CORAL GABLES, FL-Compared to the months following the capital markets meltdown of September 2008, “It’s clear that the economy has improved tremendously,” because two years ago “we were concerned about every financial institution failing,” CNL Financial Group’s Thomas Sittema said here Friday. Yet he noted that for commercial real estate, the recovery thus far has been “pretty spotty,” with some sectors doing well and others still struggling.
This mixed-bag assessment squared with that of Vincent Signorello, Flagler COO and acting CFO, Sittema’s fellow panelist in the “Perspectives on the Recovery” discussion that opened the 2011 US Real Estate Summit hosted by law firm Akerman Senterfitt. “We’re limping along,” Signorello acknowledged in response to a question posed by moderator Sule Aygoren Carranza, editor of Real Estate Forum. “All of the major victories we’ve scored over the past 12 to 18 months have been at the expense of somebody else.”
When determining whether the fundamentals are recovering, Signorello said, “One of the lenses I look through is, are we seeing positive growth in the amount of people that need space? We’ve not seen it.”
Yet both panelists also had plenty to say about the opportunities they’re seeing. Signorello, whose firm arranged one of the first post-meltdown CMBS deals in 2009, said Flagler’s big growth area in the near term would be via access to capital and getting real estate through the debt stack. On the equity side, he said, “We couldn’t swallow the amount of equity offered to us on a weekly basis.”
At CNL Financial, CEO Sittema said 2011 calls for the company to be “a whole lot more acquisitive this year” given the capital that it has raised. Some of that will be in the multifamily sector, although CNL leans toward net lease. He said that in the next 30 days, CNL would roll out a new company in partnership with a major private equity firm. It will be essentially a US corporate debt fund, Sittema said, adding, “We would hope to see more of these.”
Replays of Akerman’s US Real Estate Summit, which also included a presentation by Tate Enterprises founder Stanley Tate, will be available on-demand later on Monday by clicking here.
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