As all of us in the retail market know, the past few years have been downright tough. It’s safe to say that we all felt a slight shift in mid-2011 where it seemed that we may — just may — have stabilized. With Tivioli’s success, Sportsman’s Warehouse re-entering the market and Hobby Lobby taking the plunge into Las Vegas, it seems we may have overcome the black “X” looming over our market. Our asking rent numbers are hovering around $1.50 per square foot, and retailers like Nima Accessories, Firestone Tires, Children’s Place, Winco and Dollar General are taking advantage of these rents and expanding valley wide. More than half of the leases completed in the past year were local retailers either relocating or expanding. The retail vacancy rate valley wide is about 11 percent, up from the fourth quarter of 2010. The Southwest submarket shows the lowest vacancy rate, about 9 percent, with the West Central submarket at the highest, about 15 percent. The market absorbed more than 119,000 square feet of retail product throughout the year. Two new Winco stores add 195,000 square feet to our retail inventory, and to the net absorption for 2012. Retail sales also picked …
Market Reports
The apartment market in the Greater Salt Lake area continues to be strong and vibrant. The past two quarters of 2011 demonstrated an upward pressure on rents. Overall occupancy is at 94.9 percent, up from 93 percent in 2010. Vacancy presently hovers around 5 percent and appears as though it will remain so, which is evidence of a tight rental market. These signs enable managers/owners to increase rental rates and drop concession offerings with exception to newly constructed projects during their initial lease up. Apartment development also remains robust in the downtown Salt Lake market where the City Creek project, being developed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, will be adding more than 1,000 new units. These units will be a part of a significant redevelopment of several downtown city blocks that will add new office and retail product in addition to multifamily. With this kind of unit increase in the immediate downtown market, nearby small and large projects will soon be able to raise rents as the new units will command the highest rates. The total amount of new units expected to come onto the market in the next year is approximately 1,900, with the …
Despite the slow economic recovery nationwide, there is life in the commercial real estate investment market in Indianapolis, especially in the office sector. Nearly 900,000 square feet of office properties traded hands in Indianapolis in 2011, for a total of $119 million, which is a 70 percent increase over office sales in 2010, and four times the sales volume in 2009. Major property sales such as Intech I/II/III, 9225 Priority Way Dr. in the Precedent Office Park and Heather Glen II marked a return of stabilized office building sales in Indy last year. The increase in sales velocity is expected to continue with several major office properties currently on the market, including the Capital Center downtown, Pennwood Office Park in Carmel and the Ascension Health Ministry Service Center in the northwest submarket. Cassidy Turley is tracking an additional 3 million square feet of office properties expected to come to market this year, or in 2013. Continued improvement in office fundamentals is an encouraging sign for investors. With 237,000 square feet of positive net absorption in the fourth quarter of 2011, the overall vacancy rate for Indianapolis now stands at 20.3 percent. No new speculative construction, three consecutive quarters of positive …
The Memphis metro is an interesting industrial market. Like many other markets, we’ve begun to see positive signs in the numbers. 2011 ended with positive absorption of more than 1.6 million square feet. Because nearly all of the space added in 2011 was build-to-suit, vacancy rates have begun to decline a bit. IDI has just announced plans to build two buildings totaling 1.1 million square feet in Olive Branch, Mississippi, which will be the first new speculative development since 2008. But it’s hard to look strictly at the numbers and really get a sense of our market. That’s because, when compared to behemoths like Chicago and Dallas, we are a relatively small industrial market, with approximately 210 million square feet, depending on how you count the space. This creates significant volatility in the numbers when a major lease is won or lost. So it is the fundamentals that paint a better and more realistic picture of the Memphis market. Though relatively small in size, we’re a giant in terms of the infrastructure that makes us attractive to major players. A few of the major leases during the last 12 months help illustrate that: Trane’s 626,00-square-foot lease, California-based online retailer Newegg …
Multifamily development has come to a near halt in Las Vegas. In 2011, only two market rate properties finished their deliveries with a total of 682 units, most of which had already been completed in 2010. Only one market rate property was started in 2011. This 156-unit project was originally started as for-sale townhomes, but after a foreclosure, the development is being completed by Alliance Residential as a rental property. Other development is limited to affordable or senior housing. We are expecting a limited number of market rate starts this year, but at numbers that will not significantly impact existing inventory. The most active market rate developers in Las Vegas over the past years have been Picerne Real Estate Group, Alliance Residential, Fairfield Residential, Ovation Development, Trammel Crow Residential and Nevada West Development. Fore Property Company has been active in both the market rate and affordable sector, and Nevada Hand remains active in the affordable and senior sector. Between 2003 and 2007, 47 properties totaling 13,483 units were converted to condos. The combination of unsold units from these conversions, as well as the unsold units from properties built as condos during that time, has added 4,625 units to today’s rental …
