NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ-Following an eventful first half, the last fewsessions of RealShare New Jersey focused on opportunities indistressed assets, overall investments and mixed-use. “As everyonehere is no doubt aware, we’ve heard a lot of talk about distressover the past few years but we haven’t seen as many transactions,at least not when it comes to physical real estate,” said moderatorAlyson Grala, managing editor of Real Estate Forum. “But with wellover one trilling in commercial real estate debt maturing in thenext few years, there could be more buy opportunities.” With her todiscuss what investors should consider before buying and sellingwere Bob Martie, executive vice president of the New Jersey regionof Colliers International; Billy Procida, president of WilliamProcida Incorporated; KABR Real Estate Investment Partners partnerAdam Altman; and Jonathan Schultz, managing principal of OnxyEquities LLC.

According to Procida, "There are big opportunities in one- tofour-family housing right now.” The reason: volume. “In the pastsix months alone, there have been well over 80,000 foreclosures butonly 8,000 sold at auction,” he said, predicting that by fourthquarter 2010 there will be a deluge of one- to four-family housingopportunities nationally. "These are assets that are in foreclosureor REO, so they are typically beat up and non-habitable, creating agreat opportunity for the industry to morph into propertyowners."

The second area of opportunity, according to Procida, is "thetremendous amount of half built jobs. Banks are not pushing onforeclosures and developers are underwater," he continued. "Beforewe see development again, we need to finish what we started." Thiscould mean a focus on smaller infill projects around megadevelopments.