6/17/21 Hampton Roads Mastermind Group Meeting

Hampton Roads June 2021 – Key Take-Aways

• Richard Crouch with Vandeventer Black announced that they are relaxing their covid protocols and an in-person July meeting is looking promising! He is starting to do some business development, one-off lunches, etc., in response to relaxed covid restrictions. Doing a fair amount of work as lenders counsel for multi-family. Not seeing much in the way of acquisitions/dispositions in retail but is seeing a fair number of leases for restaurants and hair salons.
• The industrial market is still very strong, per Greg Schmitt with Kimley-Horn, and they are plugging away nationally as well as locally. On the service industry side, seeing a lot of convenience stores, car washes in expansion mode, seeing some national chains looking to move into the southeast and Virginia area. The multi-family sector is continuing to grow and seeing a couple of developments coming to fruition!
• Dan Shelton says that Whiting-Turner’s policy in the office has moved to vax – no mask. They finally have their kitchens and some commons areas back and he is every excited to see things moving back to normal around the office. As far as work, there are a lot of opportunities out there and they are chasing some of those ‘hot and heavy.’ He said that you need to be aware of lead times! Even materials that are not steel are harder and harder to get your hands on and coming with price increases. Subs are having a hard time holding quotes for any length of time with the price increases.
• John Berotti with Whiting-Turner is seeing some positive news on the wood front, hearing those facilities are back open, still lumber is 2 times more expensive than a year ago, but hopeful that by fall some of the pressure will be off with the facilities up and running again.
• Don Crigger with Colliers shared a positive experience when arriving to the office – he said that the elevator stopped 3 or 4 times on the way up and there were about 6 ‘unmasked’ people on the elevator talking – felt like the clock turned back in time! It is taking a long time to get anything transacted. Good pipeline and people wanting to do deals, lot of owner/occupied – seems like more than in past years – a continuation of a trend that was already happening.
• Jeff Parker with Colliers is seeing more ‘normalcy’ every day and the pipeline on the retail side is growing everyday as well. Seeing some new users and some ‘secret’ tenants coming into the market. Doing some restaurant deals out at Summit Point and lease wise, he is seeing a lot more activity on the restaurant front. He is hopeful that by September people will be back to work to meet staffing needs.
• Ben Anderson with Colliers reports that the industrial market is still very tight with a vacancy rate around 1.5%. He is anxious to see the vacancy rate on the Q2 report coming out soon. There is a lot of pressure on the supply chain and the port is staying very busy now, seeing a lot of activity and people needing more space to park trucks and chassis. He wishes he had more inventory.