Investment REVIEW
Falling
Back to
Earth
By Natalie Keith
“BACK TO BASICS,” “BACK TO FUNDAMENTALS”
and “back to normalcy” are just some of the ways experts describe investment sales of Florida commercial real estate lately.
With the runup in pricing experienced in recent years, followed
by the fallout from last summer’s credit crisis, experts say the
market is getting back to reality.
“We’re going back to fundamentals,” says Gene Berman,
senior VP and managing director of Marcus & Millichap Real
Estate Investment Services Inc. in Ft. Lauderdale. “We are in
a normalized market. This is the way things normally work.”
For the investor, that means a return to the strict due-dili-gence process traditionally completed before acquiring an
Las Olas Centre, a class A office building in Downtown Ft. Lauderdale, sold
for a record-setting $492 per sf last July.
