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Spring brings tourists to Washington to see the cherry blossoms, but this year it also is bringing a sense of hope to developers and brokers that the housing correction of 2006 is a thing of the past. After a record-setting pace of new condo contract sales in 2005—about 13,700 units sold—sales...
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If a penny saved is a penny earned, then Berkshire Property Advisors has earned many pennies indeed. At every stage of a property investment and every level of the company, Berkshire searches for the “alpha,” the seemingly small factors in acquisitions, renovations, and management that add up to...
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Chicago has faced a bit of criticism for its groundbreaking and controversial plan to tear down its collection of dated and dangerous high-rise public housing properties and replace them with lower-density, mixed-income housing built by private developers.
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"If it's not fun, then why do it?" That philosophy, credited to Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, has been a guiding principle for Melissa Levesque Smith, who spent summer vacations from college as a tour guide at the ice cream factory. It's working for her: In March 2006, she was promoted to...
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Imagine, for a minute, that you're a small apartment REIT. You own and operate about 13,000 apartments in 38 communities, primarily in the Mid-Atlantic. For the nine months ended in September 2005 (the most recent figures available), you generated nearly $98 million in total rental revenues and...
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High-rise living is increasingly attractive to young professionals and empty nesters, and residential towers are popping up all over the United States. Developers are designing their projects to appeal to these residents, who prefer buildings that offer edgy, contemporary architecture and unique...
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When the idealists of the '60s become business leaders, they often forget their roots. While Tom Bozzuto built a healthy, large firm that manages 14,000 apartments and owns 60 percent of those (with more than 4,000 in the pipeline), at heart, the young leader who wanted to go to Calcutta in 1968...
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When people say that real estate is a local business, they could be talking about LISC. Officially known as the Local Initiatives Support Corp., the nationally thinking, locally acting nonprofit provides help and money to community development organizations across the country. That's where Mark...
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After a grueling day at the office, a resident stops on the ground floor of his apartment building to buy a sandwich, pick up his dry cleaning, and rent a DVD. Ah, life is good. But soon, his quiet night at home is interrupted by the smell of restaurant cooking, the sound of trash being tossed in...
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Walk through the offices of Capstone Development Corp. in Birmingham, Ala., and the baseball hats lining the hallways are hard to miss. Pick a college–Winthrop, Duke University, or Arizona State, for instance–and you just might see its colors on the walls. That's because each time Capstone...