Boston's Condo Market Catches
Fire As Prices Drop

The economy's recent improvements didn't take effect quickly enough to save a hotel REIT focused on urban properties. Hospitality Investors Trust, a public, nontraded REIT formerly known as American Realty Capital Hospitality Trust, is preparing to hand over all of…

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It is just over three years since Toys R Us tumbled into administration in the UK, and the property business that owned the UK stores collapsed into receivership. The portfolio carried debts of £363M and just £177M in assets.

You would have to be an optimist to think there was a profit to be made here, but cometh the hour, cometh the man: UK investor Tim Knowles' Acepark Ltd took on the portfolio. Earlier this spring Acepark accounts confessed the outcome as the remaining stores fell in value faster than they could be sold. "It now looks unlikely that sufficient funds will be realised to make an overall profit for the group," official accounts said. That golden sunrise ahead turned out to be an oncoming train. 

This is not an atypical story because the property industry has an optimism bias. Other examples are not hard to find: a consortium of investors completing Europe's largest ever property deal on the day Lehman collapsed in 2008; or the Chinese developer who built 700K SF of offices for Chinese companies in the docks of east London, only to find he built it and they didn't come (yet).

And in 2021 that bias could become a serious liability.

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Even though he's been in the business since 1982, it took until last year, and working with a giant like Microsoft, for Dallas Smith to become a household name in Atlanta's commercial real estate circles.

Smith, T. Dallas Smith & Co.'s CEO, earned the fame when, during the depths of the coronavirus pandemic, he and his team ushered Microsoft into one of the largest corporate expansions in recent Atlanta history.

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