Market Reports

Philadelphia Suburbs Attract Apartment Construction, City Draws Investors

by Taylor Williams February 7, 2018

Suburban Philadelphia Update The suburban Philadelphia apartment market had a very successful 2017, with no slow down anticipated for 2018. Fundamentals remain strong with low interest rates and increased demand from outside buyers, which is compressing cap rates even further than historical lows. Some highlighted sales include Willowyck Apartments in Montgomery County, which sold at a sub-5 percent cap rate on trailing 12-month numbers, and Declan House in Ardmore, which recently sold at a pro forma cap rate of 5 percent. These are two of numerous transactions that have sold at historically low cap rates over the last 12 months in suburban Philadelphia. We are also seeing more newly constructed Class A, highly amenitized properties in suburban Philadelphia that are targeting rents at north of $2.75 per square foot. Some successes have included the Maybrook, a 250-unit newly constructed property in Narberth/Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. The complex opened for leasing in late 2017 and they have been achieving rents in the $2.75- to $3-per-square-foot range. Another new construction success story is the influx of more than 800 apartments located in close proximity to Towne Center in King of Prussia. The properties include Indigo 301 and Hanover Valley Forge, among others. Both properties …

February 7, 2018

Market Reports New Jersey Northeast Northeast Market Reports Office Pennsylvania

Greater Philadelphia Office Fundamentals Reflect Continued Strength

by Taylor Williams October 4, 2017

The Greater Philadelphia office market is seeing a few exciting development projects and steady interest in investment opportunities. Southern New Jersey The office sector in Southern New Jersey has exhibited overall strong fundamentals, underpinned by increased new investments from outside of the Greater Philadelphia region and economic inflows to support local economic expansion. The U.S. economy continues to grow moderately and add jobs, with the national unemployment rate dropping to a 16-year low. These conditions are helping to generate demand that is reverberating throughout the real estate sector, especially for office space. Office leasing activity has been on an upswing in 2017. The overall tone is positive, and vacancy rates have been stable for the past few quarters, hovering just above 10 percent. The second quarter posted approximately 395,155 square feet of new leases and renewals. This is a 24 percent increase in activity from the first quarter and an incredible 58 percent increase compared to the second quarter a year ago. New leases represented approximately 43.4 percent of all deals for the quarter. Notable deals ranged from 5,000 to 31,000 square feet. The office investment and sales market is also showing increased activity. Buyers continue to take advantage of …

October 4, 2017

Industrial Market Reports Northeast Northeast Market Reports Pennsylvania

Industrial Real Estate and the Pennsylvania Pangaea

by Taylor Williams September 13, 2017

Eastern Pennsylvania’s industrial markets continue to thrive due to low vacancy rates, increased barriers to entry, demand by occupiers and the institutional capital community’s ever-increasing appetite for industrial product. While the specific submarkets have unique nuances associated with the local economic drivers, highway networks, taxation, and labor base, the overall demand by tenants and the capital community alike is driven by elementary economic rules of supply versus demand met by supply chain demand drivers. In a world that is buying a higher percentage of its goods online each and every year, this geography offers the unique ability to reach almost half of the U.S. population within a one-day truck drive and better one-day or two-day delivery service from the two major providers, UPS and FedEx. This thriving market is technically four distinct submarkets inclusive of the Lehigh Valley, Northeastern, Central and Southeastern Pennsylvania. For those less familiar with the nomenclature of this geography, it’s easiest to think of the Lehigh Valley as the general vicinity of Easton through Bethlehem and Allentown and along I-78 past Hamburg. Central Pennsylvania is the region inclusive of Harrisburg, York, Carlisle, Chambersburg, Greencastle and Lancaster. Northeastern Pennsylvania is the combination of the MSAs including Pottsville, …

