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The Inside Scoop on the People & Places that Shape Atlanta Real Estate | |
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Opportunities Finally Turn to Deals
Left to right: Michael Pelt, Jeff Small and Phillip Hight of MDH Partners.
With last week's closing
of two distressed-property investment sales, the bid/ask dam may be
starting to crack.
In Duluth, Resource Real Estate
Partners - just as we suspected - acquired the six-building,
245,000-square-foot
River Green office/flex development from Nationwide for $7.9 million.
From start to finish, the transaction, originally offered as a note
sale, took 50 days to complete and attracted 12 offers, culminating
in a deed-in-lieu sale. Mike McDonald and Miles Theodore of Eastdil
Secured represented the seller and declined to comment outside of
confirming
the closing.
MDH Partners also closed the
first investment in its $60 million JV fund with Wells Fargo last week,
acquiring a 210,000-square-foot warehouse property at 1039 Northpoint
Parkway in Acworth. MDH bought the property, the former Stock Building
Supply distribution center, for $12 per square foot. Mel Stowers of
Stowers & Co. represented MDH. The building fits MDH's goals of
buying underperforming assets below replacement cost and re-tenanting
the properties as the economy improves, CEO Jeff Small said. Small also
likes the location, off Highway 92 near Interstate 75, in a Northwest
submarket that has a few more development constraints than other Atlanta
submarkets.
"We've been sitting on
the sidelines waiting for the market to get to a point where it makes
sense (to buy)," Small said. "You're going to see a lot more
transactions
going forward. It's not because the market's improving but because
there's a sense that it's not going to get worse." 
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The Richard Bowers Interview, Part I
Legendary Richard Bowers doing what he does best.
Everybody has a Richard Bowers
story, and the truth is often better than fiction.
Originally from Decatur, Ill.,
and a West Point grad, the man owns three mobile phones, not two, as
is commonly believed, and could be using one or all of them at any given
moment. He lays claim to holding the record for BellSouth's highest
individual cell phone bill, and no one disputes it.
Bowers was stationed in Atlanta
at the end of his Army tenure and looked into different careers,
eventually
going with commercial real estate because he liked the results-oriented
nature of the business. In 1973, he joined Alan Grayson Realty as a
commission-earning broker, soon establishing himself as the company's
annual top office producer and typically knocking out 100 deals a year.
"My parents couldn't understand
why I couldn't find a job that paid a regular salary," Bowers said.
As CEO of Richard Bowers &
Co., a firm involved in brokerage, office interior design/architecture
and furniture sales, property investment and facilities management,
Bowers still makes cold calls on his own or joins his young brokers
to show them how it's done. Back in the day - and back when you
could do this sort of thing - he once spent a day cold calling
downtown's
business elite, including Griffin Bell at King & Spalding, Bennett
Brown at C&S, Carl Sanders of Troutman Sanders, Erwin Zabin of
National
Service Industries and executives of what's now SunTrust. Then he
went to Executive Park in the Central Perimeter submarket.
"And that's just the tip
of the iceberg," Bowers said. "It takes six months to see the number
of people I saw in that one day."
Thursday, we'll discuss with
Bowers the issues impacting Atlanta and commercial real estate in
general.
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Positive Net Absorption
Jonathan McCord (foreground, left) and Lanie Rea
(background, right) of Jones Lang LaSalle deep in research.
Hey, it's not a lot, but we'll take it.
Jones Lang LaSalle released first quarter office stats last week, reporting 21,720 square feet of positive net absorption.
Central Perimeter and the Northeast submarkets lead the way, with
235,000 square feet and 160,000 square feet of positive net absorption,
respectively. In total, the 'burbs had 80,309 square feet of net
absorption for the quarter.
ITP ... at least it's not 2009.
Buckhead, Downtown and Midtown posted total negative net absorption of
58,589 square feet, with Midtown eeking out 5,823 square feet on the
positive side and a slight rate increase. The first quarter also marked
the end of a development cycle with the delivery of 1.6 million square
feet of office space, but that contributed to Buckhead's overall vacancy
of 26.6 percent.
JLL Research Manager Lanie Rea expects a bumpy ride for a few quarters before
we start seeing sustainable growth, but the bottom is behind us.
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ICSC's Happy Hour
From left to right: Bre Wagner of Edens&Avant, Warren Bruno of Ormsby's, Lily Heimburger
of Sembler, Corinna Ragsdale of Sembler.
Atlanta's ICSC chapter knows every hot spot in town -- it's their job!
-- and that's why they made Ormsby's at the White Provision
redevelopment the place for Thursday night's get together, which
included subterranean bocce ball in Ormsby's basement lair.
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