Ever thought about immigrating to Canada?  Well, Toronto is the place to be.  With a diverse population and job base, Toronto is Canada’s largest city and the equivalent to New York City of the United States.  In addition, the nation’s capital city, Ottawa, is also located in the same province, providing administrative benefits for being close to the capital.  If you want to experience France, there is Quebec only a few hours drive away, a truly different experience compared to the rest of Canada.  Drive south for an hour and you can get to Buffalo, New York and the beautiful Niagara Falls.  Detroit and the Great Lakes are also nearby.  So why wait, I strongly recommend checking out some Toronto Condos, since they prove to be solid investments and the favorite of investors especially those from Hong Kong and the rest of Asia.  Overall, the diversity of Toronto has drawn many foreign investors to the city and real estate there proves to be solid investments.

The Twin Cities.  City of Lakes.  Minneapolis St-Paul, the home of the 2008 Republican National Convention is like an enigma.  It had low unemployment but high office vacancy rates.  Yet, it is definitely the opposite in terms of residential.  Many storefronts remain empty, however there are several noteworthy projects to pay close attention to.  A 1.5 mile long Minneapolis Life Sciences Corridor is shining south of the city.  Like the Great Mall of America being the largest in the nation, the Life Sciences Corridor is also one of the biggest in the US.

The Central Riverfront District next to the Mississippi river has around 13 projcets under way; the most notable one being the Phoenix on the River, a condo development that recently opened.

West of Downtown Minnearpolis, a new 26 acre North Loop Village master-planned development highlighting growth to the west setting the path for the Minnesota Twin’s new ballpark which opens in 2010 in that area.

According to Salary.com, Minneapolis is the 4th best city to build personal weatlh and is the world’s 19th most livable city according to Monocle Magazine.  Overall, Minneapolis seems like an interesting city, with office vacancies nearing 15 percent, maybe now is a good time to take a look at bargains.  For more information about Minneapolis, please check out the Scotsman Guide, Salary.com and Monocle Magazine.  Further, I would suggest contacting a real estate professional to help further your investment goals in the region.

This is Part One of our ongoing series… The World’s Largest…

There are very many entities in this world who collect office buildings and so forth.  I was reading Commercial Property News and they stated that the top five are as follows:

RREEF Real Estate has a portfolio of $27 billion as of June 30, 2007.

Morgan Stanley Real Estate has a portfolio of $25.6 billion.

Boston Properties Inc. has a portfolio of $20.1 billion.

TIAA-CREF, the education pension fund has $15 billion.

SL Green Realty Corp. has $14 billion.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… CY: wait… I: wait… L: wait… YCat: wait… I: wait… Top: wait… I: wait… L: wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

With the ease of entry in the Dubai real estate market, many leading US developers and institutional investors are investing in Dubai.  Turner International, The John Buck Co., Hines, The Carlyle Group and Blackrock are just some of the big names expressing great attention to the Emirate.  The Trump Organization is also actively building and recently broke ground on the Palm Trump International Hotel & Tower, selling its residential portion for over $3,000 per square foot!  Meanwhile, average rent for class A office space has risen to about $88 per square foot.  With labor costs low and rents high along with economic stability and appreciating property values make Dubai a great place to invest. 

Yet, there also may be downside to investing in foreign countries where potential investors must exercise caution and due diligence.  The area seems to be overbuilding drastically and there seems to be no concept of the latter in supply and demand at this point.  It seems like it’s all speculative building at a large scale.  Further, overseas investors are restricted to purchasing only in designed areas, such as the Dubai International Financial Centre and Jebel Ali Free Zone, thus inflating the values of those areas perhaps leading to a great price difference in land cost for local versus international investors.

Yet, the investment doesn’t just go one way.  Middle Eastern investors and sovereign wealth funds are finding riches in the US property market.  Even as oil continues to plunge in price, these funds still hold coffers of cash, allowing them to invest in trophy real estate in the US.

Most notably, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, the sovereign wealth fund of the Abu Dhabi emirate, purchased 90 percent of the Chrysler Building in New York City for a reported $800 million.  Around the same time, Meraas Capital LLC, in a joint venture, paid $2.8 billion for the General Motors Building, also in the Big Apple.

In addition, many wealth funds from the Middle East have been investing outside of the United States.  Oman, for example, recently bought a 50 percent stake in the UK-hotel chain, Jurys Inns.  Dubai broke ground on its own turf with its Universal Studios portion of Dubai Land, a futuristic theme park valued at over $64 billion.

For more information about investing in real estate, I would consult a professional who specializes in the market and market segment and remember it is important to perform due diligence.

The boutique hotel chain Kimpton is preparing for construction on its 600,000 square foot hotel/condo in the heart of the Miwaukee city center.  Designed by HKS Architects, Kimpton Hotel and Condominiums will feature 63 condominium units with 176 guest rooms along with retail and office spaces.  The property will also have stunning views of Lake Michigan.

