapp and Ramneek Rikhy of CBRE represented Simpson Thacher in lease negotiations, while Hines represented the owner, its Hines U.S. Core Office Fund.