Property Advice

Commercial real estate hasn’t been exempt from the current economic downturn. While commercial properties in highly developed areas like New York, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles are holding value (no space to build competing properties), their values have not been increasing as they did during the speculative years that saw housing climg frantically in certain “hot” markets.

Commercial development has, however, seen a marked decline in square footage under development as many retailers have scaled back or cancelled plans to increase store counts and have turned to acquisition due to bankruptcies or mergers with competitors to increase their size without the resulting development expenses related to new store construction. As the retail marketplace shakes out and the vacant properties are shuffled into different configurations, commercial development will come back much more quickly than the new home construction market will.

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