Prices for Office, Industrial, Retail & Shopping Centers For Major Cities In Louisiana

This newsletter looks at price trends as of September 2023 for 9,018 listed properties for lease and for sale in the entire state of Louisiana, plus we drill down for major city trends as well as compare asking prices to actual transacted prices. We found some trends that help forecast future prices but also some trends that are harder to figure out than Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Let’s get started.

Louisiana Asking Lease and Sale Prices By Sector

First, let’s look at average sale and lease prices for the major sectors in the entire state of Louisiana. We examined 9,018 listings with 26 million square feet for sale and 30 million square feet for lease.  

• The industrial sector has 13 million square feet for lease and 10 million for sale. Lease and sale asking prices have increased 20% since January 2022 because lease square feet declined by 4 million but, surprisingly, sale square footage is unchanged. That means the demand curve shifted to cause the 20% price increase.
• The office sector has 8.7 million for lease and 5 million for sale. Since 2022, lease prices are flat but sale asking prices increased 12%, even though listed square footage increased by 900,000 for both.
• The retail sector has 4.9 million for lease and 4.4 million for sale and while square footage for both is unchanged since 2022, asking lease prices have increased 10% and sale prices 23%.
• The shopping center sector has 2.6 million for lease and one million for sale. Supply is down for both about 200,000 square feet since January 2022 but prices are about the same.

Office Asking and Actual Lease Prices

We examined 6,967 office listings for lease over the past 3 months which had 194 actually leased. Of the 194 leases closed, Metairie had 21 leases and commanded the highest asking price of $21.27 per square foot and actual transacted lease prices were only discounted 3%, averaging $20.57 per square foot. Lake Charles, Slidell, Denham Springs and Bossier City only averaged 1 lease transacted per month each which explains the anomaly of actual lease prices higher than asking. Baton Rouge closed the highest number of leases at 66, averaging a 17% discount, but Lafayette is again the big winner closing 36 leases at a 3% premium.

Retail Asking and Actual Lease Prices

Of the 3,048 retail lease listings, only 3% or 95 were closed in the last 3 months. Metairie lists 232 spaces and only closed 6 but commands the highest asking lease price at $24.78 with actual price averaging $23.29. Baton Rouge has the most listings at 715 and closed 22 but New Orleans closed the most at 31 which is a large enough sample so is not an outlier but still unusual, averaging $25.83 per square foot which is a 7% premium to the asking price.

Industrial Asking and Actual Lease Prices

Lafayette commands the highest asking lease prices in the industrial sector at $10.03 per square foot but actual lease prices averaged a 20% discount at $8.10, on the 7 leases closed of the 101 listed. Among the major cities, there are 899 industrial lease listings and 42 spaces were leased, with Baton Rouge the most active with 18 leased followed by Shreveport with 13 leases closed. New Orleans and Lake Charles only closed 2 leases, so their actual lease prices at a large premium to asking prices were outliers, proving that in slow markets, only the prettiest warehouses get the attention.

Shopping Center Asking Lease Prices

The shopping center market is slow. The chart shows only the asking lease prices of 1,364 lease listings. Since only 19 leases were transacted, comparing reported prices is as crazy as a Sam Bankman-Fried interview. Baton Rouge had the highest number of transactions at 7, averaging $15.56 per square foot on actual lease transactions or a 5% discount to the $16.34 asking price.

Summary

Three revelations arise when you look at all the data.

1. Days on the market averages 300 days for all sectors and ranges from 188 for shopping centers to 705 for vacant land. Even excluding the land category, the time it takes to lease or sell commercial property averages 212 days.
2. Not many commercial properties are leased or sold each month. Of the 6,839 properties for lease or sale in just the major cities, only 219, or 3%, were closed last month. This includes all sectors too.
3. The good news is that, on average, the range is narrow between actual and asking prices for all sectors. For the entire state of Louisiana, average transacted prices range within a 12.70% and 15.70% discount, averaging only 13%. This means that transacted prices are pretty close to the asking price, no matter what sector or what town, which is a tribute to the agents who are doing the research to place a realistic value on both lease and sale listings.

For more information on prices, catch our blog Which Commercial Property Databases Are Best In 2023?

Footnotes: The Hospitality and Multifamily sectors did not have enough sales in this time period for the data to be reliable, but we will cover those sectors later.

Sources: Crexi, LoopNet, LACDB, MSCREX.