“It's a whole new world in commercial.”
That’s what REALTOR® Carmen Bauman said recently about the exciting opportunities available in commercial real estate. Bauman, who works with investment clients for RM Friedland Commercial Real Estate Services in Westchester County, N.Y., attended last year’s C5 Summit, an NAR conference dedicated exclusively to the commercial industry. The summit motivated her to transition her business from primarily residential to 100% commercial.
“People are repurposing things. It’s up to the broker to identify opportunities,” Bauman told Commercial Connections recently. “This is the time to get in, [when] everything is on the brink of change.”
It is indeed an exciting time to be in commercial real estate. Although some sectors took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, commercial has proved very resilient. As I write this, I'm seeing sales up across multifamily, industrial, retail, and office. In the retail property market, net absorption helped push down the vacancy rate to 4.4% and prop up rent growth to 3.9%, according to NAR’s April 2022 Commercial Market Insights Report. Land sales were up 6% on average in 2021, the best performance since 2014, according to the latest Land Market Survey conducted by the National Association of REALTORS® and the REALTORS® Land Institute.