CBRE Forecasts Macro-Economic Recovery

"We simply haven't started to create jobs," Richard Pogue, senior managing director in Dallas for CB Richard Ellis Inc., said at last week's forecast meeting held at the Hotel Inter-Continental in North Dallas. "While there will be growth in the economy, the real estate won't be evenly distributed."

Pogue predicts a "macro-economic recovery" for the region. Issues like immigration amnesty and trucking regulation changes can't help but affect Texas economics. Industrial developers ought to be laying out projects with more trailer storage area than ever before and keying in on the high-demand market for 10,000-sf to 30,000-sf structures.

On the office side, 2003's final month brought a number of signings that will surface this quarter. "There's going to be a number of companies that transfer into Dallas this year," Pogue predicted. "If we grow and have the move-ins to Dallas, you're going to see a lot of build-to-suits." New buildings will rise because existing space isn't necessarily going to meet an inbound company's space needs, he explains.

The Dallas/Fort Worth retail market held its strong positioning, but multifamily has a red flag rising. "All sectors, we think, will remain strong. The one possible exception would be overbuilding in multifamily," Pogue told the crowd of brokers and developers.

"Looking at this historically, it's (the recovery) now where we were in 1999-2000, but it's vastly better than where we were a decade ago," said Mitch Rudin, CBRE's president of US brokerage. Concurring with peers nationally and locally, Rudin said the problem is rooted on the demand side not supply and the wealth this year and perhaps even next won't be evenly distributed among US regions. Right now, stronger markets are Miami, Washington, DC, New York City, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The January forecast circuit for Dallas/Fort Worth brokerage circles has pointed to one main question for 2004: What will be the demand driver be and when will it come about. And, the talk's pretty much the same whether it's San Francisco's financial district or Richardson's Telecom Corridor--the prevailing deep opportunities for the next leader of the New Economy.