December 27, 2009

Hoff & Leigh’s Weekend Market Report
Hoff & Leigh, Inc.
Leasing, Sales, Management, Buyer or Tenant Representation
4445 Northpark Drive, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, CO USA 80907
December 27, 2009

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All Market Average Office Building Sale Price PSF = $106.45 (DOWN from $106.47 last week.)
We are currently tracking 148 office buildings for sale.
This is 1,577,562 square feet, which represents a total market value of $167,938,533.

All Market Average Industrial Building Sale Price PSF = $81.52 (NO CHANGE from $81.52 last week.)
We are currently tracking 138 industrial buildings for sale.
This is 1,727,086 square feet, which represents a total market value of $140,790,256.

To View Tim Leigh’s ad, please click below!
http://hoffleigh.com/Doc/Tim%20Leigh.pdf

To view our most recent Colorado Springs Business Journal Ad please click below
http://hoffleigh.com/Doc/10.16.09.pdf


Tim’s Market Report

Are you making a New Year’s resolution? It’s that time of year. I’m planning to simplify my life.

I can’t control the earth - the volatile Mayon volcano from erupting 200 miles southeast of Manila. (The last time it erupted it killed 1,200 people and buried surrounding villages). Now, 50,000 people have been evacuated but Chinese tourists continue to slip through police barricades to see lava flow.

I can’t control the government – I can’t stop the Nevada horse round-up. (If you’re not aware, the BLM is planning to roundup 2,500 horses in Nevada on their way to rounding-up 25,000, many of whom will die in transit by helicopter to holding pens. (I know – you can’t make this stuff up.)

I can’t control the system – the financial crisis; and I can’t stop the rain. So, I’m going to do-whack-a-do-whack-a-do.

I’ve always been interested in resolutions and trends and the future. I want to know what’s going to happen. It’s symptomatic of control freaks. (Not that I’m one, mind you. I’m too passive for that; a mere Wallflower; a regular dandelion.) I’ve read Toffler; I’m familiar with Faith Popcorn and now, the new Rock Star trends-forecaster, Gerald Celente. If you’re not familiar with him, crawl out from under the rock and Google him. His track record’s impressive. He called the financial melt-down and is advisor to business leaders and governments.

So, what’s Celente say is in store for 2010? Terror; economic collapse; a return to elegance & quality, and a buy local movement. Great. And I’ve been worried about filling pot-holes at Industrial Place.

From Celent’s Trends Journal (his quarterly newsletter);

“We’re looking for terror in 2010. When it happens, where it happens and how it happens, we don’t know, but we’re saying it’s a high probability. (Hmm. I think the moon will change from dark-to-full; when or how, I’m not sure. I’m just saying…..)

All the stimulus money, from Australia to Japan to China to the U. K. to the U. S. – and they’ve been dumping Trillions of dollars of stimulus money to keep the bank crooks afloat, is going to start drying up. When that happens, we’re going to see another economic collapse - The Crash of 2010. We had The Collapse of 2009. It happened in March. But what they did was paper-it-over with stimulus money. So they kept the collapse from crashing, temporarily. We’re going to see the crash happen in 2010.

We’re going to see a “Depression High”. There’s going to be a return to elegance & quality. Those are the only things that make it in this kind of atmosphere. Go back to the last Great Depression. People were dressed to the 9’s and it was the hottest, happiest music America ever saw. It was Swing Time! We’re going to see the rebirth of that in a lot of ways. We might even rediscover etiquette; treating people nicely; doing things respectfully; and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Quality is the only way people are going to be able to make a profit. Average is not going to cut it. Jobs are scarce. People looking for jobs will want to look their best and be their brightest and smartest. It’s a time to regain dignity. We’re looking at a turning point in 2010.

And along those lines, another trend is the “Shape-Up America” trend. There is going to be a lot of money made in this. We’ve hit a tipping point. Obesity rates are going to hit over 40% in the next few years! So, we’re going to start seeing a reversal of that in many different ways. This will be more than a diet program and fitness; we see a new “New Age”. The only way people are going to understand how to “make it” through the very difficult times we see coming is to be in shape physically, emotionally and spiritually.

If you’re not in shape physically, emotionally and spiritually you’re going to have a hard time facing a very difficult future because one of the other trends we’re writing about is “Survival”. No one knows what’s going to happen next and that’s the kind of survival thinking people need to keep in mind. Survival means wear it out, use it up, make it do, do without. Be smart in what you do. Be lean & mean. Be ready to move in any way. It doesn’t mean going into the woods with a gun and pork and beans. But, it might mean that! But it does mean “how are you going to survive the times ahead?” How are you going to change your lifestyle and be smart to keep what you have and build on that? Survival in every different way is a major trend for 2010.

