Commercial Real Estate Alliance

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE ALLIANCE Economic Profile for 2020

By: Ken Hughes, CNK REALTY, President; and Tiffany Long, Member Service Coordinator

Our Commercial Real Estate Alliance (CREA) hosted Stewart Title’s Chief Economist, Ted Jones, PhD. for an economic forecast of 2020. The big question was...will there be a recession this year? As the title of his presentation, “And the Beat Goes On,” suggests, Dr. Jones said that a recession is extremely unlikely to happen in 2020.

The U.S. economy looks strong with the U.S. having more jobs than any time in history with a net of 2.1 million new jobs in the past 12 months along with the best wage increase in a decade.

With the focus on the Florida economy, Dr. Jones showed that Florida has the 6th highest job growth for 2019 at 2.4 percent. Largely due to the favorable business structures and incentives like having no state income tax. Predominantly all of the top 10 states with the highest job growth have no state income tax, which has continued to help fuel our growth.

Dr. Jones narrowed the focus of his presentation on the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton MSA. We have

seen annual job growth of 2.6 percent with significant growth in the sectors of construction, professional services, leisure/hospitality, education and healthcare. The unemployment rate in our area, 2.7 percent, continues to be less than the 3 percent state and 3.5 percent national averages respectively. Housing sales and medial prices continue to rise in our area with only a slight downshift in condo sales.

Although most all indicators were positive that a recession is unlikely, Dr. Jones did point out that there are a couple of areas which he felt should be monitored and could have an impact. Subprime car loans, corporate debt due to low interest rates, and the election could all have an impact on the economy, but that does not seem likely in the short term.

Overall the outlook for the national and local economy continues to remain strong. Dr. Jones was certainly entertaining and informative to the over 120 guests who are focused on commercial and residential market in our area. He can be followed on twitter @DrTCJ for continued insight into our economy. •

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