The good news keeps coming for the commercial real estate industry. This time, Cassidy Turley’s third-quarter industrial report comes with plenty of positive stats regarding this sector.
And if you’ve been following this blog, you’ve read several other positive reports from the country’s major commercial real estate companies, reports that come with good news regarding the office, multi-family and retail sectors in cities across the Midwest.
If that’s the case, then why does the commercial real estate business seem so challenging today? So many of the brokers I’ve interviewed have told me that they’re working harder than ever to succeed today. The deals are out there, but closing them takes more smarts and skills than ever.
And when I ask brokers, even those who have worked in the industry for decades, if they can remember a market like the one we’re suffering through now, they always provide the same answer: Never. There has never been a market that has been this challenging for this long, they tell me.
Of course, its not just commercial real estate professionals feeling this. Workers of all types are struggling today. Yes, the national unemployment rate did finally drop below 8 percent. But unemployment still remains far too high. It’s little wonder that so many people can’t quite shake the feeling that their jobs are far from secure. Maybe that’s the new reality.
Cassidy Turley’s industrial sector report is cause for optimism. According to the report, net absorption for industrial space hit 27.5 million square feet in the third quarter of this year, up from 20.1 million square feet in the second quarter. Cassidy Turley analysts termed the quarter one of the strongest in the current economic “recovery” period.
At the same time, U.S. industrial vacancy rates fell by 10 basis points from the previous quarter to 9 percent. This means that the U.S. industrial vacancy rate is down 100 basis points from its recessionary high.
See? This is evidence that things are getting better.
Yet somehow, all the positive reports fail to dispel that feeling of unease that has hung over the country since the earliest days of the recession.
