John Cunningham

Real estate services firm Colliers International announced today the launch of its new tri-state life science practice group. The new division will focus on leasing, investment sales and dispositions for life sciences organizations, with John Cunningham, a Princeton-based executive managing director, leading the group. Cunningham said Colliers decided to launch the arm in response to an increase in demand from that market. “The life science sector has tremendous growth opportunity, especially as the country increases its investment into research and development,” Cunningham said. TRD

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With his transition to CEO of Colliers International, a commercial real estate services firm, set for April 21, Mark Jaccom told the New York Times that Colliers is “in expansion mode.” Although his company manages around 20 million square feet currently, Jaccom said Colliers wants to double that within the next five years, a goal he recognizes is a “tall order.” But Jaccom said he’s adept at nabbing new tenants. “Anybody can lower the rent and throw more concessions,” Jaccom said. “You have to be flexible enough to give a tenant the right to give back space if necessary… we educated our landlords early enough.” Additionally, Jaccom told The Real Deal in the March issue that now may be the time for broker poaching.

Cassidy Turley, the new St. Louis-based real estate corporation created by four former Colliers International affiliates, has officially launched its new brand, Web site and a national advertising campaign. Cassidy Turley filed with the Missouri Secretary of State to incorporate in May 2009, and announced its formation in January, after Colliers International announced its merger with FirstService Real Estate Advisors. Meanwhile, Colliers ABR split from the group to join Cassidy Turley. Mark Boisi, Colliers ABR chairman, told The Real Deal at the time that, “while we are the largest component of Colliers USA, we believe we have outgrown it.” TRD

From the October issue: As if today’s leasing market wasn’t challenging enough, New York’s
commercial real estate brokers have one more thing to contend with:
demanding landlords. Whether it is an increase in the number of phone calls, requests for
weekly face-to-face meetings, or a sudden mandate of updated daily
reports on individual properties, all over town there are more stories
of landlords who now want up-to-the-minute information on what their
respective brokers are doing to fill their space. And in some quarters, this newfound neediness is starting to grate. “It’s a pain in the ass,” said a broker at one of the top firms who
asked to remain anonymous. “Landlords are micromanaging the process and
you need a lot of handholding and a lot of paper.

PricewaterhouseCoopers released a pessimistic report this week on the state of the national commercial real estate market, suggesting that a recovery for the embattled industry may be a long way off. Robert Sammons, research director with Colliers ABR, sat down with Bloomberg to share his more optimistic viewpoint. He argued that the Pricewaterhouse report was too simplistic and that different regions will see commercial real estate recoveries sooner than others. According to Sammons, Manhattan commercial real estate could recover as soon as mid-2010 because of a slowed construction pace in the city and the subsequent drop in inventory. [more]

According to Colliers ABR report for June, vacancy rates for Class A office
space in Manhattan
saw a decrease of 10 basis points for the first time in a year. Also, the
average asking rent increased for Class A space, jumping a modest $0.14 to
$65.57 per square foot. However, the report, released today, also notes that
these signs of improvement for the commercial sector could be slowed by the
struggling larger economy and housing market. Factors including low consumer
spending rates, the still high unemployment rate, and the high risk of
commercial mortgage defaults, may all be a drag on the commercial real estate
market in coming months, specifically the office space sector, according to the
report. Also, big blocks of space in Lower Manhattan
may return to the market soon, which will raise vacancy rates even higher, the
report says. TRD

Midtown Class A office space had a vacancy rate of 12.2 percent by April of this year, the highest rate since August 1996, according to Colliers ABR. Colliers reported that there is 7.8 million square feet of sublease space available in Class A buildings, the most since the company started keeping records in December 1991. Of Midtown’s 222 million square feet of office space, 30 million square feet is available, said John Powers, CB Richard Ellis’ tri-state chairman. And new commercial buildings, like 11 Times Square, which is scheduled to open in a year, and 510 Madison Avenue, will add to the glut of office space. CBRE said in March the amount of actively marketed space that is vacant or will become available within a year in Midtown reached 14.2 percent. [NYO] and [NYT] [more]