More Loan Portfolios Brought to Market
The list of commercial mortgage and loan offerings keeps growing. DebtX has launched marketing for another $203 million of commercial mortgages and loans. That gives the Boston company some $500 million of loans that will be offered through Oct. 15. The portfolios are being brought to market amid a relative deluge of whole-loan offerings by a mix of conduit lenders, banking institutions and insurers. Despite the barrage of offerings most of the offerings will find buyers because of the variety of assets they represent. While debt-market troubles might be motivating some institutions to unload certain loans, most sellers are said to be banks that are making efforts to fine-tune their balance sheets.

FirstService Buys Stake in Boston Brokerage
FirstService Corp., which has been expanding its presence in the United States commercial real estate sector, has acquired an 80% stake in Meredith & Grew of Boston, a major player in New England. FirstService, which is headquartered in Toronto, broke into the commercial real estate sector in 2004, when it bought an 83% interest in Colliers Macauley Nicolls, Inc., giving it control of the Colliers International property brokerage operation.

Market Woes Sending Mixed Signals in Dallas
About 5.5 million sf of office space was under construction in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the first half of 2007, about 50% more than the same time last year, according to numbers compiled by Cushman & Wakefield. However, net demand for space has fallen this year, and analysts believe the credit market crunch is to blame. Tenants leased just about 800,000 sf of additional space in the first six months of the year, compared to the 2.4 million sf of net leasing experienced this time last year. Despite the decrease in leasing, the average quoted office rents have increased more than 5% from a year ago.

New Office Construction in Cleveland
At least five major Cleveland companies are facing lease expirations and may consider constructing office high rises instead of relocating to existing buildings. Ernst & Young, Eaton Corp., Huntington National Bank and the law firms of Baker & Hostetler and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey are seeking new digs. With the central business district’s highest-quality buildings short on space, the firms could construct one or more new office buildings.

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