Blog
August 31, 2021
Impact of COVID-19 on Commercial Real Estate So we are still in the grasp of Covid-19, and in San Antonio it seems we have all come to grips with this Next Normal. Many vaccinated, many not, many new infections, and thankfully, fewer deaths. What impact is this having on Commercial Real Estate? The big lockdown […]
July 30, 2021
The Inevitables: Death and Taxes Death and taxes, the two inevitables. In a capital-intensive industry like commercial real estate, taxes and interest rates are the two largest expense factors driving the returns for all properties and property types. Of course, we are all aware of the dramatic escalation in property taxes in the past decade, […]
June 25, 2021
Photo credit goes to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pearl_Brewing_Company,_San_Antonio,_Texas,_September_2017.jpg The Decade of Downtown In the year 2010, Mayor Julian Castro declared San Antonio was entering “The Decade of Downtown,” declaring that “Great Cities have Great downtowns”. We were coming out of the recession that followed the 2008 Financial Crisis and he felt our city needed a new goal. […]
May 25, 2021
You will recall, with perhaps a little effort, the past ten years was the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, which came to an abrupt end when the Pandemic brought us the Recession that we had been waiting for. Then, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s quick and shockingly awesome response the economic system was so […]
March 29, 2021
Inflation is once again in the headlines. Is it here yet? Just around the corner? Those questions come from investors who remember the 10% inflation of the 1970’s, with gas lines, and mortgage rates peaking at 16% in 1981 in order to squash inflation and the economy along with it. Now, if you are asking […]
February 10, 2021
Let’s continue our January conversation about the Austin-San Antonio Corridor, a title coined by John Naisbett in his 1982 book, “Megatrends.” Remember the scene in White Christmas that went “Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters.” Could this possibly apply to San Antonio and Austin, sister cities on the I-35 corridor? Right now, Austin […]
January 7, 2021
Happy New Year! We are happy that the year is new, because the old one we just left is best viewed in the rearview mirror. Goodbye Year Too Zero and Hello Year 2021 – Year Number 1. Now is the time of year for resolutions and forecasts. One very clear trend that will be affecting […]
December 17, 2020
Its December, it’s the Holiday Season and Santa is comin’ to town! Next year, that is. And he’s “beginning to look a lot like” Amazon! This ubiquitous giant is buying up land, right here in River City. Now this does NOT come from the professionals involved in these transactions, all of whom have signed ironclad […]
November 25, 2020
District 10 City Councilman Clayton Perry, commented that San Antonio has experienced a 34% decline in small businesses due to COVID. This is the worst hit of any city in Texas, illustrating how dependent SA is on small entrepreneurs. Then, our City Council has $75-million available from the CARES Act that he felt should have been […]
October 15, 2020
I can only imagine that we are all very glad that we have reached the fourth quarter of 2020. In a football analogy, we are all still in the game, but glad this one will be over soon. However, unlike a football game, time will keep marching on. Certainly, many trends that began before The […]
August 3, 2020
Green Street Advisors, the premier commercial real estate analysis firm, covers properties across the globe. They are highly respected for their depth of analysis and breadth of coverage. Their best estimate on impact that the Days of Covid have had on commercial real estate across the board is a reduction in value of about 10 […]
July 9, 2020
Remember inflation? That is what happens when prices go up, and buying power of your dollar goes down. That has been generally flat the past few years and off everyone’s radar screen. In Commercial Real Estate, it is generally accepted that the rate of inflation is about 2%. For example, in leases, Landlords can raise […]
June 5, 2020
The New Office – Will companies find that working from home is as effective as being on-site? In 2013, Marissa Mayer took over as CEO of Yahoo! and sent everyone in the company out to work from home. After 6 months she ended the experiment, saying, “To become the absolute best place to work, communication […]
May 1, 2020
We are still in the midst of the Covid-19 healthcare crisis, but it appears the worst of this first phase is over. Here in San Antonio, hospitalizations have dropped from 77 to 54 with only 3 on ventilators as of the end of April. So, San Antonio metro area has not been hit as hard […]
April 1, 2020
I am in the process of throwing out all of the magazines and newspaper articles that I use for research for this newsletter. They are no longer relevant as we are leaving the old world and plunging into a new era, because of the quarantines put in place to combat the COVID-19 virus. No one […]
