Michael's Commercial LLC

Commercial real estate prices have been on an upward climb for the last decade until they peaked in the second quarter of 2007 according to the MIT Commercial Real Estate Transactions-Based Index. The third and fourth quarters showed a downward decline of 8.2%. However, the first quarter 2008 demonstrated a small rise in commercial real estate prices of 2.1%. If you look at the last four quarters, prices have dropped only 1.0%.

Will this trend continue? Right now it is hard to tell because as of the end of April 2008 demand for commercial real estate has fallen 10.0% and supply has increased 8.6% since prices peaked in the second quarter of 2007.

The Total Return Index which includes the Price, Demand and Supply Indices have increased 3.0% during the first quarter of 2008 with a cumulative total of 2.4% since commercial real estate prices peaked in the second quarter of 2007. It will be interesting to see what the next quarter will bring.

Note: The TBI is a statistical methodology that produces estimates of price movements and total returns based on transactions of properties sold from the NCREIF Index database.

MIT makes no warranty or claim regarding the usefulness or implications of the index. It should also be noted that TBI results for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quarters of any year are considered preliminary and subject to revision until the calendar year is completed with the 4th quarter results.

The information provided here is the author’s own interpretation of the MIT Commercial Real Estate Transaction-Based Index and also makes no warranty or claim regarding the usefulness or implications of the index.

Michael Setunsky is the Broker and owner of Michael's Commercial LLC serving the Northern Virginia commercial real estate market. His more than 23 years of experience as a commercial real estate and business broker has earned him the distinction for being one of the top commercial real estate producers in the Mid-Atlantic Region. He also serves on the Mid Atlantic Real Estate Marketing Association's (MAREMA) Board of Directors, and is a Commonwealth of Virginia licensed Instructor. He teaches Pre-licensing, Post Licensing Education, Broker's and Continuing Education courses. Visit his company web site at http://michaelscommercial.com/.

©2008 Michael’s Commercial LLC, All Rights Reserved

Blog post title. Did you know that whenever you post to your blog, the title of your post can be very important? For the obvious reason, you want a catchy blog post title so people will stop by and read it and hopefully comment on it. However, there is a more important reason.

Title Tag. The blog post title is turned into something called a “title tag” which is a small piece of HTML code added to your post. Don’t worry, ActiveRain automatically takes your blog post title and converts it to a “title tag”. This is what it looks like in the HTML source code:

                                          <title>Real Estate Blog – What’s in a Blog Post Title</title>

If you would like to see it for yourself, bring up one of your posts and click on “View” on your browser menu bar. Then click on “Page Source” if you are using Firefox or “Source” if you are using Internet Explorer. Near the top of the source code you will see the “title tag”.

What’s the big deal? This is the most important place to put your keywords to get the one thing most dear to our hearts when blogging – Google Juice! Google puts a lot of relevance on the keywords in the “Title Tag” for search engine ranking and optimization. It is probably the most important place Google looks for keywords.

Keyword Optimization. Lastly, for high rankings in the search engines use keyword optimization for that all important – Google Juice! By the way, this also applies to your web pages.

Are you getting the Google Juice you deserve?

Michael Setunsky is the Broker and owner of Michael's Commercial LLC serving the Northern Virginia commercial real estate market. His more than 23 years of experience as a commercial real estate and business broker has earned him the distinction for being one of the top commercial real estate producers in the Mid-Atlantic Region. He also serves on the Mid Atlantic Real Estate Marketing Association's (MAREMA) Board of Directors, and is a Commonwealth of Virginia licensed Instructor. He teaches Pre-licensing, Post Licensing Education, Broker's and Continuing Education courses. Visit his company web site at http://michaelscommercial.com/.

Actually, today I have two reasons to celebrate. First, I was notified today by Google that I had received Google some Google juice on my outside blog and secondly, I just went over 50,000 points.

ActiveRain is a great place to meet people and to learn from your peers. Thank you to ActiveRain and to everyone who took the time to read and comment on my posts. Have a Happy 4th of July.

I recently set up a Google Web Alert for notifying me on Google results for my name. This morning I received an email alert from Google with a link directly to my Outside Blog. I couldn’t believe it. It seems like I just set it up the other day. Thanks ActiveRain, it works!