Each Wednesday, The Wrap presents a compilation of recent noteworthy commercial real estate stories from a variety of publications. Below are links to five stories that caught our eyes in recent days:
Internet Commerce Drives Strongest Surge in Demand for US Industrial Space Since 2001, By Randyl Drummer, CoStar
Key Excerpt:
“According to a preliminary analysis by CoStar of midyear logistics and industrial property leasing data, that’s nearly 2 percentage points lower than the 2004-2007 expansion cycle, and within a few basis points of the lowest vacancy rate for industrial property since the Internet-driven demand boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s.”
PGIM Real Estate Acquires 1.1 Million-Square-Foot Avalon Mixed-Use Center Near Atlanta, Shopping Center Business
Key Excerpt:
“The open-air lifestyle center contains 390,543 square feet of retail space, 105,364 square feet of Class A office space, 250 luxury apartment units and a 3.3-acre office development parcel. It is part of an 86-acre master-planned community about 20 miles north of Atlanta that features an additional 100 single-family homes, office tower, hotel, conference center and medical office building, which are all in various stages of construction.”
Brexit Helps Boost U.S. Office REIT Performance in July, By Susan Persin, Urban Land Institute
Key Excerpt:
“Leasing activity picked up during the second quarter, although some U.S. businesses are postponing leasing decisions because of uncertainty related to the upcoming election and the volatile stock market. Oil, technology, and even banks, whose earnings have been affected by ongoing low interest rates, are reevaluating their space needs. Still, leasing activity allowed overall vacancy to stay steady or to fall slightly in most markets during the quarter even as sublease space has increased, especially in tech and oil and gas markets.”
Data Centers and the Cloud Are Going Green, By Michele Lerner, REIT.com
Key Excerpt:
“If you picture a data center as the equivalent of a big box store, but filled with sensitive, high-tech servers, it may seem like a natural fit to put an array of solar panels across the roof to generate power. Unfortunately, the amount of energy generated would likely produce only about 1 percent of the power needed to run the data center, according to [Aaron] Binkley. That said, many data center owners have found ways to commit to expanding their use of renewable energy.”
Foreign Investors Buy More Apartment Properties, By Bendix Anderson, National Real Estate Investor
Key Excerpt:
“Foreign buyers have already bought apartment properties totaling $5.1 billion in the first six months of 2016. That’s a 7.1 percent share of the total $72.3 billion in apartment assets that investors of all types bought in the first half of the year. In almost any other year that would be a tremendous amount of activity. Over the last 10 years foreign investors bought an average $5.4 billion in apartment properties annually.”