Hamilton's Property

How can timber REITs leverage their available capital, given the fact that they must distribute, and cannot retain, earnings? Over time, timberland-owning REITs have identified and employed multiple investment strategies to leverage available capital. These strategies include:

• “Recycling capital” through programs such as 1031 like-kind exchanges;
• Buying back company shares through repurchasing programs; and
• Organizing joint ventures (JVs) to share risk, access capital  and leverage expertise.

In the end, each of these represent approaches to enhancing returns from the same pool of internal capital and assets. In this post, I focus on JVs related to timberland.

Timber REITs, like their vertically-integrated forest industry predecessors and cousins, have structured JVs to invest in manufacturing assets and explore emerging bioenergy markets (for example, consider Weyerhaeuser’s JV with Chevron). However Read full article…

Sales of existing homes in September were up a whopping 11.3% from last year at this time, according to data released by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) this morning.

That’s significant, considering buyers were eligible for the $7000 first-time homebuyer credit until the end of September last year.

Remember? The tax credit allowed a first-time buyer to put just $7000 down on a $200,000 home purchase using an FHA loan, and then receive $7000 back from the government – essentially a no money down deal.

And even more enticing:  a buyer of a $100,000 property could have put $3500 down and still be reimbursed the $7000! Th Read full article…

The October 2011 NZ Property Report published by Realestate.co.nz provides an insight into the state of the New Zealand property market as measured by the supply side of the property market over the month of October. The key measures of the market analysed in the report are the number of new listings, the asking price expectation for those new listings and the level of inventory of unsold houses on the market at this time. The report is compiled from data captured by the website and represents close to 95% of all property movements in the NZ market as managed by licensed real estate agents.

A full print version of the NZ Property Report – October 2011 is published below and is available for download (1.5MB) and distribution.

Summary of the market – October 2011

The property market continues to show signs of confidence and heightened activity as compared to the past few years. The

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Highwoods Properties handily beat Wall Street estimates for the third quarter as the company leased 1.7 million square feet of space.

The Raleigh real-estate investment trust 32.7-million-square-foot portfolio was 89.9 percent occupied at the end of September.

Occupancy was down compared to the prior quarter as a result of Highwoods making one of its boldest acquisitions in recent memory in September.

The company spent $300 million acquiring seven buildings in Atlanta and Pitsburgh.

The buildings included about 2 million square feet of space that was 83 percent leased at the time of purchase.

The Pittsburgh properties represent the first new market that Highwoods, one of the largest office landlords in the Southeast, has entered in more than a decade.

Highwoods reported funds from operations, a profitability measure for REITs, of 65 cents per share for the quarter, compared to the 57 cents per share the company reported in the third quarter of 2010.

That beat the consensus of Wall Street analysts by 5 cents.

The 1.7 million square feet leased during the quarter included 1.1 million of HIghwoods older space, called second-generation space.

That was the largest amount of second-generation space that Highwoods has leased in a single quarter since the third quarter of 2007.

Highwoods also reported today that it has signed leases for 60,000 square feet of space in the Pittsburgh and Atlanta buildings since the third quarter ended.

The company has been steadily remaking its portfolio over the last eight years, shedding older assets while adding newer properties in markets where it projects strong growth.

CEO Ed Fritsch indicated in today’s release that the approach would continue.

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Greetings, Redfinnians!

As promised, this month we rolled out a new and improved version of our monthly insider report. “But where is it,” you ask. Ahh, well this new report is available via email-only, and was sent out to a group of registered users who have saved searches or favorites in the Ballard area.

If you’d like to receive next month’s report, just make sure you’re signed up for our newsletters (check the “Redfin Announcements” box in your Account Settings), and save a favorite home or a search in Ballard. That’s it, you’re signed up!

Here on the blog we will continue posting the “lite” version of our monthly report, including our Redfin Heat Index, the heat map, and the hottest / coldest neighborhoods for the foreseeable future. So, let’s get into it.

First up is our national Redfin Heat Index* ranking table at right. As you can see, not muc

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