http://www.jwindy.com/

The impressive, 34-story, 1,005 room hotel opened February 4th in downtown Indianapolis. JW Marriot states that the hotel is the tallest hotel in Indiana and the 1,005 rooms makes it the largest JW Marriot in the world. The hotel alone boasts well over 100,000 square feet of event/meeting space, not to mention nearly 800,000 square feet of additional space in the Indiana Convention Center and four other Marriot hotels, all connected to the hotel by a skybridge.

The hotel offers towering views of downtown Indy, Victory Field, and maybe even a glimpse of some of the animals in the Indianapolis Zoo. The world class facilities, luxurious guest rooms, and its location to all downtown amenities make this a go-to destination for business meetings, conventions, and even a Super Bowl.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 12:37 PM on Monday, February 14, 2011

Goddard Systems Inc.

Link to story

Background:

Founded: 1986

Franchising since: 1988

The Goddard School offers year-round programs for children from six weeks to six years old including after-school enrichment and summer programs. Goddard Systems, Inc. (GSI) is the franchisor of The Goddard School. Headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, GSI currently operates schools throughout the United States. Each school is a licensed childcare facility with an on-site owner, an Education Director and a staff trained in Early Childhood Education or Childhood Development. GSI provides continuing education for all teachers as well as a corporate Quality Assurance program.

Address: 1016 W. Ninth Ave. King of Prussia, Pennsylvania 19406

Phone: (800)272-4901

Franchisor is a privately-held company with 80 employee(s); 6 employee(s) in franchise department.

Highlights:

• Top Ranked Childcare Franchise

• 364 Total Franchises

• Added 25 New Franchises in 2010

• Ranked #80 in Fastest-Growing Franchises for 2011

Baldwin Companies is proud to represent the real estate owners of 7 Goddard Schools properties in Indiana and Illinois. These rankings reinforce the high quality of work of these franchise owners. To view our active real estate investment opportunities in the Goddard Schools, visit the links below:

Brownsburg, IN

Zionsville, IN

Noblesville, IN

Fishers, IN

Greenwood, IN

Lawrence, IN

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 02:15 PM on Monday, January 17, 2011

From The Office and our office to your office (or home), we'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 01:17 PM on Friday, December 17, 2010

Gone are the days when marketing real estate starts and stops at putting a sign out front.

For us, it's all about making as many people as possible aware of any investments we have listed for sale, or office, retail, or industrial space we have for lease. In order to make this happen, it's imperative for us to create a strong online presence for each property. We want to cast a wide net for any potential buyers or tenants. We not only want to capture those people that happen to drive by, but the real estate brokers that are searching a variety of property databases and the business owners that are searching online late at night in their pajamas.

It all makes sense really. If you need information on something, ANYTHING, you 'google' it. If you're looking to buy a new house, a new car, or just about any other purchase, the process for many people, more often than not, starts online.

So what do we do?

Well for starters, we list each of our properties that we represent on 9 different listing websites:

• Baldwin Companies
• CoStar
• LoopNet
• PropertyLine
• PropertyLinx (Indianapolis MLS)
• Commercial Source
• Commercial IQ
• Space For Lease
• Rofo

These sites are mostly used by brokers that are searching for properties for clients they represent. We also utilize social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, not only to list properties, but also to drive more traffic to the listings here on our website.

Each of the listings on our website (http://commercial.baldwincompanies.com/listings) has its own webpage that enables us to create a Pay-Per-Click campaign using Google. This helps populate our listings on Google searches for 'fishers office space', 'indianapolis land for sale', etc.

In addition, we create an electronic flyer with details on each property that we send out via email. We have a list of over 5,000 email addresses of local realtors, brokers, and investors. We also have a list of 800+ real estate directors of national retail stores.

Again, our goal is simple. When brokers or business people are looking for commercial real estate, we want them to know what we have available.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 02:12 PM on Thursday, December 16, 2010

Today I received two different mass emails from brokers indicating that the property they were advertising was "Priced To Sell." I would normally take particular notice of an opportunity like that; but lately it seems that everything is "Priced To Sell"...yet nothing does. In fact, most things that are "Priced To Sell" certainly aren't. It leaves me wondering, "What is the definition of "priced to sell?" I wish I knew the magic formula for how to arrive at that exact "Price To Sell." It seems that for most brokers, if they list something for less than it would have sold for three years ago, then it is "Priced To Sell."

