The commercial real estate market is taking a beating pretty much across the board, and New Jersey is no exception. As the industry braces for what is widely expected to be another tough year all over, the Garden State looks ahead to how it will reemerge once the dust settles. As is the case in most other markets, in New Jersey, the numbers tell the story. In the central part of the state, the average overall office vacancy rate jumped from 18.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to 19.5 percent at the close of 2008, according to a report by real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield Inc. Northern New Jersey saw its office vacancy rate go from 15.7 percent to 16.5 percent. The vacancy rate in the state’s industrial property sector increased from 6.9 percent to 7.2 percent. The figures are not expected to get any better any time soon, but Donald Eisen (pictured), executive managing director in C&W’s East Rutherford office, says that once the recession is behind us, New Jersey will have to look in new directions to help revive its economy and real estate market. The green movement, for one, is expected to play a big role. “Being such a dense state, we’ve had to deal with the environment issue before others have, so I think we’re going to be leaders in clean energy and I think that’s going to spawn jobs locally,” Eisen told CPN. And new jobs will be key, as the financial and insurance businesses in the state have been pummeled, resulting in a bigger hole in office occupancy levels. Additionally, the market is contending with pharmaceutical industry coalescence. But, just as the state was forced to do after the consolidation of the telecom industry, New Jersey will have to reinvent itself in order to get back on top. “It’s going to be very difficult to predict exactly how we’re going to get out of it, but we have a fabulous geographic location, excellent school systems, a great labor force and an array of professions in many areas,” Eisen said. “Also, the large numbers of foreign nationals who come into the state have been one of the great assets and rejuvenators of the New Jersey economy because they work and revitalize as they go, and I think that is an area that is often overlooked.” Eisen concedes that, once we close the door on the current cycle, the playing field–scarred by the lengthy period of unbridled distribution of credit and a financial crisis that went global–will be quite different. “These are uncharted waters,” he noted. “From day to day, we look at the Dow and say, ‘will we ever survive?’ And we will.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The commercial real estate market is taking a beating pretty much across the board, and New Jersey is no exception. As the industry braces for what is widely expected to be another tough year all over, the Garden State looks ahead to how it will reemerge once the dust settles. As is the case in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1003948762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-regions"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n