The Nashville office market continues to have positive momentum coming into 2019, following three years of record-setting leasing that brought several big name corporate tenants to the market — plus a recent surprise announcement that Amazon will soon be adding 5,000 employees to Nashville’s central business district (CBD) within the Nashville Yards development. The bulk of the activity is concentrated in CBD Class A office space, as tenants focus on real estate decisions that emphasize recruiting and employee retention. This trend mirrors activity occurring in many major markets across the country. Companies continue to seek the coveted urban work-live-play environments designed to attract the millennial population. Avison Young research shows that the CBD recorded 255,330 square feet of positive net absorption at year-end 2018. Among the large companies that signed notable leases in the urban core in 2018 are Philips, AllianceBernstein and Asurion, which is adding 400 tech employees and consolidating several locations into a new 550,000-square-foot headquarters at 11th Avenue North and Church Street in the Gulch. Construction is scheduled to begin this year on that headquarters, with completion slated by the end of 2021. Nashville’s strong business climate and robust office leasing activity have caught the attention of …
In 2018, Nashville continued experiencing unprecedented population growth. Major job announcements, rising home prices and income growth have led to a shift in renters-by-choice. This has continued to transform our urban core and has had an immense impact on various industries within the city. On the investment side, multifamily assets in the market demonstrated some notable pricing trends through year-end 2018. The median price per unit in Nashville increased by more than 14 percent from fourth-quarter 2017 to fourth-quarter 2018, reaching $145,000 compared to $117,000 in the Southeast and $162,000 across the nation. This comparison demonstrates how Nashville is a highly valued market in the Southeast but remains attractive from a pricing standpoint to national investors looking to acquire quality product. What was an increasingly concessionary environment in 2017 and 2018, the Nashville multifamily market will tighten throughout 2019. Large-scale job announcements like AllianceBernstein, Amazon and Ernst & Young will bring thousands of jobs to Middle Tennessee. These announcements will help ensure that the recent trend of high absorption will continue through the year. Demand in Nashville has been strong relative to the historical average, but supply has outperformed demand in the past year due to new construction of much-needed …
The Raleigh and overall Triangle retail markets ended 2018 in a strong position with several large sites changing hands, urban growth booming in the downtowns, numerous suburban ground-up projects in the pipeline and traditional malls undergoing major transitions. The market is poised to see retail construction activity grow with a healthy balance of supply and demand, despite national brick-and-mortar retail industry challenges. The Triangle vacancy rate ended the year with a vacancy rate below 7 percent, which represents strong improvement from the end of 2017, even with accounting for the large-scale closing and downsizings in the Triangle. Positive absorption over the past year has included re-leasing 12 Kroger stores, two Gander Mountains, five hhgregg stores and several other significant box vacancies. Fierce grocery competition and continued pressure on “in-store” sales have caused retailers, owners and developers to rethink and recreate the retail experience and development landscape. Downtown urban centers Rapid multifamily and housing gentrification in the downtowns of Raleigh and Durham continue to push mixed-use and high-street retail. With residential and employment densification occurring, Raleigh has experienced several first-time retail events in 2018. Morgan Street Food Hall and Urban Outfitters opened in the Warehouse District, Publix is under construction on …
The Raleigh-Durham industrial/flex market, totaling approximately 135 million square feet, continues to be strong with overall positive absorption. Absorption for industrial totaled 1.6 million square feet and flex was over 3 million square feet for 2018. Vacancy is trending lower, helping make the region a landlord and seller’s market. With increasing construction costs, lower vacancy and solid demand, the rental rates and sales prices are now the highest of any region in North Carolina. Our rental rate for new industrial product is currently in the mid to high $5 per square foot range and trending higher. Some developers and brokers speculate the Triangle may become a $6 per square foot market for institutional-grade warehouse space in 2019. Ground zero for the region’s warehouse market is in the general vicinity of Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU). Most distributors that locate here are delivering to the local market and need the central location and access to Interstate 40. The historical barriers to entry near the airport have been high land costs and lack of land not encumbered with wetland or easements. Another barrier to entry that has crept into the picture are some local municipalities desiring a “higher end” product than warehouse and …
The short answer: absolutely. You don’t need to be a savvy commercial real estate professional to notice the impact multifamily has on Raleigh’s urban landscape. Areas like North Hills/Midtown, Downtown and Hillsborough Street are typically at the forefront of everyone’s mind when they think of new Raleigh developments, but it’s not just Class A development in the city’s urban core that has seen a boom. Class B and C suburban product have seen the most significant rent growth through the cycle that continues to increase each quarter. Moreover, we are seeing new construction intensify along our suburban corridors. It’s also no secret that Raleigh has one of the healthiest economies in the country. The Milken Institute reported recently that Raleigh ranks No. 2 in the nation for creating and keeping quality jobs. Economic factors like wage and employment growth, quality of life, proximity to higher education and a bustling tech sector have created a perfect storm of dynamic economic activity. Much to their chagrin, Raleigh natives haven’t done a very good job of keeping this a secret, and the number of fresh new faces coming to the Triangle continues to rise. In fact, the Raleigh-Durham market grew by nearly 60,000 …
