Thursday, September 26, 2013

Obamacare and Federal Budget Wrangling Could Affect Commercial Real Estate, Notes Severino of Reis

  

President Barack Obama

  
Ryan Severino
ATLANTA, GA (Sept. 25, 2013) – Several years after the recession ended, the commercial real estate landscape remains varied, with the multifamily sector soaring and retail sector still the lagging sector. Meanwhile, uncertainties over the federal budget and over the implementation of the new federal healthcare reform law, known as “Obamacare,” could slow the economy and the commercial real estate industry recovery as well.

Those were several of the points made during the most recent episode of the “Commercial Real Estate Show” radio program, hosted by Michael Bull of Bull Realty. Bull and his guest Ryan Severino, senior economist at Reis, provided an enlightening view of the state of the commercial real estate markets.

Michael Bull
 Topics included the performances of the individual property sectors, investment sales, new construction, and the potential impacts of Obamacare, rising interest rates and tapering of quantitative easing.

With a national vacancy rate of just 4.3 percent, the multifamily sector remains “the star performer” of commercial real estate, Severino said. A looming uptick in new construction, however, could cool off the white-hot sector just a bit, he cautioned.

“You aren’t going to see demand pull back significantly, but you are going to see greater competition from new supply in the next six to 18 months,” Severino said. “That is not going to cause vacancy to explode, but we’ll probably drift higher in the next four to five years.”

Nordstrom, Chicago, IL
On the other hand, the retail market continues to sputter overall, but it’s not without its positives. “If you look at those high-quality, Class A malls with anchors like Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus and in-line tenants like Armani and Polo, those centers have held up pretty well,” Severino said.

 “If you get away from those sectors to the Class B+ and lower-caliber malls, we haven’t seen demand bounce back because most consumers have been a little more circumspect about their discretionary spending.”

The office market continues to be hampered by sluggish job growth, but that could change starting next year, Severino noted. “Give it a year or two,” he said. “With economic growth accelerating, I think you’ll see stronger demand on the part of users of office space.”

Neiman Marcus, Dallas, TX
The industrial sector “has a Goldilocks temperature to it right now,” Severino said. “It’s not as hot as the apartment market, and it’s not as cold as retail.” The national vacancy rate for the warehouse/distribution subsector is 11.8 percent and 13.8 percent for the flex/R&D subsector, he added.

Questions about the implementation of Obamacare are one of several economic factors poised to impact property performance in the coming months, Severino said, as business owners will remain hesitant to make real estate and personnel decisions until the dust settles.

“Whether you like Obamacare or you don’t like Obamacare, what I would really like to see them do is just settle on everything so that the market knows where it stands, and [business owners] can make decisions going forward,” Severino said. 

“Even if you hate the law and you don’t like what it’s going to do to your business, at least you can make decisions about the future once you know for certain where you stand.”

For a complete copy of the company’s news release, please contact:

Stephen Ursery
The Wilbert Group
404.405.2354


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