"Real Estate has been the drunk driver in every decade on the Economic Highway,
leverage is the “tequila,” the market is falling off the wagon once again."
— It’s All About Cycles
My quick take:
Winner: LoopNet founders and shareholders, CoStar
Loser: LoopNet users
CoStar Users: No impact.
"we need to start to look at the long term mean and trend and ignore 2006-2008 as a measure of anything other than what can happen when investors lose their senses and debt markets have no discipline. If you are measuring when will values return to the 2007 levels you may be developing a strategy that is based on more unreality. The price today is the price today. If the past is any guide, then values will rise in most markets at a slow steady pace if you manage the asset well. If you are looking at projecting returns you cannot look at 2007 as the benchmark. That is over and dead."
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"Real estate investing in developing economies is mostly a competition for deals fought with reputation, capital, expertise, and political access. Most foreign real estate companies in hypercompetitive China now lack any significant advantage in this."
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"There’s no distress to feed on. We weren’t able to feed at all in this cycle. In the deepest recession since the Great Depression, in our industry there was nothing to buy."
— Steve Roth, Sam Zell talk real estate at Warner Theater
