First Labor Day Parade on September 5, 1882, New York City Today marks the nation’s 118th official celebration of Labor Day, established by law in 1894 when Sen. James Henderson Kyle of South Dakota introduced S. 730 to make Labor Day a federal holiday on the first Monday of each September. It’s roots extend back […]
It’s Memorial Day weekend and it happens to also be the first weekend of a new endeavor by our team to post a new article every single calendar day. So, while others frolic on the beach or man their grills, we write. Our topic this weekend is obvious: we will write about our nation’s military […]
OMB Acting Director Jeffrey Zients On Friday, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Acting Director, Jeffrey Zients, issued a memorandum effectively freezing the federal inventory of leased space. The memorandum entitled “Promoting Efficient Spending to Support Agency Operations” addressed a wide range of cost reduction initiatives including reductions in travel costs, conference expenditures and more […]
While tracking sales of single-tenant GSA-leased properties over the last several years, we’ve noticed some interesting trends which won’t come as a surprise to experienced GSA investors, but may be of interest to new entrants to this specialized market. We catalogued a total of 183 transactions for the period 2011-13. The map below shows the […]
One of the most important (and perplexing) concepts we run into on a daily basis in the GSA property marketplace is the concept of “cap rate.” The cap rate has long been used as a benchmark for pricing commercial real estate across all product types, but in the 1990s and into the 2000s became more […]
Workplace injuries resulted in 4,383 worker deaths in 2012, the second lowest total since the census began in 1992. The leading causes, known as the “fatal four,” were falling, being struck by an object, electrocution, and being caught or trapped. Federal responsibility for reducing these and other workplace hazards belongs to a small agency within […]
Source: dhs.gov Last August 21, federal workers in the heart of Lower Manhattan saw a terrible situation: A disturbed man with a gun entered a building in which passports were issued and immigration cases decided. He killed a security guard, then turned the gun on himself, leaving witnesses and investigators to wonder what had driven […]
The Colliers Government Solutions team represents owners of government-leased properties nationally. So, we travel a lot. This slideshow profiles my recent trip to Hampton Roads, Virginia. (Use arrow buttons to advance slides) https://www.capitolmarkets.com/wp-content/uploads/slideshow-gallery/Hampton Roads Location.jpg Hampton Roads is in Southeastern Virginia. It is home to the United States Navy, chosen because it is one of the world’s […]
Over the years, we’ve observed that government-leased build-to-suit (or, in GSA parlance, “lease-construct”) projects often seem to price at or near the prospectus-approved rent cap. We decided to take a look at the trend using the FBI’s field office construction program as our test bed. We did this largely because the FBI field office Program of Requirements […]
Because of the high number of leases in the National Capital Region, the GSA developed a system known as the Advanced Acquisition Program (AAP) back in the early or mid-1990’s. Once per year, the GSA would issue a generic Solicitation for Offer (SFO) requesting proposals from area landlords for office or warehouse space ranging from 2,000 SF […]
Kevin Warsh, a Federal Reserve governor during the Great Recession, noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this year, “If you’ve seen one financial crisis, you’ve seen one financial crisis.” That is to say, all financial crises have unique causes and characteristics, and this current one certainly does too. Warsh noted that simply cutting […]
Last week the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors (SIOR) held its Spring World Conference in Washington, DC. I was fortunate to be asked to participate in a panel discussion entitled “Federal Real Estate Opportunities” alongside, Allison Azevedo, GSA’s Assistant Commissioner for Leasing, and Ron Kendall, Executive Vice President of Government Relations at Easterly Government […]
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), signed by President Obama on February 13, 2009, called for major new construction and the energy-efficient modernization of federal office buildings, courthouses and land ports across the country. This article—which…
Colliers recently released its U.S. 2021 Investor Sentiment Survey Results, an annual look at the mood of the investor community at the start of the New Year. Not surprisingly, more than half of all investors surveyed…
