| The Interest Rate Worm Starts to Turn
Finally, the worm is turning – the interest rate worm. And the stock markets around the globe are getting nervous, translating into choppy trading. It appears the Dow may have topped out for now and long-term bond rates have increased, because the Federal Reserve has signaled that soon it will back off its bond buying stimulus, probably a precursor to actually increasing its lending rate… Read more US Home Prices Rise by Most in 7 Years; Valley up More than 20 Percent The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index released Tuesday also rose 2.5 percent in April from March, the biggest month-over-month gain on records dating back to 2000. All cities except Detroit posted gains in April from March. That’s up from only 15 cities in the previous month… Read more Whitestone REIT Purchases Mercado at Scottsdale for $21M Houston-based Whitestone REIT (NYSE: WSR) continued its buying spree of metro Phoenix real estate with the recent $21.3 million purchase of an AJ’s Fine Foods-anchored shopping center in north Scottsdale, according to a company statement. The acquisition of the 118,730-square-foot Mercado at Scottsdale Ranch marks the 14th commercial property… Read more Climbing Rates Seen Stalling Rise in Values The sharp rise in interest rates in recent weeks has raised the specter in the commercial-real-estate industry that nearly four years of steady gains in property values could come to a halt. Until recently, the low-rate environment had been fueling the rise in property values, even while rents and occupancies generally remained below peak levels amid sluggish growth… Read more Crow Holdings Pays $46.9 Million For Phoenix Apartments (That’s $185,449 Per Unit) In what is the highest price per unit ever paid for a Valley apartment project, Crow Holdings in Dallas, Tex. (Harlan Crow, et al., directors) paid $46.919 million ($185,449 per unit) to buy the 253-unit Pavilions on Central apartments at 1 W. Campbell Avenue in Phoenix. The seller was Pavilions Apartments II LLC, a venture formed by Gray Development Group in Phoenix (Bruce Gray, principal) and The Reliant Group… Read more |