The city of Huntsville, Alabama, is no stranger to threats of economic disaster, so overcoming it is a matter of pulling together a team of commercial brokers and economic development professionals who will see office and industrial buildings half-full, rather than half-empty. In 1948, the U.S. Army hung a ‘For Sale’ sign on Redstone Arsenal, only to remove it for a team of rocket scientists. In the 1970s, Huntsville’s space industry packed its bags after the last Apollo launch, leaving the city like a bad divorce, before the hands of fate reached out in the form of missile defense. In 2005, the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) initiative set Huntsville on a fast track to economic growth and commercial prosperity. Three hard years of unprecedented national financial crashes played havoc with the market, but what remains is a handful of proverbial optimists. The North Alabama Commercial Brokers Association (NALCOM) meeting in February entertained a loyal group of survivors who at this point are unlikely to fail. They believe an increase in inquiries is a positive sign, even if they aren’t at 2007 levels. Rather than analyzing high vacancy rates and crying over companies who left two years ago, they shifted …
Market Reports
Borrowing a Charles Dickens title, Colorado is “A Tale of Two Cities,” or more accurately, two markets. High density infill markets show strong leasing activity in terms of absorption, rental rates and down time, while lower density rural areas still lag in recovery. Urban markets such as Denver, Boulder and Englewood are returning to earlier days where spaces are quick to fill with an average down time of six months, a waiting list of prospects and increasing rents. For example, a recent side shop vacancy at King Soopers-anchored Belleview Square in Englewood was backfilled with a waiting list of five tenants before the retailer had even closed their doors. On the other hand, secondary and tertiary markets such as Falcon, Colorado Springs and Greeley are slower to lease up with an average down time of 12-15 months and little rent growth. Acquisition activity has not yet recovered, and very few Class A properties are on the market. However, development activity is picking up. Active retail categories include quick service restaurants, health and dental, discounters and mattress stores. One of the interesting trends is the boutique pet store concept occupying less than 4,500 square feet, which seems to be harvesting an …
There is no denying that the industrial market in the Inland Empire is improving. In the past three quarters, a great deal of space has been leased, and vacancy is therefore down. Voit’s first quarter industrial market report revealed that vacancy rates have declined to 8.95 percent in the market, down from 11.55 percent year-over-year, in large part because ten buildings over 500,000 square feet have been leased in the last three quarters. There is actually now a shortage of buildings in this size range. Big Buildings Make a Comeback As occupancy increases, lease rates are rising. This excites developers and investors alike. On the development side, the market is seeing speculative development for the first time in three years in certain size ranges — a huge indication of an improving marketplace. At least four industrial buildings are either under construction or in pre-development in the Inland Empire right now. Watson Land Company recently broke ground on a 600,000 square-foot building in Redlands, while the O’Donnell Group has broken ground on a 786,000-square-foot building in Banning. In addition, at least two others in the 600,000 to 700,000-square-foot range are now ready to break ground. While excitement grows around new projects, …
For a city that has at times been portrayed as emblematic of the kind of economic fallout left in the wake of the recent recessionary cycle, Detroit is actually responding quite well. The current state of the Detroit office market is just one data point — but it’s a promising one. In greater Detroit — and across Southeast Michigan — there are tentative signs that things are moving in the right direction for the first time in several years. Not everything is positive by any stretch of the imagination, but the progress, while tentative, looks genuine. Since the city’s office market bottomed out in the summer of 2010, it has been slowly and steadily recovering. There were a few low points in August and September of last year, but the market began absorbing some space toward the end of the year, and that trend has continued in the first part of 2011. As you might expect, however, the progress has been uneven. Consolidation areas like Southfield, where there is a lot more activity in the marketplace, have generally done slightly better than destination-focused markets like Dearborn and Livonia, which had taken a more significant initial blow and subsequently have not …
While most of the country grows based on the birthrate, Las Vegas has grown at almost six percent per year based on the tremendous influx of new residents. That growth fueled retail development matching the pace until the growth suddenly stopped in 2008. But today, a different scenario is beginning to emerge. With many retail tenants going out of their spaces, beginning in 2008, the local retailers that had survived began a flight to quality. Key tenants in strip centers moved up to anchored centers. Other retailers that had been in the back of strip centers moved up onto pads. The addition of new space has been in waves, with the first starting in 2009, as the local retailers that survived the prior year and saw rents decreasing began adding second locations. The second wave of tenants began at the end of 2009, as strong regional retailers began seeking additional locations. The third wave, which has so far been quite small, is the national tenants. With so many choices around the nation, the national retailers are still trying to decide if Las Vegas, which was hit particularly hard, makes sense regarding expansion. The type of tenants that have been most …
