It's good to be second

The commercial real estate theme for 2014 seems to be this: Investors are moving out of the big cities and into secondary markets such as Tampa and Southwest Florida.

At separate real estate conferences in Fort Myers and Bonita Springs, commercial real estate experts delivered welcome news that capital is flowing out of core markets like New York City and San Francisco as commercial real estate there gets too pricey.

At the CCIM Real Estate Outlook Conference in Fort Myers, CBRE Americas Head of Research Randy Anderson says pension funds, and individual and foreign investors are broadening their horizons beyond U.S. major cities. “That will help bolster real estate prices in 2014,” he forecasts.

At the Urban Land Institute meeting in Bonita Springs, ULI Senior Vice President Dean Schwanke echoed those sentiments. “Capital goes wide,” he says, explaining that investors are now willing to take more risk in secondary markets.

Even commercial mortgage-backed securities are making a comeback. “This was a sector that was almost dead four years ago,” says Schwanke, forecasting $100 billion in issuance this year. “It adds fluid capital to smaller markets.”