March 19, 2020
With the corona virus threatening, perhaps this is a good time to take the temperature of Commercial Real Estate, and in San Antonio especially. We started the year in a very healthy market condition. While banks are flush with lending capacity, the foreclosure rate is extremely low. For example, back in the RTC days of […]
January 7, 2020
Happy New Year! It’s that time of year for Forecasts and Predictions. I have been a member for years of a Brokers Breakfast Group and each December we each make a forecast for the Year Ahead – will it be Better, the Same or Worse? This year the consensus was mostly the Same or Better, […]
November 27, 2019
The Happy Holiday Season is upon us and it is time for Black Friday retail shopping and the rush to get all of the great and popular gifts for Christmas. So let’s look at retail commercial real estate, because when you read the press, you would think that Black Friday’s meaning is really the death […]
October 29, 2019
Downtown San Antonio is undergoing an amazing transformation. Mayor Castro, in January 2009, declared this to be the “Decade of Downtown” and so it has been, and we are just getting started. There are three elements that came together to start this in 2005: 1. Kit Goldsbury sold Pace Picante Sauce to Campbell Soup and […]
September 27, 2019
The San Antonio industrial real estate market has really been on fire lately for new plant announcements. Investment Realty just scored a big win in the manufacturing arena with the updating of the Toyota plant on Applewhite Road for $391-million. This plant opened in 2006, manufacturing the very popular Tundra truck. Then, it also picked […]
August 15, 2019
“How you doin’?” is our typical greeting, but let’s ask Commercial Real Estate that question. In San Antonio we are doing pretty well, thank you. Texas is leading the nation in population growth, growing at twice the rate of California and more then Florida and Colorado. San Antonio is right there with the other major […]
June 26, 2019
A frequent topic I see lately is the issue of Affordable Housing and property value in San Antonio. One of the biggest expenses of owning property, whether it’s your own home or a rental property, is property taxes. Home appreciation in San Antonio averaged about 4.3% last year, one of the highest rates in Texas. […]
April 16, 2019
Let’s take a whip around the various commercial real estate sectors in San Antonio and see how it is going. Apartments occupancies just got back above 90% after a dip from 93% down to 89%. Apartments are given to a two year over-building cycle, so this is to be expected. However, while concessions are still […]
March 12, 2019
The broad consensus among commercial real estate investors, far and wide, is that we are in the very late stages of this current expansion, yet, the markets still remain surprisingly stable and durable. Now that the worries about more interest increases have calmed, and the stock market’s December tantrum has been mostly erased, IRC has […]
January 24, 2019
Job growth remains strong in the Lone Star State, in fact more than any other state, with an increase of 391,800 for the year, according to the latest figures released by the Texas Workforce Commission. This is actually more than double California’s growth, with Florida running a close second to Texas. (I believe all 391,800 […]
December 20, 2018
I sense everyone is getting pretty nervous right now: 1. This has been a really long economic advance. 2. Trump’s election has enhanced and lengthened it. 3. Interest rates are rising, for now. 4. All believe we are in the Late Stable stage of the commercial real estate cycle. 5. I have seen investors putting […]
November 7, 2018
So often we hear that we are in such an “uncertain time”. Really? Please name a period in history when we were not in an uncertain time, and then how long did it last? We seem to have forgotten the time-honored maxim, “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Change is the most basic element […]
September 24, 2018
Job growth is the lifeblood of commercial real estate because it means companies lease new space and build new buildings. Did you know that most of our new jobs come from companies who are already in San Antonio, not relocations from outside? For example, HEB builds a new grocery store and hires 300 new people. […]
August 28, 2018
The Business Cycle is often described as a sine curve, like a wave that rolls up and down, up and down, or like a roller coaster. We proceed from prosperity to peril, boom to bust, greed to fear, etc. As you have heard, “Trees don’t grow to the sky” a phrase, inferring that economic expansions […]
July 25, 2018
Where do we fit in? Mayor Nirenberg and the City Council always make a point that “San Antonio is the Seventh Largest City in the U.S.” Well, sort of. At a population of approximately 1.5-million this puts us in line behind New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philadelphia and just ahead of San […]
