Property Manager

Inside the Inner Workings of Commercial Real Estate – A Spotlight on Retail Property Managers

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June 25, 2018 — TERRANOVA TRENDS — BY ANDREA SPEEDY After the deal is done and the lease is signed, the heavy lifting in the commercial real estate business truly begins. The Property Manager becomes the key point of contact for multiple stakeholders in a particular space, including the tenant, contractors, city and municipal inspectors, business improvement district (BID) directors, marketing teams, and the property owner or landlord itself. It is a fast-paced, non-stop, always-on career that is as challenging as it is rewarding.

“To say we’re jacks of all trades would be an understatement,” says Ozzie Dominguez, a 30-year veteran of property management, and a valued member of the team at Terranova. “Sure, we collect rents – as most people know. But we also coordinate hundreds of different tasks in a given day and oversee dozens of relationships. Those relationships are essential to how anything gets accomplished.”

Dominguez, who has served as a real estate Vice President, and held other leadership roles in the industry explains that his experience is not one-of-a-kind. Successful Property Managers who stay in the field as long as he has have all learned a number of essential truths to doing business. He then goes on to explain that what the general public believes a property manager does is only the tip of the iceberg. “We’ll often hear that we work for the landlord, and that’s technically correct. But we’re truly resources for our tenants. We’re absolutely working on our retailers’ behalf to help them stay in business and stay profitable. A successful tenant means a property that’s producing income.”

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Micro Suites

Thinking Small: Inside Real Estate’s Next Huge Movement

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June 15, 2018 — TERRANOVA TRENDS — BY ANDREA SPEEDY Ask typical consumers in the Western hemisphere to describe a “micro unit” in terms of real estate, and after they take a few moments to think, they might tell you about the tiny apartments they’ve either seen or heard about in Japan… but they’d only be partially correct. Today’s micro units now exits throughout the globe, are growing in popularity in the United States, and extend well beyond the residential sector to include retail, hospitality, office spaces, dining & entertainment, and more.

Generally defined as spaces ranging between 300 and 600 square feet, micro units are becoming increasingly popular due to the value proposition they offer to consumer audiences, and the strong potential return on investment they deliver to property owners. Even better, the cost-benefit equation on micro units plays out almost exactly the same no matter where or what the space will be used for.

Consider two scenarios that typically have very different real estate priorities: residential tenants and retail tenants. Traditional perspectives would dictate that the residential tenant wants as much square footage as he or she can possibly afford for a certain monthly price. Retail tenants, on the other hand, value location over size – knowing that a better small store or restaurant that is always full is better than the large space that always seems empty. Recently, however, these two audiences have started to converge.

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Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution – The E-Commerce Merger of Retail & Industrial

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June 6, 2018 — TERRANOVA TRENDS — BY ANDREA SPEEDY Over the past five years, industrial real estate has been turning in annual returns approximately 1.3% higher than the entire real estate industry average. Typically, the historical norm for industrial properties stood at 10% annual returns on an unleveraged basis… but recent performance is now closer to 12.8%. While this has definitely caught the eye of capital markets looking to diversify investment portfolios with real estate that has been delivering above office, retail, and apartments – the shift reveals an evolution taking place in the overall commercial real estate market.

Supply and Demand

Big changes are already underway in traditional retail development – from building more immersive store environments, to innovative mixed-use properties, to adaptive re-use and re-development of under performing spaces. On the other side of the spectrum, the industrial property inventory has been unable to keep up with ravenous demand from e-commerce uses, driving up the cost of industrial space. In South Florida in particular, this supply-demand scenario is heightened by a lack of available large parcels of land suitable for new industrial development. Since 2008, residential and mixed-use has driven much of the development landscape in Miami-Dade County, with commercial properties joining the development cycle a few years later.

Changing dynamics on the demand side of the equation are also shaping a new future for industrial real estate – not least of which is the ever-increasing business related to e-commerce fulfillment. As more and more businesses look to serve digital consumers with prompt (or even same-day) delivery of everything from apparel to electronics to groceries, industrial warehousing space has become a highly sought-after commodity.

A recent Terranova joint acquisition in Doral was selected for precisely this reason. “Our new industrial property in Doral has unbeatable proximity to the Palmetto Expressway (SR-826) as well as Miami International Airport,” says Stephen Bittel, Chairman for Terranova.

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