An industry panel discussion led by law firm Cole Schotz has revealed that New York and South Florida remain the top real estate markets for distressed properties.
The firm conducted a real-time poll of executives and representatives from leading investment firms, including The Savanna Fund, Torchlight Investors, Canyon Capital Realty Advisors LLC and Cantor Commercial Real Estate, to discuss commercial real estate and debt markets. The findings of the poll revealed that investment management funds still believe that New York and South Florida real estate markets will be the most active in the upcoming year.
Using a scale of 1 to 10 and based on the geographic activity anticipated for 2013 and, New York ranked highest with an average of 9.2 and South Florida ranked the second most desirable market for 2013 at 7.3. Los Angeles, Boston, Dallas, Washington DC and Las Vegas followed, all achieving scores exceeding 5.0.
Other revelations to come from the poll have determined that 76% of attendees expect equity deals to increase, 64% think that the interest rate for CMBS loans will increase, and 60% anticipate that opportunities to acquire debt from institutional, regional and community banks will increase. Additionally, 68% of participants expect foreclosure and bankruptcy-driven deals to decrease in 2013 when compared with activity in 2012.
Although the industry expects equity-debt deals to decrease in 2013, a substantial 84% of the participants believe that equity-debt deals will increase compared with figures taken from 2012. 76% of the respondents said they are considering a combination of both debt deals and equity deals in 2013, compared to the 20% of respondents who said that they would just do equity deals and the 4% intending to only close debt deals.
