Market ills to go beyond housing

John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 9, 2007 at midnight

Text size

More Real Estate

The housing market woes festering in Denver for the past half-dozen years will spread to the previously red-hot commercial real estate market, experts said at a conference Thursday.

"I think they will spill over," said Mark Levine, head of the Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver.

"The question is to what degree. It will happen, but the depth and breadth is unknown," he added.

Levine's comments came during the DU Fall Forecast titled "Denver's Fast and Furious Real Estate Market." It drew about 1,000 people to the Colorado Convention Center.

Darrin Revious, a Frederick Ross broker who chaired the event, said the spillover from residential to commercial "is the question that everyone has been asking today. I don't know anyone has a good, definitive answer."

Those working in office, apartments retail and industrial real estate said the housing problems will affect their fields.

Big industrial deals probably won't feel much impact, said Chris Nordling of Frederick Ross, while "retail follows rooftops" and is directly impacted by housing, said retail broker Phil Hicks.

Mary Sullivan with CB Richard Ellis said commercial real estate is seeing its first cooling in five years because of the turmoil in capital markets.

"The bottom line: The frenzy is over," Sullivan said. "Damn. I really liked that frenzy."

Evan Makovsky, who is redeveloping the Fontius building and surrounding land along the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver, said the coming downturn in commercial real estate will create investment opportunities.

"You have to take a pretty long view in this business," Makovsky said.

rebchookj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5207

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News