What was your greatest professional accomplishment in 2011?
Having my wife Anne Attivissimo become part of my strategic team. She is a tremendous asset and continues to grow in her capabilities, which allows us to excel in the challenging economic times ahead.
Most notable project/deal transaction:
Selling Hazel Street in Glen Cove, this transaction was very rewarding because it was a great deal for the Town of Glen Cove. Putting a Public Storage building in an area where there was a gap for public storage was a smart strategic move for the purchaser Men On The Move. The transaction took four years and fell apart many times before we ultimately closed it.
Predictions for commercial real estate in 2012:
Business will continue to bounce along the bottom, pricing will still be soft as small business owners struggle with the uncertainty of the market. This will continue until positive administrative banking regulations and fix cost reductions are put in place for the small business owner to feel confident to hire more people. Right now they are holding on for their business life and making no capital expenditures. With the jobless rate recently reduced from 9 to 8.6% people should feel better, correct? Let's take a look. The day before the jobless numbers came out on December 1, 2011, the net jobs created for the entire United States was 120,000 jobs added in November, 2011 and jobless claims climbed up to 402,000 in an increase of 6000 in the week ended November 26, 2011 (Wall Street Journal). So, how can the jobless rate go down from 9% to 8.6%? They say 50,000 retail jobs created, but isn't that seasonal? There was loss in construction jobs, wasn't the stimulus package supposed to have shovel ready jobs, so we lose shovel ready jobs? How can that be? In addition they shrunk the size of the working population because many Americans may have given up looking. More than half of the drop in the unemployment rate came from people dropping out of the work force. Okay, so how does this effect Industrial Commercial Real Estate?
The jobs created were teachers, health care, government and some private sector 2000 manufacturing jobs. Most of those jobs created do not create revenue, they are expenses. They add nothing to the GDP. This money needed to support these jobs come from tax payers not from revenue because teachers, government and health care jobs do not create revenue. So therefore these jobs will not change the need for industrial commercial real estate to the extent we will see absorption. Remember that on Long Island we have seen an average 3 to 1 increase in vacant space since 2007-08 which will take many years to absorb and possibly ten years before any new construction.
In addition we need policy that encourages small business owners to grow by reducing fix cost, put some predictability in health care cost which is the number one concern for chief financial Officers of small companies to mention only few issues to resolve. Otherwise you will continue to see real estate values go down along with small companies struggle to make payroll.
Resolutions for 2012:
My resolutions for 2012 are to remain positive every day and to be a blessing to everyone I come into contact with in family and professionally. Tags: