Commercial real estate vacancies are going up in Ventura County





Commercial properties used to be a safe haven for real estate investors as the housing market declined. Not anymore.

Ventura County’s office and industrial vacancy rates continued their disappointing rise in the third quarter, according to figures recently released by the commercial real estate brokerage firm CB Richard Ellis.

The county’s retail vacancies jumped to 4.8 percent, up from 3.8 percent in the second quarter, the company said. Industrial availability jumped from 7.9 percent to 8.4 percent. In the office market, Conejo Valley third quarter vacancies rose from 11.2 to 13.3 percent.

“Combined with a slowing economy, the lack of credit is curtailing activity in the commercial real estate sectors,” said Lawrence Yun, National Association of Realtors’ chief economist.

“As a result, there’s been a slowdown in the net absorption of space, which is leading to higher vacancies and more modest rent growth,” he said.

The largest space increase occurred in Moorpark’s industrial buildings, where availabilities increased from 19.2 percent in the second quarter to 23.5 percent in the third, due to the combination of two large buildings totaling 404,000 square feet coming on the market via a lease buyout, and a handful of 5,000 to 10,000square-foot buildings coming available due to businesses failing or downsizing.

Around the county

Moorpark’s Commonwealth Studio, a proposed $125million, 600,000squarefoot filming studio complex on a 37-acre site will break ground in April of 2009 and is expected to be completed in 2011.

Construction also began last month on the Patriot Commerce Center in Moorpark where 66,000 square feet of office and medical space and 240,000 square feet of industrial space will be added.

In Agoura Hills, the Gold Coast Bio Center, a two-story 38,000-square-foot building on Agoura Road, is being touted as a possible new home for a biotechnology company. The project will offer tenants a variety of techfriendly amenities, including private and common labs and offices and meeting spaces.

In Thousand Oaks, the old Home Depot, which has been vacant for more than seven years, is being razed and will be replaced with a $40-million development that will include a Hampton Inn Suites and Walgreen’s Drugs.

And in Camarillo, despite widespread opposition to a proposed 1,500-bed adult prison hospital, federal prison healthcare receiver, J. Clark Kelso is proceeding with a full environmental review of the project. The site of the proposed hospital is on the grounds of the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility on Wright Road.

Other trends

The trend of converting industrial properties to office space is gaining popularity because the average asking price for office rent tends to be three times higher than asking price for renting industrial space.

In the residential housing market, the median price for a home in Ventura County fell to $400,000 in August, a more than 30 percent decline from $575,000 one year ago.