This year is shaping up to be very exciting and productive for the Richmond retail market. The Richmond retail market has started at a brisk pace for the first half of 2015, similar to the end of 2014 as it absorbed 111,889 square feet. The vacancy rate has continued to decline over the past 12 months as well. The overall retail vacancy rate in Richmond tightened to 6.6 percent, a 50 basis point improvement over last year. The main drivers of retail activity throughout the Richmond MSA continue to be grocery stores, fitness centers and restaurants. Early this year we saw the commencement of construction at two Wegmans-anchored developments in Richmond, one in Short Pump and another in Midlothian. The Midlothian Wegmans will anchor the new Stonehenge Village and is on pace to open in early 2016. The Short Pump Wegmans will join Cabela’s in the new West Broad Marketplace, a 400,000-square-foot development on the western edge of Short Pump. There has also been solid activity in the market from several other grocers, including Walmart Neighborhood Market and Aldi. Each of these concepts has opened four new stores in the market. Another grocer poised to enter the market is LIDL, …
The Richmond metropolitan area, with a population of 1.3 million, is bursting with multifamily development. The growing MSA contains more than 72,000 apartments units (45 percent Class A) and has 2,018 units under construction with another 5,826 in various stages of pre-development. On top of all this activity, the overall market occupancy remains at 96 percent. The fuel for these conditions comes from the many amenities in the market, from the University of Richmond and a robust sports scene to the proximity to Atlanta, the Atlantic coast and Washington, D.C., as well as the encouraging employment picture. The city’s unemployment stands at 5 percent compared to the U.S. average of 6.3 percent; since 2000 the city’s population has grown by nearly 15 percent. These conditions allow property owners to leverage this diverse and sustainable market for multifamily investments. Richmond development also benefits from the attractive interest rates, which remain low despite having climbed 80 basis points since late January. Along with monitoring this upward trend, news earlier this month from the Federal Reserve of a rate hike will serve as a caution sign for investors. Whether we see this hike in the next couple of months, or not until 2016, …
The story of the tortoise and the hare can be used to describe the major metros throughout Texas. In recent years, Austin has sprung to life while San Antonio has developed slow and steady. Most recently, however, it appears San Antonio’s office market has received a jolt — the second quarter of 2015 saw three to four times more activity than historic averages indicate — and San Antonio now boasts its lowest vacancy rate since 2008. With a 3.4 percent unemployment rate, San Antonio ranks third on the list of major metropolitan cities across the country with the lowest unemployment rates, trailing only Austin at 3 percent and Salt Lake City at 3.1 percent. These numbers are indicative of a much larger picture of San Antonio. Uniquely positioned to capture the spillover of tech companies and supporting businesses from Austin, its neighbor, San Antonio’s low rental rates for both Class A and B office space along with stable infrastructure make it a viable, attractive alternative for many major businesses looking to expand. But where in San Antonio is all this activity erupting? San Antonio’s newest residents are interested in one area, and you need look no further than the central …
Traverse City may be known as a small resort town on the shores of Lake Michigan, but each year it grows in popularity. And more commercial real estate players are taking notice. In the past year, Traverse City has been named one of the “Top 20 Best Small Towns in the U.S. to Visit” (Smithsonian); “One of the 50 Best Places to Live in America” (Men’s Journal); “One of the 10 Must See Cities in America” (Horizon Travel Magazine); “One of 10 U.S. Destinations on the Rise” (TripAdvisor); and “One of America’s 20 Most Romantic Towns” (Travel + Leisure). Tourism is on the rise as we become known as a region not only for cherries, but also for great restaurants, wineries, microbreweries, recreational trails for hiking and biking, skiing, festivals and a great place to live. With increasing notoriety comes pressure for development, and Traverse City is no exception. We have seen more development and projects in the pipeline in the past 12 months than we have seen since the height of the real estate boom 10 years ago. Tourists will be happy to note more hotel rooms in the downtown area as the new Hotel Indigo nears completion. The …
Philadelphia’s apartment market remains bright as increasing employment fosters stable economic growth, which in turn is bolstering apartment operations. Employers in the metro, which is known as the center of economic activity in Pennsylvania, will increase hiring 1.2 percent this year, adding 35,000 jobs. In 2014, new jobs increased 1.6 percent and the unemployment rate decreased 130 basis points. Total employment is on the upswing, recovering nearly all of the jobs lost during the recession. The favorable employment conditions are supporting demand for apartments and swiftly improving performance throughout the metro, prompting developers to start new multifamily projects. Builders in Philadelphia are focusing their attention in Center City, which includes the central business district and central neighborhoods of Philadelphia, where nearly 25 percent of this year’s deliveries will be placed into service. Developers are on track to complete 3,600 units in 2015, increasing total apartment inventory 1.4 percent. Last year 2,400 rentals were delivered. Part of the reason that demand is especially strong in Philadelphia can be attributed to the increasing popularity of living in the urban core among young professionals and baby boomers. The lack of developable in-fill locations in the area is prompting developers to convert office buildings …