Appropriate pricing these days is very difficult to gauge. If you find comparable sales at a certain CAP rate, Gross Rent Multiplier, replacement cost, or direct comparison; and you price your property accordingly, or even for less; that doesn't necessarily mean it is "Priced To Sell." At any one time, in many markets, you can find hordes of properties all priced according to existing sales comps....but they are not moving. "Time On The Market" is extending even faster than prices are compressing for many asset classes. In Indianapolis Metro, according to RERC (Real Estate Research Corporation), every CAP rate other than Apartments is growing (prices falling) and the number of properties on the market is growing while transactional volume is falling. Those numbers don't look great, but I feel they will come back eventually. But for right now, if you are going to "Price Something To Sell" it really should be quite low (discernibly low) if you really want to sell it. The normal avenues that a broker might use to value your property are very difficult to rely on these days...it's more of an educated guess followed by a crystal ball consultation. Whatever the case, in order to actually sell something these days, you need to put a concerted effort into social media, electronic advertising, networking, and persistence. The days of putting a sign in a yard and listing the asset as "Priced To Sell" are over. Don't even get me started on "Calling For Offers!"

Posted by Scott A. Baldwin at 07:37 AM on Monday, December 6, 2010

Small business owners often face the question of leasing or purchasing their office, retail, or industrial space. In today's market, good deals are aplenty. Just like you can find lower than ever lease deals, properties are available for purchase at a much lower price per square foot. Properties that leased 4 years ago for $20/SF/Year are now asking for $15/SF/Year. Many owners would be happy to get 80-90 cents on the dollar on what they paid for properties 4 years ago.

For most any business owners, the decision to lease or buy comes down to a number of factors, besides the obvious financial aspect. Having a prime location to attract customers may make leasing the only option. Below is a list of a few Pros and Cons for business owners leasing or purchasing their commercial real estate.

Pros of Purchasing Commercial Real Estate

Fixed Costs: Locking in a long term mortgage gives your business clear, fixed costs each month/year.

Lower Costs: Under-utilized programs and loans are available to small business owners to obtain as much as 90% financing on a purchase that makes their monthly mortgage costs lower than their current monthly rent costs.

Transparent CAM charges: Property upkeep is on you now. You know what you can pay for or save on when it comes to lawn care, snow, utilities, and other charges.

Additional Income: Owning additional space or land that your business doesn't utilize opens up the possibility for another source of income by leasing out space, storage, or parking to other tenants.

Cons of Purchasing Commercial Real Estate

Lack of flexibility: Long term mortgage limits flexibility in adapting to growth, downsizing, changes in the industry, strategic planning, and other issues that may appear.

Higher upfront costs: Monthly payments may be significantly reduced by purchasing a property, but the initial down payment is likely much more than the first month's rent.

Maintenance: Lawn care, snow removal, facility upkeep, improvements, etc, are all on you. In leasing, it's just a number you pay each month. Now in addition to running your business, you must also maintain your property.

Less than Prime location: Most small business owners can't afford to purchase a property downtown or along a retail corridor. A lesser location may mean less foot traffic, less drive by traffic, and ultimately, less business.

Pros of Leasing Commercial Real Estate

Prime location: It may mean a little bit higher rent payment, but your business can take advantage of significant foot/drive traffic, attract more walk-ins, and attract more business.

Flexibility: Signing a lease for 3, 5, or even 10 years can provide you with much more flexibility than a long term mortgage. If you need to move to a new location because it's cheaper, newer, smaller, bigger, there's a change in demographics, or whatever the need may be, there's much more flexibility.

Less risk: In the event that you go out of business, coming up short on a lease is probably a better alternative than coming up short on a several hundred thousand dollar mortgage.

Strictly business: With a lease, the time spent on your property is the time it takes you to stroke a rent check. This allows you to focus on what brings the money to you, your business.

More working capital: Without a large mortgage, you're able to utilize capital in ways to further your business.

Cons of Leasing Commercial Real Estate

Equity lost: Just as if you were renting an apartment, the money you pay out leasing space is lost. You can't recoup any payments or even make money by selling the property in the future.

Variable costs: With a mortgage, you have clear fixed costs. With a lease, you're bound to the market. A recovery in the market may mean in a few years when you're negotiating a new lease, you'll be negotiating at $20/sf instead of $15/sf.

Be holden to landlord: Any changes or upgrades that you'd like to see are up to the landlord. If it's not required in the lease, it may mean more money out of your pocket that you won't be getting back.

