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The U.S. office sector continues to rebound, according to a new report from commercial real estate services provider Cassidy Turley. And Washington, D.C., is leading the pack, having overtaken New York City for the highest office rents in the country in the third quarter of 2010.

An inspector with the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspection (LandI) has been charged with extortion under the Hobbs Act. U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger announced the indictment, which alleges that Kenneth Gassman used his position with LandI in an effort to compel a commercial property owner to sell the property to him. The Hobbs Act bars actual or attempted robbery or extortion affecting interstate or foreign commerce.

A June 2010 study, “Opening the Door to Green Building,” revealed a major discrepancy between the actual cost of building green and the perceived cost of building green among commercial property owners and developers.

Rep. Walt Minnick's (D., Idaho) plan to introduce legislation that would authorize the U.S. Treasury to provide as much as $15 billion to $25 billion in guarantees on new loans to the commercial real estate sector is gaining momentum in both chambers of Congress.

Minnick said he was still finalizing the details of the measure but, based on preliminary discussions with Treasury staff, expects to have the administration's support.

For the past few years, commercial property owners in the Gulf Coast haven't had much to celebrate. Now the problem has gotten worse as a result of the BP oil spill.

U.S. commercial real estate values fell in March, pushed lower by a quarterly drop in retail and office properties in the biggest metropolitan areas, according to the most recent report from Moody's Investors Service, Inc.

The Moody's/REAL Commercial Property Price Index fell 0.5 percent from February, the second straight monthly decline. Prices slid 25 percent from a year earlier and are down 42 percent from the October 2007 peak. Moody's economists see this as continued bad news for owners because it shows a trend of basically flat prices.

Seattle's biggest office owner, Boston-based Beacon Capital Partners, has already defaulted on one major loan and has stopped making payments on a $2.7 billion loan that it used to buy two major Seattle-area properties and 11 others in Washington, D.C., in 2007, at the height of the market.

Greater Boston's commercial real estate community appears to be among the healthiest in the country, in terms of the percentage of properties that have remained current on their debt payments. Currently, only 2.7 percent of the region's property loans packaged in commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) were either delinquent or in various stages of foreclosure, according to real estate experts. As of January, there were roughly $800 billion in U.S.-based CMBS assets.

State and local governments in Arizona, Connecticut, and California are compensating for budget shortfalls by selling their office high-rises, prisons, and even capitol buildings. Arizona recently invited investors to buy bonds secured by several landmark state government buildings, while Connecticut, also facing budget problems, has made plans to bring in $60 million over the next two years from real estate sales.

Although the purchases were independent of one another and don't necessarily signal a trend, two nonprofit groups, Goodwill Industries of Southern Arizona and the American Red Cross Arizona Blood Services, recently acquired Tucson, Ariz., commercial property in transactions that their brokers describe as “prudent and very forward thinking.”