2015 Year in Review - William O’Brien

What emerging trends will drive investment and development in 2016? Brooklyn and Queens have really undergone a seismic shift on a number of fronts over the last few years including the following: • New highly educated residents moving into areas previously unknown to them, services are following them including more upscale groceries, restaurants and cafes, supplanting fast food and other inner city retailers. • New development is in full swing across vast stretches of Brooklyn and Queens and is starting to increasingly move into edgier areas. • The rise of national retailers is evident throughout the boroughs, big box stores and chain stores have an increasing footprint replacing mom and pop tenants as well as many of the regional department  store operators. • The rise of “maker tenants” and Brooklyn’s artisanal chain food scene are both exploding and so is the concurrent need for kitchen space, while on the office side there  is very little viable space, traditional tenants are expanding and new “tech” tenants are taking big blocks of space, squeezing availabilities down and rents up. • The sales market for prime investment grade property or development sites is also upended with barely any product available and bidding was on virtually every site. A lot of this is good for the industry but there are challenges especially if you represent tenants or buyers.  Social service providers are getting squeezed out of many markets they previously were active in, good and bad comes with an overheated market but there are lots of opportunities, those active in the market just have to capitalize on them.