Category: News

Perfect weather, the great game of golf and good friends! Here’s Younger Partners’ Carson Rice, Lacey Queen, JLL’s Grant Matthews, YP’s Garrett Marler and Tanja Ivandic having fun at the Four Seasons.

Younger Partners’ Kathy Permenter entertained the brokers on the “NTCAR” North Texas Commercial Association of Realtors office tour of Las Colinas and Freeport this morning.

Among the featured properties are three Younger Partners leases: 122 West, 1231 Greenway and 3200 Airfield.

More Younger Partners brokers on the tour: Garrett Marler, intern Parker Morgan and Carson Rice.

Interested in some awesome office space? Reach out to us. http://www.youngerpartners.com/team/

The Texas economy slowed in March in the wake of lower oil prices, a strong U.S. dollar, and a weak global economy. That’s the summary of Luis Torres and Wayne Day for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. The duo’s research shows that the number of jobs in the state decreased in March, although annual employment grew primarily due to the services sector, trade, and leisure and hospitality. The unemployment rate ticked up with increased participation in the labor force. Texas manufacturing and mining and logging employment declined, while services continued a positive trend. Texas housingdemand improved moderately although Houston exhibited more pronounced weakening.

The Texas Leading Index, which signals future directional changes in the business cycle, edged up in March 2016, although the overall trend has been declining since its August 2014 peak. The index was negatively affected by declines in well permits, Texas value of the dollar, the help-wanted index, and average weekly hours worked. The index was only positively affected by moderate increases in oil prices, stock prices of Texas-based companies, and a dip in new unemployment claims. The Texas Business Cycle Index, which measures current economic activity, continued its positive trend in March.

Texas Housing demand showed some signs of gaining strength. In March, statewide housing sales increased 8.5 percent year-over-year on a seasonally adjusted basis (positive 7.2 percent not seasonally adjusted). Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, and San Antonio continued to register an increase in sales. Houston dropped 0.9 percent year-over-year seasonally adjusted (positive 2.9 percent not seasonally adjusted), reflecting the impact of the energy sector decline. Overall, Texas housing sales, after slowing down in prior months, appear to be growing at a more rapid pace.

On the supply side, the number of building permits issued in March increased moderately in Texas although still below the rate of growth for the U.S. Austin recently experienced positive year-over-year growth for the first time since April 2015, with eight straight months of uninterrupted increases in permitting. Dallas-Fort Worth building permits leveled off after rapid growth in prior months while Houston and San Antonio posted negative year-over-year values due to the lack of developed lots for housing construction. During March, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth led the nation in the number of single-family permits issued followed by Atlanta, Phoenix, and Austin.

Months of Inventory of Texas houses for sale remained low at near 3.7 months of inventory in March compared with 5.8 for the nation (seasonally adjusted; around 6.5 months of inventory is considered a balanced housing market). Overall, supply has been restricted due to limited lot inventory and construction labor shortages.

Rising Texas home prices reflect the low inventories resulting from constrained supply and steadily increasing demand. Since 2011, Texas home prices have increased more rapidly than the rate of increase for the U.S. In 4Q15, the U.S. and Texas FHFA Purchase-Only Housing Price Indexes increased from the prior year by 5.8 percent and 7.6 percent, respectively.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices averaged $37.77 per barrel in March compared with $47.77 a year earlier. A world oil supply glut pressured oil prices downward in the face of static demand. The decrease in the number of operating rigs in Texas continues in 2016 and has caused oil production to decline slightly after reaching a peak in March 2015. Registering a more pronounced fall in March 2016, market observers expect Texas oil production to fall more forcefully later in 2016.

Texas employment continued to register a positive annual growth rate although it lost 12,000 jobs during March from February. After the employment growth rates in the United States and Texas converged in 3Q2015, Texas continued beneath the year-over-year employment growth rate (seasonally adjusted) for the U.S. during March.

Much of the employment growth occurred in the services sectors, primarily financial services, education and health services, professional and business services, as well in trade and leisure and hospitality. Even with the increase in retail trade employment, retail sales showed some weakness in March as retailers’ perception of economic conditions were mixed in the Texas retail outlook survey. The continued expansion in the services sectors follows the expectations presented by the Texas service outlook survey.

