A few times each week I am asked by clients and colleagues what my biggest concerns are in our current marketplace. One that has really been resonating with those that I speak with is the unprecedented shift in economic power from the private sector to Washington DC and how this fact could impact the...

If you are a regular reader of StreetWise, you know that in New York City the community and regional banks have been the main driver of financing activity which has kept the sales market out of the morgue, especially for small to mid-sized assets. Ironically, these are the very types of banks which are...

We are all, by now, well aware of the $400 billion travesty created by subprime lending and the fundamental structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  A platform which includes private profits and public liabilities should have been conceptualized in a different fashion. In the 1980's, the government...

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are a form of ownership which have been around for quite a while but really began going public in earnest to delever their balance sheets in the early 1990s. And thrive they did in the mid to late 1990s. However, their dominance was somewhat muted in our most recent...

The investment property sales market in New York City was slightly improved in the second quarter of 2009 (2Q09) versus the first quarter of the year. That being said, it couldn't possibly have been worse than 1Q09 during which we saw the paralysis of 4Q08 manifest itself in a 1st quarter volume which...

Your perspective on the relative success or failure thus far of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 aka "The Stimulus Plan", probably depends, in part, on your political persuasion. Republicans have called it a failure and Democrats remain hopeful that the benefits will start...

This past week, we read an announcement about the Treasury selecting nine fund managers to implement the PPIP program. Is this a positive thing? Should we celebrate? Let's take a closer look: In what has been called, "The greatest program that never happened", the government's Public-Private Investment...

Our economy has been in recession for more than 18 months now and for the past year our real estate fundamentals have been adversly affected. Investors are constantly asking me to show them all of the distressed properties that we are handling for sale. The fact is that everyone is looking for...