Executive Profile - David Stevens

David Stevens is a partner in the commercial brokerage firm Investment Properties Corp., one of Collier County's leading real estate companies that last year celebrated its 40th anniversary in business. A resident of Naples since 1968, Stevens has been an active commercial real estate broker since 1983 and earned the prestigious Certified Commercial Investment Member designation from the CCIM Institute in 1989.

How would you describe the commercial real estate market in Naples at the present time — healthy, robust, frothy, anemic?

I'd say it's healthy. Our market continues to show signs of steady growth and receive steady attention from people in other markets who are looking for investments. And with residential growth still strong, the area continues to enjoy the attention of retailers and restaurants and service providers who want to respond to, and be a part of that growth.

Which individual commercial real estate sectors are performing well? Which are lagging, and why?

We continue to have very favorable demand for retail, whether it be on Fifth Avenue or along U.S. 41 in downtown. Demand is exceeding the supply of people, so there's opportunity for development, in the event that you can find land to develop. We're seeing a lot of service-oriented retail, too — merchants that are Amazon-proof such as Starbucks, nail salons, and food, especially. You can't get your dry cleaning from Amazon, for instance. One softer component, oddly, is office absorption. Now, we did have a few major employers that essentially went dark and that impacted things dramatically. One was HMA, which essentially was acquired by another company that had its headquarters in Tennessee. Another went from occupying three large facilities to one, and as a result put 150,000 square feet on the market. In our market, that's a big chunk of space. And then Hertz, prior to their move to their new headquarters in Estero, had occupied a lot of space in the interim. The other thing that's happened in the professional world is that we're all becoming more nimble. Smart phones are increasingly becoming the center of most of our practices, so traditional conference and office space is not being utilized as much, and as such, office owners have not been able to grow rents and less space is being absorbed. Having said that, we're seeing of late some Pelican Bay office buildings getting more active.