GlobeSt.com QUICK SURVEY: Forget the Q4 Spike

NEW YORK CITY-There’s little on the immediate horizon to give the commercial real estate industry any hope of a fourth-quarter rebound, according to the results of GlobeSt.com’s latest Quick Survey. Prior to September 11, some experts were holding out hope of an end-of-year rush to close out impending deals and pump some transactional adrenaline into the industry’s slowing metabolism. But the terrorist attacks delivered a one-two punch that decked those plans, further weakening our economic vitality, and our Quick Survey participants reflect those blows in their responses.

“Office building owners are less cocky regarding rates and terms,” writes one participant in the survey, “and most are being more responsive to RFPs. The primary reason is the competition from subleases and reduced activity due to overall economic slowdown.”In fact, some 64% of our participants project that leasing activity in the fourth quarter will drop more than 10% over last year’s Q4 activity, while 29% say it will dip by less than 10%.

Some 7% can actually boast that their markets are hot despite the news, and activity should grow in the final months of 2001.

It should be noted that 29% of respondents to this question say they reside in the Northeast while the Midwest and the Southwest each claimed 19% of the participants. Some 17% say they hail from the Southeast and 16% from the West Coast.