A real estate exchange
In an unobtrusive brick warehouse near San Francisco Bay, 75 or more heavyweight property dealers gather together once a month for what they call market day. For hours they huddle and haggle around a group of video monitors set up on the floor of the burgeoning American Real Estate Exchange (AMREX). Across the screens flash capsule descriptions of big-ticket real estate offerings (minimum asking price: $250,000) whose total value on a given day may reach more than a billion dollars. Some of the items on the block at last month's market day an interest in an $80 million...