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Cirex News is emailed weekly to over 2,000 CRE Brokers/Agents and people interested in commercial real estate. Email Ralph or call 608-345-2880 to feature your business or properties in CirexNews...

Dear CBG Members and other interested parties:

Smart Growth Greater Madison is in search for its next Executive Director. Smart Growth is encouraging the Madison Real Estate community to help us identify qualified candidates who share our commitment to advancing responsible real estate development and advocating for policies that support a strong and thriving Greater Madison community.

If you know someone within your professional network who may be well suited for this opportunity, please share the position announcement below or encourage them to contact Matt Brink or Bill Connors directly.

Contact emails:
bill@smartgrowthgreatermadison.com
mbrink@veridianhomes.com

Executive Director Position Announcement:

https://www.indeed.com/job/executive-director-047947fb357ee598

Thank you!

Ben Filkouski
CBG Past-President

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RSK: All well and good . . .until the next demonstration of some sorts hits the downtown. And of course there are the empty desks in the office buildings downtown whose occupants fueled the lunch business. I wish them all good luck.

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We offer the experience, quality and service you deserve, but with the personal attention and dedication that only a family business can provide. We’re not just your landlord, we’re partners in your success.

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - A new farm market on Madison’s west side is giving small Wisconsin farmers another place to sell their products while giving customers another way to shop local.

Grandad’s Farm Stop opened just over a week ago, but owner and operator Patrick Randolph said the idea started about six years earlier while he was helping manage a small CSA farm in Dunn, Wisconsin.

“We were growing so well but didn’t have anywhere to sell it,” Randolph said. The farm’s owners were able to donate what they could not sell, but Randolph began wondering what would happen if he had a farm of his own and could not afford to do the same.

That led to the idea behind Grandad’s: a place where farmers could drop off what they grow and have someone else sell it for them...

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RSK: That little corner by the Glen Golf Course is becoming a neighborhood hot spot. Value of the real estate has more than doubled over the last few years.

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The Madison Office Lifestyle Portfolio consists of 13 Class A, amenity-rich office properties ranging in size from approximately 25,000 square feet to over 300,000 square feet and is home to more than 130 tenants. The portfolio is located on the west side of Madison and Middleton, with the majority of properties situated in the Far West submarket.

The City is undertaking a series of Area Plans to develop a long-term vision to guide changes in the physical aspects of our community, such as development initiated by the private sector and infrastructure improvements typically carried out by the public sector. For more on area plans see our Fact Sheet(opens in a new window)PDF and Area Plan FAQ(opens in a new window)PDF. The Near West Area includes a mix of neighborhoods, the UW-Madison campus, Edgewood University, and the Arboretum...   ...Full Story Here

RSK: If you live or work in the Near West Planning Area of Madison, please read this. Important!

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“At Investors Associated, we make it easy for brokers to match clients with well managed, high quality spaces. Our team prioritizes clear communication, quick turnaround times, and a seamless leasing experience. Partner with us to provide your clients with properties backed by dependable service and long term value.”

Ready for high school flashbacks? Real estate report cards are out, and whether you should pin yours on the fridge or bury it in a locker depends on where you live.

Among the 100 largest metros nationwide, only 10 earned A grades. And the valedictorian might surprise you: Des Moines, IA, where a median-priced home costs $349,903—requiring just 27.5% of the typical household’s income to cover, well below the 30% threshold considered affordable (assuming a 10% down payment and a 6.5% 30-year fixed mortgage).

Meanwhile, salutatorian Raleigh, NC, is crushing the construction test. New homes are going up faster than the city’s population would predict. All that supply means brand-new homes are actually cheaper than existing ones, which typically run $450,588.

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RSK: Madison should actually rate a C if you truly look at the zoning laws and regulations that add cost to the construction. What is saving us is our household income barely pushes us into the B bracket.

Breakfast Meeting and CE-5 at First American Title

    September 30, 2026
    7:15 AM
    First American Title

Breakfast Meeting & CE6, hosted at Lerdahl

    November 12, 2026
    7:15 AM
    Lerdahl


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Galway Companies said Thursday it has begun construction on the Greenline, a 357-unit luxury apartment home community in Monona.

