All week, we have been meeting real estate executives at Reuters Global Real Estate Summit who have discussed the many different areas of concern that have spread throughout the sector.

Some have spoken about deleveraging. Some have told us about the shrinking of values. Others have said it’s a confidence game — as in, there isn’t any.

But J. Allen Smith, chief executive of Prudential Real Estate Investors, brought it all together for us quite nicely.

In Smith’s view, the real estate universe is subject to a confluence of all the above-mentioned problems and a few others as well. He sees it as a unique time and does not see a rebound for some time.

It’s a daunting time to be in the industry, for sure, but at the end of his comments (which you can hear by clicking on the link below) he is starting to see a glimmer of hope here and there. After the past couple years, even a glimmer is a pretty welcome thing.

Smith was one of our featured speakers at this year’s summit, which continues through the end of this week. Reuters has exclusively interviewed guests in our offices including New York, London, Shanghai, Mumbai, Sydney and others this week.

For more on Smith’s comments, please click on the attached link right below:

Allen Smith, CEO, Prudential Real Estate Investors

New York and a handful of other major U.S. cities are down, but will never be out as far as their commercial real estate goes, a leading New York real estate private equity investor said Monday at the Reuters Global Real Estate Summit.

“New York’s not going away- it’s THE global city.”

Second tier cities are another matter entirely, said Thomas Shapiro, president of GoldenTree InSite Partners. “We are a big believer in the big city theory which is that the bigger cities will continue do better, to the detriment of secondary cities.”

Companies always go to where the best talent is, he explained, meaning cities such as his big five– New York, LA, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago– remain magnets, their status self-perpetuating

“Goldman Sachs is not moving to Miami because the intellectual capital is in New York- ditto Boston, ditto San Francisco, ditto LA.”

Here’s Shapiro’s prognosis for how some other U.S. cities will fare as the real estate market recovers:

San Francisco: one of the top markets, Shapiro said, because “San Francisco has a diversified economy.”
Chicago: “It’s a boom and bust town, but it is an important center.”

But other, lower cost cities are cheap for a reason, Shapiro said:
Detroit: “It’s cheap but I will never be convinced it’s cheap enough- we have so many issues in the auto sector.”
New Orleans: “People always pitch New Orleans, ‘gee you can buy a fantastic building for $60 per square-foot, but $60 can still go to $30.”

(Reuters photo)

Remember the good old days where — if you lived in the United States anyway — people would talk about “emerging markets”?

We’d nod our heads knowingly, wishing these poor folks the best as they tried to accumulate the swell things we had bought for ourselves. We knew that residents of Mumbai or Caracas or somewhere would never attain the great things we had in such abundance here in the good old USA (Hummers; his and hers monogrammed dishtowels; zero down, 110% mortgages on houses we couldn’t afford … that kind of stuff), but we still wished them well.

So, here we are in 2009 and at this year’s Reuters Global Real Estate Summit we find that the new emerging market is … well, it’s right down the block.

According to our guest Tom Shapiro, president of GoldenTree InSite Partners private equity investment firm, the new emerging market in the real estate world is the United States.

Shapiro, in a lively discussion, spoke glowingly about his firm’s recent new business in Brazil and about other opportunities he was seeing outside the United States. But, while he said his firm had not made any investment in the U.S. in about two years, he was starting to look for opportunities and see some enthusiasm for deals to get done.

Shapiro said it was still to early to decide what inning the real estate meltdown was in, but he was starting to see some interest from the sidelines about what the “next big thing” would be — and with cities like New York, San Francisco and Boston as potential growth engines, he was a little hopeful.

Optimism this week has been pretty thin in the real estate world, so we need to take it where we can get it.

Shapiro was one of the featured speakers at this year’s global summit, which continues through the end of this week in New York, London, Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur.

For more of Shapiro’s comments, please click the link below and hear an audio clip:

Tom Shapiro, GoldenTree InSite

When it comes to shopping for bargains these days, retailers are expanding their window of possibilities the same way as increasingly price-conscious consumers.