The major losses in March employment occurred in manufacturing and mining and logging. Construction employment grew by 1.3 percent year-over-year seasonally adjusted. Manufacturing employment continued a decline that started in April 2015 with a negative 4.2 percent year-over-year change and monthly job losses. Even with manufacturing employment contracting, the manufacturing outlook survey gave some signs that the sector has possibly rebounded with a positive production index. Both the employment data and the survey outlook could be signaling that a trough has been reached in the sector.

Houston, as expected, registered a more drastic slowdown in overall employment versus the other major metros in the state. Even in the presence of dramatically lower oil prices and drilling activity, total jobs in Houston were 0.3 percent greater than March 2015, despite the loss of 2,600 jobs from February 2016.

Job growth and the decline in the labor force in Texas helped to keep the unemployment rate below the national average. In March, Texas’ seasonally adjusted unemployment rate equaled to 4.6 percent compared with 5.0 percent for the U.S. Labor force participation reversed its trend over the past couple of years from workers opting out of the job market instead of joining the labor force. In the past few months, participation has increased in Texas and across the U.S.

Real total private employee hourly earnings in March fell 1.5 percent year-over-year, registering a lower growth rate than the nation since August 2015. Real earnings in Texas have not consistently remained above January 2007 levels on a seasonally adjusted basis. Real earnings for Austin and Houston have increased above January 2007 levels while Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio have not.

Increases in the Consumer Price Index have been suppressed and remain low in the U.S. as a consequence of low oil prices and a strong dollar that has made imports cheaper. The Consumer Price Index for Dallas posted negative rates of year-over-year change from January 2015 until December 2015 when it registered a value above zero and then in March 2016 a positive 0.6 percent. The Consumer Price Index for Houston year-over-year change was 2.0 percent in February 2016.

Because of weakening global demand, lower oil prices, and a stronger dollar, U.S. and Texas exports of all commodities and manufactured goods fell in 2015 and continued to fall in March 2016 year-over-year. But the monthly gains give a possible sign that maybe a trough has been reached. The real trade weighted value of the U.S. dollar steadily increased for both the U.S. and Texas. This reflects the appreciation of the U.S. dollar with respect to world currencies, making U.S. and Texas exports more expensive to foreign buyers.

Note: Recent changes in the Real Estate Center’s data reporting have included shifting from reporting on Multiple Listing Service (MLS) areas to a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). In this report, the respective charts reflecting these changes include Months of Inventory and Housing Sales.

Lenders Tighten CRE Borrowing Standards

By Jonathan Miller for GlobeSt

It’s a problematic time where figuring out where markets are going becomes especially difficult. The economic recovery has been relatively weak, but sustained. The official unemployment rate is about has low as it ever goes, but wage growth has been anemic and many Americans are falling behind as they pay more for healthcare, receive fewer benefits, and face higher taxes, especially at the state and local levels (property and sales taxes as well as various fees for services go up, up, up).

The primary election results point to the economic uneasiness lacing the country—Trump and Sanders voters see the deck stacked against them—older white blue collar voters think they are losing ground, while the younger cohort faces obstacles in setting a successful future course—high student debt is just one of them. The world scene looks especially dicey—when economies go south (China, Russia, Saudi Arabia) governments seek conflicts to distract their restive populations. The UK possibly abandoning the EU and the ongoing migrant crisis leave an already weakened Eurozone on edge. The bubble has popped in Brazil, and India is endless hype. Overlay all of this turmoil with the threat of Islamic terror and add in a dash of climate change with a bit of Zika virus, and the recipe looks like a stew for dragging down global growth.

And then note, corporate profits are off especially in tech, banks and the energy industry, big parts of the US economy. The important housing sector has improved, but not enough to lift the confidence of mortgage saddled homeowners to turn back into reckless, credit binging consumers. Notably Macy’s and Nordstrom headline what is becoming the chronic lagging performance of bricks-and mortar department stores. For all the noise about the Fed, interest rates remain very low, because our financial state is more fragile than anyone would like to admit since harpooning confidence is just not good for anyone’s business.

