The robust commercial industry that’s still busy building may be starting to feel the aftershocks of a Southwest Florida real estate market collapse. (more…)

At a time when South Florida home values are falling, commercial real estate properties are still fetching big bucks. (more…)

By now, most people are painfully familiar with the slowdown in the residential Florida real estate market. (more…)

A boxy, 24-story office-condominium built near the Miami River is nearly finished. It starts closings with buyers this week. (more…)

Thousands of new homes in the works for land east of I-75 in Southwest Florida are providing ample opportunities not only for home builders, but for those who build schools, hospitals, churches and fire stations required to support the area. (more…)

An organization for those connected with the commercial real estate profession wants to launch a Southwest Florida chapter. (more…)

One day after announcing it had $2.84 billion in commitments for a newly launched private equity fund, Fortress Investment Group LLC struck a deal to acquire Florida East Coast Industries Inc. (more…)

For commercial real estate developers in Florida, a yellow light is flashing.

Blame it on a nationwide housing slump that slowed the pace of migration to the Sunshine State, an overbuilt Florida condo market and the other usual suspects:

1. The shifting property tax burden and the inability to find a clear solution
2. The ongoing wind insurance crisis in the wake of the 2005 hurricane season
3. The fact that Florida mortgage costs have priced many out of the market

Several top real estate executives and experts said today’s choppy seas present a good time for retail developers to keep their powder dry.

Don’t take on risky deals. Don’t build too far ahead of the market. Closely monitor demand for existing homes and home builders who have already cut back housing starts.

There’s still plenty of demand for shopping centers and other developments. Retailers are clamoring for space. The vacancy rate in the Tampa Bay area is less than 5 percent.

Investors remain eager to pour huge amounts of cash into buying healthy land in places with big population growth potential such as Florida. The population of the Tampa Bay metro area is forecast to increase by 220,000 to 2.87-million in five years.

Part of the pinch, however, is skyrocketing development costs. They’ve been soaring faster than rents which, on the average, rose 11.4 percent to $13.46 a square foot in 2006.

Meantime, the prices retail developers pay for vacant land, construction and interest in Florida doubled since 2000. Impact fees to government, bills for property insurance premiums more than tripled, according to an analysis compiled by North American Properties Inc.

Some deals have been squelched because insurance was unavailable.

Retail real estate typically follows housing, and we all know how that is going after a year that saw Florida home loan demand flatten. A cloud of caution permeates what is otherwise a bullish forecast for 2007.

“We had similar concerns at this time a year ago, but the second half turned out strong.” said Justin Greider, financial analyst for Staubauch Capital Markets.

“That could well happen again in 2007, but we think some caution probably would be a good thing until we see more rationality in the market.”

The property tax burden and insurance crisis are hitting not only shopping center developers in the pocketbook. They also put a damper on the market for second homes and Florida residents’ willingness to move.

Some forecast that retail development will slow down a bit in once-torrid home-building havens such as east Pasco County and Naples-Fort Myers.

“I’m from Flint, Mich.,” said Charlene Greenblatt, a leasing executive with Investment Properties Inc., a Naples real estate company. “So when I hear we might get back to normal growth in Florida that sounds pretty robust to me.”

A new report on the U.S. office and industrial space markets pegs West Palm Beach as a national player in both sectors.

The new findings by CB Richard Ellis identify West Palm and Boca Raton as among the top 10 Sun Belt markets best able to raise office rents during the next five years, given growing demand for Florida real estate — which happens to also be in scarce supply.

• West Palm’s commercial real estate market also is singled out as having the lowest capitalization rate in the country.
• The rate, considered a key measure, is the net operating income divided by the purchase price.
• What this usually amounts to us a low capitalization rate typically translating to a high acquisition price.

There are problems, of course: Volatile gas prices and the bursting of the speculative bubble in the Palm Beach housing market are cited as potential stumbling blocks.

Although neither would halt development altogether, the authors write:

“Markets having the greatest exposure to inflated housing prices may have the most difficult time in dealing with the fallout from soaring gas prices and plummeting home values.”

