Philadelphia’s office and industrial markets have been on a hot streak for the past year, with lower vacancy rates and greater rent growth than the national average. Office vacancies are enjoying far lower vacancy rates than regional and national averages for both Class A and Class B properties in the central business district and the suburbs. Flex and industrial vacancy rates are below 7 percent overall, well below regional and national averages, with average asking rents at about $5 per square foot. We see this upswing continuing in 2018 as demand keeps pace with or exceeds new development. Philadelphia has experienced seven years of uninterrupted job growth across all sectors, with 1.8 percent growth between August 2016 and August 2017 — outpacing the national average of about 1.5 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. We saw job growth across the board, including the education, health, and leisure and hospitality sectors. But the biggest gain was in business and professional services, where Philadelphia added 16,700 jobs over 12 months. That represents a 3.6 percent year-over-year growth rate in high-end office jobs, compared to a national average of 3 percent. Manufacturing employment declined over the past 12 months, despite …
The Raleigh-Durham industrial and flex market, totaling approximately 129 million square feet, continues to be strong with overall positive absorption. Vacancy is trending lower, making 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 city in North Carolina. Available industrial land is diminishing for development in high-demand areas, and that typically signifies a significant barrier to entry for developers helping keep supply in check. The rental rate for new industrial product is currently in the mid-$5.00 per square foot range and trending higher. Some developers and brokers speculate the Triangle may become a $6.00-plus per square foot market for institutional-grade warehouse space. However, when comparing rental rates to markets like Austin and Boston, Raleigh-Durham is still a very competitive option. Ground zero for the region’s warehouse market is in the general vicinity of Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Most of these distributors are delivering to the local market and need the central location and access to Interstate 40. The highest rates and prices can be found in this submarket and then start to decrease further out. Due to the lack of available land …
The resiliency of Houston’s industrial real estate market is truly astounding. Outsiders have always considered Houston to be an “oil town” whose economic success is tied to the geopolitical intricacies of the international energy markets. Yet three years into the oil and gas downturn, Houston has proven that it has a truly diversified economic base. The city’s industrial real estate market has consequently enjoyed a disproportionate benefit of that concerted effort to establish a truly balanced economy. From 2009 to 2014, while the national economy sputtered along due to anti-business policies of the Obama administration, Houston enjoyed a countercyclical economic boon as all sectors of the oil and gas industry added jobs, increased investment and drove demand for oil service-related real estate. Manufacturers and distributors made significant real estate commitments to property and equipment as they worked to meet the demand for materials and services related to the growth in domestic shale exploration and production. When the music stopped in November 2014, outsiders and pundits threw their hands in the air, called it the end of Houston’s growth story and declared that it would be the 1980s all over again. Houston real estate veterans, however, trusted the diversified economy and …
Over the last five years, Kansas City has seen a flurry of activity in the industrial sector. Since 2012, we have seen approximately 22.7 million square feet of new Class A industrial space hit the market, with speculative development and build-to-suits. Considering that Kansas City had only about 14 million square feet of Class A industrial space prior to 2012, these additions have had a huge impact on our marketplace. Prior to big box speculative development in Kansas City, it was hard to land large users due to lack of available product. These users did not have the time to wait for build-to-suit projects to be completed, so if product wasn’t readily available, they would move on to a different market. As a result, developers began to introduce speculative buildings, meeting this demand for new Class A product. Kansas City has thus emerged as a major player competing for larger users and their requirements. This year alone we have seen record absorption numbers and are not showing any major signs of slowing down anytime soon. The two major drivers that are taking this space are e-commerce and logistics users. The new demand for larger spaces has increased the average size …
In Southern Maine, we have an inventory problem. An inventory shortage, that is. During the recovery, there has been a steady flight to quality in all sectors including office, retail and, most strikingly, the industrial market. For the seventh consecutive year, the Greater Portland industrial market vacancy rate has dropped. We are now hovering close to a 2 percent total vacancy, which is grossly inhibiting end-users and growth. Throughout 2017, we worked with buyers and tenants that struggle to find suitable relocation and growth opportunities. Multiple offers and off-market sales have become commonplace, which frustrates end-users. We are coaching our clients to remain patient, flexible and communicative in this fluid and competitive market. Accordingly, the limited inventory drastically increased both lease rates and sales pricing for industrial style space. Sale price trends, in particular, deserve a closer look. In 2011, at the tail end of the recession, Class A and B industrial buildings were selling in the $40-per-square-foot range. Sales were almost exclusively going to owner-user businesses who were bullish enough to bet the economy would turn. Today, those businesses are competing with a smaller inventory pool, and against investors looking to diversify their portfolios. Quality industrial buildings are now …
