Morrisville, North Carolina.  Award winning custom home builder Loyd Builders will be the first customer of LED Lighting Fixtures for LEDs energy-efficient light fixtures.  All of Loyd Builders six-inch recessed fixtures will be supplied by LLF.  These tiny, long-lasting LEDs will take the place of the incandescent or flourescent fixtures that would normally have been used.  Loyd builds from 30 to 40 homes per year in prices ranging from about $500,000 up to $2 million.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Webmail: www.JohnFish.com

Raleigh, North Carolina - Aegon USA Realty Advisors which last month purchased WestChase II and III office buildings, purchased the 98,000 square foot WestChase I for $12.75 million. This translates into just over $130 per square foot.   

John Fish (919) 696-3474   email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Raleigh, North Carolina.  Electronic Arts, the world’s largest video game maker, is looking for space in Raleigh.  The Orlando based company is the producer of the Tiger Woods and Madden NFL video games.  The Raleigh area is attractive to Electronic Arts because of successful video game companies that are already here such as Cary’s Epic Games and Virtual Heroes and Chapel Hill’s Emergent Game Technologies.  Also, they want to take advantage of the students in the computer science and design programs at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina. During 2006 Electonic Arts had revenues of $2.5 billion.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Raleigh, North Carolina.  ‘Gears of War’ the movie will be coming your way.  New Line Cinema has acquired the movie rights to ‘Gears of War’ from Raleigh’s Epic Games.  ‘Gears’ has been a record breaking seller for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and has won many industry awards as well.  Mark Rein, Epic’s vice president, has some reservations as to how well the movie might do since other movies based on video games have not done well.  However, he feels that the exposure will help the franchise by giving the company exposure to people who are not into video games.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

New Home Construction.  In February new home and aparment construction was up 9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.525 million units.  At the same time building permits fell by 2.5 percent to an annual rate of 1.532 units.  This was the 12th decline in 13 months for building permits.  The best regional gains in construction were in the West, which was up by 26.4 percent, and the South which was up by 18 percent.  The Northeast fell by 29.7 percent while the Midwest was down 14.4 percent.  While no estimates were given with regard to the effects of weather on the Northeastern and Midwestern markets, it is safe to say that if was considerable.  Very cold weather and well above snowfall averages in many large markets certainly had a strong impact on these figures.

Builders are concerned about the impact rising mortgage delinquencies and tighter loan requirements will have on the demand for housing.  Builders and the housing market overall aren’t expected to get any help from the Federal Reserve in the form of lower interest rates since the Fed is more concerned with keeping the lid on inflaction than the impact of decreasing new home sales. 

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Raleigh, North Carolina.  If at first you don’t succeed try, try again.  On June 1, Midwest Airlines will begin three daily round trip nonstop services between Milwaukee and RDU.  They offered such service in 1998 but bailed out in 2001 after terrorist attacks had a serious impact on travel. The attractions in Milwaukee for local businessmen are Harley Davidson, SC Johnson and Briggs & Stratton. 

Available seats at RDU have increased 8.3 percent since the third quarter of 2006 vs. a 2.1 percent national increase according to BACK Aviation Solutions, a New Haven, Conn., consulting firm.  By July of this year daily departures at RDU will have increased to 254 which is the most since 2001.

John Fish (919) 696-3474  Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Raleigh Retirement Community.  The Cypress of Raleigh is underway.  It is located on Strickland Road about two blocks west of the intersection of Six Forks and Strickland Roads.  If you drive past that area you will see a lot of earthmoving equipment rearranging the landscape.  The Cypress of Raleigh will be a retirement community but certainly not a typical one.  It is the only equity ownership retirement community in this part of the state and, I think, one of only two in the state.  Communities similar to it are located in Charlotte and Hilton Head, S.C.  The facility will have a 42,000 square foot clubhouse, a health-care facility and 38 cottage style homes as well give multi-unit buildings for a total of 316 units.  At the end of January about 125 units had been sold.  Prices range from $375,000 to $750,000.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Raleigh, North Carolina.  Around the nation the size of a household has declined from 3.14 people in 1970 to 2.57 people in 2000.  It is reported that 68 percent Downtown Raleigh condo purchases made during 2006 were made by single males. These and other buyers, both locally and in other urban markets, are mostly made up of people who want to be close to their work, empty nesters and second home buyers.  Most of the people in this group also want to be close to restaurants, cultural activities, good shopping - and - they want to be able to walk to these places - not drive.  With regard to Downtown Raleigh, the average housing unit (condo or otherwise) sold for $337,641 in 2006 while the average size of these units was 1,334 square feet.  During 2006 18 units sold for less than $200,000 while 11 sold for above $500,000.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Morrisville, North Carolina.  On Friday I reported that Duke Realty was partnering with Kane Realty in building a 20 story office building in the Six Forks shopping center area.  Another of Duke’s holdings, 300 acres in Perimeter Park in Morrisville has been doing very well and is now about 80 percent developed.  To keep things rolling Duke has purchased 150 acres that adjoins Perimeter Park.  The price for the property was $11.8 million.  They project that it will take about seven years to build out and that the land could accommodate up to nine office buildings or one very large one.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Raleigh, North Carolina.  A 20 story office building close to North Hills shopping center and near the intersection of Six Forks Road and I-440 is scheduled to get underway this fall.  It will include 250,000 square feet of office space and ground floor restaurants and a 910 space parking deck.  The project will be a partnership between Raleigh’s Kane Realty and Duke Realty an Indianapolis real estate investment trust.  This is not Duke’s first venture in this area.  It currently has about 5.2 million square feet of office space in the Triangle.

John Fish (919) 696-3474  Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com