No Summer Lull This Year

We may have lost the spring real estate season, but we aren't losing the summer!  Our leads on LoopNet are the most plentiful they've ever been, and our agents are busy.  Given the uncertainty of the pandemic's return, this is either the calm after the storm, or the calm before the second storm (or both).  In either case, buyers are out looking.  

Many of them are thinking that properties will be available at rock-bottom rates, but, as with residential, the supply is too thin for that to be so.  Some lookers are New Yorkers, seeking to move businesses, or just invest where they may have a second home. Some buyers are local, and know that certain property types are hard to find.  The investors may be from anywhere, and we've been finding that they look at many offerings at once, often of completely different types.  

Connecticut, after decades of coming out on the losing end of many measuring metrics, such as job growth or personal income growth, is now enjoying its moment in the sun, as the state that is beating back COVID.  Isn't it nice to be good at something?  So keep wearing those masks, people, so that the buyers stay active and well, and the sellers do too.  That way, everyone wins.

Commercial Real Estate Pivots on Product

I have a friend whose job is as a cost estimator for large construction projects.  His biggest job has been paused, not for COVID reasons directly, but rather for the changes in the post-COVID world.  The client feels that the building needs to be redesigned to provide more privacy, and less open work space.  Since most recent buildings have featured open floor plans, it remains to be seen what the demand will be going forward.  It may mean that older buildings, which might not even be Class A buildings anymore, will be desirable just because they have many small individual offices.  It also may mean that flex space will be bought and reconfigured into cubicles.

Retail spaces may also be changed, and smaller spaces may become the sought after ones.  It may also be that stores will have waiting areas, entry turnstiles, or different layouts over larger floor areas.  Some retail may get used by service industries, like exercise studios that now need social distancing room, or salons and even medical facilities, for similar reasons.

Warehouse, as I have said many times, will be prime real estate for some time to come.  The rise of e-commerce has been accelerated by the coronavirus, and that trend will continue.  Location, as always, will determine value.

It's a brave new world, and we don't know everything that will happen, but change is surely in the cards.