Market Report: NJ Boom is Still On

SADDLE BROOK, NJ–While the cautious among us continue to warn that the real estate market has to slide back down eventually, the parade of mid-year market reports coming out of New Jersey seem to indicate that it won’t happen any time soon. The latest evidence is found in a mid-year report from Insignia/ESG, which has its New Jersey home base in Saddle Brook.

Indeed, the report calls the current state of the market “one of the greatest booms in recent history. The market’s leading indicators of supply and demand continue to trend in conversely opposite, but positive directions.”

In hard numbers, office space availability has fallen to 10%, down nearly three points from a year ago, this despite the fact that developers added some 1.14 million sf of new office space just in the first half of 2000. Leasing velocity zoomed to 7.28 million sf, a 63% increase over 1999′s first half volume of 4.47 million sf. Net absorption, another key indicator of the market’s health, is a positive 2.57 million sf at mid-year 2000, a startling reversal from a year ago when the market experienced negative net absorption of 1.48 million sf.