The Raleigh-Durham region’s continued strong job growth is fueling sustained demand from tenants, keeping the office market firmly in favor of landlords despite a notable increase in construction activity in recent months. The region added 26,500 jobs between October 2017 and October 2018 for a growth rate of 3 percent. Unemployment fell from 3.8 percent to just 3.0 percent during this time, hitting its lowest level since 2000. Despite not making the final cut for massive headquarters expansions from Amazon and Apple, Raleigh-Durham experienced significant economic development wins in 2018. Major job announcements came from office-using tenants such as Advance Auto Parts (435 jobs), Pendo (590 jobs), Arch Capital Services (365 jobs), Ipreo (250 jobs) and LabCorp (422 jobs). As in many markets across the United States, co-working operators significantly increased their presence in the region in 2018. Spaces has signed leases at five Raleigh-Durham properties, and WeWork committed to two locations and has stated that it plans to triple its local footprint in the near term. In November 2018, Forbes ranked North Carolina the nation’s No. 1 state in which to do business, and Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers named Raleigh-Durham the No. 3 U.S. market in their Emerging …
With 3.2 million square feet of new office space under construction, much of it in the city’s urban core, Charlotte’s skyline is in the midst of a significant transformation. Due to strong preleasing activity and solid economic underpinnings, however, the city’s office vacancy rate is projected to remain stable over the coming months as many of those projects deliver. Approximately 60 percent of Charlotte’s construction pipeline has been preleased, according to JLL research, and 2.3 million is concentrated in the city’s central business district. In Uptown Charlotte, the 33-story Legacy Union office tower recently topped out, signaling the end of vertical construction. The 850,000-square-foot development by Lincoln Harris is scheduled to deliver early next year and will be anchored by Bank of America, which has signed a lease for 550,000 square feet. Lincoln Harris recently revealed plans for a second office tower with 388,835 square feet of office space and 22,763 square feet of retail space at the high-profile site, which was once home to The Charlotte Observer. Across the street from Legacy Union, construction is also underway on Ally Charlotte Center, a 26-story, 742,000-square-foot office tower by Crescent Communities. Last year Ally Financial announced that it had leased 400,000 …
The Northern Virginia data center market continues to outpace the rest of the country’s leading data center markets by more than double. By the close of the first half of 2018, Northern Virginia had 317 megawatts (MW) under construction with Phoenix a distant second at 136.5 MW. (In real estate terms, industry standard is approximately 150 watts per square foot.) What drives Northern Virginia as the leader today is an unparalleled business ecosystem that has grown over the past 20 years from the original edge data center to today’s premier data center market. The market is a prototype for which subsequent data centers strive to achieve. Ideal Data Center Landscape Very few enterprises build their own on-premise data centers. Northern Virginia got its start as a leader in this space by going into colocation data centers. The companies that pioneered the movement, like Equinix, DFT and Exodus Communications, have brought Northern Virginia to where it is today. But, it’s more than that. It takes a confluence of legislative support, fiber, power, development, deployment of new IT technologies and other partnerships to allow the Northern Virginia market to flourish into the tech superpower it is today. Northern Virginia has also been …
Washington, D.C.’s multifamily market has enjoyed success in recent years, and 2018 has been no exception. The regional economy continues to function at an extremely healthy level, adding 77,100 new jobs in the trailing 12 months ending July 2018, much more than the annual average of 41,000 since 2010. The region has outgrown its previous dependence on the federal government, which contracted by 4,800 jobs over the same period, further highlighting the strength of the region’s private sector. This sustained economic upside is only further enhanced by the looming possibility of Amazon’s HQ2, Apple and other large tech contracts. The strong job growth has been matched by a steady increase in population, which has grown 10.44 percent since 2010, to roughly 6.25 million people. To accommodate such growth, the supply pipeline has been equally as robust, delivering nearly 13,000 units per year for the past five years. In addition to all the recent deliveries, absorption has remained steady and strong, with the market absorbing a net positive of 7,570 units over the trailing 12 months. Furthermore, Class A rents have still managed to grow 1.4 percent over the past year, while overall market rent growth has grown an even higher …
Investors have renewed their interest in office properties in the Washington, D.C. central business district (CBD) based on increasing tenant demand. The market is putting a higher value on the built-in amenities that exist in the CBD, like dining and entertaining options, transportation accessibility and architecturally timeless buildings. We can always tell the center of gravity of a city by where the brokerage shops locate. In D.C., CBRE’s latest move to the CBD from the East End puts all of the agency brokerage shops within feet of each other. With a healthy stock of historically significant, well-built office properties with value-add potential, the CBD is primed to continue its office renaissance. Transportation Infrastructure While the existing public transportation infrastructure in the CBD is an important factor driving businesses back to the submarket, shaving 20 to 30 minutes from commute times — whether by car, bus or train — is decidedly attractive to today’s employers. Combined with the variety of established dining, entertainment and hospitality options in the CBD, transportation is vital to attracting high-profile employers. The city’s law firms in particular have taken note. Over 20 notable practices have relocated their offices to the CBD in the last year alone. …