November 21, 2006 by jack petrie.

CRESA Partners’ international partner, Atisreal, has recently acquired Harrington Bannon, an Irish real estate firm, to create Atisreal Ireland.

Premier Brand and Clientele

Harrington Bannon, a property consulting business and one of the premier brands in Ireland, is a recognized player in corporate real estate services in Ireland. The Dublin-based company was founded some 30 years ago and generated in excess of 5 million euros in transactions in 2005. Harrington Bannon operates in investment property, office leasing, consulting, appraisal/valuation and property management and has 20+ employees. The company’s clients include BNP Paribas, Amgen, IBM, Ericsson, Aon, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s and EMC².

Initial Foray into Ireland

This operation represents Atisreal’s first acquisition in Ireland. Alain Béchade, Vice Chairman of Atisreal, explains: “The Irish market is strategic particularly with regards to international investment. In terms of Corporate Real Estate, this market is also an important link between North American companies and Europe. It is an extremely buoyant domestic market and Irish investors are active in both the UK and continental European markets.”

Continued European Expansion

This acquisition reinforces Atisreal’s European network and its leadership in corporate property services in the euro zone. In addition to Ireland, Atisreal is already present in France, Belgium,
Luxembourg, Germany, Spain, UK, Italy (since November 2005), and in the USA. Atisreal’s goals are to continue expanding and become the market leader in Ireland in corporate real estate services.

Posted in Media/P.R. | No Comments »

November 15, 2006 by jack petrie.

Event Report

CRESA Partners recently hosted the November 8th iBreakfast, which captured the rich, emerging field of Web 2.0 video. What makes this field different from streaming of old, is that it has taken on a whole new dimension of user interactivity. This varies by vendor but clearly, the success of YouTube, has informed every company, whether they were aiming at consumers or business: the user or viewer is part of the equation.

Vidavee Presentation

Vidavee cofounder, Tom Gilley, who began as an early Apple employee and among the creators of QuickTime, noted that YouTube taught everyone that using open source tools, hiding complexity and enabling all video sources to be uploaded and be viewed, was critical. That, and spending a fortune in bandwidth with no remuneration until the lucky moment when a company like Google acquires you.

Most video companies have a different view, vidavee, wants to offer, technically, what YouTube offers but for the purposes of business and corporations distributing their content either on their sites, syndicating them to their partners adding to. Typically, customers pay and both companies share ad revenue - the system even helps determine where best to place the ads.

Whiteblox & BrightCove Presentations

Whiteblox and BrightCove offer much the same thing although BrightCove, with the pedigree of Jeremy Allaire of ColdFusion and Flash fame, has had a lot of attention. They offer a free or paid service, depending on who wants to own the revenue and control the flow of ads. Whiteblox is only about being paid but it offers various social features like chat. BrightCove, which was predicated on the idea that it could make anyone or any company a video broadcaster never quite got the idea of user uploading junk and then aggregating a huge audience. But they are now working on that.

PalTalk Presentation

PalTalk is all about videochat. With several million users, CEO Joel Smernoff site has quietly become a meeting place for viewers who just chatter and stare. But the system is well hosted, self-policing and quite viable. A good example of the “Wisdom of crowds” ethos not merely to rate but to keep the site clean.

Motionbox Presentation

The Wow factor of the iBreakfast probably went to Motionbox.com, which wants to be a better YouTube as well as useful corporate delivery mechanism of video. The rave factor is that the co-founder, Douglas Warshaw is both a former TV talent exec, as well as a hands-on Avid editor, who figured that people want to edit intuitively and just get out the highlights. Same for the viewer. So their tools enable uploaders to simply highlight what they like in their under 100MB video clips and the systems expertly complies them into a succint video: no time code, not cuts and cueing up and so on.

Based on the enthusiasm for this event it is clear that the standard website of tomorrow will have plenty of video for all kinds of things, customer service, explaining products and even taking feedback. Whether this eclipses TV, as we know (unlikely) or expands it in whole other way (more likely) is the subject of the upcoming Web 2.0 NY Conference in February.

Posted in Recent Events | No Comments »

November 14, 2006 by jack petrie.

Tenant’s Viewpoint

Over the past twenty years, Midtown rental rates in NYC have fluctuated within a fairly well defined range; not exceeding asking rents in the $80’s/rsf nor falling below a range in the low $40’s/rsf. Current asking rental rates are surpassing even the highs of early 2001, with non-trophy Midtown “Class A” buildings asking rents beginning in the $70’s/rsf and exceeding $130/rsf in the “trophy” class. The reality of triple digit rental rates should cause alarm for service industry providers that want to be positioned in “Class A” Midtown properties, as costs become prohibitively high. Low margin businesses will feel the greatest impact if real estate prices continue to escalate at 10% - 15% per annum.

Market Overview

The demand for office space in Manhattan continues across all submarkets. The Downtown submarket has seen increases in asking prices in excess of 30% for “Class A” space over the past year. Such an increase is indicative both of a lag in that submarket and decisions by landlords to raise rents as vacancies drop in a hot Midtown submarket. In Midtown, landlords continue to aggressively raise asking rents, as reflected by 10% - 15% increases in most submarkets in the past twelve months. Trophy buildings are now commanding starting rents above $130/rentable square foot (”rsf”), and buildings outside of the Plaza District, such as One Bryant Park (42nd Street & Sixth Avenue), are beginning transactions at $100/rsf. There are no signs that market will ease in the near future.

Trends & Stats

Midtown
Average asking rents rose $3.64/rsf from the second quarter to $63.41/rsf for “Class A” space. Asking rents rose $1.36/rsf to $41.52/rsf for “Class B” space. Respectively these represent one-year increases of 13.1% and 9.6% for “Class A & B” average asking rents.
Vacancy rates dropped during the last quarter 0.4 points to 5.5% for “Class A” space and decreased 1.0 points to 4.9% for “Class B” space. “Class A” net absorption for the third quarter was 909,997 rsf and “Class B” net absorption was 558,608 rsf.

Midtown South (”Class A&B”)
During the third quarter, average asking rents rose $0.86 from the previous quarter to $39.25. This represents an increase of 12% over the past 12 months. Net absorption for the third quarter was 259,197 rsf. Vacancy rates dropped 0.3 points from the previous quarter to 5.2% and availability for the last reported quarter was 7.6%.

Downtown
Since 3Q05, asking rents have risen $11.15/rsf to $44.80/rsf for a 33% increase in “Class A” asking rental rates. Over the same period, “Class B” asking rents rose $2.56/rsf to $32.13/rsf for “Class B” space. Since the 2nd quarter this represents increases of $3.25/rsf in “Class A” and $1.40/rsf in “Class B”. “Class A” vacancy rates rose by 1.1% from the second quarter 2006 to 11.6% and “Class B” decreased 1.5% to 10.5%. The increase in the vacancy rate was due to a large block of space coming onto the market. Space availability at the close of the third quarter were 11.2% and 12.3% for “Class A & B” respectively.

Posted in Articles | No Comments »