2012 Economic Outlook

CREW Jacksonville held their monthly lunch meeting on Tuesday, November 1st at Maggiano’s in the Jacksonville Town Center.  The speaker was Ignacio San Martin, a principal economist with BBVA Compass.  CREW also incorporated speakers from The PACE Center for Girls, CREW Jacksonville’s philanthropic partner, and the Jacksonville Aviation Authority (JAA), CREW Jacksonville’s Diamond annual sponsor.

Rosa Beckett, a representative from JAA and CREW Jacksonville member gave a short presentation on JAA’s impacts on our local real estate market including a video highlighting the organization’s commitment to success in our local economy.

Lynn H. Bertram, Executive Director of the PACE Center for Girls, spoke about the PACE/CREW Jacksonville partnership and announced that due to CREW Jacksonville’s commitment to PACE, the organization will gain national recognition at the upcoming National Philanthropy Day event on November 14th  at the Hyatt Regency, Jacksonville FL.  Two students from PACE talked to the audience about how the PACE program has helped them.  They also talked about their self portraits and why they incorporated certain elements into the paintings.  Each year CREW Jacksonville facilitates a self portrait painting session with PACE students as an exercise of self reflection and introspection.  These paintings are sold by silent auction at the annual CREW Holiday event.  Monies collected for the paintings are donated back to PACE.  This year’s holiday event will be December 6th at Epping Forest Yacht and Country Club from 5:30 to 7:30 and will also be the kickoff celebration for CREW Jacksonville’s 10 year anniversary.  Visit www.crewjax.org for more information and to register for the event.

Ignacio San Martin had positive news for our region in his economic update.  Generally speaking, 2012 economy is forecasted to be an improvement over 2011.  Although the economies of Latin America and China pose possible risks in 2012, the general outlook is that the economy will continue a slow improvement into 2012.  Mr. San Martin gave specific data on the status of international markets, noting that solutions are in place but are taking a long time to implement.  He said consumer confidence is still low but a more positive outlook is ahead.  Although commercial real estate cap rates are recovering, the overall values are still lower than average.  An interesting fact he provided is that investment in commercial real estate appears to be the golden ticket for investors at this time.  He noted that while a typical treasuries investment today may bring a return of 2%, commercial real estate investment returns are around 9%-10%, as high as they were in 2005, which he believes will continue throughout 2012.