Despite the maturing commercial real estate cycle, Boston’s thriving economy continues to generate positive momentum for the metro’s multifamily property marketplace. Over the 12-month period ending June 30, 2017, area employers added 55,700 positions, growing the employment base by 2.1 percent. Job creation was driven by the typically high-wage healthcare and professional fields, and more than 30 percent of the new roles created were in office-using sectors. This healthy growth has supported a surge in household formation, which — along with the high cost of homeownership — is sustaining substantial demand for rental units. The significant affordability gap between renting and homeownership favors renting over homeownership by $591 per month. This, in combination with rising office-using employment, continues to boost apartment demand, which will support this year’s robust construction pipeline. Developers are on track to deliver more than 9,500 units to the marketplace in 2017, marking the highest point of the current cycle. Builders have focused their efforts in the urban core, particularly in the Fenway, Brookline and Brighton submarkets, and in first-ring suburbs. Nearly two-thirds of incoming units will be inside the city limits or in the closest suburban markets like Cambridge and Revere. The two largest deliveries each …
The Financial District, Back Bay, and Seaport continue to experience strong tenant demand with a vacancy of 10.3 percent and continued rent appreciation. The Seaport, which has experienced tremendous growth for the last four years, received national attention with GE committing to move its corporate headquarters to the market and continues to make headlines with Amazon committing to 150,000 square feet. In addition, 121 Seaport Boulevard just leased to PTC (250,000 square feet) and Alexion (150,000 square feet). One of the biggest trends throughout Boston continues to be the popularity of the Class B buildings. Most people think of Cambridge as one of the premier lab markets in the world. Cambridge has the lowest office vacancy of all the submarkets in Greater Boston at 4.2 percent, making it one of the strongest office markets in the country. Even pre-leasing is strong, with Alexandria Real Estate receiving commitments for all 431,000 square feet at 100 Binney Street, signing Facebook and Bristol-Meyers Squibb as the lead tenants. Space is so tight that, even when you include sublet space, a tenant looking for more than 50,000 square feet only has four options in the submarket. Top Class A product is now achieving rents …
Retail vacancy levels declined in 2012 and 2013 in Eastern Massachusetts following several years of rising vacancy rates during the Great Recession. But since 2013, vacancy rates have been on the rise as shopping habits continue to tilt toward online options. In 2016, retail inventory gained modestly, reaching 194.2 million square feet, an increase of 0.5 percent, although no major center opened during the year. The region added 488,800 square feet of vacant retail space, and the vacancy rate increased to 9 percent. Big box closings — notably Sam’s Club, JCPenney, and Kmart — and the departures of Citibank and City Sports, were the primary cause of increasing vacancy. Nonetheless, the region experienced positive absorption, netting 573,600 square feet. As reported in The KeyPoint Report: Eastern Massachusetts/Greater Boston, Boston and Cambridge ranked one and two in the list of top 10 towns by retail square footage. Abington tops the rankings for lowest vacancy rate. Eight of the top 10 towns with the highest vacancy rates are repeats from the previous year; new additions include Wrentham, site of the 135,000-square-foot Wrentham Crossing, which is vacant and currently for sale. The under-2,500-square-foot size classification remains the largest segment of the market, and …
E-commerce and the growth of the digital age have become important factors in the tightening industrial real estate market. With single-digit vacancy rates becoming the norm in nearly all of the Greater Boston submarkets, existing product cannot supply the space necessary to meet current market demand. Consumers’ shopping attitudes have changed, and retailers are having to adjust their strategies to meet their needs. In 2016, the Greater Boston industrial market recorded vacancies averaging 6.8 percent, the lowest in more than 15 years. The thriving e-commerce industry has been a large factor in the spike in demand. Last year, major e-commerce tenants like Amazon, FedEx and Wayfair expanded their presence in the Boston market with new leases on distribution centers, pushing 2016 absorption to almost 6 million square feet, an all-time record. Retailers are now looking to expand their coverage with multiple warehousing locations, pushing for facilities proximate to their specified consumer base. Instead of having one regional warehouse/distribution center, retail giants have zeroed in on infill submarkets surrounding cities to locate multiple warehouses close to the population center. Just last year, Amazon leased a 96,600-square-foot warehouse in Everett, minutes from Downtown Boston, which would become a base for grocery and …
Greater Boston’s office market is continuing a very strong streak, closing 2016 and the fourth quarter on a good note. The year saw 1.4 million square feet positively absorbed with 789,000 square feet absorbed in the fourth quarter. The current vacancy rate is 12.7 percent, slightly lower than the market average over the last five years of 13.6 percent. Average Class A asking rents are $43.12 per square foot, which has appreciated 9.1 percent in the last three years. Neither the quarter nor the year are aberrations. The market is on an extended run of positive returns. Office space in the Greater Boston market has now seen positive absorption in 14 of the last 15 quarters, accumulating 12 million square feet positively absorbed over that period. The Boston CBD contributed 59,000 square feet of positive absorption in the fourth quarter, decreasing the vacancy rate 0.1 percentage points to 9.6 percent. The most absorption of the CBD submarkets occurred in the Financial District, which saw 69,000 square feet positively absorbed. Average Class A asking rents are currently $55.09 per square foot in the CBD, led by Back Bay, which has an average asking rate of $62.51 per square foot. Across the …
