Category: News & Market Reports

Holiday Shopping & Beyond: What Texas Retail Experts See in Their Crystal Ball

Posted on by Sarah

The future has never looked brighter for retail development than it does heading into the 2021 holiday shopping season following nearly two years of, if not dark, then dim times.

“We are excited about what the extended holiday shopping season may mean for our retail tenants – especially coming off of a 2020 holiday season where in-store shopping was at worst limited and at best very inconvenient,” says Buck Cody, Principal at Endeavor Real Estate Group in Austin.

That created pent-up demand that Eric Lestin, Cushman & Wakefield’s Managing Director – Retail Lead, believes will yield a market benefit.

“Customers have been and continue to be anxious to shop and dine out and interact with others,” he says. “Many experts foresee retail sales growth to continue.”

The extension of the shopping season also has more significance this year due to supply chain restraints and overall availability concerns.

“While it is impossible to predict, or at some point understand whether or not more shopping days translates to more dollars spent, we are confident that as a general rule the more opportunities customers have to spend the better off our retail tenants will be,” Cody says. Click to read more at www.rednews.com.

VLK Architects and Bridgeland High School CANstruction® Houston Team Takes Home Three Awards at the 25th Annual Competition and Exhibition

Posted on by Sarah

(Houston, Texas) – On November 6th, the VLK Architects employees participated as the Professional Mentor to Bridgeland High School students of Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District for the 25th Annual CANstruction® Houston Competition and Exhibition. The VLK Architects and Bridgeland High School CANstruction® Houston team received three awards, the People’s Choice, Most Cans, and Best Meal.

CANstruction, Inc.® was founded in 1992 and now has competitions in 200 participating cities. Professionals from the architecture, engineering, and construction industries team up to showcase the talents of design and construction industry professionals and students they mentor in this annual event. All proceeds are donated to benefit the Houston Area Food Bank (HAFB).

“Stop Hunger” was the 2021 competition’s overall theme, and “Good Night Hunger” was the theme of the VLK Architects and Bridgeland HS team’s structure. They used over 6,900 taco-inspired canned food items to feature the story behind Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, Starry Night. The team members found Van Gogh inspiring due to his ability to look past his hospital room’s barred windows to see the true beauty of the night sky.

“Couldn’t be prouder of Bridgeland High School for all their hard work,” said Krista Thomas, captain of the VLK Architects/Bridgeland HS team. “The students helped by solving some design challenges and also helped collaborate ideas to make our CANsculpture come to life. We are ecstatic to have been able to help the Houston Food Bank. We hope that through this event, we can impact the lives of those in our surrounding community.”

The competition had sixteen team structures on display at Understory in downtown Houston from November 7-13th. The awards were announced on November 15th. Every canned food item used in this competition was donated to the Houston Area Food Bank.

VLK Architects and Bridgeland High School would like to extend a special thank you to the 2021 team sponsors, Griesenbeck, Kroger, Acme Brick, and Bridgeland™.

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About VLK Architects: With offices throughout Texas, VLK Architects provides architecture, planning, and interior design services to automotive, K-12, higher education, corporate, and institutional clients throughout Texas. For more information, please visit our website: www.vlkarchitects.com or contact 817-344-0344 or tbartley@vlkarchitects.com.  

About CANstruction®: CANstruction® is a unique international nonprofit organization that hosts competitions, exhibitions, and events showcasing colossal structures made entirely out of full cans of food. After the structures are built, the creations are displayed to the public as a giant art exhibition. At the end of the viewing, all food is donated to local food banks. For more information, please visit their website: //www.canstruction.org. 

Developers’ Dream in South Texas: McAllen Thrives as Epicenter of the Rio Grande Valley

Posted on by Sarah

It’s got a booming economy. Business development is at an all-time high, people are hustling and bustling. Welcome to McAllen, a mid-sized Texas border town with a big-city attitude.

“The growth in McAllen is amazing,” comments Rebecca Olaguibel, the city’s
Director of Retail and Business Development. “It’s an exciting time to be in
McAllen.”

While McAllen’s population hovers at just more than 142,000, according to the 2020 U.S. Census, the number of people in town swells each day as an estimated 39,000 commuters drop into town to conduct business, shop, dine, and enjoy the cities amenities.

