Archives for 2018

The recent ULI reports demonstrate the focus on healthy living spaces with wellness extending beyond to the workplace, as companies increasingly pay more attention to employee well-being.

Doctors may find more patients are practicing healthy lifestyles thanks to healthy surroundings (credit: kp.org).
Within the commercial and residential real estate worlds, health and wellness continue to take center stage. This could be attributed to two age groups: the Millennials, who are keen to live a healthy lifestyle and the Boomers, who are looking to retain good health.
The Urban Land Institute has released two new reports related to building for health and wellness–one addresses lessons from healthy affordable housing for the broader housing marketplace and the other explores the development of agrihoods. Taken together, the reports illustrate opportunities for developers to create financially successful projects which improve resident and community health, and promote social equity and sustainability.
“Each new real estate project represents an opportunity for developers and other project stakeholders to invest in a community’s overall health and well-being, social equity and cohesion, environmental sustainability, and overall quality of life, while promoting the short- and long-term viability and success of real estate projects,” said W. Edward Walter, ULI Global chief executive officer. “These new ULI reports illuminate opportunities to incorporate health-promoting elements which can benefit a project’s bottom line as well as the health and well-being of communities.”
The first report, Healthy Housing for All: How Affordable Housing Is Leading the Way, is a collaboration between ULI’s Building Healthy Places Initiative, the ULI Affordable and Workforce Housing Council, and the Center for Active Design. The report examines innovations and lessons from health-oriented affordable housing projects for the broader housing marketplace, illuminating how a focus on health can lead to positive outcomes for both developers and residents.
The four key insights from healthy and affordable mixed-income housing projects include Lesson 1: Identify and incorporate healthy housing features at the outset; Lesson 2: Engage residents and stakeholders and conduct research to ensure that projects address their priorities; Lesson 3: Coordinate design, policy and programming; Lesson 4: Establish innovative partnerships, financing strategies and revenue streams.
The report includes profiles from six projects developed by ULI members and others across the nation. These projects have incorporated healthy housing components including active transportation amenities, community events and classes, access to healthy food, and other features. It concludes with a summary of the strong demand for health-promoting housing which is accessible to people of all income levels.
The second ULI report, Agrihoods: Cultivating Best Practices illustrates strategies for creating successful real estate projects centered around farms and other food production spaces. The report identifies eight best practice areas to aid developers and partners in planning, creating and operating agrihoods, defined by ULI as single-family, multifamily or mixed-use communities built with a working farm or community garden as a focus.
The best practice areas include land, food, finance, programming, communications, housing and design, people, and partnerships, and the report outlines specific strategies in each area to help projects maximize health, sustainability, equity and economic potential. These strategies were gleaned from ULI research, interviews with developers and other experts, and from a workshop with key leaders in the field. The report includes brief profiles from agrihood projects around the country, as well as insights on food distribution, farm skills, programming and other topics.
“Our members are leaders in the development of healthy places where families can live and thrive,” said Walter. “The innovative practices showcased in these reports demonstrate the significant impact our members are making on people’s lives and their communities.”
This focus on wellness extends beyond the living realm to the workplace, as companies increasingly pay more attention to employee well-being, says Dan Polito, director of Skender’s Northern California operations.
“Wellness continues to be a top priority for tenants and their employees. For example, companies are becoming more willing to add bike storage rooms in their facilities and encourage employees to bike to work,” Polito tells GlobeSt.com. “We’re also seeing workspaces for collaboration such as onsite cafes with actual baristas and recreational amenities outside. Meditation is increasingly recognized as a tool for well-being and productivity, so some tenants are including private, quiet spaces for peaceful relaxation or meditation. These kinds of amenities create space for social interaction, as well as for alone time, and both options can improve employee well-being.”
By: Lisa Brown (GlobeSt)
Click here to view source article.

Southeastern New Mexico and West Texas are sitting on a sea of potentially recoverable oil and gas reserves in the Delaware Basin, according to a new report by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The U.S. Department of the Interior said Thursday that two underground layers in the Delaware, known as the Wolfcamp Shale and Bone Spring Formation, together contain 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. 

That’s the largest pool of oil and gas reserves ever announced by the USGS anywhere in the U.S., propelling the Permian Basin in New Mexico and Texas into the nation’s premier zone for energy production with some of the largest recoverable reserves in the world, said New Mexico Oil and Gas Association Executive Director Ryan Flynn.

“Even for someone who understands the resources and potential of the Permian Basin, I can’t help but be surprised by the sheer enormity of what the USGS has reported,” Flynn said. “The Permian resources shared by New Mexico and Texas make this area one of the most important places in the world in terms of oil production.”

And total reserves in the Delaware Basin, an oval-shaped formation within the Permian that stretches from southwestern Texas northward into Lea and Eddy counties, could be far larger than reported. That’s because the USGS looked only at the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring formations, or just two of the many layers of hydrocarbon-filled shale rock zones in the Delaware.

“Those are very important pieces of the basin, but it’s not the whole thing,” Flynn said. “That’s what makes this report so surprising, even for us.”

The USGS said its estimates are for “continuous unconventional oil,” meaning it’s spread throughout the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring formations rather than concentrated in one place. It said the reserves are “undiscovered,” meaning they have yet to be produced, and that they’re “technically recoverable” with current technologies.

The USGS released a separate assessment in 2016 of hydrocarbon potential in the Midland Basin portion of the Permian in West Texas. That report showed 20 billion barrels of unrecovered oil, 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.

At the time, it was the largest pool of potentially recoverable hydrocarbons ever reported in the U.S. by the Geological Survey. But the latest report on the Delaware shows more than twice the level of oil and many times more natural gas and liquids.

The USGS did not evaluate the profitability of extracting the Delaware resources outlined in its assessment. But modern technologies of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, into hard rock and then burrowing horizontally into pools of oil and gas trapped in different layers of shale have made production in the Permian, and particularly the Delaware Basin, highly attractive.

Some of the most lucrative gushers in the U.S. spring from the Delaware, converting that zone and other parts of the Permian into the No. 1 oil and gas producing region in the U.S. today.

“The results we’ve released today demonstrate the impact that improved technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling have had on increasing the estimates of undiscovered, technically recoverable, continuous resources,” USGS Energy Resources Program Coordinator Walter Guidroz said in a statement.

Given the level of industry activity already underway in the Delaware, the new USGS estimates mean New Mexico will benefit from continued production for many years to come, Flynn said.

The oil boom in southeastern New Mexico has generated $1.2 billion in surplus, or new money, available for state spending in the next fiscal year budget.

“That surplus has the potential to become the norm, not the exception, as we move forward,” Flynn said.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Christmas came a few weeks early.

“Before this assessment came down, I was bullish on oil and gas production in the United States,” Zinke said in a prepared statement. “Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation.”

By: Kevin Robinson-Avila (ABQ Journal)
Click here to view source article.

Congratulations to the 2018 CCIM Deal of the Year Award recipients:
Under One Million – Keith Meyer CCIM, SIOR, Jim Wible CCIM, Riley McKee, Derek Mitchell, Mark Hammond, and Mark Friedman CCIM.
Over One Million – Keith Bandoni CCIM, Scott Whitefield, Mike Leach SIOR, and Greg Leach.

Mega Deal – Randy McMillan CCIM, SIOR and Jake Redfearn.
CCIM NM’s new designees:
Cynthia Meister CCIM and Nicosha Schedlbauer CCIM.
Congratulations to CARNM’s 2018 President’s Award and Realtor of the Year recipient, Debbie Dupes CCIM!
What a year of success!