More than $41 billion was spent in the Texas commercial real state market last year.

By: Steve Brown
Source: The Dallas Morning News

Last year was the best time for commercial real estate in seven years, according to a new study.

And Texas was the top commercial property market in the country, a report by NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, finds.

The industry group said that commercial real estate’s contribution to the national economy rose by 40 percent in 2014 from the previous year.

Commercial property direct expenditures for 2014 added up to $174.31 billion – the greatest volume since before the recession.

And the industry supported almost 4 million jobs nationwide.

“The industry is getting back to full health and making an even bigger contribution to our national economy, but it still has plenty of room to grow,” Thomas J. Bisacquino, NAIOP president and CEO, said in a statement. “Office and industrial l were very strong and we believe the activity in these areas will keep accelerating.”

Texas by far had the largest direct commercial real estate expenditures last year – almost $42 billion. And more than 776,000 of the state’s jobs were derived in part or all from commercial real estate.

California was a distant second with $13 billion, followed by New York with $10.5 billion.

March 06, 2015

Source: ICSC News/Press

Reconfiguring a vacant store is often the key to leasing it, panelists said at an SCTLive event in Miami this week titled “Solutions for Hard-to-Fill Spaces.” Retailer prototypes are shrinking, making large spaces unsuitable for many of the types of chains that are now expanding, the participants were saying.

The old supermarket model that required 50,000 square feet does not work anymore, as most grocers are learning to operate in much smaller spaces. “Does the physical plan work? If not, change it,” said Paul Rutledge, CRX, CSM, CLS, first vice president for the Tampa Bay market at CBRE. “Bulldozers are not bad.” Rutledge recommended scrapping excess vacant in-line space and creating new outparcels. Food tenants and other expanding chains, such as Dollar Tree, are increasingly requesting outparcels, he said.