COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

Better Than Russia: Well, at least someone appreciates the Orange County real estate market.

Recently back from a tour of Russian real estate, Robert M. Taylor, president of Santa Ana-based Real Estate Marketing/Management, says that if folks think the market is bad here, they should look at Russia, where there is almost no private ownership of commercial property, no recording office for titles and wide swaths of land that still need to be surveyed.

“It makes you appreciative of what we have here, even in a soft market in Orange County,” Taylor said. “We have a lot to be thankful for. They really have no formal private ownership of land.”

Taylor went to St. Petersburg and Moscow for 10 days at the invitation of the State Property Management Committee and the Russian Ministry of Finance through the Citizen Ambassador Program of People to People International.