Michigan

By Steve Eisenshtadt, Friedman Real Estate 2020 was a challenging year for the office market. The pandemic caused record-high unemployment earlier in the year. Offices were forced to close, and employees quickly learned to work remotely since March. The office market in metropolitan Detroit ended 2020 with an 18.4 percent direct vacancy rate and 19.5 percent when adding in available sublease spaces, which increased to over 1 million square feet throughout the metropolitan area. In 2021, we expect to see a continued increase in direct and sublease availability, as the pandemic will keep offices closed for at least the first half of this year. Post-pandemic, many office users will integrate remote work practices, better social distancing and healthy building environments into their office plans. On a positive note, office tenants that have shelved their plans for relocations or expansions are now finally in the market forging ahead with some of their decisions. While their ultimate office space configuration may look different than what was planned pre-pandemic, it’s encouraging to see more tenants active in the market taking steps to figuring out their game plans. Let’s take a closer look at four major office submarkets in metropolitan Detroit. Downtown Detroit (CBD …

By Garrett Keais In my 25 years in commercial real estate, I’ve never seen the economy — and our industry — come to a standstill the way it did this spring after the coronavirus hit. With so much uncertainty in the market, Detroit’s office sales and leasing activity slowed considerably. But as the last decade has shown us, if ever there was a city that could take a punch and get back up swinging, it’s Detroit. Comeback before the virus Fueled by a strong economy and low unemployment, America’s “Comeback City” was posting first-quarter 2020 office vacancy rates as low as 7 percent in one central submarket, according to Cushman & Wakefield research, and seeing rising property values and rents before the coronavirus hit. It was a striking change from a decade earlier, when the Detroit area was struggling after the Great Recession. Unemployment was 3.7 percent in February 2020, compared with 17.2 percent in June 2010, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The city’s GDP had climbed steadily over those years. Tech giants like Quicken, Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Amazon moved to the city’s central business district, boosting downtown office occupancy and helping to diversify the local …

While there are plenty of news stories touting Detroit’s comeback, it’s the actual 2019 year-end numbers backing up the claims with solid momentum in the office and lending sectors. And the numbers are capturing the attention of national investors, not to mention lenders who were on the bench for years and years. Office occupancy Office vacancy across metropolitan Detroit decreased from 24.5 percent in 2013 to 13.8 percent as of the fourth quarter of 2019, according to national leasing firm CBRE. Asking rates have climbed since 2009 and vacancy rates have dropped. These figures even include the 23 percent-vacant Southfield submarket and the 19.5 percent-vacant Auburn Hills submarket, which with their combined total square footage account for 23.4 percent of the total metropolitan Detroit office market, dragging up the total average vacancy rate. Focusing on the central business district (CBD), the post-recession predictions of a city powering through the real estate cycle are holding true. The total direct office vacancy in JLL’s latest Detroit CBD Skyline report is 7.7 percent. That figure includes approximately 500,000 vacant square feet in the GM-owned and largely self-occupied Renaissance Center (RenCen) complex. Remove the RenCen from the equation, and the Detroit CBD skyline (i.e. …