Philadelphia: America’s Next Great City?
Residential/Commercial
Philadelphia’s real estate tax abatements are starting to change the residential reality of the city. The abatements for developers are helping spur an unprecedented construction boom in even Philadelphia’s most marginal neighborhoods, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. In 1997, the City Council passed a 10-year real estate tax abatement for developers who convert commercial buildings into residential; in 2000, the council passed a similar abatement for developers of new residential construction. Since 1997, 328 properties across Philadelphia have been converted, the Business Journal reported, reversing a trend in a city that has been steadily losing residents for the past few decades. There are now more than 9,000 fresh residential units in the pipeline. This residential growth is part of the reason that National Geographic Traveler in its October issue dubbed Philadelphia America’s “Next Great City.”
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Atlanta
Commercial/Residential
September saw the unveiling of plans for one of the biggest new redevelopment projects in Atlanta. The city will vacate City Hall East on Ponce de Leon Avenue and sell the old warehouse to a developer who wants to build a live-work-play community, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The community will include 1,600 residences, nearly 200,000 square feet of retail, and 155,000 square feet of office space, plus 3,500 parking spaces.
Commercial
Hurricane Katrina may have speeded up construction on Atlanta’s newest office tower. The developer, fearing construction costs from the hurricane’s impact, broke ground in late September, earlier than expected, according to the Atlanta Journal- Constitution. The 18-story, 300,000- square-foot building on Peachtree Street does not yet have any tenants and will cost about $60 million.
Boston
Commercial
Blocks of office space greater than 100,000 square feet are dwindling in the suburban Boston commercial market. Landlords in three suburbs Andover, Waltham and Quincy recently signed leases of more than 100,000 square feet, according to the Boston Business Journal, shortening significantly the list of options for tenants who don’t want to pay commercial prices in Boston proper.
Residential
The housing market in Massachusetts may soon favor buyers over sellers. In late September, 25,843 single-family homes were on the market in the Bay State, the Boston Globe reported, the highest number of homes on the market since at least 1998. The market had about seven and a half months of supply, leading some to speculate that the state’s housing market outside of Boston may gradually edge toward buyers selecting from sellers who are tired of having their houses on the market.
Chicago
Residential/Commercial
Downtown Chicago is undergoing its third big wave of condo conversions within the last 35 years, according to the Chicago Tribune. Downtown could see more than 4,000 conversions this year, as commercial buildings are changed over and rentals, too, are converted to capitalize on demand for condos. The rate of conversion from rental apartments to condos in Downtown is more than four times the annual average over the last 15 years, the Tribune reported.
Residential/Commercial
Huge housing developments of 1,000 to 3,000 homes are under way in several locations southwest and northwest of Chicago. These suburban mega-developments, the Chicago Tribune reported, include the 2,000-home Talamore development in the suburb of Huntley and the 1,030-home Southbury development in Oswego.
Las Vegas
Residential/Commercial
Tishman Construction was selected to oversee the 66-acre, $5 billion MGM Mirage development, Project CityCenter, in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip. The mixed-use development will be the largest U.S. construction project, the New York Post reported.
Residential/Commercial
A second tower will be added to the Majestic Las Vegas resort. Originally, only one tower was slated for the condominium-hotel resort on the Strip, but the developer decided in September that the construction costs justified a second one. One of the towers will be a 60-story Conrad Hotel, part of the Hilton brand, with more than 500 suites around 800 square feet each, according to In Business Las Vegas. The second tower will be a condo-hotel hybrid with 40 stories and at least 560 units.
Residential/Commercial
About 8,000 condo units in Las Vegas were under construction or about to start by late September. Much of the demand for the fresh condo construction is being fueled by investors and buyers well outside of Sin City, the Los Angeles Times reported. Among the projects, Donald Trump is building the Trump International Hotel & Tower a short distance from his ex-wife’s new condo development, the Ivana Las Vegas.
Los Angeles
Residential
If the first six months are any indication, Los Angeles is on pace to easily have a record housing sales year in 2005. Through June, the Los Angeles Daily News reported, sales in L.A. County were 8 percent ahead of the first six months of 2004. New home construction is also ahead of last year’s pace which was the strongest since 1989 up 1.9 percent through the end of June over the first six months of 2004.
Residential
And home prices, like home sales, are also up in L.A. County. The median price of an existing home there rose 23.9 percent to $564,340 in August from $455,590 one year earlier, according to the California Association of Realtors. The August median was 3.8 percent higher than the $543,890 median price for a single-family home in July, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported.
Miami
Residential
The median price for an existing single-family home in Miami-Dade County dropped to $356,000 in August from $363,800 in July, the Miami Herald reported. That marks the first month-to-month decline in the county in nearly a year, but the August number was still 26 percent ahead of August 2004’s median price. In Broward County, the Herald reported, the average median price increased $1,400 over July to $387,000 in August. That’s a 33 percent increase over August 2004.
San Diego
Residential
A group of San Diego developers calling itself the Downtown Residential Marketing Alliance recently pooled resources for a $40,000 advertising blitz to entice condo buyers under 40 to move Downtown. The group reasons that San Diego adults under 40, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, are the likeliest buyers for units in Downtown’s growing collection of mid- and high-rise condo complexes. A recent survey of Downtown sales offices by the group concluded that three-fourths of recent condo buyers there were 40 or under.
San Francisco
Commercial
A group of Hong Kong investors in September bought the landmark Bank of America tower in San Francisco for a reported $1.05 billion. In a 1031 exchange, the investors, Hudson Waterfront Associates partners with Donald Trump on this past spring’s record Riverside South sale on the far West Side intend to use proceeds from that $1.8 billion deal for the tower purchase. (Some reports said Trump himself was part of the deal; he was not involved.) The 1.8-millionsquare- foot Bank of America tower went for $583 per foot.
Commercial
A major new commercial complex is going up in the heart of San Francisco’s Jazz District. Em Johnson Interest, a Bay Area developer, is working on a $68 million, mixed-use complex at the corner of Fillmore and Eddy streets, according to GlobeSt.com. The complex will include a public parking garage as well as a commercial base topped by 80 mixed-income condo units in a 13- story tower.
Washington, DC
Residential
In a sign of the rising demand for Washington housing, the number of affordable houses and apartments in the District of Columbia dropped by nearly 12,000 in 2004, according to a Washington Post analysis of U.S. Census data released in September. Once generally abandoned by middle-class home buyers who fled to the suburbs, according to the Post, the District is now a boomtown driven by high demand for increasingly more expensive homes.