CBRE is predicting a record-setting year for investment in commercial real estate in 2022, thanks to pent-up demand from the COVID-19 pandemic, major fiscal stimulus projects and a rebound of big cities and downtowns. That’s the good news in the company’s latest look at the state of the country’s commercial real estate market, the 2022 U.S. Real Estate Outlook.

How busy is 2022 expected to be? CBRE says that it expects to see a 4.6 percent gain in U.S. gross domestic product next year as businesses and real estate continue their recovery from COVID-19 and any government restrictions that have resulted from it. Investment volumes are expected to increase by 5 percent to 10 percent for the year as low-interest rates and a rebound of international travel fuel demand.

And in good news for big cities, CBRE predicts that downtowns will bounce back as international travel and society’s gradual return to the office boost demand for offices, stores, restaurants and apartments.

“Our outlook for U.S. commercial real estate next year is positive due to a number of tailwinds overriding deterrents such as inflation,” said Richard Barkham, CBRE’s Global Chief Economist and Head of Americas Research, in a statement. “COVID-19 flareups still pose a risk, but governments and health authorities appear to have made progress in containment and treatment. We see this rising tide further buoying the capital markets, multifamily and industrial and logistics sectors and aiding the burgeoning recoveries of the retail and office sectors.”

CBRE anticipates that federal policy measures such as spending on infrastructure and social programs will add momentum to economic growth. Meanwhile, inflation will moderate through 2022 so that it amounts to 2.2 percent across the full year. CBRE foresees the Federal Reserve starting to raise the Federal Funds Rate by the end of 2022.

And how will individual CRE sectors fare?

Capital Markets:

CBRE says that investment volumes should increase by 5 percent to 10 percent. Industrial and logistics and multifamily remain the darlings, but investment in office and retail will perk up for the right assets in the right markets. Capitalization rates will hold steady as strong demand for assets offsets eventual interest-rate increases.

Office and Occupier:

The office market will remain favorable for occupiers because of elevated vacancy rates. The gradual recovery of office demand and leasing activity will carry over into 2022, although the timing of the large-scale return to the office may be affected by the omicron variant. Employers will favor buildings with numerous amenities and collaboration space to appeal to employees. The life-sciences sector has emerged as a growth leader, with both lab rents and the construction pipeline at record highs.

Retail:

CBRE is predicting a solid year for retail in 2022, estimating 10-year highs for leasing and investment activity in U.S. retail real estate next year. Retailers will benefit from pent-up demand fueled by the personal savings that consumers built up during the pandemic. Investors will favor grocery-anchored centers, neighborhood centers, open-air centers and single-tenant, drive-through buildings.

Industrial and Logistics:

This sector should enjoy another banner year in 2022, propelled by e-commerce growth and retailers storing more inventory as a hedge against supply chain disruptions. High transportation costs should ease as congestion at U.S. ports and other supply chain links slowly resolves throughout 2022. Third-party logistics firms will benefit from increased outsourcing of logistics functions.

Multifamily:

CBRE sees U.S. multifamily occupancy remaining above 95 percent and net effective rents growing by 7 percent in 2022. Construction completions will hit a new high of more than 300,000 units, reining in performance of high-quality complexes. Occupancy in urban apartments continues to recover as the pandemic recedes.

BETHESDA, Md., Nov. 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Walker & Dunlop, Inc. announced today that it structured $15,000,000 in financing for the Hamilton Park, Tully Trail, and Memory Village, a collection of build-for-rent neighborhoods located in Tyler, Texas.

Each of the build-for-rent (BFR) neighborhoods features contiguous, newly built single-family rental homes that are competitively priced. Each home is approximately 1,400 square feet, boasts three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and features fully maintained lawns and landscaping, a two-car garage, private fenced backyards, and open floorplans. Built between 1996 and 2021, the homes are in very high demand, with all 123 currently 100% occupied.

Stuart Wernick, SVP and Managing Director, and Drew Garrison, Director, led the Walker & Dunlop team in arranging the refinance for the sponsor, a regional custom home builder, a vertically integrated construction, development, and property management company. Utilizing their broad network of capital providers, the team partnered with a regional bank, which proved to be the most attractive lender for their client. The resulting financing was a non-recourse structured solution with a fixed rate in the low fours for a term of 30 years with flexible prepayment options. Click to read more at www.news-journal.com.

Black Friday? It wasn’t as busy as retailers might have hoped for this year, according to research from Sensormatic Solutions.

According to Sensormatic, visits to physical stores on Black Friday this year — the day after Thanksgiving — were down 28.3 percent when compared to 2019 levels. That’s an important comparison: Black Friday of 2019 was the last one before the COVID-19 pandemic became headline news.

In good news, though, Black Friday visits by shoppers this year were up a solid 47.5 percent when compared to 2020.

Sensormatic reported that shoppers might be more likely to visit stores in person this year because of the supply chain challenges that continue to hit the country.

“More shoppers felt comfortable visiting stores in person this Black Friday than in 2020,” said Brian Field, senior director of global retail consulting with Sensormatic Solutions, in a written statement. “One driver of this increased traffic could be ongoing supply chain challenges and shipping delays, which are resulting in consumers shopping earlier to ensure their gifts arrive on time.”

The rest of the 2021 holiday shopping season might be a strong one for physical retailers.

According to Sensormatic Solutions’ 2021 Holiday Consumer Sentiment Survey, 65 percent of U.S. consumers say they plan to shop in-store this holiday season for product-related reasons, like browsing for gift ideas or to see or touch products before buying.

Sensormatic Solutions predicts that the 10 busiest U.S. shopping days in 2021 will account for 40 percent of all holiday traffic. U.S. in-store traffic for this year’s holiday season is also expected to be down between 10% and 15% compared to 2019.

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the world’s largest commercial real estate services investment firm, CBRE Group, will bring more than 1,000 jobs to two Texas cities.

CBRE Group will invest nearly 30 million dollars in its Dallas headquarters, creating 460 new jobs. With more than a 13 million dollar capital investment going towards an operations center in Richardson, Texas, the group aims to create 550 new jobs.

“Samsung had many other options for this project…this is the largest foreign investment in the state of Texas ever.”

GOV GREG ABBOTT
The Samsung facility will produce advanced microchips for mobile devices, 5G, high-performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence (AI).

It is predicted that the creation of the Samsung facility in Taylor will create more than 2,000 technical jobs, thousands of indirect jobs, and at least 6,500 construction jobs. Construction of the facility will start early next year and production will start in 2024. Click to read more at www.fox44news.com.

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.

Here it goes: The real estate industry is one of the top industries to blame for climate change and its mounting toll worldwide.

No matter your political bent or views on climate change, in the real estate business, the environment is about to become much more important to your bottom line.

The conclusion here about climate change isn’t a conspiracy theory or an attempt to shame developers. Rather, it is the consensus of more than 2,000 top real estate minds across North America expressed in the 2022 version of the Emerging Trends in Real Estate report.

Published annually by the Urban Land Institute (“ULI”) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Emerging Trends is a comprehensive forecast for the real estate market and offers predictions about the forces experts say will drive development in the year ahead.

This latest report details COVID-19’s impacts on remote work and living arrangements, how cities are evolving, technology’s influence on the real estate market, and the financial implications of everything from job and income growth to interest rates and inflation. Click to read more at www.dmagazine.com.