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A Fire Sale Has U.S. Office Buildings Going for 90% Off – WSJ

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A Fire Sale Has U.S. Office Buildings Going for 90% Off – WSJ

America’s battered office market is holding a fire sale, featuring some buildings marked down by more than 90%.

In Chicago, real-estate developer Marc Calabria bought a 485,000-square-foot office building for $4 million. The building sold for $68.1 million a decade ago.

Developer Asher Luzzatto paid a mere $5.3 million for the Denver Energy Center, after a foreclosure process. The two-building complex sold for $176 million in 2013.

Even the federal government’s landlord is getting in on the act. The General Services Administration last month sold a 940,000-square-foot building to a residential converter for $24 million, a tiny fraction of its value a few years ago.

Landlords and their lenders held on to their office towers for years, hoping for a turnaround after Covid. Now, they are accepting enormous losses. Owners and creditors are capitulating to the reality that more employees are splitting their work time between home and office. They are also resigned to stubbornly higher interest rates, which lower property values and make it harder for buyers to borrow.

Things I plan to do to be climate resilient when I own my own land 🌎 🚜 🏘

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Climate change is real and its impacting us all already and it’s going to only get worse. The politicians’ solutions – where they exist at all – are kind of bad, mostly consisting of evacuation centers and welfare and reminding people that it’s okay to walk away from the post storm deterus – they’ll cart it off to the landfill for you.

  • First off, recognizing that political activism is not going to protect me from climate change. The buck stops with me.
  • Buying a Prisus or electric car won’t protect me but buying a backhoe might.
  • Own a house that has metal roofing and remove trees nearby that could burn in a wildfire
  • Make sure the house and barn are well away from streams and flood plains that could flood in extreme rain
  • Have an independent off-grid electric system and on site fuel storage
  • Have a tractor with a front end loader to both bury debris and dead stock, and also fill in and repair washouts
  • Have extra materials like timber, plywood, gravel, dirt and culverts to make repairs after wash outs.
  • Not own a lot of material things that are easily damaged by water or smoke
  • Be willing to do with a lot less with the land rather than the property