GLOBAL REAL ESTATE ROUNDUP

· Skanska Wins 2 Construction Jobs Valued at $156M

· San Antonio Gears for 1.6M of New Office Product as Vacancies Rise and Rents Fall

· Lower Prices Luring Mansion Buyers Back to Beverly Hills (Rodeo Drive, top right photo)

· New York Judge Scolds Lender and Erases $525,000 Mortgage Loan Balance for Homeowner

· Fannie Mae’s ‘First Look’ Buyers’ Program Taking Off

· New Jersey Developers Feud Over Planned Mixed Use Project Near Rock Arena (top left photo)

· New Student Housing Complex Under Way Near University of Texas at San Antonio

· Unlicensed Toronto Home Builders Fined $240,000

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN—Repeat customers are proving to be valuable assets in a lukewarm construction industry these days, as Skanska USA Building has found out.

The Sweden-based builder has won two contracts in the U.S. totaling $156.4 million.

In Arizona, Skanska’s $85 million contract calls for construction management work at an industrial facility for an unnamed manufacturing company. Skanska’s Oregon office will be overseeing the project.

In Puyallup, WA, Skanska’s $71.4 million contract covers the continued expansion of the Good Samaritan Hospital, about 30 miles south of Seattle.

SAN ANTONIO, TX—More new office space is the last thing this metropolitan area needs at the moment. Still, metro San Antonio is set to receive the most new office product on an annual basis since the 1980s.

That phenomenon will generate higher vacancy rates and rising concessions, according to a new study by Encino, CA-based Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services.

“While fundamentals are weakening throughout much of the metro, investment activity has begun to increase,” says J. Michael Watson (middle right photo), regional manager of the San Antonio office of Marcus and Millichap.

This year, developers are on pace to deliver 1.6 million square feet of new office space, following the addition of about 740,000 square feet in 2008, Watson says. The completions will increase
existing inventory by 5.9 percent.

Asking rents are forecast to slip to $19.39 per square foot, limiting year-over-year gains to 0.7 percent. Effective rents are expected to decline 4.1 percent to $15.52 percent. Last year, asking and effective rents rose 2.0 percent and 1.4 percent respectively.

BEVERLY HILLS, CA—The favorite playground for the rich and famous is also garnering new attention as a popular investment destination, according to the Los Angeles office of Prudential CA Realty.

Beverly Hills is showing signs of being one of the first luxury residential markets to bounce back in the current global Recession. Lower prices across the board is the magnet drawing potential buyers.

While my foreign inquiries began to rise after the changing real estate markets of Europe and Asia, my global inquiries have more than doubled since the recent Dubai (financial) crisis,” says Greg Moesser, (middle left photo)  an estate direct at Prudential CA Realty and at LAClassicEstates.com.

In addition to Beverly Hills, Moesser says “there is also strong interest” in the Los Angeles Westside areas of Bel Air, Hollywood Hills and Malibu.

Los Angeles area prices have dropped 30 percent to 40 percent from the market peak of a few years ago, says Moesser.

RIVERHEAD, NY—OneWest Bank is fighting mad as it files an appeal to a higher New York court after losing a $525,000 mortgage loan lawsuit with a New York homeowner.

The Pasadena, CA-based bank, which took over the failed online IndyMac Federal Bank, is disputing a decision by Judge Jeffrey Spinner (middle right photo)  of Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, NY.

Spinner threw out OneWest Bank’s lawsuit which demanded the homeowner pay $525,000, the balance owed in a foreclosure settlement.

According to the New York Post, the judge scolded the bank for repeatedly refusing to work out a loan restructuring with the homeowner; misleading the couple about the follar amounts of the loan during the settlement hearings; and for the bank’s general treatment of the homeowner and his wife over several months of hearings.

The bank claims former IndyMac officials had tried to resolve the dispute for four years before filing a foreclosure action.

(NEW YORK, NY)—Fannie Mae’s First Look Initiative program of for-sale foreclosed properties is catching on with private homeowners and local government entities.

“First look provides owner occupants and public entities (local governments) that are committed to the community, an early opportunity to purchase one of Fannie Mae’s real estate-owned properties,” says Terry Edwards, executive vice president for credit portfolio management at Fannie Mae.

The First Look Initiative was piloted in August and is receiving positive initial responses nationally, says Edwards.

“George Romagnoli,  (bottom right photo) community development manager for Pasco County’s community development division (in west Florida), says the program “allows our non-profit partners the opportunity to get a slight leg up in obtaining properties for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.”


NEWARK, NJ—Where is the $100,000? That’s what Arthur Stern, (bottom left photo)  CEO of Cogswell Realty Group is demanding from Hanini Group CEO Samer Hanini. Both are Newark, NJ-based developers.

In a Superior Court lawsuit filed in Newark, Stern alleges he gave Hanini $100,000 in 2006 as an advance joint venture investment on a planned mixed-use downtown development near The Rock, a two-year-old, 18,500-seat sports arena also called Prudential Center.

When plans for the residential-hotel-retail complex failed in 2007, Stern asked for the return of his $100,000. Hanini has not responded to the lawsuit or explained why the money hasn’t been returned, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

ATLANTA, GA—Student housing construction continues to be a lone bright spot on the diminishing new construction horizon.

Avalon Place, A multi-million-dollar, 246-unit complex with 440 beds is scheduled for delivery by July 2010 in San Antonio, TX. The project will serve student at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The developer is BVP Managers LLC, a joint venture between Atlanta-based Place Companies and Chicago-based Blue Vista Capitdal Management LLC. The owner of record is the Place/BV Student Housing Fund LLC.

“This project is in line with our strategy to developer high quality student housing assets in excellent student housing markets,” says Robert E. “Bob” Clark, (bottom right photo)  executive vice president, Place Management Group LLC.

"Avalon Place, along with High View Place and Hill country Place, gives us a dominant position in the UTSA market,” Clark adds.

TORONTO, CANADA—If developers are planning to build homes for profit in Toronto, they need to register and pay a fee first with Tarion Warranty Corp., a private, 31-year-old company that licenses all new home and condominium builders in the province of Ontario.

Unfortunately for them, Passion Homes Inc. owners George and Melina Tanacs of Toronto didn’t do that and were fined $240,000 for illegal construction. They could have faced a year in jail.

They Tanacs had built four homes in the Toronto suburb of North York and sold them for $400,000 to $500,000, according to the Toronto Star. Buyers later filed $60,000 worth of bad-construction claims against the couple.

Illegal construction of residential projects has increased over the past 12 months, according Dave Rogers,Tarion’s director of enforcement.

Toronto, with 2.6 million residents, is the fifth largest city in North America.