Western Market Reports

CapRock-Riley-St-Hacienda-Ave-Las-Vegas-NV

By Amy Ogden, Logic Commercial Real Estate This was an unprecedented year in a multitude of ways. Though the pandemic brought economic hardships — along with the world’s worst health crisis — it also opened our eyes to how quickly life can change overnight. Businesses reacted to the crisis as best and swiftly as they could to comply with state stay at home orders, capacity reductions, and the fear and panic that ensued. Little did we know that we would be desperately seeking toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and embracing online grocery shopping and food delivery with such intensity by early March.  The aforementioned, in turn, created a domino effect as the pandemic became the catalyst for a boom in the industrial real estate sector. Ecommerce has grown more over the past year than it ever has. These occupiers have seen their five-year trajectory of forecasted retail sales occur in just six months. The rise of ecommerce has forever altered consumer buying behavior and expectations. With consumers now anticipating fast shipping and deliveries, there is now a strain on the traditional logistics and supply chain models. This has subsequently resulted in a heightened need for warehouse, fulfillment and distribution properties as …

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Cinnamon-Ridge-Ontario-CA

By Cray Carlson, CBRE With 2020 coming to an end, we look back at a year of much uncertainty, confusion and unprecedented restrictions. Yet amidst all that, the Inland Empire multifamily market has been going steady, continuing to thrive in spite of some substantial drops in sales volumes. Total multifamily sales of eight units and larger in the Inland Empire were $2.5 billion in 2018 and $2.1 billion in 2019. That compares with only $1.09 billion in 2020, as of October. We expect total sales volumes in the area could ultimately show a reduction of up to 40 percent for the full year. So, how is the Inland Empire maintaining its title as one of the strongest apartment markets in the nation? Collections A recent housing and employment study examined the ability for renters to make their rent payments. The Inland Empire led the category of households caught up on those payments. Respondents also indicated a high confidence level in their ability to meet their future lease obligations. Among the 15 metros surveyed, the Inland Empire ranked second. Vacancy Rates Rent vacancies have decrease in the Inland Empire to as low as 3.7 percent as rent growth has risen 6.2 …

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By Dan Palmeri, Senior Director, Tenant Advisory Group, Cushman & Wakefield As with most of the country, Las Vegas’ office market has been significantly impacted since COVID-19 restrictions started back in March. While many businesses have been allowed to operate at limited capacities, we’ve also seen many larger office users elect to work from home over the past nine months.  This increase in work from home scenarios has naturally created a large increase in sublease availabilities in the market. Prior to March 17, 2020, we were tracking 24 subleases consisting of 555,000 square feet, with two of those spaces being 257,000 square feet and 61,000 square feet, or roughly 57 percent of the overall inventory. Since March, we’ve seen the number of availabilities increase to 70 with a total of more than 1.2 million square feet of space. This represents an increase of 118 percent. We’re tracking an additional 313,000 square feet of pending subleases that have yet to hit the market. This will bring the total to 78 options, with six of the availabilities being 50,000 square feet or larger.  Large tenant activity was minimal over the past nine months. The most significant transaction was NYU Grossman School of …

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While the Inland Empire economy was hit hard in 2020, we remain optimistic on the retail sector’s recovery over the coming 12 to 24 months. This market is a benefactor of COVID-19 in that more people than ever before are able to work remotely. This has triggered a migration from urban cores to more spacious and affordable housing in the newer residential communities of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. As the population is anticipated to expand here, retail will directly benefit as residents are more likely to have additional discretionary income to allocate to retail and restaurant venues. In particular, there are many high-growth submarkets to watch within the region. Some of our top areas include Eastvale, Jurupa Valley and Rialto, which have all experienced expansion despite the restrictions and challenges that COVID has created. They are seeing a significant amount of residential growth as they offer strong school districts, expansive parks, affordable housing, proximity to large employment bases and newer retail amenities. A young family demographic is moving to towns like these, and retail users have taken notice. This has resulted in large retail projects like Renaissance Marketplace in Rialto and the Station in Eastvale taking shape. Turning to …

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By Mike Mixer, Colliers International – Las Vegas At the beginning of 2020, Las Vegas was anything but ugly. Nevada’s economy was one of the fastest growing in the country. Unemployment was the lowest ever at 3.6 percent, while casinos reported three straight months of $1 billion in winnings. Then COVID came along and things got real ugly, real quick. The entire Las Vegas Strip was shut down, closed…on less than a day’s notice. The Las Vegas unemployment rate hit a staggering 34.2 percent. One out of three people in Las Vegas became unemployed in April 2020. Meanwhile, the last time the Strip was shut down was after the JFK assassination in 1963. The bad doesn’t look so bad compared to the ugly. As the year comes to a close, the Las Vegas Strip has reopened, but with fewer visitors. Low visitor demand hits hard in a city with more than 150,000 rooms. Las Vegas hotel occupancy has dropped from 90 percent down to 44 percent. Room rates have seen a milder drop this year, down only 6.77 percent (from $133 a night to $124 a night). The Las Vegas Gaming Market was also unlucky, especially without a robust convention …