The underlying forces bolstering the strength of the Seattle metro multifamily marketplace are robust job growth, new development projects and the short supply of single-family houses. While these factors also slightly impact vacancy levels, property prices and sales activity are expected to continue to rise. New and expanding companies, particularly in the tech sector, have sustained job growth in the Seattle-Tacoma region over the past five years. They have put more than 115,000 people to work since the pre-recession peak. This influx of workers, strong housing demand and a number of new development projects contributed to the construction sector posting the region’s strongest 12-month job gain of 14,600 new jobs. Company expansions are anticipated to generate an additional 65,000 jobs this year alone. Construction of both single-family and multifamily housing projects is expected to continue at an accelerated pace over the next several years. Limited inventory and affordability issues associated with single-family houses are preventing many people from transitioning to homeownership, thus fostering intense demand for apartment rentals. Roughly 12,000 rentals are expected to come online this year – with about 2,600 apartments delivered in the second quarter of 2015 alone. This represents the second-largest quarterly gain in more than …
Richmond has become a multifamily safe haven with unemployment rates below the national average and the second-best annual rental returns in the nation at 20.42 percent. Richmond’s high annual returns are due in large part to its population. The city has become a mecca for young adults as 32.2 percent of the population is in its 20s and 30s — well above the national average of 22 percent. This population’s drive for an urban, walkable lifestyle is generating a great deal of development in the CBD, as well as the Manchester submarket where Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) Institute for Contemporary Art is located. VCU’s art institute is the No. 1 art and design school in the country, and continues to draw in Millennials looking to take advantage of the open and historic downtown district surrounding the James River. Richmond’s flourishing, younger population is demanding adaptive re-use and new development and developers in Richmond are answering the call. Areas such as Scott’s Addition, Shockoe Bottom and Manchester have all seen new mid and high-rise developments in recent months that are attracting a plethora of new tenants. Highlights of Richmond’s apartment market include: • 1,000 units are currently under construction with an …
Operating as our state’s political core and as the “live music capital of the world”, Austin’s real estate market is as distinctive as the people that make this city great. Austin is a one-of-a-kind place that’s unique to Texas and the entire country. It defies stereotypes with its progressive and fiercely entrepreneurial spirit, and continually gets top marks for its quality of life, pro-business culture and pro-environment views. WalletHub recently ranked Austin as the 2015 best large city to live in and the data matches up — the city ranks second among 2015’s fastest-growing cities in the U.S., according to Forbes, behind Houston and ahead of Dallas-Fort Worth. In the era of ‘Walker, Texas Ranger,’ Emmitt Smith and ‘the Dream Team,’ and the release of ‘Dazed and Confused,’ the tech boom of the 1990s drove the Austin office market. During that same time, Austin’s total population increased 35 percent and close to 1,750 companies employed over 110,000 people in technology-related jobs in Austin. By the end of the 90s, Texas’ capital city was widely known as Silicon Hills, home to a critical mass of institutional technology knowledge and major tenants like Dell, IBM, Motorola and other software and gaming companies. …
Improving real estate fundamentals in the St. Louis office market are opening the floodgates to new construction that is greatly needed as large occupiers are finding limited, if any, existing available options. Over the past few years, the gap between rent for existing office properties and new properties was too great to justify construction. Until now, that is. The St. Louis employment base is finally reaching a pre-recession level with continued growth in the healthcare, information technology and engineering industries. The centrally located and more affluent residential areas — the West County and Clayton submarkets in particular — are experiencing higher occupancies and increasing rental rates. Clayton historically has been the best-performing submarket in St. Louis and still is today, while West County is situated near mid- to upper-level income workers. Development has and will continue to follow these highly sought after submarkets as they offer the metro area’s best real estate fundamentals and returns. Add to all of those factors a lack of new product in the past several years — plus a Class A vacancy rate of 10 percent — and you have an ideal climate for new construction. Pivotal project is catalyst The announcement that St. Louis-based …
Fueled by record-setting employment, the San Francisco Bay Area multifamily market is performing at its highest level in recent years in terms of low vacancy rates, strong rental growth, and new apartment communities coming online, under construction and planned. The San Francisco metropolitan area – which accounts for half of the San Francisco Peninsula, San Francisco, Marin and Oakland – added about 4,100 jobs during September, according to Beacon Economics. This number is on par for most of the year. Sources from the City of San Jose reported the Bay Area added more than 40,000 new jobs during the 12-month period from October 2014 through September 2015. A further report from the Association of Bay Area Governments stated that “by spring of 2013, the region had regained all of the jobs lost in the 2007 to 2009 recession, while estimates indicate that the jobs lost since the higher peak in 2000 were finally regained by the end of 2014. This rebound has spread unevenly throughout the region, with counties as diverse as San Francisco and Napa each having passed the two previous peaks in employment.” Unemployment is running as low as 3.7 percent in the San Jose/Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA. It …