NW Arkansas
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Less than 1% of warehouse space in NWA is available for lease — meaning there is functionally zero square footage to rent.
Much of the square footage for storage is being consumed by e-commerce and subcontractors staging supplies to build Walmart's new home office.
The big picture: The area's overall commercial real estate vacancy rate — from warehouse to class A office space — dropped to 5.8% as of June 30, down from 8.3% at the beginning of the year. It's the tightest the region's market has been since at least 2005.
Driving the news: Data comes from the biannual commercial Skyline Report out Tuesday. The residential report for the first half of 2022 was released in September.
Context: The report divides commercial real estate into seven submarkets: office, medical office, office/retail, office/warehouse, retail, retail/warehouse and warehouse.
Yes, and: Vacancy rates in six of the submarkets declined between June 30, 2021 and June 30, 2022.
What they're saying: "[It] looks like even though people might be working remotely some days of the week, office space demand hasn't declined any," Mervin Jebaraj, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, told Axios.
The bottom line: "I see us in a market that all of the vacancy rates tell us we should build, but that has to be weighed against the pressure we have of interest rates and construction costs, and that is a nasty looking and tasting soup," Jeff Pederson, a senior vice president with Lindsey & Associates, told Axios.
Yes, but: "This doesn't mean that it's over," he said. "This is a correction. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do."
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