In real estate, players now  talk about entering the cycle’s late innings—cap rates have lowered to uncomfortable limits for prime properties, funds’ buying appetites have slackened, and fund managers find it a bit harder to raise capital. “You think more than twice about doing deals.” Developers should also think long and hard about breaking ground.

There certainly seems to be somewhat more discipline than in past cycles when investors blindly ignored warning signs and irrationally plowed ahead into disastrous over-priced deals and high-risk projects.  Any investment slowdown now may help insulate the markets from a hard fall— certainly a period of lackluster returns with little or no appreciation would be preferable to suffering through sharp value declines. That may be possible, if some measure of restraint can take hold even more firmly.

But it’s hard for a transaction-oriented business, predicated on putting money to work, to pull back consciously and willingly face lower profitability. Deal guys, lawyers, bankers and brokers don’t easily volunteer to head to the sidelines and turn their backs on bonus checks. Investment managers rarely look to play it safe and give money back rather than the norm—“let me reinvest for you or better yet give me more so we can double down on recent gains.”

What happens over the next year will be critical in determining whether the next downturn is a soft landing or the usual crash.

About the author: A marketing communication strategist who turned to real estate analysis, Jonathan D. Miller is a leading interpreter of 21st citistate futures – cities and suburbs alike – seen through the lens of lifestyles and market realities. For more than 20 years (1992-2013), Miller authored Emerging Trends in Real Estate, the leading commercial real estate industry outlook report, published annually by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute (ULI).

Bisnow reports that the US economy added 160,000 jobs in April. That’s according to the Department of Labor’s jobs report, making April the weakest hiring month since September 2015—and flying in the face of Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal surveys of top economists who on average expected 200,000 and 205,000 jobs added, respectively. Given the poor employment showing, Bisnow sat down with top economists for their take on the odds of a June Fed rate hike.

Bisnow’s slideshow shares the debts here.

By Younger Partners Property Services President Greg Grainger

Zig Ziglar has often said, “It’s impossible to consistently behave in a manner inconsistent with how we see ourselves. We can do very few things in a positive way if we feel negative about ourselves.” Ziglar has a very practical, common-sense wisdom that he has shared with people for years. Nathaniel Branden, a psychotherapist and expert on the subject of self-esteem, says nothing is more important in people’s psychological development and motivation than the value judgments they make about themselves. Every aspect of their lives is impacted by the way they see themselves, Branden adds.

John Maxwell, who is well-known for teaching the Law of the Lid from The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership suggests that you imagine that you want to do something great in your life that impacts a lot of people. Perhaps you want to build a large organization. That desire, no matter how great, will be limited by your leadership. It is a lid on your potential. Well, your self-esteem has the same kind of impact. If your desire is a 10 but your self-esteem is a 5, you’ll never perform at the level of a 10. You’ll perform as a 5 or lower.

We need to understand that the value we place on ourselves is usually the value others place on us, too. One of my favorite stories is about a man who went to a fortune-teller to hear what she had to say about his future. She looked into a crystal ball and said, “You will be poor and unhappy until you are 45 years old.”

“Then what will happen?” asked the man hopefully.

“Then you’ll get used to it.”

It is sad that most people live their lives that way – according to what others believe about them. If the important people in their lives expect them to go nowhere, then that’s what they expect for themselves. That’s fine if you’re surrounded by people who believe in you. But what if you’re not? You shouldn’t become too concerned about what others might think of you. You should be more concerned about what you think of yourself. If you want to become the person you have the potential to be, you must believe you can!

To build self-esteem, apply the following suggestions.

1. Guard your self-talk. 

Whether you know it or not, you have a running conversation with yourself all the time. What is the nature of yours? Do you encourage yourself? Or do you criticize yourself? If you are positive, then you help to create a positive self-image. If you’re negative, you undermine your self-worth. Where does negative, critical self-talk come from? Usually from our upbringing. In their book The Answer, businessmen-authors John Assaraf and Murray Smith talk about the negative messages children receive growing up. They write, by the time you’re 17 years old, you’ve heard “No, you can’t” an average of 150,000 times. You’ve heard “Yes, you can” 5,000 times. That’s 30 no’s for every yes, creating a powerful belief of “I can’t.”

