Has the Seniors Housing Market Hit Bottom?
	Eight Years Post 9/11: Lower Manhattan Diversifies in Face of Office Glut
	Office Fundamentals Fall Quicker Than Expected, Says Foresight Analytics
	LEED Program Fails To Resonate With Apartment Renters, Says Researcher
	Annual Green Building Survey, Chance to Win Gift Card

Vacancies at seniors housing buildings are still on the rise, but so are rents. While concessions remain widespread, signs are emerging that vacancies may start to decline as new construction comes to a halt.

That’s the conclusion of the National Investment Center for the Seniors Housing and Care Industry (NIC) based on an analysis of second-quarter data in nation’s top 31 markets. The results are being released at NIC’s annual conference being held Sept. 23-25 in Chicago. Among the highlights:

Q&A with Robert Goodman, FirstService Williams

For the past 26 years, Robert Goodman has worked in Lower Manhattan, where he started his career. Goodman prides himself on his encyclopedic knowledge of the market, and maintains a mental database of tenants and their locations, past and present.

He has seen multiple cycles and watched the market rebuild over the past eight years as he also watched it collapse before his very eyes. On Sept. 11, 2001, he left his office on the 86th floor of One World Trade Center at 8:47 a.m. One minute later, he was at the base of the building, getting ready to jump onto the subway, when the first plane crashed.

In a revised forecast, Foresight Analytics projects that the national office vacancy rate will hit 18.4% by year’s end, up from an earlier prediction of 17.5%. As businesses hard hit by the financial crisis began to struggle in late 2008, they shed more space than anticipated, according Susan Persin, a partner with the Oakland Calif.-based research firm.

In tandem with rising office vacancies, estimates for job losses among office space users rose to 1.6 million for 2009, up from a previous estimate of 1.2 million to 1.5 million.

While apartment developers are making a big push to construct LEED-certified buildings and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace, most renters are unfamiliar with the highly coveted green seal of approval and they’re unwilling to pay more for it.

So says Jonathan Bartlett, vice president of Robert Charles Lesser & Co. (RCLCO), a real estate consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. that has conducted extensive research on apartment demand. Renters are familiar with the Energy Star program, however, and are willing to pay a premium to use products or reside in buildings that carry that label, adds Bartle

National Real Estate Investor is once again investigating trends in the development and use of Green Buildings. Whether you own, develop or lease green buildings or not, we would like to include your opinions as an industry professional and valued National Real Estate Investor reader. Your answers will be kept completely confidential and used only in tabulation with others. As an added incentive, at the end of the survey you will be given the opportunity to win a $100 Visa gift card.

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