COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE PROFILE | Christopher Shucart

CHRISTOPHER SHUCART
President, JCS Realty Group, Naples

Christopher Shucart and his father, James, have been investing in Collier County commercial properties since 1997. In 2004, the pair formed JCS Realty Group, and today they specialize in buying smaller office and retail properties. JCS Realty's portfolio contains six retail projects containing roughly 150,000 square feet and two vacant parcels of commercially zoned land, all of which are in Naples and East Naples.

How do you view the current retail market in Naples and Collier County?
We feel the market is currently strong, in large part because there's not a lot of new product coming online, which tells me that occupancy rates will continue to increase and rental rates will continue to increase as well. Combined, construction costs, leasing costs, impact fees, the soft costs that go into building something, land costs — when you put them all together it equals a big number that you have to get rent-wise, so that's a barrier to entry for a lot of new development. It takes a lot of pre-leasing and some pretty high rents to get product built from the ground up.