While the concept of outlet malls and shopping centers was once considered a last-ditch way to unload excess inventory, Steven Tanger, chief executive at Tanger Outlet Centers, says the model is changing…and fast!

Tanger, speaking at the Reuters Real Estate Summit on Tuesday, said that many retailers who had previously shunned the outlet concept are starting to look at the option as more than just something for “the other guy.”

Mr. Tanger also gave us an update on how business conditions are looking overall — including how much the recent spate of lousy weather in New York is weighing on shoppers’ moods (it hasn’t helped our moods that much either, quite honestly!).

But Mr. Tanger was a bit more sunny than the New York weather has been – at least about his own space in the retail world. He sees companies and store concepts including Limited Brands, Victoria’s Secret and Restoration Hardware all expanding their businesses into outlets.

He even sees an outlet market for plastic shoes — as Crocs has entered the space.

Tanger, with outlets spread throughout the United States, sees this expansion as a plus for his business and a definite avenue for future growth. While Tanger is a very East Coast-centric concept right now, the map of the United States has a lot of room for growth for the company and Tanger said he and his team are looking for opportunities to expand right away.

Tanger was one of the featured speakers at this year’s annual real estate summit. This year the summit is a global effort with guests in cities including New York, London, Shanghai, Sydney and Moscow. The summit runs through this week.

For an audio sampling of Tanger’s comments, please click on the link below:

Steven Tanger, CEO Tanger Outlet Centers

Everyone likes to set records. Think about those two giant twins who felt the need to ride motorcycles for their Guinness Book of World Records picture. What were those guys thinking?

Well, after many Reuters Summits, it seemed we set a record on Monday for the use of the word “crap” in one session.

It’s not a particularly glorious achievement, of course, but when thinking about the state of the real estate industry these past few years the words could have been a lot more nasty.

At the Reuters Real Estate Summit today, Richard Jones, partner at the Dechert LLP law firm and co-chair of the firm’s real estate group, spoke about the kinds of deals that will have to get done to help get the ball rolling on the many restructurings that need to be completed industry-wide in the next few years.

As there are a great number of troubled loans out there, the question of what happens to the worst of them (jokingly granted an effluent-style nickname). Jones, who advises clients on almost every side of an available real estate transaction, gave a good sense of exactly what will have to happen to start seeing the market swing back into action.

Jones was one of the featured speakers at this year’s summit, whch continues through this week around the globe. Reuters will be welcoming guests to centers including New York, London, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney.

For a chance to listen to Jones’ thoughts, please click on the link below:

Richard Jones, Dechert LLC

It’s not a motorcycle or a unicycle - we’re talking the overall real estate business cycle.

While the bulk of the focus at this year’s Reuters Real Estate Summit is on the commercial real estate side of the business, Richard Dugas, chief executive of Pulte Homes, spoke to us about how things look on the residential side of the aisle.

It remains pretty rough out there.

Dugas told us it was still difficult to predict where things stood and how the rest of 2009 would shape up, but he did sound somewhat hopeful that the sector had leveled off from its dramatically depressed levels seen during 2008.

The confetti was not going off and there was no champagne being passed around just yet, but after a ride south that the residential real estate and building industry has seen, “not getting much worse,” sounds a lot like “better”.

Dugas was one of the featured speakers at our annual Real Estate summit, which this year has guests across the globe in centers including New York, London, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.

To hear Dugas’ comments, please click on the link below:

Richard Dugas, CEO Pulte Homes

If you had paid $3.5 billion for a skyscraper named after bankrupt automaker General Motors, wouldn’t you want a tenant to come in and pay you another few million to rename the building, with the added bonus of giving it a name not associated with a failed recipient of government largesse?

Boston Properties, which bought the building last year, located at the southeast corner of Central Park in Manhattan, is not known to be shopping around the naming rights to the building, but a top real estate broker in Manhattan, known as the “Queen of the Skyscraper” has one suggestion if ever it is : Apple.