The Greenline community, which will also have approximately 16,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, is the largest project in company history and in the city of Monona’s history.

Located at 1709 W. Broadway, it will incorporate a central park, a year-round public gathering place for farmers’ markets, outdoor concerts and movie nights...

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RSK: Ambitious good-sized project. I like the location for some reason.

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At Essen Haus, beer steins hang from the ceiling, waitstaff wear lederhosen and dirndls, and polka music plays from the small dining-room stage. The downtown restaurant is a showcase of Wisconsin’s lasting German cultural heritage, and since it opened in 1983, Essen Haus has been a gathering place for everyone from families to local fraternity brothers.

The menu includes some American fare, like the Reuben or the Philly steak sandwich, but the most popular offerings are German classics, like rouladen (thinly sliced beef rolled around meats and vegetables and smothered in gravy) and käsespätzle (noodles with cheese and ham).

“It’s Wisconsin, [so] of course people come in for bratwursts,” says general manager Neale Hansen. Essen Haus delivers with its Wurst Teller, a trio of German sausages served with sauerkraut and house-made sauces like hot-and-sweet mustard and curry ketchup.

It’s no secret that Germany is also known for its beer, and Hansen goes so far as to say it’s the best in the world. Naturally, Essen Haus boasts a long list of tap beers, including pilsners, lagers and German styles like weiss beers and Oktoberfest beers.

At Essen Haus, a meal or drink often comes with a side of live entertainment. While Thursdays bring a mixed bag of genres, from jazz to country music, Fridays and Saturdays are reserved for polka. “It’s in the DNA of the business,” Hansen says.

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RSK: A lot of hoops to go through before the Essen House gets "Das Boot" for a development that makes sense. Stay tuned!

CARW Deal of the Year Awards and Annual Meeting

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The retail renaissance in the U.S. is accelerating, with promising new leasing metrics and a resilient economy giving retailers confidence to push forward with expansions.

But their growth efforts are increasingly colliding with a supply shortage as rising construction costs prevent developers from putting shovels in the ground to take advantage of rising rents and historically low vacancy.

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RSK: Retail wants to grow and expand but construction materials, workers and money is being gobbled up by data center construction

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With over 350 experienced real estate professionals, Knight Barry provides exceptional support and service. Visit our website for more information about our 50+ commercial and residential offices throughout Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota.

MADISON: 2450 Rimrock Road, Suite 204, 608-255-2700
CAP SQUARE: 44 E. Mifflin Street, Suite 101, 608-255-2700

It was Thanksgiving week in 2022 — a time when most employees are hard to find, let alone critical pieces of data center power infrastructure. And Kurt Bogle needed a transformer.

Bogle, then a senior regional director of critical facilities operations at NTT Global Data Centers, oversaw seven operational buildings around Chicago and Virginia and a staff of about 150 people. After a transformer failed a test, Bogle had to find a replacement and coordinate a swap with the on-site managers — all without disrupting service.

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RSK: Even with a slow-down in data center approvals and construction, there is still a great need for entry level construction workers.

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With the largest Real Estate Practice of any law firm in Wisconsin, Reinhart offers clients custom-tailored real estate insight.

Lawsuits against multifamily landlords over mold and habitability are on the rise.

The issue of mold in the U.S. housing stock is a growing one as properties age and rising costs lead to deferred maintenance. Keeping properties free of the fungus is crucial to maintaining tenant health. 

At the same time, increased risk of lawsuits has driven up the cost of habitability insurance, pushing some carriers out of states like California. As a result, some landlords find themselves in a situation where they can face substantial legal costs without a sufficient backstop. 

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RSK: I have no doubt that this is happening in Wisconsin. It is just we are not hearing about it. And with the warmer, wetter weather, it will be on the rise until a good hard frost.

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Since 1971, St. John Properties has designed, developed, and managed spaces that fit every type of business. Our team anticipates and serves the needs of over 2,700 clients, including small, mid-sized, and large companies, nationwide.

