Cassidy Turley recently released its Third Quarter Office Market Snapshot for Northern and Central New Jersey. We detailed the absorption rates, asking rents and availability in both Central and Northern New Jersey and found the Grow NJ tax incentives and the movement of midsize companies played significant roles in shaping the market. Although not shocking revelations, these factors help explain surges and lags and why some markets are still feeling the crunch of previous quarters, even though employment rates have increased. Shifts in the Newark submarket, particularly Prudential vacating large portion of 3 Gateway Center and moving into its own office tower, created an uptick in availability. The resulting availability at the Gateway complex was a large factor in the 86,084 square feet of negative absorption recorded during the third quarter throughout Northern New Jersey. However, the impact was lessened as the owner of 3 Gateway recently announced Prudential has signed a lease to maintain a 160,000-square-foot presence in the building based on significant internal growth. Interestingly, in many submarkets, the development of a new office building indicates a thriving economy. However, Newark’s economic recovery has been slow. Panasonic’s recent move to a new headquarters and the development of new …
Market Reports
New Jersey’s industrial market took a positive turn in the past 18 months, and now the lack of new development during the downturn has market conditions comparable with any boom period. Occupiers are paying record rents as high as $8 per square foot for new, Class A product, while submarkets such as Port/Airport and Exits 10 and 12 report vacancy below 5 percent. Investor demand for industrial property with credit tenants and decent lease term remaining is literally insatiable. Central New Jersey closed 2013 with 1.2 million square feet of fourth quarter net absorption and a vacancy rate of 6.6 percent, which is a 170–basis-point decrease compared to the end of 2012. Northern New Jersey’s largest -submarket, Meadowlands, has 78.2 million square feet and the submarket posted 1.7 million square feet of net absorption to finish the year with 6.2 percent vacancy. To the south, where average asking rents are $4.87 NNN per square foot, several Central New Jersey submarkets are at sub-6-percent vacancy, including Exit 8A, the region’s largest industrial submarket, which ended 2013 at 5.1 percent vacancy. Mom & Pop, Meet Amazon New Jersey’s traditionally strong base of small- to medium-sized, mom-and-pop end users certainly plays a role …
The New Jersey retail marketplace is finally showing signs of modest recovery for the first time since the recession. Retail is on somewhat stable ground, but not as solid as we would hope. We expect continued bumps caused by the harsh winter we have experienced, the closing of stores by some major national and regional retailers nationwide, and the fact that consumer confidence is still not in a fully stable position. Retail closings and bankruptcy filings continue to remind us that nothing is certain. For example, RadioShack recently announced it will close 1,100 stores nationwide; Pathmark and A&P supermarkets continue to close underperforming stores; and some other retailers such as Loehmann’s, and more recently, Dots women’s apparel chain have filed Chapter 11. But all is not so bleak. There are some new trends in retail that show how the sector continues to reinvent itself in an effort to thrive in this new economy. We saw the economy start to come out its doldrums, especially this past year, with many furniture and home furnishing stores opening in New Jersey for the first time. Paramus — which is one of the strongest retail markets in the U.S. — had several out-of-state furniture …
Located along the New Jersey Turnpike (I-95) in the geographic center of the Boston-Washington, D.C., corridor, the Exit 8A industrial market is situated 45 miles southwest of Manhattan and 60 miles northeast of Philadelphia. This location enables distributors to reach more than 130 million consumers, one-third of the northern American population, within a one-day drive. With currently 67.48 million square feet, it is the largest submarket in Northern New Jersey. The vacancy is currently dramatically down from the double digits of the recession to 8.4 percent. Asking rents are inching up to the mid-$4 range, NNN, due to the tightening of the market and a shortage of attractive development sites at 8A. National and international tenants are drawn to the submarket’s superior highway access and proximity to the New York/New Jersey ports and Newark Liberty International Airport. The Exit 8A submarket is home to national and international distributors, manufacturers, and logistics firms. Companies with a major presence at Exit 8A include The Home Depot, Pearson Education, ConAgra, Crate & Barrel, FedEx, Costco, William Sonoma, Staples, Iron Mountain, Kellogg’s, Petco, Volkswagen, Ford, LG Electronics, Wakefern, L’Oreal, and Raymour & Flanigan among many others. The 8A industrial market’s desirability is best illustrated …
With nearly 24,500 units planned, under construction or recently completed, Northern New Jersey’s impressive multifamily development pipeline continues as one of the region’s hottest discussion topics. Specifically, inquiring minds want to know how this growth in inventory will impact market fundamentals moving forward. The bulk of the development pipeline and activity (59 percent) is taking place along the Hudson River Gold Coast, from Jersey City to Edgewater. Just north of Edgewater, Fort Lee is seeing a surge of new construction. Three projects are underway or at the cusp of breaking ground there; over the next two years, they will add 1,000 units within a three-block radius of the entrance of the George Washington Bridge. This will have a transformative effect on the neighborhood. This raises some questions. At what pace will the new product be absorbed? What will happen to short- and longer-term rent growth? Northern New Jersey always has maintained high, unmet demand for newly constructed communities (especially along the Gold Coast), evidenced by high occupancy levels and rent growth for Class A product that outperforms the regional and national market averages. Currently, asking rent for Class A communities is at an all-time high of $2,043 per month. The …
