Residential
The median price of a new home in the Atlanta metro region in 2004 was $189,000, according to a study by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The median resale price was $166,500. Prices varied widely over the multi-county metro region, with more expensive neighborhoods like Buckhead surpassing more rural areas in Fayetteville and Cherokee counties.
Residential
Southern Fulton County has become one of the fastest-growing residential areas in the Atlanta region. Housing permits issued in south Fulton in 2004 nearly doubled the number of permits issued in the more established, more expensive north Fulton area, according to the Journal-Constitution. About 30 subdivisions are under construction in Fulton County south of Atlanta, with land prices rising there from $9,135 an acre in 2001 to $20,448 an acre last year.
Boston
Residential/Commercial
Revere Beach, one of the nation’s oldest public beaches, is undergoing a revitalization as developers build in the sleepy waterfront suburb that’s seen very little growth the past two decades. Two condominium complexes with a total of 130 units and a 60-unit apartment building are expected to be finished this year in the community five miles north of Boston, according to GlobeSt.com. Two more condominium buildings with 311 units total are anticipated after 2005, and the city plans to develop an 11-acre site into a multi-use complex including a hotel, restaurants and more residential units.
Chicago
Residential
The Near South Side has become Chicago’s busiest residential market in 2005, says the Chicago Sun-Times. Applications for construction of 1,200 apartments are before the city and could add several dozen stories of residential space to the area. The largest proposed construction is for 454 units in two 20-story buildings on South State Street at the former site of the Wicklander Printing Company. Other big projects include 278 units, also on South State, and 273 units on South Calumet Avenue. The Near South Side saw 559 sales or reservations of new homes in the first quarter of 2005, the Sun-Times reported.
Commercial
Chicago continues to lose ground to other cities in drawing conventions, according to the Associated Press. Industries and trade groups are bypassing the Windy City, generally considered the birthplace of the modern industry convention, in favor of cities like Las Vegas and Orlando, which can now offer venues similar to the 2.2 million square feet of exhibit space at McCormick Place in Chicago. According to Tradeshow Week magazine, Chicago ranked second to Las Vegas in 2004 in the number of big conventions hosted.
Las Vegas
Commercial
Las Vegas continues to dominate other American cities in spending on tourism. The budget of the city’s Convention and Visitors Authority for fiscal 2004 was more than $145 million, according to the Las Vegas Sun. The next-closest city was Orlando at $41 million. Las Vegas also led the nation in 2004 for the 11th straight year in hosting top industry conventions, according to Tradeshow Week magazine. Sin City hosted 38 of the biggest 200 conventions ranked by space occupied.
Commercial
McCarran International Airport is expanding as Las Vegas continues to grow rapidly. Local officials are planning parking and terminal expansions at the nation’s sixth-busiest airport. Also, a $1.6 billion terminal the airport’s third is scheduled to open at McCarran in 2009.
Los Angeles
Residential
Los Angeles County has the lowest foreclosure rate among the nation’s top five metro areas. In May, for the second month in a row, the L.A. area had one property in some stage of the foreclosure process for every 4,242 households, according to the Los Angeles Daily News, less than half the national rate of one for every 1,853 households.
Residential
The northern L.A. suburb of Bakersfield continues to be one of the fastest-growing areas in the nation, according to the Los Angeles Times. It’s California’s fastest-growing large city, averaging 36 new residents and 12 new houses a day over the last year. And that housing is getting pricier: Bakersfield has the nation’s highest appreciation rate, with homes there selling for 34 percent more in the first quarter of 2005 than in the same period last year.
Miami
Residential/Commercial
A huge new commercial complex with residences near Miami’s Performing Arts Center won approval from the city in late June to move forward. The five-story, 1.8-million-square-foot Bayview Market Retail Center, developed by BDB Miami, will feature space large enough for four big-box retailers in addition to 24 residential units. It will also have enough space for smaller, ground-floor shops, according to the Miami Herald, and will include a 10-story parking garage.
