Sunset at Oxbow Bend in Teton National Park. Photo by Patrick Devereaux.

About 10 years ago, Patrick Devereaux went to Yellowstone National Park in the fall and shot a photo of an elk in a field.

Patrick Devereaux is an avid nature photographer, in addition to an investment broker at Cushman & Wakefield.

He was so taken by capturing the moment of the majestic animal on film, that he became hooked on nature photography.

Devereaux – a top investment broker who is a leader of the Capital Markets team at the Denver office of Cushman & Wakefield that has sold more than $1.5 billion in office buildings, shopping center and industrial properties –  several times each seasons  swaps  the world of calculating  internal rates of return and cap rates for his two Canon digital SLRs and lenses from 12 mm to 600 mm, and heads into the wild. (Devereaux recently prepared an analysis of the Denver market that showed only $250 million in commercial properties sold this year, as reported exclusively by InsideRealEstateNews.com.)

Light bouncing off rock formation in Slot Canyon in Paige, AZ. Photo by Patrick Devereaux.

He’s covered a lot of real estate to capture his photos, but instead of office parks and shopping malls, he’s made multiple trips to places such as Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Monument Valley, Bryce, Zion, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and, of course, the Rocky Mountain National Park. Closer to home, he chronicles each season at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.

Devereaux, a youthful-looking 40 and a University of Denver graduate, recently travelled to the Bosque del Apache in New Mexico.

“They have 60,000 birds there,” he said. “It covers 3,800 acres along the Rio Grande floodplain. It has everything from sandhill cranes to snow geese. It truly is magnificent.”

As with any outdoor photographer, he often is chasing the light. It is not uncommon for him to rise before the sun rises, hike for miles, finally catching the morning light on a cliff, canyon or lake. Or, conversely, he will wait for hours for a few moments of the precious glow of sunset.

Devereaux also will stalk animals in the bush, patiently raising his camera to his eye to capture a candid moment of a bear cub or an elk.

“I really enjoy the hunt, when you capture a great image or moment on camera,” he said.

He estimates only about 15 percent of his clients know that he is a serious photographer. He is a member of the Mile High Wildlife Photography  Club, where he hones his shooting skills. “You can take nature-photography tours, just like you might go out with a ski guide,” Devereaux said. Through the club he met Russ Burden, a professional outdoor photographer. “Russ has been my mentor,” he said.

He sells his photos at his Web site, Devereauxphoto.com, but commerce isn’t the driving force.

“I have no desire to make this my business,” he said. “This is my passion. If I turned it into my main business, it would ruin it for me. It is a great stress reliever. I love to capture that moment in time and place.”

Sprinting bull elk in Yellowstone. Photo by Patrick Devereaux.

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.

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Patrick Devereaux, an investment broker at Cushman & Wakefield, found that commercial real estate sales this year in the Denver area are at the lowest point in recent memory.

Investors  purchased only  $250 million in Denver-area commercial real estate properties this year, the lowest tally on record.

And a single deal,  the $134.25 million purchase of the 32-story, 17th Street Plaza, accounted for 53.7 percent of the total sales volume. Without that deal, there would have only been $115.750 million of office,  industrial and retail properties of more than $1 million each, shows the report released to InsideRealEstateNews.com by Patrick Devereaux, a senior director of the Capital Markets Group for the Denver office of Cushman & Wakefield.

“What is going on in commercial real estate is analogous to what is happening in residential real estate,” Devereaux said in an interview in his office at Independence Plaza in downtown Denver. In a nutshell: Fewer properties are selling for less money.

But the downturn  is even more pronounced on the income-property side.

This year’s sales volume is 85.7 percent lower than the $1.725 billion in sales in 2008, the biggest year-over-year percentage drop on record. It was the first time since 1996 that the sales volume had dropped below $1 billion.  Even in 1992 – as far back as Devereaux’s records go  - there was $365 million in sales, 31.5 percent more than this year. And while sales volumes in the 1980s at times fell below $250 million, if adjusted for inflation, they almost certainly were higher in today’s dollars.

Indeed, J.P. Morgan this year sold 17th Street Plaza for an estimated 30 percent to 40 percent less than it was it had been negotiating to sell it for last year. But even at the reduced price, the purchase of the 662,653-square-foot building by HRPT Properties Trust, a real estate investment trust, was one of the largest office deals of the year in the country. The building was sold by Mary Sullivan and Tim Swan of CB Richard Ellis. REITs, priced out of the buying sprees of a few years ago, are returning to the market because they can raise money on Wall Street and acquire buildings at a low enough price that they can pay investors dividends, Devereaux said.

And, also, as with the residential market, “all of the buyers want to feel as if they’re getting deals,” Devereaux said.

And they are, he said.

Investors are buying properties at below replacement cost, he said.

And with the residential sales market, it is difficult for buyers to get loans.

“Only a handful of banks are really in the market,” Devereaux said. And buyers need to make hefty down payments, just like someone buying an expensive home, he noted.

There also is a disconnect between prospective buyers and and property owners, he said.

Buyers are looking for “value-add” opportunities, where they can buy properties cheap, fix them up and re-tenant them. Owners, meanwhile, want to wait until the fundamentals of the market improve, so they will fetch higher prices, he explained.

And while current owners have little motivation to sell, investors are increasingly looking to buy distressed properties, just like it has been the case with many home buyers.

“The new clients are going to be the lenders,” Devereaux said. And while most of the income-producing properties that have been sold by lenders so far have been B and C properties – that is, older, less-well-located buildings than Class A – it is only a matter of time before some trophy buildings are sold by lenders, he said.

“Lenders will stop amending loans and delaying foreclosures, resulting in a surplus of assets on lenders’ books,” Devereaux said. “The number of distressed assets for sale will increase in 2010. It will not be a flood of product, but the cycle will last for years.”

Devereaux  said the perception among would-be buyers it that they will get better deals, once the buildings are in the hands of the lenders. “I’m not sure that is going to be the reality, though,” he said. “There are going to be a lot more people bidding for properties in foreclosure or in a receivership, so the competition may drive up prices.”

The good news, he said, that as with the residential market, Denver seems certain to bounce back quicker than most national markets. The same economic forces drive both residential and commercial markets. Denver did not become as overbuilt as other markets, its unemployment rate is lower than most parts of the country and the national average, and the economy is more diversified than it has been historically.

“Denver will continue to be a preferred market,” Devereaux  said.

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.

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