« Westchester Putnam County Home Sales 2Q 2011 | Real Estate | 2011 Real Estate Trends for Investors »
White Plains Commercial Real Estate Trends Westchester NY 2012
Westchester's sluggish commercial real estate market might have finally turned the corner, industry leaders say.
This year, there has been a surge in demand for office space, particularly in downtown White Plains, according to a second-quarter report recently released by Cushman & Wakefield, a global real estate solutions company.
"White Plains is a submarket of Manhattan," said Jim Fagan, senior managing director and head of the company's regional operation, calling the city "clearly the hottest part of the marketplace."
He also concludes in the study that Westchester's unemployment rate — recently recorded as 6.8 percent, much better than the national rate of 9.2 percent — will continue to drop through the end of the year.
Countywide, there was a 13.6 percent drop in leasing activity from the first quarter, but it was almost a third higher than a year ago, according to the report.
"If you look from where we were in 2009 and early 2010, a lot of things happened," Fagan said. "We're in a much better place today."
The report also found a significant increase in commercial rents for the White Plains area and a slight increase for the New Rochelle area.
Fagan said the trend will likely continue even though more companies are expected to leave Westchester in the next year or two — including Starwood in White Plains, Nokia in Harrison and Bayer in Tarrytown.
Part of the reason is that the area's office buildings are starting to turn over and take on new uses, thus removing the vacancies.
In Harrison, which has been plagued by office vacancies, two big projects are coming to the Planning Board on Tuesday: LifeTime Fitness, which would demolish the existing Journal News building at 1 Gannett Drive and replace it with a recreation center, and a proposal from Sloan-Kettering hospital, which calls for turning the empty Verizon building at 500 Westchester Ave. into a cancer treatment facility.
Another vacant office building at 104 Corporate Park Drive in Harrison, the former home of Malcolm Pirnie, is under contract with a biotech firm, Histogenetics, and is expected to close by the end of the year, said William Cuddy, executive vice president of commercial real estate company CB Richard Ellis. The move would further change the Platinum Mile corridor along Interstate 287.
"It's becoming much more diversified," Cuddy said.
The biggest deal for Westchester in the second quarter was RPW Group's purchase of 450 Mamaroneck Ave. in Harrison for about $7 million, according to the report. That building had been empty since Citigroup left after the market crash in 2008.
RPW Group — which owns and operates about 3 million square feet of office space in the region, including the adjacent building — might transform the office into a medical or biotechnology facility, said Cuddy, who is the property's leasing agent.
"There's owner optimism," Cuddy said. "I think the market is feeling as if the tide is receding and we're making positive strides."
Hipotecas Prestamos July 26, 2011 02:55 AM