Residential
The difference between home prices and income has reached a record level in Miami-Dade County, according to government data. The price of a home in Miami-Dade is now more than six times that of personal income levels, the Herald reported, and home prices continue to rise in what a Merrill Lynch study released in late June termed the nation’s most “bubbly” housing market. Home prices in Miami-Dade appreciated more than 40 percent from March of 2004 to March of 2005, according to the newspaper.
Philadelphia
Commercial
A 50-acre parcel of mostly junkyards between Essington Avenue and 67th Street in Philadelphia’s Eastwick neighborhood will be developed into the 500,000-squarefoot Shoppes at Essington Avenue, one of the biggest retail destinations in that area of the city. O’Neill Properties recently obtained the rezoning approval to build two big-box stores of 135,000 and 150,000 square feet as well as two smaller box stores of 30,000 and 40,000 square feet, according to GlobeSt.com.
Residential
Philadelphia will need at least 18,000 new residents to fill thousands of fresh developments going up in the city over the next three years, according to developers. The city may have as many as 9,185 new residential units in the near future, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. A city that has steadily lost residents will have to reverse that trend to fill them, say developers. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 70,000 residents left Philadelphia in the 1990s, one of the sharpest losses of any major city in the nation.
Phoenix
Residential/Commercial
Phoenix and other Arizona cities may soon be paying higher taxes to supply the state’s growing rural areas with groundwater, according to the Arizona Republic. Rural Arizona’s population, which doubled to more than one million in the past quarter-century, is projected to grow by 500,000 in the next 25 years, straining already finite supplies of groundwater in the largely desert, drought-afflicted state. Water demand could soon severely reduce the flow of the Verde River, an important source of water for metropolitan Phoenix, one of the nation’s fastest-growing real estate markets.
Commercial
Not surprisingly for the nation’s fastest-growing city, Phoenix and its surrounding desert valley landscape will see several new projects in the next several months. Biggest among them is the $400 million convention facility that, among other things, will be the home of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals. Also going up is the Phoenix Civic Plaza, which will include a 65,000-square-foot underground exhibition hall and a conference center. Two new hotels with more than 450 rooms total are also planned.
San Francisco
Residential
The price of a home in the Bay Area continues to climb as the number of home sales there keeps falling. The area’s median home price in May was a record $595,000, up 7.6 percent from May 2004, according to media reports. The median home price in San Francisco County was $765,000, more than 10 times its median household income. The median price in San Mateo County south of San Francisco was $740,000. Home sales and resales in the Bay Area were down 6 percent in May from the same month last year.
Commercial
The 417-room Sir Francis Drake Hotel, a 77-year-old San Francisco landmark, was purchased for an undisclosed sum in early July by the Oxford Lodging and Advisory Group and Longwing Real Estate Ventures. The new owners plan a $20 million renovation affecting guest rooms, meeting spaces and public areas, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The purchase comes as San Francisco hotels generally and finally have begun to emerge from a post-September 11 slump, the Chronicle reported.
Washington, D.C.
Residential/Commercial
Rockville, Md., will be the home of a $400 million mixed-use development on a 17-acre parcel of land next to the Twinbrook Metro station. JBG Cos. plans to build 1,595 housing units, 220,000 square feet of retail, and 325,000 square feet of office space, according to the Washington Business Journal. The city of Rockville annexed the land from Montgomery County in mid-June, which is expected to speed up the development.
Residential
Illegal residential construction is on the rise in the District of Columbia as home values increase, according to the Washington Post. District property owners seeking extra space on existing homes are building without the official OK because they can’t afford to buy bigger houses, the Post reported, and others are doing so because they want to drive up the value of their homes even more with an eye toward selling. The District, however, is cracking down: It issued more than 1,400 stop-work orders on illegal construction during a 17-month period, fining property owners almost $1 million.