Richmond October 2020 – Key Take Aways

• Industrial and Multi-family markets remain strong; medical office is also heating up.
• Andy reported they closed on a 6 building office park in Columbia Maryland.
• Rates remain at historic lows – great time for refinancing and new deals.
• Family money / high net worth individuals getting into the market; institutions are entering but cautiously.
• Lots of focus on tax plays right now – CARES Act, cost segregation, credits for R&D.
• First Citizens acquired CIT Group making it the 19^th largest bank in the US.
• Bank competitors are making changes.  Wells Fargo announced that all business accounts under $50M will no longer be managed locally, but via a phone desk.  Great opportunity for smaller banks.
• First Citizens is seeing a lot of deals – 180k owner occupied warehouse, 130k manufacturing consolidation, several $1M and under professional practices, 1031 exchange money.
• Whiting Turner reports a number of retrofit jobs underway while buildings remain mostly empty.
• Draper Aden’s construction services business is booming; lot’s of multi-family work and next phase single family home developments.
• Everyone is waiting for the state budget to be finalized as there are a number of significant projects in the area.
• Quinn Evans reports steady work in their four sectors:  Learning, Living, Culture, Heritage.  Federal government work remains very active with a lot of National Park Service work underway.
• CoStar reports of signs of the economic recovery slowing down.  Richmond seems to have lost jobs in September.  Office leasing is down 20% as compared to the last 5 years, but the market remains tight.  Retail down 450k sf of demand since last year.  Multi-family YTD demand is 3,000 units and rent growth is up; concern is if the market is being propped up by stimulus and what will happen when the moratorium on evictions is lifte