Apartment Look

Vanguard Group is fast becoming a dominant investor in the U.S. real estate industry . Securities and Exchange Commission reports compiled by Bloomberg show that the company’s mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are now the leading owners of real estate investment trusts (REITs), the tax- protected investor funds that own many of the nation’s offices, shopping centers, apartments, hotels, warehouses, and data and storage centers. Including its indexed stock and REIT-focused funds, Malvern- based Vanguard owns 18 percent of Host Hotels & Resorts, whose portfolio includes Ritz -Carlton, Marriott, and Westin hotels; 15 percent of Simon Property Group , the national mall owner that counts King of Prussia Mall among its holdings; and a similar share of Prologis, the warehouse giant. Locally, Vanguard funds control 16 percent each of Brandywine Realty Trust , which owns a majority of Center City’s highest buildings; Liberty Property Trust ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio - The owner of downtown Cleveland's fourth-tallest building is doing an about-face, marketing the Tower at Erieview and the adjacent Galleria shopping mall for sale after more than a year of exploring a partial conversion of the skyscraper to apartments. RAIT Financial Trust recently put the buildings on the market, at an undisclosed price. A listing package from real estate company HFF , Inc., started making the rounds last week. The 40-story tower, at East 12 th Street and St. Clair Avenue, is only 45 percent leased, according to HFF's listing materials. The glassy, barrel- shaped Galleria is 60 percent leased. The property also includes a 421- space parking garage . Related: Oswald Centre, former Eaton Center hit the market RAIT's decision doesn't shut the door on a potential residential redevelopment of a third of the office space. But the listing throws the timeline for such a project into limbo - and signals that the Philadelphia- based company...

Six years ago, Mike Brown and Casey Lynch stood on Downtown Boise ’s 8th Street and wondered: Why don’t more people live here? Downtown seemed to have everything that a growing percentage of Americans wanted in a place to live. “I mean, there’s all kinds of jobs. There’s a million coffee shops and hair salons and restaurants, and there’s an active street life ,” says Brown, who founded the Los Angeles- based development company LocalConstruct with Lynch in 2008. Casey Lynch, left, and Mike Brown have made their mark in Boise. Provided by LocalConstruct But in 2011, fewer than 4,000 people lived in Downtown’s scattered apartment and condominium buildings and houses. On a typical weekday afternoon , most Downtown workers got in their cars and put the city in the rearview mirror. Brown and Lynch saw an opportunity. They thought Boiseans would trade ample floor space and vaulted ceilings in the suburbs for smaller, high- end Downtown apartments that offered amenities like gyms, a do...

Since it was installed in 2010, the "orange bubble" chairlift at The Canyons in Utah has become the resort's most iconic feature. The high-speed quad, which whisks skiers 8,700 feet to the summit of Lookout Peak in just nine minutes, was the first in North America to have heated seats and a plastic shield — the bubble — to protect riders from frigid air and snow along the way. It's just like a gondola, but you don't have to take off your skis. Any skier would love it. But Robert Katz is not any skier. He's the CEO of Vail Resorts, the $1. 4 billion resort powerhouse that owns The Canyons. Vail bought the resort in 2013, and then — through a mix of luck, lawyers, and shrewd business — snatched up neighboring Park City Mountain Resort in 2014, merging the two into a single mega-resort now known as Park City. Vail now owns 14 resorts, which have a total of 305 lifts, and Katz thinks long and hard about all the little things that go into making the properties s...