By Brad Bailey, first vice president, CBRE; Adam Rabin, associate, CBRE; and Logan Reichle, vice president, CBRE It’s no secret that across the United States, the retail investment community has had to shift and adapt in several ways due to the ongoing pandemic. In addition, retail owners have had to make quick assessments of their strategies for asset management, usually on a property-by-property basis. For the first part of the pandemic, the commercial real estate industry was primarily reactive and in crisis mode. However, seven months into it, the indication is that this is something that will be around for the foreseeable future. As such, investors are moving out of their reactive modes and beginning to implement offensive strategies to identify and secure strong retail real estate investments. There are a number of key reasons that these investors are honing in on Central Texas retail: Suburban vs Downtown Good retail locations are hard to come by in Austin. We estimate that investment demand will rebound for space recently vacated. In high-quality locations, don’t expect too much of a change on rental rates. For some Austin submarkets like Cedar Park and Lakeway, we may see rates adjust slightly as vacancy rises. …