September 13, 2017

Market Reports Northeast Northeast Market Reports Pennsylvania Retail

Redevelopment Drives Much of the Retail Story in Pittsburgh

by Camren Skelton June 14, 2017

Pittsburgh retail can be summed up in three words: location, location, location — and the original definition of great real estate has never been more pronounced than it is today in the Pittsburgh retail market. According to some publications, retail and retailers appear to be struggling almost everywhere for many different reasons, including online sales, too many stores, market conditions and oversaturation of product. However, as of year-end 2016, CoStar indicated that the overall Pittsburgh retail market occupancy rate was 96.8 percent. Pittsburgh has natural barriers to entry for retail due to its topography, which includes numerous hills and valleys, making it often times impossible to build a “newer, bigger, better” retail property across the street. As a result, many developers have successfully repurposed older centers through adaptive reuse, converting them in keeping with the latest and greatest retail trends. Other older centers have successfully withstood the test of time, replacing outdated retail concepts with today’s current concepts at significantly lower costs than building a new center. Adaptive reuse of Pittsburgh retail started decades ago when the May Company relocated Kaufmann’s Department Stores from four freestanding locations into the dominant regional malls, leaving one- and two-story 200,000-square-foot boxes vacant. Local …

June 14, 2017

Market Reports Northeast Northeast Market Reports Office Pennsylvania

Office Leasing Down in Pittsburgh, But Tech Sector is Growing

by Camren Skelton June 7, 2017

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) listed Pittsburgh among its top five markets to watch in the 2017 Emerging Trends in Real Estate report due to its low cost to do business; access to talent via four major universities; and its status as an emerging tech hub with the likes of Uber, Google, Facebook and most recently, Amazon, establishing regional research and development centers in the city. Citizens Bank announced that it would remain a tenant in 525 William Penn Place, where it occupies approximately 150,000 square feet, reporting that its management views Pittsburgh as a growth driver for the company. Ford Motor Company inked a $1 billion deal with Argo AI, a Pittsburgh start-up that focuses on artificial intelligence and robotics, to expand its research and development of self-driving cars. Ford now is surveying the Greater Downtown submarket for space to construct a 100,000-square-foot facility to hold the 200 employees it expects to hire over the next 24 months. Despite the region’s growing popularity as a tech hub, leasing activity in first quarter 2017 reported a 23.3 percent drop from the same period 2016, ending the quarter at just less than 600,000 square feet, while overall net absorption dropped an …

June 7, 2017

Industrial Market Reports Northeast Northeast Market Reports Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Continues to Be One of the Top Performing Industrial Markets in U.S.

by Camren Skelton March 8, 2017

Philadelphia is well positioned in the Northeast to flourish in the industrial sector in 2017. With a centralized position in the Boston-New York-Washington, D.C. corridor, Philadelphia has capitalized on its superb location to firmly establish itself as a distribution hub leading to sustained positive momentum in all key market sectors. The e-commerce market has been experiencing significant growth and the demand for near immediacy in delivery has been the driving force behind the strong performance of the industrial sector nationwide over the past few years, especially in the Northeast. In 2016, the industrial sector in greater Philadelphia had a banner year for absorption with a net positive of 9.27 million square feet absorbed. That represents the largest growth in occupancy since the onset of the Great Recession and places Philadelphia among the top performing markets in the U.S. for net absorption in 2016. Vacancy rates for the region have fallen to 6.9 percent — the lowest they’ve been since 2008. Asking rental rates rose steadily throughout 2016 and stood at $4.77 per square foot at year-end – the highest they’ve been since 2008. Following a record year for industrial sales in 2015, sales volume remained strong in the greater Philadelphia …

March 8, 2017

Market Reports Multifamily Northeast Northeast Market Reports Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Multifamily Sees Robust Construction, Expects to Maintain Occupancy

by Camren Skelton March 1, 2017

Center City Philadelphia continues to be one of the most vibrant residential downtowns in the country. Millennials and empty-nesters are attracted to the city’s myriad live, work and play opportunities, and the total number of Greater Center City residents has risen 17 percent since 2000. Overall the market is holding up strong; the average occupancy is 95 percent and it is expected to remain at this level for the foreseeable future. Annual effective rent growth is projected to be 3 percent in 2017 and average 2.8 percent from 2018 to 2020. The MSA’s largest job sector — higher education and healthcare services — has increased by 17 percent since 2005 and now provides 37 percent of all jobs in Philadelphia. Total job growth is projected to be 1.6 percent or more than 15,000 new jobs in 2017. Since the beginning of 2015, 23 companies, including EisnerAmper, WeWork and GSI Health, have established offices in the submarket. Multifamily investors and developers have been focused on Center City for the past few years. However, interest in some suburban markets has increased significantly as evidenced by the development and sale activity in 2016. More than $1 billion of sale transactions were recorded in …