It was a little less than two decades ago that local business leaders could see what was unfolding in West Michigan. The industrial sector was steadily declining, and companies were either going out of business or moving away. It was evident that something had to be done. That’s when two hometown heroes, Amway founders Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel, proposed their vision to turn Grand Rapids into one of the top medical services cities in the world. Their leadership and philanthropic efforts spurred a series of events, forever changing the landscape, mentality and image of Grand Rapids. One of the city’s first streets, Michigan Street, running parallel to I-196, was the initial site of their vision. In 1996, Jay and Betty Van Andel founded the Van Andel Institute. They broke ground in 1998, and the Van Andel Institute opened its doors in 2000. The institute is now home to scientific research that is focused primarily on cancer and Parkinson’s disease and has received more than $1 billion in research funding. The original development was a $60 million facility. In 2010, the institute opened a second phase with an additional 242,000 square feet at a cost of $175 million. Butterworth …
2011 was a good year for the Dallas office market with above average demand, minimal new construction and two quarters of rising overall asking rates. If you look at the Dallas office market since 2001, a typical year net absorption is usually about 800,000 square feet. In 2011, the Dallas market recorded more than 1.6 million square feet. New construction (excluding owner-occupied properties) averages 2.5 million square feet for that same time period, but a little more than 200,000 square feet was completed in 2011. Still, the overall total vacancy rate remains higher than normal at 22.5 percent. Keep in mind Dallas, with its abundance of land and pro-development climate, rarely dips below 20 percent vacancy. The average total vacancy since 2001 is 21.4 percent. Typically if it nears 20 percent, the construction cycle picks up again and more new product is brought to the market. That’s about where the market is headed at this point. Developers have not made any official announcements for new construction yet, but more than a few are prepared to break ground on potential projects in a few submarkets (Far North Dallas and the Dallas CBD being two of the more likely submarkets). Unless there …
South Florida, the densely packed grid squeezed between the Atlantic Ocean and the Everglades, is back on the priority list of retailers that, until recently, were content to hang out on the beach and wait for more inviting waters, so to speak. Over the past few months, the list of the most active newcomers has included Toys “R” Us, Babies “R” Us, Ross Dress for Less, Sports Authority and Dick’s Sporting Goods, just to name a few. And while the region is still a long way from the blistering pace of activity that was evident during the housing boom, there are other positive signs of life. A year and a half ago, similar to most major cities across the U.S., shopping center landlords in Miami and South Florida were fending off an overabundance of aggressive rent requests from retailers. All too often, in an effort to grasp some security for the future, many had to give in to retailers’ insistent demands for relief. In fact, many chains managed to lock into long-term leases at low- to mid-double-digit rent amounts in class “A” centers that used to command $25- or even $30-per-square-foot. During the past few months, however, the flood of …
The Las Vegas market has a total office inventory of 60.7 million square feet in 3,820 buildings. There were 13 buildings completed in 2011 totaling 724,535 square feet. An additional 550,000 square feet was still under construction at the end of the fourth quarter. Net absorption in 2011 was a positive 402,712 square feet, largely due to the Metropolitan Police Department moving into their new 390,000-square-foot facility during the third quarter. The total office vacancy rate valley wide was 19.4 percent at the end of the fourth quarter, which did not include shadow inventory. As this article was being submitted, Auction.com was completing another round of asset sales. Of the 25 property deed sales on the block in Las Vegas, four were office projects totaling about 204,000 square feet. Two of the14 non-performing notes were secured by office product totaling 103,000 square feet. The largest office project sold in the auction was the 124,082-square-foot Sahara Plazas. Sahara Plazas is located in the central portion of Las Vegas and consists of 10 individually parceled Class B buildings situated on 7.87 acres. The largest non-performing note secured by an office product was Charleston Valley View at 86,586 square feet. This property is …
The Minneapolis-Saint Paul MSA was on the road to recovery long before many others. And while that might come as a surprise to outsiders, this market actually packs quite a punch. With more than a dozen Fortune 500 employers — including Target, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Ecolab and 3M, to name a few—the MSA’s 5.1 percent unemployment rate is a full three points lower than the national average and is consistently ranked as one of the friendliest job markets in the country. Little wonder national retailers have been so keen on taking space in prime Twin Cities markets such as Roseville, Edina (Southdale) and Minnetonka (Ridgedale). Whole Foods, for instance, opened a Minnetonka store in a former Circuit City box late last year and also razed a vacant Storables to make way for a Southdale store. More recently, the Texas-based chain announced plans to open a downtown Minneapolis store on the site of a former Jaguar dealership. Slowly but surely, remaining Ultimate Electronics, Circuit City and Linens ’n Things boxes are being refilled by expanding chains. Some are leasing vacant boxes in their entirety; others are taking portions of subdivided boxes. Case in point: Last year T-Mobile, Godfather’s Pizza and …