That’s a lot to overcome. If we want to change our lives, we have to change the way we think of ourselves. If we want to change the way we think of ourselves, we need to change the way we talk to ourselves. And the older we are, the more responsible we are for how we think, talk and believe. Don’t you have enough problems in life already? Why add to them by discouraging yourself every day with negative self-talk?

You need to learn to become your own encourager, your own cheerleader. Every time you do a good job, don’t just let it pass; give yourself a compliment. Every time you choose discipline over indulgence, don’t tell yourself that you should have anyway; recognize how much you are helping yourself. Every time you make a mistake, don’t bring up everything that’s wrong with yourself; tell yourself that you’re paying the price for growth and that you will learn to do better next time. Every positive thing you can say to yourself will help.

2. Stop comparing yourself to others. 

When I started my career, I looked forward to my organization’s annual report, which showed statistics for each leader. I’d immediately check my standing and compare my progress with the progress of the other leaders. After about five years of doing that, I realized how harmful it was. What happens when you compare yourself to others? Usually you either perceive the other person to be far ahead of you and you feel discouraged, or you perceive yourself to be better than the other person and become proud. Neither is good for you, and neither will help you to grow.

Comparing yourself to others is a needless distraction. The only one you should compare yourself to is you. Your mission is to become better today than you were yesterday. You do that by focusing on what you can do today to improve and grow. Do that enough, and if you look back and compare the you of weeks, months or years ago to the you of today, you should be greatly encouraged by your progress.

3. Move beyond your limiting beliefs. 

I love the old comic strip Shoe by Jeff MacNelly. In one of my favorites, Shoe is pitching in a baseball game. In a conference on the mound, his catcher says, “You’ve got to have faith in your curveball.”

“It’s easy for him to say,” grumbles Shoe. “When it comes to believing in myself, I’m an agnostic.”

Unfortunately, that’s the way a lot of people think about themselves. They don’t believe they can accomplish great things. But the greatest limitations people experience on their lives are usually the ones they impose upon themselves. As industrialist Charles Schwab said, “When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.” 

4. Add value to others. 

Because people with low self-esteem often see themselves as inadequate or feel like victims (which often starts because they actually have been victimized in their past), they focus inordinately on themselves. They can become self-protective and selfish because they feel that they have to be to survive.

If that is true of you, then you can combat those feelings by serving others and working to add value to them. Making a difference—even a small one—in the lives of other people lifts one’s self-esteem. It’s hard to feel bad about yourself when you’re doing something good for someone else. In addition to that, adding value to others makes them value you more. It creates a cycle of positive feeling from one person to another.

Memorial Day is more than just a day to barbecue and celebrate a day off work, but many people struggle to even know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Learn more below about Memorial Day history and the military, law enforcement, firefighters and rescue personnel we support. Do you have 60 seconds to learn more? Sure you do. Watch this. 

You can contribute to Younger Partners’ $2,000 goal here.

We’re always looking for ways to improve efficiency and Sarah Chang at The Muse came up with a list of some out-of-the-box suggestions. Here’s a a few:

• Sort your email with a new tactic: Next, next, next.
• Use social media to increase work output. (seriously)
• Laugh more. Really, Forbes says so.

What works for you?

Steve Brown of the Dallas Morning News has some big news: Dallas office building rents have for the first time topped the $50-per-square-foot mark.

That’s what developers are asking for choice business digs in new buildings on the way in Big D’s booming Uptown market.

“Based on recent proposals, rents continue to skyrocket in these premier, existing assets — and are now coming in at around $52 per square foot,” said Walter Bialas, vice president with commercial real estate firm JLL. “We must emphasize that these existing buildings are not run-of-the-mill class A properties — they are the premiere players in the submarket.

“They also are essentially full in terms of occupancy, so limited space options exist,” he said in a new report. “Combine that with the need to wait for 6 to 18 months for the new properties to be completed, and you have a unique situation where existing tenants and renewing tenants have few top-tier location options.”

The sky-high office rents being quoted in some of Uptown’s newest office developments are about twice the citywide average. Those rents are more than $20 per square foot higher than the average downtown and in the Legacy-Frisco market in Collin County.