March 1, 2017

Market Reports Northeast Northeast Market Reports Office Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Office Inventory to Grow by 1.8 MSF This Year as Rents Increase

by Taylor Williams February 22, 2017

Philadelphia’s diverse local economy, healthy hiring trends and area-employers’ ability to draw fresh talent from the metro’s deep college-graduate pool, continue to attract businesses to the area and support improvements in the office property segment. In 2016, Philadelphia firms increased payrolls by 1.9 percent with the creation of 54,000 new positions. Hiring was driven by office-using employment sectors which, over the four-quarter period ending with the second quarter of 2016, accounted for the addition of 21,700 jobs, or nearly 37 percent of all new hires. This year, it is expected that the local workforce will add 49,000 to its ranks, representing a 1.7 percent expansion. Hiring will continue to be strong among office-using companies, as well as in the healthcare and education segments. In the first half of 2016, developers sluggishly completed 178,000 square feet of new office space. In the second half of last year, the construction pipeline exploded, and by year-end 1.2 million square feet of office space had been delivered to the marketplace, with a significant amount of completions pre-leased, which helped mitigate any effects to vacancy levels. Office projects completed in 2016 were spread throughout the metro within the submarkets of Delaware County, Lehigh-Northampton, Harrisburg Area …

February 22, 2017

Industrial Market Reports Northeast Northeast Market Reports Pennsylvania

Robust Philadelphia Retail Market Generates High Competition for Space

by Taylor Williams February 15, 2017

When it comes to the Philadelphia real estate market, the retail industry is the hot topic for many commercial real estate agents. Per a Center City district report released in early December of 2016, the city has experienced a $1 billion surge in retail spending. Subsequently, prime retail rents in Philadelphia have risen by almost 90 percent in the past five years — second to only Miami when compared to cities across the nation. Sales of retail centers in center city peaked in late 2016 at over 18 percent higher than their former top-most numbers, seen in 2008. Popular Philadelphia areas such as Walnut and Chestnut streets have been subject to high-end retail rush. The retail spending increase is thought to be a direct result of the Philadelphia metropolitan area’s new job positions. Going into the fourth quarter, the city increased its jobs by 2.2 percent compared to the previous year’s numbers. Philadelphia’s local rate of employment stood at over half a percent higher than the national employment rate in late 2016. Many of the new positions — created in well- paying, upper-echelon employment sectors — have facilitated a rise in the median household income, and subsequently the disposable income, …

February 15, 2017

Market Reports Northeast Northeast Market Reports Office Pennsylvania

The Lehigh Valley Office Sector Welcomes New Tenants and New Developments

by Jaime Lackey July 13, 2016

The Lehigh Valley has seen no shortage of success stories in recent months when it comes to the region’s office sector. The third-largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley is located 60 miles north of Philadelphia and 90 miles west of New York City. The region consists of 62 municipalities within Lehigh and Northampton counties, including the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton. Last year, Guardian Life Insurance, one of the nation’s largest mutual life providers, announced it would establish a three-story corporate office building in Hanover Township, Northampton County. That 281,680-square-foot facility is expected to be completed by late 2016 and will house 1,500 employees. In March, Paychex Inc., a provider of payroll, human resources, retirement, and insurance services, announced it will undertake a $1.3 million expansion of its facility in South Whitehall Township, Lehigh County. That project will nearly double the company’s square footage and will create 100 new jobs. Many economic factors have contributed to the growth in Lehigh Valley’s office sector. These include its central location, well-developed transportation infrastructure, availability of suitable office space, high relative broadband rank, access to markets, and strong workforce. All these factors led Atlanta-based Garner Economics to identify high-value business …

July 13, 2016

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