This is just a short list of Pros and Cons of leasing or purchasing commercial real estate.

What did I miss or leave out? Comment below.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 05:06 AM on Friday, December 3, 2010

According to a recent report put out by a NAR chief economist, commercial real estate markets across the US appear to be stabilizing. "The basic fundamental of rising commercial leasing demand, resulting from a steadily improving economy, means overall vacancy rates have already peaked or will soon top out," says Lawrence Yun.

Read more about the article here:

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 05:23 AM on Wednesday, December 1, 2010

View Pre-Tax Yield, Going-In and Terminal Cap rates for the Indianapolis Commercial Real Estate Market for the 3rd Quarter 2010 at the Baldwin Commercial Wordpress Blog: http://baldwincommercial.wordpress.com/

Posted by Scott A. Baldwin at 11:16 AM on Monday, November 22, 2010

Your primary business is running your company, so hopefully, you don’t have to lease new office or retail space or negotiate renewals more than every 3 to 5 years or so. Usually businesses lease office or retail space only a few times in over the life of the company, while landlords on the other hand lease office space over and over again.

In most cases, landlords hire a listing agent to help market the property and advise them. Do they have an unfair advantage? You bet they do!

Balance this unfair advantage by engaging the services of your own qualified tenant representative.

Many tenants think that by hiring a tenant representative they will end up having to pay more in rent. When it comes to negotiating for office space, a good tenant rep will not only save you money, but will also make sure you don’t make any critical mistakes in the leasing process.

When deciding whether to use the services of a tenant rep, consider the following:

1) Real estate fees of typically 4%-6% of the lease amount are built into the cost of the lease

2) If you do not have a tenant rep, the landlord's (listing) agent will keep the entire commission...

3) If you hire a tenant rep, the commission fee is split between the listing agent and the tenant rep.

4) The listing agent represents the landlord, and will always have their best interests in mind.

5) Not having a tenant rep will most often not save you the commission and you will most likely pay much more for your office space.

For most companies, real estate is their second-largest expense after payroll, and every dollar saved on your lease goes directly to your bottom line. Landlords will always look for the highest possible rent for the longest possible guaranteed term. Tenants typically want the lowest possible rent and the greatest lease flexibility. An experienced tenant rep will develop negotiating leverage and help you to get into a lease drafted in your best interests - not the landlord's.

Analyze and Define Your Space Requirements

An experienced tenant representative can assist you in calculating your actual need for space and determining your company's particular layout requirements. Your tenant rep can help you to evaluate your space plan and maximize the efficiency of space usage, which may decrease your rentable area . A landlord obviously has no incentive to assist you in increasing your economy of space and lowering your lease costs. By knowing your space plan, and therefore your business requirements, your tenant rep will also prevent you from wasting time on property negotiations that are not right for your organization. As part of the process of defining your space requirements, you should also consider geographical areas, the quality of space desired, the image you want your new space to portray, and how that ties into corporate objectives. An experienced tenant rep can be invaluable in that process, as well as help you to calculate the possibility for future expansions.

Investigate Properties and Determine Top Alternatives

This involves more than scanning the available listing services. A professional tenant rep can identify a property that is not an obvious choice to meet your needs. This could result in lower rental rates and space that is otherwise better suited to your needs. An experienced tenant rep will have a general market knowledge of 'deals' available, and will verify the terms and conditions associated with each property. A tenant rep will help you narrow down the alternatives, and schedule tours with the top properties that meet your requirements. After touring the different locations your tenant rep will help you go over space plans as they relate to each property, and help narrow down your decision further, usually to a few alternatives. The tenant rep will request proposals from those properties, and perform layout efficiencies and financial analysis on the responses. At that point the tenant representative will help you to choose the top alternatives and prepare to make offers.

Create a Bidding War Among Landlords

A good tenant rep knows that creating competition for your business will maximize negotiating position, and will try to start a bidding war among landlords. The result can be concessions and incentives that exceed the norm in the marketplace, such as free rent for several months or an allowance for tenant improvements (TIs). The tenant rep will protect your interests during lease negotiations, act as a buffer between you and the landlord, and ensure that you come away with terms that meet your present and potential future needs. For example, a tenant rep would ensure you retain such options as subletting in case you eventually downsize or outgrow the space. A professional tenant rep is familiar with real estate forms and documents, and having them prepare all proposal requests and letters of intent can help resolve issues before the final lease is prepared, and help you avoid signing something by accident or out of ignorance.

