Market Reports

For retail tenants and developers alike, Houston’s Space City moniker could easily be interpreted as a kind of tongue-in-cheek double meaning, mainly because space is one thing Houston always has plenty of. Commercial developers have taken full advantage of that space in recent years, adding an eye-opening 16.3 million square feet of retail product over the last 36 months, according to a report from Colliers International. Houston added somewhere between 4 million and 4.5 million square feet of new retail during last year alone. That pedal-to-the-metal pace has been the clear headline for so long now that it almost feels odd to talk about a change of pace. But that’s exactly what seems to be taking place in Houston, as the commercial development marketplace is in the midst of transitioning from the explosive growth of recent years into a more demand-based dynamic. This is not a slowdown so much as a stabilization or a recalibration — a sprinter taking a breath between laps. This is an interesting and perhaps even necessary turn of events. Houston is a development-friendly city with a relative abundance of available and affordable land and a streamlined and generally permissive regulatory environment that makes permits, zoning …

After Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast, the storm’s impacts on commercial real estate were most immediately felt in the single- and multifamily spaces. As the recovery effort got underway, it became clear that some office buildings had been damaged, driving down occupancy in that sector, while demand for industrial materials and space rose. Perhaps because retail occupancy in Houston — which most recently clocked in at 94.6 percent, according to CoStar Group — has been strong throughout the oil downturn, or because most store closures stemmed from employees being unable to get to work, the storm’s impacts on the retail sector have been somewhat trickier to measure. Whatever the case, nearly four months after the storm, retailers in certain industries are seeing their sales figures climb dramatically, and without help from the holiday shopping rush. Grocers Lead the Way The grocery business — a form of brick-and-mortar retail thought to be somewhat insulated from e-commerce — has been at the forefront of retail segments seeing an uptick in sales following Harvey. Residents experiencing power outages and damaged refrigerators generated healthy and immediate demand for groceries. “Grocers were particularly impacted by Harvey, and in the aftermath it …

As the real estate world addresses the uncertain future of brick-and-mortar shopping, the market for retail investment in San Antonio remains strong. The recent bankruptcies of physical merchandisers such as Toy “R” Us, Radio Shack, Rue 21 and Payless Shoes — to name but a few — have proven that retailers must adapt their strategies to an ever-changing environment. In San Antonio, however, a historically low volume of new retail development and decreasing vacancy rates, combined with strong fundamentals, have attracted and secured more retail investors than ever before. San Antonio’s thriving economy is supported by steady job growth — 25,000 jobs have thus far been added in 2017, according to the City Employment Statistics survey. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put San Antonio’s unemployment rate at 3.7 percent as of August 2017, versus the national average of 4.5 percent. Often referred to as Military City, USA, San Antonio is home to Joint Base San Antonio, which includes Fort Sam Houston, Lackland Air Force Base and Randolph Air Force Base. These military installations alone employ roughly 90,000 people and have an estimated $27 billion impact on the local economy. These statistics, coupled with the market’s steady job and population growth, …