Our Monthly Market update is a week late (oops!) but the good news is that the stats about December haven't changed since last Monday! The commercial real estate market as a whole isn't expected to rebound fully for a good long while, but there are sectors that have been surviving - even thriving - through the last 10 months!
As we fall into a new month and COVID numbers continue to be on the rise in NH yet again, surprising amounts of leases were signed last month. Perhaps people are trying to get back to a sense of normalcy in the office, and perhaps people are down - or up - sizing their offices based on their needs. Whatever it might be, 39 lease transactions in a single month is something that hasn't been reported since February 2019.
The industrial market is kind of in a strange place right now. It is faring better than the majority of the commercial real estate sectors, which is certinaly a positive. It seems that perhaps the sudden increase in the amount of e-commerce and online ordering has helped the industrial sector find its footing again.
If you're wondering how the office market is faring 6 months after a national state of emergency was declared, look no further!
July showed some promising numbers when we took a look at our monthly report!
The number of lease transactions are (WAY) up from last month. On top of lease transactions being up, we also saw that leases were being signed at 107% of the asking lease rate which is good news for landlords!
The residential real estate business is booming right now, and this includes 1-4 unit multifamily properties as well as larger 5+ unit multifamilies. Single family homes have seen their heyday recently with little inventory and plenty of competition. While there have always been plenty of individuals looking to invest in multis, this number has recently increased, especially on smaller multifamily properties. With people being out of work due to layoffs and furloughs, many are going to look to offload their large mortgages and get into something more affordable.
One of the sectors of commercial real estate that seems to be surviving through this pandemic is the industrial sector, despite having to shut down for a period of time.
In June we saw:
• higher list-to-close ratios for sales AND leases
Not surprisingly retailers are a litttttle leery signing new leases in the midst of a pandemic. Even with businesses beginning to open up across the country in May and June, there are still too many unknowns out there.
Among those questions are:
Could this be the jab to the throat brick-and-mortar retail was trying to avoid? Back in February forecasts were predicting that U.S. retail would see moderate growth somewhere around 2.8% in 2020. This was PC (pre-COVID), of course. Now, the newest available data is showing that U.S. retail sales will most likely decline 10.5% this year, and those getting hit the hardest will be brick-and-mortar retail stores.
Normalcy in everyday life certainly seems like a distant dream for most of the United States right now. With radical changes to how we work, shop, eat and otherwise live thrown at the country so suddenly, one thing is for certain – the way we go about our lives is going to be very different once the dust has settled from this COVID-19 pandemic.
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