That would seem to describe the scene in Palm Beach County, where historic Florida mortgage rates remained low for so long that home prices ballooned by 30 percent from July 2004 to mid-summer 2005. People simply believed they could not lose money.

Of course, housing markets have cooled since then, and the Port St. Lucie area is ranked sixth in overvalued markets in the country, according to a mid-year survey of real estate information firm Global Insight and National City Corp. West Palm Beach weighs in at number 19.

Yet demand for office space remains robust, and scarce industrial space continues to push up prices, even as the long-term future of both Florida home mortgage loan rates and residential real estate is highly questionable.

Here in Palm Beach County, that’s as true in wide open St. Lucie County as it is in Boca’s crowded industrial market.

“The problem with St. Lucie is that no one is speculating on building product up there. “Instead, investors are buying land - and waiting to build,” Robert C. Smith, a CB Richard Ellis V.P., said.

In Southwest Florida and beyond, commercial real estate marketing has traditionally been governed by the principals of the “Four Ps”:

• Put up a sign.
• Place an ad.
• Post on the MLS.
• Pray.

Until recently. Now you can add an “I” to that list, as in Internet. A year of effort by the Commercial Investment Division of the Sarasota Association of Realtors later, the wonders of Al Gore’s brainchild now showcase properties from Ruskin to Punta Gorda.

SuncoastCIX.com marks the first time in Southwest Florida that nformation on commercial properties has been uniformly collected and distributed from various real estate companies. Modeled after the Multiple Listing Service that has long been a staple of residential Florida real estate, commercial brokers believe SuncoastCIX.com will add a new dimension.

“This will expand and enhance our ability to market property, pure and simple,” said Steve Ross, an agent with Hembree & Associates Inc.

“The reason for the multiple list service is residential real estate. For those of us that practice commercial real estate, information exchange has always been done by a bit of a band-aid approach. Now, all of a sudden, we have something better than MLS,” said Carl Wise, owner of Preferred Commercial, Inc.

SuncoastCIX.com, using a software package developed by Catalyst Inc., lets members can view addresses, sizes, the prices or rental rates — even one or more pictures of the commercial property. Additionally, members can see broker or agent biographies, link to other websites, find a directory of real estate services — even post want ads.

Agents like Ross maintain that the creation of SuncoastCIX.com represents a watershed moment in the evolution of the area. Because, while the Southwest Florida housing market has seen epic growth this decade up until this year, the region was no commercial real estate haven until recently.

“Our market is now on the map; we’ve grown up. And, with that, we’ve reached a point where we needed to be more professional in marketing our area. This provides the Florida real estate professional a much better venue than what we’ve had in the past. It’s a very versatile program that allows for narrow searches, and it allows us to market ourselves as individuals, too,” Ross said.

Spearheaded by a group led by Sarasota Commercial Management Vice President Diane Lawson, Wise, Ross and Osprey Real Estate Services’ Brian Kennelly, SuncoastCIX.com arose from an association decision to change MLS vendors. Wise said the commercial division paid the $7,500 cost to develop the site with member dues, which amount to about $400 a year.

SuncoastCIX.com becomes the eighth commercially-oriented multiple listing service in Florida. Information on the Tampa-St. Petersburg market, by comparison, has been compiled in a Catalyst system by the Florida Gulf Coast Area Realtors association. Nationwide, there are 40 such commercial information exchanges.

By 2009, commercial division members expect SuncoastCIX.com will contain information on thousands of properties in the four-county area. Eventually, many believe the entire state will be connected electronically, allowing members to glean information on properties from North Florida to Miami.

Not that there aren’t bugs to work out. In its first week, SuncoastCIX.com had yet to post listings of officers, many properties lacked accompanying photographs, biographies were spotty and the “success stories” portion of the site was bare.

Like the residential market, which has slowed drastically this year as Florida home mortgage rates have risen and a statewide insurance quagmire hasn’t helped matters, thus far it’s been a down year for commercial real estate in the region. Hopefully, the new packaging of info will help spur sales in the remainder of 2006.