Demand for data center space stems from a variety of sources. The vast majority of companies across most industries have some sort of web presence, and their customer and employee records and information are stored electronically. At the same time on the consumer side, smartphones and tablet devices are all but ubiquitous, their owners constantly upping their usage of apps and social media platforms. Nonprofit communications firm CTIA tracks aggregate wireless data usage across the country on an annual basis. The Washington, D.C.-based company found that in 2013, Americans used approximately 3.2 trillion megabytes of data. By 2015, a year in which there were about 228 million smartphones and 41 million tablet devices in circulation, that figure had increased threefold to 9.6 trillion megabytes. By 2016, a year in which there were more than 261 million smartphones in circulation, wireless data usage had exceeded 13.7 trillion megabytes. That total represents more than 35 times the volume of data traffic recorded in 2010, according to CTIA’s website. Web presences, records storage and electronic communications — not to mention the ever-expanding role of e-commerce in retail today — each contribute marginally to the growing demand for data center space. However, when combined …
With a statewide unemployment rate of 2.7 percent, New Hampshire has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, and is well below the national unemployment rate of 4.4 percent. The New Hampshire labor market has continued to tighten, with unemployment having dropped 0.2 percentage points since third quarter of last year. Employment gains have not been seen in two traditionally industrial sectors: trade, transportation & utilities or manufacturing. Employment in these sectors has remained relatively flat year-over-year, at -0.4 percent and 0.6 percent growth respectively. Year-to-date industrial absorption was pushed up to 623,485 square feet by continued positive absorption in the third quarter. The three largest submarkets — Nashua, Manchester, and Portsmouth —made up the majority of that absorption, while two of the smaller submarkets — Concord and Bedford — are the only ones experiencing negative year-to-date absorption. The largest new lease of the fourth quarter of 2017 was Bensonwood Woodworking’s lease of more than 100,000 square feet of space at 25 Production Avenue in Keene. The space will be used mainly for manufacturing purposes. On the capital markets front, the largest transaction of the quarter was the purchase of 55 and 85 Mechanic Street, a 119,000-square-foot multi-tenant …
As we enter the fourth quarter, fundamentals are strong in San Antonio’s industrial market, with direct vacancy tightening and continuing the hot streak it’s been on the past few years. At the third quarter’s end, the metro’s direct vacancy rate stood at 5.4 percent, down from 6.2 percent during the second quarter and 5.8 percent during 2016. In fact, that 5.4 percent direct vacancy rate represents a 12-year low. The figure is a far cry from the 9.3 percent direct vacancy registered during the third quarter of 2006 — the last time the market posted a rate above 9 percent. This d in direct vacancy is particularly noteworthy given that more than 10 million square feet of inventory has been added to the market since that time. The shrinking rate has also coincided with a slight increase in direct average asking rent, which now stands at $5.99 per square foot following a $0.16 quarter-over-quarter increase. Driving the falling vacancy numbers was an economy that fast-tracked over the summer. The San Antonio Business-Cycle Index increased at its fastest pace since 2016, while the area unemployment rate remained the same and job growth surged. Job growth increased at a 3.6 percent annualized …
The commercial real estate market in the Greater Boston area continued its torrid pace in the first half of 2017. All sections of the commercial real estate market inside Route 128 are white hot, especially after the announcement that General Electric will move its corporate headquarters to the Seaport District. Recent data indicates that Boston has one of the hottest economies in the United States and ranks as one of the top economies in the world. The 2017 Investment Intensity Index ranks Boston as the fourth market in the U.S. and 14th in the world for commercial real estate investment. In the industrial sector, which includes warehouse/distribution and flex/R&D product, vacancies are at the lowest point seen in decades. At the end of the first quarter the vacancy rate decreased to 5.7 percent. Net absorption totaled 2.24 million square feet for the quarter. The fact that the urban industrial market is continually shrinking as aging industrial properties are redeveloped into “higher and better uses” has caused a tremendous displacement of companies from inside Route 128 to areas outside the coveted Route 95 corridor. A dearth of available institutional-quality industrial product exists in today’s market with just over 13 percent of …
In the greater Fort Worth commercial real estate market, there was a scarcity of industrial speculative development until 2007-2008. A number of submarkets saw projects go vertical at this time, including Alliance, North Fort Worth and South Fort Worth. The results were mixed. While there were some successes, a number of developers found themselves at the mercy of unfortunate timing. Deal velocity slowed, leaving well-positioned buildings competing for the same tenants. This resulted in unanticipated, extended vacancy time frames and generous tenant concessions. Fast forward to 2017 — 10 years after the last cycle — and we are in the midst of an even more ambitious round of speculative development. Although many would say we are in the late innings of this real estate upswing, the number of new starts under construction or announced across Fort Worth paints a different picture. Is the continued construction justified, or is this another example of developers falling in love with the market fundamentals and not paying enough attention to market-specific deal velocity? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Fort Worth’s population has grown 60 percent since 2000, making it the 16th-largest city in the country and the fastest-growing among the 20 largest cities …