All three components of the index rose in July. Current sales conditions rose five points to 60—the highest level since early 2006. The component gauging sales expectations in the next six months gained seven points to 67, and the component gauging traffic of prospective buyers rose five points to 45—marking the strongest readings for each since late 2005.

“Builders are seeing more motivated buyers coming through their doors as the inventory of existing homes for sale continues to tighten,” noted NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “Meanwhile, as the infrastructure that supplies home building returns, some previously skyrocketing building material costs have begun to soften.”Sales of newly built homes rose just over 2 percent from May to June. Single family housing starts were flat. But permits, considered a more reliable indicator, gained 1.3 percent month-to-month.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100889688

Charlie Malet of Shorenstein, which won the Real Estate Deal of the Year in 2011 for its lease with Twitter, stands outside Market Square.

Emily Fancher
Senior Editor- San Francisco Business Times

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Which Bay Area real estate deals and projects caught your eye in 2012? Any memorable, bold office purchases? How about a huge, complex lease transaction or a beautifully designed medical research building?

The San Francisco Business Times is asking the real estate community to nominate the biggest, best and most complex deals and projects of 2012 for our annual Real Estate Deals of the Year Awards. Projects and deals throughout the Bay Area are eligible to win.

The categories include housing, office, retail, RD, health, renovation, hotel, restaurant, public/cultural, infrastructure and industrial. The paper will feature the winners in a special publication to be published March 22, 2013, and at an awards gala in March.

Click here to fill out a nomination for the 2012 Real Estate Deals of the Year.

Click here to fill out a nomination for Real Estate Dealmaker of 2012.

The deadline for submitting entries for this year’s competition is 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 4, 2013.

Questions? Feel free to email me at efancher@bizjournals.com.

Emily Fancher is a senior editor at the San Francisco Business Times.

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Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2012/11/real-estate-deals-of-the-year.html

• By: Rich Miller
  March 12th, 2012
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The growth of cloud computing is prompting increased demand for data center space in North America, according to a survey commissioned by Digital Realty. The growing interest in cloud adoption, along with the resumption of planned expansions that were deferred due to the economy, suggests robust growth ahead for the U.S. data center industry.

Ninety two percent of IT decision makers at large companies said they will “definitely or probably” expand their data center footprint in 2012, the highest number in the six-year history of the survey by Digital Realty, which is the largest operator of data center facilities. By comparison, 70 percent of respondents said they had expanded their data center operations over the past two years, suggesting

An intriguing data point: 41 percent of companies that are adding space reported plans to use a containerized module as part of their expansion, suggesting that a growing number of companies are open to deployments that use modular designs to house either IT capacity or power and cooling infrastructure.

Customer Sentiment Improving

The survey, conducted by Campos Research, included 300 IT decision makers at large corporations in North America with annual revenues of at least $1.0 billion and/or at least 5,000 employees. It’s not surprising that Digital Realty believes demand will be high, since the company is in the business of building and leasing data centers. But the findings are useful in tracking customer sentiment about their requirements for data center space.

“These results are consistent with what we are seeing with our customers across our portfolio,” said Michael Foust, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty. “There are a number of factors that we believe are driving the increase in demand for data center space as reported in the survey. These include the continued adoption of public, private and hybrid cloud computing solutions, pent up demand from enterprise customers that had deferred expansion plans in previous years due to economic uncertainty, an improved economic outlook, and the proliferation of data requiring appropriate computing and storage environments.”

The survey results provided some hints at the scope and breadth of customer expansion plans for 2012:

• 38 percent expect to expand in three or more locations.
• 54 percent expect to pursue projects of 15,000 square feet or more in size.
• 49 percent expect their data center projects to be supported by at least 2 MW of electrical power, including 12 percent reporting data center projects that will have 5 MW or more of electrical power.
• 50 percent of companies planning North American expansions also expect to expand in Europe or the Asia Pacific region, and 21 percent reported plans for projects in South America.
• 4 percent of companies reported having no plans for data center expansion in 2012 or 2013.

The most frequently cited locations for expansion in the U.S. include, in order, New York/New Jersey, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco Bay Area and Phoenix.

Article source: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/03/12/cloud-growth-spurs-demand-for-data-centers/

A group pushing for more infrastructure spending has listed several California cities, including San Francisco, San Jose and Stockton as having among the nation’s highest percentage of structurally deficient bridges.

Transportation for America’s report, which will be released with updated figures at a press conference tomorrow, analyzes the federal National Bridge Inventory database and finds one in nine U.S. bridges are structurally deficient. The report said most U.S. bridges are at an age, about 50 years old, where they need overhaul or replacement, and that California is at the top of the list in the number of deficient bridges that carry heavy traffic.

San Jose is second in cities of up to two million population, with 18.7 percent of its bridges, or 189, ranked deficient, with daily traffic listed as nearly 6 million trips. San Francisco ranks second in cities over two million, with 20.9 percent, or 380, of its bridges ranked deficient, carrying 15 million trips on average each day.

The report said bridges are very expensive and complicated to repair or replace because so many drivers use them each day. The report calls for overhauling the way they are funded and prioritized, saying the problem can’t be fixed just by spending more money. State formula funding doesn’t work, the report said, recommending instead that states “should be required to show that they have taken care of what they have before they spend repair money on new capacity they can’t afford to maintain.

The report also says ending bike and pedestrian programs as some members of Congress want to do is stupid, in so many words, because it won’t make a dent in bridge repair.

Transportation for America is made up of a lot of local officials, including many from California, along with smart-growth, environmental, bicycle, real estate, architectural and other groups.

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2011/10/18/bay-area-bridges-deemed/