People ask me a lot about how I think the office/residential market will be in Near Southeast in 2008, to which I always give the following learned reply: "Uhhhhhhhh, how should I know?"
But the
Washington Times has a piece today about Grubb & Ellis's forecast for commercial real estate in the DC area, which the Times summarizes thusly: "Washington's commercial property market will not be bad in 2008, just not as good as the past five years[.] ... With the downtown area inundated by new construction and tenants in recent years, developers are looking to build in sections of the city where lower land prices make them ripe for new projects[.] Chief among them are the North of Massachusetts Avenue neighborhood, the area around the new
Washington Nationals baseball stadium and the District's Southwest Waterfront. That is where land is available."
You can drill down to the Grubb & Ellis report for DC by starting
on this page. The actual text paints a slightly less rosy picture than how the Times depicts it:"The development pipeline in D.C. is going to grow as areas such as NoMa and Southeast, which already have elevated vacancy rates in Class A buildings, will break ground on a number of projects over the next two years. Developers in each market are hoping their lower economics will attract tenants, but until they do, both markets may have a temporary oversupply."
(Perhaps it's not the best timing to be posting this when the Dow is down 300 points.)
