Commercial real estate investors continue to find leasing multifamily properties in Worcester increasingly attractive as a variety of trends boost rents and property values.
Worcester, Mass. has served up many bargain deals on multifamily housing for commercial real estate investors over the last few years, but the time for big discounts could be running out as the area shapes up to be one of the most in demand real estate markets in the country.
Boston continues to lead in the business and finance world, displacing recent favorites and staying head and shoulders above other destinations trying to seduce companies away from old strongholds.
A new ranking index released by Forbes at the end of April 2013 places Boston among the ‘Top 10 Happiest Cities for Young Professionals’, While the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch ranks Boston #2 in the country for business growth, displacing Houston, San Francisco and even San Jose, California.
Of course a variety of other concerns and trends including skyrocketing rents in central Boston and improved technology and remote working trends are pushing real estate demand outwards. Companies are trading their old offices in the dense urban capital for cheaper rents a little further out and workers are happy to be outside of the city for lower cost housing, while remaining within striking distance of all the excitement and major employers.
Of course this all makes Worcester County one of the hot spots benefiting from this trend, in addition to the fact secondary markets like this have been serving up the best yields for commercial real estate investors. This together with factors like Zillow’s new ‘In the Move for Love’ index which ranked Worcester tops in the country for finding new love keep on boosting it as a better choice for living, working and investing for full time investors, professionals and tech entrepreneurs.
At the same time the latest rounds of data following 1Q 2013 reports and April surveys show commercial real estate experts extremely bullish on the industry for the year ahead. Investment has already been gaining steam, especially with a lot of loosening in access to commercial mortgage credit. This is already making it very tough for investors to find worthy purchases in the NNN leased single tenant sector, forcing capital to search elsewhere for acceptable returns.
Another survey of 300 lenders, developers, investors and real estate industry professionals reports 86% are more optimistic about commercial real estate performance ahead based on the economy, availability of equity capital and rising foreign investment.
Over half of the respondents to this survey are most bullish on the multifamily sector which they anticipate seeing the most activity this year and having fully recovered this year, 12 to 24 months in advance of office, retail, hospitality and industrial.
This combination of confidence in multifamily and investment opportunity in Worcester County, Mass. with office close behind makes this a powerful time to get in ahead of surging investment, rising values and rocketing rents.
Multifamily is of course great for housing the surge of young professionals into the region and a correctly positioned with great property management in place is expected to yield incredible levels of cash flow.