Land News Trends
Rezoning Land? Cities Say OK, Economy Says No
Last year, Doug Jorritsma, senior marketing consultant for Park Place Partners, a large residential land realty firm in Irvine, Calif., thought he found a way around the morbid Southern California residential land market.
Dirty Work: Land planners leverage grading plans into more profitable proformas
“I’ve been involved in land grading for 25 years, and I’ll tell you one thing,” says Jim Berger, who re-engineers land plans as senior construction manager for Seattle-based Port Blakely communities, “The person who coined the phrase ‘dirt cheap’ obviously never moved any.”
Green Guru: Jonathan Rose
SPEND JUST A FEW MINUTES WITH Jonathan Rose and you quickly forget you are talking to a high-powered executive on the 23rd floor of his firm’s swanky Fifth Avenue headquarters in the heart of Manhattan. The city’s frequent police sirens and blaring horns fade into the distance as Rose leads you on a spiritual quest of contemplation and reflection.
Sign of the Times - Five cities bringing new life to abandoned sites
Estimates vary, but foreclosure listing company RealtyTrac approximated 261,255 homes in foreclosure in May of this year, almost double the number in May 2007. The Brookings Institution estimates that vacant and abandoned properties of all kinds— whether from foreclosure or not—occupy about 15 percent of a typical large city, an average of 12,000 acres.
Preying on Land-Developer identifies what the three leading buyers of land today demand.
For more than 18 months, the industry has been abuzz with talk about the billions of dollars in capital roosting in real estate. Private equity firms, global investment banks, insurance companies, foreign investors, even high net-worth individuals have all been posturing, waiting for that sweet moment when their return threshold and risk calculations will pencil out.
