Construction costs in Hawaii are beginning to plateau after seeing year-over-year increases for the past several years. The market has seen gray shell retail building costs of about $275 per square foot; and to vanilla shell, another $80 per square foot to $100. Restaurants range from $300 per square foot to $350 to take them from gray to finished shell without fixtures. Remarkably, even with escalating construction costs, retail leasing and development are both extremely active. This, combined with retail vacancy of about 3 percent and record rents, has spurred a wave of new projects. Some of the new retail projects currently under construction are: Kilauea Lighthouse Village, Kilauea Town, Kauai — The center is a 47,000-square-foot development anchored by a 10,000-square-foot Market at Kilauea. Construction on Kilauea Lighthouse Village has begun and is expected to be complete in late 2017. It is owned by Hunt Development and leased by Colliers International. Kahala Bowl Shopping Center, Honolulu – Anchored by McDonald’s, the 10,000-square-foot center is owned by Kamehameha Schools and leased by JLL. Kealanani Shopping Center, Kapolei — This 20,000-square-foot center, anchored by Panda Express, is an outparcel of the Walmart in Kapolei. It is owned by Panda RG Inc. …
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), …
There are two major trends affecting retailers across South Florida: the reduction of affluent foreign tourists in the market and the internet, which is forcing retailers to shift their concepts at an accelerating pace. Both factors have led to a slight decline in market conditions, specifically a deceleration of growth rates, but not significantly enough to cause great concern or to feel South Florida has become a “falling market.” Instead, much like origami, one must shape retail concepts to adapt to the new online reality. The American dollar is still very strong against Latin American and most foreign currency. This has created a downward spiral for hotel occupancy and retail sales in South Florida’s tourist driven areas such as South Beach and Lincoln Road. Miami-Dade County hotel occupancy was down 0.6 percent year-over-year to 83.5 percent in February/March 2017. This tourism decline has also created a shift in foreign investing. While large foreign investors are still active in the market, there has been a noticeable exit of smaller foreign investors. This has created an unusual twist in the South Florida market as now domestic (primarily from the Northeast) and Canadian investors are actively looking and purchasing retail opportunities given they …
Houston’s multifamily market appears to be on the verge of recovery after facing considerable headwinds in 2016. Job growth, population growth and faster-than-anticipated apartment absorption in the first half of 2017 are luring investors and lenders back to the region, putting the market on solid footing for future growth. To better understand how we arrived here and to grasp near-term expectations, let’s take a brief look back. The collapse in energy prices and the ensuing job losses of 2015 and 2016 dealt a considerable blow to the overall Houston economy, particularly the multifamily sector. Developers had already started construction on thousands of new units in 2014 and 2015. In 2016 alone, multifamily development had delivered 21,791 new units — a 20-year high. This left a tremendous oversupply of inventory to be absorbed during a period of anemic job growth – only 15,000 new jobs were created in 2016. Supply-side pressure shifted vacancies up and rents down, while investment sales volume dropped dramatically. Today, the picture is quite different. Overall economic fundamentals are steadily improving, taking the multifamily sector along with them. While the energy sector is still in a period of retrenchment, sectors such as education, health services and hospitality/leisure …
Kansas City is in the midst of an aggressive expansion of capital investment in medical office space that is consistent with national activity. A variety of factors drive these developments, including patients’ expectations for medical care, a change in how large-scale healthcare operators view their networks and the growth of specialty practitioners. The evolution of medical space created by these forces leads to an entirely new development approach. The most obvious evidence of this change in the Kansas City market is located along the Interstate 435 corridor between State Line Road and Metcalf Avenue. Every major healthcare operator in the metro area either has an established presence there, is in the midst of an expansion project, or both. Within that area, the new medical office building for St. Luke’s Health System at Mission Farms was completed in the second half of 2016. Further west, the 76,000-square-foot Quad Six medical office building, located at 6650 W. 110th St., delivered in June of this year. To the south, at 159th Street and Antioch Road, the first phase of the BluHawk project recently delivered for Shawnee Mission Health – Overland Park. The project includes a 75,000-square-foot medical office building, along with a separate …
From the hottest commercial submarkets, such as Downtown Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, to far-flung suburbs like Lynnwood, the Puget Sound multifamily market has been firing on all cylinders lately. A major reason for this is the huge growth in tech employment throughout the Puget Sound region. Tech employment in the region has grown almost 87 percent since 2001, and more than 80 tech-based companies have opened engineering offices in Seattle in the past five years. Demand for engineering and creative talent has pushed salaries up. Salaries for tech workers in Seattle are 9 percent higher than the national average. Seattle offers the highest salaries in the nation for positions like vice president of engineering ($253,488) and director of product ($228,482). Demand for talent is also having a major impact on demand for apartments. In South Lake Union, where vacancy is 3.5 percent, demand among renters for apartment units continues to be strong. This is driving tremendous interest among multifamily investors. Newly built, high-quality properties like the 282-unit Radius apartment community lease up very quickly. A joint venture between Kennedy Wilson and Lefrak purchased the just-completed asset in February for $141 million. Radius is a prime example of the quality …