The AI power pledge was signed in a room named for broken promises. Is the Ratepayer Protection Pledge as good as a broken treaty?

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RSK: Interesting way to view it.

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Park Towne is a family run Madison-based real estate company serving southern Wisconsin for over 50 years. Led by second generation brothers Mike, Jim and Joe Ring, Park Towne has a portfolio of for-lease commercial properties and offers development, management and brokerage services.

With striking speed, the widespread debate around data centers has become a fault line in American communities, cutting across political parties, splitting constituencies and forging unexpected alliances.

In city halls and county commission chambers, east to west and north to south, people are squaring off against their local representatives.

It starts with distrust

Data centers have "upended politics as we know it," says Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. It's more than a not-in-my-backyard issue, he says — it also reflects existential fears that artificial intelligence will take jobs or eliminate humanity entirely...

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RSK: Just look at the local campaign ads and tell me data centers haven't become a political hot button.

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Tech leaders like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman have supported space “data centers” as a potential solution to terrestrial troubles.

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RSK: There is a lot of space in space and data centers are wondering if it will work for them. But there will always be some NIMBYS out there even in space.

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A record level of merger activity helped boost August commercial real estate sales volume, masking a more measured pace of individual asset sales.

Total sales volume in August was $107B, boosted by $70B in M&A-type sales, according to MSCI. Megadeals lifted transaction volume 127% year-over-year in August, but total sales excluding M&A were down roughly 21% compared to last year.

M&A deal volume was at a record pace for a single month in August, and the data reflects a highly liquid market, but one where the expansion of deal volume is slowing, MSCI analysts wrote. 

Rising interest rates and the shifting capital markets environment were unlikely to have scuttled many deals in August but could put pressure on activity in the months ahead, analysts at JPMorgan Chase wrote in a note to investors...

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RSK: Trophy properties and mega deals are skewing the actual amount of building sales if you only use purchase price.

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From 2017 to 2019 the national median rent increased by an average of 2.5 percent per year; if that trend had continued from 2020 through present, the median monthly rent would sit at $1,395 as of August 2026. The actual median rent in August 2026 is $1,390, just barely below that projected level. Rents may have skyrocketed in 2021 and 2022, but the gradual cooldown of the ensuing years has now offset those increases to the extent that the national median rent has converged back to a long-run trend of slow and steady growth.

Key Takeaways

• As of August 2026, the national median rent sits at $1,390, almost exactly where it would have been if rent growth since 2020 had remained on the slow and steady trajectory it had been on pre-pandemic ($1,395).
  
  
• Since 2020, the rental market has whipplashed between skyrocketing rents and price declines, and those alternating hot and cold spells have now offset each other such that rent growth over the past six and half years as a whole averages out to an annual pace of 2.5 percent per year.
  
  
• This national finding masks significant regional variation. In the Buffalo, NY metro, the median rent is 37% higher than it would have been had rents increased at a typical rate, whereas in the Austin, TX metro, rents are 15% below that level.

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RSK: May be a nice way of saying supply is catching up to demand.

	The Gialamas Company, Inc.	RFA Asset Management Madison, WI	Key Commercial Real Estate, LLC
Madison Commercial Real Estate LLC	St. John Properties	IA Management, LLC	Wisconsin Commercial Real Estate
Park Towne Realty LLC	Mullins Group, LLC	Crown Commercial	Flad Development & Investment Corp.
Evans Properties, LLC	Keller Real Estate Group		MIG Commercial Real Estate, LLC
First Weber Group, Inc - West Towne	Opitz Realty, Inc.	First Weber Group, Inc - Prairie Du Sac	Peterson Management Company Inc.
The Lenhart Company, Inc	Scott Faust & Associates	Shamrock Real Estate Services, LLC	Targa, Inc
Executive Management, Inc	Stark Commercial - East	Urban Land Interests	Slinde Realty Company
Assist-2-Sell/Pohlkamp & Associates	Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Matson Real Estate	Artisan Graham Real Estate

Hovde & Hovde, Inc

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