Office vacancies to persist next year, USC report predicts
Fallbrook Bonsall Village News
... Southland office vacancies will continue to be affected by the recession next year, but industrial markets could recover because of demand in India and China for American goods, according to a USC report released last week.
"Heightened traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will create more jobs and an increased need for warehousing across Southern California," said Tracey Seslen, co-author of the USC Casden Industrial and Office Market Forecast released by the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. "And the expected growth nationwide in green technology, education and healthcare should bode well for the recovery of L.A.'s office markets in 2011."
Seslen added that "considerable downward pressures on office rents will continue, however, due to job losses across the board. "The resulting drop in the value of many vacant office buildings will present new opportunities for cash buyers willing to wait out this downturn," she said.
Richard K. Green, director of the USC Lusk Center and a forecast co-author, pointed out that even though Riverside and San Bernardino counties have some of the highest unemployment rates in the country, "companies located in coastal areas will be setting up satellite offices in the Inland Empire, where there is sufficient land and cheaper rental rates." Parts of the region will wait a long time for recovery, he pointed out, especially San Bernardino, which was substantially overbuilt...