Industrial May Be The Place to Be

Economic events affect different sectors of real estate differently. While housing continues to suffer very badly, and is likely to continue to do so for several more years, other sectors will benefit from the dislocations in the economy. Hotels are on a rebound, but still have large numbers of assets which will hit the wall over the next two years as extended loans come due. Defaults and delinquency remain high. Office and retail are better and rents have generally stabilized or are rising a little. However values remain depressed in many markets. The one place where the macro economic factors is likely to have a positive impact is industrial.

The US dollar has declined 12% vs its six major trading partners over the past year. China has seen average wages rise 14%. Oil has caused transport costs to rise substantially. As a direct result of the recession, US manufacturers have done substantial restructuring of the manufacturing processes and have driven costs down materially. The result is slower rehiring to produce the same manufacturing output which is bad for the housing and retail sectors, but very good for manufacturing. Because of all the massive layoffs of factory workers over the past two years, there is a residual pool of  skilled and semi skilled workers available to hire at relatively competitive wages when compared to Europe. The Euro has risen substantially further impacting the cost differential. The decline of the dollar has the most impact on manufacturing relative to the other food groups in real estate. In fact one could argue that retail is hurt by higher oil and food prices. Technology has likely materially diminished the demand for office space vs what it might otherwise have been. The whole social networking revolution will continue to materially impact office in a negative manner as companies find there are new ways that people work and how office get configured. Hotels will continue to suffer from high oil prices and social networking and new technology in video meetings, are making travel less required than it may have been. The violence in Mexico is a huge deterrent to opening any new factories in that  country. The Yuan is sure to float higher over the next year. Chinese government interference in commerce and the obvious attempt to steal technology and compete head on is a further deterrent to having all your products produced there.