Yesterday, TechCrunch wrote a story about Toys R Us winning a heated battle for the toys.com domain against domain holding company National A-1. Apparently, several bidders were active early on but dropped out around the $3M range. Toys R Us ended up winning the bidding war for the paltry sum of $5.1M. To me, the [...]
Feb
26
The End of Long-Term Gains?
Square Feet has a post up about Obama’s proposed budget changes which would raise taxes on capital gains and dividends from 15% to 20%. Although this would be problematic for developers who generally build and sell, it should lead to more 1031 exchanges being completed as most investors will be more motivated to avoid/defer taxes [...]
Feb
12
Microsoft to Open Retail Stores
Both CrunchGear and Ars Technica posted articles about today’s press release from Microsoft which announces their intention to open retail stores to showcase their line of products. I like this idea. Apple did it, why can’t Microsoft? Microsoft has the XBOX. I’m sure the XBOX setup will drive plenty of consumer traffic into their stores. Here [...]
Feb
12
A CRE Scam for Brokers
This past Tuesday I received a call from a very timid person asking if I had and bank-owned listings and if I would like to obtain bank-owned listings. I could immediately tell something was fishy with this guys pitch. He was calling to promote a conference call the next day about obtaining REO listings. I [...]
Feb
08
Trading Up: A Case Study
I just closed the upleg portion of a client’s 1031 exchange last week and got to thinking about how I was able to help my client “trade up” in this challenging environment. I hope this makes for an interesting read. I have been working with these clients for several years and have built a very [...]
Feb
05
Marcus & Millichap in Hot Water
The Los Angeles Times today has an interesting article about a pending lawsuit from a group of investors against Marcus & Millichap and two businessmen who operated franchises of Church’s Chicken and Jiffy Lube. The parties are accused of the classic “pump and dump” scheme whereby franchisees artificially inflate their rent so they can achieve [...]
Feb
04
Fresh & Easy Changing Strategy
Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has altered it’s course. Until now, Fresh & Easy has been a savior tenant for many developers, eating up 14,000 square foot chunks of old space and dark drug stores. They have done deals in existing spaces, build-to-suits and ground leases. Last week I heard that they had changed course [...]