Despite a slow start to the year, the Northern New Jersey office market decreased vacancy to 20.2 percent as we moved from fourth quarter 2016 into 2017. More than 750,000 square feet of office space is expected to be absorbed in the market to drop the vacancy rate 20 basis points. New deliveries in Morris and Essex Counties, including a 200,000-square-foot office for UPS in Parsippany, are leading the way. Moreover, landlords and investors alike are upgrading and investing in larger redevelopment projects throughout the state which has increased leasing activity. In response to healthier market conditions, owners have also increased rents for office space, which caused higher vacancy rates at the beginning of the year. The average asking rent is anticipated to climb to $27.59 per square foot this year, outpacing the 2 percent rise in office rents posted in 2016. In first quarter, the Hudson Waterfront saw an increase of 3.6 percent per square foot. Hudson Waterfront The main trends in Jersey City and Hoboken are driven by the large populations of millennials in and around surrounding areas. Millennials account for 27.2 percent of the population in Hudson County. In the last 12 months, investors — particularly New …
The New Jersey retail market continues to gain strength as landlords redevelop existing properties, successfully backfill formerly vacant supermarket and Sports Authority boxes, and even break ground on several major shopping centers. Green Leaf at Union, a new redevelopment scheduled to open this fall, will include 111,000 square feet of gross leasable area. Located on Route 22 and West Chestnut Street, the center will be anchored by Bob’s Discount Furniture and LA Fitness. Chimney Rock East and West in Bridgewater is also under construction. The new upscale center will add more than 200,000 square feet of gross leasable area to the Route 22 corridor. Tenants will include Whole Foods, The Container Store, Saks Off Fifth and Nordstrom Rack, as well as ULTA and European Wax Center, which were both represented by R.J. Brunelli & Co. (RJBCO). The District at Metuchen, a new 78,505-square-foot upscale neighborhood center, opened in downtown Metuchen on Route 27 and Middlesex Ave. It is anchored by Whole Foods, with a satellite tenant lineup that includes RJBCO clients Massage Envy and European Wax Center. The Route 35 corridor in Hazlet/Holmdel/Middletown has seen its ups and downs this past year. In Middletown, the WRDC-owned property formerly anchored by …
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 …
The office market in 2017 has rebounded from the slowdown of 2016 — suggesting that Manhattan market conditions remain stronger than some might have imagined at the end of last year. Growth in office-using employment has picked up steam this year, and New York’s Gross City Product expanded at a faster rate than in 2016. Buoyed by large transactions in the financial services and government sectors, leasing activity also expanded in the first half of 2017, outpacing 2016’s mid-year leasing activity by 19 percent. Asking rents continued their trajectory of modest growth, though tenant improvement allowances have grown at a far faster rate, suggesting tenants are paying lower net effective rent; meanwhile, the number of upward repricings on existing listings fell off considerably in the first half of 2017, while downward repricings continue unabated from last year. Despite the increase in both leasing activity and velocity in the first half of 2017, Manhattan continues to see negative net absorption this year, largely due to the delivery of new office product in Midtown South and Downtown. This has pushed up the availability rate to 12.0 percent — suggesting increasingly tenant-favorable conditions in the market. New York City Employment After a relatively …
As America’s brick-and-mortar retail sector continues to come to grips with the impact of e-commerce on its long-term future, it is worthwhile to track the progress of the growing number of retailers who have chosen to step away from a web-only platform. These retailers are establishing an omni-channel presence by setting up operations in physical stores, and many are showing signs of success. Many such retailers are choosing to set up shop along the streets of New York City, with its massive and steadily growing population and its broad demographic mix. Despite the recent, well-publicized increase in the city’s available inventory of retail space, New York City remains the preferred market to launch a brand with aspirations of building a meaningful national profile. Considering the more-youthful and trendy profile of a large proportion of online shoppers, these “adding-bricks-to-our-clicks” companies are gravitating toward New York City submarkets that deliver this coveted, younger demographic. Moreover, e-commerce players possess a ton of data profiling their customers — including their buying behavior and their browsing interests and habits — and retailers tap this intelligence when making decisions about where to locate stores as well as how they should be merchandised to best cater to …
