| This may be the worst real estate recession Tom Davenport's ever seen, but it's been really good for his firm, Lavista Associates.Yesterday, we sat down with Tom (snapping his pic as he left for an appointment) at his Peachtree Corners' office to hear his reflectionson 2010 and what he sees this year. Rather quietly, Lavista has positioned itself as one of the bigger players in the REO sales market in Atlanta, selling 36 properties last year and generating$24M in proceeds. Lavista has more than 50 REO properties on the market, including 410 East Taylor Street, a mixed-use project in Griffin, for State Bank & Trust. | |
| Here's a pic of 1908 Cliff Valley Way, a 25K SF office building,and one of the properties Lavista sold last year. Other notable sales include 205 Scientific Dr, a flex office building in Norcross sold by StanCorp and the strip retail center Cross Creek Village inLawrenceville sold by Federal Trust Bank. REO properties are trading at discounts of 15% to 45% of 2007 pricing, Tom says. And the good news is pricing has likely hit bottom, with investors being more aggressive on REO pricing by the second half of the year. Tom says the firm purposely focused on helping banks take over, manage and unload distressed assets beginning in 2006, when more and more of his brokers came to him with stories of developers and landlords with deep debt problems. Now a good number of his 28-member brokerage and management team are involved with the handling of REOs, he says. He expects a steady stream ofdistressed assets coming to market from banks all the way through 2012. ?Anything past that is anybody's guess.? |
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