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In business real estate quarterly Hughes Center office park being sold for $347 million By Eli Segall staff writer Solutions to your Commercial Real Estate Financing needs. WE GET IT DONE! Silverado Retail Plaza Blue Diamond Crossing $10,200,000 10-year Fixed Rate Non-Recourse $59,000,000 10-year Fixed Rate Non-Recourse Henderson, Nevada DECEMBER 2012 Las Vegas, Nevada MARCH 2012 Marlin Medical Office BDBC Building H $6,500,000 10-year Fixed Rate Non-Recourse $2,800,000 7-year Fixed Rate Single-Tenant Financing Henderson, Nevada DECEMBER 2012 Las Vegas, Nevada MARCH 2012 For more information on this transaction, contact Christopher J. Funai, NV MLD license #452 at 702.304.0437 • 5451 S. Durango Dr. Ste. 100 Las Vegas, NV 89113 20131014_VI12_F.indd 12 The Hughes Center is being sold for $347 million to a Wall Street investment firm, in one of the most lucrative Las Vegas office deals in years. Crescent Real Estate Holdings, an investment firm owned by Barclays Capital and Goff Capital Partners, is selling the property to the Blackstone Group. A mile east of the Strip, off Flamingo Road, the center consists of 10 office buildings, 1.4 million square feet of space and several restaurants. Big-money office sales are rare these days in Las Vegas, one of the worst office markets in the country. The most recent major transaction was last fall, when mall owner General Growth Properties sold 32 office buildings in Summerlin to Hines Interests and Oaktree Capital Management for about $120 million. The buildings reportedly were half vacant at the time. Blackstone is one of the largest investment firms in the world. This is the fourth time in the past decade that the complex has changed hands. "We see this as a tremendous opportunity," Frank Campbell, Southern California managing director for Equity Office, said in a news release. Though it is widely viewed as Las Vegas' top office park, given its high-quality buildings and prominent tenants, the center's vacancy rate is on par with the rest of the valley. Southern Nevada had a 22.7 percent office vacancy rate in the second quarter this year, compared with 7.9 percent in 2006 during the real estate bubble, according to Colliers International. The Hughes Center is 22 percent vacant, according to data provided by Randy Hall, a spokesman for the new management. When Crescent bought it roughly 10 years ago, the property was almost fully leased with a 2.3 percent vacancy rate, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows. This is not Blackstone's first foray into the valley. The New York company has spent billions acquiring and fixing up homes in markets battered by the recession, including Las Vegas, Phoenix and Southern California's Inland Empire. Lately, though, the firm has tapered back on home purchases locally amid skyrocketing prices. Crescent, based in Fort Worth, Texas, acquired the Hughes Center in phases in late 2003 and the first half of 2004 for $242.5 million. In 2007, shortly before the real estate market crashed, Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley bought Crescent for $6.5 billion, taking control of its then-portfolio of 54 office buildings nationwide. Within a few years, Morgan Stanley had lost almost $1 billion on the deal and was about to default on the $2 billion loan from Barclays that had financed the buyout, according to news reports. In fall 2009, the company essentially handed over the keys: Barclays teamed with Goff to take control of Crescent and its 17 million square feet of office holdings. real estate quarterly home prices likely to keep rising By Eli Segall staff writer Las Vegas home values continue soaring faster than the country at large and should outpace the nation for the next year. The valley's median home value last month was $156,600, up 2.8 percent from July and up 30.6 percent from August 2012, according to a new report from housing data firm Zillow. Las Vegas' month-to-month increase was second fastest among the 30 metro areas covered in Zillow's report, with Riverside, Calif., leading at 3 percent. Its year-to-year jump also was second fastest, to Sacramento, with 34.1 percent. Nationally, home values rose 0.4 per- cent from July and 6.6 percent from last August, to $162,100. Home values are expected to rise 11.3 percent locally and 5.2 percent nationally by August 2014, Zillow reported. Among the valley's submarkets, North Las Vegas had the biggest increase during the past year, with home values climbing 36.9 percent to $137,300. Las Vegas, ground zero for the housing bust, has rebounded in large part because wealthy out-of-state investors have bought cheap homes in bulk to turn into rentals. A number of those investment firms, however, have been tapering back their purchases because of the rising prices they helped create. 10/10/13 2:30:44 PM