Since 2011, office rents in Uptown’s prime buildings have shot up by almost 30 percent, according to JLL.

Some of the the city’s largest legal and accounting firms have made the move from downtown north of Klyde Warren Park to land in the newest Uptown towers.

So far there’s no sign of oversupply and a slowdown in rent growth. If anything, higher land prices are adding to the pressure on office rents in the area north of downtown Dallas.

“With a continued strong local economy for the next two plus years, there is no sign of rents plateauing in high-demand locations,” Bialas says.

While a high-water market for Dallas, rental rates in Uptown are still significantly below what first class offices go far in coastal cities including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“$50  per square foot for our new buildings is a new high, but still low compared to other major cities existing stock,” Bialas said.

On Feb 29, Younger Partners expanded the team to include long-time Bisnow reporter Tonie Auer. She will be responsible for the social media and expanding YP’s brand awareness.

Last night, Dowdle Real Estate’s Lynn Dowdle & E Smith Realty’s Susan Arledge set up a welcome celebration at Sevy’s for Tonie as she transitions to the other side of the CRE world.

Here’s just a few pics from the festivities.

Tonie & Kathy Permenter

Tonie & Moody Younger

Back row: Younger Partners’ Lacey Queen, Garrett Marler, Trae Anderson. Front row: Tonie & Colliers’ Lindsay Wolcott

Dowdle Real Estate’s Lynn Dowdle, The Trocchio Advantage’s Liz Trocchio, Tonie & Hudson Peter’s Cincha Kostman.

Just a reminder that we’re shooting for a team goal of raising $2,000 to help Carry the Load, which strives to protect the true meaning of Memorial Day. It isn’t just about a day off from work and cook-outs. It’s about restoring the true meaning of Memorial Day with a 2,000 mile national walk and local community events. Help us by making a contribution here.

We love making deals and helping our clients. Candace Carlisle and the Dallas Business Journal spotlighted one of our big wins here.

Landing Milwaukee-based heating and air conditioning giant Johnson Controls Inc. (NYSE: JCI) wasn’t easy, but the landlord and leasing team were able to make some in-house adjustments and help the company’s North Texas expansion.

The team — Denver-based DCT Industrial and Dallas-based Younger Partners — had to shuffle around some of the tenants at 1615 Diplomat Drive in Carrollton (pictured below) to make way for Johnson Controls, which also leases an adjacent facility.

DCT Industrial’s Art Barkley said the landlord and development firm said another company in the building wanted to give up some space in the building and the move made sense.

“We strive to accommodate our customer’s every-evolving supply chain,” said Barkley, a senior vice president at DCT Industrial.

With that, Johnson Controls signed a lease for 55,000 square feet of space at the Carrollton facility, which sits in a central part of the region and helps the company move product from Fort Worth to Garland.

CBRE’s Jeremy Halbeck represented Johnson Controls in its real estate search. Younger Partners’ Carter Crow and JT Samford represented DCT Industrial in the real estate negotiations.

Crow, a real estate broker with Younger Partners, said the company could’ve gone to any landlord, but selected DCT Industrial because of the firm’s reputation.

“The space and location were great, but the landlord and owner makes a big difference,” he said. “A good landlord saves tenants a lot of headaches and knowing that DCT is a long-term holder is also reassuring.”

Meanwhile, DCT Industrial has two other new industrial projects underway in North Texas. They include:

• A 107,000-square-foot industrial facility, called DCT Freeport West, at 1204 W. Bethel Road (rendered above) that is slated for completion in the third quarter

• A 347,000-square-foot distribution center, called DCT Waters Ridge, at 514 Bennett Lane (rendered above) in Lewisville that is expected to be complete in the third quarter

Barkley said DCT Industrial is bullish on the economic outlook of North Texas and expects to continue landing leases like Johnson Controls.

The company owns interest in 5.52 million square feet in the Dallas-Fort Worth.

“Dallas has been one of the great job growth stories in the past 20 years and we don’t expect that to change,” he said.

