As I frequently rant to my wife about unused space at my local bank branch, this idea caught my fancy. Maybe I should pay attention. At the end of June, Ranieri's company, American Financial Realty Trust, raised $804.3 million led by Banc of America Securities and the Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group. And simultaneously, American Financial Realty Trust announced the acquisition of a Bank of America portfolio of 158 properties totaling 8.1 million square feet for $769.8 million. (Is this a conflict?)

Here's the vacant space calculation. Of the 8.1 million square feet, Bank of America will lease back 5.2 million square feet for 30 years. Bank of America will also lease 804,000 square feet on a short term basis, and approximately 813,000 square feet are leased to third party tenants. If my math is correct, this leaves a balance of 1.283 million vacant square feet.

So now I'm wondering, How do you recycle all that vacant space quickly? Who are the best tenants for bank branches? Is this a good real estate strategy? In any event, investors seem to like the American Financial story, having bid up the IPO price 20% to $15 at the close of the market on Tuesday. What do you think?

--Peter Pike