Investors are attracted to Boston due to its diverse economy, education base and strong market fundamentals. In fact, major corporations like GE, Reebok, New Balance, and most recently Asics have all relocated to the city or are in the planning to relocate or rebrand here. As a result of this heightened interest in Boston as a global headquarters destination, the city is expected to grow, which in turn creates housing demand. Rhythm between Cap Rates and Interest Rates As investors know, there is a direct correlation between cap rates and interest rates. However, while a correlation exists, not all buyer profiles are necessarily affected in the same way in a shifting interest rate environment. Highest impact: Leveraged buyers would be most impacted by rising interest rates since they are typically trying to maximize leverage when pursuing an acquisition. With shifting interest rates, higher rates have a direct impact to potential returns. If leveraged buyers can borrow less at high rates, this has a direct impact to pricing/cap rates. Within the leveraged buyer profile, groups possessing strong balance sheets and banking relationships will be less impacted than groups not necessarily in the same financial position. Moderate impact: Cash and low-leverage buyers …
The last five years have seen a lot of shuffling around for Boston’s mainstay industries, with professional service firms moving to the Seaport and tech companies moving to Kendall Square. Although we’ve seen more new residential and commercial development than ever, there will always be space limitations in Boston, which means there will always be more user demand than there is space on the market. The space left behind from tenants on the move will be easily filled by the next wave of tenants — and the cycle continues. Oxford Properties’ latest announcement of its acquisition of 222 Berkeley St. and 500 Boylston St. in the Back Bay is perhaps the best example of the trajectory model in Boston. And similar to the media and finance switcheroo that Manhattan is experiencing (the media mecca is now downtown and FiDi is now midtown), media companies in Boston are now moving into the financial district and finance firms are moving to the Seaport. Boston Globe Media Partners is close to leasing 75,000 square feet of space at 53 State Street. The publishing company will take some of Goodwin Procter’s block that will be vacated once the company relocates to the Seaport District. …
Despite the clichés and naysayers, Boston’s apartment fundamentals continue to trend at the top of U.S. cities’ forecasts. For developers, investors and borrowers, Boston truly is that city on a hill. Clichés heard often in the commercial real estate community: Interest rates have no place to go but up. Who is going to pay $4.50-per-square-foot rents? Wait until the next wave of units is delivered. Valuation and yield don’t make sense. The facts: Economists have been predicting interest rate increases for the past five years. Market vacancy has been sub-5 percent for more than five years. Every major apartment player owns or is currently building in Boston, averaging $1.2 billion in product for past three years. Boston is a premier gateway city and buyers want in. The Investor Outlook Simplified When cap rates for the most desired real estate class — in a gateway city, in the safest country for investment in the world — average 4.25 percent, it’s a great time to invest. The 2006 cap rates were just 100 basis points above the 10-year risk-free rate. Today they are 2.0 to 2.25 percent. Half of the deals are cash transactions. Locals can only shake their heads at the …
In what was the most dynamic quarter since the dot-com boom in 2000, tenants in Greater Boston absorbed 2 million square feet of office space in the second quarter of 2015. The activity was driven by a number of high-profile construction completions throughout both the urban and suburban areas of the market. The Boston CBD experienced its ninth straight strong quarter with 861,000 square feet absorbed. Notably the activity occurred mostly outside of the boundaries of the “Big 3” Boston submarkets of Back Bay, Seaport District and Financial District (though the latter did absorb 290,000 square feet in its own right). North Station saw a major bump in occupancy with the completion of Converse’s 230,000-square-foot headquarters, causing the submarket’s largest quarterly absorption number on record. Move-ins by Sonos and Safari Books Online added 200,000 square feet of absorption in Midtown, where vacancy has dropped to nearly half of what it was a year ago after State Street’s departure. And development continues at Boston Landing, where the 245,000-square-foot second phase is currently under construction and is already partially pre-leased to the Boston Bruins. Space continues to be scarce in Cambridge, where vacancy is just 5.8 percent and availability is at an …
All of the property sectors in the Boston area are thriving, thanks to one of the strongest economies in the nation. As of April this year, the unemployment rate in Massachusetts was 4.7 percent and in Boston, it was 3.7 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists generally consider employment to be essentially “full” when unemployment rates dip below 5 percent. By comparison, the unemployment rates in neighboring states were 6.3 percent for Connecticut, 3.8 percent for New Hampshire and 6.1 percent for Rhode Island. The U.S. unemployment rate in April was 5.4 percent. Boston’s overall industrial vacancy rate at the close of the second quarter was 8.1 percent, according to CoStar, and includes warehouse/distribution space, flex space and R&D facilities. It was the fourth consecutive quarter that the vacancy rate has remained in the low 8 percent range. Overall net absorption has been negative this year: -82,364 square feet in the second quarter and -41,089 square feet in the first quarter this year. This compares with positive net absorption of more than 3.1 million square feet in the third and fourth quarters of 2014. However, we believe that the first half of this year is a …