June 25, 2018
Datacenters are basically warehouses for “1’s” and “0’s, the cyphers that make up the entire world of data, and generated by either an “on” or “off” switch of electricity. It’s all that simple and that complex. It’s called binary code for you non-nerds in the audience. Now the interesting thing about 1s and 0s is […]
May 25, 2018
When I first entered the commercial real estate business there were many metrics I needed to learn; for example, how many square feet are in an acre (43,560). One of the metrics I learned is that the average space used by an office worker was about 250 square feet. This takes into account not only […]
April 25, 2018
The housing industry has “sort of recovered,” in the words of Jim Gaines, Chief Economist of The Real Estate Center, continuing that a full decade after the start of the Great Recession, home building still isn’t all the way back. “Theoretically, housing is around 75 to 85 percent of where it should be,” he said. […]
March 15, 2018
Mae West once said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!” That may be where commercial real estate is at this time in history. CRE has appreciated greatly over the past 8 years and all sectors are pretty fully valued at this point in the economic cycle. So much so, that the few […]
December 14, 2017
As we celebrate the end of a great year, let’s review the commercial real estate market, and consider this past year as the prologue to the New Year 2018. Let me begin with the residential market, though. Interesting things are afoot. Here’s a clue – home sales volume is up, that is the dollar amount […]
October 17, 2017
So are the rumors of the retail apocalypse over blown? In San Antonio we are actually doing okay. Yes, you have seen some of your favorite stores go dark or very seriously renegotiate leases, like Payless Shoes and Rue 21, and the incursion of eCommerce has certainly left its mark and given way to discussion […]
September 19, 2017
Home ownership has seen new trends come and go over the last decade. Housing is a major component of our economy and our homes are the central location for the living of our lives, raising our families, and the site of most of our best times and our worst times. Our homes have evolved over […]
August 7, 2017
Recently, I was privileged to represent the Buyer of Shavano Center I and II, a pair of office buildings on Loop 1604 near Paesanos Restaurant. The two office buildings totaled 57,000 square feet of Class A space and are nearly 89% leased. I present this as a case study in commercial real estate investments, but […]
July 7, 2017
Is the retail marketplace changing? With old businesses like Payless Shoes, Macy’s, J.C. Penny’s and Sears closing up shop we can conclude- yes, the retail marketplace is changing. This is partially due to the shift to on-line shopping and quick delivery to your door. But there are other forces at work – Millennials are somewhat […]
May 30, 2017
I think cities are like people in that each and every one of us has a unique personality, skills and experience. No two of us are alike, even brothers and sisters in the same family. How different is Dallas from Houston, albeit they are both large cities with close to 7 million populations and both […]
April 10, 2017
I’m sorry but every time I hear a pundit on T.V. or radio go on about the uncertainty we face, I have to laugh a little. Isn’t there an old saying, ‘There is nothing more certain than change?’ Ah, that was Heraclitis in 535 B.C. Or circa 1840, Jean-Batiste Karr, “The more things change, the […]
February 1, 2017
It’s a New Year and we have a new President. Will this be a new age for commercial real estate? The current expansion is 7 ½ years long, one of the longest on record, yet, remarkably we are not seeing signs of a downturn on the horizon. The regional exception, of course, is Houston, but […]
December 15, 2016
“Everyone needs a place for his/her stuff,” said George Carlin (RIP). Your house may be just the place where you keep your stuff, the housing market is an extremely important element of our society and our economy. Homeownership is key to personal property rights and personal homesteads have been a major source of personal wealth […]
November 21, 2016
In Politics there is a phrase, “October Surprise.” Now there is a new one –“The November Surprise.” How will this affect commercial real estate in San Antonio? It will be good. The expectation is that we will see a positive change for small businesses; for example, the stocks of small capitalization companies were among the […]
September 13, 2016
Commercial Real Estate investment transactions are slowing markedly from the torrid pace of 2015, however, this matches the trend in 2012, another election year. Regardless of who wins, a pick up after the election is likely. Interest rates play a huge role in our economy, and “lower longer” is still going to be the theme. […]
November 2, 2015
