This is a follow up on the REFM piece about a national real estate index.  I’ve written a few times about the introduction of technical indicators and metrics to what we do in real estate (see here, here, and here).

My primary point that I’ve made in the past is that you have to at least [...]

Joe Stampone sent me a link to a post that REFM has up that I liked a lot.  The post discusses potential for a national real estate index and two such indices that exist today.  Check out the full post as I’ll be discussing it further today.

Why it was so challenging. The simple reason for [...]

There are a lot of ways to think about this, one of the more common is what value investors call the Margin of Safety, but basically as an investor you don’t want to price yourself out of upside in an investment.  That sounds like a really simple and stupid thing to say, but investors regularly [...]

We were on a land tour this week and a limited partner of one of our clients (think hedge fund type) asked whether the housing boom might have been an anomaly that we can’t expect to be repeated.  It was a great question.  Our client pointed out to the questioner that the same anomaly had [...]

It’s interesting to watch the tech market right now and the debate between those saying that tech is a bubble, and those clinging to the hope that it’s not.  I think too much of the conversation focuses on whether or not valuations have reached a bubble threshold and ignores the dangerous effects that increased valuations [...]

The land development market has been propped up by speculators for the better part of three years.  I’ll define a speculator as anyone who is relying on future appreciation for investment returns and can’t make deals based on current development economics.  Land speculators aren’t any different really than gold speculators, so I am not using [...]

A few weeks ago I mentioned a deal that we didn’t get in on the first time, but that I was convinced would come back to us.  Yesterday the deal came back to us.  I should probably disclose that even though I was right that we would get another shot at it, I was wrong [...]

In honor of the Mavs NBA title I give you the REIS Reports summary of construction and demand trends for the Dallas office market:

To summarize:

Vacancy across the entire sub-market is 25%, which is similar to the “dead” Vegas market that we looked at a few weeks ago.
Absorption was negative through 2010.
Dallas was [...]

However, the plaintiff alleges that the proposed acquisition is the product of a flawed process that is designed to ensure the sale of LoopNet to CoStar on terms preferential to CoStar Group and the defendants.

Certain LoopNet’s directors, certain executive officers, and certain significant shareholders representing 32% of LoopNet’s outstanding shares, have already signed a voting [...]

Sometimes in baseball it’s necessary for the pitcher to get a batter away from the plate.  The standard operating procedure is to throw at them, or to brush them back.  Batters willing to endure a little pain can just stand there and get hit, thereby thwarting the pitcher’s attempt.  It’s the never ending battle for [...]