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Title

12th Annual Real Estate Conference Draws a Crowd

Message

More than 500 of the region's real estate professionals turned out for the Burnham-Moores Center's 12th Annual Real Estate Conference, held Jan. 22 at the San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina.

Mark Riedy, the center's executive director, kicked off the conference by announcing the completion of a fund-raising campaign to endow a new faculty position in honor of Daniel F. Mulvihill, chairman of Pacific Southwest Realty Services and a founding member of the center's Policy Advisory Board.

Mulvihill received a standing ovation from the sold-out room. "I feel a little bit like a tiny intruder in the forest of giants," he told the attendees following the announcement. "You're talking about the Burnham-Moores Center. Those are great guys and great names."




	Mary Ludgin, of Heitman in Chicago, finds a reason to smile during her property markets presentation.

Following the Mulvihill presentation, keynote speaker John Robbins offered the attendees his view of the downturn in the industry, as immediate past chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. Robbins, who is chair of the center's Policy Advisory Board Executive Committee, said, "We are experiencing the effects of someone who has consumed too much wine. The good news is we've stopped drinking; the bad news is we're going to have a hell of a headache." Robbins said that he expected to see signs of a "normalized" market in 2009 and a "healthier" one in 2010.

Steve Osgood of Dupont Fabros, which was the only publicly traded REIT initial public offering in 2007, highlighted the role fate plays in global capital markets. "We have often joked that had we gone public a week before or a week after we wouldn't have gotten out," Osgood said of the company's Oct. 19, 2007 IPO. "Our lead investment bank, Lehman Brothers, actually shortened that time period and said that if we had priced an hour and a half after we did, we probably wouldn't have gotten out."

During the "What Are the Capital Markets Telling Us?" panel, Janice Sears advised the room to follow the "Keep it simple, stupid" mantra that she and her colleagues at Bank of America have adopted during the current market cycle. "Go back to basics and do the right thing," she said. "Don't be too fancy and try all of the financial engineering — just get it done."

Burl East of Silver Portal Capital took the advice a step further. Data are "always backward-looking," he said. "People who get wealthy in our business don't wait for data. They hold a wet finger to the wind and make a snap, thin-sliced judgment on where we are in the cycle and go with it."

Jay Spivey, senior director of Product Management at Costar Group, and Norm Miller, director of academic programs at the Burnham-Moores Center, revealed some positive news in their "Does Green Pay Off?" presentation. The researchers reported that sustainable development can yield financial benefits in addition to environmental ones.

In the final panel, "Property Markets and Property Types — Heading North or South?," Bob White, president of Real Capital Analytics in New York, shared some encouraging news of his own with the group. White said that his company's report of major commercial property sales transactions around the world ranked San Diego as the 17th most active market. When grouped with all of Southern California, the ranking jumped to No. 2, just behind New York and ahead of London.

"Globalization of the capital markets is happening very quickly," White said. "It is something you have to realize. You're not just comparing yourself to LA and San Francisco or Atlanta and Chicago. You're comparing yourself to Moscow and Shanghai and Hong Kong and all of the other places capital can go these days."

Contact

Jeryldine Tully | jtully@sandiego.edu | 619-260-4786

Web Address

http://www.sandiego.edu/business/centers/real_estate/research_and_presentations.php