Structured Development has modified their plans, reducing the number of units and making them rental rather than condo’s. There will also be commercial space. But the project remains on track to start construction middle of 2009. Source: Chicago Sun-Times Dec 23 ‘08.
Tags: chicago, clybourn corridor, rental housing
Morningstar reports that, as of 11/6/08, the best return by a long term bond fund year-to-date was achieved by Capstone Church Bond Fund. Only three other funds in the class show a positive return for the period, and none match Capstone’s 4.92%.The fund invests exclusively in church mortgage bonds.
Church mortgage bonds are corporate debt securities issued by non-profit organizations that have a stated Christian mission, including local churches, denominations and associations, educational institutions, para church and other Christian mission-related organizations for purposes including construction, purchase or refinancing of existing real property. The bond issuers operate in a variety of geographic regions in the U.S.A. The Fund will only invest in church mortgage bonds that are secured by a first position trust deed or mortgage on the issuer’s real property.
Because church mortgage bonds do not have an active secondary market and are illiquid, they are typically issued with yields that are higher than those of corporate bonds of similar credit quality and maturity.
Which helps explain why they’d have a higher yield than other funds. These are still real estate investments, but I suppose the risk profile of a church wouldn’t be very similar to typical individual borrowers nor corporate borrowers. Of course the churches don’t have to worry about rising real estate taxes. It will be interesting to see how they do.
Tags: christians, churches, mortgages, securities
Persimmon PLC, reportedly the largest British home builder, is writing down the value of its land holdings by 600 million pounds, in addition to a writedown of 40 million pounds June 30. Based on the 76,159 lots they reported holding at that time, this is a drop of about 7800 pounds per lot. The mid-year report(pdf) also implied the total value of their land holdings was about 2.7 billion pounds, so this latest writedown might be about 22% of the land value.
It’s just a sign on the roof of a building, but it’s diagonally across the street from Wrigley Field (and, presumably, it’s legal) so it’s worth $350,000/year. That’s how much Anheuser-Busch was paying to maintain their advertising sign on it. This is in the news only because A-B failed to pay on time, so the corporation owning the building at 3701 N. Kenmore covered the sign. (Print editions of the story seem to have mislocated the building on Sheffield)
$350,000/year implies the sign, or rather the right to place it on that building, is worth something like $4-$6 million.
The County Assessor’s web site says that 3701 N. Kenmore is parcel number 14-20-219-026-0000 and has a total market value of $854,000 (The “assessed value” is $136,640). So if the right to place a sign is worth, say $4 million, even pretending that the building has no value at all, the assessment is far too low, only 3.4% of market value.
I want the Assessor to assess my house at 3.4% of the value of the right to put a sign on the roof.
Tags: Billboards, Cook County Assessor, Jim Houlihan, wrigley field
A report from Perth, in Western Australia, says that two sites capable of accommodating a total of 24 apartment units were recently sold for a total of $5.35 million. This would be $A222,917/unit, or about $184,000 US. The sites are in the Churchlands Green development which is said to “emphasize sustainable design principles.” The developer has published a list (small pdf) of single family lot sales prices, which it reports have ranged from $A525,000 to $A860,000.
A 5500 sq ft lot in Flushing, offered for $3.49 million, pays taxes of only $12,000/year according to this ad. That’s about 1/3 of 1%, if the value is at the asking price. Typical residential properties pay about 3 to 6 times this percentage of value, I think. The asking price works out to $634/sq ft., which seems like a lot for a site in an outer boro, altho I’m not very familiar with NYC land prices.
Tags: Flushing, Queens, undertaxed
That’s the news for the second quarter of 2008, from a Bloomberg report. Values fell in 38 areas and rose in 13. Apparently the remainder of the 100 districts showed no change from the previous quarter. There is a brief report in Japanese which google can sort of translate , as can yahoo babelfish. It seems that these are prices of central city land suitable for high-rise apartments or commercial use, estimated by professional appraisers. There’s also a pdf, in Japanese, with nice maps.
So now I know more about Japanese urban land prices than any U S Government agency seems to know about American urban land prices.
Tags: Japan, land value trends, urban land value