The food you eat; everything, buy local! That’s another trend. Not “Made in China”. This is a huge new trend! I’m not only an “American Firster”, I’m a buy-local-guy. I support my neighbor. And people better get wise to that thought because the government sold us the biggest lie ever. It came out of the mouth of Bill Clinton – how he shoved NAFTA down America’s throat. He told us that with NAFTA our quality of life would go up, more jobs created and with higher pay. The exact opposite has happened. It’s not “fair trade”. Its dealing with the country that has the cheapest labor supply; slave labor. Get it made over there, bring it back over here and mark it up! So for us to increase our standard of living, we first have to support each other, thus, the “Buy Local trend”.

We see many more trends coming. One of them is “Mothers of Invention”. When there is chaos, you work from that and find new form. You use it in a productive manner. You know that you can no longer go on the same path and all these trends are interconnected. With chaos, when you look at it in personal health, you hit a point where you have to turn around or continue to decline. With chaos, you lose a job; the former job no longer exists. What do you do? You re-formulate and move to a new direction. So, the “Mothers of Invention” as we call this trend is going to create an America world that’s going to be much better than the one we’re leaving.

We have to wash away the system’s corruption; the greed and destruction. If we continue on this path, our future will be clear - it’s going to decline. If we look at it for what it is and move in new directions, we could move into a much brighter future.

Q: ARE YOU SEEING ANOTHER ECONOMIC CRASH IN THE UNITED STATES IN 2010 BECAUSE OF FAILING COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE?
A: Well, that was one of the trends we forecast many months ago: “Bye-Bye Dubai!” was the headline we used at the Trends Journal. 2009 was the beginning of the commercial real estate collapse. So far commercial real estate has only been held up by funny money and Fed programs.

For example, one of them was called TALF – Term Asset-backed Loan Facility. And what the government did was prop up the commercial real estate sector. They can’t do that anymore. It’s collapsing and it’s worldwide.

Q: IF CHINA CARRIED THROUGH SWITCHING FROM BASING ITS CURRENCY ON THE U. S. DOLLAR AND SWITCHING OVER TO THE EURO, WHAT WOULD BE THE PRACTICAL IMPACT FOR THE AMERICAN EVERY DAY?
A: The cost of everything we buy is going to go up. And we’re very concerned about a currency crisis. It’s not only the dollar - all of the currencies. There is a problem worldwide, but not so much for the Chinese because they have a currency surplus of about $2.5 Trillion. Other countries like the United States, the U.K. and others are stimulating economies with deficits. But even the Chinese are going to face problems because we’re looking at world trade in 2009 off-more than 20%. If the world doesn’t consume (their products) China doesn’t go forward.

What we’re very concerned about is that they’re going to start bailing out of dollars! Who wants to be stuck with dollars when our government is printing them – this isn’t real money! Its digital money that’s not worth the fake paper it’s printed on! And when that happens, there’s going to be a devaluation of the dollar (called Inflation!). Then everything we buy is going to cost more.

Q: DO YOU THINK IT IS POSSIBLE FOR THE UNITED STATES TO END UP AS BADLY AS ARGENTINA A DECADE AGO?
A: Worse; because our debt problems are worse. We’re witnessing classic empire decline. We’re fighting wars in foreign countries as we’re depleting the Treasury. The worst news is that when America crashes it is going to affect the entire planet. It’s kind of like the collapse of the Roman Empire that was followed by a Dark Age.

There’s no one to fill the vacuum. China’s not going to emerge as a great power. They have 1.3 billion people and a million problems! In 2008, the last numbers that came out, China had 70,000 major riots and disturbances. What are they going to do when people are thrown out of work by the hundreds of millions? We’re entering a very de-stabilizing period worldwide.”

Don’t shoot the messenger! Heck, I think I’ll go home and blow-a-little-reefer; (er, ah, that would be legal, now – it’s medicinal marijuana, Bob) and bury my head in the sand. Or I’ll get up; get to work and work-on-working. I mean, after all, I can’t control the earth, the government or the system, so I’ll just control what I can.

My new years wish for you is Peace & Prosperity.


Sincerely,

TJL
Tim Leigh
719-337-9551
Tim@HoffLeigh.com