2018 Commercial Real Estate Outlook

2018 Commercial Real Estate Outlook

2018 is predicted to remain steady and consistent reports speakers Alan Nevin, Jim Roherty and Eric Northbrook at the “Our City” event focusing on San Diego’s Commercial Real Estate Outlook for 2018. Interest rates are forecasted to remain low with a low number of laborers. Gas prices will also remain low with a healthy economy. Since Donald Trump has made millions as a real estate entrepreneur, common sense says he will likely implement policies to strengthen the real estate industry. At the very least, he wouldn’t decide to undermine it. He wouldn’t hurt his own business, right?

As for San Diego, 2018 is predicted to bring a vast amount of remodeling to our community. 2017 brought multiple new and large buildings to the streets of San Diego, which included the Pendry Hotel, Bankers Hill building boom, the high-rise proposed on 520 W. Ash in Little Italy, and the Roma market little Italy expansion. With these new buildings and projects, it is predicted that 2018 will become a year for re-positioning of long-standing buildings. Office spaces and multi-family apartment buildings are also making a push to incorporate new amenities to attract top tenants. Whereas ten years ago, a well-equipped office or apartment would have been sufficient, today you need to have hyper amenities to push the rents you want to push.

As contractors and investors decide to adopt renovation projects, they must also recall that millennials now make up almost 50% of the workforce, their preferences are largely defining the future of the workplace and commercial real estate. Listening to their demands on ideal work environments is an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed. There are four basic ways millennials are shaping today’s commercial real estate market based on what they value most in their work environment:



  1. Urbanism: Millennials prefer walkable, mixed-use, centrally-located, transit-oriented environments. Over all, a building’s location and design should be intended for a “live-work-play” lifestyle. Meaning: Young urban professionals live near their workplaces which should ideally be centrally located around shops, restaurants and entertainment.
  2. Open-Concept Design: Say so-long to corner offices and cubicle farms, and welcome to wide open spaces. One major millennial trademark is the open office; however, this layout has surpassed just a millennial mindset. Seventy-percent of American employees spend their working lives in open floor plan offices, according to International Facility Management. Open offices offer collaboration, communication, and creativity, all which millennials are demanding. This popular floor plan additionally offers a lesser known motivator desired by this generation: competitiveness, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Open offices allow coworkers to “look over the shoulder” of their colleagues, sparking friendly competition and a drive to better their work.
  3. Alternative work spaces: Millennials have dismissed the idea of the stuffy cubical and replaced it with a variety of productivity-driven work spaces and creativity-focused collaboration stations such as on-site cafes, lounges, standing desks, outdoor spaces, gyms, and community workstations.
  4. Eco/Tech-Friendly: Millennials are all about eco-consciousness. One way to attract them is to offer sustainable spaces and practices, bike racks, and walkability. Technology-based solutions dovetail nicely with their eco-mindedness and the idea of smart spaces.
One of the latest trends in real estate development has been to mix things up a bit. Instead of constructing strictly residential buildings, developers are looking to make projects more versatile by adding retail and office space. It’s called mixed-use, and it’s being encouraged more often these days, particularly by local governments and planning agencies, because it can help improve an area’s livability. Tenants don’t have to drive to the grocery store or coffee shop. That kind of commercial development can be located in the building in which they live, or in one just down the block. Many people would like to see more mixed-use projects in downtown, but one of the bigger hurdles is a lack of major employers in the city’s urban core.

The nation’s most vibrant downtown's have either a university or a major health care facility, which brings activity 24/7. San Diego has neither. The most common type of development downtown is residential. Because of the region’s housing crunch, there is high demand, so lenders are more willing to loan money for such projects. A mixed-use project is considered riskier because of concern that it won’t get filled. Unlike the housing market, the retail market is seeing a downward shift. The national retail market is over saturated, which has led to nearly 6,000 retail closings nationwide in the last few years. The retail sector is also down double digits in the stock market.

Although we are seeing a shift in the retail market, Amazon brings high hopes for transformation and a large shift for the development of the city. E-commerce giant Amazon is boosting its footprint in San Diego -- leasing office space in University City with room for more than 500 employees. The Seattle-based online retailer confirmed this week that it has signed a lease in the Campus Pointe office park from Alexandria Real Estate Equities, said Sam Kennedy, corporate communications manager at Amazon, in an email response to questions.


Amazon is taking nearly 107,000 square feet at 10300 Campus Point Drive. While Amazon has a small office in Solana Beach, as well as distribution facilities in the region, this is its first major office/engineering presence in the county. The deal is among the largest expansions of an outside, well-known, tech giant into San Diego – exceeding the 60,000 square feet that Google leased last year for a satellite office. Google’s decision to set up shop in San Diego was linked in part to its acquisitions of local start-ups, including sensor developer Lumedyne Technologies. Amazon is planting roots without an acquisition. Is this part of a larger trend? UC San Diego graduates 10,000 students a year.

If you are Google or Amazon, you’re looking at that and saying there is going to be a good local pipeline of talent. They feel that they can grow and find the talent here. The availability of people from the universities is attractive, and we have technology clusters in cyber, big data and biotechnology -- which attracts a lot of people who work in data and analytics – that show there is also seasoned talent in the region.

San Diego will be among the bidders, with officials planning to emphasize the region’s strengths in technology workforce and quality of life to overcome weaknesses such as high housing costs and limited government incentives. Amazon’s decision to establish a beachhead in Campus Pointe squarely backs up the argument that we’ll be making in our bid that San Diego is one of the only cities where you can access both the lifestyle and talented workforce that companies want and need.

The 2018 Commercial Real Estate outlook is projected to remain steady and consistent while navigating new obstacles such as Amazon, UC San Diego’s new campus and renovations of office and industrial space throughout the city. 

Will these changes transform San Diego into one of America’s most vibrant cities where we can sustain developments such as mix-use residential buildings? Seasoned professionals have high hopes that San Diego will continue to expand, whether it be reconstruction, or large corporate and educational development presence. 







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