San Antonio climbs to 9th in NAR CRE demand index

San Antonio climbed from 76th to ninth in the National Association of Realtors' third-quarter CRE Demand Index, a one-year move NAR attributes to local hiring in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing.

Of the 306 metro areas tracked, 143 scored above 100 in the third quarter, NAR's marker for stronger commercial real estate demand drivers relative to other markets. St. George, Utah, retained the top spot with a score of 132, followed by Huntsville, Alabama, at 125, Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Arkansas, at 123, Sherman-Denison, Texas, at 123 and Ocala, Florida, at 121.

For allocators, the ranking is a hiring screen to set against a sponsor's industrial acquisition map. A fund with San Antonio, Seattle or Nashville in its pipeline now has a third-party score to cite; a manager marketing a metro outside the top 143 does not. The other 163 tracked metros did not score above 100, which makes local hiring the first question for any sponsor thesis built there.

“The story this quarter is where companies are hiring,” said Nadia Evangelou, NAR's principal economist and director of real estate research. “While industrial employment has been relatively flat nationally, some markets are adding jobs much faster than others.”

The same hiring strength helped lift San Antonio, Seattle and Nashville in the rankings, NAR said. That metro-by-metro reading is the point Private Real Estate Daily made about data-center underwriting in September: national averages are a poor substitute for market-level counts.