CRE ‘Burbs’ are Alive and Well
July 30, 2019 | Michael Beckerman | Cretech.com
So much of the hubbub in commercial real estate right now centers on “smart cities”—we’ve tracked the trend as much as anyone—but the truth likely lies closer to home. The fact is, suburbs across the country are positively humming with CRE activity, and they always have been. Wealth and activity have always flocked to the suburbs, so it’s a natural progression to look at “smart suburbs” as fertile ground for real progress and innovation in CRE.
On a recent panel at ICSC’s RECon, our own Ash Zandieh moderated alongside speakers from both Ollie and Envoy to discuss how there is no future CRE equation without factoring in the suburbs. Cities of the future, shopping of the future, and transportation of the future are all intertwined, and suburbs are benefiting from the shift.
The 2017 American Housing Survey, 76,000 households nationwide, showed that “about 52 percent of people in the United States describe their neighborhood as suburban, while about 27 percent describe their neighborhood as urban, and 21 percent as rural,” according to CityLab. Even as trends show influxes moving into our busiest urban hubs, rising housing costs in the nation’s most popular cities are showing slowed growth. This has hastened a millennial exodus to suburban communities with populations over 50,000—think places like Frisco, Texas or Scottdale, Georgia—which now account for 14 of the 15 fastest-growing cities in the U.S. This rapid shift, however, has come at a cost.
