Dickson Commercial Group Principal represents Northern Nevada in Nevada Business Magazine commercial real estate discussion

This post was written by Tom Fennell I recently attended a Commercial Real Estate Round table discussion hosted by the Nevada Business Magazine. The meetings were held at the Snell and Wilmer law offices in Las Vegas and was attended by many brokers and directors offices from the Las Vegas market. I was the sole representative from the Northern Nevada markets. A couple interesting takeaways from the meeting were some of the differences and similarities from the Northern and Southern marketplaces. One of the key differences was the vacancy rates between the two markets. Our office market in Northern Nevada has a much lower vacancy rate of roughly 15 percent while Las Vegas’s market has roughly a 20 percent vacancy rate according the attendees at the meeting. The Las Vegas office market is larger than Reno’s so this plays a factor, as there is a lot more space. Also, there is a lot of newer product in the Las Vegas market, while Northern Nevada has not seen a speculative office development in almost a decade. One similar trend in the office market was the demand for Class-A space. Similar to Northern Nevada, there seemed to be a flight to newer Class-A space, and there were not many options above 15,000 square feet. Apartments were similar in both markets in that the market has been very competitive. There was a much lower vacancy rate for industrial in Las Vegas at around 5-6 percent as compared to 8-9 percent in Northern Nevada.  The retail vacancy rate was also lower in Las Vegas at around 8-9 percent compared to 13-14 percent in Northern Nevada. A key concern in both markets seemed to be the need for an improving education system. Many of the attendees voiced that the perception of the education system and overall workforce needs to continue to improve in order to attract top companies. The participants in the discussion also felt there was a lack of quality investment deals in both markets.  Both markets seemed to have a lot of capital trying to find suitable investment deals to purchase but were finding it difficult to do so. Quality assets with quality tenants or leases continue to be in high demand in both marketplaces.]]>