Urbanexus Update - Issue #76
The curator of this weekly posting of real estate and community development news is Pike Oliver. He is Acting Chair of the Runstad Department of Real Estate in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. Please note that some links may lead to items that are behind a paywall.
Equity markets and real estate
Goldilocks data lifts real estate, except malls
'Goldilocks' is alive and well. On the final 'jobs week' before the Fed's October meeting, US equity markets clawed back from steep mid-week losses to end the week roughly flat.
Real estate finance
The Federal Government is re-involved in risky mortgage underwriting. In a new recession, the mortgages could cost taxpayers billions.
Office
Expedia’s somewhat isolated campus — www.seattletimes.com
Four years after Expedia announced it would move its headquarters from Bellevue to the former Amgen campus in Seattle, the first of the company's 4,500 employees are about to move in.
Hospitality
With so much institutional capital moving into the sector, are hotels about to lose their niche status?
Residential
Where can teachers afford the rent? — www.nytimes.com If they are the sole breadwinner in their home, hardly anywhere in America’s largest metro areas.
When rent gets ridiculous, talent runs away It takes a lot to chase ambitious people out of America's costliest cities. Yes, rents are steep; homes are tiny; restaurants are crowded and commuting is tough.
Renting bunk beds In the midst of an affordable housing crunch, people are trading privacy for a place to live.
Getting real estate data
Counting construction cranes — www.citylab.com In some cities, a skyline full of construction equipment has become synonymous with change and displacement. But there are things cranes can’t tell you.
Real estate litigation
A developer vs builder dispute
Glenn Straub, a Florida-based developer, claims that D.R. Horton, the nation's biggest homebuilder, violated an agreement to greatly expand the residential side of the luxury Tesoro Club in Port St. Lucie.
The second time around
Firm reacquires Seattle tower that it sold in 2003
Continental Properties LLC has acquired Met Tower, a 366-unit residential building in Seattle it helped develop in 2001, for $216.1 million. The seller was Seattle-based Westlake Tower Associates, according to multiple media reports. The buyer orignally developed the 31-story tower in a joint venture with Bentall and sold the building in 2003 for $105 million, or $287,000 per unit. Bentall was looking to get out of the multifamily real estate business at the time.
Urban design
Who’s afraid of the pedestrian mall? To make cities safer and denser, we need to make room for people, not cars. The specter of the 1970s is holding our foot traffic back.
Environment and sustainability
Fill cities with taller wooden buildings
Across North America, trees stand ready to help us solve the climate crisis. Trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their wood. This opportunity arises from cross-laminated timber, or CLT. First introduced in the 1990s, it enables architects and engineers to design tall, fire-safe and beautiful wood buildings.
Furniture from materials in abandoned buildings
Room and Board has a product line that uses wood from demolished buildings in Baltimore.
Around the world
Catherine Mazorodze was overworked and tired when she quit her job as a farmworker in Zimbabwe's Manicaland province. No job meant she was also homeless, along with her grandmother with whom she had shared a small home provided by the farm's owners. Mazorodze jumped at the opportunity to get a small plot of land of her own - distributed by the leaders of Chisumbanje, her village - but soon realised there was a price to pay.
How the Rohingya refugee camp turned Into a city
Two years into the Myanmar refugee crisis, life for the Rohingya trapped in Bangladesh remains difficult but has improved, thanks to infrastructure and design improvements.
Fun facts
All about hard hats — www.inc.com
Color matters.