Reprographics 101

Well, I’d like to be the sales rep who gets the opportunity to travel down to Trinidad or Tobago to submit a proposal for this one – lovely islands, beautiful weather (unless there’s a hurricane coming through.)

Seriously, though, I doubt any U.S. reprographer is going to have an interest in participating in this particular RFP opportunity, so I’m posting about this one simply for amusement purposes.

The University of Trinidad and Tobago (“UTT”) is in the process of reviewing the use and management of its Reprographic equipment and is inviting submissions from interested companies that have the capability and experience to manage this service. The participants that meet UTT’s minimum capability/capacity requirements will be shortlisted thereafter to participate in a Request for Proposals (RFP).

Application Process:

Click here to download EOI document. There is no cost attached to this process.

Minimum Requirements:

Participants will be required to submit

1. Audited Financial Statements (last two years)

2. Work history

3. List of referrals


Deadline for submission of the EOI

The closing date for QUERIES is Friday, 6^th January, 2012, while the closing date for the SUBMISSION of the EOI Document Package is Monday, 16^th January, 2012 at 2:00 p.m. Hard copies of the completed EOI Documents are to be deposited personally in the Tender Box located at the Administration Building of UTT’s O’Meara Campus, Lots 74-98 O’Meara Industrial Park, Arima between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. and should be addressed to: The Secretary, Management Tenders Committee (see page 7 of the EOI for more details).

Late submissions will NOT be accepted.

General Information

UTT reserves the right to reject any or all submissions without incurring any cost to the Participants and to cancel this expression of interest and to take no further action.

A recent article said that we should, in 2012, be on the lookout for a wave of foreclosures on commercial real estate projects that were financed (or re-financed) in 2007. Evidently, 5-year notes were a popular way to finance commercial real estate projects. Don’t know if this project had a 5-year note, but someone just took a big hit on what was owed.

Resurgens Plaza back to lender for $53 million

From Atlanta Business Chronicle, by Doug Sams, Staff Writer

Date: Monday, December 19, 2011, 2:04pm EST

CW Capital Asset Management has foreclosed on Resurgens Plaza, the opulent 27-story Buckhead tower, for $53 million, after negotiations to restructure the building’s loan ended between the special servicer and owner Behringer Harvard.

The foreclosure sale took place Dec. 6 and marked a 35 percent decline from the $82 million value of the loan, according to Fulton County records. The debt had been transferred to special servicing this year, a move that often signals negotiations with a building’s ownership to restructure the loan.

Behringer Harvard acquired the Resurgens Plaza in 2006, the height of the market and prior to the Buckhead and Midtown building boom that added towers on Peachtree Road and at Lenox Road and Georgia 400. It was built in the 80s, a period that included the construction of other notable towers including One Atlanta Plaza and the Atlanta Financial Center. Resurgens Plaza was known for its ornate lobby, outfitted with wood and marble, “Ritz-Carlton-like” in its day, and the building’s office space was marketed to wealth management firms and law firms.

The latest building spree, however, coupled with the downturn, created an ultra-competitive landscape in which owners of Atlanta’s older towers, some purchased at peak prices, had to compete with the ownership of new towers and the huge concessions they were able to offer, including free rent and tenant improvement packages.

The same competition is being played out in many commercial real estate markets, though Atlanta’s office tower boom between 2006 and 2009 has made it worse and allowed it to stand out.

Behringer Harvard, and others, often lacked the flexibility to adjust rates and concessions, until their loans were restructured, real estate observers said.

Behringer Harvard, for example, lost the law firm Fisher & Phillips LLP to Midtown’s 1075 Peachtree, developed by Daniel Corp. and Selig Enterprises in the past few years. It vacated three floors, while another tenant downsized by more than a floor.

Behringer Harvard and CW Capital had been in negotiations to restructure the loan for months.

Home sales data revisions made

Dec. 22, 2011, Detroit Free Press (Freep.com)

National home sales data crunched by the National Association of Realtors was inflated by 14.3% going back to 2007, according to revised numbers released Wednesday, but economists said the revision doesn’t change a better outlook for housing.

“The revision shows weaker sales from 2007 to present, but the pattern is the same,” said Robert A. Dye, chief economist for Dallas-based Comerica Bank. “From my point of view, this does not significantly alter my view on the housing market. The recent trends are intact.”

The association said it reduced its earlier counts of home sales as its data became out of whack with market realities.

It also reported that existing home sales were up 4% in November from a year ago, continuing a trend of tentative gains in the beleaguered housing market.

The restated data indicate that there were 4.19 million existing homes sold last year, down 14.6% from the previous projection of 4.9 million. The revisions impacted only the annual sales figures and not the month-to-month.

Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the association, said the data revision does not affect local home prices or local multiple listing service data.

The disparity developed over time between the sales reported to NAR by the local listing services and sales determined by a U.S. Census benchmark, he explained. Reasons for the shift in the data include population shifts and an overestimation of the number of for-sale-by-owner transactions, which softened during the downturn.

Existing home sales are of marginal value in predicting housing market strength, IHS Global Insight economists Patrick Newport and Michelle Valverde said in a statement.

This is because sales could rise on distressed sales, which is a sign of market weakness, or because the economy is improving, a sign of strength, they wrote. The new construction market is a better gauge of housing market health, they said.

In November, 28% of sales were cash purchases. The sales data included closed transactions and showed existing home sales at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.42 million last month. That’s a 4% rise over October and a 12.2% increase over the November 2010 pace.

The national median existing-home price was $164,200 in November, down 3.5% from a year ago. Housing inventory fell 5.8% to 2.58 million homes for sale, or a seven-month supply at the current sales pace.

To view the data, go to: www.realtor.org/research/research/ehsdata.

Contact GRETA GUEST: 313-223-4192 or gguest@freepress.com