A Look at the Commercial Real Estate Market in Northern Nevada, Six Months Into a Pandemic

It's been six months since the first case of coronavirus appeared in Nevada, and many aspects of the economy continue to suffer. Some businesses have closed their doors for good; others continue to struggle to keep them open. But, there are some sectors that are actually expanding right now.

"We've done some of the largest leases and sale transactions we've ever done during this COVID time," said Dan Oster, Senior Vice President with NAI Alliance. "The Tesla expansion that was just announced is also accompanied by other expansion of companies; supporting industries to Tesla and other manufacturers are looking at Reno and we're signing leases with them. We've also seen companies in the health care industry that provide PPE or other types of medical devices expanding during this time."

The local housing market has been resilient through all this, even posting record numbers in recent months.

"That has been the surprise to me, is how good our residential market has held up and that support it gives to the general economy," Oster said. "And what we're hearing on that, and what we're seeing in many cases, is that people from other areas of the country have been given the freedom to work from home and told that they can live anywhere and do their job, and they say Reno, Nevada looks like a great place to live. And that's happening with enough regularity that it's supporting the residential market and that helps, in turn, our commercial market as well."

Residential tenants are still protected; the moratorium on evictions has been extended. But Nevada lifted the moratorium on commercial evictions in July. Oster says a lot of landlords and tenants are working together to try and find solutions right now.

"I'm pleased to say we didn't see a rush of eviction," Oster said. "Landlords are in a business as well and they want to keep their business working. We've been very busy working on subleases, early terminations, taking new tenants and putting them into old tenant's spaces and I'm pleased to say that as Americans, we're very adaptable people and we tend to be very pragmatic. And one silver lining of COVID is that really no one is to blame. So we haven't spent a lot of time accusing each other of wrongdoing; we've spent our time looking for solutions to the problems."

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