Traderama

 I’ve been away the past two weeks—about as far as you can go and mostly out of communication in Patagonia. I came back to repercussions of the Japan earthquake and tsunami as well as the ongoing Middle East news headlined now by Libya and Yemen. One of my first blackberry emails off the plane was an account of last week’s PREA meeting where a record number of attendees where reportedly especially upbeat, buoyed by what else—the increasing number of deals. Properties are moving again—year over year sales for January and February up around 50%. Transactions have begun in secondary and some tertiary markets. Prices are increasing and the CMBS market is bouncing back. A fee based industry sees momentum returning and everybody feels more confident about deals, deals, and the possibility of more deals.

In the real estate Traderama, the properties and buildings are almost beside the point now. Fundamentals—supply and demand, leasing trends—are covered perfunctorily in investment committee reports, but the idea isn’t to hold a property and nurture it. It’s to ride an expected market upswing, and sell as soon as possible for as big a gain as possible. Timing plays don’t require much real estate management acumen, and when the Traderama gets going with advisors and investment bankers using Other People’s Money, you have plenty of interchangeable buyers and sellers transacting with one another to keep the prices moving higher and the fees flowing. That’s really all that counts.