Category: Feature Articles
Regulators and emergency officials are increasingly urging people to take flooding more seriously. Strengthen properties against flooding, don’t build in high-risk flood zones and buy flood insurance to protect your home. They argue not nearly enough homeowners buy flood insurance, especially in an era when climate scientists have documented rising sea levels and higher global [...]
Gun policies have been at the center of the country’s political debate for decades as incidents of mass shootings and violent crimes in schools have increasingly dominated news reports. Between 2014 and 2022, there were approximately 400,000 documented gun-related incidents nationwide, while Florida had 18,150 gun incidents, according to Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization [...]
In line with the conversation about artificial intelligence affecting every aspect of our lives, Due Diligence offers insight into its impact on the real estate industry. When covering the field of AI, why not have AI write a story about AI’s use in real estate. This is exactly what we did. Using AI is not [...]
Traditional real estate investment analysis often emphasizes population and household growth as primary indicators to gauge the demand for multifamily units in a given market. However, Rick Scarola, a UF Bergstrom Real Estate Center advisory board member, introduces a compelling alternative metric that leverages employment data to gauge market health. Scarola, a graduate of UF’s [...]
Long ago, Mark Twain supposedly said, “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.” The witticism seems ever more apt today, particularly in Florida, where the state’s strong population growth and competition for land is drawing increased attention from academics, public officials and landowners. Researchers at the University of Florida’s Center for Landscape Conservation Planning inventoried [...]
Ram Realty Advisors has entered the final stages of a $135 million project to reimagine a more than 50-year-old shopping mall in the heart of Chapel Hill, N.C. Begun in 2018, the extensive redevelopment has turned the mall inside-out by tearing down a third of the space and creating an open-air shopping center with 350,000 [...]
The stiffest headwind most boaters face these days isn’t from a storm. It’s finding a place to tie up. Slips at marinas are so hard to find that Florida boat and yacht brokers advise clients not to buy a watercraft until they have first found somewhere to store it. “There’s just too many boats and [...]
New York City’s Green Energy Local Law 97 (LL97) is a significant component of the Climate Mobilization Act passed by the New York City Council in 2019. The New York City Mayor’s Office of Climate and Sustainability presents this law as “one of the most ambitious plans for reducing emissions in the nation.” One of [...]
During times of market uncertainty — such as a financial crisis, pandemic or spike in interest rates — the illiquid nature of private equity real estate (PERE) leads to questionable valuations. Appraisals rely on recent transactions of comparable properties to estimate the most probable selling price for a property. But commercial property transactions typically drop [...]
A simplified measure of housing affordability is the ratio of median household (HH) income over income needed to own a median-valued home. This is a gauge of broad-based affordability that can help determine if a market is balanced. Using the input choices shown in Figure 1 yields a current index of 1.07 for Florida indicating [...]
There is no question that debt markets face some challenges and current maturities are elevated by any standard. In February, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported 20% of the outstanding $4.7 trillion in U.S. commercial mortgages held by lenders and investors will mature in 2024. If commercial mortgages range from one to 10 years maturity, then [...]
Ferber Co. spent $28 million to develop Cypress Ranch, the largest land development project in the company’s 117-year history. The mixed-use project in Pasco County includes retail businesses, single family homes, townhomes, and apartments. Work began in 2018 when Ferber applied for governmental approvals to rezone the 164-acre tract. After navigating delays related to the [...]
Much of the most valuable property across the United States is near the coasts, and the estimated costs from coastal hazards and rising sea levels are enormous — amounting to over a trillion dollars. Florida represents perhaps the best example of the explosive combination of severe weather hazards and a large population. Warm weather and [...]
Following the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Tower South condominium in Surfside, Florida, the state Legislature enacted a new law to address high-rise condo safety concerns. The new regulations require increased inspections, specify the involvement of experts, mandate the funding of reserves and remove inspection exemptions. If executed with diligence, these new requirements should improve [...]
Over the last four years, the commercial real estate market has undergone a series of major changes, marked by three periods. First, uncertainty: In 2020, the world was rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns that brought global economies to a virtual standstill. The real estate industry was among the hardest hit as government [...]