San Antonio is known as the steady real estate market – neither big boom nor bust. So it goes. Prices of investment properties are continuing to increase, but the supply of available, attractive properties is not plentiful. As mentioned in previous Reports, owners are sitting on their properties and are reluctant to sell. The question […]
October 1, 2015
How safe is commercial real estate investing? Are we over-building or is this the sweet spot? The Cost of new construction is now very high, as land prices, construction materials and labor costs have risen substantially; and they are very unlikely to decline. One of the basic measures of a building’s value is ‘what would […]
July 28, 2015
Is the New Home / First Time Home Buyer a disappearing breed? If you are young college graduate and just married, then, you want to buy a new home don’t you? However, twenty-somethings are having difficulty with the down payment and the necessary credit scores to buy a house. So they must save more and […]
May 19, 2015
The activity level in commercial real estate in Q1 2015 picked up from a more subdued Q4 of 2014 and is currently very strong and healthy. The “oil shock” of December, scared a lot of Texans, as I wrote in February, but now we are seeing that the impact locally is not going to be […]
February 24, 2015
Texans are a little nervous these days. Some of us saw a really, really scary movie in the 1980’s, and we didn’t like the ending. Will this be the sequel, with the same bad ending for the Lone Star State? Nope. It really is different this time around. A few may remember that in 1986 […]
January 29, 2015
Here we are at the Kick Off for Year 2015. This year also marks the 40th Anniversary of Investment Realty Company, founded in 1975. I have attached the newspaper article that appeared in the San Antonio Express News Sunday January 11, 2015 which tells the tale of IRC. At least, it tells our history and […]
December 22, 2014
“To everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn …” sang the Byrds in the 1960’s. (That is a test of your age and your memory). It is taken from Ecclesiastes Chapter 3, which actually begins, “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for everything under heaven.” This passage seems […]
November 20, 2014
Retailing is changing, but it is still very much in fashion. It is now a tale of two markets. One is the large national retail corporations that have dozens, hundreds or thousands of store outlets nationwide. They can afford to pay the higher rents that are required to support new construction. The increases in 1. […]
September 30, 2014
Time for an overview of the commercial market place in San Antonio; subtitled “The stresses and strains of the New Normal.” Apartment construction has come back strongly since 2012, after the slump of the Great Recession. Occupancy is presently 92.6%, about the same as a year ago, and rents are up 3.6%, adding $30 per […]
August 20, 2014
Pop Quiz: What does “CPI” stand for? Answer: “Consumer Price Index.” What does this mean? It is designed to measure the change in prices of products that you and I buy every week; that is, it is a measure of “the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living, as determined by prices paid by […]
July 29, 2014
“Where have all the investment deals gone?” It’s a question that seems to be on investors’ minds these days, as they are looking for places to put their money to work. Everything they look at seems over-priced and there are not many selections from which to choose. I believe there are several issues that […]
June 2, 2014
While the international scene is confusing right now (QE 4-awhile longer, Russia vs Ukraine; China vs. Japan, Viet Nam, Philippines, et al), how are WE doing? The employment picture in San Antonio is excellent with the unemployment rate dropping to 4.8% from 5.2%, and hitting the mark last set in July 2008, and making San […]
April 8, 2014
For decades now, the U.S. economy has depended upon and been gaged by consumer consumption. Consumer spending is watched closely by economic analysts for swings and indications of the health of the economy. In the past few years, it has dipped because of the Great Recession and our desire to pay off debt and slim […]
February 12, 2014
Mexico’s Pemex oil company has vastly underperformed for years. It is state-owned and inefficient but since it is the biggest source of revenue for the Mexican government, next to payments from the U.S., it is critical to their stability and prosperity. What to do? Mexico is now opening to outside oil and gas producers for […]
January 10, 2014
It’s the turn of the year — time for reflection on the past year and looking forward to what will be. In my niche of commercial real estate in San Antonio, the year 2013 was a pretty good year as we have adjusted to the New Normal. Occupancies increased in all sectors of commercial real […]
November 8, 2013
Does this look like the front end of a Boom? Please turn your attention to the following newspaper articles. The San Antonio Business Journal Oct 16, 2013 San Antonio’s housing prices were up 2.1%, the largest month over month increase for U.S. cities. Also from SABJ Oct 16 – San Antonio housing inventory hits an […]
