Jacksonville’s overall real estate prospects are looking generally good.
That’s a specific designation and a welcome one.
The Urban Land Institute’s “Emerging Trends in Real Estate” report for 2016 gives Jacksonville a green dot on its map for real estate prospects, which is better than the area’s yellow “fair” dots in 2014 and 2015.
Those followed two years of the unwelcome red dots for “generally poor” prospects in 2012-13. And before that, the city was “modestly poor” or “poor” for investment and development prospects for 2009-11 in the wake of the recession.
This year, Jacksonville even warranted a mention as a “ville.”
The report said survey respondents and interviewees expressed interest in the “villes,” which it loosely defined to be markets such as Nashville, Knoxville, Jacksonville and Gainesville.
“The ‘villes’ are seen as offering opportunities to take advantage of faster-growing demographics, economies, concentrations in desirable industries, and, in many cases, aggressive development plans to establish growth centers within the community,” said the report.
In saying Florida’s resurgence continues, the report said Jacksonville continues to improve.
ULI North Florida scheduled a discussion from 5-7:30 p.m. today at WJCT Studios Downtown about the latest real estate trends, focusing on how innovations will affect the industry and addressing “the ingredients for a cutting-edge city.”
Panelists include Nicole Thomas, senior vice president of Specialty Services for Baptist Health; Acosta Executive Chairman Gary Chartrand; Office of Economic Development Executive Director Kirk Wendland; and Lee Nelson with the University of Florida.
For information about the event, visit northflorida.uli.org.
The annual trends report, by ULI and the PwC tax and advisory service, covers the U.S. and offers a separate report about Canada.
Dallas/Fort Worth topped the U.S. markets to watch for overall real estate prospects, followed by Austin.
Charlotte came up No. 3, followed by Seattle, Atlanta, Denver, Nashville, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles to complete the top 10.
Miami was the highest ranking Florida city at No. 19.
Jacksonville rose two spots to No. 53 overall among the 75 U.S. markets to watch.
By category, it dropped a few notches to No. 63 for investment and No. 66 for development, but jumped 10 points to rank No. 26 in homebuilding.
In looking at investment prospects, Jacksonville showed improvement from 2015 in office, retail, multifamily, hotel and housing, as well as overall.
The only slight drop was in the industrial sector.
Still, Jacksonville’s overall “local outlook score” remained below the average for Southern metro areas.
Jacksonville also notched right below “improving” to lead the Southern cities in the “average” category for the local outlook.
That outlook is defined as the average score of local market participants’ opinions on the strength of the local economy, investor demand, capital availability, development and redevelopment opportunities, public/private investments and the local development community.
In the South, 18 metro areas topped Jacksonville in the local outlook category, including Florida cities Miami, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Orlando and Cape Coral-Fort Myers-Naples.
Deltona/Daytona was one of the 10 Southern cities below Jacksonville.
Still, Jacksonville improved to a score of 3.46 in 2016 from 3.31 in 2015, when it topped just seven cities and came in below 21 of them.
Jacksonville did much better in local perspectives on development and redevelopment opportunities.
In 2016, Jacksonville scored 3.63 and landed in the “improving” category. Last year, its score of 3.43 put it in the “average” ranking.
The report also predicts the top trends for the year.
In the lead is the trend toward 18-hour cities, which are secondary markets that replicate elements of the 24-hour gateway cities. The report specifies Austin, Denver, San Diego and San Antonio as examples.
The second trend is the look at suburban opportunities. The report ventures that as the millennial generation defers marriage and family formation and prefers denser downtown living, the emphasis is on “deferral.”
“Eventually, the logic goes, generation Y will follow the baby boomers’ path and head to the suburbs in the child-rearing years,” it says.
The third trend is office space, including the change in design and use. Walls and cubicles give way to “hip, cool open spaces,” it says.
Fourth, housing options expand and change to accommodate the changing needs of demographics.
Parking is the fifth trend as the industry looks at how mass transit use and urban living affect the need for parking spaces.
The remaining trends involved infrastructure, food, developer specialization, capital, and a return to the “human touch” in attention, judgment and decision making.
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