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Staff Reports
LaSalle Hotel Properties has acquired the Park Central Hotel in New York City for $396.2 million. Located in Midtown Manhattan on Seventh Avenue between West 55th and 56th Streets, the full-service hotel features 934 rooms.
The transaction was funded with cash on hand, borrowings from LaSalle Hotel Properties’ senior unsecured credit facility and issuance of 296,300 operating partnership units valued at $27 per share. LaSalle received a $9.3 million reduction from the original purchase price, which is equal to the hotel’s income after debt service from September 2, 2011 through closing and is reflected in the $396.2 million purchase price.
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Online Exclusives
By Elaine Misonzhnik, Senior Associate Editor
 After generating strong momentum in the first half of 2011, the national office sector will experience slow growth in 2012. The financial crisis in Europe, coupled with government budget-cutting in the U.S., will put a damper on demand for new office space next year, except for the select markets that serve as homes to technology firms and energy companies.
By the end of 2011, the average office vacancy rate for the U.S. as a whole will stand at 16.8 percent, according to research by Grubb & Ellis, a national real estate services firm. Over the course of 2012 it will likely budge just 110 basis points, to 15.7 percent. What’s more, average rents will continue to stagnate. Asking rents on class-A properties might rise 0.7 percent next year, while rents on class-B buildings will go up 0.2 percent, according to Robert Bach, senior vice president and chief economist with Grubb & Ellis.
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Commentary
By Victor Calanog, Contributing Columnist
 Multifamily properties have outperformed other commercial property types in the past two years, benefiting directly from the continuing travails of the for-sale housing market.
Occupancies and rents have improved consistently, in seeming defiance of slow economic growth and the lethargic pace of job creation. Signs of weakness have begun to appear, however, for certain segments of the apartment market, suggesting that even the best performing property type in real estate nowadays is still subject to fundamental economic rules.
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Guest Column
By Douglas S. John, Esq., NREI Contributing Columnist
 As 2012 begins, the real estate collapse ravaging Phoenix continues. Phoenix real estate prices have fallen from their height in early 2008 by 28 percent for retail, 52 percent for industrial and 71 percent for office, according to Navigant Capital Advisors, a Chicago-based investment bank. Phoenix ranks No. 7 on Real Capital Markets’ list of the most distressed U.S. markets for commercial real estate.
The city’s delinquency rate for commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) loans is the third-highest in the nation, accounting for 3.6 percent of total U.S. CMBS delinquencies. And Phoenix’s delinquency count is expected to increase next year.
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