GM has already announced that it’s trying to come up with no less than $5b in savings by the end of the calendar year. To assist these efforts, GM has put Jones Lang LaSalle in charge of 200m Euros worth of sell-offs and leasebacks. Together with its attempt to sell or lease its Renaissance Center headquarters, GM’s fire sale should bring in some $750m. Property Week reports that JLL’s portion of the sell-off will include non-manufacturing sites in Europe and the UK. On their selling block will be Saab’s properties in Gothenberg and Trollhatten, while Vauxhall’s Luton headquarters, GM’s headquarters in Dublin and other Chevy, GM, and Opel sites are said to be on the sale list. Including factories, GM is estimated to own some $43b in real estate around the globe.
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Is that Jones Lang LaSalle III or Jones Lang LaSalle IV? Seriously for a minute, Isn’t a little late to be selling off real estate. This is just an effort to fool the congress into thinking something real is going on. I mean who is going to pay real money for RenCen
Neither.
43 Billion in real estate. Wow. I’m guessing it’ll be all pretty leveraged already though minus little bits here and there
Did they heard that recession was started by real estate crunch? If they priced their properties the way they price their vehicles, they are for surprise. If they could back loans with this real estate they probably would. I think it is all as real as Volt.
I’m going to be entertained (again,still) when the specifics are actually specified.
Love to know who did that $47B valuation. Perhaps it was the community college freshman that used to do drive-bys “appraisals” for one of the local realtors.
Value: Whatever they needed/wanted to hear.
He got paid well. In cash.
Between the fact that corporations grossly routinely overvalue everything from real estate to ‘goodwill’…
A dime on every one of those 47B dollars if they are *really* lucky. Couple that with the fact that most of that property is either not useful, not in a desirable neighborhood (Hey kids, let’s go to DETROIT!), and the pesky little detail that there’s a boatload of desirable commercial real estate sitting around already, and oh yeah, ain’t a whole lotta folks loaning money right ’bout now…
Has anyone noticed that GM is selling bits and pieces of their profitable enterprises worldwide… just to support their deeply unprofitable business here in the US?
Shouldn’t they be selling their unprofitable bits and beefing up their profitable enterprises?!?
Guys,
Commercial real estate is a different market from residential. In most major cities, vacancy has risen a bit over the last year, but pricing has not gone South the way that house and condo values have plunged in speculative markets.
This is a smart move for GM; the only question is why they didn’t do this years ago. Overconfidence, I suppose.
It was just earlier this year that GM burned up a bunch of cash by BUYING the RenCenter buildings.
Idiots.
@SherbornSean,
If we are referncing NYC, SF, and LA, you have a point. If you are looking pretty much anywhere else in the USA, in relative terms, commercial is swirling the bowl just like residential.
Big commercial projects are being cancelled, or put on indefinate hiatus all over the country. Over the course of the next year (or three depending on your source) you’ll be seeing commercial vacancies on extant properties continue to increase. Prices will continue to fall even in highly desirable neighborhoods.
Yes, the Empire State Building was constructed during the last Great Depression. There will be things built during the coming years as well.
But, between the fact that most developers are keenly aware that everything will be cheaper tomorrow (and the next day, and the next) for the forseeable future, and the fact that banks aren’t loaning a damn red cent that they don’t feel really safe about, good luck dumping any commercial property right now.
For those of use old enough to remember the 70s and 80s, we’ve seen this movie before.
And oh yeah. Property in DETROIT? Or anywhere else in Michigan? Valuable? Pass those ‘shrooms, please.
FWIW- I’ve lived in Grands Rapids and Coldwater. I like Michigan. In the summer anyway.
Dear mr Niedermayer: It’s “Gothenburg”, with ‘u’ as the last vowel, not ‘e’. (Seeing how this is a frigging ENGLISH word — it’s Göteborg in the original Swedish — you have NO excuse for spelling this wrong.) And “Trollhättan”, with ‘a’ as the last vowel, also not ‘e’. If you can’t swing the umlaut[*], make it “Trollhattan”, still no ‘e’ as the last vowel.
HTH!
C.R.C.
[*]: Not that it’s all that super-difficult: Just type ampersand-“auml”-semicolon. “Auml” for the capital A-umlaut, “ouml” for o-umlaut, and take a wiiiild guess at the capital O-umlaut.
P.S: Mr Farago: *Please* take it easy with that trigger-happy delete finger, OK? It *is* frigging English, and come on — “frigging” isn’t really all that horrendous, now is it? Particularly as it is applied to the word “Gothenburg” and/or the English language, not mr Niedermayer. Thank you for your (re-)consideration.
f1guyus :
Is that Jones Lang LaSalle III or Jones Lang LaSalle IV?
Edward Niedermeyer :
Neither.
Hehe, I got it. It sure DOES seem like this selloff has been a multi-generational thing, doesn’t it?
Okay, my post (again) didn’t seem to take. I’ll try again.
f1guyus :
Is that Jones Lang LaSalle III or Jones Lang LaSalle IV?
Edward Niedermeyer :
Neither.
Hehe, I got it. It sure DOES seem like this selloff has been a multi-generational thing, doesn’t it?
Funny, when I first read the headline of the article, my mind played a trick on me. I thought I read “GM Appoints Self Off Team”. Naturally, I thought, “Wow, that just might work!”