Investor Forum Survey
Ain’t Getting
Much Easier
Transaction activity may be up on paper, but word on
the street says the market’s still difficult for investors
By now it’s broadly accepted that the investment market today is doing much better than a year ago. We’re hearing that more properties are put on the market for sale, albeit at a painstakingly
slow pace; financing is becoming more available, for
the right deals; and sellers are getting slightly more
realistic on pricing.
Given the shift in market dynamic, the editors at
Real Estate Forum decided to survey
our readers to get a sense of how they view
the investment environment and the
acquisition opportunities over the next
year. Most started off the rebound on the
same page— 56.1% of respondents said
their companies altered their investment
parameters and scaled back during the
recession, while another 26.6% said they
held to their traditional parameters. And
a decent percentage, 17.3%, said they
took advantage of recessionary conditions
and became more aggressive, grabbing
opportunity as they found it.
Yet today, even those who retrenched
during the downturn are planning or
embarking on aggressive, yet selective,
acquisition strategies. Many more potential
buyers are in the market, looking at opportunities. But there remain some issues,
namely, the availability of financing and
quality product for sale. All in all, however,
the industry professionals who responded to Forum’s
Investor Survey were feeling good about the market.
Broken down, the majority of the 250 or so respondents to the survey, conducted in September, were
owner/investors ( 37.3%), commercial real estate bro-kers/service providers ( 24.6%), were employed in
Compared to six months ago,
the current investment climate is...
More
Competitive
59.4%
finance/investment banking/lending services
( 11.9%) and development firms ( 9.8%). Others were
with life company/institutional investor/asset man-ager/pension funds ( 3.7%), asset management firms
( 3.3%) or private equity firms (2%), while the rest
were a variety of corporate space users, mortgage
banking intermediaries, public and private REITs,
sponsors or other real estate firms. Nine in 10 of
those polled were male, and 63% had more than 20
Unchanged
32.4%
Less
Competitive
8.2%
years of industry experience. And while 28.9% were
with national companies, 19.7% concentrated on the
West Coast, 12.6% on the Southeast, 10.9% on the
Southwest, 9.6% on the Midwest, 8.4% on the
Northeast, 4.6% on the Mid-Atlantic and 5.4% operated internationally.
