The Commercial Real Estate Informational Portal

Welcome to CRE-Expert.com

Welcome to the Commercial Real Estate Expert Blog! A host of industry leading real estate professionals, lawyers, and consultants providing the latest in real estate relevant news and advice.

Environmental Due Diligence

Preparing for the CALGreen Updates

Posted on by Kelly Javier

California’s Green Building Standards, better known as CALGreen, is currently being updated to further advance green building practices. The updated code goes into effect on January 1, 2014. This means that all project construction documents submitted to the building department for plan checks on or before December 31, 2013 will be assessed under the current…

Read More →
Environmental Due Diligence

The LA Better Buildings Challenge – doing even better than we’d hoped!

Posted on by jmandler

The Los Angeles Better Buildings Challenge (LABBC) has been overwhelmingly successful over its first 2 years and is set to easily surpass its original long term goal: to achieve 20% energy savings across 30 million square feet of existing commercial buildings in Los Angeles by 2020.  So now the LABBC is stepping it up a…

Read More →
Environmental Due Diligence

Environmental Bankers Association San Francisco 2013 Recap

Posted on by Nicole TK Moore

This year’s bi-annual summer Environmental Bankers Association (EBA) meeting was held in San Francisco earlier this week. As expected, we covered many interesting topics of particular concern to the environmental professional and lending communities. Lawyer-Speak The kick off panel for the EBA San Francisco conference consisted of four lawyers covering trends in banking, business and…

Read More →
Environmental Due Diligence

Environmental Bankers Association – Summer 2013 Meeting

Posted on by Joe Derhake PE

Entry by JoeDerhake Entry The 2013 summer Environmental Bankers Association (EBA) meeting was held in San Francisco earlier this week.  As always, Jeff and Tacy Telego put on a well organized conference.   A few key take away: Phase II Environmental Site Assessments My colleague Kathryn Peacock was on a panel that examined the results of…

Read More →
Building Experts | Commercial Real Estate Education | Commercial Real Estate Finance | Energy | Multi-Family | Real Estate

ENERGY DISCLOSURE IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE DEALS

Posted on by Jay Grenfell

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…

Read More →
Engineering Due Diligence

CHECK UP – PCAs CAN PROTECT AGAINST DEAL-KILLERS

Posted on by Jay Grenfell

Property Condition Assessment Reports (PCAs) provide a return on investment (ROI) that many equity investors might overlook.  PCAs yield ROI in three ways: protect buyers from bad purchases; provide buyers with information for price negotiations with sellers; and find opportunities to improve building value post-purchase. As noted in the article; “Not all PCAs are the…

Read More →
Building Experts | Commercial Real Estate Education | Commercial Real Estate Finance | Engineering Due Diligence

Seismic Risk Assessment and Seismic Probable Maximum Loss Reports

Posted on by Kelly Javier

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…

Read More →
Commercial Real Estate Education | Commercial Real Estate Finance | Conferences and Industry Events | Engineering Due Diligence | Environmental Due Diligence | Fannie Mae | Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae | HUD | Real Estate

Essential of Seismic Risk Assessments Webinar

Posted on by Kelly Javier

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…

Read More →
Building Experts | Commercial Real Estate Education | Commercial Real Estate Finance | Construction | Energy | Engineering Due Diligence | Environmental Due Diligence | Fannie Mae | Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae | HUD | Multi-Family | Real Estate | SBA Real Estate Finance | Site Surveys (ALTA)

Partner Spring Webinars

Posted on by Kelly Javier

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…

Read More →
Building Experts | Commercial Real Estate Education | Commercial Real Estate Finance | Energy | Engineering Due Diligence | Environmental Due Diligence | Multi-Family | Real Estate

Heeding Green Advice

Posted on by Jay Grenfell

The benefits of green building and energy efficiency are real and increasingly want to be realized by commercial real estate investors and tenants alike.  Partner Engineering and Science, Inc.’s green retrofit of their new company headquarters in Los Angeles provided Partner with firsthand experience in realizing those benefits.  By undertaking this project Partner is now…

Read More →