Commercial Real Estate & Business News – December 27, 2017

As 2017 comes to a close, multifamily investors and developers are getting ready for another year of steady demand. “Overall, we expect that same stability to hold in 2018, with occupancy and rent growth anticipated to basically mirror 2017’s statistics,” says Greg Willet, chief economist for RealPage Inc., a Richardson, Texas-based provider of property management and software services.…»

Did retailers enjoy a big boost in sales this holiday season? Preliminary indications are that they did, but the data is still being compiled. Income is up for consumers, which would seem to bode well for retail sales, even for brick-and-mortar stores. Then again, consumer confidence dropped a bit in December, though not that much. …»

Houston-based retailer Mattress Firm plans to close about 200 stores. The locations to be shuttered aren’t yet known, but note the company has at 17 locations in the Phoenix metro area. The planned closings answer a question that many observers have long had about whether the industry was saturating the retail landscape…»

Phoenix home prices are continuing to rise, clocking in at a 6 percent year-over-year increase, according to a new housing report. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index report released Tuesday showed that, through October, the Valley’s home prices were continuing an upward trend. The region finished in the middle of the pack in terms of price gains when compared to the 20 metro areas the report uses.…»

Surprise and Gilbert led the pack when it came to increases in apartment rents around the Valley this year. The two suburbs at opposite ends of the region saw yearly increases well above other Valley cities, and those hikes were consistent in one- and two-bedroom apartments, according to a monthly report on rents by Zumper.com Surprise is now the fifth priciest market for apartment rents…»