Confidence Coming Back To South Florida CRE Market

Transwestern just issued its Miami-Dade County fourth quarter office market report, and while we wouldn’t necessarily encourage a celebratory “end of the recession” gala, the report did include some positive indicators.
Most notable:  Miami’s CBD showed strong absorption in the fourth quarter, and sits at a vacancy rate of about 22%.
Looking at the big picture, Miami-Dade has a 23% vacancy rate for class A office space and a 22.1% rate for class B space.
“Given the events over the summer in Washington and the corresponding uncertainty in economy, the absorption in the fourth quarter is more indicative of the recovery we have been seeing in South Florida and we expect the markets to continue to perform very strong in first half of 2012,” says Walter Byrd, managing director of Transwestern. “In the fourth quarter and in the beginning of 2012, we are seeing confident tenants with growing needs ready to take space and not the tire kickers of 12 to 18 months ago.”
South Miami came in at around 27.4% vacancy, Coral Gables settled at about 19%, Miami Beach came in at 12.6%, and Aventura came in at about 10%.
“What concerned us most is the negative absorption of the Airport West market considering the strength of the trade sector and activity with Latin America,” Byrd says. “We think this may be an aberration with Amadeus moving out of class B space into a new building, which only shows up as negative absorption, and the addition of the Southcom space to the market.” The Airport West submarket posted a 25.8% vacancy rate.