Square Feet

Opus West To File Chapter 11; Opus East Chapter 7

squarefeet — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:31:44 +0000

Two months ago Opus South filed bankruptcy and now following suit is Opus West, who has disclosed its intention to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy (reorganization). In addition, Opus has filed Chapter 7 (liquidation) and decided to liquidate Opus East. We previously discussed Opus West and some of their local projects below in a few previous articles [...]

Oppose Forced Withholding on Independent Contractors

squarefeet — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:56:33 +0000

A proposal to force those making payments to independent contractors to withhold 3% is making is making its rounds. This provision was included in a budget gap proposal approved earlier this week by a Budget Conference committee in the California legislature. Here’s how the proposal would work: When an agent closes a transaction, they are typically paid [...]

Trouble in North San Jose For Tishman Speyer

squarefeet — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:53:30 +0000

Tishman Speyer has defaulted on the loan it used to finance the purchase a 40 acre site from BEA Systems in 2007. Tishman paid about $60 psf ($108M) for the site in March of 2007, which BEA Systems then parlayed into the purchase of the office tower at 488 Almaden from Sobrato. Tishman had intended on [...]

Goldman Sachs Is The Devil

squarefeet — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:12:44 +0000

That’s Matt Taibbi’s theory at least. Check out this article in Rolling Stone about how GS has been behind every major bubble, and how there is a commodity bubble brewing (with GS being the chief architect). On a side note, I’ve heard from clients that there are brokers at a certain CRE brokerage firm positioning their [...]

East Meets West

squarefeet — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:33:55 +0000

Every time things seem to get out of control, there is always an excuse why it can be sustained. During the dot-com run up, we had the “new economy”. During the boom cycle of the housing run up, banks, investors, bankers, builders, the media, and everybody in between had their own reason why the market [...]

Gramercy Capital Takes Control of Cupertino Square

squarefeet — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:54:00 +0000

It seemed like only a matter of time, but Cupertino Square has finally gone back to the lender. Not much to say except that I hope the new owners will make better decisions that the previous ones who in my opinion had a difficult job in the first place but made some short-sighted leasing decisions. The [...]

Mountain View Deal Highlights Trauma in Land Values

squarefeet — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:16:20 +0000

With development anticipated to be dead for at least 4-5 years, land has lost incredible amounts of value. Just two years ago, Dostart development paid some $60+ psf for a 15 acre site on East Middlefield Road. Two years later, the county has offered up a 3.6 acre piece next door to that site, and [...]