National market report

Texas

In a sign of the fast-growing Texas commercial real estate market, a portfolio of office buildings is expected to trade hands this month for $1.1 billion, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. Cousins Properties, an Atlanta-based real estate investment trust, signed a deal to buy Greenway Plaza, a 4.4 million-square-foot 10-building office complex in Houston, and 777 Main Street, a 980,000-square-foot office tower in Fort Worth. Both properties are currently owned by a joint venture operated by Crescent Real Estate Holdings. According to Businessweek, Houston in particular has lured investors with properties offering lower prices and higher returns than buildings in other U.S. cities. Office sales in Houston rose 32 percent to $3.89 billion in 2012, the highest in five years, according to Real Capital Analytics. Meanwhile, the private equity firm Blackstone Group LP last month agreed to buy majority stakes in about 80 apartment complexes from General Electric in a deal that values the portfolio at $2.7 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. The apartment buildings, with roughly 30,000 units, are in Dallas and other parts of Texas and the Southeast.

New Orleans

The construction of a $2 billion medical complex in New Orleans’ Mid-City is fueling a real estate renaissance in the surrounding area, the Times-Picayune reported. Two side-by-side hospitals under construction by Louisiana State University and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, slated for completion by 2016, are prompting more commercial development and residential sales along Tulane Avenue, a once-vibrant area that is now blighted. The Patio Motel, which has been vacant since Hurricane Katrina, was sold last year, and the new owners plan to invest nearly $3 million to renovate the hotel and turn it into a Quality Inn. Baton Rouge–based Wampold Companies recently announced that it would spend $20 million converting the vacant 17-story Elks Place office tower into 100 luxury apartments, with 8,000 square feet of retail. And last year, Campus Federal Credit Union purchased a parcel of land adjacent to the medical complex site for $1.5 million, or $43 per square foot, setting a new benchmark for land sales in Mid-City. Residential real estate has also picked up in the area, the Times-Picayune said. The Domain Companies recently spent $130 million to build four residential buildings and a shopping center in the area. The buildings’ 530 units are 100 percent occupied.

Chicago

Illinois home sales in July hit their highest levels since 2006, as an inventory shortage pushed up prices, the Chicago Tribune reported last month. In July, the median home price in the Chicago metropolitan area rose 18 percent to $201,075 and 11,897 homes were sold, up 36 percent from 8,744 in July of last year. Within the city of Chicago, the median sale price was $250,000, a 25 percent increase from July 2012’s $200,000. It was the best July performance for median prices in the city since 2008. Higher prices are being driven by a limited availability of homes, the Tribune reported — the number of homes listed for sale in the Chicago area was down 35 percent from a year ago. Also buoying prices is the effect of fewer distressed sales. In July, distressed sales accounted for just under 30 percent of all transactions, the Tribune said, down from almost 50 percent earlier this year.

Northern New Jersey

With banks starting to lend and prices stabilizing, the number of big-ticket commercial property sales in northern New Jersey this year has outpaced 2012, reaching some $450 million in dollar volume, the Bergen Record reported. In the first half of 2013, there were 14 transactions of $10 million or more in Bergen and Passaic counties. That’s up from 10 such transactions totaling $356 million in the first six months of 2012. The increase comes despite the fact that the number of overall commercial deals in Bergen and Passaic dropped to 317 in the first half of the year, down from 384 in the same period of 2012. North Jersey’s priciest deal of the year so far has been the sale of the Prospect Towers apartment building in Hackensack, which traded for $99.2 million. “Sellers’ expectations are now more aligned with the realities of what the market will bear,” Bob Martie, Colliers International executive vice president for New Jersey, told the Record. While the area’s industrial and multi-family sectors are strong, the North Jersey office market, with its outdated corporate parks, remains challenged.

Rhode Island

The Rhode Island real estate market is recovering, the Providence Journal reported. In the second quarter, the state’s median home price rose 10 percent year-over-year to $209,900. In the first six months of 2013, 3,968 houses were sold in the state, up from 3,636 in the same period of last year. Some 22 percent of those were classified as distressed, down from 30 percent last year. Rhode Island’s median house price reached its peak of $282,500 in 2006, but dropped to $190,000 in 2012. The state’s real estate market has been gaining strength since January, the paper said. One high-profile listing on the market now is the 3.4-acre “Rocky Farm” estate on the waterfront in Newport, which is currently listed for $4.7 million.

Orange County

Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant has listed his home in Newport Coast, Calif., for just under $8.6 million, Curbed reported. Bryant reportedly purchased the 8,500-square-foot four-bedroom home in 2001. Among its features: a pool and spa, an 850-square-foot gym, a hair salon, an outdoor kitchen and a library equipped with a shark tank.

Los Angeles

Celebrity couple Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi listed their 26-acre equestrian estate in Thousand Oaks, Calif. for nearly $11 million in late July, the Los Angeles Times reported, then upped the price two weeks later to just under $13 million. The couple bought the ranch, which features eight cabins, two barns, stables and a tennis court, in 2009 for $8.5 million. Earlier this year, DeGeneres and De Rossi bought a 13-acre estate in Santa Barbara County for $26.5 million.

Scottsdale

Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky has sold his Scottsdale, Ariz., home for $2.88 million — $520,000 less than the asking price, according to Redfin. Gretzky, who listed the house in June, paid $1.4 million for the estate in 2003.