Although the Indianapolis retail market took a hit during the downturn, it never sunk as deeply into the doldrums as other U.S. cities, and has been relatively quick to rebound from its modest slide. Maintaining an unemployment rate well below the national average (8.7 percent at year-end 2010), with the prediction of 20,000 new jobs for 2011 ensures this market is headed in the right direction. Retail real estate brokers in this statistical region of more than 2 million were actually quite busy in 2008 and 2009 when most other regions were reeling from the economic crunch. Recognizing still-strong market fundamentals, retailers tried to seize on the doom and gloom of the times to lowball local landlords, who for the most part would not yield to unreasonable rent offers that they knew would tie them up for years to come. While retail vacancies remain low in the city’s most robust retail corridors, they are higher than they were before the downturn began in areas where demographics have shifted. We continue to see a flight to quality in this market with the most attractive, well-positioned shopping centers commanding surprisingly strong rents. For instance, Class A big box rents in highly desirable …
The St. Louis market, long known for its diverse economy, has been slow to extricate itself from the downturn. The retail real estate brokerage business has been mostly dormant for the past 2 years, particularly the tenant representation side, as scant few national retailers dared to brave the murky expansion waters. Rental rates in the market decreased slightly from third quarter 2010, ending at $12.51 per square foot. However, rates have held up better in some submarkets, including West St. Louis County, where they are $20-plus per square foot. Prime properties at hard corners are holding their own, but second-tier properties have taken a pretty hard hit with rents down into the mid- to high-single digits. When the recession started, many landlords granted rent reductions almost uniformly to tenants and will have to live with their decisions for a while, but other owners held fort and demanded to see sales reports as proof. This resilient region of nearly 3 million people is starting to show new signs of life heading into spring 2011. The market has seen slight improvements in retail vacancy rates, which dropped from 8.4 percent in third quarter 2010 to 8.1 percent in fourth quarter 2010, according …
There is a visible upside to the Boise retail market as we begin 2011. Major employers such as Micron Technology, Hewlett-Packard and Albertsons seem to be holding their own after some layoffs in recent years. A number of national retailers are considering smaller store footprints, which has led them to consider smaller markets like Boise. And pedestrian friendly downtown Boise endured the economic downturn reasonably well, remaining an employment and cultural center that’s home to dozens of local shops and other small businesses. In addition to art galleries, restaurants, coffeehouses, jewelers, wineries, salons, apparel shops and gift shops, national tenants such as The North Face, Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters and Office Depot are well located in the city. After a brutal 2009 and soft 2010, the Boise retail leasing market is showing signs of recovery, despite that the greater Boise area posted negative absorption of about 100,000 square feet last year due to a few large move outs. One long-delayed major lifestyle retail project is moving ahead and is a positive sign that confidence is returning to the market. After a 3-year delay, CenterCal Properties is breaking ground later this year on the 90-acre mixed-use Meridian Town Center in the growing …
The U.S. apartment sector staged a strong recovery in 2010 well ahead of expectations, despite modest job creation and stubbornly high unemployment. Net absorption surged, with occupied stock rising by nearly 200,000 units, double the number of apartments constructed and the highest level on record since 2000. Several factors contributed to high levels of absorption, including the release of pent-up renter demand as households de-bundled in the wake of the recession. In addition, apartments benefited from private-sector job growth in the critical 20- to 34-year-old cohort, expiration of the homebuyer tax credit, displaced foreclosed homeowners entering the renter pool, immigration and lower unit turnover. Renting also became a lifestyle and economic choice for many households as the effects of the housing collapse and recession persisted. Continued recovery in 2011 depends more heavily on improvements in the job market, which should gain momentum as the year progresses. Building on that momentum, operating conditions in the suburban Chicago apartment market will strengthen considerably this year, building on improvements in vacancy and rents recorded in 2010. Apartment construction will sink to one of the lowest levels in the past decade, minimizing competition for tenants at a time when renewed job growth will accelerate …
The commercial real estate market in Fairfield County reflects the issues affecting the greater national economy. Due to the fundamentals of commercial real estate and how the marketplace functions, the region will be in a state of malaise for the foreseeable future. The marketplace has bottomed, however, and will improve over time. From 2005 through mid 2008, employment was increasing, companies were expanding; there was competition to put money to work through loans and investments. Capital formation grew at a torrid pace as the national capitalistic system sought higher and higher returns in a market where the risk seemed to diminish each month. As that feel-good locomotive hit the wall in 2008, there were tremendous lay-offs and all capital sources that had been pushing money at the real estate asset class evaporated. In the first three quarters of 2009, tenants stopped conducting real estate business almost altogether. Even tenants driven by lease expirations often opted for short-term renewals due to the cataclysmic uncertainties that decision makers were facing. Additionally, tenant renewals were driven by give-backs of space as companies needed less space due to fewer employees. Companies took space proactively in 2007 because they anticipated hiring more employees, but they …