Strong Commercial Real Estate Sales Continue Into 2017

Hayes Commercial Group has reported that commercial real estate sales for the first three months of 2017 in the South Coast area have “maintained the momentum of 2016,” with Santa Barbara seeing most of the activity.

The city’s 19 sales made for its busiest quarter in three years, Hayes’ report said. The $78 million in sales was a 48-percent increase in volume compared to 2016’s first quarter.

Sales to investors highlighted Santa Barbara’s Quarter 1: The Trader Joe’s building at 3025 De la Vina St. went for $12.5 million, four floors of the Granada Theatre Tower were sold for $8.6 million and the El Torito building at 29 E. Cabrillo Blvd. went for $7.3 million.

January, February and March also marked the first quarter since the recession that no industrial property was sold on the South Coast, something Hayes concluded was due to limited supply. The industrial space vacancy rate in Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria, was, respectively, 0.5 percent, 1.6 percent and 0 percent.

Along the South Coast, half the transactions and more than half the dollar volume involved office property. The office-space vacancy rates in those cities were, respectively, 4.8 percent, 11.8 percent and 3.0 percent.

Retail vacancy rates in Quarter 1 were 3.8 percent, 2.2 percent and 4.4 percent, Hayes reported.

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