Most experts agree that the services of a tenant rep during an office move, lease renewal, or site selection can be even more important to the tenant than anything else in the process.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 05:52 AM on Monday, November 22, 2010

Just recently, Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers released their comprehensive 79-page report on the Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2011. To read the full report, click here

Highlights of the report include:

• Industry showing signs of improvement, but unemployment, declining wages, and apprehensive lenders continue to restrict a steady rebound.

• An increase in outsourcing and continued technological advances eliminates some need for new office or industrial space, contributing to the halt in new development.

• Investors flush with cash will continue to have ample opportunities to obtain struggling or foreclosed assets.

• Multifamily assets are easily the most sought after investments, with most office complexes lagging the further behind.

• Indianapolis ranks as one of the top midwest Markets to Watch for Commercial/Multifamily Investment in 2011. However, the outlook for the midwest is well behind the coastal regions.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 05:12 AM on Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The REALTORS Commercial Real Estate Market Survey has published it's most recent report, highlighting statistics, trends, transaction volume and more. The report presents current economic struggles and what lies ahead.

To view the full report, click here.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 04:54 AM on Thursday, September 30, 2010

Baldwin Companies has the real estate of 5 Indianapolis area Goddard School properties available for sale. The firm just recently got a sixth Goddard School under contract for purchase. These are modified NNN leases - the Goddard franchise pays taxes, insurance, utilities and CAM charges for the property. The schools are in different stages of a 15 year lease, with options for an additional 5-10 years.

Visit the listings for each school - Brownsburg, Zionsville, Noblesville, Greenwood, and Lawrence - at our website http://commercial.baldwincompanies.com/listings or contact Scott or Brad for additional information.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 06:25 AM on Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Owners of Hotels, Resorts, Condos and Other Commercial Property Face Pall of Uncertainty -- Just As Economies and Housing Markets of Florida and Other Gulf States Showing Signs of Recovery

With estimates of the economic losses of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill already as much as $11 billion and 200,000 jobs lost in counties along Florida’s Gulf Coast alone, owners of income-generating property throughout Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi face varying degrees of financial exposure to the crisis.

Read entire article here.

Posted by Scott A. Baldwin at 04:11 PM on Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Recent data shows property values stabilizing and suggests that the worst might be over. Read more on this WSJ article here.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 05:46 AM on Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Read more on the National Association of Realtors quarterly market survey for March here.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 04:24 AM on Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Clarian Health's CEO envisions three ways in which health care real estate will evolve: smaller, denser clinics incorporating innovative technology, physician assistants populating medical office buildings to handle increased number of patients, and nursing homes in connection with hospitals.

The article states the biggest reason for the shift is the large influx of patients in the coming years: 32 million people who will now have health insurance, as well as the 70 million baby boomer population.

To read more on this Indianapolis Business Journal article, please click here.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 04:11 AM on Tuesday, May 25, 2010

"Triple-net lease properties are the best performing sector of the commercial real estate marketplace," this according to the head of global managed investments for Citi Private Bank. With these properties, the tenants take responsibility for utilities, taxes, and insurance, while the investor collects rent checks.

Baldwin Companies currently has 4 listings with modified triple-net leases.

To read more about these investments, click here.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 04:08 AM on Monday, May 17, 2010

In this current economy, it's a tenant-driven market not only here in Indiana, but all across the country. With vacancy rates continuing to be high, business owners are taking advantage of these much lower rates in leasing or buying real estate in order to expand their enterprise.

To read more, please visit here.

Posted by Bradley J. Untrauer at 03:14 AM on Thursday, May 13, 2010

RetailTrafficMag.com Dec 1, 2009 11:21 AM

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) policy recommendations for banks dealing with troubled commercial real estate loans appear to be easing the burden on borrowers facing falling property values.

Read entire story here.

Posted by Scott A. Baldwin at 01:02 PM on Wednesday, December 2, 2009

There's a downsizing trend under way at many small businesses: Moving to smaller offices because of shrinking staffs and as more workers telecommute.

Owners say they're saving money on real estate, office furniture and other expenses by letting employees work from home or by using independent contractors who don't work on-site. And those who have cut staffers obviously don't need to provide space for them.

Read the entire text of the article here.

Commercial Office Downsizing

Posted by Scott A. Baldwin at 12:55 PM on Sunday, November 22, 2009