CRE Strikes Back In Transfer Tax Battle, Appeals To Illinois Supreme Court

The Chicago Bears are pivoting from plans to build a stadium in Arlington Heights and bearing down on a new domed stadium on the lakefront, pledging $2B in private financing to construct it.

As a part of the plan, the team would partially demolish  Soldier Field, which has the smallest seating capacity in the  National Football League, and erect a publicly owned stadium with the potential for year-round events, including  the Super Bowl, according to Crain's Chicago Business…

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Commercial appraisers find their work at the center of one of the largest real estate stories of the moment: the fate of the office market. Their decisions of value will have enormous sway on when properties sell, how and when transaction volume restarts and even who controls key assets. 

“There’s a lot of money and control rights at stake, all depending upon the appraiser’s determination,” said Joseph Cioffi, chair of the Bankruptcy, Creditors' Rights and Finance Practice Group at Davis+Gilbert in New York City. “So you can imagine the pressure.”

Trying to find out when things have hit bottom and when sales may restart in earnest has kept many appraisers busy. While transaction activity has plummeted, there is a client base of institutional investors and large property owners keenly interested in where the market is headed, according to Adam Dembowitz, JLL’s senior managing director of value and risk advisory in the U.S. 

In this office market, where valuations can be tough to figure out because bedrock facts are in flux, appraisers find themselves in high demand. Yearly appraisals have become quarterly, and “the information can't come fast enough,” Dembowitz said. But better access to market data alone can’t solve the contemporary challenge of…

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