Winners of the 2017 Mayor’s Design Awards showcased an eclectic mix of commercial, residential and events that help to shape Denver's urban fabric.. The 16 winners included office buildings, restaurants, retailers and homes. “We are here to celebrate the projects that are getting it right,” Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock said about the winners in…

Life insurance companies increasingly are a better option than Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac for investors buying apartment buildings, according to veteran mortgage banker Peter Keepper. Freddie and Fannie, known as government sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, have been the single biggest lenders for multifamily acquisitions in Denver and across the U.S. in recent years. Keepper…

Absorption. The late George Wallace, founder of the Denver Tech Center, told me in the 1980s that the absorption rate was the single most important metric for measuring the health of a real estate market. That was an era when Denver’s economy was being hammered by a drop in oil prices and changes in tax…

Floor plans may not have the appeal of flashy apartment amenities such as top-of-the-line fitness centers, dog washing stations, bike maintenance shops and business centers. But to retired architect Mervin F. Weinstein, a good floor plan can pay huge dividends for the owner of apartment and condo buildings. In one case, Weinstein estimates the owner…

Emerging Trends ranked Denver No. 23 out of 78 cities, its worst showing in a decade in the high-profile and comprehensive analysis of markets throughout the U.S. and Canada. The last time Denver fared worse was when Emerging Trends ranked Denver in 28th place for 2007. Denver was ranked No. 11 for 2017. Seattle was…

Bruteig’s bully pulpit. Cary Bruteig, the go-to apartment authority for everyone in the multifamily business, book-ended the half-day multifamily conference last week that drew about 500 brokers, lenders, developers and others on the ground floor of the Front Range apartment market. Bruteig not only provided a detailed analysis of where the Denver-area and Front Range…

Kindell Williams is managing director of the Denver office of IA Interior Architects, a firm that employs 600 in 19 offices. “Out of our Denver office, we do work for national, global and local clients,” Williams noted. With that kind of perspective, Williams has the pulse of the real estate needs of corporate clients. On Nov.…

The Denver office market has evolved by leaps and bounds since Tami Door took the helm of the Downtown Denver Partnership more than a dozen years ago. “I’ve seen it evolve in a number of ways,” said Door, CEO and president of the partnership. “Some of those changes in the office market relate to that…

Thomas W. Toomey, the longtime CEO of UDR, one of the nation’s largest apartment REITs, early this year confessed, “We missed it,” as far as staking out a big claim in the company’s Denver backyard. Toomey, CEO of Highlands Ranch-based UDR, with a market cap of about $10.5 billion, said he had been telling his…

Woodspear Properties decided it was time to sell The Orchards shopping center in Greenwood Village. And Woodspear ended up selling the prized 73,904-square-foot center in a novel way. But more details of that later. The Orchards, at 5926 S. Holly St., at the key intersection of Orchard Road and Holly Street, is the type of…