“McAllen has consistently ranked in the Top 20 retail sales tax generators in
the state of Texas for the past few decades,” Olaguibel shares. “And, as of 2015, McAllen MSA is now the fifth largest metropolitan statistical area in Texas, surpassing El Paso.”

Even the pandemic shutdowns couldn’t dampen the city’s economic successes. “Closing out our fiscal year, we have earned epic retail sales tax revenues,” says Olaguibel. “We’ve seen our numbers go up in both retail sales tax and construction.” Click to read more at www.rednews.com.

Not Just Residential: Commercial Real Estate Is Booming, Too

Posted on by Sarah

The real estate market is hot in North Texas.

But it’s not just housing – experts say the frenzy we’re seeing in homebuying is happening in commercial real estate, too.

The demand is driving up costs from rent to construction.

“Prices are now at all-time highs,” said Chris Dharod, president of Dallas-based SSCP Management. “There’s a lot of money from other cities coming here because they want to own DFW real estate. For a long time, people wanted to buy California real estate. It’s now Texas real estate that they want to own.”

His company owns several shopping centers, apartment buildings and other real estate holdings, so Dharod has been able to observe the ever-changing market as the pandemic has unfolded over the last 18 months.

He said before COVID-19 disrupted the economy, the market was much more predictable and stable.

“At the start of the pandemic, a lot of businesses sort of slowed down and completely froze any growth that they were going through. They stopped building restaurants, they stopped moving offices, and building offices,” he said. “Since then, companies in most industries have picked back up and prices are now at all-time highs.” Click to read more at www.nbcdfw.com.

National Asset Services Delivers 270% Cumulative Return for Legacy Investors in Dallas Area Multifamily Property

Posted on by Sarah

MESQUITE, Texas, Nov. 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — National Asset Services (NAS), one of the Country’s leading commercial real estate companies, successfully delivered a buyer for Alexis at Town East, a 224-unit, multifamily community located approximately 13 miles northeast of downtown Dallas. The sale of the property resulted in a cumulative return of 270% for investors who originally purchased the property as a group of tenants-in-common (TIC) owners in January 2006.

The tremendous return on the co-owners’ investment can be attributed, in large part, to a decision made by the group in 2016 to refinance rather than sell the property at time when market conditions were not favorable.

As the maturity date of the original loan approached in January 2016, NAS executives presented options that included refinancing the property and extending the hold period until market conditions improved. The NAS team then worked with co-owners to refinance the property while securing a capital resource to finance the TIC-structured property, with favorable terms, at a time when capital markets were resistant to financing properties that consisted of multiple co-owners.

Refinancing the asset also presented a major challenge as some co-owners preferred to sell rather than extend the investment holding period. Capital sources required a guarantor for each property ownership position. With procedural guidance from the NAS team, three Town East investors stepped forward as guarantors, satisfying these lending requirements. Click to read more at www.inforney.com.

Office Market Rebound: NAIOP Projects Strong Return to Positive Net Absorption of Office Space in 2021, 2022

Posted on by Sarah

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A demand forecast by the NAIOP Research Foundation is projecting a strong resurgence of the U.S. office commercial real estate market through 2023.

As the unemployment rate declines, more workers return to the office and the economy continues to improve, the office space net absorption forecast has been revised upward from 1.8 million square feet to 8.3 million square feet in Q4 2021. The total net absorption in 2022 is forecast to be 53.5 million square feet with a quarterly average of 13.4 million square feet. In 2023, the projected net absorption is 34.3 million square feet during the first three quarters, with a quarterly average of 11.4 million square feet.

This forecast is dependent on continued economic growth, which seems plausible given recent data. The measured unemployment rate in September was 4.8%, down from 6.1% in April. Supply chain issues have resulted in higher consumer prices and stoked inflationary concerns. Still, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose at an annualized rate of 2.0% in Q3 2021, a pace that cooled from the Q2 2021 real GDP growth rate of 6.7%

According to the report, “although the number of people currently employed in professional and business services, financial activities and information industries is only 1.5% lower than in February 2020, office utilization rates remain much lower than before the pandemic due to continued concerns about coronavirus transmission. Click to read more at www.naiop.org.