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By Richard Lee and J.C. Casillas, NAI Capital Commercial In the fourth quarter of 2020, the Inland Empire industrial market continued to battle the effects of an economy that has so far spent three-fourths of the year under a COVID-19 shutdown. After dipping for several quarters, the average asking rent held steady at $0.72 triple net, down 6.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019. The vacancy rate nudged up 10 basis points from the previous quarter’s record low, down 90 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2019 to 3.9 percent. Pointing to the market’s resilience this time around, vacancy remains 8.4 percentage points lower than the prior peak, which hit in the third quarter of 2009 during the Great Recession. There has been exponential growth in demand for ecommerce due to COVID-19 and related industries, such as packaging and third party logistics. This has resulted in a fast recovery for the Inland Empire industrial market. Soaring demand for warehouse and distribution space has created opportunities for developers. The vacancy rate has increased, due to the 1.9 million square feet of completed construction added to the market in the fourth quarter of 2020. Since the first quarter of this …

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Georgetown-Crossroads-Seattle

By Jeff Forsberg, Principal, NAI Puget Sound Properties It has been interesting, to say the least, since our governor issued the stay-at-home order on March 23 and we all started contemplating a future where we’d never have to get out of our pajamas.  Though our market’s industrial sector isn’t immune to disruptions, the immediate fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is not quite as dire as some might have projected. The Seattle industrial market comprises about 223 million square feet.  This essentially covers the area between the two major ports (Seattle and Tacoma) in our region.  Bolstered by large lease transactions with PCC Logistics (400,000 square feet), Darigold (284,067 square feet), Scotts (245,185 square feet), Ikea (200,000 square feet), Infinity Global Express (203,505 square feet) and Filson (126,028 square feet), our market posted respectable second-quarter lease stats. The current vacancy rate hovers at 5.05 percent, which is great for any market but slightly above average on what we have seen here over the past 10 years.  The average monthly shell rate has remained flat at $0.659 per square foot, but apart from a few subleases, we haven’t seen a dramatic reduction in rent. Driving most of these trends is the rising …

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Nova-North-Valley-Phoenix-AZ

By Brian Tranetzki, Principal, Taylor Street Advisors Multifamily is staying strong despite COVID-19. That’s because this product type was coming off an extremely hot market at the end of 2019 and early 2020 before the pandemic hit. The Phoenix metro area remains one of the few markets nationally with positive rent growth due to the steady population increase. Now, just months away from 2021, the market is faced with many unknown factors, such as unemployment, election outcomes, continued COVID uncertainty and the risk of eliminating 1031 exchanges. In turn, buyer sentiment also remains intense with a flurry of activity on those very exchanges. Development is still robust in the valley, with significant increases in downtown Phoenix, downtown Tempe and Chandler/Gilbert. There are currently more than 15,000 units under construction in the region. The building sizes are getting larger, while individual units are getting smaller. Developers are focused on building Class A properties with an emphasis on higher-end amenities, pool areas and concierge services. The class type determines whether it’s a landlord or tenant market. Tenants have several options in the Class A rental space, particularly as new units are delivered, which makes this a tenant-friendly environment. Class A vacancy is …

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Orange County Rent Occupancy

Orange County offers residents all the key elements of the American dream. Its virtues are numerous and faults few. Indeed, Moody’s Analytics ranks the quality of life in the OC 10th highest among the 378 U.S. metros it reports on, just a half-step behind leaders Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. Orange County is a terrific place to live, but is it a good place to invest? Gauging by observed capitalization rate trends, one may conclude that county apartment properties are highly prized gems. Class A trophy properties trade to going-in yields in the 4.00 percent to 4.10 percent area, and Class B and C garden complexes are typically priced to yields in the mid-4s, all only 25 basis points or so behind Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area comparisons. But judging from transaction velocity, one might draw a different conclusion. Only six Orange County multifamily properties of 50 units or more have changed hands since mid-year 2019, and not a single sale has closed since February. Even by the cautious norms of the moment, this stands out as a market in search of price discovery. Slow transaction velocity can be ascribed, in part, to the prevailing buy and …

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Vineyards-Porter-Ranch-Los-Angeles-CA

By Matthew M. May, President, May Realty Advisors A bird’s-eye look at the Los Angeles metro prior to the coronavirus outbreak reveals that the area was already beginning to soften as it worked its way through more than 1.26 million square feet of new retail space that was delivered to neighborhood and community shopping centers over the past five years. According to REIS, about 35 percent of that, or 443,000 square feet, came online in 2018. Vacancy rates increased every year for the past five years, while averaging about 7.3 percent for the metro area in 2019. Despite the increasing vacancy, we also had quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year growth in asking rents, primarily led by increases in the higher-end neighborhoods. At the street level, quarterly asking rents for neighborhood and community centers averaged about $33.03 for 2019, while increasing about $0.5 per square foot from 2018 to 2019. However, pre-leasing has been weakening over the past few quarters. Discussions in development circles were indicating fewer mixed-use projects in the planning stages with more builders favoring dedicated multifamily builds. Nevertheless, new retail inventory was in the pipeline for this year, with optimism surrounding the evolving retail landscape. All of this was, of …

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