Is suburban retail dead? The short answer is “of course not.” While the recession was especially hard on many suburbs, recent activity indicates that conditions have improved greatly. To better understand where we are, we need to examine where we have been. During the real estate boom leading up to 2007-08, retail developments were sprouting up everywhere. Many developers expanded farther and farther away from Chicago, while incurring an additional risk through overleverage and speculative projects. The economy started to crash about the same time that many real estate projects came to market. Developers and landlords quickly discovered that there was a lack of consumer demand necessary to drive retailers to lease space in the newest suburban centers. Many retailers were attracted to the suburbs due to high household income levels. However, population density was often overlooked. Even the most affluent suburbs experienced difficulties as too many retailers were chasing a limited amount of customers. Tale of Two Markets As the economy and overall real estate market started to recover, many retailers focused their energies on opening stores in Chicago’s core metro areas. Neighborhoods such as the West Loop, Streeterville, River North and Wicker Park were on fire. For many …
Market Reports
There is no question that the technology sector is one of the principal drivers of our commercial real estate sector today. Downtowns nationally have seen an influx of new economy firms because of the presence of young knowledge workers in CBDs — and Chicago is one of its stars. More than $265 million flowed into Chicago-area digital tech companies during the third quarter of 2013. In addition to startups, this growth caused an exodus of firms out of suburban business parks into areas populated by millennials like the West Loop and River North. Developers are planning to build 8 million square feet of office space in downtown Chicago during the next 24 months. Arrivals and Departures Following Motorola Mobility’s move out of Schaumburg, Gogo Inc. signed a 230,000-square-foot lease to move its headquarters to 111 N. Canal St., shifting more than 500 workers from two buildings in Itasca. Meanwhile, OfficeMax Inc. is leaving behind 344,000 square feet in Naperville to consolidate in Boca Raton, Fla. Much of the media coverage has focused on these relocations as the only story worth telling about the Chicago office sector. But the reality is the suburbs aren’t throwing in the towel. Defying conventional wisdom, …
Modest economic growth in the Chicago metro area will support further improvements in apartment vacancy and rents this year. Staffing levels grew in the first half of 2013, though the pace of hiring eased from prior periods. Vacancy will remain lower than normal in the near term, though temporary imbalances between supply and demand will occur over the next two years. This trend is especially likely in the city, where the number of new luxury units aimed at upwardly mobile young households and affluent older households is increasing. New sources of demand, however, will also emerge, including echo boomer and new immigrant households. Properties listed for sale typically elicit multiple offers, placing upward pressure on prices and compressing cap rates. Northside neighborhoods remain a targeted area, and the best assets in those submarkets can trade at cap rates from 5 to 6 percent. Investors continue to look for underperforming assets and are giving greater consideration to eventual exit strategies. Interest in Class C and Class D assets in blue-collar neighborhoods on the west side and south side is also gaining traction. Recent transactions have established $30,000 per unit to $35,000 per unit as the strike point to execute deals, and …
Recently employed residents are forming new rental households in metro Chicago, generating positive net absorption, a decline in vacancy and a rise in apartment rents. Additional payroll growth will stimulate new demand and reduce marketwide vacancy to its lowest annual level in 5 years by year’s end to about 4 percent in the city and suburbs. Over the longer term, the market’s stature as a primary destination for college graduates should sustain a vacancy rate of approximately 4 percent, though the delivery of new rentals may more significantly offset demand growth in the quarters ahead. The potential influx of college graduates, many of whom will occupy rentals and remain there for an extended period as they pay off student loans, has attracted developers. While the pipeline of planned projects in the suburbs is also expanding, the greatest potential effect of supply growth will register in the city, where completions will rise this year and additional projects wait to proceed. Steady hiring in the first quarter has sparked demand. Across the metro area, 8,000 jobs were added during the period, raising the number of positions created in the past 6 months to 14,400. The private sector continues to set the pace, …
The Chicago downtown office market is on a roll. Vacancies have fallen for more than 12 months straight as corporations pull the trigger on new or rehabbed office space in marquee locations to accommodate consolidation and growth. One of the big stories is that the market is far more geographically diverse today. We are seeing the suburban sprawl in reverse as corporations leave far-flung business parks to seek out trendier 24-hour neighborhoods such as River North (Chicago’s tightest submarket), the West Loop and the Millennium Park/East Loop-area. Where you work is also increasingly where you live. Chicago’s 136.7 million-square-foot office CBD market reported a 14.9 percent vacancy rate at the end of the first quarter, a welcome decline from the 15.4 percent reported during the fourth quarter of 2011. According to CBRE Group, downtown vacancy has fallen in every quarter since the end of 2010, when the rate was 17 percent. It peaked at 17.3 percent midway through 2010. Overall vacancy numbers include sublease space. Direct vacancy was 13.6 percent in the first quarter of 2012, down from 14 percent in the prior period. Compare that to the suburbs, where the first-quarter vacancy rates rose to 24.6 percent after consecutive …
