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.

For Marc Holliday, chief executive of SL Green Realty Group and Gramercy Capital Corp, the Tom Petty lyrics ring especially true.

Holliday, speaking at the Reuters Global Real Estate Summit, said on Tuesday that his company is waiting with bated breath to hear about which company has won the award to expand the gaming options at New York City’s borough of Queens-located Aqueduct Race Track.

In April, three companies where chosen as finalists for the rights to expand Aqueduct with thousands of video lottery terminals (VLTs) that the state hopes will eventually give it $300 million a year of revenue.

The companies include Holliday’s SL Green, Delaware North, and Capital Play Inc, whose partners include the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority and Victoria Racing Club. 

But things in the New York capital of Albany have been a little dicey recently — especially since former Gov. Eliot Spitzer has left office following a sex scandal and new Gov. David Paterson has questioned whether the things Spitzer agreed to about the expansion plan are binding or if there’s some wiggle room there.

So, anyway, that leaves Holliday and his competitors waiting. SL Green has a plan ready to roll, he said, and that could mean that the preliminary expansion could be ready six months after approval.

Holliday was one of the featured speakers at this year’s global real estate jamboree — which takes place in New York, London, Singapore, Moscowh and Dubai.

LaSalle Investment Managers said its assets under management in Asia could double in the next three years and added it is considering investing in India for the first time. LaSalle Investment holds about $11 billion in Asia property assets under management, and plans to make $10 to $15 billion worth of deals in the next years.

Hear David Edwards, Regional Director speak about the opportunities in China as developers get squeezed by banks and his take on India.

AMP Capital Investors said it was planning to boost its investments in Asia properties to A$16 billion ($15.3 billion) and will start by doubling the S$300 million ($220 million) in Singapore industrial assets it has already bought.

The investment unit of Australia’s top pension fund manager AMP Ltd is also looking to buy properties, or acquire businesses such as real estate investment trusts and developers, in markets including Japan and China.

Chief Investment Officer Andrew Bird tells us what opportunities they see and why they think Japan is hot.

Plain vanilla, in the box, straight financings are the future, or at least near future, of real estate deals, says Marathon Asset Managing Director Scott Schwartz.

“Either the Street kinda comes back and supplies leverage, or people have to get their returns without leverage. And right now we’re at a point where people have to get their returns without leverage. So that’s why there aren’t a lot of deals happening,” he said, speaking at the Reuters Global Real Estate Summit.

The heydey of commercial mortgage markets was greased by easy money from Wall Street banks, which routinely made short-term loans to investors who wanted to invest the proceeds in longer-term assets, such as commercial mortgage-backed securities. The onset of the U.S. credit crunch last summer has pinched banks’ balance sheets, forcing them to rein in the credit they provided to these investors.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

Sure thing, kids LOVE the bubbles. The blowing, the running around, the popping.

All the things that gives real estate investors and developers fits.

Any simple search on “real estate” in a news story for the past two years would more than likely also mention the word “bubble”. In fact, a quick Google search of “real estate” and “bubble” turned up 998 news stories — in the past month!

At the Reuters Global Real Estate Summit, the problems that have plagued — and continue to plague — the real estate market has been much on the minds of all our guests, including Scott Schwartz, managing director of Marathon Asset Management.

Recognizing the breadth and depth of this real estate trough is critical for Schwartz’s business, but it is also equally key for him to see what’s coming at him down the road.

That is, “What’s next?”

Schwartz wonders about the expansion currently happening in Dubai and also sends up warning flares on another non-US economy — which he mentions in the attached audio clip.

Schwartz was one of the featured guests on the first day of the U.S. arm of this global summit — which has guests in New York, London, Dubai and Singapore and runs through Thursday.

Scott Latham, one of the most powerful commerical real estate brokers in New York, says that Chinese investors are making approaches to buy Manhattan properties.

“They are coming,” he told the Reuters Global Real Estate Summit in New York on Monday. “We’ve seen them in the bidding process over the past four months on a number of assets we’ve handled.”

So much has already been said and written about the bursting of the U.S. real estate bubble, one might make the mistake of thinking that a widespread rebound is right around the corner.

Well, Scott Latham, executive vice president at Cushman & Wakefield, said on Monday that there are still some discouraging signs out there.

Latham, speaking at the Reuters Global Real Estate Sumitt, warned that the continued problems in the financial sector — especially in his target area of New York City — suggests that more weakness exists.

And he said that both the buy side and the sell side recognize that these problems still exist. 

In Latham’s view, the main macro-economic concern is that, unlike in years past, this credit crunch is more global in nature. In the past, if New York investors were having a tough time raising cash, investors from the U.K. or Japan could be counted on to rush in and make a market for a property. Now though, it’s hard for anyone to get the credit they need to raise the cash for mega-property deals.

Latham was one of the featured speakers at this year’s summit, which is taking place in New York, London, Tokyo and Dubai and will feature guests who focus on both retail and corporate properties.

If global real estate was at a turning point in mid-2007 after a golden era of sizzling returns and unprecedented cross-border investment, the big question at this year’s Global Real Estate Summit is how far will markets fall? 
 
Top industry executives will visit Thomson Reuters offices in London, New York, Moscow, Singapore, and Dubai on June 23-25 to discuss this and related topics.
 
Will real estate — with its dependence on debt funding — see out the credit crunch? Or will some property firms have to restructure, or even go under, unleashing a wave of forced selling? 
 
To what extent will weaker consumer spending, jobs cuts, and slower economic growth make things worse by squeezing tenant demand for retail, office, and industrial properties and hitting rents? Will markets that have so far escaped the downturn be dragged down along with the UK, where property values are 17 percent below peak levels? 
 
How much bigger can the discounts to NAV get on US, Asian, and European REITs, and when might property derivatives signal an end to the general malaise? 
 
Most importantly, will debt markets recover, enabling property investors to refinance their assets or cut deals at a time when transaction volumes have slumped? To what extent in the interim will sovereign wealth funds and other cash-rich players, as well as distressed debt buyers and mezzanine finance providers, help to plug the gap?
 
These topics, and many more, will be under the microscope as the Reuters Global Real Estate Summit gets underway. 

The FBI unveiled “Operation Malicious Mortgage” and charged more than 400 people of fraud.

The same day that two former Bear Stearns hedge funds managers were arrested and indicted for securities fraud, the FBI unveiled a big mortgage fraud investigation.

Bobbi Rebell reports.