Make no mistake, successful people often share the same traits and practices. Younger Partners Property Services President Greg Grainger says he’s learned five mistakes that successful people avoid doing from bestselling author and KPI and Big Data guru (clearly a great title to have) Bernard Marr. Here they are under Greg’s smiling mug:

Mistake 1. Avoid responsibility – “The price of greatness is responsibility.” –Winston Churchill

One of the first things you will notice that successful people don’t have is a blaming or victim mentality. When things go wrong, what is your first response? Successful people won’t say, “I couldn’t succeed because of X, Y, and Z” or “It’s actually this person’s fault.” They’re much more likely to own a mistake rather than blame others for their failure or misfortune. I believe the key here is that by owning a mistake, we are more likely to learn from it and much less likely to repeat it.

Mistake 2. Procrastinate – “Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.” ~Napoleon Hill

Successful people tend to take action, regardless of whether it is the “perfect” time or not. When Gutenberg invented the printing press, the literacy rate was almost nonexistent—not exactly perfect market conditions for mass producing books. And no one knew they needed a “smart” phone until Apple invented one. Don’t wait for the perfect time to do something. Work hard and don’t give up—regardless of what might be going on around you. Success is very often the accumulation of many small achievements over a long period of time.

Mistake 3. Follow the trends – “Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion”. –Jack Kerouac

Every day we produce 2.5 quintillion (1018) bytes of data. In that flood of information, it’s tempting to think that we have to jump at every new development, try every new thing. (We sometimes call it “shiny object syndrome.”) But jumping at every new thing will leave no time to develop the deep understanding that pursuing lifelong learning might. Focus your energies on understanding the root of what you hope to succeed at and ignore the rest. For example, if you hope to succeed in sales or marketing you might choose to study human psychology rather than the latest social media marketing schemes.

Mistake 4. Try to go it alone – “Life is not a solo act. It’s a huge collaboration, and we all need to assemble around us the people who care about us and support us.” –Tim Gunn

One of the most vital things successful people do is to surround themselves with other successful people. No man is an island, and having a network, a mastermind group, surround oneself with clever people can make all the difference between success and failure. This is true whether you hope to succeed at a personal goal like weight loss (studies show people lose more weight in a group than alone) or a business goal.

Mistake 5. Lack of belief

“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” –Norman Vincent Peale

This isn’t about positive affirmations or visualizing success, but rather, as Peale says, “a humble but reasonable confidence” that you can achieve what you set out to achieve. Think about it the other way round if you are skeptical; if you don’t believe that you can succeed, why would you even try? You must cultivate a strong belief in yourself even in the face of setbacks or adversities if you hope to ultimately be successful.

Avoiding these mistakes will help you succeed at work or a single goal or task, but to be truly successful, we also need to be happy.

U.S. employers added 160,000 jobs in April, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5%. Here’s a look into what we can learn by diving into the details of the monthly employment report.

Over the past year, the economy has added a total of 2.7 million jobs. This is a somewhat slower pace than was seen over the course of 2015 when the economy was adding about 3 million jobs a year.

Read the full report here.

Memorial Day is about honoring and celebrating those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Join our national movement to restore the true meaning of Memorial Day.

We, at Younger Partners, are joining the cause. We’ve set up a team to raise funds and awareness. Please consider contributing to our team effort to raise $2,000 for Carry the Load. You can contribute here.

Tell us who you are celebrating this Memorial Day with #CarryTheLoad. Who are you carrying? For more information about Carry The Load, visit carrytheload.org

All stars continue to stay aligned in the DFW area.  As a result, the DFW Industrial market continues to thrive.  With steady demand, strong rental rates and lack of land availability we are seeing record setting values being paid for institutional quality assets. The lack of land in key markets is creating a barrier to entry into the DFW Industrial market, which in turn has led the institutional investor to seek out existing Class A product.

We continue to see e-commerce driving some of the larger Industrial transactions.  Amazon continues to challenge the likes of Wal-Mart as evidence of Wal-Mart‘s recent announcement of 450 employees being laid off at the company’s Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters.

Now on to the jewel of the Metroplex—the Texas Rangers clinched the AL West on the final day of the 2015 season.  Their journey to the World Series will begin when they face the Toronto Blue Jays in a 5 game series, starting in Toronto on Thursday, October 8, 2015.

Todd Jones