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Grubb & Ellis Company (NYSE: GBE), a leading real estate services and investment firm in the world.

September 24, 2009 – Comments (0) | RELATED TICKERS: CBG , HF , ZIPR

With new construction winding down and the economy stabilizing, the rental market has every opportunity to rebound.

Grubb & Ellis (NYSE: GBE) 40% HIGHER;continuing higher today on what appears to be a technical breakout. Since crossing over the $1 level, shares of GBE have jumped nearly 70% on very heavy volume.

Grubb & Ellis Company (Grubb & Ellis) is a commercial real estate service and investment management firm. It offers property owners, corporate occupants and program investors’ integrated real estate solutions, including transactions, management, consulting and investment advisory services supported by market research and local market capability. It operates three segments: Investment Management, which includes providing acquisition, financing and disposition services with respect to its programs, asset management services related to its programs and dealer-manager services by its securities broker-dealer, which facilitates capital raising transactions for its tenant-in-common, real estate investment trust and other investment programs; Transaction Services, which comprises its real estate brokerage operations, and Management Services, which includes property management, corporate facilities management, project management, client accounting, business services and engineering services.

Lease comparables represent one of the most vital market indicators collected by Grubb & Ellis researchers around the country. While third-party data vendors collect and publish a lot of data on commercial real estate markets, none of them track lease comps, at least not on a national scale. Grubb & Ellis has quarterly contests and recognition for the offices collecting the most comps, scaled by the size of the market. These are not just transactions represented by Grubb & Ellis but transactions throughout the market. While our comps do not cover the entire leasing universe, they can be considered a representative sample. The latest data show that leasing activity as measured by total square footage has declined sharply in recent quarters, and a leasing market recovery has not yet begun. Grubb & Ellis is seeing anecdotal evidence that companies, lured by bargain rents and an improving economy, are initiating searches for space, but the searches are taking longer and have not yet translated into an uptick in signed leases. Expect leasing activity to improve gradually through 2010.