A few things happened recently that may have long-term impacts on the Northern New Jersey office market: • Regional employment continues to improve. • Facebook is more than doubling its occupancy in Manhattan. • Merck made it official and is listing its 1-million-square-foot campus for sale. • Governor Chris Christie signed into law the Economic Opportunity Act of 2013. Regional employment continues to improve. Northern New Jersey falls within an MSA that includes New York City, Long Island and a portion of Pennsylvania. The unemployment rate for this MSA stood at 8 percent in August this year compared with 9.5 percent in July 2012, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Using the theory that a rising tide floats all boats, the more people at work in the region, the better our economy performs. And everyone who works in real estate knows that real estate absorption is connected to one thing and one thing only: jobs. Facebook recently inked an office lease at 770 Broadway in Manhattan for one floor of 85,000 square feet and a portion of a second floor, which more than doubles the approximately 40,000 square feet the social networking company currently occupies in New …
South Jersey has room to grow, with several proposed ground-up centers taking center stage in the seven-county region as developers capitalize on residential growth tied to the market’s relative affordability. Meanwhile, “redevelopment” is the operative word for the 14 counties in the state’s more densely populated north and central regions, where industrial sites are being converted into mixed-use centers. Fueled by big-box absorption, the vacancy rate for open-air and freestanding retail in the northern counties inched down to 8.1 percent in mid-2013 from 8.2 percent a year ago. Central Jersey’s vacancies rose to 9.8 percent from 9.1 percent a year earlier, driven by small-shop closures. In the south, the average is 9 percent. Rents in the north crept up 0.1 percent in the first three quarters of 2013, with a median of $20 to $26 per square foot in top markets; central counties crept up 0.3 percent to a median of $15.50 to $16. South Jersey rents increased just 0.1 percent in the first two quarters of 2013, with a median of $13. For regional malls, one continuing trend is the move by owners to take interior spaces and turn them outward for more of a lifestyle feel. This began …
From a macro perspective, the Northern New Jersey office market has remained stagnant and continues to tread water. In 2012, corporations with capital stayed on the sidelines. The overall availability rate hovered around 21 percent with an average asking rent of $24.29 per square foot at the close of the fourth quarter, and those numbers were not expected to change much in the first quarter of this year. The few recent significant leasing transactions were not enough to move the occupancy needle. The biggest deals were Biomet Bone & Spine Healing Technologies’ lease of 102,224 square feet at 399 Jefferson Road in Parsippany; EMC Corp.’s lease of 81,700 square feet at 184 Liberty Corner Road in Warren; and Tower Insurance Co.’s 76,892-square-foot lease at Harborside Financial Center II in the Jersey City Hudson Waterfront project. The Tower Insurance lease was a boost to the Hudson Waterfront market. For a long time, the waterfront was one of the few bright spots in the state with even a brief period of rent growth. However, in 2012 a large amount of shadow space came on the market and led to roughly 500,000 square feet of negative absorption. With the election year over, it …
In the words of Benjamin Franklin, New Jersey’s multifamily housing investment market is “a barrel tapped at both ends,” with fluid trading activity extending from the Hudson River’s Gold Coast to the shores of the Delaware River. Statewide, multifamily properties continue their reign as one of the healthiest investments. Low vacancy rates, convenience to mass transit and a high concentration of properties, particularly in Central and Northern New Jersey, continue to feed the appetite of investors who are hungry for virtually any building class. Thanks to the state’s choice location along the Boston/New York City/Philadelphia/Washington, D.C., corridor, New Jersey has historically been, and continues to be, one of the strongest and most desirable markets for multifamily investments. From urban walk-up buildings to suburban garden-style apartment complexes, the Garden State boasts some of the best multifamily housing stock in the nation. This is further bolstered by a strong average occupancy rate of more than 95 percent and durable rent growth. Both of these conditions are fueled by the enduring effects of the residential housing crisis as well as people “priced out” of cities like Philadelphia and Manhattan, who are seeking a more affordable living option. These migratory tenants are flocking to …
The rising demand for bulk warehouse space among e-commerce users is driving the New Jersey industrial market. After climbing to 14.1 percent during the third quarter of 2010, the vacancy rate for warehouse space for the 10-county region in Northern and Central New Jersey has declined to 12.5 percent during the first quarter of 2013. More than 7 million square feet of inventory has been absorbed since the middle of 2011. Increased demand resulted in rising average asking rents during 2012, the first year of steady increases since 2007. Nearly 90 percent of the net absorption occurred in Central New Jersey, more specifically along the New Jersey Turnpike from exits 7A to 8A, where vacancy rates ascended to as high as 22.5 percent during the third quarter of 2009 and currently stand at 14.4 percent. Adding to the momentum of activity in Central New Jersey is Amazon’s commitment to open two large fulfillment centers here, demonstrating the significant impact that e-commerce is having on the state’s commercial real estate market. The first of these two warehouses, which is slated to open in 2014 in Robbinsville (Mercer County), will generate an estimated 700 jobs and more than $22 million in tax …