Developer moving ahead with Prosper housing development

Forest City Enterprises said Friday that it's moving ahead with plans to develop a 2,100-acre master-planned community in the Town of Prosper.

As part of the deal, Forest City and the Mahard family - which owns the land - say they have reached an agreement with Prosper to annex the property at U.S. Highway 380 and FM 423.

The Denton County land is the longtime site of the Mahard Egg Farm. Cleveland-based Forest City plans to build on the land in a partnership.

"This project is not about building a legacy for ourselves, rather creating the greatest community possible for the place I've called home for the past 75 years," Ernest A. Mahard Jr. said in a statement.

Plans for the project include neighborhoods of single-family homes, shopping centers, office space, parks and recreational facilities.

The Mahard family has used the land as part of its egg farm operations and for other agricultural uses. Mahard Egg Farm is one of the country's largest egg producers.

About a year ago, Forest City and the Mahards announced their partnership to develop the property.

The deal is one of two Forest City is working on in the U.S. 380 corridor.

In August, the firm said it was teaming up with shopping center developer General Growth Properties to build a 400-acre mixed-use project near the southwest corner of the Dallas North Tollway. That development will include 1.5 million square feet of shopping, a hotel, office space and housing.

Forest City also has large community developments in Colorado and New Mexico.

Forest City is best known in the Dallas area for its redevelopment of downtown's historic Mercantile National Bank tower.

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source: dallasnews.com

Real estate market still booming in B.C.

With a muscular loonie and a B.C. housing market that shows no sign of slowing down, especially in Vancouver, logic suggests foreign investors might find the real estate market here a little chilly. U.S.-dollar purchasers face a double whammy of weakened currency and soaring real estate prices. But experts say that won't deter a lot of investors, who if anything see B.C. assets as an even better bet. And those who bought when the loonie was nicknamed the northern peso are chortling at their foresight and good sense.

The average selling price of a house in Vancouver and its immediate suburbs reached $819,794 last month, with townhouse condos nudging $600,000 and apartments $400,000. For British Columbia as a whole, average residential prices climbed 12 per cent in September to $436,000, compared with a year ago. Meanwhile, the Canadian dollar pushed through the US $1.04 barrier briefly Friday. Experts now believe it could easily surpass US $1.05 by the end of this year, an amazing climb from 65 cents in 2003. But the steroidal loonie won't deter most foreign buyers, except perhaps at the margins, says Cameron Muir, chief economist at the B.C. Real Estate Board. "The reality is many U.S. and offshore buyers who are buying here are buying luxury condominiums,'' he says. "Some of the latest ones downtown now are at $2,000 a square foot. "Buyers in that category ... are not as sensitive to exchange-rate changes because they have a very high net worth.''

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source: updatere.com

Real estate buyout funds still on a tear

The private equity party may be over but the news hasn't yet made it to the real estate buyout funds, which are seeking $105-billion (U.S.) in new capital, a sixfold increase from January, 2006. There are 206 real estate-focused funds in the market raising capital around the world, an explosion of growth in what was once a niche sector of private equity, according to data from London-based Private Equity Intelligence.

Last year, 116 new funds raised a record of $72-billion, and 2007 is set to surpass that amount with a total of about $75- to $85-billion. That's seen further increasing to $80- to $100-billion next year, the research firm said. This contrasts with the rest of the private equity market, which is expected to raise slightly less this year than it did in 2006, said Tim Friedman, a spokesman at Private Equity Intelligence.

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source: updatere.com

Real Estate Funds Bounce Back

With floods drenching hundreds of Ohio homes, mortgage debt securities turning toxic and home values dropping nationwide, pessimism in real estate investments has maxed out -- for now. Last Friday, the Fed valiantly rescued the market with a half point cut in the discount rate. Exactly 100 years ago, six years before the creation of the Federal Reserve System, it was the large banks that restored market sanity after panics and crashes. Big banks stepped up to the plate again this week, when in a show of solidarity, Citigroup (C - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating), Bank of America (BAC - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating), JPMorganChase (JPM - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) and Wachovia (WB - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) each borrowing half a billion dollars from the Fed's discount window. J. Pierpont Morgan, the private banker whose leadership and confidence turned around the Panic of 1907, would have been proud

All this liquidity makes it possible for banks to keep lending. Going one step further, Bank of America helped to stabilize the mortgage industry by investing $2 billion in Countrywide Financial (CFC - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating), easing fears of bankruptcy at one of America's largest mortgage lenders. Optimism abounded. The market rallied, and real estate companies rose too. The average real estate fund tracked by TheStreet.com Ratings climbed 6.91% for the five trading days ended Thursday, Aug. 23.

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source: updatere.com