In 2016 and the first quarter of this year, Atlanta’s economy boomed, showing several positive signs that point to another banner year for the multifamily market. From December 2016 through February 2017, Atlanta added 96,700 total non-farm jobs, an increase of 3.7 percent over the same time the previous year. Additionally, in 2016 the city experienced 3 percent wage growth overall. This translates to a robust multifamily market with solid fundamentals. According to Axiometrics, Atlanta’s average effective rent broke the $1,000 ceiling in second-quarter 2016 and has not stopped climbing since, reaching $1,068 as of first-quarter 2017. Rents are projected to increase by just under 5 percent in 2017. While the market’s rent growth rate is slowing, we cannot forget that Atlanta is breaking historical rent records while maintaining an occupancy rate in the 94 percent range for the last 11 consecutive quarters. Throughout the city, all asset classes — from Class C suburban properties to trophy Class A properties in the urban core — are posting strong performances. One trend we are keeping an eye on is single-family development, which is starting to come back as rental rates continue to rise and renters look to make a more permanent …
At the end of the first quarter 2017, the Houston industrial market finds itself in very familiar territory, with several dominant trends largely maintaining course. Despite continued struggles within the oilfield manufacturing sector, the overall market is still in very good shape. Large consumer goods distributors driven by population growth in the greater Houston area and plastics users responding to increased demand from expanded chemical plant capacities produce the headliner transactions in the current market. This has been the case for the last 12 to 24 months. While leasing and sales for existing manufacturing facilities have slowed in recent years, there are some bright spots to report. CoStar notes an overall market vacancy increase of less than 0.5 percent to a still-historically low 5.7 percent. Northwest and Southeast Houston lead the way in terms of major activity. Northwest Houston currently has 5.1 percent vacancy, driven by consumer product companies like Serta Mattresses, which leased 268,482 square feet at Trammell Crow’s Fallbrook Pines, and Shaw Carpet, which leased 201,600 square feet at Prologis Jersey Village. These firms are inking long-term deals for manufacturing and distribution hubs, reflecting their confidence in the area’s long-term consumer growth. Multiple large positions from FedEx and …
You’d be hard-pressed to find a commercial real estate company in the Midwest more active than Bedrock Detroit. The full-service firm — which acquires, leases, finances, develops and manages commercial and residential space — has several projects in the development pipeline spread across property types. Since its founding in 2011, Bedrock has located more than 160 office and retail tenants to Detroit’s “technology-centric” downtown. In addition, Bedrock and its affiliates have invested more than $3.5 billion in acquiring, renovating and developing slightly more than 100 properties totaling about 16 million square feet in downtown Detroit and Cleveland. Bedrock is commonly referred to as the real estate arm of billionaire businessman Dan Gilbert’s Rock Ventures. Gilbert is the chairman and founder of Rock Ventures and Quicken Loans Inc., the mortgage lending giant headquartered in Detroit. Diverse project portfolio In January, a joint venture between Shinola/Detroit LLC and Bedrock broke ground on the eight-story, 130-room Shinola Hotel. Located at 1400 Woodward Ave., the boutique hotel is scheduled to open in fall 2018. (Shinola, a Detroit-based company, is best known as a manufacturer of watches, bicycles and leather goods.) Chef Andrew Carmellini and Noho Hospitality are developing the food and beverage offerings to ensure …
There’s never been a better time to live and work in downtown Milwaukee. With the recession in the rearview mirror, a massive resurgence in the multifamily and office sectors has originated in Wisconsin’s largest city. Since 2011, 2,500 multifamily units have been completed, with an additional 1,500 units under construction and 2,000 proposed. The office market has seen a similar trend with nearly 2 million square feet of new development being created, the bulk of which is Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.’s new $450 million, 32-story office tower. After decades of decline, downtown Milwaukee is experiencing a surge in population growth largely attributed to the development influx. This has changed the makeup of the city’s job market and molded a new workforce hinged on modern factors. With an increase in residents migrating to urban areas to work and reside, companies are shifting gears to tap into this ever-evolving talent market. Catering to millennials Known as the job-hopping generation, millennials are the focus of companies’ recruiting tactics. Combined with competitive compensation packages, businesses have begun leveraging their chief incentive: the physical office space. A prime example of this development, the Third/Fifth Ward on the city’s southeastern side has become one of …