Lou Kahnweiler, the founder of Bennett & Kahnweiler, the predecessor to Colliers International here in Chicago, is reported to have once declared, “Industrial Real Estate is a great way to get rich slowly.” He meant buying or building buildings, putting 25-year debt on them, keeping them leased and was the way to wake up rich 25 years later. During the late 1990s and most of the 2000s, industrial real estate in Chicago was the place to get rich quick, as developers couldn't build fast enough to satisfy the demand of well-heeled investors who, by 2006, were actually paying more for vacant properties than those actually encumbered by leases and demanding tenants. “Buy it and figure it out” was their strategy. Flips, portfolio premiums, cap rate compression and an overall “drunken sailor” mentality generated lots of fees for brokers and huge profits for many developers and investors until the music stopped. I vividly recall touring in 2006 with a group of investors from the East Coast who, after looking at the per square foot prices of property around O'Hare and comparing them to New Jersey, said that they wished they were brokers and owners in Chicago, because it must be so …
The U.S. apartment sector staged a strong recovery in 2010 well ahead of expectations, despite modest job creation and stubbornly high unemployment. Net absorption surged, with occupied stock rising by nearly 200,000 units, double the number of apartments constructed and the highest level on record since 2000. Several factors contributed to high levels of absorption, including the release of pent-up renter demand as households de-bundled in the wake of the recession. In addition, apartments benefited from private-sector job growth in the critical 20- to 34-year-old cohort, expiration of the homebuyer tax credit, displaced foreclosed homeowners entering the renter pool, immigration and lower unit turnover. Renting also became a lifestyle and economic choice for many households as the effects of the housing collapse and recession persisted. Continued recovery in 2011 depends more heavily on improvements in the job market, which should gain momentum as the year progresses. Building on that momentum, operating conditions in the suburban Chicago apartment market will strengthen considerably this year, building on improvements in vacancy and rents recorded in 2010. Apartment construction will sink to one of the lowest levels in the past decade, minimizing competition for tenants at a time when renewed job growth will accelerate …
For those who were expecting some market relief by now, there is not a great deal of positive prognosis to provide. Despite the slow rise in the stock market since its fall, the market continues to suffer from mediocre progress with its continuous ups and downs. There is still much change needed in the global economy to sustain the stock market growth we need to realize a full and effective recovery of other markets, including commercial real estate. But I would like to say that we are now bouncing off the bottom with an ability to understand where market corrections have settled in terms of value, cap rates, absorption and development, which is all but non-existent. With historic high unemployment and the uncertainty of what new pothole we might hit while we are finding our way out, it may still be a rough year or more ahead of us. Much depends on how the commercial lending industry plays out the myriad transactions that still linger in their portfolios. The penalties for a defer-and-deny or an extend-and-pretend philosophy may not yet to been fully realized. On a positive note, if consumer confidence continues to eek up, while other economic indicators remain …
The retail market in Chicago, mirroring that of the nation, has been plagued with vacancies as a result of retailers suffering from lack of consumer demand. From 2003 to 2008, roughly 80 percent of the American GDP was comprised of spending. This means that the country’s output, or contribution to the world, has been focused on consumption. By contrast, from 1990 to 2006, the earnings of individual workers in the United States increased by less than 0.5 percent per year, while the GDP increased about 3.6 percent per year. This consumer psychology led to increased debt and home equity lines of credit given to many unqualified borrowers. The additional debt introduced to the American economy enabled people to spend money on items they were not, in reality, able to afford. How does this shift in consumption impact retail real estate in the third largest metropolitan statistical area in America? It moves the consumer to buy goods based on need and reduces the retail therapy or impulse buy. In the same way, business owners also make cuts in acquiring goods for luxury and begin focusing on the items needed for basic survival. Add to that a staggering 11 percent unemployment rate …
The old adage that every cloud has a silver lining holds true for the St. Louis industrial market. After posting positive absorption during every quarter of the current recession, the industrial market got cloudier when Chrysler shuttered its St. Louis plants during the early part of the third quarter. That placed more than 5.1 million square feet of space on the market and boosted the vacancy rate a couple points. The auto industry’s woes trickled down to a number of Chrysler’s suppliers as well. Another 2.1 million square feet of auto supplier buildings also became available. So where’s the silver lining? Actually, there are several. For starters, Chrysler’s plants and its suppliers are primarily located in the South County submarket. Historically, South County has been one of the area’s strongholds for industrial, with a vacancy rate of only 4.2 percent at the end of the second quarter. The availability of space now opens up opportunities for large and small users. A number of companies have already taken advantage of these opportunities. Colt Industries, the area’s distributor for Corian countertops, purchased a nearly 100,000-square-foot building formerly occupied by Dakkota Integrated Systems, which supplied vehicle interiors. An aerosol can supplier has signed …