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, …
With employment representing one of the most critical factors in the health of the office sector, people naturally look to the unemployment rate as a key metric to quickly assess a given market. By this standard, Fairfield County should be thriving, with the unemployment rate at 4.4 percent in April 2017 — just under the 4.8 percent rate reached just prior to the recession. And yet, the availability rate in Connecticut’s largest office market stood at 24.5 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2017 — a far cry from the 15.2 percent rate seen at year-end 2007. There are two reasons for the discrepancy. First, it is far more accurate to look at office-using employment (information, financial, professional services and other industries) versus overall employment as a barometer. While office-using employment has rebounded approximately 4.0 percent since the depths of the latest recession, today’s count is still 8.4 percent lower than the latest peak. Second, a marked shift in the desired style of office and an upswing in remote working opportunities have led to reduced utilization rates in terms of square feet per employee. Today’s employers want to be in buildings that make their employees happy and …
A trend in retail activity in Western New York and the Finger Lakes Region over the past six to 12 months has been the announcement or arrival of a number of high-end or specialty retailers and restaurants. Although traditionally these retailers are more selective about the markets they enter, as they continue to grow nationally they have to expand the list of potential markets they will consider. Some of them find that the Buffalo and Rochester metropolitan areas are markets in which high-end or specialty retailers or restaurants can thrive, particularly when Upstate New York’s lower occupancy costs and lighter competition are sufficient to offset potentially lower unit volumes. Whole Foods’ much-anticipated Western New York debut will be this summer in the Northtown redevelopment project by W.S. Development in Amherst. Whole Foods has also signed a lease in Brighton, a suburb of Rochester, for a 50,000-square-foot store at Palazzo Plaza, a proposed 90,000-square-foot shopping center on Monroe Avenue at Interstate 590. The project, being developed by the Daniele Family Companies, is currently making its way through the entitlement process. In a sign of the renaissance in progress in both Downtown Buffalo and Downtown Rochester, the first-ever national brand polished steakhouse …
One might expect that the industrial real estate market is in rough shape in a state with a projected $1.7 billion state budget deficit, where the capital city (Hartford) has discussed bankruptcy, and where one of the most famous employers (General Electric) has moved out — not to mention the state’s high taxes and high wages. However, the industrial real estate market is one of the tightest I’ve seen in Connecticut in more than 31 years. Each region in the state is experiencing varied levels of success, but overall the industrial market is healthy, with dropping vacancy rates, increasing rental rates, and decreasing cap rates. The game changer is big box distribution and third-party logistics activity throughout the region. In a market where a 75,000-square-foot deal used to be major news, we have seen numerous leases and new construction deals over 200,000 square feet in the past two years. E-commerce activity includes Amazon (1.5 million square feet in Windsor), FedEx (550,000 square feet in Middletown), and UPS (239,000 square feet in Windsor). Other significant transactions include Trader Joe’s (750,000 square feet in Bloomfield), Mobis Parts America (291,000 square feet in South Windsor), Vistar NE (296,000 square feet in South Windsor), …
The latest CoStar Industrial Report for Providence reports that 2016 ended on a positive note on many fronts for the industrial real estate sector. The Providence industrial vacancy rate overall was down to 4.6 percent, a steady drop from 4.8 percent at the end of third quarter 2016, 5.3 percent at the end of second quarter 2016 and 6.4 percent at end of first quarter 2016. Flex projects showed a vacancy rate of 7.1 percent at end of fourth quarter 2016, a sharp drop from a rate that held largely steady for most of 2016 (11.4 percent for end of third quarter 2016, 11 percent at end of second and 11.5 percent at end of first quarter). For warehouse projects, the vacancy rate at the end of fourth quarter was just 4.4 percent, no change from end of third quarter, but down from 5 percent at end of second quarter and 6 percent at end of first quarter. It’s more good news for the state’s industrial outlook that the current administration has prioritized bringing businesses and jobs here. There’s evidence in the CoStar report to support that claim. Look at the third-largest lease signing of 2016. It was enacted by …