Urbanexus Update - Issue #122
H. Pike Oliver assembles and distributes selected economic, real estate and community development news and perspectives every few weeks. Some items are behind a paywall.
The economy and jobs in the USA
Significant job recovery in Q3 2020
Mark Vitner of Wells Fargo Securities stated the obvious--job losses during the current recession are much steeper than previous recessions, which are depicted in gray vertical bars in the chart below. “This recession is the worst we’ve ever seen in terms of job loss and declines in GDP, but it was the shortest we’ve ever seen,” said Vitner. “All the decline we saw was in the second half of March and the first half of April. Since April 15 we’ve been recovering.”
Employers added 661,000 jobs to the U.S. economy in September, which was nearly 200,000 jobs below the expectations of economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. Still, the economy has recovered 11.4 million of the 22 million jobs lost since the beginning of the pandemic. Additionally, the unemployment rate fell 50 basis points from August to 7.9 percent in September.
Real estate finance
Record-low interest rates have provided a major boost to mortgage lenders’ business. And now, several of them are looking to capitalize on the low-rate environment — quite literally.Caliber Home Loans has filed for an initial public offering — the company is set to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “HOMS.” The proceeds of the offering will go to the selling stockholder, LSF Pickens Holdings, which is a unit of private-equity fund manager Lone Star. And United Wholesale Mortgage announced it would go public through a merger with Gores Holding IV Inc. GHIV, -0.80%, a special purpose acquisition corporation. Another lender, LoanDepot, is reportedly reviving its IPO plans after having abandoned them a few years ago.
Office
Howard Hughes opens 55-Story Office Tower along the Chicago River
The Howard Hughes Corp. and Riverside Investment & Development have opened 110 North Wacker Drive, a 55-story office tower situated along the Chicago River. The 1.5 million-square-foot project is the tallest office building completed in the city in the last three decades, according to the developers.
Several downtown Calgary offices buildings are empty A new report from Avison Young shows the economic downturn has caused more downtown offices in Calgary to sit empty, but experts believe the shift may not necessarily be a bad thing.
Working at home was rising pre-pandemic The 2019 market share data has just been released by the American Community Survey. Looking at driving alone and transit market shares, there has been virtually no change since 2010, with driving alone accounting for about three-quarters of commuting, while transit remains steady at 5%. The big news before Covid: the increase in people usually working from home (also referred to as telework or telecommuting)
Industrial
A 4.4 million square foot logistics hub
CT Realty and PGIM have initiated a 206-acre Agua Mansa Commerce Park will feature three buildings spanning over 1 million square feet each, as well as two 200,000-square-foot buildings in Southern California’s Inland Empire.
Residential
Investors seek safe harbor in Chicago’s apartment market
Multifamily investors prefer to concentrate capital in the primary markets. Although prices are steep and cap rates low, the gateway cities offer private equity and institutional buyers the young, affluent tenants, economic diversification, deep trough of performance data and property market liquidity that can’t be found in smaller cities. Gateway cities offer these assets…until they don’t.
This raises the question of whether investors may find the primary market attributes they seek with less NOI risk in more predictable Midwest markets. Chicago’s near-primary market status makes it the natural test case for the proposition. Did greater return stability (and therefore reduced risk) compensate Chicago investors for slower NOI growth? The answer is yes, but only to a degree. With respect to the standard deviation of quarterly four-quarter NOI growth rates, which we use as a proxy for NOI growth volatility, Chicago ranked 14th most stable among the 50 metro peer group, trailing Boston, Washington D.C. and Seattle among the primary markets.
Homebuilding continues historic climb — eyeonhousing.org Single-family starts experienced continued gains in September, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Census Bureau
The housing market index is at an all-time high
Builder confidence rose by five points in September to an all-time high of 83 in the latest edition of the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. Last month’s reading of 78 had been the last highest in the history of the survey, matching a record set in December 1998.
Explaining the trong housing market across the USA
Thanks to three key drivers of demand, housing has been on a rocket ship trajectory after bottoming out earlier this year. See more at the article for why demand is being driven by: demographic tailwinds, historically low mortgage rates, a stronger relationship with home during the pandemic.
San Francisco housing has cooled The coronavirus pandemic has pushed people who were already considering leaving San Francisco for the suburbs or out of state, but houses are still selling for 2019-level prices.
Missing middle housing California State Senate Bill 1120 (SB 1120), a bill that would’ve permitted duplexes on land zoned for single-family residences across the state, died abruptly at the 11th hour back in August when assembly members in Sacramento failed to pass a vote before the official end of the 2020 legislative session. While the failure was a blow to housing advocacy and YIMBY groups, it was a win for neighborhood and homeowner associations across the state who viewed the legislation as too radical and heavy-handed.
Top ten building for conversion to apartments
A RentCafé report looks at the types of buildings that most often end up being converted into apartment rentals.
Floor plans changing as families clamor for flex space
Floor pans that can accommodate home school and remote work now can be used for different purposes later.
Mixed-use and master-planned development
A Texas master-planned community
Following the approval of a zoning change from the Mesquite, Texas, City Council, Huffines Communities has announced its plans to build the largest master-planned community in the city’s history, Solterra, set to include an estimated 3,900 homes across 1,424 acres at full build-out.
A Google mixed-use project in California
Google’s plans for a massive mixed-use project in downtown San Jose, California, came into clearer focus this week as the city released hundreds of pages of documents detailing the tech giant’s proposal.
In the works for more than three years, the Downtown West Mixed-Use Plan will develop 81 acres in downtown San Jose into a transit-oriented area consisting of new office space, housing and open space.
Although the coronavirus pandemic delayed the project review and related outreach by a few months, the plans released this week will enable further public input and allow city officials to complete the review process
Millennium Partners Boston, a local arm of developer Millennium Partners, has secured $775 million in construction financing from Cale Street Investments for Winthrop Center, a $1.3 billion mixed-use development located in downtown Boston.
Upon completion, the project is expected to feature 812,000 square feet of Class A office space; 572,000 square feet of residential space including 321 luxury residential units; and a 24,000-square-foot common area featuring a fitness center, game room, coffee bar, cafe and lounge space.
Regional and metropolitan dynamics
Departures from gateway markets like New York City is one of the major issues facing the commercial real estate industry in 2021, according to the Urban Land Institute (ULI). Emerging Trends 2021 included a map of the United States that highlighted U-Haul migration patterns (see below). Cities that saw net out-migration in the past several months include Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland and Los Angeles, as well as other large markets like Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.
Cities that U-Haul classified as in-migration destinations included primarily Sunbelt markets such as Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Raleigh, Nashville and Charlotte, as well as a few others around the country like Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Boise and Indianapolis. The Emerging Trends report has commonly referred to these cities as 18-hour markets to distinguish those from 24-hour markets like New York City and Los Angeles.
'Zoom towns' are exploding in the West of the USA
First, there were boomtowns. Now, there are Zoom towns. The coronavirus pandemic is leading to a new phenomenon: a migration to “gateway communities,” or small towns near major public lands and ski resorts as people’s jobs increasingly become remote-friendly. This is straining the towns’ resources and putting pressure on them to adapt. Many of these communities aren’t ready for the onslaught.
According to NAHB estimates, the total count of second homes in the USA was 7.5 million, accounting for 5.5% of the total housing stock in 2018, the most recent data
Environment and climate change
Housing and wildfire areas in the West of the USA
Cape Analytics analyzed new homes built over the last decade and found that California leads the West when it comes to the most builds in high-risk areas. When adjusting for population size, Utah leads the West by a significant margin in building homes in places with high fire risks.