TriState's Commercial Real Estate Show A Success

The TriState REALTORS® Commercial Alliance, of which I am a member, held their annual Annual Commercial Real Estate Show (ACRES) at the Valley Forge Convention Center in King of Prussia, PA on Thursday, 10/26/2006.  It consisted of exhibits, several informative panel discussions made up of major area real estate practitioners, service providers and major users of of real estate services; ending with a luncheon and keynote speaker.
 
The panel discussions were informative and well run, with moderators feeding relevant questions to the panels.  Following are some of the panel topics and a few of the comments:
 
Retailers' Site Requirements and Expansion Plans
      Land is getting harder to find.
      Zoning and approvals are getting tougher.
      Recommendation: Submit prospective sites via email with PDF attachments, including as much information as possible (site plan, good directions and explanation of location, zoning info., aerial views, maps, demographics, etc.) with full contact information and submitter's role/position in the transaction.
 
Corporate Real Estate Executives’ Expectations of Real Estate Providers
      All were looking for honesty, demonstrable understanding of their organization's needs, network/relationship building over time and performance.
      Real Estate agents for buyers and tenants need to manage expectations by educating buyer/tenant in advance about costs, configuations, requirements, timing, comparatives, history, demographics, special needs, etc. so there are no surprises. 
      Real Estate agents need to be able to help direct focus of buyers/tenants and to develop and provide a consolidated decision making point of contact for the seller/landlord (and vice versa).
      Buyers and tenants, particularly professional organizations, were looking to avoid contracts that incurred any personal liabilities.
      Looking for real estate providers that would not have a conflict of interest by their involvement in representing other tenants and/or landlords that would have overlapping interests.
 
The Investment Outlook for the Delaware Valley
      All panelists were generally positive about the commercial real estate outlook in all segments: 
              The Multi-Family area still strong -- though it has switched from condo-conversion investments to responding to strong tenancy demand, with low vacancies and increased rates. 
               Other commercial segments were switching from investments driven by property appreciation (and correspondingly lower cap rates) back to focusing more on financial fundamentals, income streams and IRR.
               It was suggested that owners needed to look at investing back into current properties to upgrade and possibly obtain returns in the 10% range or more, as opposed to new acquisitions and the resulting development and compliance costs they were sure to incur.
 
The keynote speaker discussed that in general the larger property transactions should expect near term IRR to be in the 7 to 11% range.  He went on to point out the many positives of the greater Philadelphia metropolitan area, including having 11% of the BioTech industry, a large nationally recognized healthcare center, eight of the world's top pharmaceticals within an hour's drive and area colleges and universities of all sizes providing 50,000 quality graduates every year.
 
The TriState REALTORS® Commercial Alliance is the preeminent advocate for the Commercial and Industrial practitioner in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.
 
 
 

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Copyright 2006 by Lawrence Yerkes. All Rights Reserved.