The GM Building is home to Apple’s sleek flagship store, well known to the hordes of tourists and New Yorkers alike, and the maker of the iPhone enjoys top brand name recognition and public affection that Apple is a logical choice.

“If I were Steve Jobs I would be negotiating now,” said Darcy Stacom, the CB Richard Ellis broker who handled the transaction. (She hastened to add she has no knowledge of whether Apple is or might be interested.)

What’s more, she said, the building is home to CBS News’ national daily broadcast, so a massive audience hearing, “Live from the Apple building in New York…” every day would be a major coup for the retailer.

The naming rights to such a marquee building can be cost millions (they are not typically sold outright, but built into rents.) Then again, few companies, Apple among them, can afford that luxury in this market. And even if, as Stacom says, it takes a while for New York to get used to a new name, they may be eager to forget GM.

(Reuters photos)

Not a lot of goodness and cheer in the real estate industry these days.

In the first day of our annual Reuters Real Estate Summit, our first few guests were not seeing a lot of the so-called “green shoots” that other parts of the U.S. economy are supposed to be seeing.

There are still an enormous number of troubles out there — including a lack of available credit and the dire need to restructure many loans made during the go-go days of a few years ago.

While the homebuilders and their stocks have been walloped the past few years, the attention this week (so far anyway) has been on the commercial side.

When things are bad, people often choose one of two routes — 1) head down, full of despair and loathing; or 2) hoping that the worst has happened and better days are right around the corner.

For Jacques Gordon, chief strategist at LaSalle Investment Management, he’s hoping for the best, but knows there are still some major work to get done.

Gordon was one of the featured guests on the first day of the summit, which is being held this year in cities around the world, including New York, Beijing, London, Mumbai, Sydney and Kuala Lumpur.

For the audio clip of his comments, please click on the following link:

Jacques Gordon

China’s real estate sector has a chilly winter ahead, said Pan Shiyi, chairman of Beijing property developer SOHO China Ltd. And he had interesting, alphabetical way of describing it.

“I look at the shape of the real estate market and I imagine it bottoming out as a letter “L”. If after the snows earlier this year, China had loosed up its monetary policy, we would have seen a “V”-shaped market. If they had loosened up before the Olympics, we would have seen a “U”. But for them to release new policies now, like reducing the interest rate, it’s already an “L”. I don’t know when the market will come back up.”

More pressure will come to bear on Beijing’s property market, especially the market for lower-end, residential units, as projects built on land released for development in 2007 are completed, Pan said, speaking at the Reuters China Summit in Beijing on Thursday.

“Most developers are building common, residential units. As these units come onto the market, they will deal it a huge hammer blow,” Pan said, adding that China’s policy since late-2006 of promoting the construction of residential units of less than 90 square meters would soon be felt.

“This year in the fourth quarter, the effect of this policy will hit the market and reshape it…. The price pressure will be biggest first on real estate outside the fifth ring road, second on units 90 square meters and below, and lastly on those priced at 8,000 a square meter or more.”

By Lucy Hornby

The chief executive of Russian developer PIK Group sees one guarantee of his future success in an emergency decision made by the Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. Back then, tens of thousands of cramped communal flats were unpacked and whole families residing in single rooms were resettled into their own bright and new flats in hastily constructed five story kit buildings which came to be known as khrushchevki. 

“It solved a problem for millions of Soviet citizens but the lifetime of these buildings is coming to an end,” Kirill Pisarev told the 2008 Reuters Russia Investment Summit.  “Over a million square meters of housing are in these khrushchevki, which had a planned lifetime of 20-30 years. Now they are 40-50 years old. They will survive another three, five, seven years maximum.”

The resulting housing gap is his to fill. Pisarev, whose company builds flats for Russia’s rapidly expanding middle class, believes the global credit crisis will cut the pace of new housing construction this year, while demand will remain strong, keeping housing prices in Russia on the rise through 2009-10.