The Future of Office Space in Greater New Haven

 Much has been written about the terrible effects of the pandemic on occupancy rates in major cities.  Although New Haven is a smaller city, it has reasons to hope that office space locally will not take the big hits predicted in other areas.

First of all, we don't have the same supply.  We haven't been adding to the number of office buildings the way other regions have done.  In fact, we've been taking office and turning it into residential in several cases.  Low supply always pushes up occupancy rates.

Secondly, we have been adding residential units, both condo and particularly rentals, at a fast clip over the past decade.  Luxury buildings have all filled faster than expected, and sometimes it seems that there is an unending demand.  Although some tenants commute to other cities, preferring New Haven as a place to live, most people are working or going to school here.  As that continues, it leads to a greater need for commercial space, even offices.  Obviously, it helps retail, restaurants, and service uses, but it has long been known that people try to work where they want to live.

Thirdly, our uses for office space don't line up exactly with most urban locations.  Yale is a large tenant, in addition to owning millions of square feet of space.  Biotech is a greater percentage of the for-profit sector than in most other cities, and the need for lab space and intensive collaboration means that employees can't do much of their work from home.  Those factors won't change, and that will help us fill more office/flex space going forward.

Finally, COVID has pushed many to move from dense locations to ones with more open space.  Smaller cities are thriving, and may outpace larger ones over the next few years.  New Haven, with its desirable location between NYC and Boston, may well be one that does exceptionally well.  And we're on board with that!

New Haven Outperforming Other Connecticut Cities

Fairfield County, with its big corporations, is still reeling from the actual, but even more the psychological, effects of GE's move to Boston.  GE is still leaving a lot of employees in Fairfield, but both the home and office market reflect the strain.  Hartford, on the other hand, is losing Aetna after a century and a half, and other big insurance companies have moved, downsized, or merged as well.  In addition, the city itself is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, which doesn't improve its chances to pick up new office users.

That leaves New Haven, with its startups, biotech related to Yale, and medical complex, to pick up the slack.  New Haven also has an easier time of recruiting young professionals, since there is a vibrant nightlife scene, and many residential choices, from close-in city neighborhoods to high-rise condos and apartments.  New Haven officials and developers are banking that this will continue, and the future is looking bright for that trajectory. 

Now, if only Connecticut could solve its fiscal problems, we'd be all set.  Come on, legislators, help us out here!

Moving Chess Pieces

What do restaurants and technology/biotech companies seemingly have in common?  They both seem to abruptly change status.  Restaurants, for obvious reasons, don't ever seem to give a lot of notice about closings, and so closures come as a surprise.  Tech and biotech companies, which are clearly hot properties, merge or move on a dime.  Buildings which have just finished fit-up, or undergone extensive renovations, may suddenly find themselves empty again. The rent cost doesn't amount to enough to factor in heavily to other synergies of moving. 


Lately, we've seen both phenomena in our market.  Long-term, established restaurants have closed, and new lab and office space has re-entered the market.  The latter, particularly, could represent opportunity for investors and users to pick up square footage at a relatively low cost.


Nothing is constant except change!

Investment Real Estate in Greater New Haven

To make money in New Haven real estate, a person needs to know that it is, at heart, a university town.  The growth is in education and health care (the latter being here in some large part because of Yale's medical school), as well as biotech (ditto the sentence above). We are disproportionately employed in the arts, again in part because of schools, and also because our highly educated workforce values the arts greatly in evaluating quality of life issues.

These factors tend to produce a population in some parts of the region that can be quite transient - students, graduate students, residents, artists, and "hired gun" executives.  At the other end of the spectrum, we have a very poor inner city area, with high rates of unemployment. Those two groups combine to produce a high need for rental properties at every price point, and contribute to New Haven having the lowest apartment vacancy rate in the country (about 1 and ½ percent).

If you've read the two preceding paragraphs, you're probably already in the market for residential investment property.  Join the club!  We have a great demand for those types of listings, and are always on the lookout for more.  New Haven now has rentals that exceed $5,000 per month for an apartment, as well as Section 8 housing (in one instance, in the same building).  Investors have a choice, therefore, about the segment of the market where they feel most comfortable.  There is also a shortage of houses for rent, and we are starting to see activity in that sector as well as the strong demand for multifamily homes that has existed, particularly near the colleges and universities.

Of course, where there are students there is also a need for restaurants, bars, retail, and health facilities, so investment property does exist in other sectors as well.  Greater New Haven is considered to be significantly "under-retailed", and 06511 is reported to be one of the nation's hottest mail-order zip codes, the theory being that the people in that part of New Haven have high incomes and not enough retail outlets to satisfy their consumption preferences.

So, whether you'd like to be a landlord, a franchisee, or simply a holder of a potentially valuable future income stream, we can find what you'd like in Greater New Haven, at any time that you think that you've had enough of entrusting your wealth to the increasingly volatile stock market.