Utah Commercial Real Estate Market is Booming

Indications of Utah's economic health are ample in the state's business real estate markets, portrayed as "astounding" and "great."

As a matter of fact, as analysts on property committed to retail, offices, flats and distribution warehouses accumulated in Salt Lake City to survey 2015, their remarks verged on euphoric.

"Last year will be remembered as possibly one of the most robust since the prolonged economic recession, and certainly one of the best across all market sectors along the Wasatch Front," said Jason England, Utah president of NAIOP, representing brokers, developers, owners and investors in commercial real estate.

Investors invested more than $1.8 billion into purchasing commercial properties in Utah in 2015, the third straight year that present number surpassed its preceding high.

Total transactions could have gotten much higher, numerous intermediaries said, if Utah had more top-dollar properties available to be purchased.

Most of the investments are originating from outside the state as national real-estate trusts, pension funds and other big portfolio administrators try to spread their wagers and look for deals outside bigger, costlier metro markets.

The commercial real-estate market's present star, multifamily housing, added 4,100 living spaces to Utah's inventory a year ago since a number of young adults and retirees prefer leasing and urban living as opposed to purchasing single-family suburban houses. Indeed, even with that additional supply, vacancy rates stay low and rent prices keep on crawling upward.

Utah's largest real estate investment sale in 2015 was in the multifamily category: the $56 million offer of The Crossing at Daybreak, a 315-unit flat complex in South Jordan.

Real estate retail market is doing pretty good. Asking rates on shopping spaces, encouraged by interest from home-grown and popular stores of retailers, food merchants and restaurants looking to grow, are on a high.

As opposed to common expectations, brick-and-mortar shopping outlets are doing great midst e-commerce boom. That has put industrial structures dedicated to order-fulfillment, warehousing and bulk distribution.