Hotel/condominiums have been a highlight for the past decade and it is a marvelous idea for hotel owners from a financial perspective.  First of all, land prices are exuberantly high, so the first thing that comes to mind is: build as much as possible/don’t under-utilize.  However,  most markets do not allow for 50-story, 2000 room hotels, unless you are in Las Vegas or Macau.  So the most feasible would be to combine the hotel with something else… maybe an office building?  Many cities, especially in Asia, it is a very popular concept.  Many newer hotels in Tokyo and Hong Kong are built that way, since land is so expensive, but those cities also happen to be major financial centers.  In the US, there are very few financial centers and second-tier cities like Milwaukee or Portland, Oregon don’t have extreme demand for office space compared to, say New York or Washington, DC.  How about putting in some condos?  Why not?  It usually allows the developer to make a profit on otherwise unused space and in many US markets right now, condos are expensive.  A one bedroom condominium (around 700 square feet) sells for around US$ 500,000 in the Seattle, Washington metro area.  Penthouses and larger units easily top US$ 1,500 per square foot in the same region.  Although labor and material costs are rapidly rising, I doubt it takes that much money to build.  In the end of the project, perhaps the hotel owner will make some money and if lucky, get a FREE hotel!

Light Rail in Dallas has become very popular after cranking up its engines around twelve (12) years ago, when people were highly skeptical with regards to the potential of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit plan.  Today, over 50,000 people ride the 45-mile system each day.  Recently, transit-oriented developements began to spring up near the light rail transit stations.

Next to the Park Lane Station, a $750 million, 3-million square foor mixed-use project called the Park Lane is springing up.  Additionally planned for 2013, Prescott Realty Group is building Lake Highlands Town Center at the Lake Highlands station.  The project is planned to have 1,700 residential units in addition to retail and office spaces.

Overall, urban planning in Dallas has successfully integrated mass transit lite rail systems to the daily lives of its residents and visitors.  Meanwhile, Houston has followed suit and successfully inaugurated its METRO light rail service and currently has ridership of 45,000 every weekday.  Seattle, Washington has been successfully rolling out its Sound Transit light rail in phases with connections to Airport to Downtown Seattle rolling out in the next year.  Transit oriented developments fill the area along the road the to Downtown with emphasis in the up-and-coming Martin Luther King Jr. Way area.  Phoenix, Arizona is also launching its very own $1.4 billion light rail system in December of this year.

All in all, light rail is becoming an efficient system of public transportation in many cities throughout the United States.  Perhaps, this is a good time to invest in transit-oriented real estate that are convinient for its users.

Amidst a worldwide credit crunch, St. Louis, Missouri, in mid-western United States, home of the Gateway Arch is still piling up with mixed-use developments.  For example, RJ York Development is working on a 23-story hotel, condo and retail tower in nearby suburban town of Clayton.  Centene Corp, the health insurance giant is planning an office project in the area as well.  Perhaps the Subprime Crisis is not affecting all areas of the United States.  Maybe the city of Saint Louis is blessed.

The red stick.  Baton Rouge, hard hit in 2005 by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, more than 30,000 residents have moved there to take advantage of the Gulf Opportunity Zone.   With the rapid population growth, there is a number of projects going on in the city.  With the support of the Downtown Development District, there are many commercial developments under way in the Central Business District.  For example, the four-block North Boulevard Town Square project is expected to break ground next summer, comprising of the $100 million state courthouse building.  In addition to the North Boulevard Town Square, there is also a 12-story, 260,000 square foot Class-A office building under construction.  It seems that Louisiana is finally recovering from the “Katrina Bump” with its world class universities as well as its petrochemical and shipping industries.

Next to the Cinerama Theatre on Fourth Avenue, between Lenora and Blanchard streets, Seattle-based HAL Real Estate is building a new 40-story condominium building.  HAL purchased the one-third acre site in May for $5,000,000.  Currently, the building is a one story transmission shop.  I was reading the Seattle Times today and it stated there will be 360 units in this new building along with ground floor retail.

HAL Real Estate is formerly the owner of Holland America Lines.  Per its website, its parent company is based in the Netherlands.  Today, the company is a diversified investment company with significant real estate holdings in the Pacific Northwest.  Some of its other projects include Cameo Condominiums on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, Columbia Plaza in Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood, Newmark Commercial Center in the CBD, Triton Towers in Renton, Washington, a nearby suburb and Plaza at Yarrow Bay, a trophy office property in Kirkland, in Seattle’s Eastside, commonly known as the Silicon Valley of Washington.

With a pricetag of $360 million, International Business Machines (IBM) is building its ninth environmentally friendly cloud computing center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.  According to Bob Greenberg, general manager of IT optimization:

This new data center is part of IBM’s commitment to construct the world’s most advanced data centers. When we open for business in late 2009, the new IBM data center assures that Research Triangle Park will be a strategic location for our outsourcing business for many years to come. I’d like to thank the State of North Carolina, Durham County, the Durham Chamber of Commerce, and Duke Energy for their outstanding support that helped make this project possible.  Source: http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1802216/

Green data centers are beneficial for all.  It helps IBM reach it’s billion dollar environmental initiatives and benefits the environment.