TOPEKA, KAN. — NorthMarq Capital has arranged the $15.8 million refinancing of The Overlook Apartments, a 318-unit multifamily property in Topeka. The apartment community is located at 1310 S.W. Summit Woods Drive. Dan Trebil of NorthMarq Capital’s Minneapolis office arranged financing for the borrower through its seller/servicer relationship with Freddie Mac.
In what might be the twilight of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac years, investors in Kansas City’s apartment market have fully capitalized on the continued availability of cheap debt and a slowly improving economy. As reminders of the 2008–2010 economic downturn, bank-owned properties are still being sold, but the bulk of REO sales have already occurred. Additionally, local job creation surged in the past three months, buoying investors’ confidence. As a result, sales of Class B and C properties will continue to rise and approach historic levels. The sales velocity of top-quality apartment product is also normalizing, albeit on a downward trajectory. All Classes Normalizing So far this year, transaction volume and average sales price per unit have both been strong. Nevertheless, the data suggests the market is stabilizing below the levels of 2011 and 2012, which represented after the pent-up demand from 2008 through 2010. Annualizing the year-to-date sales data from Hendricks-Berkadia suggests there will be 36 transactions of Class A, B and C properties with 40 or more units this year. An end-of-year boost in sales is expected, but we still anticipate fewer than the 55 and 54 transactions completed in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Total sales …
Kansas City is best known for its beer, barbecue and jazz, and an economy inextricably linked to railroads and cattle. It’s not unusual for an Easterner flying over Kansas City on his way to Los Angeles to remark, “I hear I can get a great steak down there.” You can indeed find a great steak down here, but most importantly the economy is more about the steak than the sizzle. The truth is that the local economy is so broad-based that it is difficult to define. Kansas City’s economic growth today is driven by life sciences, architecture and engineering, information technology as well as financial services. All of these industries feature homegrown companies and institutions that began with entrepreneurial roots such as telecommunications giant Sprint, a company that traces its roots to a small utility company west of Kansas City. The world’s power plants and sports stadiums are designed in Kansas City, and a cure for cancer is ongoing driven by The Stowers Institute for Medical Research and the University of Kansas in conjunction with the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute. Cerner, the second largest health care technology company in the world with more than 8,000 employees, announced in …
The commercial real estate market in Wichita stabilized in the second half of 2010 and has started seeing slow, but steady, improvement during the first four months of 2011. The majority of the activity has been on the leasing side of the business, with limited sales activity. Market conditions still favor tenants but are starting to move back to a more balanced position, giving landlords more leverage in their negotiations. Development activity has been minimal the past two years, but the strengthening economy is starting to generate interest in bringing new projects into the market. Laham Development Company continues to be very active in the local market, particularly in the popular northeast area. Laham’s showcase Bradley Fair lifestyle center is at 98 percent occupancy after the opening of Sephora’s in April. The developer’s Regency Park project at 21st North and Greenwich got a major boost earlier in the year when Cabela’s announced plans to construct a new store there. This is Cabela’s first location in the area; it will be anchoring the center with Super Target and World Market. In addition to Cabela’s, other national retailers expanding into the market include Sephora’s, Five Guys Burgers & Fries and Menards. These …
While the Wichita industrial market may lack the size of its neighbor to the east — Kansas City — it still has a strong and relatively stable presence. Wichita is driven by the aviation industry, and several major aircraft manufacturers and suppliers call the city home. Overall, Wichita has traditionally been an owner-use market with some leasing from larger national companies. With the credit markets dried up and a construction pipeline that has never been that large to begin with, most activity in Wichita lately has been leasing. “January through April, leasing activity was pretty slim, but we are starting to see a lot more inquiries; there are a lot more people in the market looking to relocate, mostly to keep their rents the same in a newer facility,” says Bradley Tidemann, an associate with locally based J.P. Weigand & Sons. Some notable transactions include Weckworth Manufacturing’s purchase of a 100,000-square-foot facility south of the city in Haysville. The owner-user had previously been leasing. In addition, a 50,000-square-foot office and flex warehouse deal is expected to close this month to a local owner-user. On the leasing side, Associated Materials has relocated from a 12,000-square-foot facility to a 35,000-square-foot facility. Additionally, …
For Doug Malone, a retail brokerage and leasing associate with Wichita, Kansas-based J.P. Wiegand & Sons, “The good news about Wichita is that we have been a little pocket of prosperity for a number of years, and we didn’t get hit until just recently with the economic problems that the rest of the country had.” While retail in larger markets struggles, the smaller Wichita market has remained steady. This is due partly to the conservative nature of real estate professionals in the market and partly due to the fact that overbuilding tends to happen less in secondary markets. But the recession is starting to be seen here. “Wichita has a tendency to feel those impacts last and to come out them last as well, but we don’t have the real ups and downs of a lot of other markets” Malone says. “Although, what we’re seeing now, in terms of a slowdown in retail activity, we probably haven’t seen this kind of slowdown since post-9/11.” This slowdown has many retailers taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to doing deals. Since most major new projects in the market are done by local developers — who know the market and can withstand …
