Howard Bissell of The Bissell Cos. sums his take on the Charlotte office market by echoing a concern voiced by developers all across the country. In nearly every major market and in a vast array of property types, developers are hurting because of rampant economic uncertainty. Tenants and investors simply don’t know what’s next, so they aren’t making any moves. “There’s a lot of concern over the unknown,” Bissell says. “Depending on where you are in the Charlotte market, you can point to slow downs in the velocity of leasing. What we started seeing last year has just accelerated into 2009.” For developers like Bissell, the main concern in Charlotte isn’t that the office market has slowed, but that it’s taken a rapid course downward, a quick pace that nobody quite anticipated. Tenants are on the sidelines looking in. Bissell has had to put two of his developments on hold due to the recession. “We’re out there trying to capture every deal that we can, so long as it makes sense,” he says, noting that he foresees pursuing deals more aggressively in the next year. At the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, Jeff Edge takes a brighter point of view toward …
North Carolina
The Charlotte industrial market has continued to weather the global economic storm with relative stability. Experts in the market believe this is by design and is not just good fortune. A disciplined development community that did not over-build the city is the foundation for the stability. The market size for institutional grade industrial product in Charlotte is approximately 30 million square feet. The entire market is well more than 100 million square feet, which comprises user-occupied and manufacturing product that institutional investors are not trading day-to-day. With 3.3 million square feet available, the institutional market stands at 11 percent vacant. Given the gloomy economic news that we have all grown accustomed to hearing, an 11 percent vacancy rate is not particularly unhealthy. The key statistic is this: in a 30 million-square-foot market, only 250,000 square feet is being constructed, representing less than 1 percent of the market. In addition, only 1.7 million square feet of product is in the planning stages, with no assurances that it will go vertical in the near future. If all 1.7 million square feet of product were to be built — which won’t happen — it would represent a 5.7 percent increase in inventory. There …
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