The low oil and gas prices eroding office space demand in energy sector hubs like Calgary and Houston have had measurably less impact on multi-residential rents, vacancy rates and investment activity. CBRE Research’s recent analysis of five North American cities where energy prices hold greater sway over commercial real estate reveals continued strong apartment fundamentals.
Notably, Houston, Dallas and Denver rank in the top five U.S. cities for apartment completions over the past year, collectively adding 27,000 new units. Investment activity and transaction volume in those cities also picked up in the same period, as CBRE analysts hypothesize “private capital remains interested in the near- and long-term growth potential of energy markets.”
Houston has seen a 1 per cent increase in apartment vacancies over the past year, bumping the rate up to 5.2 per cent as of mid-2015. (The city’s office vacancy rate sits at 13.4 per cent.) Approximately 25,000 new apartment units are now under construction in the city, but not expected to be fully delivered until 2018. The CBRE report suggests current low oil prices are helping to discourage new projects that might contribute to an overbuilt market.
Elsewhere in the Texas apartment market, analysts conclude low oil and gas prices have had negligible influence on vacancies and average rents in Dallas/Fort Worth. Projected job gains across the broader economy are expected to more than counterbalance hits in the energy sector, where only 1.1 per cent of the region’s workforce is directly employed.
The same theory holds for Denver, where steady population growth is forecasted. The report notes that rents in the city have been rising at one of the fastest rates in the U.S.