August 15, 2013
Last Year I presented the proposal that because of Texas’ gross product and rate of growth, we can be considered the equal of many “Emerging Market” countries. Please look at the following chart, taken from “Business Insider.” It illustrates how Texas has become the 13th largest oil producer in the world, if (only) Texas was a […]
July 21, 2013
Since I entered the Commercial Real Estate field in 1984, I have heard, “Well, things are booming everywhere, maybe it’s time for Corpus Christi.” Well, Corpus has never boomed but just kept on gradually growing and being a nice place to vacation. That is, until recently, with the Eagle Ford Shale windfall embracing South Texas. […]
June 10, 2013
San Antonio’s jobless rate has risen by .01% for 3 months in a row; but San Antonio at 6.3% is below the Texas average of 6.4% and the national unemployment rate of 7.5%. Austin is super hot though with an unemployment rate of only 5.4%. The implementation of Obama Care next year will be a […]
April 3, 2013
When driving you are focusing on the windshield and road ahead, occasionally glancing in the rear view mirror and side mirrors to be sure that what is going on behind and to your side is not going to disturb you. Real estate is a lot like that — the past is our window to the […]
December 5, 2012
“Jobs” was the central issue in the recent election. It is certainly on everyone’s minds with the national unemployment rate hovering around 8%; and if you go to the government’s broadest measure of unemployment which includes all the potential workforce including those who have stopped looking, then, the unemployment rate is at about 15%. It […]
October 22, 2012
“Are we there yet?” – Yes, this was the question your kids asked you on your summer vacation trip this year. It is also the question everyone is asking about The Recovery. Are we THERE yet? Or are we starting another Double Dip? Or just limping into the New Normal malaises? At the moment it […]
July 5, 2012
Think of an egg and the little chicken inside is breaking out. I believe this is an apt analogy for what is happening to our South Texas region as a result of the Eagle Ford Shale drilling boom. The old dry shell has cracked open from the inside and a little chick emerges to become […]
May 8, 2012
We celebrate Texas Independence Day on April 21st which was the day of the victory over the army of Santa Ana at San Jacinto and the reason for Fiesta San Antonio. We should pause to remember our great Texan heritage as an independent nation for the ten years from 1836 to 1846. Our beloved Governor, […]
March 13, 2012
We are having a very interesting discussion in our fair city over private property rights. You may know that Wal-Mart has a tract of land at Wurzbach Parkway and Blanco Road under contract. The property has been appropriately zoned for this type of use since the early 1970’s when the land for the surrounding subdivisions […]
January 30, 2012
Happy New Year! This time last year I said that 2011 will be Year One of the Recovery. Well, we started off well for the first six months and then things fizzled in the latter half of the year. So now what’s next? With the economic landscape still shaky and the political scenery unclear in […]
December 1, 2011
As we approach the end of the year, I thought it time to do an overview of the market place. Some of the analysis comes from the recent CCIM Symposium. All in all, we are bumping along the bottom, awaiting a reason to turn optimistic but uncertain about the proverbial “Light at the end of […]
October 26, 2011
Isn’t it interesting to make a comparison between the Occupy Wall Street mob and the Tea Party? The Tea Partiers are middle-aged middle Americans, who wave the Stars & Stripes, clean up after themselves, and tout a clear message of reducing taxes and limiting government. Their result was a big success at the ballot boxes […]
August 8, 2011
In the June edition, I wrote about Uncertainty; and sadly this monster is still roaming, becoming even stronger, like a Transformer. In this metaphor from the movie, Risk is that fast and neat car, which is manageable to drive. But then it morphs into the monster of Uncertainty, which is destructive, deadly and uncontrollable, causing […]
July 23, 2010
“Uncertainty” is our word for the day. It applies to predictions of future events and the unknown. Uncertainty is distinctly different from the familiar term “risk” which is a measurable uncertainty. Uncertainty is immeasurable. Risk, in the financial arena, is quantifiable. It is incorporated into interest rates, discount rates, insurance premiums, capitalization rates and the […]
January 10, 2010
This blog is to be a convenient method for readers who are interested in Commercial Real Estate investing in San Antonio, Texas. We know you are assaulted daily with all sorts of conflicting information and insights on how the real estate market is doing, where to invest and what to avoid. IRC makes it our […]
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