This recession has hit the U.S. very hard causing an unprecedented level of government intervention. Trillions of dollars have been committed in spending, bailouts, tax credits and guarantees.  Eventually we must  pay for these financial commitments and we pay for them in the form of higher...

Whose kidding whom? Sellers will only sell if they want or need to and buyers will only buy if they believe they see a good opportunity. Brokers can't "sell" a client into acting but I wanted to discuss some reasons why sellers might want to sell today and buyers might want to buy today. Clearly,...

I know what you're thinking: Why is Knakal addressing unemployment yet again? Simply, it is because last week's announcement that the official rate has climbed to more than double digits further illustrates that the administration is incorrectly focused on things other than job growth. As...

This past Thursday, the government announced that our Gross Domestic Product - a broad measure of the economy that sums up all the goods and services produced in the U.S. - increased at a rate of 3.5% during the third quarter of 2009. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has been hovering around 10,000 and housing...

So often I hear people in our industry say that the weak dollar is encouraging foreign investment in U.S. real estate. This is something that only makes sense in two ways: the first is if the foreign investor is purchasing a residential property for his or her own use and it is simply "cheap" to them...

The volume of investment sales recently has been extraordinarily weak whether you look at aggregate sales price or number of transactions. In fact, we are on pace to see sales volume hit the lowest level we have seen in the 26 years we have been tracking these statistics. Our recently completed analysis...

If you are a frequent reader of StreetWise, you know that I am always following trends in unemployment, and for good reason. There is no other metric that more profoundly affects the fundamentals of our real estate markets. If someone has lost a job or believes they may be losing a job, they will typically...

During the past three years, the Federal Reserve Bank, led by Chairman Ben Bernanke, has reduced the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) from 5.25% to its present level which is a range from 0%-0.25%. While this 500 basis point reduction in FFR was occurring, our commercial real estate mortgage rates have remained fairly...