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REBusinessOnline.com is conducting a brief online survey of brokers, lenders and the owner/developer/manager community to gauge market expectations for 2016, and we welcome your participation. This survey should only take a few minutes to complete. The results will appear as a news feature story in the January 2016 issues of the regional publications. Questions cover a variety of topics, ranging from the outlook for investment sales and leasing activity in 2016 to development and lending opportunities to interest rates. Note: We prefer to attribute comments we quote from open-ended responses, however you may respond anonymously if you prefer. To take our 2016 broker survey, please click here To take our 2016 developer/owner/manager survey, please click here To take our 2016 lender survey, please click here Thanks for your participation!   Matt Valley Editorial Director of Regional Real Estate Publications France Media, Inc.

New construction starts in October advanced 13 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $591.1 billion, according to Dodge Data & Analytics. Much of October’s gain for total construction was due to a sharp rebound by nonresidential building, with additional support coming from a moderate upturn for housing as the result of further strengthening by multifamily housing. During the first 10 months of 2015, total construction starts on an unadjusted basis were $551.9 billion, up 10 percent from the same period a year ago. October’s data raised the Dodge Index to 125, compared to 111 in September. “The healthy increase for construction starts in October alleviates concern about a stalling expansion that may have arisen with the sluggish activity in August and September,” stated Robert Murray, chief economist for Dodge Data & Analytics. Nonresidential building in October jumped 32 percent to $200.7 billion after a weak September. The commercial building categories as a group soared 49 percent in October. Store construction surged 56 percent, pushed upward by the $561 million expansion and renovation of the Westfield Century City Mall in Los Angeles. Office construction advanced 45 percent, helped by the start of two large data center projects — the …

New York City’s 5th Avenue has once again topped the list of most expensive retail rents in the world with an average of $3,500 per square foot annually, according to research by Cushman & Wakefield. Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay placed a distant second, with rents averaging $2,400 per square foot. The research comes from “Main Streets Across the World,” a research report that Cushman & Wakefield releases annually. It tracks over 500 of the top retail streets in the world by prime rental value. Across the U.S., retail rents increased 6.9 percent year-over-year. Seattle experienced the sharpest increase at 27 percent, though at $70 per square foot, is still the least expensive U.S. market tracked by the report. Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles also saw a dramatic rent spike — 23 percent — which maintained the street’s second-place finish in the U.S. with rents of $800 per square foot. Other U.S. markets singled out for strong growth were Chicago (Michigan Avenue), Miami (Palm Beach) and San Francisco (Union Square). “In San Francisco, a combination of a bustling tourism market — the city is one of the top international destinations — and an improving local economy has led to strong luxury …

All but one of the 10 largest office markets in the country can expect to see improvement in real estate fundamentals in 2016, according to a third-quarter report titled “Top Office Metros Snapshot” from Colliers International. The report measures absorption, rents and vacancy rates in 10 major U.S. metro areas — Manhattan, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston and Seattle. In the third quarter of 2015, vacancies declined in all of the top 10 metros except Houston. Overall vacancy across the markets decreased to 12.9 percent, which is 30 basis points lower than the second quarter and 60 basis points lower than a year prior. Absorption trends were mixed overall. Only half of the metros saw more office absorption in the third quarter than in the second quarter, but the report notes that all but Los Angeles still recorded positive absorption. For example, Dallas saw less absorption in the third quarter, but still managed to absorb more than 5.6 million square feet of office space. “With construction restrained in most markets, even this moderate leasing has helped reduce the backlog of vacant space, enabling vacancies to continue to track downward,” according to the Colliers report. …

CHICAGO — The number of new construction projects rose considerably in the third quarter of 2015 in markets across the country, according to data compiled by Chicago-based BidClerk, a leading provider of construction project data in the United States and Canada. The BidClerk Construction Index (BCI) reported more than 76,000 new projects valued at over $200 billion nationally in third quarter 2015; an upswing of 21,000 projects and $35 billion from third quarter 2014. Markets that saw spikes in new construction from second quarter numbers were Texas; Florida; Washington, D.C.; Pennsylvania; and the Southwestern U.S. In the third quarter, Texas recorded a 10 percent uptick in the number of actively bidding projects, with more than 3,800 projects at a combined contract value of $17 billion. High-profile projects out for bid in the third quarter included a $575 million addition and expansion of an educational facility in Fort Worth, and the $325 million Liberty Mutual offices at Legacy West in Plano. Areas in the report by BidClerk include Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, El Paso, Houston and San Antonio. More than 2,100 construction projects with a combined contract value over $8.4 billion were actively bidding in the state of Florida in the third …

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After disappointing reports by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in August and September, hiring has surged with employers adding 271,000 new payroll jobs last month, far surpassing the 185,000 jobs forecasted in Bloomberg’s survey of economists. Revisions to the August and September reports were also minor, totaling only 12,000 jobs. While the hiring surge is positive in many ways for the commercial real estate industry, it may also prove to be a source of negativity, as it is likely to lead to a rise in interest rates. Many — including Ryan Severino, senior economist and director of research at Reis Inc. — were surprised by the findings in the October jobs report. “I was surprised not so much that the figure exceeded the forecasts, but by the magnitude by which it exceeded it,” says Severino. “I thought that the disruption of the past couple of months was a blip and this helps to confirm that.” While the hiring surge is unequivocally positive for commercial property leasing markets, as employers will take on more space to accommodate growing staffs, the report increases the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will raise the short-term federal funds rate — the interest rate at which banks and …

What will drive real estate and economic decisions in the future? Members of The Counselors of Real Estate (CRE) recently tackled that all-important question in a series of panel discussions at the organization’s annual convention in Charlotte, N.C. The organization, which serves 1,100 members worldwide and represents no single property specialty, is known for providing objective, balanced perspectives on critical issues affecting commercial and residential real estate. What follows are seven major takeaways stemming from this year’s convention. Big-box retail will not surrender to e-commerce — In a discussion led by Michael MaRous, president of Park Ridge, Ill.-based real estate advisory firm MaRous and Co., panelists stated that retail adaptation and integration of Internet shopping will be crucial in the coming years. The panel emphasized the need for big-box chains to create smaller formats more compatible with urban core markets. These smaller concepts, the panel believes, should be implemented alongside larger formats in select shopping centers. Drones are not novelties, toys, hazards or nuisances — Members of the Counselors of Real Estate believe drones to be essential tools that will open doors for smart users of the technology. “Drones are more affordable than ever, making aerial data gathering a mandatory piece …

Demand for office space decelerated slightly in the third quarter of 2015, but remained high enough to result in one of the strongest quarters of the current expansion, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s latest U.S. Office Snapshot report. The U.S. office market absorbed 17.3 million square feet of office space during the third quarter, which was down 10 percent from the level recorded in the second quarter. Still, demand remained strong enough to offset the limited amount of new office product deliveries, which in turn helped the vacancy rate inch downward from 14.4 percent in the second quarter to 14.2 percent in the third quarter. “As vacancy dips below equilibrium in most markets, the construction pipeline is ramping up,” notes the report. Approximately 95.1 million square feet of new office space was under construction at the end of September. Office Rents on the Rise The weighted average rental growth rate increased in the third quarter, posting a year-over-year jump of 4.7 percent. About 90 percent of all U.S. markets are experiencing positive rental growth, and more than 40 percent have seen year-over-year growth above 5 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Meanwhile, Real Capital Analytics (RCA) reports that office investment …