When will recovery come to New Jersey? Not until '05.

Everyone who is directly or indirectly involved in the real estate industry wants to know when the office market will recover from its recent slowdown.

Although the general consensus is that the market is improving, the question remains: when can we expect a full recovery? This then leads to another question: what is a full recovery?

Many real estate professionals answer this question based on their personal experiences with the level of leasing activity taking place in their projects.

This article takes a more scientific approach, attempting to explore the demand for office space and its connection to new office employment.

In real estate, assessing potential demand is much more difficult than computing supply. The difficulty occurs in establishing how many office employment jobs are created relative to all jobs created. For the purposes of this article, we have estimated the number of office jobs that were created during our last recovery period, from 1996 to 2000, in the eleven Northern counties of New Jersey's office market. However, it is virtually impossible to determine whether these office jobs occupied space in the office space inventory or in corporate, federal and state-owned properties.

Therefore, we created a ratio from the historic labor and occupancy data from the period, which considers the office job creation impact on net absorption in the rental market. The formula for this ratio is the total net absorption from 1996-2000 divided by office jobs that were created during the same period.

In 1996, the occupied office space in the eleven counties of Northern and Central New Jersey was approximately 147.734 million s/f, with estimated office employment of 856,000 jobs. This represents approximately 172 s/f of leased rental space for every office employee. At the end of 2000, the occupied office space in New Jersey was approximately 165.767 s/f, while the estimated office employment was 1.006 million jobs, or approximately 165 s/f per office employee. The difference in occupied space from 1996 to 2000 was 18.033 million s/f. This figure represents the true net absorption for that period. The change in office employment from 1996 to 2000 was a job increase of approximately 150,000 jobs. Based on these statistics, for every office job created, approximately 120 s/f of office space in the rental inventory was absorbed.

The year 2000 represented the peak of the market recovery that took place during the 1990's, following the real estate recession that began in 1986. The vacancy rate at year-end 2000 was approximately 9.5%. We consider this vacancy rate to represent a fully recovered and balanced office market. At the end of 2003, the New Jersey office market had a total inventory of 189.569 million s/f, with 28.93 s/f of available space. This represents an availability rate of 15.3%, including sublease space. To reach a balanced market with an availability rate of 10%, approximately 10 million s/f must be absorbed. What is the office employment growth necessary to achieve a 10% vacancy and a balanced market?

Assuming the same rate of absorption for the rental office space market of 120 s/f per office job created, the New Jersey economy must create 83,000 jobs in one of the office employment sectors. During one of the greatest recent economic expansions, from 1996 to 2000, the State of New Jersey produced an average of 41,500 new office jobs per year. Rutgers Economic Advisory Service's forecast for December 2003 indicates that employment will grow in New Jersey at an average annual rate of 45,600 total jobs between 2002 and 2008. If haft, or 22,800, of the jobs created are office jobs in Northern and Central New Jersey, then at the absorption rate of 120 s/f per office employee, it may take approximately four years to reach a 10% vacancy rate. This prediction also assumes that no new office space is constructed during the same period.

In addition, the average amount of s/f occupied per employee in 1996 was approximately 172. However, at the end of 2003, that statistic dropped to 161 s/f. What is the reason for this decrease and the apparent disconnect between amount of square feet required per employee and the absorption rate per employee? First of all, not every new office job utilizes rental space. Some employees locate to government or corporate-owned facilities that are not part of the rental market. Secondly, not every new office job absorbs space at the same ratio. Some office employees become telecommuters or share workspace at a corporate facility under the "hoteling" concept. In addition, corporations continue to adhere to cost saving practices by reducing space required per person. We have seen work and cubicle space change from 8' x 8' to 8' x 6' and in many cases 6' x 6'. As technology improves and companies continue to look for more efficient ways to reduce space per employee, these factors are expected to further impact the rate at which office space is absorbed.

In 2003, the economic recovery began to positively affect the real estate market in New Jersey. Negative office space absorption has substantially decreased or halted. We anticipate that the recovering economy will eventually mean job increases for New Jersey, which will have an even more beneficial impact on office space absorption in 2004. Nonetheless, opportunities for corporate users are still abundant and it will remain a tenant's market for the next 12-24 months. A jobless economic recovery does not help the office space market conditions and New Jersey will need to see substantial growth in office employment before we experience a drastic turnaround in the office market conditions.