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Category Archives: Commercial Real Estate Finance

Commercial Real Estate Finance

Remediation: Not As Scary As It Seems

Environmental remediation, or a Phase III Environmental Site Assessment (ESA), is a potential sink for time and money at project sites. Fortunately, steps can be taken to ease the process of remediating contamination while keeping project timelines and budgets on track. Phase III ESAs take place if, after an initial Phase I ESA assessment and…

How Climate Change Poses Risks for Banks and Insurers

In 2010 the Securities and Exchange Commission passed a rule requiring publicly traded companies to report their corporate risks from climate change. CERES, a non-profit organization that tracks this disclosure prepared a report cited in a 2014 Wall Street Journal article that concluded that climate-related disclosures by S&P 500 companies are terse, provide little discussion…

March 2015 Events

Start            End              Conference                              Location 1 5 ICBA National Convention Orlando, FL 2 4 CLRM Roundtable Phoenix, AZ 3 3 CREJ: Multifamily Owners and Managers Conference and Expo Englewood, CO 3…

John Hancock Centre – Structural Engineering Creating Value

I recently wrote a blog about the value of architecture, in which I concluded that a building’s cultural symbolism or history, and the way its design is perceived by the public and the industry affects the return it delivers to investors.  Having spent many years living in Chicago, I decided to look at how this…

How Did Environmental Contamination Become a Factor in the Appraisal World?

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Handbook on Commercial Real Estate published in 2013 mandates that environmental contamination should be discussed and considered in real estate appraisals.  In the same year the OCC updates were published, the Appraisal Institute released a document providing guidance to appraisers for how environmental contamination should be…

ENERGY DISCLOSURE IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE DEALS

The State of California as well as individual municipalities within California are on the forefront of energy disclosure.  Section 25402 of the California Public Resources Code requires benchmarking and disclosure of energy usage of commercial properties.  Energy benchmarking can be conducted through the EPA’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager, which provides ratings based on energy usage…

Seismic Risk Assessment and Seismic Probable Maximum Loss Reports

Seismic Risk Assessments are an assessment that can be “forgotten” when the lender/buyer is not themselves in a seismic risk zone. Property that is in a high risk seismic zone should be evaluated for loss during “the big one.” Seismic Probable Maximum Loss Reports are engineering reports that evaluate the expected amount of loss that…

Essential of Seismic Risk Assessments Webinar

Partner’s Technical Director – Structural Engineering, Joshua Marrow, PE and Principal, Jenny Redlin, REA presented an informative webinar today regarding the Essentials of Seismic Risk Assessments. This hour long presentation covered many important topics such as; Why do we perform Seismic Risk Assessments? Who are Seismic Risk Assessment Users? Why a Seismic Risk Assessment is…

Partner Spring Webinars

Partner Engineering and Science, Inc. is pleased to launch our spring webinar series. This series offers new and updated webinars that discuss commercial real estate trends, standards updates and changes as they affect the commercial real estate industry. Registration for all webinars is at no cost to industry professionals. Webinar Topics Include: The Essentials of Seismic Risk…