Tom’s Recommended Reading for the Week

Baseball season has finally started! Too bad the Cubs and White Sox didn’t bring the warm weather back with them from Spring Training. Enjoy these Chicago Commercial Real Estate news articles and have a great weekend!

1. 2014 Top Brokers – It was another year of robust growth for commercial real estate brokerage firms. Increases in investment sales and leasing activity enabled many of the firms on our list to grow their transaction volumes by 15 percent or more, with some firms experiencing particularly robust growth rates.The top dog on our list remains CBRE Group Inc. It is the 11th consecutive year that CBRE has lead the industry in total transaction volume. The firm reported a total volume of $233.30 billion in 2013, a 17.7 percent increase over 2012’s figure of $189.80 billion… NREI 
   
2. After eight-year hiatus, Japanese return to downtown office market  –  A subsidiary of Tokyo-based conglomerate Sumitomo Corp. has paid $111.5 million for a downtown office tower, the first such acquisition by a Japanese investor in eight years. New York-based Sumitomo Corp. of Americas, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Japanese firm, acquired the 581,107-square-foot office portion of the 27-story tower at 203 N. LaSalle St. yesterday, confirmed Tomonori Wada, a senior vice president who oversees the Sumitomo group that includes real estate, food and tire businesses… Crain’s Chicago
   
3. Growth Is Picking Up In U.S. Office Market – The U.S. office market is showing signs of picking up steam, with businesses adding space in the first quarter at the fastest pace since 2007, according to a report from real-estate data firm Reis Inc. The amount of occupied office space grew by 9.8 million square feet in the first three months of the year, up from 9 million square feet in the fourth quarter of 2013 and an average of 5.2 million square feet a quarter between 2011 and 2013, according to Reis…         Wall Street Journal
   
4. Chicago Lays Out a Complex Plan for the Future of the Fulton-Randolph Market Area – The future of the Fulton-Randolph Market District could well look back on its past. Representatives of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development described an ambitious plan for ongoing development of the district. That plan will pay respect to the feel of the district’s heritage, even down to the exterior building design and streetscapes... The Chicago Architecture Blog
   
5. Top Commercial Real Estate Firms and Brokers in Chicago Win CoStar Power Broker Awards – The winners of the annual CoStar Power Broker Awards have been announced, and several top firms and real estate brokers in Chicago are among the winners. Recognizing the “best of the best” in commercial real estate brokerage, the CoStar Power Broker Awards are presented each year to a select group of local real estate firms and individual brokers who achieved the highest overall transaction volumes in commercial property sales and leases in their market during 2013… CoStar Group