As prices for residential real estate throughout Maine and New England have either fallen or held steady over the past several years, commercial real estate, especially in the retail, office and development sectors continues to thrive. Those of us who sell or lease commercial/ investment real estate in Maine, are often asked the questions “How is the market?”, “Are you seeing a slowdown/softening of the market?”, “How have the interest rates affected sales?” and so on.
The truth of the matter is that commercial real estate in Maine, especially in Southern Maine, remains a good (great) investment for any and all who have chosen that route over the last 15+ years. I personally started selling commercial real estate in Portland in 1991. For the purposes of this article, I have chosen to highlight a number of different office and retail properties that have changed hands at least twice over the course of the last 10-15 years.
These particular properties involved some fitup and investment by the owners, but relatively small in comparison to the gains that they realized by leasing up their properties and then eventually putting them back on the market. Some of these properties, I am aware of personally because I was involved in the sales and/or leasing. Some of them, I am just aware of from being in the marketplace and had no broker involvement on my part whatsoever. Typically, the owners realized a significant profit, even after considering their fitup costs, brokerage commissions, capital improvements and other costs associated with owning commercial real estate. (Continued on PDF)