Daily Archives: 05/14/2009

(Community Matters) Diana Holford of Jones Lang LaSalle hosted a breakfast for EF member company CEOs/CFOs this morning, explaining to us what opportunities today’s commercial rental market presents.

Not intending to recount her professional advice since I’m likely to forget to mention the nuances; nevertheless, some macro points she made which readers might find of interest:

• Austin is one of the few cities in the country that has not incurred negative job growth.

• Downtown space still scarce. Even the two new buildings drivers off MoPac notice on 5th are leased.

• A significant new lease at the Frost Bank Tower signed for $30psf plus $16psf in expenses plus parking and annual escalations

• Downtown class A space renting at triple net for $24 to $31 psf with annual escalations. Class B: $14 to $22psf

• Suburban class A space renting at triple nets of $14 to $22 psf, though there are some very sweet opportunities, more negotiating and more gross rental deals available in the suburbs – especially from sublease. Suburb class B: $9 – $15psh triple net

• For finish out, she estimates an experience construction manager will save you $2.00 for every $0.50 you spend on their service

(Community Matters) Breakfast with Bryan Jones today who helped me understand the article on the future of the social web. In fact, we’re already in phase 3 whereby the one’s social graph (their social network information) from Facebook or Myspace will be utilized in other platforms. He gave the example of watching an event on CNN, while being able to see who else in your Facebook social network is also watching and being able to communicate with them (for instance, IM).

As for #4 , Bryan explains:

An easy example is NetFlix…crowdsourced reviews are able to recommend movies that are pretty good – Amazon is like this too – where based on your history, and those of millions of other people, they can recommend items that you might also enjoy.

Compare that to integrating NetFlix – or Amazon – with Facebook Connect, where, if you wanted to broadcast your movie rental history to your friends you could, so that all of a sudden, NetFlix is customized for YOU – what your friends have rented, which movies they liked, which movies they would also like to see, etc. Something that would change for each individual based on their social graph.

Always time well spent with Moximity’s CEO – who btw, has recently been elected to the Texas Ex’s board of trustees.