Commercial activity checkup Q1-2013

It’s April 15, 2013, tax day, and let’s take a look at the commercial sales and leasing activity in the Iowa City / Coralville area market.  So far, there have been 27 leasing and sales transactions.  27 leasing and sales transactions doesn’t really seem like many in 104 days.  Last year at this time there were just 36 similar transactions, so the volume is not that different from last year.  The makeup of the transactions is interesting.  3 are commercial land sales, 6 are retail leases / sales and 18 are office leases / sales and there have been no industrial sales / leases.  In a small market like the Iowa City / Coralville area each transaction represents 4% of the market activity, so one has to be cautious about making generalizations from small data sets, but office seems to be king so far in the area!

Last year (2012), there were a total of 127 transactions in the area, 13 were land sales, 26 were office sales / leases, a whopping 58 were retail sales / leases and 30 were industrial sales / leases. All transactions are healthy for the market but all indicate different trends

Tim Terry and Todd Helle inform at CRT

Tim Terry and Todd Helle, partners at Terry, Lockridge and Dunn Accountants and Business Consultants presented the new tax law changes and more to the Iowa City Area Association of Realtors Commercial Round Table committee.  The presentation was fact filled and specific and actually very interested and well presented.

There was investor concern at the end of 2012 about dramatic tax law changes with regard to treatment of real property taxation.  The TLD team said the actual changes were minor on January 1st, but hold on to your wallet, there are some serious changes to tax law in Congress.  The nominal rates will go down, but deductions and special treatment will vanish!  The overall effect is the changes being contemplated in Congress will raise needed tax revenue much more than the fairly minor changes in top tax rate and capital gains rate already passed.